David Labrador is a Senior Writer/Editor at RMI.
David’s background is in journalism, marketing, and foreign aid. He worked as a writer and researcher at Scientific American magazine and as a copy editor at a scholarly press. He helped to found an English-language newspaper in Kosovo. In addition to his editorial work, he worked for a marketing firm representing corporate clients and raised funds for several nonprofits in the United States and abroad.
David served in the Peace Corps in Paraguay and assisted development efforts in Kosovo and in Afghanistan, where he managed a large-scale infrastructure program with the United Nations. He came to RMI from Vermont CARES, an HIV/AIDS service organization, where he served as development director.
BA, Classical Studies, Dartmouth College
Boulder, CO
@DaveLabTweets
“I love being at the cutting edge of so many fields of energy innovation.”
Manufacturing powerhouse Taiwan has created a renewable energy credit (Taiwan-REC or T-REC) scheme that allows companies, including foreign companies, to procure directly from renewable energy projects. This is part of an emerging trend among countries vital to the global supply chain that will simplify corporate sustainability and stimulate the addition…
Rocky Mountain Institute has teamed up with the National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) to supply the nation’s TV newscasters with materials about home energy upgrades that they can use in their broadcasts, blogs, and websites when they are most relevant. Drafty, energy-inefficient homes can seem perfectly fine when conditions…
Platte River Power Authority (PRPA), the generating authority that serves Fort Collins—a community Rocky Mountain Institute has been working with for a long time—and three other Colorado cities recently got the results of a study it commissioned on the relative costs of transitioning to net-zero carbon generation by 2030.
On December 1, 2017, RMI CEO Jules Kortenhorst and RMI Managing Director Miranda Ballentine held a live video discussion about RMI’s efforts to think bigger, act boldly, and scale globally to support our efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change and create a clean, prosperous, and secure low-carbon future.
Among the 135 stakeholders of RMI’s Electricity Innovation Lab (e–Lab) who gathered for the first e–Lab Summit at the end of 2016, many are involved with Leap, an ongoing RMI initiative dedicated to empowering and improving the lives of low-income communities and households in a clean energy future.
The transition to low-cost, highly efficient clean energy technology is being accelerated by an accompanying revolution in innovative business models to deploy that technology. This new approach can be seen in a number of clean energy markets; whether the underlying technology is a recent innovation, such as solar photovoltaics (PV),…
Guest author Kristen Ardani is a solar program lead for Solar Soft Costs and Tech to Market at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The residential solar-plus-storage market has certainly received a lot of attention in recent months. With the release of new, lower-cost products and implementation of utility time-of-use…
On December 15, 2016, RMI CEO Jules Kortenhorst and Amory Lovins, RMI’s cofounder and chief scientist, held a live video discussion—introduced by Sir Richard Branson—about the business case for renewables and clean energy. They did not have time to answer all the questions attendees asked, so staff from…
In late April 2016, RMI hosted the third annual eLab Accelerator. Described as a boot camp for electricity innovation, the four-day intensive work session brought together 13 teams from across North America—from North Carolina to Ottawa and California to New York—to work on new business models, energy innovation districts, and…
In April 2016, RMI hosted the third annual eLab Accelerator. (Applications are now being accepted for eLab Accelerator 2017.) Described as a boot camp for electricity innovation, the four-day intensive work session brought together 13 teams from across North America—from North Carolina to Ottawa and California…
When surveyed, homeowners respond that they want to do home energy upgrades. So why haven’t home energy upgrades spread like wildfire? Residential solar installations, meanwhile, spread like crazy in neighborhoods where even a few solar panels appear, in a process called “solar contagion.” A webinar on December 1 will reveal…
The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) is about to become the newest member of the Smithsonian system on the National Mall, in a dazzling building that is more sustainable than any before it. At the official opening this Saturday, Victor Olgyay, a principal at RMI and a leader of RMI’s buildings practice, and Elaine Gallagher Adams, a former manager with RMI’s buildings practice, will be taking part. The pair was involved with the project from its very beginning, as was RMI.
President Obama announced measures on July 19 to increase access to solar energy and energy efficiency by low- and moderate-income customers. Elements of the plan, called the Clean Energy Savings For All Initiative, will bring 1,000 megawatts of solar energy by 2020 to a group that has thus…
3M, the global manufacturing and technology giant, announced its first-ever power purchase agreement in February for a hefty 120 MW of power. The power was procured from Invenergy, North America’s largest independent renewable power generation company.
The Business Renewables Center (BRC) is working together with RE100, led by The Climate Group in partnership with CDP, to accelerate the procurement of renewable energy by some of the world’s most influential companies.
Clean Edge recently released a new benchmarking index of corporations that take the lead in clean energy. The list of Corporate Clean Energy Leaders includes more than a dozen members of RMI’s BRC, who make up nearly half Clean Edge’s inaugural list.
Non-utility customers accounted for 52 percent of last year’s total of over 4,000 MW of wind PPAs. Non-utility customers include some universities and city governments, but the vast majority are corporations.
First-time corporate buyers are entering the market in droves and now account for the majority of both deal announcements and contracted MW of wind and solar energy.
Earlier this week, aerospace, defense, and advanced technology company Lockheed Martin announced that it had concluded a deal to buy 30 MW of solar power from Duke Energy Renewables, a Business Renewables Center (BRC) sponsor and part of Duke Energy.
“Salesforce committing to a second PPA after signing their first contract last December is an excellent example of how new companies can join the renewables club and build momentum quickly.”
In November 2015, financial advisory firm Lazard released its first-ever Levelized Cost of Storage Analysis (LCOS). Well known for its Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis (LCOE) analysis—now out in version 9.0—Lazard publishing an analysis of storage is a major sign that it considers battery energy storage a critical…
At this year’s CES conference in Las Vegas, clean energy and energy-smart technology were two of the major trends in new products.
To cap what is already a banner year for corporate renewable energy procurement, Salesforce recently signed another major PPA deal for 125,000 megawatt-hours of electricity annually.
An authoritative new study released earlier this week shows how energy efficiency can be a low-cost pathway to keeping global warming to the critical 2 degrees centigrade mark.
Early last week the EPA announced the 2015 Green Power Leadership Awards. At least five of the winners, who are recognized for achievements in advancing the nation’s renewable energy market, are affiliated with RMI’s Business Renewables Center (BRC).
In the face of rising retail prices for grid electricity, investing in solar-plus-battery systems can insulate grid-connected customers from those increasing prices and effectively lock in a peak price that won't continue to climb, according to a recent analysis by RMI.
Last week, New York’s Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) proceeding achieved another key milestone as part of its electricity system evolution.
Colorado's state legislature has considered a bill to move towards performance-based regulation of investor-owned utilities.
A recently released study commissioned by the Maine Public Utility Commission dropped a bombshell on the electricity world earlier this year, valuing distributed solar at $0.33 per kWh, far above the state’s prevailing price.
Does it make business sense to do a deep energy retrofit on a commercial building? Many investors currently overlook the retrofit’s value beyond its energy cost savings, but now their asset managers will be able to do a more complete calculation.
How does a single streetscape project turn into a community-wide energy independence effort? Tiny Bloomfield, Iowa, discovered the answer with the help of RMI’s eLab Accelerator, and their story is a surprising one with big implications for small towns across America.
With its shelter-in-place strategy, the City of Hoboken, New Jersey, plans a resilient microgrid to help residents stand their ground in the face of the next big storm.
Utility-scale solar and wind power is the best source of cheap, large-scale renewable energy. So what will it take to bring more companies to the table?