OK finds success in building out windpower
|Tags: North America, Wind With more than 1,000 megawatts of wind capacity under construction in Oklahoma, the state is poised to overtake California as the No. 3 provider of wind energy in the United States by the end of the year, behind only Iowa and Texas. At the end of 2015, Oklahoma had a...
Working on what comes after coal in Appalachia
|Tags: Community Transition, North America From farming to tech to energy efficiency construction, a look at some of the entrepreneurial initiatives in Appalachia coal country that are being described not as economic cures for declining coal but as steps enabling elected officials, business leaders,...
Mont. coal plant asks city to cut water use
|Tags: Climate, Coal-fired Power, Municipal Utilities, North America In an ironic twist, residents of Colstrip, Montana, the home of the second largest coal-burning power plant in the West, are being asked to limit their water use so the plant continue to operate safely. The city’s mayor sent a note to 2,300 residents making the...
Calif. has a lot more solar power than reported
|Tags: Municipal Utilities, North America, Solar, Utilities There is little doubt that California is by far the national leader in solar, with more capacity installed than any other state, but the numbers often cited as record-breaking fall far short of detailing the full story about how far in front of the rest of the country...
Colorado drafting order to cut CO2 emissions
|Tags: Clean Power Plan, Coal-fired Power, North America, Utilities Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is contemplating an executive order that would require cuts of up to 35 percent in carbon emissions from the state’s power sector – compared to 2012 levels – by 2030, according to documents reported on by the Denver Business...
Read more“At present, procuring foreign loans for renewable energy projects is far easier than thermal power projects. A green power generation company also attracts global equity investors.”
– A senior analyst for India’s biggest power company, state-owned NTPC, on increasing renewables and decreasing thermal in its 10-year expansion plan.
Read more“By law, if my office can’t offer a tax break to a single mom who worries about feeding her children, I’m not going to offer one to a multi-national corporation that just asked the bankruptcy court to pay its executives $12 million in bonuses.”
– Brita Horn, Treasurer of Routt County, Colorado, on Peabody Energy’s efforts to avoid paying interest and fees owed for overdue property taxes.
Record low solar price set at Chilean auction
|Tags: Central & South America, Financing & Economics, Solar The bar on solar pricing has dropped even further following bids submitted at an energy auction in Chile. The bid to provide a slice of Chile’s power at 2.91 cents per kilowatt-hour, which was submitted by Spanish energy firm SolarPack, set a new record-low for...
Getting rate-design right as renewables rise
|Tags: Consumer Impacts, Innovation, North America, Solar, Utilities At a time when many U.S. utilities are reacting to increasing consumer interest in on-site renewable energy and increased efficiency with regressive and punitive proposals like mandatory fixed fees – sparking conflict with clean energy and consumer advocates – an...
Read more“The impacts between now and 2030 were extremely modest.”
– Angus Duncan, chairman of the Oregon Global Warming Commission, commenting on a utility analysis showing that the state’s new clean energy law will have negligible impact on customer rates over the next 15 years.
No rate impact from Oregon clean energy law
|Tags: Clean Energy, Coal-fired Power, Consumer Impacts, Financing & Economics, North America, Solar, Utilities An analysis by one of Oregon’s two investor-owned utilities indicates that complying with the state’s recently enacted law requiring 50 percent renewable energy by 2040 will be cheaper than anticipated and have almost no impact on customers’...
Judge upholds denial of coal export permit in OR
|Tags: Asia & India, Coal Production, North America An administrative law judge in Oregon has upheld the state’s denial of a permit for construction of a proposed coal export terminal on the Columbia River. In 2014, the Oregon Department of State Lands denied a permit for the Morrow Pacific project to construct a dock...
Solar growth smashes through U.S. milestones
|Tags: North America, Solar While it took decades for solar developers in the United States to install the first 10 gigawatts of cumulative rooftop PV, that milestone is about to be matched in a matter of months. According to data from GTM Research’s Utility PV Market Tracker, there are...
Read more“We’re initiating our … shift from today’s pipeline architecture – moving central-station power across wires to customers at the other end – to a platform architecture, which is the business architecture of the 21st Century.”
– ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, speaking at the National Conference of State Legislatures and urging lawmakers nationwide to help utilities shift to new business models.
Power drain: deep cuts to coal industry lobbying
|Tags: Coal Production, Financing & Economics, North America, Politics & Legislation The sustained doldrums of the U.S. coal industry has sharply limited the political reach of coal advocates in an election year in which climate and energy policies pose an existential threat to the industry. According to an S&P Global Market Intelligence analysis...
