Natel CEO invited to White House Water Summit to announce new public-private partnership with UC Berkeley’s RAEL for climate resilient hydropower and groundwater recharge.
Natel Energy, Inc., and the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley announce a new pilot project to address four core water challenges — falling groundwater levels, land subsidence, increasing flood risk, and climate change driven shifts in precipitation from snow to rain — while adding new baseload renewable energy and creating American jobs. The partnership between Natel and Berkeley’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Lab will pilot distributed, low-head hydropower systems paired with distributed water storage for increased groundwater recharge, improved flood mitigation, and wetland habitat restoration, while simultaneously delivering cost-effective and flexibly dispatched baseload renewable energy enabling integration of more intermittent renewables and meeting greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals. Additionally the research will explore distributed hydropower’s potential in California to address environmental justice issues by enabling more intermittent renewable generation, while reducing the need for fossil-fuel based generation. The partnership will select, deploy, and assess a 1 to 5 MW project in California that will deliver 5,000 to 10,000 acre-feet of groundwater recharge annually. Upon completion, this pilot could be scaled in California to $1 billion worth of distributed hydropower infrastructure, providing 500 MW of new baseload renewable generation, 1 million acre-feet of annual groundwater recharge, and improved water management benefits to the public and to irrigation districts. This analysis will provide a blueprint to scale to 5+ GW of similar projects representing $10-15 billion of investment nationwide. Natel has a 100% US-based supply chain, assembles its systems in Alameda, CA, and expects to create 700+ direct and indirect jobs by 2020 based on its current pipeline; the planned work announced in the partnership with UC Berkeley would increase the number of jobs ten-fold.
Announcement made by Gia Schneider, CEO of Natel Energy (Alameda, CA) at the White House Water Summit. Partner organization RAEL is Directed by U. S. State Department Science Envoy Professor Daniel M. Kammen
