Banding Together: How Aggregation Helps Cities Buy Renewables at Scale
By Yuning Liu & Mia Reback
In March 2021, 24 local governments in Maryland joined together on a plan to purchase enough renewable energy to power more than 246,000 homes a year. They did this by issuing a joint request for proposal (RFP) through the Baltimore Regional Cooperative Purchasing Committee (BRCPC) to seek a supply of up to 240,000 MWh of renewable energy starting in 2022. This large-scale transaction was made possible by an energy procurement approach known as energy aggregation, which is a way for two or more buyers to purchase electricity from a utility-scale generation facility.
According to the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) must peak within four years to limit global warming to 1.5°C, and cities have a critical role to play in meeting that target. Aggregation can be a powerful way for cities to rapidly increase their renewable energy and help decarbonize local economies at the necessary speed and scale. Yet most cities have not pursued aggregation due to an inadequate understanding of its novel deal structure and a lack of tools and resources to help streamline the process.
Aggregation can be a powerful way for cities to rapidly increase their renewable energy and help decarbonize local economies at the necessary speed and scale.
To help cities overcome these barriers, last year the American Cities Climate Challenge Renewables Accelerator, an initiative co-led by RMI and World Resources Institute, began organizing a Large-Scale Renewables Aggregation Cohort. This cohort provided technical assistance to more than 30 organizations, including the BRCP. A second iteration of the cohort is now underway with a new group of organizations. In addition, a newly released RMI report, Procuring Large-Scale Renewables through Aggregation: A Guide for Local Governments aims to help more cities understand and pursue aggregation.
As more and more cities take actions to decarbonize the electricity system, aggregation will be an increasingly important option that can provide buyers with several advantages, such as opening doors for smaller cities, creating positive network effects, and unlocking more cost savings.
Enabling Smaller Buyers to Access Large-Scale Projects
Aggregation can enable participation from smaller cities that, on their own, are not able to purchase enough electricity to warrant the attention from developers. This is particularly important for smaller communities with 100 percent renewable energy goals, as most municipalities cannot supply 100 percent of their electricity needs with on-site solar generation alone. Therefore, a utility-scale, off-site procurement will be an essential component of many smaller buyers’ decarbonization strategy.
One instance of a small buyer accessing large-scale renewables projects is a 25 MW joint solar purchase completed by MIT, Boston Medical Center (BMC), and Post Office Square (POS) in 2016. In this aggregated deal, MIT committed to buy 73 percent of the power generated by the new array, with BMC purchasing 26 percent and POS purchasing the remainder.
“Entering into a renewable power purchase agreement was our next step, but our consumption is too small to do it alone,” said Pamela Messenger, general manager of Friends of POS. “It is exciting to join forces with two industry leaders, allowing us to mitigate 100 percent of our electricity footprint.”
Similarly, other smaller local governments have also used aggregation to gain access, such as five local governments in Maine. They teamed up for the state’s first multi-town renewables project, a 4 MW solar array, which provides climate benefits equivalent to more than 4,000 acres of forests.
Without pooling the electricity demand with other buyers, smaller cities would not be able to access utility-scale projects on their own, making it difficult to reduce their carbon emissions efficiently.
Creating Knowledge-Sharing Opportunities
By joining together, cities can not only aggregate their buying power but also pool their knowledge to streamline procurement processes. The shared experience among participants can generate positive network effects, including increased mentorship, increased credibility, and support for inexperienced buyers.
For example, the City of Nashville partnered with Vanderbilt University last year to purchase electricity from a 125 MW solar project as part of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Green Invest program. This public-private partnership allowed the city to leverage the expertise of the University’s Large-Scale Renewable Energy Study Advisory Committee to identify the best risk mitigation strategy.
According to Susan R. Wente, interim chancellor of Vanderbilt University, “We want this partnership to serve as a model of collaboration that other organizations within our region and beyond can replicate to make long-term, lasting changes to protect our shared environment.” In fact, the connections formed within the aggregation group have garnered national media attention and are sending a powerful signal to utilities, policymakers, and developers that local governments are serious about rapidly decarbonizing the electricity system.
