Latest News

Georgetown, Texas, a community of about 50,000 people near Austin, has become the first city in Texas to switch entirely to renewable electricity generation. The city has signed long-term deals for solar- and wind-powered energy in a move that has rid it of its former reliance on coal and natural gas and that serves as a model other municipalities can follow. “Georgetown has already reached out to neighboring cities to help them make the same changes,” reports an Austin cable-news station.

The Public Service Company of New Mexico, the biggest utility in the state, is doing right by its customers in planning to close the coal-fired San Juan Generating Station by 2020 and replace it with renewable resources, gas-fired generation and power-storage technology. The transition promises to provide “important and beneficial economic development opportunities for our state and its rural communities,” writes the author, who notes that the wind and solar industries have already invested $4.4 billion locally.

Trump administration proposals to subsidize failing coal plants continue to anger the oil and gas industry, among others. Administration proposals to impose steel and aluminum tariffs will also damage the U.S. energy as a whole, critics say. One Arizona oil field services company owner said Trump’s “tortured coal policy penalizes natural gas” and that is “seems counter to what he campaigned on.”

A conservative energy group in Michigan has published a report calling for expansion of the state’s renewable energy as a way to expand the economy and capitalize on market trends. The report endorses a 15 percent renewable energy standard by 2021 and 20 percent by 2027. “It’s not an unrealistic target, given the trajectory and rapid advances in renewables in Michigan,” said a spokesman for the group.

A new study concludes that rising operational costs at PacifiCorp’s coal-fired electricity plants are hurting consumers. PacificCorp, the parent company of Rocky Mountain Power, operates in six states. The study, by Utah-based Energy Strategies, calculates that keeping PacifiCorp’s aging fleet of 22 coal plants online for “the remainder of their lives” will cost $11.7 billion.

“Renewable energy — particularly solar and wind power — have become increasingly attractive,” says a spokesman for Rocky Mountain Power, which has signed a long-term agreement to buy power produced by the first utility-scale solar project in Wyoming. The Sweetwater Solar LLC plant received crucial clearance this week from the Bureau of Land Management. It will produce enough electricity to power 17,000 homes, and is expected to go online by the end of this year.

In announcing the retirement by 2020 of its 54-year-old coal-fired electricity plants, a Kentucky city is joining a market tide toward transition. The closure will affect 60 employees, and while the city of Owensboro will continue to get electricity from some conventional sources, it is now pursuing a solar power purchase agreement. “It’s just as in when your car gets older, or any other piece of mechanical equipment, it becomes harder and harder and more expensive to maintain it,” said a utility spokeswoman of the decision to close Elmer Smith Station.

As Wyoming grapples with how to manage its energy industry transition, more people are considering the economic benefits of the wind industry. One project in particular, the TransWest Express,captures some of the possibilities. “These are good, high-paying jobs. And when we finish this project, the permanent jobs are going to be roughly 150 people, well paid, fully-benefitted jobs that are really a boon to those communities,” said the CEO of the company building TransWest.

The utility company Exelon, which does business in 48 states, is joining a campaign to urge enactment of a federal carbon tax on the U.S. utility industry as a way to discourage further reliance on power generated from coal, natural gas, and oil. Other supporters of the initiative include ExxonMobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and General Motors, and the proposal “has a good chance of getting across the finish line,” said Kathleen Barron, Exelon’s senior vice president of federal regulatory affairs.

A new report on global electricity-generation trends finds once-conventional forms of fuel continuing to lose market share. The shift is driven partly by U.S. corporate preferences. “Coal emerges as the biggest loser in the long run,” said Elena Giannakopoulou, an energy economist for Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “The future electricity system will reorganize around cheap renewables—(and) coal gets squeezed out.”