Clean Energy Finance Forum

The parent company of renewable generator Avangrid has offered to buy PNM Resources, broadening its footprint from Texas to New Mexico. (Note: One of CBEY's team members has provided consulting services to Avangrid.)

"Policies to foster competition in energy are important especially in states like Michigan with regulated electricity markets. In Michigan, regulated investor-owned utilities are the only providers of electricity in the service territories in which they operate."

Seven states – Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, South Carolina, and Vermont – have enacted legislation to promote pollinator-friendly solar development. A new white paper by the Clean Energy States Alliance provides an overview of these state efforts and offers suggestions for what other states can do to promote solar while also creating or preserving healthy habitats for pollinators.

Rocky Mountain Power contends that rooftop-generated power is not worth much, while clean-power advocates and the solar industry counter that rooftop systems provide broad benefits to the public at large and to the utility in the form of reduced stress on the electrical grid and power-generation needs.

The MI Power Grid program will focus on three areas: customer engagement, integrating emerging technologies and optimizing grid performance and investments. Business groups and one of the state's largest electric utilities, Consumers Energy, applauded the move.

Soleil Lofts, an under-construction luxury apartment complex in the Utah city of Herriman, announced that it will host the largest renewable energy setup of its kind. The 600-unit complex will feature five megawatts of solar panels. Each unit will also host a Sonnen EcoLinx battery to store the energy, combining together to offer 12.6 megawatt-hours of storage.

The utility has chosen to disregard the goals of the state of Rhode Island and only procure electricity from one of the projects that completed a recent solicitation.

Michigan regulators approved Consumers Energy's latest integrated resource plan, which will shutter its Karn coal-fired plant by 2023, setting the utility on a course to eliminate coal entirely and by 2040 reduce emissions from power plants by 90%.