News

Utility Dive reported Indiana passed a bill making it more difficult to retire coal-fired power plants, quoting AEE's Dylan Reed. Read excerpts below and the entire UD piece here. 

Indiana on Tuesday passed House Bill 1414, which will make it harder for utilities in the state to retire their coal generation. The House version of the bill was significantly altered in the Senate, drawing greater support from critical groups including the Indiana Energy Association (IEA) which represents electric and gas utilities in the state. 

Utility Dive covered Democratic U.S. senators filing amendments to the American Energy Innovation Act that would prevent FERC's (minimum price rule) MOPR, quoting AEE's Jeff Dennis and Dylan Reed. Read excerpts below and the entire UD piece here. 

"Congress is concerned about barriers to the participation of advanced energy technologies in these markets, and also concerned, I think, about the balance of state policies and federal regulation of the wholesale markets," Managing Director and General Counsel at Advanced Energy Economy Jeff Dennis told Utility Dive.

"I think the fact that we saw ... amendments on that introduced was pretty significant." Of the hundreds of amendments introduced by the Senate since the legislative package was first unveiled Feb. 28, only 18 made it into the modified version filed by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Murkowski last week. But the FERC amendments, introduced by four Democratic senators, indicate several growing frustrations around the actions of federal energy regulators, said Dennis...

Utility Dive covered Indiana Senate amendments to HB 1414 (a bill that supports coal plants that AEE opposes), quoting AEE's Dylan Reed. Read excerpts below and the entire UD piece here. 

Indiana's controversial House Bill 1414 was stripped of its most contentious language in the Senate Utilities Committee on Thursday, allowing it to pass 8-2 and move onto the Senate floor. The latest iteration "takes out all the worst of it," Advanced Energy Economy Director Dylan Reed told Utility Dive. Language that would have allowed utilities to store up to 90 days of fuel supply on site was removed, and the sunset was pushed up six months to Dec. 31, 2020, around the time the state's task force is supposed to issue its recommendations for how the state should proceed on energy policy. This version still slows down a utility's retirement process, mandating utilities looking to retire more than 80 MW of generation notify the Indiana Utilities Regulatory Commission (IURC) and go through a public hearing within 120 days of giving notice...

Supply Chain Dive covered Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recent $10B pledge to fight climate change, quoting AEE President Heather O'Neill. Read excerpts below and the entire Supply Chain Dive piece here. 

Billionaire Jeff Bezos, founder, president and CEO of e-commerce company Amazon, on Monday announced his commitment to providing $10 billion toward fighting climate change. Specifics of the plan were sparse — in his Instagram post announcing the funding, he said the Bezos Earth Fund will provide funding for "scientists, activists, NGOs — any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world." He'll begin issuing grants this summer and said the $10 billion is "to start," but doesn't specify how much more he plans to spend or over what time period. Some speculate the billionaire's move was timed to deflect attention from FRONTLINE's release of a documentary that includes criticisms of his technology empire's carbon footprint and rising pressure from the company's employees about not doing enough on climate change...

Utility Dive noted AEE's coalition filing with ACORE, AWEA, and SEIA asking FERC to revisit its December 'MOPR' order in its coverage of stakeholders push-back on the controversial federal pricing proposal, including concerns raised by PJM. Read excerpts below and the entire UD piece here. 

Clean energy advocates and competitive interests have raised concerns that FERC's December order is too wide-sweeping and will harm the ability of new clean energy technologies to enter the market. Under PJM's original order, the MOPR was largely intended to apply to new natural gas resources, where it expected most interference to come from, according to the grid operator's comments on the FERC-proposed MOPR. But FERC's action was much more wide-sweeping, proposing to administratively raise the bids of any new resource in the market that receives a state subsidy...

Utility Dive covered FERC's new rule on capacity market pricing for the PJM region, quoting AEE's Jeff Dennis. Read excerpts below and the entire UD piece here. 

Federal regulators on Thursday voted to effectively raise the bids of subsidized resources selling their power into PJM Interconnection's wholesale capacity market. Under the plan, new resources receiving subsidies will now be subject to the Minimum Offer Price Rule (MOPR), which raises the price floor for those resources attempting to sell their power into the wholesale market. The move is intended to prevent potential "unacceptable market distorting effects" caused by state clean energy policies, according to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chair Neil Chatterjee. Commissioner Richard Glick was the sole dissenting vote of the three commissioners.

Utility Dive covered state AG's and competitive market groups who criticized a recent federal proposal to overhaul PURPA, including quotes by AEE's Jeff Dennis. Read excerpts below and the entire UD piece here. 

States, competitive market groups and other stakeholders criticized a federal proposal to overhaul the Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA), in comments filed Tuesday, questioning the potential impacts those changes could have to the country's renewable energy momentum. Stakeholders, including the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Electric Power Supply Association (EPSA) raised concerns that the notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in September would unduly impact states outside regulated power pools. Meanwhile, states participating in regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) had their own concerns about the potential impacts of the proposed rule.

Utility Dive reported Minnesota regulators pushed back on petroleum groups' attempt to reverse approval of Xcel Energy's $25 million electric vehicle pilot program, quoting  AEE's Matt Stanberry and AEE member Greenlots. Read excerpts below and the entire UD piece here. 

Minnesota regulators on Monday stamped out manufacturing and petroleum groups' attempt to reverse approval of Xcel Energy's $25 million electric vehicle pilot program. The state's Public Utilities Commission (PUC) approved the program in July, and five large industrial groups, including oil groups Marathon Petroleum and Flint Hills Resources, filed a petition with the commission on Aug. 6 asking regulators to reconsider the decision...

Utility Dive reported on six state utility commissioners who are pressing FERC to prioritize its resilience docket, including perspective of AEE's Managing Director and General Counsel Jeff Dennis. Read excerpts below and the entire Utility Dive piece here. 

Six state regulators are pressing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to prioritize its resilience docket, citing concerns over rapid coal plant retirements, Bloomberg first reported Monday. Utility commissioners from Wyoming, Montana, Alabama, Tennessee, West Virginia and Kentucky wrote separate letters to FERC, asking the commission to take action on the resilience docket opened in response to its unanimous rejection of the Department of Energy's bid to subsidize coal and nuclear resources.

Utility Dive quoted AEE's Amisha Rai in its coverage of six recent EV related bills passed in California that could be impacted by the Trump Administration's emissions rollback threat. See excerpts below and read the full UD brief here. It was also reposted by Supply-Chain Dive here.

California lawmakers made progress on advancing the state's electric vehicle market this legislative session, despite President Donald Trump's Wednesday announcement that his administration intends to challenge the state's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.