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Solar at High Noon

Surplus generation at mid-day calls for long-duration energy storage.

Utility execs and PUCs should plan now to handle extensive solar penetration, including the significant overgeneration that can occur at mid-day.
Byline: 

Edward Cazalet and David MacMillan

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Life Without Building Block 4

Energy Efficiency under EPA’s Final Clean Power Plan.

Energy efficiency remains the most cost-effective route to compliance with the Clean Power Plan. In the final Clean Power Plan rule issued August 3, 2015, EPA did not include Energy Efficiency in the calculations used to develop state targets. However, EPA and the White House have made it abundantly clear that energy efficiency remains just as viable a compliance option as before.
Byline: 

John Hargrove

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The Natural Gas Mystique

The surprising reason why American manufacturing is getting greener.

The newfound abundance of shale gas is not just benefiting utilities using it fuel electric generators. It’s also benefiting manufacturers, which are tapping into basins to fuel their onsite generators.
Byline: 

Ken Silverstein

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Electric Vehicle Charging: Tariffs and Tradeoffs

We examine various types of charging strategies and infrastructure available today and report on the experience gained from rate structures for electric vehicle charging now being offered at four different utilities. These findings lead us to provide recommendations to achieve more productive use of the electric grid.
Byline: 

Mindy Blank and Kevin B. Jones

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Radical Candor

Making ‘Clean Coal’ More than an Oxymoron.

Are clean coal efforts likely to fail? Yes. Does that mean investing is foolish? No. Here are eight ways I think the industry should change its clean coal messaging if it wants to win over the people who matter most.
Byline: 

Peter Sandman

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Commenting on Carbon

State PUCs take on EPA and its Clean Power Plan.

Everything about the Clean Power Plan seems surreal. States complain of unfair treatment. Regulators read the proposed rule and sound warnings of a coming apocalypse.
Byline: 

Bruce W. Radford

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Finding Common Ground on Energy Efficiency

Policy recommendations for utilities and regulators.

It’s the downright cheapest way of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Yet it’s mired from state to state in battles over definitions, principles, and parameters. Herein a collection of recommended policy positions to break the impasse over energy efficiency.
Byline: 

M. Sami Khawaja, Hossein Haeri, and Brian Hedman

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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.
Byline: 

Stephen E. Luttrell, Paul R. McIntyre, and Stephen C. Jones

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