2014 CCBJ Business Achievement Award

SolarCity, the leader in the third-party owned solar PV business, for growing its revenues 57% YOY through Q3 2014 to $183.2 million and achieving several key milestones including: Announcing with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in September a $5 billion plan to expand in the state and build, in conjunction with SUNY Polytechnic Institute, a solar cell manufacturing plant near Buffalo with annual capacity of 1 GW that will create an estimated 5,000 new jobs; Registering a solar bond issue for up to $200 million annually with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Available through the company’s website in increments of $1,000 for interest rates ranging from 2% to 4%, the bond issue allows SolarCity to broaden the range of investors who back its projects; Winning another round of contracts to develop rooftop PV systems for WalMart, which calls SolarCity its largest solar provider, responsible for more than 200 projects since 2010.

SunEdison for achieving PV market leadership in Latin America and taking strong positions in other developing regions of the world-markets where the bulk of growth in solar PV will occur in the coming decade. GTM Research ranks SunEdison as Latin America’s top PV developer, with 155 MW operational and another 163 MW in its development pipeline at the end of 2014. In Brazil, SunEdison formed a joint venture with Renova Energies to build, own, and operate four solar PV power plants, amounting to 1 GW of capacity in the state of Bahia. The plants are expected to be operational by 2017. SunEdison also plans to invest $30 million in a new Brazilian module production facility. Also in 2014, SunEdison, which had $1.87 billion in revenues for the nine months through Q3 2014, entered a partnership with Aboitiz Power Corp. to build and operate up to 300 MW of utility-scale solar PV power plants in the Philippines over three years.

Vestas, the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturer, for weathering turbulent times-including revenue declines of 16% in 2013 and 2011-to achieve a position by the end of 2014 where it was hiring new workers and upgrading its revenue projection for the year from €6 billion to between €6.4 and €7 billion. On the strength of very large orders from Enel Green Power North America and EDF Renewable Energy, Vestas announced in December that it will hire hundreds of new workers at two production facilities in Colorado. Earlier in 2014, the firm achieved landmark deals in Southeast Asia and Africa. Vestas will supply 365 of its 850 kW turbines for the Lake Turkana wind farm in Kenya. Called the largest wind power plant in Africa and expected to provide about 20% of Kenya’s electrical generating capacity, the project almost did not go forward due to financing problems. Vestas is part of a group of investors that agreed in June 2014 to provide equity to complete the €498 million project. In Vietnam, Vestas reached agreement with Phu Cuong Group to develop a 170 MW wind farm. In the developed world, a great deal of the future growth of wind power will occur offshore, and in 2014 Vestas consolidated its second-place position, with 22% of the offshore market, after Siemens, which had 59%. To compete more effectively, Vestas formed a joint venture with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in 2014. The JV recently secured a 258 MW contract to supply its 8 MW offshore turbines for a Dong Energy project off the west coast of Great Britain.

Overseas Private Investment Corp. (OPIC), the U.S. federal government’s development finance institution, for committing a record $1.2 billion in financing and insurance during fiscal year 2014 to support a series of ambitious renewable energy projects in developing countries. Examples of OPIC-approved support for projects includes $25 million to SunEdison for a 50 MW solar project in Jordan, $3 million to Simpa Energy to expand a network of innovative rooftop home solar paid via mobile phone in India, $43 million to the BMR Jamaica 34 MW wind project that helps to set a model for Caribbean islands to transition from fuel oil, and several game-changing solar projects in Chile. One of the Chilean projects includes $230 million in OPIC financing to Arizona-Based First Solar, for its 141 MW Luz del Norte plant, which will be the largest solar project in Latin America once complete and was supported in part through OPIC’s first-ever Green Guaranties, U.S. government guaranties which adhere to the Green Bond Principles of 2014.

