Advanced Energy Perspectives

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to develop its first greenhouse gas performance standards for new and existing power plants under the Clean Air Act. These new GHG standards could increase opportunities for both supply- and demand-side advanced energy technologies to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, depending on the ultimate regulatory design. This is the latest in a regular series of blog posts chronicling important news about these EPA regulations and their development.

The wind blew strong on the plains of Texas last week. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) announced that wind turbines in Texas broke an electricity generation record, on Wednesday, March 26. Wind turbines were producing 10,296 megawatts of electricity, or 29 percent of the total electricity generated in ERCOT, at 8:48 pm. This beat the previous instantaneous output record by more than 600 MW. In sum, ERCOT has 11,000 MW of installed commercial wind power – when the record was broken, 94 percent of the state’s total wind power capacity was being tapped.

In Kansas, there was a replay of 2013 last week as an ALEC-sponsored bill to roll back the state’s renewable portfolio standard went down to defeat in the state legislature. RPS repeal bills around the country had a very poor showing last year – not a single one passed – as opponents of renewable energy had to confront the real jobs and economic impact the policies were having.

Electric vehicles (EVs) have burst on the consumer scene in recent years, with a wide array of sedans, SUVs, sports cars, vans, and trucks already available for purchase, and national sales triple the number of hybrid vehicles sold in the same period of development.

Surprise, surprise: Tesla was all over the news this week, with several states taking action, for or against, direct vehicle sales. Tesla’s sales model of boutique store fronts and direct purchases from the company is unique among automotive sales and cuts out the dealer as a middleman. Tesla has insisted that the direct sales model is necessary to introduce consumers to this new technology.“We strongly believe it is vital to introduce our own vehicles to the market because electric cars are still a relatively new technology,” says Tesla on its blog.