Falling TX coal demand a threat to PRB producers
|Tags: Coal Production, Financing & Economics, Natural Gas, North America, Solar, Wind Powder River Basin coal producers working their way through bankruptcy and severe financial distress will have to contend with the loss of their most important customers. Texas power plant operators increasingly replacing coal with wind, solar and natural gas could...
Read more“The writing on the wall for the coal industry is clear. Young coal workers, in particular, should consider retraining for a job in solar now.”
– Michigan Technological University proferssor Joshua Pearce, commenting on a study he co-authored showing that many coal companies, even those filing for bankruptcy, could retrain all their employees to work in similar solar industry job for less than the CEO’s annual salary.
Read more“Anything [nuclear] that hasn’t gotten off the ground yet isn’t getting built. There is no economic rationale for it.”
– Greg Gordon, a utility analyst at New York investment advisory firm Evercore ISI on the future of new nuclear power plants being built in the U.S.
Customers stuck with bills for paper nukes
|Tags: Consumer Impacts, Financing & Economics, North America, Nuclear, Utilities Customers of several U.S. utilities could end up paying more than $2.5 billion to cover costs for nuclear plants that never get built, according to according to company disclosures and regulatory filings reported by Bloomberg. In recent decisions, regulators have...
Study: coal jobs could transition to solar
|Tags: Coal Production, Jobs, North America, Solar A new study by researchers at Michigan Technological University and Oregon State has found that huge growth in solar-related employment could benefit coal workers, whose industry is being decimated, by easily absorbing layoffs over the next 15 years and offering new...
In China, coal output and use race downward
|Tags: Asia & India, Coal Production, Coal-fired Power, Solar The latest official statistics from China support the idea that the nation’s coal output and use peaked in 2014. Coal production in China has dropped 9.7 percent in the first half of 2016 compared to 2015 – and 2015 saw a 5.8 percent decline in output over 2014....
Efficiency upgrades could save biz $11B
|Tags: Clean Power Plan, Consumer Impacts, Energy Efficiency, North America Commercial building owners and occupants in the United States could shave 6.7 percent off their annual electricity bills by 2030, saving them $11.3 billion, if they implemented the energy efficiency requirements laid out for states by the Obama Administration’s Clean...
Colo. coal mines take big production hit this year
|Tags: Coal Production, Financing & Economics, North America Coal production in Colorado over the first six months of 2016 dropped 42 percent compared with the same period of 2015, according to data released by the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety. From January through June of 2016, Colorado’s active mines...
Read more“This decision was not only the best environmental decision for our community, but it was also beneficial financially for all of our customers.”
— El Paso Electric CEO Mary Kipp on the utility’s decision to eliminate all coal from its portfolio
Read more“Battery experts are now saying that the cost of lithium-ion systems has dropped to the point where it would be less expensive to build a large battery facility than it would to build a peaker plant in today’s prices.”
– Rick Azer, Associate Vice President of Development for Black & Veatch’s Smart Integrated Infrastructure, on the precipitous drop in battery prices as scale increases.
Bill boosts storage, offshore wind in Mass.
|Tags: Clean Energy, Energy Storage, North America, Solar, Utilities, Wind The Massachusetts Legislature has passed a sweeping energy bill that solidifies the state’s position as a national leader in clean energy development. A key piece of the legislation requires utilities to obtain contracts for 1.6 gigawatts of offshore wind energy...
NY PSC sets high clean energy bar; 50% by 2030
|Tags: Clean Energy, Climate, Consumer Impacts, North America, Utilities The New York Public Service Commission has upped the ante for renewable energy in the state, raising the bar on its clean energy standard to 50 percent by 2030. Under the newly approved Clean Energy Standard, utilities and other energy suppliers will be required phase...
Ukraine floats idea of Chernobyl solar farm
|Tags: Europe, Jobs, Nuclear, Solar, Transmission Ukrainian officials have begun floating the idea of resurrecting the site of the world’s most destructive nuclear meltdown into a massive solar farm. The plan comes with plenty of risks related to radioactive contamination throughout the 1,600-square-mile exclusion...
Clean energy beat coal in UK’s 2015 power mix
|Tags: Clean Energy, Coal-fired Power, Europe, Hydroelectric/Tidal Power, Natural Gas, Nuclear, Solar, Wind Renewable energy sources including which include onshore and offshore wind, solar, hydroelectric dams and biomass, provided a quarter of United Kingdom’s power supplies in 2015, outstripping coal power for the first time, according to recently published...