Advanced Energy Perspectives

Florida is hot right now, and we don’t mean the temperature. It ranks second in the country for retail electricity sales per household; it is the third most populous state and has the fourth largest economy; and has the fifth largest projected population growth rate between 2010 and 2014. That adds up to a huge opportunity for advanced energy in the Sunshine State – where it is already a $6.2 billion industry, bigger than the $4.2 billion generated by agricultural exports in 2014. That was the message that AEE took to Florida earlier this month, armed with a report prepared by Navigant Research showing just how big an economic force advanced energy is in the state. 

By Dan Scripps

In 2010, the Federal Housing Finance Authority almost killed Property Assessed Clean Energy Programs (PACE) for residential properties. A lot can happen in five years, and what was once a program on the verge of foreclosure is now a booming market. Also, what a new financing model could mean for current solar consumers and producers.

Beautiful, sunny, and on track to 100 percent renewable energy – is Hawaii paradise, or what?, Xcel Energy’s consumers in Colorado get a break, and a different kind of nuclear power renaissance in the making. That’s what the advanced energy news looked like this week.

In one of the most hopeful moments in years for advanced energy, the major forces in California politics – Governor Jerry Brown, leaders of the Senate and Assembly, labor, the environmental community, and advanced energy businesses – are coming together to extend the state’s landmark greenhouse gas reduction law, AB 32, which expires in 2020. That law calls for the state’s GHG emissions to be reduced to 1990 levels. With that goal clearly within reach, the question became: what’s next? In his inaugural address in January, Gov. Brown called for new targets: reducing GHG levels to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. It is behind these goals that California’s political stars now seem to be aligned.