DG+Design

With Election Day just around the corner, there are a lot of questions about how the next administration might impact clean energy. Globally, the energy transition is slowing down (https://lnkd.in/gDFSHAQH). But in the U.S., we’re encouraged by top-down and bottom-up momentum for renewable energy. Here are the stories we’ve been reading this week The government is catalyzing domestic clean energy manufacturing 👷🏻👩🏽🏭 The U.S. Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service just rolled out final rules for the Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit—often called the 45X tax credit—as part of the push to boost clean energy manufacturing in the U.S., according to Solar Power World. These rules set clear credit amounts for making solar, wind, battery, and critical mineral components here at home. Designed to create jobs, strengthen supply chains, and enhance energy security, this credit also helps smaller startups by making it easier to access the full incentive value. This clarity should drive even more investment in American-made clean energy tech. (https://lnkd.in/gbhBArn7) Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has been a boon to Republican-led states 🐘 The IRA was initially opposed by Republicans but it’s driving major cleantech investments in states that lean Republican, reports Cipher News. These areas now lead in new wind, solar, and EV projects, largely due to their existing infrastructure, natural resources, and business-friendly environments including favorable permitting, tax breaks, and lower labor costs. The fact that red states are capitalizing on the IRA’s incentives shows that cleantech investments align with economic benefits, job creation, and community development, regardless of political stances. (https://lnkd.in/gDu9MqWr) A nonprofit is rallying support for renewables at the grassroots level ☀️ Inside Climate News highlighted nonprofit Greenlight America that’s working to rally local support for renewable energy projects, countering strong opposition often seen at local government meetings. While public support for renewables is high, opposition voices tend to be louder and more organized. Greenlight’s team provides information and training, helping residents feel comfortable advocating at meetings. Inspired by grassroots movements, they aim to increase local engagement without funding from developers. Their approach focuses on coordination rather than direct lobbying, as seen in Erie County, PA, where they facilitated a coalition to support a solar ordinance revision. (https://lnkd.in/g9wYsagG)

Compared to the boom in solar energy in recent years, wind energy is lagging. This week, the DG+ team has been reading stories that help us understand wind’s predicament. Wind probably won’t reach the global 2030 goal 🎯 While solar capacity has more than tripled globally in the last five years, wind has only doubled, with bottlenecks in equipment supplies, grid capacity, and permitting, reports Bloomberg. Solar's growth is fueled by its low costs, smaller size, and ease of installation, but wind turbines are massive and face logistical hurdles at every turn. Governments are taking action to ease these barriers, but the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) urges them to do more, faster. (https://shorturl.at/G3Iik) Offshore wind doesn’t get the props it deserves 😞 New Jersey voters don’t care much for offshore wind projects. A recent Stockton University poll found that only 17% of NJ voters feel candidates’ views on offshore wind would really influence their vote. Support remains politically divided, with 74% of Democrats backing wind projects versus 28% of Republicans. Last year, controversy around a now-abandoned project (Ørsted Ocean Wind 1 and 2) soured offshore wind’s public perception. (https://lnkd.in/gEKeEZN9) No funding for Maine’s offshore wind 💸 The U.S. Department of Transportation - Office of the Under Secretary for Policy rejected Maine’s $456 million funding request for a wind port on Sears Island. The competitive grant was part of $4.2 billion allocated for clean energy and transit projects under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, The Center Square reports. Wind energy is key to Maine’s 80% renewable energy goal by 2030. Maine and other New England states are calling for expanding and upgrading interconnection points for undersea cables that will eventually help connect offshore wind farms to the grid. (https://lnkd.in/gtRmJcph) #RenewableEnergy #WindTurbine #WindEnergy #OffshoreWind

Working at the intersection of climate and communications isn’t for the faint of heart. To succeed, you have to be an expert in both topics. DG+’s latest Insight from Phoebe Skok, MAS lays out a “required reading list” for climate communicators. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gYHfgaHM

