Split Rock Energy, a wholesale power marketer and trader and wholly owned subsidiary of Great River Energy, has issued and will issue two request for proposals (RFP) for two very different types of power resources: baseload and distributed generation.
A coalition of U.S. and foreign automobile manufacturers and car dealerships in California joined together to file a lawsuit against California’s innovative rule to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles in that state. In a tug of war between federal and state authority, the stage is set for a public debate on how far a state can go in directing its own energy future.
Everyone knows that President Bush was reelected on November 2nd but did you know that voters in three municipalities voted to take control of their electric systems? In Rolfe, Iowa (pop. 675), the vote was 182-19, in Wellman, Iowa (pop. 1,393) the vote was 470-159, and in Auburn, New York (pop. 28,574) the vote was 4,726-987 to allow their cities to form municipally-owned power companies. The two Iowa cities already control their natural gas utilities so the move toward electricity should be a natural extension.… Read More
While Democratic Energy is primarily tracking energy innovations in the public sector, we thought that you’d be interested in this energy policy development from the private sector announced last week by the Hyperion Solutions Corporation.
In September 2004, The New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) adopted a renewable energy portfolio standard that requires 25 percent of the state’s electricity to be supplied from renewable energy sources by 2013. The NY RPS will require about 3,700 megawatts (MW) of new renewable fueled electricity projects to come on-line between 2006 and 2013.
Colorado voters have become the first in the nation to vote on and pass a renewable energy standard on as part of a statewide ballot question. By a 53%-47% margin, a majority of voters approved Amendment 37 on the November 2nd ballot; which requires an increasing amount of the electricity in Colorado to come from renewables energy sources such as wind and solar.
Colorado now joins 17 states with minimum clean energy standards as part of a growing trend of states taking the lead to fill the void of federal energy policy.
Two pieces of legislation have been passed recently by the U.S. Congress contain some provisions that will provide financial incentives for distributed energy technologies including biomass, wind, solar and geothermal. The Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004 [H.R. 1380] and the 2004 American Jobs Creation Act [H.R. 4520] have been signed into law by President Bush. Some of these incentives are new, some are extensions of incentives that have lapsed with the inability of Congress to pass a comprehensive energy bill in the past two years.
On October 14, 2004 the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released a joint statement related to new FCC rules to facilitate the widespread adoption of broadband internet access over electric power lines, known as Access BPL [Action by the Commission, October 14, 2004 by Report and Order (FCC 04-245)]. The BPL ruling will not only provide households with another option in broadband internet service but it is expected to lead utilties to provide more efficient management of their power supply system, and ensure increased operational reliability.… Read More
On September 24, 2004 the California Air Resources Board announced that they had approved a landmark regulation that requires automakers to begin selling vehicles with reduced greenhouse gas emissions by model year 2009.
