“I don’t see any problems with reliability, and I say bring on more renewables.”

– Colette Honorable, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, speaking at a conference sponsored by the federal Energy Information Administration.

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“Coal is now largely irrelevant in New England.”

– Gordon van Welie, president and CEO of ISO New England in a story about grid reliability remaining stable even as coal continues to fall off as a baseload electricity generating resource.

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The Mississippi Pubic Service Commission requests a “solution that eliminates ratepayer risk for unproven technology and assures no rate increase.”

– Mississippi Public Service Commission in a news release directed at Southern Co. subsidiary Mississippi Power, in which it gave the utility 45 days to abandon its beleaguered and massively over-budget seven-year, $7.5 billion effort to construct a carbon-capture-and-storage coal-burning power plant.

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“Coal’s competitive advantage is fast evaporating. It cannot compete with renewables on cost, and storage and smart management of the grid have made the need for new baseload redundant. Coal is yesterday’s technology – the only thing new coal has going for it is inertia.”

– Kobad Bhavnagri, the lead author of Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s New Energy Outlook 2017 in Asia-Pacific report.

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European nations set bold offshore wind target

Jun 2017

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The governments of Germany, Belgium and Denmark have come together with industry partners to commit to deploying 60 gigawatts of offshore wind power in Europe from 2020-2030. According to WindEurope, the industry has been on a steep cost-reduction curve and has...
“The whole utility paradigm has shifted. We really are doing our ratepayers a disservice by not considering all viable options.”

– Reiko Kerr, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s senior assistant general manager of power systems, regarding a decision by the utility to put a hold on a $2.2 billion plan to rebuild several old natural gas power plants while it studies clean energy alternatives.

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“The cost declines that we are seeing with these technologies are so steep that it becomes a matter of time as to when they start crossing over and becoming competitive in different ways. These things are getting cheaper faster than we thought even a year ago.”

–  Seb Henbest, lead author of Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s latest annual New Energy Outlook report, discussing the predicted dominance of solar, renewables and lithium-ion batteries in the global energy mix by 2040.

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“A lot of West Virginians understood that they were rolling the dice with Trump. …  [They] realize there is not going to be a gigantic return of coal.”

– West Virginia professor and historian Chuck Keeney, who has written extensively on the state’s coal industry and its miners,

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