Host John Farrell talks with Marcel Castro Sitiriche, co-director of CoHemis at the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, about the challenges Puerto Rico faces in building a clean and resilient energy system. They also discuss:
If you walk past Xcel Energy’s national headquarters in downtown Minneapolis, you’ll see a giant banner hung just to the right of the entrance doors. In large letters you might mistake for an indication of pride, it proclaims that Xcel hosts the nation’s largest community solar program.
Last year saw the largest growth in new power generation capacity in the US in more than a decade — 34.7 gigawatts of new capacity came online. While growth across a mix of energy resources contributed to this jump, new gas plant development overshadowed all renewable energy sources, combined.
A comparison of how well policies in nearby states support distributed energy, including rooftop and community solar, provides insights into which states are regional leaders and where cross-pollination of state policy ideas that support local energy might improve areas that lag behind.
Renewable energy continued to expand across the country in 2018. This expansion in renewable energy complements a growing number of states, utilities, and cities that have set ambitious goals to transition to 100% renewable and carbon-free power generation.
Mariel Nanasi, executive director of New Energy Economy in New Mexico, joined ILSR’s Director of Energy Democracy, John Farrell, in March 2019, for a new episode of the Local Energy Rules podcast, to discuss the state’s proposed Energy Transition Act and its big giveaways to one of New Mexico’s incumbent monopoly utilities, PNM. The two also discussed the pitfalls of state policy that ignores how rooftop solar and other distributed energy offer huge opportunities to share the wealth of a climate-friendly energy system.
Last week’s release of the 2019 Community Power Scorecard illustrates which states help and which hurt local renewable energy. Assessing state policy is especially timely/significant because in late 2018 the 100th U.S. city adopted an ambitious 100% renewable energy target. The success of commitments made by cities like Cincinnati, Ohio; Salt Lake City, Utah; or Minneapolis, Minn.; hinges on whether state policy gives them the power to take charge of their energy future and equitably share the economic benefits created by doing so.
In the 2019 Community Power Scorecard, four states excelled, 11 states and the District of Columbia saw above average scores, 15 were mediocre, and 20 states received failing grades at enabling individuals and communities to take charge of their energy futures.
I’ve been asked a lot of questions about Minnesota’s community solar program over the past couple years and it’s time to make one thing clear: Minnesota’s program is the best in the country.
Why? Because there 10 times more community solar projects in the queue—400 megawatts—in Minnesota than have been built in the history of community solar in the United States (40 megawatts).
Utilities in many states have undercut competition by playing “hide the peanut.” Instead of sharing their avoided cost publicly, as required by Congress and state laws, utilities have hidden them behind a “trade secret” designation. This illegal shield––if left in place by state and federal regulators––requires prospective clean energy developers to lawyer up in order to extract a fair priced contract from the utility company.
