Energy Exchange

Report: More renewables could mean 5,000 new jobs and $8B in investment for Ohio

By Dick Munson / Published: July 19, 2018

Last year, I highlighted how voters in Ohio overwhelmingly support developing more clean energy like solar and wind over more traditional resources like coal.

Ohio has a remarkable opportunity to capture the benefits of a growing renewable energy market. A new report shows the state could boost supply chains and create local jobs by developing more wind and solar, potentially creating more than 5,500 jobs and bringing in nearly $8 billion in investment.

Multibillion-dollar opportunity

Ohio is part of PJM, the regional grid operator for all or part of 13 states. Eleven of these (including Ohio) have state requirements for a minimum amount of renewable energy and, under the current laws, these requirements will be 67 percent higher across PJM in 2025 than today. Read More »

Posted in Clean Energy, Ohio / Comments are closed

On pollution facts, don’t be fooled by rhetoric of oil and gas trade groups

By Colin Leyden / Published: July 13, 2018

Once again, a trade group funded by the oil and gas industry is trying to distort the facts on the industry’s pollution.

In a recent blog post, Texans for Natural Gas cherry picked government data in an attempt to argue against the need for policies that protect public health and the environment.

Posts like this – which take select pieces of data in order to make broad generalizations about industry’s progress toward reducing pollution – often fail to tell the whole story about the harmful emissions that warm the planet, jeopardize public health, and result in the massive waste of U.S. energy resources.

When reading industry-sponsored pollution assessments, there are a few crucial things to keep in mind.

Posted in Air Quality, BLM Methane, Methane, Natural Gas / Comments are closed

The race to reduce emissions: Five takeaways from OGCI venture day

By Isabel Mogstad / Published: July 12, 2018

The day before the World Gas Conference – one of the energy industry’s largest – 10 companies competed for USD $20 million to fund solutions with the power to disrupt how methane is managed, measured, and reduced.

The money was provided by Oil and Gas Climate Investments, the billion-dollar investment fund tied to the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) – a consortium of 10 oil and gas companies sharing knowledge and resources to cut the greenhouse gas footprint of their industry.

OGCI’s investment team and technical experts from member companies provided expertise and consumer-driven insights to select the 10 companies competing at Venture Day from nearly 60 applicants. The goal was to highlight companies and concepts that aren’t just innovative, but scalable and disruptive – something BP CEO and OGCI Chair Bob Dudley made clear: “If a person in the field with a hard hat turning the valves doesn’t get it, it won’t work.”

Not only was Venture Day a moment to showcase how high-tech can be high-impact (despite the companies in the room, it felt more Silicon Valley than Houston), it also represented a noticeable shift in the philosophy around industry investment in the methane space. In what OGCI CEO Pratima Rangarajan dubbed “the year of methane,” Venture Day signaled an inflection point for increased transparency, enhanced coordination, and global vision.

Posted in General, Methane, Natural Gas / Comments are closed

California sets new standards for natural gas storage sites

By Adam Peltz / Published: July 11, 2018

Data visualization shows the methane plume from the Aliso Canyon gas leak in red.

Three years ago, a blowout at the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility forced thousands of nearby families to evacuate their homes and leaked over 100,000 tons of methane and other harmful pollutants into the atmosphere. The facility’s operator, Southern California Gas, wasn’t prepared for the scope or scale of the disaster that unfolded over four months.

The disaster demonstrated the risks of under-regulated natural gas storage sites, as well as the importance of not being over-reliant on natural gas. Regulators in California and across the country realized the need for better oversight and management.

As a result, California’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) recently finalized new rules for managing the risky, industrial enterprise of underground gas storage. These rules are a foray into an underdeveloped policy space, and are the product of collaboration with stakeholders including national laboratories, the environmental community, and the federal government.

Posted in Aliso Canyon, California, General, Methane, Natural Gas / Tagged Gas storage | Comments are closed

A regionalized energy grid creates a home for California’s wasted renewables

By EDF Blogs / Published: July 11, 2018

By Andy Bilich, Lauren Navarro

These days, California’s renewable energy records are regularly broken.

During the summer solstice on June 21, California utility scale solar power set a generation record with solar producing equivalent to about 16 percent of all electricity consumed during the day.

And earlier this year, on April 27, California set two renewable energy records for both instantaneous solar generation: about 10.5 gigawatts), and instantaneous renewable generation: 73 percent of the state’s total electricity demand came from renewable energy.

With renewables deployment poised for more growth, it’s likely even these new records will be surpassed sometime soon. However, to ensure the state’s investment in clean energy is put to use, and not wasted, California has some work to do. Read More »

Posted in California, Clean Energy, Regional Grid, Solar Energy, Wind Energy / Comments are closed

New utility settlement highlights how Ohio utilities are leaving FirstEnergy behind on clean energy

By Dick Munson / Published: July 9, 2018

BLOG UPDATE – September 26, 2018

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio today approved DP&L’s rate case, described below.

A new utility settlement in Ohio is loaded with promising clean-energy components. Meanwhile, Ohio-based utility giant FirstEnergy continues to cling to the energy sources of the past.

Encouraging settlement

Along with FirstEnergy, Duke, and AEP, Dayton Power & Light (DP&L) is one of Ohio’s four investor-owned utilities that deliver electricity to people’s homes and businesses.

In DP&L’s recent rate case (a process that sets customers’ electricity delivery rates), the utility and environmental groups, including Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), have reached a settlement that includes the following: Read More »

Posted in Clean Energy, Ohio / Read 2 Responses