Renewable energy investments becoming mainstream, from startups to global deals

Mainstream companies increasingly are investing in alternative energy in order to juice their growth.

Allete, the Duluth-based holding company that owns Minnesota Power, plans to buy the parent company of Roseville-based IPS Solar for $165 million.

Industry is investing to green operations because wind, solar and conservation technology are economical energy sources and combat climate change. And consumers and business are increasingly concerned about mounting environmental and economic threats.

This also results in economic opportunity and jobs in renewable technology, including training for a growth industry that adds jobs in Minnesota at up to 2.5 times the rate of the overall job market and is growing much faster than the overall energy market.

Here are some more examples of companies investing in renewable energy:

• Quanta Services, an electrical contract from Texas, last fall bought Blattner, the huge central Minnesota-based construction firm focused on wind energy for $2.7 billion.
• Twin Cities-based Restaurant Technologies, which collects and sells 300 million gallons of used cooking oil for conversion to bio-diesel, just got a new owner. And oil and-gas titan Chevron is buying Iowa-based Renewable Energy Group, a refiner of Restaurant Technologies' waste oil, for $3.1 billion.
• Target just announced its first "net-zero" emissions store in Vista, Calif., featuring a roof full of solar panels and conservation technology. Target has reduced greenhouse-gas emissions by 25%-plus in five years and expects to source all its electricity from renewables by 2030.

Global investment in the renewable-energy transition — from wind and solar to energy storage and electric vehicles — totaled $755 billion in 2021, a new record and an increase of 27% from 2021, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The investments are in an industry growing much faster than the overall energy market. For example, Allete Clean Energy expects to grow more than 15% annually while Allete's rate-regulated Minnesota Power grows revenue around 5%.

Last week, several people helping Minnesota accelerate toward a low-carbon, high-growth economy gathered in the parking lot of a once vacant building on Plymouth Avenue in north Minneapolis at the "well head" of a University of Minnesota-developed spinoff that aims to cut conventional heating and cooling costs by around 70%.

Minneapolis-based Darcy Solutions is building demonstration projects at a union hall in St. Paul and at the Regional Apprentice Training Center (RATC). The center's owner, Renewable Energy Partners, has raised close to $3 million of the $4 million it will take to turn the 22,000-square-foot building into an energy-producing education and training center. It already has a solar roof, batteries and more. Essentially, it will be a "microgrid," exporting electricity at times.

CEO Jamez Staples said Renewable Energy has acquired vacant land across the street for a larger building for additional demonstration and classroom space so the area, which boasts a high population of people of color and lower-median incomes, showcases, develops and labors in good-paying energy jobs.

"We're creating a new economy with renewable technology, including here on the North Side with Jamez," said Darcy Solutions CEO Brian Larson, who also is building a demonstration project in St. Paul.

Darcy Solutions, which has raised about $4 million in equity and grants over several years of development, seems to have simplified the geothermal process. Its system projects the greatest reduction in carbon emissions, under 10-year paybacks, and uses recycled water instead of propylene glycol typically used in HVAC systems. And groundwater maintains relatively constant temperatures that can be captured to help heat and cool buildings.

Darcy is among the first five energy startups selected for the 2022 demonstration cohort of Grid Catalyst, the first climate-business acceleration program in a northern state and a program of business-led Clean Energy Economy Minnesota.

Each Grid Catalyst business partners with at least one established business, utility, university, nonprofit or local government that is focused on advancing clean energy. Darcy is working with Otter Tail Power and the University of Minnesota.

The idea is for long-term investors to buy into the demonstration projects and finance commercialization and scale-up production. Grid Catalyst, also committed to diverse communities, also is partnering with the Center for Economic Inclusion.

Another local company, Renew Power Systems, has developed an inverter technology that can form, connect and manage sustainable electrical grids, said Nina Axelson, founder of Grid Catalyst. Renew is working with Renewable Energy Partners on the RATC.

"We are teed up to lead in cold-climate technology, attracting innovators, entrepreneurs and financiers to team with our energy leaders … to deploy groundbreaking climate-change solutions," Axelson said. "And the trained workforce.

"We start with five exceptional startups. We hope to pull up to a dozen companies through the accelerator annually."

These developments also should help deliver a greener, faster-growing, more-inclusive economy.