Law & Lawyers

Triggering & Tailoring

What the Supreme Court said, and didn’t.

Justice Scalia saw the need for tailoring as proof that EPA’s Triggering Rule was mistaken.

A Greener Standard Offer

A new model to help restructured states add renewables to the default service portfolio.

By taking the intermittent supply of the renewable generator out of the generator’s compensation, the developer (and lenders) receive the stability they crave while supply customers avoid products they do not need.

EPA's Clean Power Plan: An Unequal Burden

The Clean Power Plan's largest obstacle is how its cost is distributed disproportionately among the states.

How the Clean Power Plan introduced in June by the Environmental Protection Agency will produce widely differing compliance obligations among the states, in terms of emissions targets, likely carbon prices, and effects on wholesale power prices.

Unleashing Energy Efficiency

The Best Way to Comply with EPA’s Clean Power Plan

A framework for measuring the resource value of energy efficiency – touted as the best way for states to comply with the EPA’s Clean Power Plan.

From Coal to Gas

Regulatory and environmental challenges for power plant conversions under the EPA’s Clean Power Plan.

Converting a power plant from coal to natural gas triggers a host of environmental challenges and regulatory issues. Operators could be trading one set of regulatory obligations, liabilities, and costs for another, equally problematic, set of liabilities and costs.

Digest (Oct 2014)

Vattenfall awards Siemens Energy contract for wind turbines; Minnesota Power to build solar energy array at Minnesota National Guard Camp Ripley; Echelon agrees to sell grid operations to S&T AG; DTE Energy teams with Ford Motor Company to build Michigan’s largest solar array.

$9 Billion at Risk

If PJM markets should lose demand response as a capacity resource.

The AEMA sees the self-help DR revolution as a key to America’s recent industrial renaissance: “If demand response is removed from wholesale markets,” the group says, then “the electric grid is back to the rotary phone.”

People (November 2014)

El Paso Electric named Mary Kipp president; Edison International appointed Ronald L. Litzinger and Pedro J. Pizarro presidents at subsidiaries; OGE Energy promoted Sean Trauschke to president; Alan Oshima was named Hawaiian Electric’s president and CEO; Plus board of directors changes at ISO New England and sPower; VP appointments at GDF SUEZ Energy Resources NA, and Georgia Power; and others…

Why Care About Transactive Energy?

Only if you’re a governor, legislator, regulator ... or customer. 

When ratepayers become generators, the utility industry is turned upside-down. A warning to legislators, regulators – and even governors – on what to expect.

Germany's Energiewende

Lessons learned for U.S. utilities – drawn from first-person fact-finding.

Policy experts travel to the continent to get a first-hand view on the lessons the U.S. utilities should take away from Germany’s rush to renewables.