ICF International for achieving organic growth in its climate risk assessment and adaptation practice of approximately 80% over the past two years. The firm has accomplished this by diversifying within several strategic areas that are emerging as key adaptation services, including new approaches to managing climate change risks to infrastructure and strengthening transportation-related climate risk management. (For more on ICF’s climate change risk management and adaptation practice, see Q&A later in this edition.)

CH2M HILL for developing the Coastal Change Adaptation Planning Guidance (CCAPG) for the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). CCAPG is designed to help coastal managers, engineers, planners and professionals to manage coastal change. CCAPG will be used to help identify Coastal Change Management Areas (CCMAs) and to develop adaptation approaches within the CCMAs utilizing best practice techniques and complying with requirements of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). The CCAPG defines a four-stage approach to develop CCMAs to control and manage coastal change risks to both existing and future development through spatial management policy.

AECOM for its work as a strategic partner for the 100 Resilient Cities program. Pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, the program funds the salary of a chief resilience officer (CRO) in 100 cities for two years. AECOM is working with the leadership team to help develop the process that each of the cities will follow to develop their resiliency strategy, as well as working directly with a number of the cities in the first round of the program. These include: Christchurch, Melbourne, San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Rome, Bangkok and Quito. For each city, AECOM provides content, logistical and facilitation support for an agenda-setting workshop for up to 100 delegates, with a large media and mayoral/governor presence; provides consultancy support on the resiliency strategy development process, including vulnerability and risk assessment of shocks and stresses; coaches the CRO; and helps deliver the resiliency strategy for the city.

Anthesis Group for building its specialty sustainability consulting business to $11 million in revenues and a staff over more than 110 in the United States, UK, Germany, Philippines, China and UAE in just 16 months. The firm positions itself as a global business offering more specialized value than large multi-disciplinary organizations and greater depth and geographical reach than small boutique firms. Anthesis Group has realized 50% of its growth organically and 50% from acquisitions, including Best Foot Forward, UMR, Caleb, SecondNature and M4C. Anthesis publicly lists more than 75 clients across industries ranging from energy and financial services to food and beverage, healthcare, forestry, oil and gas, retail and sporting events. Tesco, the UK’s largest retailer, has appointed Anthesis to develop and manage a single online sustainability community spanning the retailer’s supply base. For the Cool Farm Institute, a global NGO helping famers reduce their environmental impacts, Anthesis developed an online tool where farmers calculate their on-site carbon emissions, learn where their hotspots are and explore scenarios for reducing emissions and improving resource efficiency.

Environmental Management and Planning Solutions, Inc., for facilitating stakeholder vetting of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Regulatory and Permitting Information Desktop (RAPID) Toolkit for geothermal and solar developers aiming to build on federal lands. RAPID guides developers and agencies through the maze of federal (e.g. NEPA) and state permitting requirements. Geothermal roadmaps have become available for the federal level and 12 western states, while solar roadmaps are currently online for federal lands and California. Because the toolkit is available in a wiki-based platform, any stakeholder with an account can manage the information.

Solar Grid Storage for gaining impressive pilot-stage sales and industry recognition for the its PowerFactor battery storage modules and its business model that leverages multiple value streams: selling frequency regulation to grid operators; providing inverter services for solar PV project developers and owners; and providing emergency backup power to its end-use customers. Similarly to solar-as-service companies, Solar Grid’s business model is third-party ownership, but its focus for deploying systems is in the commercial and industrial (C&I) space. Its largest installation to date is a PowerFactor500 system installed along with a 402 kW PV system on the Laurel, MD, headquarters of Konterra, a mixed-use residential, retail, office development. Heralded by Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley and FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghof, the project is a microgrid capable of islanding with 50 kW of capacity for just over four hours. While Solar Grid Storage’s primary market are C&I enterprises, the firm expects to do business with utilities, according to Leyden, who pointed to storage procurements by PSE&G, National Grid and California’s three investor-owned utilities.

