Latest news with #decarbonizing
Japan Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Japan Times
A startup is tapping underground parking garages for clean energy
The heat held in New York's underground labyrinth of infrastructure, from hundreds of miles of subway tunnels to parking garages and malls, is a clean energy gold mine. Now, a Swiss startup wants to tap it to heat and cool buildings, all without drilling a single borehole. Globally, heating accounts for nearly half of all energy consumption. That could make decarbonizing it a half-trillion-dollar market, according to a BloombergNEF analysis. Using the Earth's heat offers one route to cut emissions, but traditional geothermal projects can be costly and require space to operate drilling equipment, making them a poor fit for cities. Startup Enerdrape's system uses energy-harvesting panels in manmade underground spaces, though, which could allow it to gain a toehold in cities. The Swiss company focuses on older multifamily buildings, which are harder to decarbonize than newer builds. In New York, residential structures built before 1960 make up more than 64% of the housing stock, though not all of it is well-suited for the panels. "There really aren't many companies doing this,' said BNEF analyst Stephanie Diaz. "They are truly a novel approach in how to decarbonize buildings,' though the company will have to figure out how to scale its technology to work with a wide variety of buildings. Enerdrape's technology is the product of decades of research spearheaded by Lyesse Laloui, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne. A five-time startup founder, he's spent the last 15 years tackling the question of how to turn underground structures into energy sources. Initially, he created a solution for new construction, but realized that it only addressed a small part of the decarbonization puzzle compared to existing buildings. He and his team developed a prototype heat-exchanging panel in 2015. Enerdrape's panels affix to concrete infrastructure, which can hold large stores of heat. (Think of how hot a subway station gets in the summer, for example.) Enerdrape taps that heat using a system of prefabricated panels that absorb geothermal energy from the ground or the air. Even when underground spaces aren't sweltering, the ground temperature, at several feet of depth, stays relatively constant throughout the year. During the summer, Enerdrape's system uses the underground as a heat sink to absorb a building's heat and cool it. In the winter, it does the opposite, using the ground like a battery to warm things up. The system requires installing one panel for roughly every 110 square feet (10 square meters) of a building's floor area. The panels are connected to heat-transferring fluid, working in tandem with one or more heat pumps. "Enerdrape moves heat from where it's not needed to where it is,' co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Alessandro Rotta Loria said. Rotta Loria, who was Laloui's former PhD student, likened it to an underground solar panel that feeds on heat rather than the sun's rays. Enerdrape says its panels can meet 100% of the space heating, cooling and hot water needs for buildings up to 10 stories in height. The company, which launched in 2019, has projects across Europe, including with Switzerland's largest retailer, Coop Immobilier, small businesses like a dental office in Spain, utilities and multiple Swiss cities. It also teamed up with Engie, one of Europe's largest gas and renewable energy suppliers, to provide energy to 72 homes with Paris Habitat, France's largest affordable housing provider. Enerdrape said its 145 panels provide 70 megawatt-hours of heat per year and cover 25% of homes' domestic hot water needs while avoiding 15 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. Despite many urban areas setting ambitious climate goals and a growing number of residential electrification programs, few companies target affordable housing, according to a 2022 report from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Decarbonizing heat first is the most cost-effective way to electrify affordable housing, the group found. Low-income housing tends to be old buildings that are more expensive to retrofit, said Thatcher Bell, who leads climate tech accelerator The Clean Fight's programs. High upfront cost for replacement, financial constraints and the large number of stakeholders in these buildings make operators less likely to install new technology. The accelerator selected Enerdrape for a recent cohort of startups focused on low-cost, low-construction ways to cut emissions from older units, without displacing residents. The need for those types of solutions is growing. In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul calls for building 800,000 electrified or electrification-ready homes by 2030. New York City, meanwhile, passed a law to tackle building emissions, which account for approximately 70% of the city's carbon footprint. Similar measures in cities like Boston and Seattle have followed. The majority of New York City residential buildings covered by the law are pre-war construction of six stories or less, according to the Urban Green Council. That provides plenty of opportunities for technology like Enerdrape's. However, the startup faces some challenges. Heat pump adoption is higher in parts of Europe, and Enerdrape will have to contend with slower adoption in the U.S. due to cost. Upfront cost, which includes panel installation and heat pump connection, is typically between $100,000 and $500,000, depending on a building's available surface area that can be activated as a heat source. Political headwinds in the U.S. are another issue, with President Donald Trump curtailing federal support for heat pumps. The system can cut electricity costs, though. According to the company, it can deliver energy at 3 to 4 cents per kilowatt hour, compared to the average U.S. gas price of 17 cents per kWh. Enerdrape says its solution is cheaper in Europe, where fuel costs are 3 to 5 times higher than in the U.S.. The system also won't help with larger buildings, which are some of New York's biggest energy users. "We're not going to be able to do much' with a 60-floor high-rise, Rotta Loria said.
Bloomberg
3 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
A Startup Is Tapping Underground Parking Garages for Clean Energy
The heat held in New York's underground labyrinth of infrastructure, from hundreds of miles of subway tunnels to parking garages and malls, is a clean energy gold mine. Now, a Swiss startup wants to tap it to heat and cool buildings, all without drilling a single borehole. Globally, heating accounts for nearly half of all energy consumption. That could make decarbonizing it a half-trillion-dollar market, according to a BloombergNEF analysis. Using the Earth's heat offers one route to cut emissions, but traditional geothermal projects can be costly and require space to operate drilling equipment, making them a poor fit for cities.
