The Connecticut Senate passed legislation yesterday by a vote of 26 to 6, to expand the state's underlying renewable power requirement to allow large-scale hydroelectric power to qualify under the standard when wind and solar are not available. Despite the lop-sided vote, the legislation has come under increasing scrutiny by environmental groups and some power providers because they believe it will give the state department of energy and environmental protection to much authority to rollback renewable energy requirements.

State and federal policymakers in the past could be confident that America’s energy demands would increase every year. Now the future isn’t as clear.  Barbara Tyran, director of Washington, D.C., and state relations with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), said the Great Recession, a greater use of locally produced power, a growing interest in energy efficiency and the unprecedented increase in the natural gas supply have turned once staid assumptions about the future of energy on their head. Tyran was one of the featured speakers at a CSG policy academy about natural gas development last week and noted that all three branches of the federal government are currently engaged in shaping energy and environmental outcomes that will impact the future electricity and natural gas sectors. 

Solar panel installations rose 76 percent last year, according to a release by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) which is the national trade association for the industry. Overall, installed solar capacity was 3,313 megawatts - a record for the industry.

Numerous renewable energy tax incentives were extended as part of the 11th-hour legislation passed by Congress late last night to avoid the so-called "Fiscal Cliff." Among the bill's many provisions, perhaps the most high-profile in the energy arena was a one year extension of the 2.2 cents/kilowatt hour production tax credit (PTC) for wind energy that is estimated to be worth roughly $12 billion.

In October 2012, the Obama administration passed an important milestone in siting 10,000 megawatts of renewable energy projects - three years ahead of the objectives laid out in federal law - to encourage the development of vast resources on public land. Constructing large amounts of expensive electric transmission lines and concerns over habitat impacts to endangered species pose potential hurdles for these and other large-scale renewable energy projects. 

Proposition 3, an amendment to Michigan's constitution requiring 25 percent of the state's electric power generation to come from renewable energy, will be before voters on election day in November and it has generated intense political debate.  Environmental groups tout potential job creation and public health benefits, while utility companies and business interests raise concerns over the economic costs associated with the mandate and that it would limit Michigan's options to meet the standard with only wind power.

U.S. Solar installation companies are expressing their frustration with a May 2012 decision by the Commerce Department to apply tariffs between 31 percent to 250 percent on Chinese-made solar panels. While the decision has raised trade tensions between the US and China, some business owners are protesting the retroactive application of the tariffs - which, in some cases, adds more than $100,000 in penalties to companies on orders made before the decision by the Commerce Department.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a 35-year license for the nation's first commercial-scale wave energy project, the Reedsport OPT Wave Park, off the coast of Oregon. The project, which is owned by Ocean Power Technologies, would construct 10 individual 1.5 megawatt wave generators that could provide power for up to 1,000 homes.