Clean Energy Finance Forum

Now, in states from New York to California, the focus of the conversation has moved from: How can utilities weather the shift toward distributed energy without suffering big losses? to: How can utilities, their customers and the electric grid as a whole best harness the benefits of distributed energy resources?

The Ohio Supreme Court threw out FirstEnergy Solutions’ lawsuit arguing that the recently enacted law bailing out its two nuclear power plants on Lake Erie cannot be subjected to voter referendum.

Early this month, three community-choice aggregators and one municipal utility serving much of California’s San Francisco Bay Area launched a 30-megawatt distributed energy storage-plus-solar solicitation. It breaks ground on multiple fronts.

Cities in California and Massachusetts are advancing what has become the newest trend in the local fight against climate change: bans on natural gas hookups in new buildings.

In a nutshell, the state needs utilities that partner with communities to maximize local resilience and self-sufficiency, and whose financial fortunes are tied to their performance in that pursuit.

Bill Johnson is a utility executive, not a climate scientist. That didn’t stop the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) CEO from wading into California’s complex climate conditions. Noting that Northern California’s wildfire risk has grown exponentially in recent years, Johnson placed much of the blame on climate change, not PG&E’s compromised electricity grid.

A new survey finds Ohio voters support a broad array of policies to address climate impacts and increase production of renewable energy in the state, and want their elected officials to support those policies.

Questions remain about where the money is coming from to fund both the petition drive for a public vote on FirstEnergy’s subsidies and the inflammatory campaign against it by a group called Ohioans for Energy Security.