The Climate Policy, Renewable Energy, & Sustainability Blog
We last reported to you about Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) activities in connection with the Ralls Corporation case. CFIUS is a multi-agency U.S. government committee charged with reviewing foreign acquisitions of U.S. businesses for national security implications
The committee recently released its unclassified Annual Report to Congress for 2013…
As my colleagues Kristen Castaños and Melissa Foster posted on the Stoel Rives California Environmental Law Blog, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced today that it will publish the Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (“Solar PEIS”) for solar energy development in six southwestern states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. The Solar PEIS is a major step forward in the permitting of utility-scale solar energy on public lands in the West.
The Solar PEIS will establish solar energy zones with access to existing or planned transmission and with the fewest resource conflicts and provide incentives for development within those zones. The roadmap set forth in the Solar PEIS will make for faster, more streamlined permitting of large-scale solar projects on these public lands. The focus of the Solar PEIS is on Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) lands that are most suitable for solar energy development. It identifies 17 Solar Energy Zones (“SEZs”), totaling about 285,000 acres of public lands, as priority areas for utility-scale solar development. The Solar PEIS also notes the potential for additional zones through ongoing and future regional planning processes and allows for utility-scale solar development on approximately 19 million acres in variance areas lying outside of identified SEZs.…
Continue Reading U.S. Department of Interior Moves to Streamline Solar Development in the West
NRG Bluewater Wind won the exclusive rights to negotiate with the federal government to build an offshore wind farm off the Delaware coast on March 24, 2011. As the first developer to enter into the “Smart from the Start” program released by the BOEMRE on February 7, 2011, NRG Bluewater Wind signed a non-competitive lease agreement…
We are pleased to announce that the first edition of THE LAW OF BIOMASS is available now. THE LAW OF BIOMASS is a guide which contains insights and lessons that our team has developed through our position as a market leader in renewable energy legal issues. THE LAW OF BIOMASS focuses on electricity generated from…
On March 24, 2010, three federal agencies announced a Memorandum of Understanding for Hydropower (the “MOU”) that impacts developers of traditional hydropower, hydrokinetic, pumped storage, and small-scale hydropower facilities. The Department of Energy (“DOE”), the Department of the Interior (“DOI”), and the Department of the Army, through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (“USACE”) (collectively, the…
The U.S. Department of Energy is hosting a free webinar on "How to Build a Strong Application" for the DOE Loan Guarantee Program on Tuesday, September 8, 2009 from 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM EST. The webinar is intended to explain the loan guarantee program and help lenders and applicants navigate the application process. DOE will…
On Friday August 28, Eric Lindeman of The Energy Daily will be moderating a webinar about "Advanced Biofuels: What Are the Commercial Possibilities? Why All the Interest in Algae?" My partner, the always-entertaining John Eustermann, will be speaking at the Webinar along with Connie Lausten (VP, Regulatory and Legislative Affairs, New Generation Biofuels (NGBF))…
On August 13, 2009, the American Wind Energy Association, Wind on the Wires and certain wind developers filed protests at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator’s (MISO) recent filing at FERC. The MISO filing proposes to revise MISO’s cost allocation methodology for network upgrades for generator interconnection, and resulted from MISO’s Regional Expansion Criteria & Benefits (RECB) Task…
On June 24, 2009, the Department of Energy (“DOE”) announced more than $204 million in ARRA funding to ten states for their State Energy Programs (“SEPs”).
Here is a summary of how the monies will be used in Minnesota, South Carolina and South Dakota:
Minnesota has been awarded $21.7 million in federal stimulus funds for…
Last week DOE released a new funding opportunity announcement for up to $480 million for pilot-scale and demonstration-scale integrated biorefinery projects. An integrated biorefinery uses an “acceptable feedstock” to produce a biofuel or bioproduct as the “primary product.” Acceptable feedstocks include:
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