“Regular people only need to understand that this is likely the most progressive clean energy action the federal government will take this year.” – Center for American Progress
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is capable of making bold moves under the radar. Last year it imposed a $245 million sanction on a major utility without too much fuss. Beginning this year, as part of a landmark rulemaking called Order No. 1000, FERC will be lending a multi-billion-dollar hand to large wind developers.
Overview
According to FERC, “Order No. 1000 is a Final Rule that reforms the Commission’s electric transmission planning and cost allocation requirements for public utility transmission providers.”
At the risk of oversimplifying a 600+ page document, Order No. 1000 essentially adds a requirement that (1) transmission providers consider new projects driven by state and federal “public policy,” and (2) planning regions do away with “participant funding,” at least at the regional and inter-regional level, which means that transmission costs must be allocated over a broad region.…
Continue Reading“It’s high time that people’s safety – and truly devastating impacts on important bird and bat species – stopped taking a back seat to political agendas, crony corporatism, and folklore environmentalism.”
Georgia residents recently learned that a rare bat has stalled state highway improvements. The May 2012 sighting of an endangered Indiana brown bat in a northern Georgia tree has triggered federal regulations requiring that state road projects not “harm, kill or harass” bats.
Even the possibility of disturbing bats or their habitats would violate the act, the feds say. Therefore, $460 million in Georgia road projects have been delayed for up to eighteen months, so that “appropriate studies” can be conducted. The studies will cost $80,000 to $120,000 per project, bringing the total for all 104 road project analyses to $8–12 million, with delays adding millions more.…
Continue Reading“Fundamentally, what is to stop a FEB from supporting an energy rationing scheme, say a carbon tax or CO2 cap-and-trade program, to ‘save the climate’ or ‘level the playing field’ for wind, solar, and other beggar energies? Hofmeister might oppose such programs, but a FEB is ‘independent’ to do so. Anti-energy forces such as the “green lobby” and current Washington establishment will not surrender or retreat but likely become emboldened by centralized power in a federal energy board.”
John Hofmeister, formerly president of Houston-based Shell Oil (the U.S. side of Royal Dutch Shell), has been an active voice for energy policy reform. Upon retiring from Shell in 2008, he founded Citizens for Affordable Energy (CAE), an educational nonprofit advocating “sound U.S. energy security solutions for the nation, including a range of affordable energy supplies, efficiency improvements, essential infrastructure, sustainable environmental policies and public education on energy issues.”…
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