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Call it a tale of two renewable portfolio standards (RPS). North Carolina’s renewable energy and energy efficiency portfolio standard has just scored a major investment in solar power by the state’s major utility. But in Ohio, a new law freezing that state’s renewable energy standard has already put the local solar industry in a deep freeze.

Duke Energy announced on Monday that the utility would be investing $500 million in solar in North Carolina to meet the state’s requirements. The money would go toward building three new solar farms, as well as purchasing power from five other facilities being built by investors.

“That’s why we’re doing this, for renewable portfolio standard requirements,” said Rob Caldwell, Duke Energy’s vice president of renewable generation development. “One of the objectives of this [process] is to get as many megawatts as attractively priced as we can for our customers, since our customers are paying for this,” he said to Fox Business News. To Greentech Media, Caldwell put it somewhat differently: “Solar prices are coming down. We can make it work at an attractive price.”

While North Carolina’s RPS is bringing in major investment, Ohio has seen what happens when an RPS is stopped in its tracks. Earlier this year, Ohio’s state legislature pushed through a law that froze the state’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards. The law went into effect last week, and it appears those chickens are already coming home to roost. As Midwest Energy News reports, Ohio’s market for solar energy credits (SRECs), which utilities have to buy from solar installation owners to meet their compliance obligations, has already tanked. As a result, projects have stalled and Ohio solar energy companies have started to look for opportunities elsewhere.

“Projects were put on hold almost immediately,” said Eric Scheier, a portfolio analyst with Sol Systems, a financing and investment firm in Washington, DC.

“Indianapolis, a city just two hours away in driving time from Columbus and Cincinnati, is one of the largest markets for solar,” said Steve Melink, whose Melink Corp. recently completed two projects there. “And here in Ohio we’re saying oh, we can’t do it,” said Melink, a board member of Ohio Advanced Energy Economy. “It shows, I think, that Ohio is heading backwards.”

Nationwide, however, new reports reveal solar energy is making competitive gains. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory released three reports focused on solar energy this week, showing that the price of electricity from large-scale solar generators under long-term contracts has fallen by more than 70 percent since 2008. The reports also show that costs of residential solar are also down, falling 70 cents per watt in 2013 alone.

Prices of wind and solar are falling across the board, according to the Financial Times, becoming cost-competitive with more traditional fossil fuel-based power plants in many parts of the U.S. without government intervention. Falling costs and rising efficiency are increasingly making solar and wind energy sources a financially attractive model.

“We used to say some day solar and wind power would be competitive with conventional generation. Well, now it is some day,” said George Bilicic, global head of power, energy & infrastructure for Lazard, one of the world’s leading financial advisory and asset management firms.

Regulators in California this week approved another enormous solar thermal power plant, similar to Ivanpah. Developers BrightSource Energy and Abenoga Solar were seeking approval for two of the 750-foot-tall monoliths, but the California Energy Commission approved only one. The single approved tower could come online as soon as 2017.

Finally, two new electric vehicle concepts to keep an eye out for. Silicon Valley-based Motiv Power Systems announced that the company’s first fleet of all-electric garbage trucks had been delivered to Chicago and is now in use on city streets. The electric garbage truck not only saves fuel, it’s also incredibly quiet – which could come in handy on early morning trash rounds. And the market for electric motorcycles is heating up, with traditional bike-maker Harley Davidson entering the market. Harley is going toe-to-toe (or wheel-to-wheel) with newcomers like Zero Motorcycles and Mission Motors, both based out of California’s Bay Area. Bloomberg Businessweek says that Harley’s move into electric motorcycles lends credibility to what has been considered a niche market.

Keep track of energy legislation and regulation state-by-state with PowerSuite. PowerSuite is a robust set of tools—including BillBoard, DocketDash, and PowerPortal—that allows you to search, track, and collaborate on energy legislation and regulatory proceedings from across the country with one, easy-to-use interface. Check it out:

Image courtesy of Harley Davidson.

As Congress returned to session focused on passing a continuing resolution to keep the government funded through December 11, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on energy tax reform, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) extended the comment period on its proposed Clean Power Plan, and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to review a ruling on a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) demand response regulation.

Yesterday, the D.C. Appeals Court rejected FERC’s request for an en banc review of the court’s previous ruling to nix Order 745, which established regulations for compensating demand response providers in wholesale energy markets. AEE supported the call for a review of the ruling. Demand response is a critical component of advanced energy that saves consumers money and makes our electric power system more reliable and resilient. FERC has the option to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court or revisit its rulemaking.