With staff spread out across the country, the annual DG+ company retreat is an important time for us to connect, conspire, and recharge as a team in person. And that’s exactly what we did last week amongst the fall foliage on the beautiful Front Range of Colorado. We packed a lot in during our time in Boulder and Denver, with key highlights including: ☀️ A visit to one of Pivot Energy's agrivoltaic sites in LaSalle, CO. The 3-acre site, hosted on land owned by a local farmer, services households in Xcel Energy territory with community solar and will eventually integrate sheep grazing while also beta testing various vegetable crops. 🌽 A stop at Anderson Farms for a corn maze and other fall festivities (which we all appropriately packed our flannels for). 📄 Strategic planning for 2025 and team building, including a fascinating look at our individual DiSC assessments and a facilitated discussion about the different priorities, preferences, and values we each bring to the workplace. 🥃 Sponsoring a packed house for Pivot Energy’s monthly happy hour and networking event Solardarity in Denver’s RiNo district. The local solar industry came out in force with over 100 attendees! A big thanks for all of our clients’ patience and understanding last week while we tried our very best to stay unplugged. We’re back online and energized to close out 2024 on a high note! 📷 from left to right: David Ganske, Nadia Johnson, Mary Duncan-Sain, Melissa Stafford-Woodruff, Dana Filek-Gibson, Julianne Waite, Barbara Weber, Daniel Jones, Phoebe Skok, MAS

Nuclear energy is enjoying a resurgence. For the first time in decades, burgeoning use of AI and data-center development are driving up U.S. electricity demand, with an increase of up to 15% by 2029, according to Wood Mackenzie. (https://shorturl.at/lCbIx) Here are a few deals that show how Big Tech is tapping nuclear as a source of reliable clean energy to power its planned data centers. 👇 1️⃣ Microsoft on Three Mile Island In September, Microsoft and Constellation, the biggest owner of nuclear plants in the country, announced a 20-year power purchase agreement that would restart the Unit 1 reactor on Three Mile Island near Middletown, Pa. Unit 1 is close to the site of one of the worst nuclear accidents in U.S. history. This deal is part of Microsoft’s project to add more than 800 megawatts (MW) of clean electricity to the power grid and is expected to create ~3,400 jobs, bring in $3 billion in state and federal taxes, and add $16 billion to the state's economy, NPR noted. (https://shorturl.at/oexOT) 2️⃣ Google and Kairos Power Google has announced what it calls the world’s first corporate agreement to buy nuclear energy. It’ll purchase a 500-megawatt (MW) fleet of small nuclear reactors (SMRs) by 2035 from Kairos Power, a California-based SMR developer, to power its emerging AI technologies, reports Utility Dive. (https://shorturl.at/pGGr6) SMRs have a smaller physical footprint than traditional nuclear reactors, allowing them to be built faster and closer to the grid. 3️⃣ Amazon in Virginia Amazon signed three agreements with Energy Northwest to support the development of nuclear energy projects, including several SMRs near Dominion Energy’s grid in Virginia. Amazon is also investing in SMRs and fuel developer X-energy, according to Quartz. (https://shorturl.at/EiHax) This comes after Amazon struck a deal with Constellation Energy and purchased a nuclear-powered data center in Pennsylvania for $650 million. (https://shorturl.at/AevzO) #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Nuclear #Tech

Colorado! What are you doing Thursday night? We're proud to sponsor this month's Solardarity event, hosted by our longtime client Pivot Energy. If you're on the Front Range, join us at Improper City in Denver for drinks and good conversation amongst solar industry professionals. RSVP here: https://bit.ly/3XQiVA7 We hope to see you there!

