March 2010

In late February, the Associated Press reported that the Minerals Management Service received proposals from two Virginia companies for leases on the outer continental shelf to develop offshore wind farms.  Apex Wind Energy Inc. is proposing to lease 116,000 acres for an undetermined number of wind turbines with the potential to generate up to 1,500…

NV Energy issued its Spring 2010 Request for Proposals seeking new renewable resources.  NV Energy hopes to use the RFP to meet its RPS requirement of serving 12% of retail load with renewable energy in 2010.  Bidders should also be aware that NV Energy’s non-refundable bid deposits have changed:  projects 10 MW of larger must submit a $10,000 deposit…

Proposed legislation in the Senate would greatly limit the effectiveness of the grant in lieu of tax credits for renewable energy projects under section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The section 1603 grant currently applies to renewable energy projects, such as wind, solar, geothermal and biomass, that are placed in service before…

DOE issued three Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) on March 2 that offer $100 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding for the third round of its Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) program. The FOAs were announced at the first ARPA-E summit in Washington, D.C., and focus on innovations in three areas of technology: …

Michigan’s Great Lakes Wind Council (GLOW Council), an advisory body within the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor & Economic Growth to examine issues and make recommendations related to offshore wind development in Michigan, has issued recommendations for a regulatory framework for offshore wind in Michigan’s Great Lakes.  These recommendations follow the GLOW Council’s September 1, 2009 report (see previous…

My colleague Graham Noyes and Clayton McMartin of Clean Fuels Clearinghouse recently published a white paper on the massive and staggeringly complex revision of the federal Advanced Fuel Standard (RFS) issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on February 3, 2010. Graham and Clayton describe how this second generation renewable fuel initiative (RFS2) will bring…