First-of-its-kind tool provides unprecedented transparency on pressing issue: 'Access to this data is crucial'
A first-of-its-kind living atlas is tracking and mapping every major renewable energy installation globally, showing impressive growth in clean energy adoption worldwide, Sustainability Magazine reported.
The Global Renewables Watch combines Microsoft's AI capabilities, Planet Labs' satellite imagery, and The Nature Conservancy's expertise to create a database anyone can access. This project gives us a transparent view of renewable energy progress dating back to 2018, giving researchers and policymakers important data about solar and wind installations.
The findings from GRW paint an encouraging picture of renewable energy growth.
Solar land coverage has tripled over the past seven years, while the number of onshore wind turbines more than doubled to 375,000 by mid-2024. The United States and China lead in total wind installations, though European countries have higher numbers per capita.
You can use this publicly available data to understand energy transitions in your region and globally. The tool helps track progress toward Paris Agreement goals and the U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goal 7, which looks to ensure democratic access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy.
"Access to this data is crucial for the public and private sectors to power growing economies and manage key resources. I'm grateful to our partners, The Nature Conservancy and Planet Labs PBC, for their expert guidance and invaluable contribution of data to build this digital public good," said Juan Lavista Ferres, Microsoft corporate vice president and chief data scientist.
Jennifer Morris, CEO of The Nature Conservancy, added, "This will be a publicly accessible resource to help researchers and policymakers understand current capacities and gaps so that decision-makers can scale much-needed renewable energy resources in a responsible, nature-friendly way."
By making this data accessible, GRW bridges the gap between technology and environmental stewardship, creating a clearer path toward a sustainable energy future that benefits people and the planet.
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A few reasons: We are beginning to believe that deep in the heart of the Biden administration was a core group of administrators in the agencies who were from the Bernie Sanders/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wing of the party. That's the part of the party that many traditional Democrats feel has hijacked the apparatus and may have been responsible for some of the backlash that led to the disaffection of typical middle-of-the-road bankers who might have been enthusiastic Democratic supporters but went for Trump or didn't vote at all. Those agency administrators — including those in the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department, but also the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and all of the others that interfaced with businesses — simply had a dislike for Corporate America that mimicked that of former President Joe Biden. As someone who followed Biden's career and knew him fairly well at one point, I was shocked how anti-business he had become. The core group who ran the country in the last two years may have been as antithetical to the positives of business as any that our history has recorded, maybe even in the first years of Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, maybe worse. The insult to business found its leader in former FTC chief Lina Khan, a 36-year-old populist firebrand who was an anathema to business and tried to check its every move. She reminded me of a modern-day Mary Lease. But she was almost outdone by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which, at its core, despised the banks it regulated and truly viewed them as the oil behind the kleptocratic machine that drove an ever-widening wedge between the rich and the poor. Without the incredibly fast dismantling of what amounted to a nihilist fifth column within the government, we are seeing nothing more than a wholesale revision of a group of stocks that has been shackled ever since the 2008 financial crisis when the multiples were far higher than they are now. With the anti-business wing of the Democrats now crushed, we are left with a nexus of banks that will be able to print money the following ways: Facilitating a merger wave that will be among the most powerful in history after it had been on hold because of Khan's strident policies. Mergers and acquisitions involves a small handful of people at these banks so their profit margins will be immense. A more forgiving "stress test" from the Federal Reserve with an easy curve that will allow much more money to be put to work lending. We just saw the beginnings of this Friday evening , and more reform could be on the way. 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It's based around semiconductors, not software, and that's a huge change. If you look at the software companies, especially enterprise software, you see stalled stocks like ServiceNow , Workday , MongoDB , Salesforce , Accenture and Adobe . These are truly struggling stocks this year that now feel like they are all going against each other. There are some surprising names on that list. Contrast those charts with the performance of names like Club name Eaton , Carrier , Johnson Controls and Emerson Electric for the grid; or GE Vernova , Quanta Services and really anything involving natural gas or nuclear power; or CoreWeave and Nebius , as well as Vertiv , Cummins and Arm Holdings . These moves are insanely powerful. The money coming out of enterprise software is making a beeline to the much smaller semi cohort like Analog Devices , KLA Corp , Lam Research , Texas instruments , Advanced Micro Devices and Micron . The amount of money coming into the exchange-traded funds that agglomerate these segments is spectacular. Oh, and let me say it again for emphasis: Nvidia. There is a small and puzzling group of contract manufacturers — Flex , Celestica and Jabil — with stock moves that defy logic. I don't have a line on it yet, but it is a fascinating move. And then there are the companies that have figured out how to minimize their tariffs and are ready to roll come July 9, the day that Trump's 90-day pause is set to expire. Then there are the losers, and they are so hideous I wouldn't even deign to think of them as a possibility in a fund: drugs, foods, consumer packaged goods, retailers save the dollar stores, fast food (as opposed to fast casual), and oil and gas. These are plain out sources of funds and can't be trusted to hold no matter how big their yields might become. Take a look at Conagra and Campbell's if you disagree. What's it all mean? This is a market where the discourse is radically at odds with what we talk about all day. We are so stuck on Fed talk — should they cut? — that we are part of the hideous misdirection play that is going on in the professional discourse of the moment. These buyers and the stocks they buy don't care about any of what "we" talk about, and I have to redouble my efforts to try to blunt what I see as a radical mistake in coverage that is geared toward hedge funds and not the dominant chord of individual investors. Oh and remember, I am not even talking about the youthful traders who congregate around stocks like Coinbase , Robinhood and Michael Saylor's bitcoin-focused Strategy . While that cohort can't be ignored, they are more obvious. They are part of a confused, momentum-oriented new investor class that is led by those who will drive Palantir to $200 a share, an excellent speculative stock by the way. And it is going to $200. Now, I am schooled in the value of the Fed talk myself. But I am trying to pull the wires from my own brainwashing, which is never easy. I need to go back to the 1990s, when what mattered was stock picking — not the S & P 500 and earnings; not sales and companies that did something meaningful; not companies that catered to the enterprise software mob of code-writers who might be obviated by AI; or those who do nothing but trade the S & P and a bunch of stupid ETFs. Will it be difficult to upend the Fed-geared reportage that every single outlet finds to be the holy grail of business journalism? No. Because those who follow it and believe in it don't know jack about individual stocks anyway. Learning about them is a time-consuming anathema. Plus, they don't know their game is atavistic anyway. They don't see themselves as an obstacle to new world performance. Business journalism has gotten away from learning new stories — too difficult and time consuming and not the province of young researchers anyway. They console themselves that they follow Magnificent Seven drizzle and can speak about Tesla with the best of them. In order to help the waning tide of viewers to stay with us, the new manifesto is to learn the "great unwashed" of stock stories that are under $100 billion in market cap that are truly terrific. There are investors who want to own Nvidia or the next Nvidia, and by golly, we better help find them, or we might as well cut the cord, too. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