“It’s not the end of the world,” said Commissioner Philip Moeller, as reported by Politico. “Personally, I was sad to see [the rehearing request] denied because I did not want our commission to lose jurisdiction on demand response.” But Moeller said he thought states would embrace demand response programs. “I think if states are the ones now that have to procure demand response, it will be real money to real consumers and they will treat it responsibly.”

On Tuesday, EPA Acting Assistant Administrator Janet McCabe announced that the Clean Power Plan comment period would be extended 45 days to December 1 “in order to get the best possible advice and data to inform a final rule.” McCabe said the agency received “a number of requests from a variety of different stakeholders” to extend the comment period on its proposed rule to reduce carbon emissions from the electric power sector. These requests included a letter from 53 senators, including 10 Democrats, proposing a 60-day extension to the original 120-day comment period. Even with the extension, EPA is “still working towards a June [2015] deadline” to finalize the rule, said McCabe. Since the initial announcement last June, EPA has received 750,000 comments. In July, AEE testified in support of the Clean Power Plan as an “historic opportunity” to modernize our electric power system for the 21^st century.

Before heading back to the campaign trail, Congress is expected to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government at fiscal year 2014 levels for the first six weeks of the new fiscal year, to prevent a shutdown on October 1. As AEE reported previously, significant energy issues, including extension of expired tax credits, will be put off until the lame duck session at the earliest.

But there was talk of energy tax reform on Capitol Hill yesterday, as the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on “Reforming America’s Outdated Energy Tax Code.” At the hearing, both Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Ranking Member Orrin Hatch (R-UT) expressed support for extending a series of tax breaks that expired at the close of 2013. Hatch urged his fellow lawmakers “to set partisanship and political gamesmanship aside and get the extenders package across the finish line as soon as possible.” The committee approved an extenders package in April but it has yet to be taken to the Senate Floor.

In a statement, Wyden noted that while passing a tax extenders package is vital, “short-term extensions cannot put renewables on the same footing as the other energy sources in America’s competitive marketplace.” Rather, he said, “it’s past time to replace today’s crazy quilt of more than 40 energy tax incentives with a

modern, technology-neutral approach” that “takes the costs and benefits of energy sources into account.”

For his part, Hatch expressed support for an “all-of-the-above approach” to energy policy and urged his colleagues to “examine all existing tax provisions – including energy tax provisions – under President Reagan’s three criteria for tax reform: fairness, simplicity, and efficiency.”

At the hearing, the committee heard diverse perspectives on these and other energy tax issues.

Ethan Zindler, head of policy analysis for Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a market research firm, testified that the global energy sector is “in the midst of a fundamental transformation” due to “technological innovation, economies of scale, and yes, policy support coming from many nations around the globe, including most notably, China.” While the global market is moving forward, “inconsistent policy-making can impact the role the US plays in this change.” Zindler emphasized the importance of stable tax policy to the vitality of the U.S. advanced energy market, citing the production tax credit (PTC) for wind and the investment tax credit (ITC) for solar.

Norman Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin Corp., shared insights based on the work of the American Energy Innovation Council, a group he formed with six other business leaders, including Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, and Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO of General Electric, both AEE member companies. Augustine called for “robust, public investment in energy technology and innovation” and “thoughtful tax policy” that encourages development and deployment of “domestic, clean, low emission sources of energy,” strives to be “technology- and energy source-neutral” and is “predictable, not subject to year-to-year renewals, but also not permanent.”

The committee also heard from former Senator Don Nickles, chairman and CEO of the Nickles Group, which represents energy companies including ExxonMobil, Exelon, and Koch industries. He argued against continuing the PTC for renewable energy and for preserving the intangible drilling costs deduction for oil and gas, which has been part of the tax code since 1913.

Finally the committee heard different perspectives on pricing carbon emissions.  David Kreutzer, research fellow for the Heritage Foundation, argued against putting a price on carbon. Gilbert Metcalf, an economics professor at Tufts University, made the case that “economic efficiency is best achieved by setting tax rates to align the private and social costs of producing and using energy.” Metcalf explained that a well-designed price on carbon would appropriately align the private and social costs of carbon emissions. He suggested that a “second-best” approach to pricing carbon would be to provide tax breaks to low-carbon energy options.

Keep track of energy legislation and regulation state-by-state with PowerSuite. PowerSuite is a robust set of tools—including BillBoard, DocketDash, and PowerPortal—that allows you to search, track, and collaborate on energy legislation and regulatory proceedings from across the country with one, easy-to-use interface. Check it out:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) plan to regulate carbon emissions is just the latest challenge facing the U.S. electric power system. Technological innovation is disrupting old ways of doing business and accelerating grid modernization. Earlier this year, AEE released Advanced Energy Technologies for Greenhouse Gas Reduction, a report detailing the use, application, and benefits of 40 specific advanced energy technologies and services. This post is one in a series drawn from the technology profiles within that report.

