Elliot Mainzer is ending a seven-year stint as CEO/administrator at Bonneville Power Administration to lead an organization that has become a central figure in decarbonizing the West, it was announced Aug. 6.
Southern California Gas Co. and others on July 31 filed suit against the California Energy Commission in state superior court in OrangeCounty, alleging that its 2019 Integrated Energy Policy Report does not conform to state law and that the agency’s push for building electrification amounts …
California could need more than 77,000 medium- and heavy-duty vehicle charging stations by 2030 to support the truck fleet in the state, according to an Aug. 6 research presentation by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
A new report, designed to accurately quantify California’s future, in-state renewable natural gas supply, forecasts that 15.8 MMBtu or 119-million diesel-gallon equivalents of the fuel will likely be produced annually by January 2024.
San Jose Clean Energy and Peninsula Clean Energy in an Aug. 3 news release said they had issued a joint request for offers for the purchase of 1-million MWh per year of new, long-term renewable energy or renewable energy-plus-battery storage resources.
Land-intensive renewable energy projects, despite producing no greenhouse-gas emissions, can still threaten sensitive habitats, interfere with animal migration and impact important water resources, experts told participants during a July 31 webinar hosted by the California Community Choice A…
As climate change-related drought increases along with the population of the western U.S., water, arguably the region's most precious resource, is becoming even more valuable.
Pacific Gas & Electric is planning a new program to identify the age of certain critical transmission components, and aims to start a pilot of the program in the first quarter of 2021, the utility told its felony probation judge in a July 28 filing.
Sunrun—a San Francisco-based provider of home solar, battery storage and energy services—and three Bay Area community choice aggregators are launching a solar and battery storage project designed to provide backup power to vulnerable residents during public-safety power shut-offs, including …
Monterey Bay Community Power on July 27 launched its Agricultural Electrification Grant Program, which is intended to support the replacement of fossil-fuel-powered equipment with new electric equipment.
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and Exxon Mobil Corp. have developed a new material able to more effectively and inexpensively capture carbon dioxide from natural gas power plants' flue emissions for eventual reuse or sequestration.
The California Independent System Operator approved new rules designed to more easily integrate generation that includes an energy storage component, saying its policies need rapid change because of an expected expansion of storage on its system over the next few years.
The California Independent System Operator has by far the highest percentage of wind and solar projects in its interconnection queue that are proposed to be paired with storage compared with other ISOs and regional transmission organizations, according to a new report from Lawrence Berkeley …
Utility-scale solar power plants could degrade at a significantly faster rate than previously reported and "claw back most or all of an investor's return in a utility-scale photovoltaic project," according to a July study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The worldwide market for solar-photovoltaic technologies is expected to reach $100 billion with some 100 GW installed by 2040, but silicon might not be the only material deployed, according to a newly released market research report.
FERC on July 16 threw a wrench into the decades-long march to decommission and remove the four dams of PacifiCorp's 169-MW Lower Klamath Project.
Southern California Gas Co. has begun powering two of its Los Angeles-area facilities with Bloom Energy solid-oxide fuel cells, which the companies in a July 17 announcement said should reduce emissions, air pollutants and the cost of power in addition to providing reliable power without nee…
California's energy sector lost about 178,000 jobs from March to May of this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than half of those job losses occurring in the clean-energy sector, according to a July report published by BW Research Partnership on behalf of the California Energy Com…
Renewable natural gas will not aid in building decarbonization as it is too expensive, in short supply, and its use poses significant health and environmental risks, according to a newly released report by Earthjustice and the Sierra Club.
Tall wind turbines with large rotors can reduce energy costs and provide "hidden" benefits to the electricity grid, according to a new Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study.
Western states are collaborating on a new road map for electric vehicles, which is designed to pursue opportunities to approve the planning, siting and coordination of charging infrastructure in the West.
A California electric-tractor developer has been awarded a grant by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District that will enable the company to validate the equipment's performance in real-world operation.
The California Independent System Operator proposed a series of modifications to its resource-adequacy program that it says will ensure more effective procurement of generation capacity to reliably operate the grid at all times of the year.
Increasing amounts of rooftop solar on the grid and other factors have been pushing down overall electricity load for nearly a decade in California, an effect that has only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali on July 6 denied wildfire victims' request to appoint an examiner to investigate voting irregularities that allegedly occurred during Pacific Gas & Electric's bankruptcy settlement plan voting period.
