LOCKHEED MARTIN SPONSORS FREE ACCESS TO EXCLUSIVE CONTENT.

Vienna, Va.: Public Utilities Fortnightly magazine launched a new twice-monthly online resource today. Fortnightly’s Green Utility (http://greenutility.fortnightly.com) features content developed by Fortnightly’s editorial staff, focusing on renewable power generation technology, finance and regulatory policies in the United States and Canada. The new editorial resource is made possible with sponsorship support from Lockheed Martin.

Fortnightly’s Green Utility will feature exclusive articles, webcasts, intelligence and commentary, as well as special access to related articles from the archives of other publications at Public Utilities Reports Inc. — including Public Utilities Fortnightly, Fortnightly’s Spark and Utility Regulatory News.

“Green Utility will focus Fortnightly’s editorial analysis on the challenges and opportunities of building out North America’s renewable energy infrastructure,” said Michael T. Burr, Fortnightly’s Editor-in-Chief. “Fortnightly brings the world-class editorial expertise to look beyond the news and hype, and analyze renewable energy issues in a way no other publication does. Lockheed Martin’s support allows us to make this unique and objective analysis freely accessible online.”

Fortnightly’s Green Utility is part of Fortnightly.com’s growing inventory of online resources. In the past two years, Fortnightly.com launched two financial databases — the Utility ROE Database and the Transactions Database — providing data about utility ratemaking decisions and financial transactions, such as mergers, acquisitions and debt issues.

The March 1, 2011, installment of Fortnightly’s Green Utility, with a webcast and article developed by Fortnightly Contributing Editor Steven Andersen, features a conversation with tax-credit guru Keith Martin of Chadbourne & Parke. The second installment is scheduled for release on March 15.

PUBLIC UTILITIES FORTNIGHTLY (www.fortnightly.com), published by Public Utilities Reports Inc., in Vienna, Va., is the journal of record for the U.S. utility industry, providing authoritative, in-depth analysis of trends in generation, transmission and distribution of electricity and natural gas. For more than 80 years, Public Utilities Fortnightly has delivered exclusive interviews and expert analysis to help utility-industry executives and regulators decide where to invest, how the industry will be regulated and what the future holds. Subscription rate: $287/year.

Posted: March 1st, 2011 under IGCC, R&D, biomass, carbon regulation, climate change, efficiency, electric vehicles, geoengineering, green energy, offshore wind, regulation, renewable energy credits, renewables.
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States to defend 2nd Circuit common law ruling

Courtesy of Utility Regulatory News #3998: An appeal of a Second Circuit decision that resurrected various nuisance lawsuits against five electric generation companies has landed before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The appellate court order was rendered when Justice Sonia Sotomayor was serving on the Second Circuit. She has recused herself from associated Supreme Court deliberations. The cases originated with eight states, one municipality, and three private entities filing suit against the generating companies. Asserting that the scientific consensus is that the emissions from such fossil fuel-fired facilities are a primary cause of global warming, the complainants sought the specific remedy of abatement.

A federal district court had dismissed the cases, saying that any consideration of nuisance arguments would be premature without a prior ruling on underlying environmental policy. The Second Circuit, however, determined that environmental statutes, such as the Clean Air Act, had not preempted the common law doctrine of public nuisance. According to the appeals court, the public health dangers stemming from climate change are undisputed, and since the Environmental Protection Agency has not yet promulgated standards for carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions, there was no basis for dismissing the nuisance claims outright. For the full story, subscribe to URN.

Posted: December 23rd, 2010 under Uncategorized, carbon regulation, climate change.
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Business Roundtable asks Sen. Reid to Intervene

Fortnightly obtained today the following letter from AEP CEO Michael Morris, which was sent to Senate Energy Committee Chairman Harry Reid under the auspices of the Business Roundtable. This is especially interesting given Morris’s work to help craft workable GHG legislation in Congress.-MTB

>>>>>>>>>

The Honorable Harry Reid

Majority Leader

United States Senate

Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable Mitch McConnell

Minority Leader

United States Senate

Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Majority Leader Reid and Minority Leader McConnell:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finalized or soon will be finalizing several regulations under the Clean Air Act addressing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and major industrial sources. While these regulations will be challenged in the courts, the lack of a clear regulatory roadmap for these and future regulations affecting greenhouse gas emissions has created additional investment uncertainty for large portions of the utility and manufacturing sectors of our economy.