Our hearts go out to those who have been affected by Hurricane Helene over the last few weeks. With the utter severity of the storm and another massive hurricane — Milton — making landfall in Florida, we’ve been exploring what these disasters tell us about the climate crisis. Helene was a “biblical” storm… Hurricane Helene jumped from Category 1 to 5 in a single day, elevating the expected damage from “minimal” to “devastating.” Its wind and rain triggered a humanitarian catastrophe in six states that are still recovering from its impacts. Climate change, atmospheric scientist John Morales explains, will make extreme weather events like hurricanes even more dangerous. (https://shorturl.at/KzUMf) Data visualizations by @NPR show how a warming planet is making storms stronger. (https://shorturl.at/H3LPL) …And it knocked out the federal government’s climate and weather data repository Axios reports that Helene's devastation in western North Carolina took the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) offline. NCEI maintains one of the most comprehensive archives of oceanic, atmospheric, and geophysical data in the world, with information dating back to the 1700s. The disaster will delay the release of monthly U.S. and global climate reports that are used by both the public and private sectors. Climate change-fueled disasters have also hit other federal assets in years past, highlighting the need for congressional action to ensure the federal government’s financial exposure to climate change is fully accounted for and minimized. (https://shorturl.at/sb0q3) “Once-in-a-lifetime” Milton hits Florida Quickly following Helene, Hurricane Milton made landfall at the mouth of Tampa Bay in Florida Wednesday evening as a Category 3 hurricane and cut through the state as a Category 1 storm before moving offshore. Nearly tripling in strength in less than 36 hours, Milton became the fifth strongest Atlantic storm ever recorded before making landfall, according to Newsweek (https://shorturl.at/GPOW5). As of Friday morning, at least 16 people have died, 1,000 people have been rescued, over two million homes and businesses are out of power, and Florida still reels from the flood, CNN reports. (https://shorturl.at/Kuhom) #Hurricane #Adaptation #Milton #ClimateCrisis #Helene

Happy (early) Halloween from the DG+ team! While it’s always enjoyable to don a new identity for a night, Halloween’s environmental impacts can be a scary sight to behold. DG+’s Phoebe Skok lays out some tips and tricks to help you celebrate spooky season sustainably — and, there’s some climate-themed costume inspiration you won’t want to miss. Check out our latest Insight below ↓ https://lnkd.in/gg5bmGun

DG+ continues to grow! We’re looking for a full-time marketing associate to join our team. Our ideal candidate is a skilled writer, team player, and client advocate with marketing experience in clean energy and sustainability. If this sounds like you or someone you know, we would love to hear from you! Learn more about the position here: https://bit.ly/3wb8QEd

Overlapping with the United Nations General Assembly, the Climate Group Climate Week NYC drew ~100,000 people to more than 900 events last week, covering topics as wide-ranging as energy, corporate transparency, climate finance, the impact of AI, and regenerative agriculture. This week, the DG+ team highlights some of the week’s big takeaways: Big climate announcements ahead of COP 📢 As the attendance at November’s COP29 in Azerbaijan is expected to be low, political and business leaders chose Climate Week as their venue for making climate announcements. Brazil’s new environment minister, for example, announced that the country is upping its climate targets. Colombia and Panama joined a coalition committed to phasing out coal, and Denmark increased funding that its development bank will spend on tackling climate change in the developing world. The We Mean Business Coalition, a network of business-focused climate nonprofits, also launched a new campaign offering guiding principles to end reliance on coal, oil, and gas. (https://shorturl.at/HQ3jp) Al Gore calls thinks UN climate talk rules need to change 🌐 At an Axios event, former Vice President Al Gore worried that COP summits have too many choke points. Today, the COP process requires unanimity among all countries, which has created a pattern where groups of countries (e.g. petrostates) band together to slow progress, bringing geopolitical friction into COP decisions. Al Gore would like to see the UN secretary-general have more authority to choose which nations host the summits and who runs the talks. But not everyone agrees that this is the right solution. (https://shorturl.at/Hz6Rl) And the protests… 🪧🪧🪧 Cipher News reports that a New York Times-sponsored Climate Week event was disrupted and moved online for its last hour when anti-fossil fuel protesters took over the stage as Vicki Hollub, CEO of Occidental Petroleum, entered (https://shorturl.at/PaVas). Inside Climate News also noted the presence of many fossil fuel executives in Climate Week events, fueling protests even before the week began. (https://shorturl.at/lh4EV) #AlGore #Climate Week NYC #ClimateChange