The San Luis Obispo City Council at a July 7 meeting formally approved new building regulations the city began formulating in 2018 that put restrictions on natural gas infrastructure in new construction, but do not ban it outright.
Hydrogen could become the most cost-effective grid-integrated seasonal storage technology by 2050, according to an analysis by National Renewable Energy Laboratory researchers.
Sunrun, a residential solar, battery storage and energy service business with headquarters in California, has agreed to acquire Utah-based Vivint Solar, a full-service residential solar firm, in an all-stock transaction valued at $3.2 billion.
California, the country's leading state for clean-energy employment, saw the largest increase in the number of clean-energy workers returning to the job, according to a July 8 analysis of unemployment data. The analysis, by BW Research, Environmental Entrepreneurs, E4TheFuture and the Americ…
Pacific Gas & Electric on July 1 emerged from the bankruptcy reorganization it began a year and a half ago, a day after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed "failsafe" legislation that would turn PG&E into a nonprofit utility if things go wrong.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali on June 29 ordered Pacific Gas & Electric, the tort claimants committee and the wildfire victims' trustee to respond to a request by Theresa Ann McDonald, a Camp Fire victim who voted to reject PG&E's proposed settlement and reorganization plan.
Utilities including those in California are reacting to a newfound national focus on racial justice by making public statements in favor of the Black Lives Matter movement, but are also following up with actions to support racial equity.
San Francisco Supervisor Rafael Mandelman on June 30 introduced legislation that would eliminate natural gas in all new-building construction within the city.
The U.S. approaches its annual independence celebration this year amid a global pandemic that is infecting and killing people of color at much higher rates than whites and during an unprecedented reckoning with its history of racism.
The cost of new technologies capable of improving energy efficiency, generating and storing energy, and decarbonizing end-use appliances is declining and their availability is growing, but the ability of disadvantaged communities to participate in the advances is far from equitable, a new re…
Pacific Gas & Electric on June 24 proposed a new set of probation requirements for itself, stating the requirements would "provide flexibility for the utility to continuously improve."
Less than one week after U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali confirmed Pacific Gas & Electric's plan of reorganization, two wildfire victims say they are "dismayed by the treatment" they have experienced as they start through the fire victim compensation process.
The clean-energy sector, a short time ago one of the nation's leaders for new jobs, has been hard hit in California by a wave of job losses that could set the industry back years, according to a new report from Environmental Entrepreneurs.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali intends to confirm Pacific Gas & Electric's plan of reorganization, which would guide the utility out of bankruptcy for the second time in less than 18 years.
A Superior Court judge fined Pacific Gas & Electric nearly $3.5 million for causing the Camp Fire in November 2018 that killed 84 people and destroyed the town of Paradise, in highly emotional hearings that included agonizing testimony from relatives of the deceased.
The United States can reach 90-percent carbon-free electricity by 2035 using existing technology and without increasing customer bills, according to a new report from the University of California, Berkeley, and the energy nonprofit GridLab—but it won't be easy.
An additional 27,000 clean-energy workers applied for unemployment in May, according to a June 15 analysis that runs counter to a recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report suggesting nationwide economic recovery.
The Humboldt Bay Generating Station is now able to operate in islanding mode, Pacific Gas & Electric said in a June 12 announcement.
With the completion of a collaborative study on how to install electric-vehicle charging infrastructure for medium- and heavy-duty trucks along roughly 1,300 miles of Interstate 5 from the Mexican to the Canadian border, a coalition from three West Coast states now has a road map outlining a…
Reserve margins are expected to exceed the North American Electric Reliability Corporation's reference margin levels in all of the Western Electricity Coordinating Council's subregions this summer, WECC said at a June 17 virtual board of directors meeting.
The California Energy Commission on June 3 released a final report that provides comprehensive detail on how the state should ideally build and deploy renewable-hydrogen production facilities.
Pacific Gas & Electric this week reached critical wildfire victim trust fund agreements with the victim claims committee and is now waiting for U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali to approve its plan of reorganization.
New legislation working its way through the state Assembly would make Pacific Gas & Electric a public utility if its reorganization plan is not approved by June 30 or if it loses its safety certification.
Federal legislators, clean-energy business owners and industry officials from across the nation recently sent three separate letters to congressional leadership calling on the federal government to provide support for the sector. All three letters requested robust federal investments in clea…
Southern California Gas Co. operations are under renewed scrutiny following two recent key maintenance announcements.
