Planetizen Newswire
Keep up with essential planning news and commentary, delivered to your inbox every Monday and Thursday.
Electricity Generation
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the nonprofit, independent power grid operator for 90 percent of the nation's second-largest state, has become the convenient fall guy for the epic power failure caused by an extreme weather event.
Austin American-Statesman
CNN host Fareed Zakaria questions whether the goals of Sanders' ambitious Green New Deal are realistic.
The Washington Post
The Los Angeles municipal utility will convert a Utah coal power plant to run on natural gas in 2025. According to a proposal unveiled Dec. 10, the plant will incrementally be converted to run entirely on hydrogen, a zero-emission fuel, by 2045.
Utility Dive
Can a Democratic governor in a state controlled by a Republic legislature achieve meaningful emissions reductions from the state's energy utilities? North Carolina Governor Gary Cooper is trying.
Inside Climate News
Overall greenhouse gas emissions in California dropped 1% in 2017, according to the inventory by the California Air Resources Board, which includes a 9% drop in emissions from electricity generation and a 1% increase in transportation emissions.
San Francisco Chronicle
Most of the aging 350-megawatt Grayson Power Plant, operated by Glendale Water & Power, will be retired by 2021. The city's utility district has struggled with how to repower it. A compromise reached last month ensures low emissions and reliability.
Greentech Media
When the N.J. Department of Environmental Protection adopted new rules for power plants on June 17, the Garden State becomes the tenth to participate in a cap-and-trade program known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
Utility Dive
Are 'zero carbon' goals the most effective way to cut greenhouse gases, or are they the most politically feasible strategies? NPR climate and environment reporter, Nathan Rott, explores the challenge in an interview on All Things Considered.
NPR
The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission is concerned about the lack of renewable options for replacing a coal plant in Wabash County.
The Evansville Courier & Press
The report heralds increased shuttering of coal-burning powered plants due to cheaper alternatives. Almost three-quarters of coal-burning power plants today are more costly to operate than renewable facilities. In six years, it jumps to 86 percent.
InsideClimate News
Move over, Hawaii and California, with your ambitious goals of going to 100 percent renewable electricity generation by 2045. The District's city council passed legislation on Tuesday that sets 2032 as the target to reach 100 percent renewable.
Huffpost
Texas doesn't do small, so a new wind power regeneration record must be big.
Houston Chronicle
Two western states had very similar renewable energy initiatives on the ballot sponsored by NextGen America requiring utilities to get 50 percent of electricity by 2030. It passed in Nevada but was rejected in Arizona.
The Arizona Republic
President Trump and his cabinet have been busy rolling back environmental regulations and promoting coal burning, and now they claim credit for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions last year even greater than in 2016.
NPR
Voters in two Western states next month will determine whether to require energy utilities to increase their share of electricity from renewable sources to 50 percent by 2030. In Arizona, the campaign has become the costliest in state history.
The Arizona Republic
Water is an important part of the thermal energy process – one that we may not think as much about.
Quartz
New York Times climate reporter, Brad Plumer, comments on California's landmark accomplishment in reducing emissions, observing that with the low-hanging electricity generation fruit picked, reducing transportation emissions will prove formidable.
The New York Times
It is possible to achieve state-mandated global warming reduction goals after all. The nation's first such goal, signed into law by Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006, called for reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
San Francisco Chronicle
Last month the Trump administration directed Energy Secretary Rick Perry to require grid operators to purchase power from aging coal and nuclear power plants, enabling them to keep operating as a matter of "national security." Regulators disagree.
InsideClimate News
The president hopes to revitalize the nation's sagging coal industry by forcing utilities to purchase power from aging coal and nuclear power plants in the name of national defense. The news is already paying dividends for coal companies.
Bloomberg Politics
