Publications

The consulting firm McKinsey & Company recently released a report noting that energy storage prices are falling faster than anyone expected, with battery costs down to less than $230/kWh in 2016 from almost $1,000/kWh in 2010. The falling costs for batteries, coupled with the spread of solar power, presents a growing threat of disruption for utility business models.

In May 2017, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA, released a daily energy brief noting U.S. nuclear capacity and generation is expected to decline as existing generators retire. Five nuclear plants, with a combined capacity of 5,000 megawatts, or MW, have retired in the past four years, primarily due to competition from low-cost natural gas, unfavorable market policies, and/or local opposition. The Three Mile Island generating station in Pennsylvania is the latest nuclear power plant to announce retirement plans. In addition to these recent retirements, six other plants are scheduled to retire in the next nine years.

The transformation of the electric grid in the United States is proceeding at a rapid pace. Several factors, including the proliferation of distributed energy resources, or DERs, utility-scale renewable generation, energy storage, advanced metering infrastructure, and other technologies, are changing the way electric power is now generated, transmitted and distributed.

With growing mass transit needs and uncertainty about the future of federal funding, states like Georgia and Colorado look for new solutions to expand and maintain their transit systems. It has been suggested that the federal infrastructure investment President Donald Trump campaigned on could attract $1 trillion from the private sector. But his budget proposal shows federal cuts to transit, placing much of the responsibility for funding transit projects on localities...