By L&W Energy Attorneys
Both China and Germany have now surpassed the United States in attracting clean energy financing and investments, according to a report – Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race? 2010 Edition – issued on March 29, 2011 by The Pew Charitable Trusts in collaboration with Bloomberg New Energy Finance. In 2010, China’s clean energy sector received a record-setting $54.4 billion, an increase of 39 percent over 2009. Germany, for the first time, attracted greater investments than
By L&W Energy Attorneys
On March 31, 2011 Jonathan Silver, the Executive Director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO), testified in front of the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee to discuss the LPO’s recent accomplishments and its 2012 budget requests. Silver stressed that the deployment of commercially-ready clean energy technologies in the near term, as well as the longer term deployment of innovative clean energy technologies are critical to reaching the
On March 21, 2011, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources (ENR Committee) issued a white paper (PDF) laying out some of the key questions and potential design elements of a Clean Energy Standard (CES). The white paper notes that President Obama in his January 2011 State of the Union address proposed a CES that would require that 80 percent of the nation’s electricity come from clean energy technologies by 2035. The white paper provides that the ENR Committee
A recent brief by the Center for American Progress (CAP) –“Invest in America’s Clean Energy Future”–advocating against substantial cuts in funding for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee program proposed by the U.S. House of Representatives provides interesting and heretofore not publicly known details about the pipeline for projects seeking guarantees under Section 1705 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, for which Division A of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act)
By L&W energy attorneys
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recently released a notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) in Docket No. RM11-7-000 revising the compensation paid for frequency regulation service in organized wholesale power markets administered by Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) and Independent System Operators (ISOs).
Frequency regulation service is the injection or withdrawal of real power by facilities capable of responding appropriately to deviations or imbalances on a transmission system. Minor frequency deviations can adversely affect energy consuming devices, while major deviations cause generation and transmission equipment to separate from the grid, possibly resulting in cascading blackout. Frequency regulation is largely provided by generators (e.g., water, steam and combustion turbines) specially equipped to respond to dispatch signals sent by a transmission system operator. However, non-generator resources, such as controllable demand response and storage devices, are increasingly providing this service in some of the organized wholesale power markets.