Stem for developing distributed, behind-the-meter energy storage products that combine reliable battery hardware with intelligent software to help businesses reduce and predict energy bills without disrupting operations. Stem has worked with the Hawaiian Electric Company and California Independent System Operator on pilot projects, and in Q4 2014 it was selected by Southern California Edison to provide 85 MW of capacity. SCE’s procurement process placed Stem’s technology head-to-head with conventional assets like gas-fired power plants, proving Stem’s solution is viewed as a viable alternative to costly, fossil fuel-based resources.

Southern California Edison for its investments in preparing for the electricity grid of the future. The investor-owned utility, which had revenue of $12.56 billion in 2013, is already operating in that future mode on some weekend days when a handful of its distribution circuits are 100% supplied by solar PV. SCE has a number of programs and initiatives underway to study and prepare for the grid of the future, some on its own initiative and others mandated by California legislators and regulators. When SCE purchased 261.6 MW of energy storage capacity in fall 2014 as part of a long term procurement plan, it exceeded by more than five times its energy storage mandate from the CPUC. In the voluntary category, SCE is running an $80 million advanced energy demonstration project (partially funded by federal Recovery Act funds) with UC Irvine to investigate how solar PV, energy storage, electric vehicles, demand response and smart grid technologies can play well together. At the bulk transmission level, SCE began in 2014 the demonstration phase of the Tehachapi Energy Storage Project, where a 32 MWH lithium-ion battery storage resource has been developed in the Tehachapi Wind Resource Area, where up to 4,500 MW of wind power capacity is expected to be operational by 2016. The demonstration project is being funded by SCE and by federal Recovery Act funds. “This installation will allow us to take a serious look at the technological capabilities of energy storage on the electric grid,” said Imre Gyuk, energy storage program manager in DOE’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability. “It will also help us to gain a better understanding of the value and benefit of battery energy storage.”

First Fuel for leveraging its Remote Building Analytics (RBA) software platform to enable the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) to identify $15.6 million in annual energy savings through 1,000 remote audits of 54 million square feet of buildings, according to First Fuel. First Fuel’s RBA can evaluate a building’s energy consumption patterns remotely and produce an actionable energy audit much more quickly and cheaply than conventional methods. The audits were conducted in 15% of the expected time and cost GSA several million dollars less than what the agency had expected to pay, according to FirstFuel. Sixty percent of the identified energy savings could be achieved by operational changes. One audit at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center enabled building managers to identify poorly controlled HVAC fans that were causing consumption spikes; with improved control, the GSA is saving more than $500,000 a year. FirstFuel uses building meter data and weather data to find opportunities for energy savings through either operational changes or equipment retrofits. It has been backed with more than $20 million from global power and energy company E.ON as well as VC investors Nth Power, Rockport Capital and Battery Ventures.

Four Twenty Seven and Climate Earth for launching a climate risks analytics application designed for companies concerned that extreme weather events will disrupt their supplier network, halt operations, and cost money in lost production and sales. The firms are both early stage start-ups. Four Twenty Seven is a small boutique climate adaptation consultancy and sustainability. Climate Earth is a data and software company focused on modeling environmental impacts. Each firm has fewer than a dozen employees each. But within the first nine months of launching their joint Climate Change Risk Management (CCRM) application, they have sold and deployed it to two Fortune 100 companies in the consumer goods and pharmaceutical sectors. According to Four Twenty Seven, one client used the findings to raise the issue of environmental risk and natural resources dependency with senior leadership as part of a five-year strategy process. The other is drawing upon the results to reassess their raw materials sourcing strategy. The partnership blends the environmental impacts modeling expertise of Climate Earth with Four Twenty Seven’s ability to screen for climate change impacts and analyze risks and probabilities. Supporting CCRM is the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index (ND-GAIN) that tracks countries’ levels of preparedness to deal with climate disruption and other global shifts.

