Dive Brief:
Puget Sound Energy s new long-term resource plan is failing to live up to the promise of Washington state s ambitious clean energy legislation by leaving the door open for more carbon dioxide-emitting resources, according to environmental advocates and Washington residents.
The debate over PSE s draft integrated resource plan (IRP), seen at a Feb. 26 meeting held by Washington regulators, is the latest example of a conflict over the degree to which natural gas will be needed to back up renewable energy, and whether or not using alternative forms of natural gas like biogas alleviates emissions concerns.
The IRP serves as a launching pad for how PSE, the state s largest utility, will implement Washington s 2019 Clean Energy Transformation Act (CETA), which requires utilities to transition toward carbon neutrality by 2030 and 100% clean energy by 2045. PSE and other Washington utilities must file their first CETA implementation plans by Oct. 1, and the plan must be consis
Dive Brief:
Southern Company has joined with the Gas Technology Institute (GTI) and six of the Department of Energy s national laboratories to form a two-year, $15 million research consortium tasked with examining the impact of blending hydrogen in natural gas on existing gas infrastructure.
The research partners will explore the performance of existing natural gas assets such as pipelines, storage, compressors and even household appliances when hydrogen is added to the fuel mix, allowing utilities to find optimal portfolio solutions in the future, according to Zachary Lowe, director at Southern Company Gas.
Research will enable utilities to transition to hydrogen fuel while leveraging existing infrastructure, according to Brian Weeks, senior director of businesses development at GTI. However, an analyst watching the hydrogen industry questions whether existing gas infrastructure is in fact the cheapest option for deploying hydrogen.
Dive Brief:
Attempts to blame the Texas power outages on renewable energy stand to derail calls for bipartisan climate legislation, members of the Congressional Subcommittee on Energy said Thursday.
While Democratic members of the subcommittee viewed power outages in Texas and other states following severe winter weather as a sign of the need for urgent action on climate change, Republican members spoke of the same events as demonstrating the danger of over-reliance on renewable energy.
Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., criticized parties attempting to blame the Texas outages on either fossil fuels or renewable energy, saying he hoped to see bipartisan agreement on energy policy. We can t allow the Texas crisis to be used as an excuse to discourage movement toward renewable energy, he said.
Dive Brief:
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Thursday voted 3-1 to vacate an infamous footnote added to a rehearing order on the PJM Interconnection s broader minimum offer price rule (MOPR) proceeding.
FERC s order eliminates confusion over the footnote, which had suggested that New Jersey s default service auction could be considered a state subsidy under the expanded MOPR. I believe this, finally, is the end of the commission s PJM MOPR proceeding, said Chairman Richard Glick. Although I disagreed with our various MOPR orders, I do believe it is time for PJM to move ahead with the capacity auction, which has unfortunately been delayed for several years.
Dive Brief:
There will be 8.5 GW of new storage added to the U.S. grid by the end of 2021, and another 2 GW annually through 2025, according to new estimates from S&P Global Market Intelligence. Storage projects paired with renewable energy could see the strongest growth due to tax credits, falling development costs and the potential for higher gas prices.
These hybrid economics are driving new storage build into a greater proportion of markets than we d previously forecast, Steve Piper, director of energy research with S&P, said Wednesday during a presentation of the firm s Q4 Power Forecast.
The growth of new storage resources is helping to fuel the electric transition, but Piper also said that S&P expects the generation market share for zero-carbon resources to increase only marginally from 2021 to 2035, from 39% to 47%.