Energy analytics for mass-scale building energy efficiency evaluations is a category of software solutions that determine how a building is currently consuming energy and recommend operational and retrofit measures to maximize energy savings. Energy analytics combine different types of data inputs, such as consumption or building asset data, with advanced analytics and modeling techniques to rapidly generate a unique building energy model. Leveraging big data energy analytics via the cloud saves substantial time and costs compared with the traditional manual methods of performing building assessments and audits.

Utilities, program administrators, energy service providers, government, and other building portfolio owners use energy analytics software to identify energy savings opportunities and target buildings with best potential across a portfolio, engage customers with personalized efficiency opportunities that exist in their buildings, streamline on-site energy audits and convert projects faster, and measure savings and evaluate ongoing efficiency opportunities that arise in the future. Con Edison is utilizing Retroficiency’s energy analytics software to drive large-scale building efficiency savings in New York City, as well as to identify candidates with high potential to reduce peak demand to help the utility alleviate constrained areas of the grid

Energy analytics for buildings can help to identify areas for improvement that may go unseen by a human inspector. The analysis can also help building owners to determine where to make future efficiency investments. Most importantly, the analysis enables building owners to better understand the building’s energy usage, leading to deeper energy savings, lower bills, and increased avoided generation emissions.

We are now a little over four months into the landmark regulatory proceeding in New York State called “Reforming the Energy Vision,” or REV. With REV, the New York Public Service Commission (PSC) is seeking to fundamentally transform the way the state’s electric distribution utilities are regulated and how they do business – changing the way electricity is generated, bought and sold in New York. The REV proceeding is arguably the most comprehensive yet to tackle what is variously known as “Utility of the Future,” “Utility 2.0,” or as we at AEE call it, the “21st Century Electricity System.” (Users of PowerSuite can track and collaborate on this vital regulatory proceeding here.) Whatever you call it, the idea is to create a high-performing electricity system that runs on advanced energy. With the release of a new straw proposal on August 22, the PSC is moving the vision toward reality.

In brief, REV seeks to unlock the potential of distributed energy resources (DER) to improve system efficiency, give customers more control over energy use and costs, and help meet New York State’s energy and environmental policy goals, such as improved resiliency (think Hurricane Sandy) and greenhouse gas reduction. DER is shorthand for a range of advanced energy technologies and products such as energy efficiency, demand response, energy storage and distributed generation, including renewable energy systems, fuel cells, combined heat and power and other clean, efficient power generation options.

Central to REV is the creation of the Distributed System Platform (DSP), a new entity that will create the technology and market platforms upon which DER can be widely deployed. The initial assumption of the PSC is that the existing distribution utilities will also be the DSPs, but there is the potential for this new role to be carried out by independent entities, somewhat akin to how many wholesale power markets operate in the United States today, with independent system operators (ISOs) – a concept that former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) chairman Jon Wellinghoff has been promoting recently.

Regardless of the final market structure, achieving REV will entail making new investments in an intelligent, flexible distribution network that can readily integrate DER and take full advantage of the desirable attributes of DER while minimizing the potentially disruptive effects of high DER penetration. It will also require fundamental regulatory changes that incent utilities/DSPs to seek out new solutions, instead of continuing to invest in traditional “poles and wires” solutions that add to the rate base and perpetuate the status quo.

While it is not possible here to go into all the issues covered by REV, some of the key ones we have been actively addressing include:

• Performance-based regulation: Changing the way utilities are remunerated, from inputs (a regulated return on invested capital) to outputs (performance against defined metrics) is critical to achieving REV. This will create the right set of incentives for utilities/DSPs to seek out the most cost-effective solutions that meet the overall goals of REV, not the solution that grows their rate base the most. Within this framework it is important that utilities have both incentives for exceeding targets and penalties for missing them.
• Basic (essential) vs. value-added (optional, enhanced) services: Central to REV is the notion that the utility/DSP will provide a set of basic, essential services to all customers, but that customers will also be able to choose from a set of value-added services for an additional fee. Basic services will be the domain of the regulated utility/DSP, whereas value-added services may be provided by either the utility/DSP or non-utility companies. On the one hand, if the utility/DSP can provide some value-added services for a fee, this can provide added revenue to the utility. On the other hand, this is the bread and butter of non-utility companies, and if a regulated entity can offer products and services that are also available from the competitive marketplace, this raises a host of issues around ensuring fair competition for non-utility companies. AEE and its members have been addressing this issue in detail.
• DER ownership: Who can own DER, and under what circumstances, is a critical issue for the advanced energy industry, many of whom are providers of DER products and services. In general, the advanced energy industry believes that the role of the utility/DSP is to create the platform and programs that facilitate DER deployment. In addition, under most circumstances, the advanced energy industry believes that the actual deployment and ownership of DER should be by non-utility companies, either acting on behalf of the utility/DSP or by participating in the competitive marketplace. This is how most energy efficiency and demand response is implemented today.
• Valuation and monetization of DER benefits and costs: For REV to work, New York State needs to revamp the way it evaluates costs and benefits, particularly for DER technologies and services. The framework for a benefit-cost assessment needs to move beyond individual measures and look at DER programs and portfolios of deployments, especially given that DER technologies will interact with each other and the grid in new ways. Moreover, benefit-cost assessments need to go beyond traditional economic metrics to include a wide range of benefits that are considered in the public interest. This is core to achieving the outcomes envisioned in REV. In its recently released straw proposal, which outlines the basic features of REV, the PSC noted that putting in place such a system will take time. The AEE Institute has commissioned a study to define a new benefit-cost analysis framework suitable for application to REV.
• Access to data: Timely access to granular energy usage and price data by customers and their designated third-party providers is critical to enabling many of the products and services envisioned for REV. These data may come from smart meters or other devices. Also, making real time data available to non-utility companies in a timely manner will be important for enabling these companies to design products and services that will be of value to the utility/DSP.

It is not an overstatement to say that the success of REV is critical to the advanced energy industry. While New York is just one state, success (or failure) will reverberate across the country as other states seek to address the same underlying technology, market and policy drivers that are at work. Because of this, AEE and its state and regional partners, the Alliance for Clean Energy New York (ACE NY) and the New England Clean Energy Council (NECEC), have been active participants in the REV proceeding, filing joint written comments (see them on PowerSuite) and participating in stakeholder working groups. As REV continues to unfold well into 2015, we expect to remain heavily involved in this critical proceeding. Many states and countries are paying close attention to the REV proceeding and our organizations are working diligently to help make it a success.

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The “sharing economy.” It’s the new, new thing (or, depending on your perspective, very, very old). Over the past five years, companies like Uber and Airbnb have attracted millions of dollars of venture capital and built a huge customer base. “Just as peer-to-peer businesses like eBay allow anyone to become a retailer,” The Economist writes, “sharing sites let individuals act as an ad hoc taxi service, car-hire firm or boutique hotel as and when it suits them.” The ability to share goods and services is having a disruptive impact across the economy. Can energy be far behind?

Since America electrified in the late 19^th Century, the solution for energy growth has been to “get bigger,” Hemant Taneja, venture capitalist and AEE co-founder, wrote in Tech Crunch. Economies of scale allowed utilities to provide power to more customers and increase profitability for themselves. But, Taneja argues, “the industry is starting to reach the limits of scale.” Could “unscaling” the industry by aggregating users onto platforms for sharing, like Airbnb and Uber, be the future of electricity?

This week, the Rocky Mountain Institute published a blog post titled “An Airbnb or Uber for the Electricity Grid?” For more than a century, RMI writes, the nation’s grid has relied on centralized generation and one-way distribution to customers. But, as distributed energy resources become more available and affordable, we may be on the cusp of a shift toward a more democratic structure, where consumers hold the resources – advanced energy resources – and share them to meet each other’s needs.

“Energy efficiency, demand response, distributed generation such as rooftop solar, distributed storage such as batteries, smart thermostats, and more are poised to become the front lines of a sharing economy revolution for the grid,” RMI states.

Two major barriers stand in the way of Uber for kilowatt-hours. The first is supply. As Taneja points out, many of us “already have a car or an extra bedroom,” but spare generators are hard to come by. That is changing, as rooftop solar and small-scale wind become more prevalent. More distributed generation could inspire more ways to distribute that generation.

The second obstacle is the lack of a system that allows for sharing. A shared grid needs to be more nimble than today’s grid, which “can’t easily handle the diverse and intermittent energy sources that come from small-scale generators,” Taneja writes. But we are seeing movement on that front as well: Systems are being implemented across the country to allow for distribution of electricity generated everywhere from rooftops (with net metering of electricity taken from and provided to the grid) to community solar gardens.

Finally, a key component to the success of services like Airbnb and Uber is a trusted third party that can handle instant transactions. In energy, there’s no app for that…yet.

A shared electricity future is still that: the future. But it’s not necessarily so futuristic. A shared economy in energy is looking less like The Jetsons than something that’s just around the corner. Companies like Mosaic and SunShare already allow consumers to collaborate on solar installations within a community. I bet we’ll be ubering up kilowatt-hours before long – and before we get into a flying car.

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