Preliminary data assessments by air districts across California indicate the state's stay-at-home order might be improving air quality, if only temporarily, but they stopped short of claiming a correlation just yet.
Hybrid battery energy storage projects could offer more value to an electricity grid than stand-alone generation and battery storage projects, according to a new study published by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
AES U.S. finalized the sale to an undisclosed buyer of roughly 51 acres of land on which its natural gas-fired Redondo Beach Power Plant currently sits.
A confluence of sluggish policymaking and inadequate economics has stunted biomass energy production to the point that it is falling short of its potential as a tool to restore and maintain healthy northern California forests.
The Diablo Canyon Decommissioning Panel held its first meeting of 2020 in an empty San Luis Obispo auditorium March 11, the day COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization.
Energy prices are moving lower as a result of what analysts are calling an unprecedented combination of events—reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, supply imbalances and soured OPEC negotiations—that have caused electricity, natural gas, oil and gasoline prices to drop.
Pacific Gas & Electric is "burning CDs" that will explain to California wildfire victims what is included in PG&E's proposed reorganization plan and how victims can cast their votes on the plan, a lawyer for PG&E said in bankruptcy court on March 25. But lawyers representing fire…
Two victims of California's 2017 and 2018 wildfires have resigned from an 11-person committee that is supposed to represent the voices of victims in PG&E's ongoing bankruptcy proceeding.
Southern California Edison, operator of the shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station south of San Clemente, on March 25 temporarily halted deconstruction work at the plant in response to Gov. Gavin Newsom's March 19 stay-home order.
California should see continued energy job growth throughout 2020, according to a newly released report. But the report does not account for the effects of COVID-19, which has caused wide disruption across the energy and employment sectors.
California is under a stay-at-home order over COVID-19, and state agencies took action to keep essential energy-related businesses operating, such as residential electric and communications services and critical elements of the transportation and fuel supply chain.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on March 20 said he supports Pacific Gas & Electric's reorganization plan, stating it would meet the requirements of the state's wildfire fund bill—AB 1054—as long as the California Public Utilities Commission and U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali, who is overseeing …
Pacific Gas & Electric on March 18 appealed a modified wildfire settlement decision with the California Public Utilities Commission, saying the terms of the settlement do not allow PG&E to pay a $200-million penalty out of the wildfire victim trust fund.
California utilities and the wider Western energy industry went on alert with some changes in operations and cancellations of industry events as they reacted to the spread of the new coronavirus, although the scheduled entry of two new entities into the Western Energy Imbalance Market on Apr…
Pacific Gas & Electric has agreed to a $1-billion settlement with the Federal Emergency Management Agency for costs that FEMA incurred during and after catastrophic fires in California that killed more than 100 people, according to lawyers for the federal agency. The $1-billion settlemen…
Construction has begun on Westlands Solar Park, a project located in Fresno and Kings counties that developers are touting as "one of the largest permitted solar parks in the world."
Support from an international consortium will help a natural gas plant in California install carbon capture and sequestration technology.
More than 1,600 wildfire victims and concerned California residents signed a petition calling Pacific Gas & Electric's $13.5-billion victim settlement "bad," while PG&E this week released further details on how victims will be compensated for their losses.
Pacific Gas & Electric's chief ethics officer at a March 2 court hearing told a wildfire victim that she has not reviewed PG&E's reorganization plan for ethical considerations and hasn't read letters from victims.
Natural gas prices in the California Independent System Operator territory fell in the fourth quarter of 2019 compared with the same period the previous year, driving down wholesale energy prices and the overall cost of serving load in the ISO by $0.5 billion, its market monitor said in a ne…
The California Independent System Operator is moving forward with a series of proposed modifications to its day-ahead market with a goal, among others, of accommodating the uncertainty of variable generation such as solar and wind.
Idaho National Laboratory is helping a California-based firm by granting it access to spent nuclear fuel to both develop and demonstrate its microreactor technology.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali in court on Feb. 26 considered the legitimacy of a $3.9-billion federal wildfire claim that a lawyer for wildfire victims said has "huge" implications for Pacific Gas & Electric's bankruptcy proceeding.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency reversed course and will allow a greater proportion of federal funds to reimburse the state for spillway reconstruction costs at Oroville Dam in Northern California.
There has been a great deal of discussion and misinformation circulating about an offer of "free nuclear electricity" being made by Pacific Gas & Electric to load-serving entities in its service area, but it is actually a complex, proposed transaction that only nominally involves generat…
Energy storage developer esVolta said Feb. 24 it closed a deal that provides a roughly $140-million senior secured credit facility that it plans to use to finance its California utility-scale battery energy storage projects.