ICF International for developing two climate change resilience tools, under a U.S. Department of Transportation project, that helps transportation agencies overcome barriers to conducting climate change vulnerability assessments. The CMIP Climate Data Processing Tool addresses the challenge of obtaining locally downscaled climate projection data that is expressed in terms relevant to transportation decision making. The Vulnerability Assessment Scoring Tool (VAST) reduces the resources required to conduct a system-wide vulnerability assessment by guiding users through data collection from existing datasets, internal knowledge, and spatial analysis. By automating vulnerability calculations, transportation agencies can conduct vulnerability assessments of hundreds of assets within a matter of weeks or months. Both tools have made vulnerability assessments substantially more accessible to transportation agencies, and both are already in use. Spearately, ICF developed an online tool called EZ Retrofit to assist multi-family property owners in saving energy and water.

Maxwell Technologies for pioneering the use of energy recuperation for electric rail systems, with two breakthrough applications announced in 2014. With Spanish power electronics and controls systems engineering firm Win Inertia, Maxwell’s ultracapacitors were deployed at the Cerro Negro, Spain, rail station in August. The rapid charging and discharging capabilities of the technology is at the heart of a stationary wayside braking energy recuperation system that recovers 8-10% of the total energy used by the rail system at that station. The system also enables the railway operator, ADIF, to store excess energy in a battery bank for an EV charging station at the rail station. According to Maxwell, wayside energy recuperation systems have been gaining traction as major rail OEMs have developed and validated such systems and demonstrated the value proposition with grid power consumption savings and reduced brake wear and maintenance. Maxwell Technologies also worked with ABB in 2014 to install a hybrid configuration of the ENVILINE energy recovery and storage system for the Southeast Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA) light rail system. The addition of Maxwell ultracapacitors in this system reduces SEPTA rail vehicles’ consumption of grid energy by 10-20% and enables the sale of excess power for utility grid frequency regulation. Between energy cost savings and revenues from frequency regulation, the system is expected to generate $250,000 annually.

Ameren Illinois and its consultant Leidos Engineering for milestones achieved by Ameren’s ActOnEnergy Program. Over seven years, ActOnEnergy initiatives have enabled Ameren Illinois customers to save more than 2,800 gigawatt hours of electricity and more than 27 million therms of natural gas. The program has produced more than $190 million in total energy savings across 42,000 square miles of service territory. In 2014, ActOnEnergy exceeded its energy savings goals while spending $6.3 million less than allotted. The program awarded just under $11 million in electric and almost $2 million in gas incentives.

Leidos Engineering for supporting a large U.S. automaker to reduce energy intensity from all of its U.S. facilities by 20% by 2020. With Leidos integrating an energy management program into the automaker’s overall business model, the firm is ensuring continuous efficiency improvements across the entire global organization. Among the top scheduled program improvements: replacement and retrofit of existing lighting fixtures with lightweight fluorescent or LED fixtures; and installing new gas-fired air handling units, piping and controls as part of three steam elimination projects at separate locations representing more than 2.5 million square feet.

Pathfinder Renewable Energy, Magnum Energy, Dresser-Rand, and Duke-American Transmission Co. for proposing an $8 billion project that will encompass a massive wind farm in Wyoming, a large energy storage facility in Utah, and a 525-mile transmission line connecting those facilities together. The proposed $4 billion wind farm would be located about 40 miles north of Cheyenne and would be designed to generate 2,100 MW. The $1.5 billion, 1,200 MW energy storage facility, to be located near Delta, Utah, would consist of a compressed air energy storage system utilizing four vertical caverns. The transmission line would extend from the wind farm in Wyoming through Colorado to the energy storage facility, while an existing 490-mile transmission line would transport electricity from the storage facility to the Los Angeles area. “This project would be the 21st Century’s Hoover Dam-a landmark of the clean energy revolution,” said Jeff Meyer, managing partner of Pathfinder Renewable Wind Energy.

