Exelon's Rowe: cap and dividend is a no-go
Exelon Corp. Chief Executive John Rowe on Saturday slammed an alternative to cap-and-trade now being considered by Congress and said the EPA’s plan to regulate carbon emissions is a nonstarter.
Rowe, who runs one of the country’s largest utilities, said the so-called cap and dividend plan would “not work” and would act as “a halfway house to a full cap-and-trade system.” Read More »
For cleantech companies Washington has become a crucial financial partner.
In the post-Lehman/global financial meltdown era it’s been repeatedly said that the money power has left Wall Street for the shores of the Potomac in Washington.
This is not just a talking point, but a stark reality for whole industries — the renewable energy sector among them– which have come to rely on Washington for their mid-to-long-term survival.
The government’s pivotal role as a funder of last and first resort was glaringly apparent this week with the announcement that BrightSource Energy was offered a $1.37 billion loan guarantee (if it meets certain conditions) from the Department of Energy. The BrightSource loan guarantee dwarfs the $535 million thin-film photovoltaic cell maker Solyndra got last year, which, until now, was the largest such loan guarantee. Read More »
As we retweeted last night, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says it won’t start regulating carbon emissions and of other greenhouse gases as part of its recently issued “endangerment finding” until 2011. We’ve posted a copy of the original letter below the fold. Read More »
Jim Pierobon is vice president – policy & market development at Standard Solar, Inc., a developer, integrator and installer of solar electric systems based in Gaithersburg, Md. He is a former chief energy writer for the Houston Chronicle.
Now that the dust is settling from Scott Brown’s U.S. Senate victory in Massachusetts, it’s becoming clear that the political momentum to pass a comprehensive energy and climate change bill has flatlined.
Let’s face it, despite President Obama’s call in yesterday’s State of the Union address for America to lead the world’s clean energy economy, it is unlikely that a law to make such an economy a reality will actually be considered until at least 2011, when the 112th Congress convenes. That’s despite a growing chorus of voices from corporations, utilities and clean energy advocates rooting for Congress to price carbon rather than relying on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulatory gauntlet to reduce carbon emissions. Read More »
Kate Mackenzie at the Financial Times’s EnergySource blog has an interesting take on the future of U.S. coal. Citing a report by Bernstein Research analyst Hugh Wynne, she writes that the recent proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to tighten sulfur dioxide emissions could actually push coal into a “secular decline.” Read More »
