In the news today…
Grid:
- Reuters reports that tens of thousands of storm-weary Californians were without power and under evacuation warnings on Wednesday as the latest storm packing wind-blown rain and snow threatened to bring more flooding to the rain-soaked state.
- APPA reports that the PJM Interconnection recently presented stakeholders with an early outline of its initial proposal aimed at improving key aspects of the PJM capacity market construct.
- PV Magazine reports Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy is funding a Minnesota organization that advocates for building new transmission lines along infrastructure corridors, such as highways and existing transmission rights of way.
- KNSI reports that Xcel Energy is proposing a 160-180 mile transmission line that would move clean energy from the site of a coal plant that’s scheduled to close in the coming years and be replaced by solar.
Energy:
- Wall Street Journal reports companies pursuing subsidies for green energy are trying to shape the Treasury Department’s definition of ‘made in America’.
- Washington Examiner reports NERC CEO and President Jim Robb said yesterday that reliability problems for U.S. power grids are continuing to increase due to to an increasingly diverse resource mix, retirements of traditional power generation sources, and an increase in extreme weather events across the country.
- E&E Energywire reports for the first time, no coal-burning power plants in New England qualified for payments in the region’s annual electricity auction.
Lands:
- Washington Post reports a Native American group that’s trying to stop an effort to build one of the largest copper mines in the United States told a full federal appeals court panel Tuesday that the project would prevent Apaches from exercising their religion by destroying land they consider sacred.
- E&E Greenwire reports a lawyer for the Biden administration on Tuesday signaled that a controversial land swap in Arizona is likely to move forward in the coming months, paving the way for an Apache holy site to be developed into one of the nation’s largest copper mines.
Permitting:
- Washington Examiner reports Sen. Ed Markey is staking out progressives’ position on how Congress should go about speeding up environmental permitting with new suggestions that would explicitly exclude fossil fuel projects from special project designations and enable local communities to be included in project planning itself.