Alec Appelbaum

Alec Appelbaum
Industry Positions News Editor, Yale Center for Business and the Environment
Degree Programs Yale College, BA, 1993 Yale School of Management, MBA, 1998

Alec Appelbaum writes and teaches to help all stakeholders act on climate challenges. He's written journalism and research for the New York Times, the Atlantic, Bloomberg CityLab, the Urban Land Institute, the Rockefeller Foundation, and many others. He's taught about writing or climate or both at New York City high schools, Pratt Institute, NYU Stern School of Business, and in enrichment training for teachers in the New York City Department of Education. 

At CBEY, he coaches and edits students who write stories for the Clean Energy Finance Forum and Conservation Finance Network websites, and helps edit and write publications across the Center. He lives in Lower Manhattan, works in Brooklyn, and gets misty over New Haven.

Authored Articles
This photo of Arkabutla Lake, Mississippi evokes a hydropower project this fund has staked.

This photo of Arkabutla Lake, Mississippi evokes a hydropower project this fund has staked. (Photo by Sean Davis via Flickr Creative Commons.)

Policy Pinpoint: Bring a Flashlight on a Camping Trip

Alec Appelbaum
The Inflation Reduction Act blazes miles upon miles of trail with clear markers in what had been overgrown backcountry. And the inconclusive recent climate negotiations that the United Nations sponsored in Egypt work as charcoal-gray clouds overhead. Where are attentive capitalists placing investment now that scale is possible and challenges...
Avangrid CEO Pedro Azagra Blazquez

AVANGRID's CEO Sees American Ingenuity Rising With the Inflation Reduction Act

Alec Appelbaum
In this video, AVANGRID CEO Pedro Azagra Blazquez frames his perspective on investment opportunities after the United States Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act. He also weighs in on Europe's investment climate, the outlook for hydrogen as a fossil-free energy source, and other topics where this European-based corporation sees the...
Agrivoltaic projects, where solar panels create shade and revenue for farmers, suggest one compelling development model.

This photo of Jack's Solar Garden and its agrivoltaic plans comes from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. 

Policy Pinpoint: Re-Charge for a Heavy Responsibility

Alec Appelbaum
Now that the Inflation Reduction Act's incentives operate as American law, it will take compromise and conciliation to make the investments that meet those incentives succeed and endure. Let's revisit our metaphors.
Wind power in desert

Prosperity arises not only from putting power sources in new places. It also flows from helping people currently powerless to tap energy for more active lives. 

Policy Pinpoint: Lessons of (Recent) History

Alec Appelbaum
Lawyers and VCs have sized up the Inflation Reduction Act by now, and American energy systems will likely never stagnate again. For thinking about investment over the decades that decarbonization will take, take a trip back to another crossroads in the nation's energy history.
Looking for long-term investment flows

(Photo by Kevin Oliver via Flickr Creative Commons.) It was no precipitous proclamation about traffic that reprogrammed New York City's economy. 

Policy Pinpoint: Legislation and the Long Road Before Us

Alec Appelbaum
Many have boiled down the seminal Inflation Reduction Act, and many are burrowing into it. To set boundaries and context beyond the timing of tax credits, consider an analogy to how another blockbuster set of policies altered one of the world's more emissions-intensive cities.
Joseph FIordaliso, looking to the ocean and the roads to power the Garden State

For Joseph Fiordaliso, progress toward a fossil-free economy flows from top-level leadership to street-level entrepreneurship. 

Joseph Fiordaliso on New Jersey's Energy Master Plan (Updated as the Plan Moves Forward in '21)

Alec Appelbaum
When we spoke with Joseph Fiordaliso, the president of the state's Board of Public Utilities, lockdowns were still only happening overseas and states were the only serious partners for renewable developers. Now, New Jersey is moving forward on transmission investment- making Fiordaliso's cheery appeals to the next generation and the...
A minigrid using solar shines via Nigeria's initiative

We showcased this Nigerian minigrid last summer. We're now sharing a warning that ambitions from multinational investors had better grow more maximalist. 

Building the World's Clean Infrastructure Takes a 7X Investment Increase. Who's Up?

Alec Appelbaum
The sweep of nations from Central America across to Asia contains billions of people and untold potential for climate-smart infrastructure. The sweep of capital across those nations, we learned in a panel, looks tepid in light of the job. A set of reports from the International Energy Agency zooms in...
What was that line from Hoosiers?

The President made promises. His cabinet looks promising. What do you watch for now? 

The President Has a Team, and Decarbonization Has Its Time

Alec Appelbaum
Jennifer Granholm, former governor of the auto-manufacturing mecca in Michigan, became the United States secretary of energy on February 25. Granholm now oversees a revamped agency that includes energy-justice advocate Shalanda Baker in a key role and other clean-energy doers in high places. Is this a downpayment on President Joe...
Enough for everyone

Now that we needn't think of solar as an "alternative" source, we also can find alternatives to a system in which way more of solar goes to affluent whites.

Demanding Upstanding Solar Supply: Two Pioneers Chart Paths to Energy Justice

Alec Appelbaum
Look behind the dominant curve, on which solar power becomes cheaper to supply while corporate commitments, voters' priorities and scientific data goose demand for solar. You'll see that too many people find themselves locked out of the solar market or barred from influencing its direction. Two speakers challenged Yale audiences...