renewable portfolio standard (rps)

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The basic question for proponents of Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) is this: What exactly are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to reduce carbon emissions? Are you trying to keep future electric rates affordable? None of these goals are accomplished by the RPS.[read more]

California’s CO2 emissions fell in 2011 for the third straight year, putting the state in a good position for meeting its target of reducing carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, according to the California Air Resources Board (CARP) and as mandated by California AB32 (the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006). Since businesses...[read more]

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The large-scale rollouts of smart meters heralded one of the first noticeable machine to machine (M2M) communications deployments.   It also launched a series of conversations about safety and privacy concerns, which will continue to play out in many other M2M applications.  DOE ARPA-E funding jumpstarted an interesting...[read more]

In just under two weeks, standard 100 Watt incandescent light bulbs will be officially banned in the US, in the first step of a gradual phaseout of Edison's technology. However, as a result of recent Congressional action, enforcement of this regulation has been delayed by about a year, leaving the bulbs and the retailers who sell them in a temporary limbo.[read more]

The New York Times posted yet another error-riddled article last Friday on clean energy. This one, titled "A Gold Rush of Subsidies in Clean Energy Search," purports to describe the "banquet" of "lucrative" subsidies that result in "windfalls" to renewable energy project investors. Rather than catalog all the errors made by the Times,...[read more]

California’s Senate has just passed some important new renewable energy legislation that will, if approved in the Assembly and signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown, require utilities operating in the state to obtain one third of their electricity from renewable sources of energy such as wind, solar or geothermal. This is a big...[read more]

Texas did it again, it achieved it’s target for new renewable power generation capacity years ahead of schedule. And so, of course, as it becomes increasingly obvious that the Texas Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) is essentially irrelevant to growth in wind power, the Texas RPS is increasingly held up as a success and model for...[read more]

By Alexis C. Jolly In addition to the federal investment tax credit, in which 30% of your solar investment can be written off against your taxes no matter where you live, states like New Jersey have begun to offer tremendous local incentives for residents to adopt solar lifestyles.  One of those incentives is known as a Solar...[read more]