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How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream
The biggest turbines in Osterild stretch more than 600 feet high. The largest rotor blades can reach 270 feet in length, comparable to the wingspan of an Airbus A380, the world’s largest commercial plane. The price tag: Up to 10 million euros, or more than $12 million. The monstrous scale has helped turn wind into a mainstream form of power. [ read more … ]
Ex-Trump aide was overruled on solar tariffs
President Trump’s former energy adviser suggested yesterday that Trump’s contentious solar tariffs won’t likely achieve the president’s desired outcome. George David Banks, who left the White House in February, said Trump’s tariffs wouldn’t make the U.S. solar industry more competitive globally. He spoke at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs’ Center on Global Energy Policy, which he joined this week as an adjunct research scholar. [ read more … ]
Policy & Politics
Tech firms like Google, Amazon push power companies toward solar and wind, a blow to coal
very time you save a photo to the cloud, buy something on Amazon, open a Google doc or stream a movie, you’re probably pulling electricity from a wind turbine in Texas or a solar farm in Virginia. In fact, your clicks and taps may have helped build them. [ read more … ]
A Wind Lover’s Dream: All 57,636 U.S. Wind Turbines on One Map
Thanks to a new online database, details on every one of the 57,636 operating turbines in the U.S. are only a mouse-click away. The project, unveiled Thursday by the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Department of Energy, is “more accurate, and updated more often” than any existing turbine data sets and offers valuable details to government agencies, researchers and anyone else with a keen interest in wind power, according to a statement. [ read more … ]
New Jersey governor signs drill ban to thwart Trump plan
On the anniversary of the largest marine oil spill in the petroleum industry, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill Friday prohibiting oil and natural gas drilling in state waters, as well as preventing infrastructure like pipelines that could support drilling in more distant federal waters. The tactics have gotten the attention of the Trump administration. At a forum earlier this month in New Jersey on offshore wind, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said states opposed to the drilling plan have “a lot of leverage” against it by enacting state-level bans. [ read more … ]
Hawaii can get to 80% clean twice as fast — study
Hawaii can accelerate its switch from fossil fuels to renewables, hitting more than 80 percent clean in 2030, a study released today said. The report from the Rhodium Group and Smart Growth America said that the most cost-effective pathway for Hawaii is 55 to 84 percent renewable penetration by 2030. The existing state target is 40 percent by 2030. [ read more … ]
In killer year for wind, Wyoming lags behind
Wyoming and Colorado both got 10 percent of their power from wind in 2011. Last year, Colorado had nearly doubled that. South Dakota hit 30 percent, and 15 percent of Idaho’s power came from wind. The amount of wind power turning on lights in Wyoming actually fell to 9 percent. [ read more … ]
Oklahoma continues to hold high wind production marks in latest industry report
Oklahoma is among four states in the nation where wind generated at least 30 percent of the electricity produced inside its borders during in 2017, an industry update released this week reported. An annual report published by the American Wind Energy Association for 2017 shows that Oklahoma and Kansas, Iowa and South Dakota achieved that mark for the year. [ read more … ]
Sunshine State Is Set to Get More Solar After Florida Ruling
The Sunshine State is removing what solar installer Sunrun Inc. has seen as a roadblock to consumer panel leasing, an arrangement that drove a boom in rooftop power systems elsewhere in the U.S. A ruling by Florida regulators on Friday will allow Sunrun, the largest U.S. residential-solar company, to expand in the state, the company said. The San Francisco-based installer jumped 4 percent to $9.27 on Friday. [ read more … ]
FirstEnergy ’emergency’ is a ‘policy problem’
FirstEnergy Solutions Corp.’s financial problems won’t factor into the Energy Department’s decision on whether to throw it a policy lifeline, a deputy to Energy Secretary Rick Perry said yesterday. FirstEnergy Solutions, the competitive-generation arm of FirstEnergy Corp., filed for bankruptcy last month, and it has since asked DOE to apply a rarely used “emergency” authority that would require its plants to keep running. Bob Murray, the CEO of coal miner Murray Energy Corp., has lobbied for the same action. [ read more … ]
DOE’s Walker: National security assessment broader than grid reliability
The Department of Energy’s assessment of a national security threat goes beyond grid reliability assessments from the federal government and regional grid operators, DOE Assistant Secretary Bruce Walker told Utility Dive Friday. he North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) and regional grid operators say U.S. grid reliability is not at risk in the short term, but Walker said those entities may not “have the visibility or the proper information to determine if something is a national security issue.” [ read more … ]
Note: News clips provided do not necessarily reflect the views of coalition or its member governors.