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NV Energy is failing to get the best deals for its customers, resulting in higher than necessary rates, according to experts who say compared with other electric utilities in the west, the company is lagging in leveraging the lowest-cost, and most environmentally friendly options.

In September, an NV Energy executive told Clark County commissioners that fulfilling a legislative mandate to ensure half of its energy is from renewable sources by 2030 “is going to be a challenge.”  

This year may forever be remembered as the start of the American clean energy manufacturing boom.

Since the beginning of 2023, companies have announced more than 150 separate investments in new and expanded factories to manufacture solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and other clean energy technologies in the U.S., for a total pledged outlay of nearly $60 billion, according to tracking by the nonpartisan group E2. And these factories won’t just be assembling the final products. Entire supply chains have arrived on shore.

House Democrats on Tuesday introduced a bill to spur transmission development, with a focus on interregional and offshore wind lines.

The bill, introduced by Reps. Sean Casten, D-Ill., and Mike Levin, D-Cal., plus 74 co-sponsors, directs the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to issue rules to improve interregional transmission planning; provides a 30% transmission investment tax credit; incentivizes renewable energy development in priority areas on federal land; and expands consultation with disadvantaged groups and communities in the permitting process.

Late last month, the Illinois Commerce Commission suspended Peoples Gas' pipe replacement and ordered an investigation into this program, which is responsible for an increase in rates since work began in 2011. The call to restart the program in the op-ed "The ICC needs to restart Peoples Gas' pipeline replacement immediately" (Nov. 29) is shortsighted, and doesn't factor in the surge in market trends toward home electrification technologies, driven by consumer choice.

We have the technologies today to deliver reliable, clean, homegrown energy for Indiana while saving Hoosiers billions of dollars. The “solutions” proposed by Mr. Robert Turner in his Viewpoint on Nov. 24 [“As winter nears, state must protect reliable coal energy”] would be a barrier to truly reliable, affordable energy in Indiana.

Massachusetts is legally required to zero-out planet-warming emissions by mid-century, and to get there the state must do several critical things: Replace fossil fuel-powered vehicles and home heating systems with ones that run on electricity; develop more renewable resources like wind and solar; and use nature-based solutions to sequester and store as much carbon as possible.

So how is the state doing on all of this? On Friday, the Healey administration revealed in its first annual climate report card that the state is on track for its 2025 goals.

AES Indiana’s Petersburg Generating Station, which towers over the White River here in southwest Indiana, has been burning coal to generate electricity since the late 1960s.

That era, though, will come to an end soon. Two of the power plant’s four coal-burning units have already retired and the last is planning to shut down in 2025. 

Storage and renewables projects already offered in response to an RFP from the Public Service Company of Colorado (PSCo) would be more economic and provide greater capacity than a 400 MW gas peaker unit proposed by the utility, found the consulting firm Strategen in an analysis of the utility’s proposed resource plan.

Voters Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a nearly $10 billion fund for gas generation in Texas, while handing Democrats victories in legislative elections in New Jersey and Virginia that have implications for energy policy there. 

Texas’ Proposition 7 passed by a vote of 1,641,453-886,991, gathering nearly 65% of the votes. (See $10B Fund for Gas Plants on Texas Ballot.) 

The proposition sets up the Texas Energy Fund (TEF), a $7.2 billion low-interest loan program intended for the development of up to 10 GW of natural gas plants. Some $5 billion will be set aside for 20-year, 3% interest loans to build new generation with at least 100 MW of fully dispatchable capacity. Power plants that come online before June 2029 are eligible for bonus payments. 

Michigan power providers would have to reach a 100% clean energy standard by 2040 under sweeping climate bills approved late Thursday and early Friday in the Democratic-led House. Legislators also voted to let renewable developers seek state permits to site large-scale wind and solar farms in communities that block the projects.

The party-line votes capped a marathon day and night of session and likely cleared the legislation’s path to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who wants lawmakers to act this fall. The Senate, also controlled by Democrats, passed the main measures last week and appears poised to OK the siting bills next week before legislators potentially adjourn for the year.