In addition, a group of buyers can also share external lawyers, accountants, or consultants. For instance, 15 Pennsylvania municipalities and public entities, which also participated in the Renewables Accelerator’s Large-Scale Renewables Aggregation Cohort, have teamed up to investigate the viability of investing in a joint solar deal. The 15 entities issued a joint RFP for energy consultants in May 2021 to share external advisory services.
Unlocking More Cost Savings
Throughout the collaborative process, aggregated deals can produce various cost savings because they enable cities to achieve greater economies of scale by combining the renewable energy demands of multiple buyers.
For example, a National Renewable Energy Laboratory analysis estimates that procuring 100 MW of solar instead of 5 MW can reduce development costs by 24 percent. This can lead to cost savings in the form of lower power purchase agreement prices for all buyers, regardless of size.
In another case, the company Enel X, which is working with the BRCPC on a joint purchasing strategy, found that renewable energy projects typically must be over 20 MW in size to be economical. The company discovered that aggregation is one way for smaller buyers to participate in large projects.
In Florida, 12 cities joined together to form the Florida Municipal Solar Project. They are developing 372.5 MW of zero-emissions energy capacity, enough to power 75,000 Florida homes. According to Jacob Williams, CEO and general manager of the Florida Municipal Power Agency, “By working together, our cities are able to provide clean power to their communities in a cost-effective way.” Clint Bullock, Orlando Utilities Commission general manager and CEO, explained, “We can leverage the economies of scale to bring the price of solar down to a point where a dozen municipal utilities can afford to sign on and I believe this is something people around the country will take notice of.”
Better Together
As more cities set goals to transition to renewables, aggregation is democratizing clean energy access by enabling participants, especially smaller buyers, to collectively develop significantly larger renewables projects than any one buyer would be able to access individually. The partnerships can create positive network effects through knowledge sharing and inspire other organizations within the region to replicate the collaboration model. By unlocking more cost savings, aggregated deals provide a lower-cost mechanism for cities to achieve climate goals efficiently.
The new IPCC report underscores the urgency of decarbonizing the electricity system and reducing GHGs. To play their part, cities need to increase the pace and scale of renewable energy procurement. Although aggregation is still a relatively underutilized procurement method, this approach is crucial to help them do that.
Procuring Large-Scale Renewables through Aggregation: A Guide for Local Governments helps walk local governments through the aggregated procurement process step-by-step and links to other key tools and resources relevant to each stage.
Cities must act now to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The best path forward involves engaging all actors and ensuring a more promising economic structure for a wide array of purchasers. In the battle against climate change, it is better to aggregate than to go it alone.
Article courtesy of RMI.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk threw shade at Waymo for having “rookie numbers” amid Tesla’s own disappointing autonomous-driving performance, raising the question: Is Elon Musk delusional or simply lying about Tesla’s Full Self-Driving?
Every year since 2018, Musk has alternately claimed that Tesla would solve self-driving “by the end of the year” or “next year.”
It never happened.
Tesla claimed a sort of victory this year with the launch of its “Robotaxi” service in Austin, Texas, but even that has been misleading since the service only operates a few vehicles in a geofenced area, something Musk has criticized Waymo for in the past, and unlike Waymo, Tesla has in-car supervisors with a finger on a killswitch to stop the vehicle in case of a potential accident.
Even with in-car supervisors preventing an unknown number of accidents, we recently learned that Tesla’s robotaxi crash rate is almost twice that of Waymo’s, which operates its service without any employees inside its vehicles.
Now, Musk called Waymo’s 2,500 fully autonomous vehicles currently in operation “rookie numbers”:
To put the comment in perspective, Tesla is believed to have about ~30 “Robotaxis” in its Austin fleet. In addition, Tesla claims to be operating “robotaxis” in the Bay Area with just over 100 cars, but it is officially considered a ride-hailing service because drivers are in the driver’s seat, and Tesla hasn’t even applied for an autonomous driving permit in California.
Tesla has also been pushing increasingly more misleading claims about its “Full Self-Driving” system being safer than humans.”
