Category: ENERGY2021_MN TRANSPORTATION_TRUCKS_CN

A select group of drivers could soon knock a chunk off their lease payment for a hot new Ford F-150 Lightning — if they sign up for a smart-charging program with utility Duke Energy. It’s an early attempt at rewarding EV adopters for the value their mobile battery packs can offer to the electric grid.

Hot summer days can mean high electricity bills. People want to stay comfortable without wasting energy and money. Maybe your household has fought over the best strategy for cooling your space. Which is more efficient: running the air-conditioning all summer long without a break, or turning it off during the day when you’re not there to enjoy it?

National Grid on Tuesday announced it had located “robust stocks” of renewable natural gas and green hydrogen via a recent request for information, enough to meet its needs in New York and Massachusetts through 2025. The utility is planning for a 100% “fossil-free” gas network by 2050.

The bill contains tax, healthcare and climate provisions, including about $369 billion in spending over 10 years on energy and climate measures. In a measure expected to affect some utility companies, the legislation is partly funded by a 15% alternative minimum tax for corporations with a 3-year average adjusted book income above $1 billion.

By the end of today, Congress will likely have passed the biggest climate bill in U.S. history.
This newsletter has already covered the bill’s main goals and the back story of how it came together. Today, I want to get more detailed and explain how it will help people and businesses abandon the dirty energy that contributes to global warming.

Wildfires are a top priority for land management agencies and utilities, as the number, size and intensity have increased along with the cost to battle these mega-blazes. While not all wildfires are caused by the power grid, the two are closely linked. New tactics need to be adopted to protect infrastructure, principally by investing in prevention strategies and secondarily by coordinating interagency approaches and community participation.

Locked in a potentially tight reelection race and facing criticism over the grid’s 2021 collapse, the governor is exerting unprecedented influence over what the state grid operator shares with the public — and who will be its next CEO.

We are less than a week away from the much-anticipated release of the Consumer Price Index, the key measure of US inflation, for July. As of June, US personal spending on energy goods and services (gasoline, electricity and natural gas) was running at an annual rate of $860 billion . That is a record in nominal dollar terms: US consumers have never spent more on energy. Even adjusted for inflation, US personal spending on energy was at an all-time high in June, having passed its previous March 2008 high in March 2022.

With the annual rate of inflation reaching 9.1% in June, the highest in 41 years, consumers are being hammered by unsustainable price increases for staples like food, housing, furniture, gasoline, airfare, and cars and trucks; driven largely by pandemic related labor, supply chain issues, fiscal policy, and a protracted war in eastern Europe.

As governments across the world continue to invest hundreds of billions in the energy system to reboot their economies, our analysis is expanding to cover more countries and provide a more comprehensive global picture. Countries are also grouped by regions, which helps to identify trends and patterns in their local contexts.