Team Gemini Contributes Key Development Areas Enabling Shift Towards 100 Percent Renewable Energy

From developing utility-scale projects, to integrating microgrid and smart-grid technologies, energy efficiency, and resource conservation, Team Gemini incorporates options that are indispensable in moving towards 100% renewable energy use.

No single technology can foreseeably cover all [energy] resource needs for entire communities. As can be observed from a growing number of working models, it takes a combination of solutions to successfully tackle resource production and distribution to sustain the needs of businesses, industries, and communities over time. These solutions are provided by Team Gemini and its members on varying levels, and include the development of utility-scale projects applying resource-generation from sustainable agriculture, waste processing and other renewable sources; the integration of smart utilities; and energy-efficient project designs.

Optimizing business energy use and working/living accommodations contributes to the overall outcome of sustainability. This factors towards decreasing wastefulness of precious resources like water, but also allows for fewer resources like thermal energy and electricity to be needed in order to sustain ongoing operations.

“Radical efficiency” on the demand side is critical to achieving a 100 percent renewable energy goal, according to the report, which noted that net zero energy (NZE) buildings are at the leading edge of the green building movement.

While NZEs currently make up only a small part of the building sector, the report said that that status will change in coming years, as major new building mandates take effect in the U.S. and overseas. The European Union, for example, has mandated that all new public buildings must achieve “nearly zero” energy status by the end of 2018, and that all other new buildings achieve the same goals by the end of 2020. In addition, sweeping new building code mandates in California known as Title 24 took effect in 2014. Those mandates require net zero status for all new residential construction in the state by 2020 and for all new commercial buildings by 2030.

Various industry sectors overall are experiencing growth, and suggest the relevance of these areas. Take, for example, the growing importance of microgrids:

An intelligent, two-way electric grid is tying together the ongoing developments in utility-scale generation, distributed generation, energy storage and efficient buildings. At the heart of the smart grid’s growth are smart meters and microgrids. According to research by Clean Edge, based on U.S. Energy Information Administration data, about 37 percent of all electric meters in the U.S. are now smart meters. In addition, Navigant Research estimates that microgrid capacity will grow to more than 4 GW by 2020, from just 685 MW in 2013.

Team Gemini and the company’s team members actively work on a variety of utility-scale projects to help make communities energy-efficient and -independent, and ultimately improve their Triple Bottom Line. These efforts usually take the form of “multi-phase” approaches that require many years to implement, and often evolve based on advancements in technologies and different industries; a changing policy landscape (particularly concerning waste management initiatives); and other factors.

To learn more about just some of Team Gemini’s technologies that enable renewable communities and increased resource production for different businesses, visit http://teamgemini.us/technologies/. And consider subscribing to our RSS feed or follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay in the loop about future updates.

For the original article on the developments enabling a shift towards renewable energy, you can check out this link.