In the last few weeks, Tesla has repeatedly shared this misleading data as “proof” that its system is safer than humans:
This dataset is based on Tesla’s quarterly “Autopilot safety” report, which is known to be misleading.
There are three major problems with these reports:
- Methodology is self‑reported. Tesla counts only crashes that trigger an airbag or restraint; minor bumps are excluded, and raw crash counts or VMT are not disclosed.
- Road type bias. Autopilot is mainly used on limited‑access highways—already the safest roads—while the federal baseline blends all road classes. Meaning there are more crashes per mile on city streets than highways.
- Driver mix & fleet age. Tesla drivers skew newer‑vehicle, higher‑income, and tech‑enthusiast; these demographics typically crash less.
With the new chart on the right above, Tesla appears to have separated Autopilot and FSD mileage, which gives us a little more data, but it still has all the same problems listed above, except the road-type bias is less pronounced, since FSD is also used on city streets.
However, many FSD drivers choose not to engage FSD in potentially dangerous or more difficult situations, especially in inclement weather, which contributes to many crashes – crashes that are counted in the human driver data Tesla is comparing itself against.
Lastly, it is unfair to say that the data proves FSD is safer than human drivers, as even with the flawed data, Tesla should claim that FSD with human supervision is safer than human drivers. It’s not FSD versus humans, it’s FSD plus humans versus humans.
It leads us to this.
With Tesla and Musk being undoubtedly wrong and misleading about the performance and the very nature of its current autonomous driving offering, I wanted to know your opinion about the situation through this poll:
Electrek’s Take
Personally, I think it’s a little of both.
I think he sometimes really believes Tesla is on the verge of solving autonomy, but at the same time, he is perfectly willing to cross the line and mislead people into thinking Tesla is further ahead than it actually is.
For example, I believe I can explain this comment about Waymo having “rookie numbers” despite the Alphabet company having about 10x more “robotaxis” than Tesla – even with Tesla’s very loose definition of a robotaxi.
Based on job listings across the US and his recent ridiculous comment that Tesla will magically cover half of the US population with robotaxis by the end of the year, I think Tesla is hiring thousands of drivers. Soon, it will put them in Model Ys with ‘Robotaxi’ stickers on them and have them drive on FSD and give rides in the Robotaxi app in several US cities.
Musk will claim that Tesla’s Robotaxi is now bigger than Waymo, even though it will basically be the equivalent of Uber drivers in Tesla cars with FSD, which is already the case. Just this week, I took an Uber from the Montreal airport, and it was in a Model Y with FSD. Has Tesla launched ‘Robotaxi’ in Montreal?
It’s either that or he counts consumer vehicles with FSD, which is even dumber.
In short, he is delusional, and when he realizes that he was wrong, he is willing to lie to cover things up.
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Solar and wind are growing fast enough to meet all new electricity demand worldwide for the first three quarters of 2025, according to new data from energy think tank Ember. The group now expects fossil power to stay flat for the full year, marking the first time since the pandemic that fossil generation won’t increase.
Solar and wind aren’t just expanding; they’re outpacing global electricity demand itself. Solar generation jumped 498 TWh (+31%) compared to the same period last year, already topping all the solar power produced in 2024. Wind added another 137 TWh (+7.6%). Together, they supplied 635 TWh of new clean electricity, beating out the 603 TWh rise in global demand (+2.7%).
That lifted solar and wind to 17.6% of global electricity in the first three quarters of the year, up from 15.2% year-over-year. That brought the total share of renewables in global electricity – solar, wind, hydro, bioenergy, and geothermal – to 43%. Fossil fuels slid to 57.1%, down from 58.7%.
Renewables are beating coal
For the first time in 2025, renewables collectively generated more electricity than coal. And fossil generation as a whole has stalled. Fossil output slipped slightly by 0.1% (-17 TWh) through the end of Q3. Ember expects no fossil-fuel growth for the full year, driven by clean power growth outpacing demand.
China and India are partly driving that shift. In China, fossil generation fell 52 TWh (-1.1%) as clean energy met all new demand, resulting from a structural change in its power system. India saw fossil generation drop 34 TWh (-3.3%), thanks to record solar and wind growth and milder weather.
