Clean Edge this week released its annual Clean Energy Trends 2014 report (download for free here), which includes tracking, forecasting and market sizing of the global solar, wind, and biofuels markets, analysis on solar PV pricing, public market performance, venture capital investments, and energy capacity additions. For 2014 the report also features global figures for LEED buildings and EV/hybrid vehicles. The authors highlight the following as five key trends to watch: 

• Enlightened Utilities Begin To Embrace Distributed Energy Assets
• Cities Lead Climate Charge by Focusing on Regional Carbon Reduction
• Net Zero Energy Buildings Gain Ground
• Internet-Enabled Clean-Tech Startups Define a New Sector
• Vertical Farming Sprouts in Cities Around the World

On March 19, 2014, the Institute participated in a roundtable hosted by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) on the topic of “Sustainable Infrastructure.” The IDB is the leading source of development financing for Latin America and the Caribbean. Besides loans, the IDB also provides grants and technical assistance and conducts research.  In 2013, the IDB released a new infrastructure strategy  [English | Español].

IDB representatives opened the event by highlighting the following key questions: How do we determine whether infrastructure projects are increasing the welfare of society? Are they are providing a decent service? Are they within the boundaries of the environment / biome?

Three Pillars of Sustainability
Three pillars of sustainability were discussed: Physical, Social, and Environmental. On the topic of environmental sustainability, the buzzword was “upstreaming,” which means that the IDB aims to engage governments in much earlier stages of infrastructure project planning in order to introduce sustainability concepts at the policy-making and project development stage (upstream), rather than later at the financing stage (downstream). After the opening presentation, panelists from academia and civil society organizations shared their expertise and perspectives on these issues. In particular, speakers emphasized the importance of engaging ministries of finance and planning and highlighting the economic benefits of sustainability (e.g., positive impact on GDB growth, reduction in project delays and costs).

Infrastructure Sustainability Evaluation Tools
Speakers from Harvard University and the US Department of Transportation and highlighted several web based tools for evaluating the sustainability of infrastructure projects.

• Envision™ is a sustainable infrastructure rating system that provides a holistic framework for evaluating and rating the community, environmental, and economic benefits of all types and sizes of infrastructure projects. It evaluates, grades, and gives recognition to infrastructure projects that use transformational, collaborative approaches to assess the sustainability indicators over the course of the project's life cycle. Envision™ is the product of a joint collaboration between the Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure.
  
• INVEST (Infrastructure Voluntary Evaluation Sustainability Tool) was developed by the Federal Highway Administration as a practical, web-based, collection of voluntary best practices, called criteria, designed to help transportation agencies integrate sustainability into their programs (policies, processes, procedures and practices) and projects. While the use of INVEST is voluntary, it can be used by transportation agencies and their consultants and partners, to evaluate and aid the integration of sustainability into their programs and projects.

In a detailed study of 245 dams in 65 countries, researchers with the University of Oxford found that cost overruns averaged 96% and schedule slippage averaged 44%. The study found overwhelming evidence that energy planners systematically underestimate the actual costs and implementation schedules of large hydropower dams. The larger the dam, the longer the implementation schedule and the higher the cost overrun. As a result, even before accounting for negative impacts on human society and environment, and without including the effects of inflation and debt servicing, the actual construction costs of large dams are too high to yield a positive return; including these items, costs and cost overruns are much higher. Since large dams take inordinately long periods of time to build, they are ineffective in resolving urgent energy crisis. Applying this forecasting analysis to large dam projects in the planning and construction stages, such as Brazil's Belo Monte, the authors warn that such projects are likely to face large cost and schedule overruns that seriously undermine their economic viability. The study was published in the March 2014 issue of Energy Policy.

Two recent technical papers published by the InterAmerican Development Bank highlight the economic and societal benefits of renewable energy and energy storage technologies to Latin America and the Caribbean: Societal Benefits from Renewable Energy in Latin America and the Caribbean and Potential for Energy Storage in Combination with Renewable Energy in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In 2013, the US added nearly twice as much solar generation capacity as coal—2,936 MW of solar compared to 1,543 MW of coal—according to data from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.