Mainstream Renewable Power and NEK Umwelttechnik for agreeing to purchase the 225 MW Avitepa Wind Farm project in Ghana and complete its development. The facility, which will be the largest utility-scale wind farm in Ghana when it starts up operations in early 2016, is located about 40 kilometers from the capital Accra on Ghana’s east coast. Mainstream Power and NEK expect to close on the financing for the $525 million project in 2015. “It is my hope that this agreement between NEK and Mainstream will accelerate the process towards the realization of wind farms in Ghana, and they can be assured of the full support of the Ministry of Energy & Petroleum,” said Wisdom Ahiataku-Togobo, the ministry’s director of renewable energy.

Constellation, an Exelon company, for winning a competition to design, build and operate a 27 MW biogas power plant at L.A. Sanitation’s enormous Hyperion Treatment Plant. With natural gas prices projected to remain low for many years, developing biogas projects from landfills or wastewater treatment plants is a difficult economic challenge, and many high-profile projects have been sidelined in the last several years. The $130 million project will use three combustion gas turbines with heat recovery steam generators for efficient combined cycle generation to power the wastewater treatment plant, with a portion of the steam extracted for plant processes. The oldest wastewater treatment plant in Los Angeles-and one of the largest in the world-Hyperion handles 350 million gallons of sewage on a dry day, and up to 1,000 on a wet day, according to LA Sanitation. Constellation and its subcontractors will develop, construct and operate the facility for 10 years, with an option to extend the agreement for five additional years. Commercial operation is expected by the end of 2016.

NRG Energy and JX Nippon for their joint venture announced in 2014 to build what may well become the largest post-combustion carbon capture and storage project near Houston. The Petra Nova Carbon Capture Project is expected to capture about 1.4 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, compress and pipe it for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The project will capture approximately 90% of the CO2 emitted in a flue gas slipstream from 240 MW of coal power capacity at the 2475 MW WA Parish power plant. The captured CO2 will be used at the West Ranch oil field, which is 25% owned by each of the JV partners, where it is expected to boost oil production from 500 barrels to approximately 15,000 barrels per day. NRG Energy CEO David Crane called the project an “enormous step” in the direction of providing “safe, affordable and reliable power to our customers, but without risking the health of the planet as a result of our activities.” Sargent & Lundy has been awarded the EPC contract for the project which is expected to be completed in 2016.

Saskpower for commissioning in October 2014 the world’s first commercial-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at a coal-fired power plant, the 110 MW Unit #3 of SaskPower’s 50-year-old Boundary Dam power plant in Estevan, Saskatchewan. The carbon-capture unit, installed at a cost of about $1.2 billion, is capturing about 1 million tons annually, 90% of the power plant’s carbon dioxide (CO2). Oil and gas producer Cenovus Energy is buying most of the captured CO2 from Boundary Dam and using it for enhanced oil recovery. “It’s the first project [of its kind] in the world, [and] it’s the only place you can go and actually look at a real power plant,” with CCS, said Jon Gibbons, Director of the UK CCS Research Centre, in a video produced by Saskpower. “The knowledge that Saskpower is generating and willing to share through [the CCS Consortium] is the most powerful method we can envision to accelerate CCS,” said Steve Whittaker, principal manager, geological storage, for the Global CCS Institute. The commercial development of CCS has been slow. In its 2008 report on CCS, CCBJ listed 39 proposed CCS projects, most of them slated for existing or new coal power plants, and the vast majority were canceled long ago due to the recession and low carbon prices. Saskpower CEO Robert Watson said the company will assess the economic performance of the unit to determine whether CCS is viable for other power plants in the utility’s system. “We want to see how much per kilowatt hour it is to produce the power with carbon capture and compare that against possible future designs, so others in future have something to benchmark against.”

