President Obama on Friday signed into law two bills that are designed to boost hydropower production in the U.S. H.R. 267, the “Hydropower Regulatory Efficiency Act of 2013,” modifies the Federal Power Act and the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act to promote and facilitate the development of hydroelectric power capacity. The law directs the Federal […]

Installed prices for solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in the U.S. in 2012 fell for the third straight year by a range of roughly 6% to 14% compared to the prior year. In its latest edition of “Tracking the Sun,” the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) reports installed prices for PV systems fell […]

Europe’s third-largest power provider on Tuesday announced it would take offline 3.1 GW of natural gas and coal power plants in Germany and the Netherlands, citing a “continuing boom in solar energy.” Echoing several European utilities, Germany-based RWE has underscored the declining profitability of fossil fuel–fired plants that it says is pegged to fundamental changes […]

In an apparent legal victory for the states of Washington and South Carolina, a divided federal court on Tuesday directed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to continue its legally obligated review of a license application to build the proposed permanent nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain, Nev. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. […]

A report released by the White House and Department of Energy (DOE) on Monday that assesses how to best protect the nation’s electric grid from power outages that occur during natural disasters calls for increased cross-sector grid investment and identifies strategies for modernizing the grid. The report, “Economic Benefits of Increasing Electric Grid Resilience to […]