Pacific Gas & Electric is nearing the end of its bankruptcy protection period, but the judge overseeing the utility's criminal probation case said PG&E's equipment still poses a threat to the safety of the residents of Northern California.
California Independent System Operator CEO Steve Berberich is retiring after nearly a decade in the position, CAISO said in a Feb. 19 news release. The CAISO Board of Governors has begun a nationwide search for his successor.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said former Pacific Gas & Electric lawyer and U.S. Army Colonel John Busterud was named regional administrator for Region 9, which covers California, Arizona, Hawaii, Nevada, U.S. territories in the Pacific Ocean, and 148 federally recognized tribes.
Pacific Gas & Electric has released a critical disclosure document that describes how wildfire victims will be compensated for their losses and how their votes to approve PG&E's settlement plan will be counted.
Pacific Gas & Electric is among eight companies and nonprofits that were issued subpoenas on Feb. 12 related to a wider corruption probe involving former San Francisco Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru.
Greenhouse gas emissions associated with California milk production have decreased by nearly 47 percent in the last 50 years, according to new research from the University of California, Davis.
Chevron Technology Ventures has commissioned a carbon-capture technology study from a Vancouver, British Columbia firm designed to evaluate whether its technology can be used at Chevron facilities.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali on Feb. 5 approved an agreement between Pacific Gas & Electric and a group of the utility's bondholders, clearing the way for PG&E to tiptoe closer to its Chapter 11 bankruptcy endgame.
Pacific Gas & Electric is nearing a $1.7-billion wildfire settlement with the California Public Utilities Commission, but a group of stakeholders in the proceeding has asked the commission to reject the proposal, saying it does not adequately address the 2017 Tubbs Fire and is being forc…
The California Independent System Operator said 2019 was a "banner year" for integrating renewables, but the influx of clean energy is not without problems—data also showed that the peak level of curtailments of wind and solar surged by about 74 percent from the year before.
Pacific Gas & Electric would transition to a publicly owned electric utility if legislation introduced by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) becomes law, and the new entity's methods of power procurement and asset management would change significantly.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali on Jan. 28 approved a motion to seal and make confidential a "letter agreement" between Pacific Gas & Electric and one of its most vocal opponents in bankruptcy court—the group of its bondholders [5539].
Southern California Edison loaded its 48th canister of spent nuclear fuel at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Clemente on Jan. 31 and expects to begin dismantling buildings, containment domes and other aboveground structures within the month.
Wider and more rapid adoption of electric vehicles will benefit most Californians, whether they purchase an EV or not, by stimulating the overall economy and reducing pollution, among other benefits, a new report from Next 10 says.
A dozen environmental groups in a Jan. 22 letter asked California Restaurant Association board members to urge the organization to drop its lawsuit against the City of Berkeley.
Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) is gaining support as he responds to public-safety power shut-offs—his bill assessing penalties to investor-owned utilities and allowing customers to recover costs is advancing through the Statehouse.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali on Jan. 29 denied a request from more than 1,000 Camp Fire victims to require Pacific Gas & Electric to reveal how much money the victims of another deadly fire—the Tubbs Fire—will receive out of the utility's overall $13.5-billion fire victim trust fund.
Pacific Gas & Electric has finalized a deal with a group of its bondholders, which had been competing for control of the bankrupt utility over the past year.
The challenges of integrating renewable energy and procuring power on a rapidly changing electricity grid were the topic of a panel discussion at the Solar, Storage and Smart Energy Expo in San Francisco on Jan. 17, with one representative of the California Independent System Operator saying…
The nature of California's community solar program, and the dearth of participation in the initiative since its creation a few years ago, were the topic of an at-times passionate debate at an event in San Francisco last week.
The State of California on Jan. 17 filed suit against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in federal court, disputing BLM's environmental review that would open more than a million acres of public land in Central California to oil and natural gas drilling—including hydraulic fracturing, or fr…
Pacific Gas & Electric has been granted eminent domain across a section of a privately owned Calistoga vineyard, which will allow the utility to install equipment it contends is needed to augment natural gas supplies during pipeline repairs and to address increasing customer demand.
Pacific Gas & Electric is negotiating a new deal with its bondholders that would provide the group with cash and new debt, but only if it agrees to terminate its competing restructuring proposal.
Annual greenhouse gas emissions from California's electricity sector have declined about 40 percent over the past decade, but imports have been the biggest contributor to the reductions, according to a new report from the Legislative Analyst's Office.