Missouri River Energy Services for leading a $380 million project to convert the Lake Red Rock Dam near Des Moines, Iowa, to a hydroelectric power facility. Once converted, the dam will be the second largest hydroelectric power plant in the state, generating 36.4 MW during peak water levels. In 2013, the Iowa legislature enacted legislation allowing the project to receive the same tax credits as wind energy projects. The Army Corps of Engineers and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued final approvals for the project in 2014. The North Tailwater Recreation Area of Lake Red Rock has already been closed, marking the beginning of the project’s construction. The Newton Daily News in Iowa reported on August 11 that state officials are hoping that the success of the project spurs the development of another large hydroelectric project on the Mississippi River near Iowa’s eastern border. While there is very little opportunity for new greenfield dams in the continental United States, approximately 10 GW of hydropower capacity could be developed on existing un-powered dams such as Lake Red Rock, according to the National Hydropower Association.

FirstElement Fuel and Air Products and Chemicals for developing a network of 19 hydrogen fueling stations in California, which currently has fewer than a dozen such stations, including both public and private ones. FirstElement Fuel is dedicated to providing customers access to safe, reliable, retail hydrogen fueling to enable the widespread commercial adoption of fuel cell electric vehicles. It has been awarded a $27.6 Million grant from the California Energy Commission as well as financial backing from Toyota. The station’s will use Air Products’ SmartFuel technology, providing hydrogen at 700 bar (10,000 psi) and feature Air Products’ advanced consumer-friendly retail hydrogen fuel dispenser, developed in conjunction with Bennett Pump Co. Separately Air Products, has developed nine hydrogen fueling stations in California with CEC support and is in the process of adding nine more locations. The firm also operates three hydrogen-powered forklift fueling stations in the state. Black & Veatch will perform the engineering, procurement, and construction of the 19 stations.

DNV GL for providing invaluable analytical insights, technical resources and consulting to support the low-carbon transformation of the electric power industry. The firm’s expertise in this realm has been boosted considerably by acquisitions of industry leaders, KEMA, Garrad Hassan and GL Renewables Certification in the last several years. DNV GL’s 2014 contributions and accomplishments in the area of electricity sector transformation include: Began working with TU Delft and Berenschot to develop for Top-sectorEnergy, the Dutch Government’s energy advisory group, a road map for energy storage in the Netherlands; Developed a new solar inverter testing service to lower the risks and costs associated with deploying inverters; Achieved the highest score out of six participants in a blind test of wind flow modeling—an important tool for estimating wind power output and financing prospective wind projects in complex terrain—run by European energy giant E.ON; Co-founded with ABB, Alliander, ICT Automatisering and Stedin, a Universal Universal Smart Energy Framework Foundation to support development of smart energy products, services and solutions; Issued a “manifesto” pledging to support 25% cost reductions for offshore wind through joint industry projects to improve design, engineering, installation and operations; optimizing monopole design standards by improving crew transfer technologies, supporting application of HVDC transmission technology and other measures. The firm also continued its management of Power Matching City in the Netherlands, one of the few advanced demonstrations of real-time load balancing technologies that manage distributed renewable resources and energy storage; and it continued using its portable simulation facility to educate grid managers, project developers and city planners about the opportunities offered by smart grid technologies and distributed energy resources.

CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) for making greenhouse gas (GHG) and climate change disclosure an increasingly standard element of reporting by publicly held companies worldwide. From 2013 to 2014 alone, the number of companies disclosing their climate change data through CDP grew from 4,500 to more than 5,000. Seventy percent of the S&P 500 reported through CDP in 2014. CDP does more than just collect and report data; it scores company’s efforts and pressures reporting companies to do more to mitigate their GHGs. In CDP’s fourth annual Carbon Action report (published in December 2014) on 224 companies in heavy emitting industries, CDP applauded the growth in the number of these companies that had established GHG-reduction targets (79%), but said too many companies were taking a “business as usual” approach—and that more than 90% of reporting companies had only cut emissions 1% from 2012 through 2013. CDP’s core constituency is institutional investors—767 of them, representing assets worth more than $92 trillion. The investors look to CDP for objective analysis and insight into companies’ greenhouse gas emissions, water usage and strategies for managing climate change, water and deforestation risks.