Q13 Fox: Utah Man Sent to 'Casual’ Roundtable Meeting Gets a Shock

You know your visit with the president of the United States didn’t go all that swimmingly when you are cut entirely out of the official photo.

That’s what happened to a Utah man who was sent by his employer to a roundtable discussion to meet with “a senior White House official" and didn’t exactly dress up for the occasion.

Fierce Energy: DOE Employee Solar Program Reports First Results

Back in 2014, employees at a few large corporations were offered the chance to go solar as a benefit of employment. The program allows the employees to invest in solar -- at a discount -- as part of what is considered the first nationwide bulk solar purchase program. The first results of the program are being reported.

Six months after the "Solar Community" program's launch, the Department of Energy's Solar Energy Technologies Office has reported that 1,415 employees have signed up for the program, and that 174 installations have been completed or are currently in progress.

New York Magazine: 3 Reasons Solar and Wind Energy Will Take Over Our Power Grid

An enormous new survey of industry experts shows how fast things are moving. Recently, DNV GL, an international energy consulting company, asked 1,600 people who actually work in the field -- at equipment manufacturers, power producers, utilities, policymaking agencies, energy retailers, regulators, and equity investment firms -- about the future of renewables. One of the main questions: "How quickly will renewables be generating 70 percent of the energy in the markets you work with?" Almost half of the survey respondents said they could see that happening by 2030.

Bloomberg View: Clean Energy Revolution Is Ahead of Schedule

The most important piece of news on the energy front isn't the plunge in oil prices, but the progress that is being made in battery technology. A new study in Nature Climate Change, by Bjorn Nykvist and Mans Nilsson of the Stockholm Environment Institute, shows that electric vehicle batteries have been getting cheaper much faster than expected. From 2007 to 2011, average battery costs for battery-powered electric vehicles fell by about 14 percent a year.

Environmental Leader: Corporate Sustainability Initiatives ‘Lack Critical Data and Analytics’

More large companies are tracking, reporting, and striving to meet corporate sustainability goals. However, once the low-hanging fruit is picked, further improvements demand sophisticated tools, like emerging big data and geospatial analytics, to help companies make more informed decisions about sustainability goals, according to Lux Research.

Ryan Dolen, Lux Research data scientist and a co-author of the report, A Data-Driven Approach to Sustainability Benchmarking, says the need to track, report and optimize resource utilization will soon become central to every business’ assessment of financial performance and resilience strategy.