News

May 13, 2014 – Washington, DC – Advanced Energy Economy (AEE) has issued the following statement on recent events that have taken place in the Senate concerning the Shaheen-Portman Energy Efficiency Bill. 

New Report Details Benefits of Advanced Energy Technologies for Buildings and Industry, Electricity Generation, Electricity Delivery and Grid Management

New York Governor Gov. Andrew Cuomo has announced $285 million in rate incentives to decrease demand by up to 125 MW in New York City and Westchester. The initiative will be done through Combined Heat and Power systems and will be run by New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and ConEd. The program also includes $219 million for large-scale commercial and industrial energy efficiency and demand reduction projects and another $66 million for CHP systems at large commercial sites. Read more here.

Exelon Corporation has announced that it will acquire Pepco Holdings in a $6.8 billion all-cash transaction to form the largest utility in America in terms of the number of customers served. Exelon owns Baltimore Gas & Electric, Commonwealth Edison and PECO, while Pepco Holdings owns Atlantic City Electric, Delmarva Power and Pepco.

The Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA) has compiled a list of the top ten solar utilities in America in 2013. The rankings are based on how many new megawatts of solar utilities were built in 2013 and how many megawatts per customer were installed. The listed utilities accounted for 82 percent of all new solar capacity in 2013 with California’s Pacific Gas and Electric Company being the top new builder. Read more here and see the full list of rankings here.

Mars Inc. the company that produces Snickers, M&Ms, Mars Bars and a host of other products has partnered with a Tokyo-based company to invest in a 200 MW Texas wind farm. The project is being jointly developed with BNB Renewable Energy and Sumitomo and will be operational in 2015. It will produce 800,000 megawatt-hours of energy - enough to make 13 billion Snickers bars.

NRG Energy and MidAmerican Solar have teamed up to build the world’s largest solar-panel power plant between Yuma and Phoenix, Arizona. The 290 MW project - Agua Caliente, was built by AEE member FirstSolar and will send electricity to  San Francisco-based Pacific Gas and Electric under a 25-year contract. FirstSolar will also operate the plant. Read more here.

As Greentech Media reports, New York has made huge structural adjustments to the utilities market in its recent regulation reforms, thereby meeting the needs of a more distributed, consumer-focused energy system. In the New York Public Services Commission’s recently released report - ‘Reforming Energy Vision, the commission calls for an overhaul of the regulation of the state’s distribution utilities. The commission also acknowledges that the current distribution system cannot meet the needs of the changes in the energy market.

Malcolm Woolf, AEE's senior vice president for policy and government affairs, was featured on E&E TV's On Point this week. He discussed the role of advanced energy and how states will be able to incorporate advanced energy technologies in their plans to comply with U.S. EPA's pending regulations for existing sources. Watch the full interview here.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Office of Energy Projects reports that renewables made up 92 percent of the 1,150 MW of new domestic electrical generating in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2014. Solar, wind and hydropower provided 84.5 percent of generating capacity in March alone. Read more here.