Dive Brief:
Regulators at the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission (PUC) on Tuesday grilled Hawaiian Electric (HECO) representatives on their plans to replace a 180 MW coal plant on Oahu, amid concerns that without adequate planning the facility will be replaced with oil-fired generation after it is retired in 2022.
The AES coal plant serves around 15% of demand on Oahu and is one of the fossil fuel plants that HECO is looking to shutter in the next couple of years. But regulators worry that delays to renewables projects that are planned to help replace the plant could require the state to turn to oil at the end of the next year.
Dive Brief:
Solar deployment in the U.S. reached a record 19.2 GW of solar capacity last year, a volume expected to quadruple by 2030, according to the U.S. Solar Market Insight Report released by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables on Tuesday.
Residential solar deployment, initially impacted by the pandemic, reached a record 3.1 GW in 2020, up 11% from 2019. Utility solar also had its largest year on record, installing nearly 14 GW or 65% more annual capacity additions than in 2019.
WoodMac forecast an 18% growth in 2021 over 2020 distributed solar installations, partly driven by increasing consumer interest in [distributed solar and solar-plus-storage] products for resilience needs, following the Texas winter storms, Michelle Davis, senior analyst at WoodMac, said in an email.
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This is the latest installment in Utility Dive s Taking Charge series, where we engage with power sector leaders on the energy transition.
Allison Clements, the 10th female commissioner to serve as a Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner, began her first public meeting this December with a promise: that the grave threat of climate change would absolutely underlie her role, which oversees the certification of pipelines, and setting rules for a wide swath of the U.S. power sector.
Allison Clements
Her nomination and successive confirmation comes at a critical time for FERC. The agency has generated more public interest as pressure mounts for the power sector to quickly decarbonize in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. FERC s role is deemed essential to that transition, and Clements will be a key player in enabling a broader array of voices to share their input, in her newly-established position of leading the Office of Public Participation.
Dive Brief:
With customer demand already driving the rapid growth of renewable energy, a climate-focused infrastructure bill should focus on transmission and research, according to experts on a Thursday panel hosted by the American Council on Renewable Energy.
Infrastructure is next on the Biden administration agenda, and there s ample political will to increase spending on infrastructure, according to Christina Hayes, vice president of federal regulatory affairs at Berkshire Hathaway Energy. Focusing on decarbonization by 2035, she said, could create thousands of new jobs and other benefits, but requires a focus on shovel ready projects.
Private capital for clean energy and transmission projects is readily available, according to Susan Nickey, executive vice president and chief client officer of climate-focused investment firm Hannon Armstrong. However, she said, cumbersome permitting processes have prevented the construction of needed transmission projects.