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Better than gold

Mission Mineral: Raising Finance and Strategy to Build Clean Infrastructure

Allan Zhang
As the world rapidly builds renewable energy infrastructure and transportation networks, the critical minerals' sourcing, processing, and trading will have profound economic, environmental, and geopolitical implications. Ensuring the critical minerals’ supply meets ever-rising demand while navigating the mineral supply chain’s impacts on the environment and society is a daunting challenge.
Solar Farm in Mountains

Explainer: How Does the Inflation Reduction Act Relieve Doubts About Clean Energy Tax Credits?

Allan Zhang
Most investment in solar and wind power involves drawing cash from investors who use those technologies' tax credits. The Inflation Reduction Act removes some barriers and doubts about the tax credits, signaling a rise in their use. But nothing is ever simple, and investors are bringing vital questions about timing...
Amy Harder, a journalist with chops, takes on the net-zero challenge

Amy Harder, an expert journalist, steers the storytelling for Breakthrough Energy's new publication. 

An Interview With Amy Harder of Cipher by Breakthrough Energy

Bryson Wiese
Amy Harder, a veteran journalist, now runs a new site out of Breakthrough Energy called Cipher. She looks at the transition's hard questions, hard slogs, and compelling stories in a casual Zoom with undergraduates.
A (very) old technology for transmission still holds in parts of South Carolina and other states.

(Photo by overWHAMmed, from Flickr Creative Commons). This transmission line in Pelzer, SC, testifies to the market potential for investment in new high-voltage lines. 

Explainer: What Makes Transmission So Difficult (and Vital)?

David Landolfi
The main line is the main event. Transmission of clean electricity, combined with storage, means that every state and nearly every community can effectively live on fossil-free power. Financing and permitting involve economic, political, and engineering knots. This explainer takes in the breakthrough ideas and baseline for speedier deployment.
Don't let the sun go down on price reliability, our author urges

(Photo by Don and Suzan Weller, via Flickr Creative Commons.) As the sun sets over Waterford, CT, an expert proposes a price floor in wholesale electricity markets. 

Policy Memo: How We Pay For Free Electricity

Mike Novello
As New England states progress towards decarbonization goals, the electricity spot market will see offers from solar and wind generators that incur no marginal cost. That can harm reliability and put some operators hastily out of business. To retain existing resources and the stability they bring, we need to set...
These sure look trustworthy. Or antiquated. Or both.

(Photo by Oran Viriyincy via Flickr Creative Commons.) Where can the 20th Century grid consistently carry 21st Century energy across regional lines? 

Explainer: What Are Grid Interconnections And What Complicates Them?

Pratima Garg
To someone facing a wildfire in California or bunking in a shelter after a flood in Louisiana, what does power supply from a far corner of the country have to do with survival? Quite a bit, as this tale of grid interconnection will show. Connections of supply from one electric...
How does your clean grid grow?

On an unspoiled site or an unloved one, a renewable-energy installation navigates tricky economics. 

Explainer: How Do Developers Choose New or Remediated Project Sites?

Max Flignor
Solar and wind projects are essential to the energy evolution, but most of them take up a lot of space. This story looks at the two main sorts of land developers can use and walks through economics, strategies, and public policies that can foster solar and wind while attending to...