How EPA can establish a U.S. GHG Program for the Electricity Sector.
Climate policy heats up after the Great Recession.
Wall Street is back in business. What’s next for utility finance?
Utility CEOs face disruptive trends.
Top executives at AEP, the California ISO, and El Paso Electric address key challenges and opportunities.
Could carbon taxes emerge in the election aftermath?
Since Obama won reelection, we must ask whether we’d rather have EPA cracking down on carbon emissions, or whether a legislated framework would be better for everyone.
How suppliers and generators can each gain from today’s historic low prices.
Gas-fired generators and suppliers alike can each share risk and reward from historic low prices with contracts that blend market and fixed prices
EPA’s new water, waste, and air regulations complicate power plant compliance.
New environmental requirements under the Clean Water Act (CWA) will add to the already complex burden of compliance for power plants. As the Environmental Protection Agency moves forward with cooling water and effluent standards, utilities and generators will have to deal with overlapping rules and conflicting policy goals.
Renewable M&A lives on despite death of Treasury cash grants.
The U.S. Treasury cash grants for new renewable power projects expired at the end of 2011. These incentives, which were implemented under Section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, helped to support continued capacity additions throughout the recession. The impending expiration of these grants caused a wave of merger and acquisition (M&A) activity during 2011 as developers and financiers rushed to get deals done and to begin construction in order to meet the Section 1603, 5-percent safe harbor threshold by the Dec. 31, 2011 deadline.
On Sept. 16, 2011, the Supreme Court of Virginia became the highest state court in the country to rule on the issue of insurance coverage for climate-change claims under a general liability policy. In AES Corp. v. Steadfast Ins.
A strategic approach to mitigating rate increases and greenhouse gas price risk.
Experience in the Duke Energy Carolinas service territory shows that high penetration rates for electric vehicles, combined with increased natural gas-fired power generation, can result in lower costs to customers and lower risks for utility shareholders—while also reducing total emissions of greenhouse gases. However, these outcomes depend on policy changes that facilitate smart, off-peak vehicle charging, and that allow utilities to capture the benefits of a more environmentally friendly power system.