By Kari Lydersen, Energy News Network
The competing bills come from different constituencies. The Clean Energy Jobs Act, or CEJA, is largely backed by environmental and community groups, while Path to 100 is supported by the renewables industry. Both aim to get the state to 100% renewable energy by 2030 by tapping money collected on customers’ utility bills.
Currently, Illinois utility customers pay a monthly charge that is capped at 2% of what customers paid per kilowatt-hour in 2007. CEJA would raise the cap to 2.67% this year and 4.88% by 2023. These changes would allow the collection of up to $700 million a year by 2023, according to CEJA supporters. Currently, about $235 million a year is collected for renewables through customer bills. Read more here.
Photo Credit: Keith Ewing / Flickr / Creative Commons
SEIA NEWS RELEASE
The Solar+ Decade Will Usher in Widespread Clean Energy and Massive Economic Growth, by Abigail Ross Hopper, SEIA President & CEO
We already know that public support for solar is higher than any other fuel, with wind as a close second. Storage can help expand both. Poll after poll shows that the public wants more renewable energy, and fast. Some want it because it will directly address climate change; others because the economic benefits are too good to pass up. Now it’s on us to mobilize our grassroots support to make this goal possible.
GRID DATA MANAGEMENT
Utilities vs. grid edge upstarts: Turf battles in an increasingly DER-centric world, Utility Dive article contributed by Dan Goldman, Managing Director & Co-founder, Clean Energy Ventures
As a result of the need for new data access, analytics and management, the grid edge is hosting a turf war between utilities and private sector upstarts racing to capture data and create avenues for acting on it. On one side, utilities believe they will be in the best position to manage the grid if they own and control the data directly, without intermediaries. On the other side, grid edge upstarts — Tesla, Vivant, SunRun and many other technology-enabled start-ups — want to collect and manage the data directly for their own platform benefits, and see an opportunity to provide it to utilities for a fee. New technology solutions to gather and manage the data are emerging rapidly as a result.
REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE
- 4 ways to scale regenerative ag, by Jim Giles, Carbon and Food Analyst, GreenBiz
By planting cover crops, reducing tillage and changing grazing patterns, a few forward-looking farmers have turned their soils into sponges that suck up carbon. When experts with the National Academy of Sciences reviewed relevant studies (PDF), they estimated that these techniques can draw down 250 million tons of carbon dioxide in the United States every year. - General Mills, Danone dig deeper into regenerative agriculture with incentives, funding, by Heather Clancy, Editorial Director, GreenBiz
RECYCLING WIND TURBINES
Commentary: For retired wind turbines, we can find alternatives to landfills, contributed opinion by Scott Coenen / Wisconsin Conservative Energy Forum, Energy News Network
Many have probably now seen the picture, shared widely on social media, of wind turbine blades being buried in a landfill in Wyoming. The picture highlights a legitimate challenge to wind energy, especially as costs continue to fall and deployment of wind increases across the country. Importantly those challenges, one of them highlighted here, are not a reason to walk away from the table. We can find solutions.
COAL-ASH CLEANUPS
Cap coal ash in place? Duke and others have learned better, contributed Utility Dive article by Frank Holleman, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. In South Carolina, all three utilities — Duke Energy, SCE&G (now owned by Dominion) and Santee Cooper — are cleaning up every one of their unlined riverfront lagoons.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Solar Power Just Miles from the Arctic Circle? In Icy Nordic Climes, It’s Become the Norm, Inside Climate News. As solar prices fall and efficiency increases, countries like Finland are discovering the benefits of summertime solar.