Japan Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Japan Times
Banking's ailing climate coalition loses ground in Europe
Inside the world's largest climate coalition for banks, there's speculation that an exodus led by Wall Street could be about to spread to the European Union. The Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), an organization dedicated to decarbonizing global finance, may be facing defections by some large EU banks with sizeable U.S. exposures, according to a person close to the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations. The risk of being accused in the U.S. of having an anti-oil bias appears to be a key concern among the banks, the person said. EU exits from NZBA would mark a painful milestone for the group. In the U.S., where President Donald Trump's re-election has brought with it intensified political attacks on net-zero policies, banks have had to navigate a landscape in which NZBA commitments have come with the risk of lawsuits and Republican blacklists. In the EU, meanwhile, net zero has been enshrined in law and the bloc's banks stand out as some of the world's most climate conscious. A spokesperson for NZBA said the alliance is committed to supporting its remaining members, without commenting on possible EU defections. This moment calls for "long-term work that requires courage, consistency and true leadership to stay on track, even when faced with barriers to action,' the person said. BNP Paribas, the EU's biggest bank by assets, was questioning the value of continued NZBA membership as recently as June, according to another person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private conversations. The bank is reluctant to create headlines by leaving, however, and back in June discussed postponing a formal decision until around the end of the year, the person said. A spokesperson for BNP declined to comment. Deutsche Bank, Germany's largest lender, is "monitoring current developments and will assess them,' according to a spokesperson, who added that the bank's own sustainability and net-zero targets remain unchanged. A spokesperson for Spain's Banco Santander said it's still committed to net zero but declined to say whether that includes remaining an NZBA member. A UniCredit spokesperson reiterated comments it made last month in connection with its earnings release, when the bank noted that it's an NZBA member with a net-zero transition plan to support clients in their low-carbon transition. Commerzbank closely monitors "market trends, regulatory developments and jurisdictions to ensure we can act appropriately if necessary,' Beate Schlosser, a spokeswoman for the bank said by email. Commerzbank's 2050 net-zero goal still holds, she said. Among reasons EU bank executives have given in the past for staying in NZBA was the access it gave them to other banks. But as defections continue, that access is no longer a selling point. Barclays, which left earlier this month not long after U.K. peer HSBC Holdings, said the string of walkouts means NZBA "no longer has the membership to support our transition.' Barclays' exit was promptly followed by UBS Group of Switzerland. Those departures, though all by banks in non-EU countries, have added to speculation that EU banks will be next, the person familiar with discussion inside NZBA said. The value of climate alliances such as NZBA remains a topic of debate. Lisa Sachs, head of Columbia University's Center on Sustainable Investment, said that a key weakness of frameworks like NZBA is the assumption that the finance industry can have a material impact on the low-carbon transition simply through setting targets to reduce emissions and committing to nudging portfolio companies to decarbonize. "Financial institutions are not the right institutions to fix market flaws or deliver societal transitions because their mandates are to maximize returns within existing market conditions,' she said. "And their assessments of risk are based on those parameters rather than on long-term societal risks.' NZBA still has 125 members across the globe representing a combined $41 trillion in assets, according to its website. Banks in Northern Europe are among the most outspoken in their support, with ING Groep and ABN Amro Bank in the Netherlands, Swedbank and SEB in Sweden and Danske Bank in Denmark all underscoring their backing via spokespeople. The alliance was created to encourage banks to throw their weight behind the net-zero transition. It initially required members to align their financing operations with the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But after being virtually wiped off the North American map earlier this year, NZBA dropped that requirement and recast itself in more of a support role. It's a dramatic loss of stature for the alliance, which was created back in 2021 and feted by global bank executives at the COP26 climate summit in Scotland. Back then, when interest rates were at crisis lows and a global pandemic had created room for a green energy boom, net-zero finance looked like a reliable path to commercial success. That narrative was reinforced when U.S. President Joe Biden a year later signed the Inflation Reduction Act — the biggest piece of green legislation in U.S. history. Ironically, NZBA is hemorrhaging members just as fossil-fuel finance appears to be in decline on Wall Street. Policies designed to push up supply and drive down prices have pummeled the oil sector, and analysts at JPMorgan Chase have said this moment may mark the first decline in global upstream oil and gas development spending since 2020. In all, financing provided to oil, gas and coal projects by Wall Street's top six banks fell 25% to $73 billion this year through Aug. 1 from the same period in 2024, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. "A fundamental truth is that financial institutions follow markets — they don't create them,' Sachs of Columbia University said. Banks that have left NZBA in the U.K. have faced some pushback from clients and investors. HSBC lost a string of green customers, and the Church of England Pensions Board says it's now "engaging' with Barclays and HSBC on their NZBA exits. "As a shareholder we want to see banks to be genuinely committed to acting to address very real quantifiable financial risks like climate change,' says Laura Hillis, director of responsible investment at the pensions board. "It is very clear that some banks simply are not prepared to stay the course on their own commitments long term, which points to governance issues.' At the same time, banks leaving NZBA have said they'll continue to help clients decarbonize their businesses. UBS said on Aug. 7 its "commitment to sustainability remains unchanged and we recognize the importance of an orderly transition to a low-carbon economy.' Departing banks are also sticking with their sustainable finance goals. HSBC, for example, says it did $54.1 billion in deals it categorized as sustainable finance in the first half of 2025, which is up 19% from the same period a year ago. The bottom line remains that the decisions made by financial institutions "are driven by whether a specific investment is financeable today, given current market conditions, policies, and risk-return profiles,'' Columbia's Sachs said.
Bloomberg
6 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Banking's Ailing Climate Coalition Loses Ground in Europe
Inside the world's largest climate coalition for banks, there's speculation that an exodus led by Wall Street could be about to spread to the European Union. The Net-Zero Banking Alliance, an organization dedicated to decarbonizing global finance, may be facing defections by some large EU banks with sizeable US exposures, according to a person close to the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations. The risk of being accused in the US of having an anti-oil bias appears a key concern among the banks, the person said.
