Sustainability Weekly — CTA Architects P.C.

**Fridays are for…**

Solar Surpassing Coal, Home Batteries, Upcycled Towers, and more!

by Alli DiGiacomo

Happy Friday! Thanks to everyone who came to our volunteering event with the LES Ecology Center this week! It was a success as we filled over 15 large bags of weeds and invasive species from the gardens of East River Park. For those curious, the East River Park resiliency project, part of the city's East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) effort, is a $1.45 billion initiative to protect Lower Manhattan from coastal flooding and a 100-year flood. They rebuilt the park by raising it to elevate it from sea level, added flood gates, bridges, recreational facilities, tennis and basketball courts, varieties of seating, and more.

Keep reading for sustainability news…

T H I S W E E K ’ S T O P S T O R I E S

RENEWABLE ENERGY OFFICIALLY PRODUCED MORE ELECTRICITY THAN COAL SO FAR THIS YEAR

For the first time ever, combined global electricity generation from renewables exceeded coal as the largest source of electricity, according to a report from Ember. In the first half of 2025, renewables (including solar, wind, and hydro power) generated 34.3% of global electricity, while coal accounted for 33.1%. Solar power contributed to most of this growth, more than doubling its share of global electricity from 3.8% in 2021 to 8.8% in early 2025. Together, solar and wind grew so fast that they not only met all new electricity demand during this period but also displaced some fossil fuel use. Coal is still the single largest electricity source worldwide, and no individual renewable source surpasses it on its own. Coal generation hasn’t decreased but has mostly stayed the same, while renewables continue to grow.

Rising electricity demand is driven by factors like economic growth, electric vehicles, data centers, population growth in developing countries, and higher cooling needs. The report states that global solar generation grew by a record 31% and wind by 7.7%, producing over 400 terawatt-hours more than the overall rise in electricity demand. Total fossil fuel generation fell slightly, less than 1%, signaling a plateau in emissions. The analysis highlights trends in China, India, the EU, and the U.S., which together account for approximately two-thirds of global power generation and CO2 emissions. The shift toward clean energy provides countries with greater energy independence by reducing reliance on imported fuels. This is a historic milestone!

HOME BATTERIES ARE GETTING $1 BILLION IN FUNDING

Texas-based startup Base Power has raised $1 billion, one of the biggest cleantech investments yet this year, to accelerate its rollout of large-scale home batteries. Base Power is solving some of the challenges with the U.S.’s surging electricity demand, driven mostly by AI data centers, new factories, and EV adoption. The company claims they can add grid capacity faster and cheaper than most alternatives by installing powerful batteries in homes and using them as mini power plants.

Base Power’s business is built entirely around making home batteries central to the power grid. Here’s how it works: Base Power installs 1-2 oversized batteries in a customers home. The company owns the batteries, while customers pay an installation fee starting at $695 and a small monthly rate. The distributed fleet is networked together and acts like a connected power plant. The batteries charge when renewable energy makes prices cheap and discharge when demand and prices spike. They are also partnering with regulated utilities to provide backup power to customers and relieve grid stress and make adjustments when renewables fluctuate. It’s scaling fast and has already surpassed 150 MWh of total installations, ahead of projections.

The company is also shifting from contract manufacturing to in-house production. It has leased the former 90,000 sf Austin American-Statesman building for engineering and manufacturing operations. The domestic production is expected to start in early 2026, and will help Base Power comply with new U.S. tariffs limiting products from China. By owning, operating, and networking thousands of large home systems, the company is creating a flexible source of distributed energy that expands grid capacity faster than new power plants can be built.

THE WORLD’S FIRST “UPCYCLED” SKYSCRAPER IS A FINALIST FOR THE EARTHSHOT PRIZE

The Quay Quarter Tower in Sydney, Australia, is widely recognized as the world’s first fully upcycled skyscraper and is a finalist for the 2025 Earthshot Prize. Instead of demolishing the original 1970s AMP Centre that was reaching the end of it’s lifespan, which would have released tons of carbon and waste, architects, engineers, and contractors chose to retrofit the building. The project was led by Danish firm 3XN with Australian partners BVN, BG&E, Arup, and Multiplex, retaining 95–98% of the building’s core and 65% of its original structure, and saving over 12,000 tons of embodied carbon. This is equivalent to ~35,000 flights between Sydney and Melbourne, for context.

Completed in 2022, the tower transformed the aging building into a taller, more energy-efficient skyscraper, doubling the office space and increasing occupancy from 4,500 to 9,000 people. It already won World Building of the Year and continues to receive recognition for proving that large-scale retrofits are both environmentally responsible and commercially viable. Since most of the embodied carbon of buildings comes from the structure, hopefully the success of this building will be an inspiration for cities to start rethinking urban development and for the industry to use more existing larger buildings instead of starting from scratch and demolishing existing buildings. The final Earthshot Prize winner will be selected later this year from 15 global finalists.

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