Legal & Regulatory
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News
Nation’s Largest Community Solar Program Set to Launch
Florida Power & Light (FPL) on March 3 received approval from state regulators to launch the nation’s largest community solar program. FPL’s $1.8 billion SolarTogether project will more than double the amount of available community solar power nationwide. The program, unanimously approved Tuesday by the Florida Public Service Commission (FPSC), adds almost 1.5 GW of […]
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Commentary
Trump’s Attempt to Bring Sanity to a Torturous Environmental Review and Permitting Process
The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) proposed changes to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations to promote “efficient, effective, and timely” NEPA review by federal agencies (85
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Interview
Georgia Commissioner: EVs Help Utilities and Ratepayers
There’s general agreement among industry analysts that sales of electric vehicles (EVs) will continue to grow. Those same analysts, though, may not agree on the pace of growth. BloombergNEF (BNEF) in its “Electric Vehicle Outlook 2019” report said it expects yearly passenger EV sales will hit 10 million in 2025, up from just more than […]
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T&D
Public Safety Power Shutoffs: How Utilities Could Partner
Catastrophic wildfires have devastated California in recent years. This article seeks to outline a plan wherein neighboring utilities can send energy to support a utility that has shut down critical paths during wildfire mitigation efforts. On the morning of Nov. 8, 2018, the Camp Fire erupted 90 miles north of Sacramento, California (Figure 1). This fire […]
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Fuel
Is Biomass Dead?
With subsidies running short and emissions regulations still a challenge, the promise of biomass as a sustainable source for utility-scale power generation remains elusive. Yet, there are novel applications
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Commentary
Energy Storage—Operational Versatility Causes a Regulatory Identity Crisis
The next decade could belong to energy storage. Project development costs are dropping. Enhanced state and corporate focus on climate-related issues is producing more opportunities for renewable generation and
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News
Endesa to Close Two Giant Spanish Coal Plants
Endesa on Dec. 27 formally moved to shutter two massive coal-fired power plants—the 1.4-GW As Pontes plant in A Coruña, Galicia, which is the biggest coal-fired power plant in Spain, and the 1.16-GW
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Carbon Capture
Policy Support for Carbon Capture Critical to Clean Energy Future
Analysis by both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and International Energy Agency shows that achieving a zero-carbon energy system by 2050 will require large-scale deployment of carbon capture
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Coal
Cementing Coal Power Phaseout, Germany Sets Out to Shutter 40% of Current Generation Mix
Germany’s federal cabinet on Jan. 29 approved a nationwide phaseout of coal power generation by 2038, paving the way for the country, which has already initiated a nuclear phaseout, to rely even more heavily on renewables. The federal cabinet’s approval of the “Reduction and Termination of Coal Power Generation” (Gesetz zur Reduzierung und zur Beendigung der […]
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News
EPA to Withdraw Federal Regional Haze Plan for Utah Based on New Analysis
Citing new technical information gleaned from a more modern modeling analysis, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed to withdraw a federal implementation plan (FIP) to control regional haze from four PacifiCorp coal-fired units in Utah and allow the state to revert to conditions set out in a 2015-submitted state implementation plan (SIP). The agency’s […]
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