North Carolina has the potential to be a leader in offshore wind development, and the governor’s guidance can help jumpstart the industry. As a new market, however, the industry needs a stronger signal of interest. An executive order setting a goal for offshore wind development will show the wind industry that North Carolina intends to significantly invest in the sector.
As Germany shuttered another of its nuclear power plants on New Year’s Day, the office of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi was said to be considering a proposal which would make coal more competitive with renewables in one of the world’s worst polluting nations.
In California, the nation’s most populous state, every newly-built home must now come with enough solar panels to satisfy its electricity needs. It’s a quiet revolution tucked into the building codes approved unanimously by the California Energy Commission in 2018.
Some of the biggest investor-owned utilities in the country have in recent years had significant grid modernization proposals rejected by regulators. But utilities may be able to avoid such rejection by answering three basic, but critical questions.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf proposed Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) legislation in the fall 2019 legislative season. By voting to join RGGI, Pennsylvania can reduce electricity rates, improve the state and regional economy, and make the state a leader in the global effort to combat climate change.
The implementation plan that Arlington County expects to propose in June 2020 needs to include the creation of a green bank – a quasi-public entity established to facilitate private investment into local low-carbon, climate-resilient infrastructure.
To capture the energy efficiency opportunity across the U.S. economy, the House Energy and Commerce Committee should introduce a bill to establish a national energy benchmarking standard for commercial buildings. Building on the success of local ordinances, the proposed bill would create a national requirement while giving state and local governments the option to maintain more aggressive requirements if they desire.
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.
A companion bill to the National Climate Bank Act is expected to be introduced in the House, which could provide a huge boon to the solar and the solar-plus-storage markets.
