Dive Brief:
Xcel Energy on Tuesday announced plans to invest $1.7 billion in transmission in order to unlock 5,500 MW of largely new renewables projects in its Colorado footprint.
The proposal includes five new segments of high voltage transmission lines to connect more rural, renewables-heavy areas with more urban regions of the state. In total, the proposal would comprise a 560 mile, 345 kV transmission line that will allow the utility to reduce emissions in its Colorado territory by an estimated 85% below 2005 levels by 2030.
Xcel executives in the company s most recent earnings call had said the utility would be able to reduce emissions across its entire footprint 80% by 2030, in line with its current carbon reduction targets.
Dive Brief:
House Democrats unveiled legislation on Tuesday that would bring economy-wide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to net-zero by 2050, and cut emissions 50% below 2005 levels by 2030 or sooner.
The CLEAN Future Act proposes a national Clean Energy Standard that would require all retail electric providers to generate 100% of their power from zero-emissions resources by 2035, and 80% by 2030. It would also require the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to update U.S. transmission policy in order to better integrate renewables onto the grid, and direct greater investment in energy storage, microgrids, distributed energy resources and more.
The bill also targets transportation electrification, environmental justice, economic transition for fossil fuel workers, building efficiency and more. It would also include major changes to the Federal Power Act (FPA) and the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA).
Texans were left in the cold and dark this February, following extreme cold weather that had the Texas competitive energy market unable to prevent deadly power failures. Leaving behind its historic commitment to power system independence and joining the larger U.S. grid can relieve some of the consequences of extreme weather events Texas is likely to see again, many energy analysts in and out of Texas said. We designed this system for Ozzie and Harriet weather and we now have Mad Max, said Texas energy consultant Alison Silverstein, a former Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) adviser, during a Feb. 24 webinar cohosted by the Advanced Power Alliance and Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation. Texas is now reaping the bitter harvest of avoiding federal transmission regulation and state energy sector regulation.
The following is a contributed article by Paul Griffin, executive director of Energy Fairness.
As extreme winter weather gripped much of Texas and millions of customers were left without power because of blackouts, national conversations took a familiar and predictable turn down partisan lines. Opponents of renewable energy pointed the finger at the state’s robust wind energy, as roughly half the state’s wind capacity was knocked offline. Others cast the blame on traditional thermal sources, as 30 GW of generation from nuclear, coal and natural gas were unavailable for dispatch.
In the fog of war or winter as it were we fear many observers may have missed the real point. It wasn’t an electricity source that failed customers in Texas’ mostly deregulated marketplace. It was an electricity system. That’s because while regulated electricity markets are designed to serve customers, deregulated electricity markets are made to serve power providers.