Solar is leading the charge
Solar is doing the heavy lifting. It’s now the single biggest driver of change in the global power sector, with growth more than three times larger than any other electricity source in the first three quarters of the year.
“Record solar power growth and stagnating fossil fuels in 2025 show how clean power has become the driving force in the power sector,” said Nicolas Fulghum, senior data analyst at Ember. “Historically a growth segment, fossil power now appears to be entering a period of stagnation and managed decline. China, the largest source of fossil growth, has turned a corner, signaling that reliance on fossil fuels to meet growing power demand is no longer required.”
Electricity demand rose 2.7% in the first three quarters of 2025, far slower than the 4.9% jump seen last year when extreme heatwaves pushed up cooling demand in China, India, and the US. This year’s milder weather helped take some pressure off the grid, making it easier for clean energy to close the gap.
A turning point for the global power system
For the first time outside of major crises such as the pandemic or the global financial crash, clean energy growth has not only kept up with demand but surpassed it. The next big question: can solar, wind, and the rest of the clean power sector keep up this pace consistently? If they can, 2025 may be remembered as the year global fossil generation plateaued.
Read more: FERC: For two years straight, solar leads new US power capacity
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![The Genesis GV90 really does have coach doors [Video]](https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/09/Genesis-GV90-space.jpeg?resize=1200,628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)
Genesis is taking luxury to the next level with its new flagship SUV. The GV90 is shaping up to be the brand’s most lavish vehicle yet, offering ultra-premium features like coach doors.
Genesis GV90 caught with coach doors in real life
After unveiling the Neolun Concept at the New York Auto Show last March, Genesis said it was a preview of its first full-size SUV.
The “ultra-luxe, state-of-the-art SUV,” as Genesis describes it, will be the brand’s largest and most luxurious vehicle yet, slotted above the GV80.
It wasn’t the stunning design or the over-the-top interior that caught most people’s attention, but the B-pillarless coach doors.
Although we were worried that some of the ultra-premium features, like the coach doors, wouldn’t make it to the production model, new spy photos reveal otherwise.
A GV90 prototype was spotted out in public with the coach doors wide open, giving us our closest look at the setup. The new spy photos, courtesy of SH Proshots (via TheKoreanCarBlog), show the hinged door system in action and offer a glimpse of the interior.
Earlier this year, Hyundai Motor filed several patent applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, detailing new door latching devices.
Two patents, titled “Cinching Device For Door Latches in Vehicle” and “Door Latch Device for Vehicles,” offer a better idea of how the Genesis GV90’s coach doors will work.
Genesis has previously said that B-pillarless coach doors are now a reality in production vehicles. It looks like the GV90 will be the first to debut it.
Yes, the Genesis GV90 will be available with coach doors, but it likely won’t be standard on all trims. It could be a premium feature reserved for higher-priced variants. The GV90 has been spotted out in public several times now with a traditional door design. We’ve also caught a glimpse of other premium features it will offer, like adaptive air suspension.
Genesis has yet to reveal prices or final specs. We could see the GV90 debut by the end of the year, with sales expected to start in mid-2026.
One thing is for sure: The Genesis GV90 won’t be cheap. It’s expected to start around $100,000, but higher trims could cost upwards of $120,000.
Earlier this week, a production version of the GV90 was caught for the first time driving in South Korea. It was still covered in camouflage, but from what’s shown, it looks nearly identical to the Neolun concept.
Reports suggest the flagship SUV could debut on Hyundai’s new eM platform. Hyundai claims the platform will deliver a 50% improvement in driving range per charge compared to its current EVs. It’s also expected to offer Level 3 autonomous driving and other advanced driver assist capabilities.
The flagship electric SUV will serve as a tech beacon, showcasing Hyundai’s latest tech and software. It’s expected to feature a massive 24″ curved infotainment as part of a digital cockpit design.
Genesis is also launching its first hybrid, the GV80, next year, and an extended-range electric vehicle (EREV) in late 2026 or early 2027. The luxury brand will also introduce a new off-road SUV as it expands into new segments.
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