EPA and most industry participants agree that the Clean Air Act is not well-designed to regulate ubiquitous pollutants like carbon dioxide emissions, whose impact is global, not local or regional. Congress never envisioned that the Clean Air Act would be used to regulate carbon dioxide emissions and EPA has struggled mightily to tailor a regulatory program for greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act that makes sense. For this reason, Business Roundtable long has advocated Congressional action and international cooperation to address the climate issue. Without comprehensive legislation and global agreements encompassing other major emitting nations, EPA regulations only will increase energy costs for U.S. companies, thereby reducing their competitiveness in international markets, and drive up consumer costs, while doing little to reduce global concentrations of greenhouse gas emissions.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that Congress will act on comprehensive energy and climate legislation this year. It does have time to enact legislation that would delay the effectiveness of EPA regulations for up to two years, as proposed by Senator Rockefeller, until the next Congress has the opportunity to address the climate issue legislatively. We urge the Senate to do so. A two year delay will give Congress and the Administration time to work with a variety of stakeholders to develop new approaches, such as those advocated by Business Roundtable in its Balancing Act and Unfinished Business studies, focusing on new technologies and efficiency, as promising ways of addressing the climate challenge. A focus on developing needed technologies not only will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions but it will also help develop the industries of tomorrow and result in a more secure energy future.

A vote to delay pending EPA greenhouse gas emissions will provide Congress the opportunity to develop sound policy approaches to address greenhouse gas emissions, rather than default to a poorly designed EPA regulatory approach that is likely to further damage U.S. competitiveness, drive up consumer costs and make an immaterial contribution to reducing global greenhouse gas concentrations. Business Roundtable respectfully urges a favorable vote on legislation that would delay the effective date of EPA regulatory action with respect to greenhouse gas emissions.

Sincerely,

Morris-1

Michael G. Morris

Chairman, President and CEO

American Electric Power, Inc.

Chairman, Sustainable Growth Initiative

Business Roundtable

C: United States Senate

Posted: September 15th, 2010 under Current News, carbon regulation, climate change, coal, energy policy, green energy, regulation.
Comments: 1

Project removed from Appalachian Power’s rate base

Weekly Update courtesy of Utility Regulatory News #3981: While finding it reasonable for the American Electric Power (AEP) system to study various options for complying with possible future federal limitations on greenhouse gas emissions, the Virginia State Corporation Commission has deemed it unreasonable for the ratepayers of an AEP subsidiary, Appalachian Power Co. (APCo), to be responsible for the costs of any such exploratory project, at least at the present time.

In a general rate case, APCo had sought to reflect in rate base $74 million associated with AEP’s West Virginia-based Mountaineer Carbon Capture and Sequestration Demonstration Project. The utility asserted that the project is the first such endeavor to occur at an in-service coal plant and that it is likely to yield valuable information as to the commercial viability of such technology, to the benefit of not only APCo’s customers, but all electric consumers. Although the commission did not refute the possible attributes carbon sequestration might offer, the commission determined that it was inequitable to ask APCo’s customers to pay for AEP’s project.

Given that the project was still in its earliest stages, the commission held that AEP’s shareholders should be the ones shouldering the financial risks of AEP’s research and development programs. Subscribe to URN for the full story.

Posted: August 13th, 2010 under IGCC, R&D, carbon regulation, climate change, coal, energy policy, finance, green energy, regulation.
Comments: none

Gainesville plant ‘not technically needed’

Weekly Update courtesy of Utility Regulatory News #3980: Because a municipally planned biomass-fired power plant project would provide the city with additional fuel diversity as well as various environmental benefits, the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) has issued the project a determination of need, even though the city was found to have sufficient generating capacity through at least 2023.

In Florida, no entity may proceed with construction of a generating facility rated at more than 75 megawatts (MW) unless it first receives a determination of need from the commission. Although other state and local consents also are required, those authorizations may not be pursued until the requisite determination of need has been obtained from the PSC. In the instant case, the City of Gainesville, through its municipal electric service provider, Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU), had sought a determination of need from the PSC for a proposed 100-MW biomass-fired station, which it said should be ready for service by the end of 2013.

As support for its proposal, the city noted that a primary power purchase agreement is set to expire in 2013 and that a large coal-fired plant is expected to be taken out of service for scheduled maintenance in the same time frame. According to GRU, the two events taken together would leave the city in a capacity-deficient situation, at least temporarily, although it acknowledged that because of a 15% capacity reserve policy and various other power purchase arrangements, it is unlikely that it will experience any true shortage of capacity before 2023 at the earliest.

The commission agreed that the biomass project was not “technically needed” in order for GRU to maintain reliable service in the short term. However, the commission said that the concept of “need” can be viewed in different ways. From the PSC’s perspective, the biomass unit would contribute to greater fuel and supply diversity, would offer a good hedge against possible future carbon emission reduction requirements, and would provide environmental attributes not available from conventional fossil-fueled plants. Consequently, the commission held that the biomass facility’s ability to replace older, less efficient sources of power with a cleaner, more productive form of generation, while not necessary in a technical sense, nevertheless would satisfy other types of need, such that it was appropriate to issue the formal determination of need. Subscribe to URN for the full story.

Posted: August 13th, 2010 under biomass, carbon regulation, climate change, coal, energy policy, green energy, regulation, renewables.
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