On average, U.S. electricity customers experienced just over eight hours of electric power interruptions in 2020, the most since we began collecting electricity reliability data in 2013. The average U.S. electricity customer experienced nearly 20 more minutes of power interruptions in 2020 than in 2017, the year with second-longest duration of … [continued]
Chalk it up to years of corporate disconnection from reality, but Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) is reportedly now facing bankruptcy after being suspected a culprit of the last devastating Californian wildfires.
Utility companies are undercutting state regulation with their legislative lobbyists. And utilities are also bringing their monopoly market power to bear in previously competitive markets.
We’ll detail examples of each of these three disturbing trends, and ways to fight back.
Circumventing a decades-old pact providing a market monopoly in exchange for public oversight, an investor-owned utility has proposed legislation to allow it to build a new natural gas plant criticized for its financial and environmental impact, and then stick customers with the tab.
Think of big businesses that lobby to restrict US work on climate change. ExxonMobil and its hard-line petroleum allies probably come up first. However, we sometimes forget the participation of many of the flagging US coal barons. The Climate Investigations Center, a small progressive group that monitors energy and environmental outliers, says … [continued]
In the upcoming US election, independent voters in the key swing states—the most influential of influential voting sectors—will be more likely to vote for a Republican candidate who vocally supports solar energy, according to a new poll by Public Opinion Strategies. When asked the question “If a Republican candidate for … [continued]
Originally published on ilsr.org. With the rich history of cost overruns in the nuclear industry, Xcel Energy and Minnesota regulators shouldn’t have been surprised when the retrofit cost for the Monticello nuclear power plant ballooned to more than twice the original estimate. Regulators asked tough questions last year about whether … [continued]
Originally published on ilsr.org. In August 2013, Minneapolis (MN) was in the news for considering a take-over of its energy utilities. Today, they’re back in the news for supporting a first-in-the-nation clean energy partnership with those same utilities and a pioneering effort to bring more local input into the city’s … [continued]
This article is Part 1 of a two-part series discussing what the NextEra Energy & Hawaiin Electric merger means for the nation’s innovation landscape before diving into the past and future of Hawaii’s energy system. On Wednesday, December 3, Hawaiian Electric and NextEra Energy announced they will combine in an agreement … [continued]
The Northern Mariana Islands are one of several island U.S. territories, lying three-quarters of the way from Hawai’i to the Philippines. Like most islands, their electricity supply has been almost entirely supplied by diesel-fueled generators, at enormous cost. So why have islanders in the Marianas – such as the residents … [continued]
