Kent County Gears up for Fight Against Wind Project
The Kent County Commission and area residents are preparing for a fight against the proposed Mills Branch Wind Project that would include up to 35 towering turbines on farms in the Eastern Shore county.
The Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, the Kent County Farm Bureau, the Queen Anne’s Conservation Association and a group called Keep Kent Scenic organized a standing-room-only meeting at the Kennedyville fire house last week to brief opponents. “We are not unfriendly to green industries,” said Bill Graham, an organizer of Keep Kent Scenic. “We are definitely pro-green energy. We just feel that certain energy sources — like 500-foot-tall turbines — don’t comply with Kent County zoning and the comprehensive plan.”
Apex Clean Energy has approached property owners and is gathering data, but it has yet to submit an application with the Public Service Commission for a Certificate of Public Convenience. Although it doesn’t have the power to block the project, the opinion of the three-member County Commission, composed of the county’s legislators and executive, has to be taken into consideration by the PSC when the regulatory agency reviews the project.
More: Easton Star-Democrat
MASSACHUSETTS
Berkshire Gas Pipeline Under Fire at DPU Hearing
Several hundred residents in Western Massachusetts and state and local officials attended a Department of Public Utilities hearing to blast a plan for local utilities to tap into a controversial gas pipeline expansion. Berkshire Gas, along with Columbia Gas and National Grid, are seeking DPU approval to purchase natural gas carried through the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline, extending from New York state across Massachusetts to Dracut.
Berkshire Gas has said it will not accept new customers or expand natural gas delivery services to existing customers until the pipeline has been completed. The project would take three and a half years to build if Federal Energy Regulatory Commission permits are obtained.
More: Berkshire Eagle
NEW HAMPSHIRE
Eversource Starts ‘New Hampshire First’ Jobs Program
Eversource Energy has launched a “New Hampshire first” initiative to partner with local contractors and electrical workers’ unions to help construct and maintain proposed energy projects throughout the state.
Eversource has three major projects that are planned to begin in 2016 that represent a more than $2 billion investment in the state’s electrical grid, the company said. The most notable and controversial project is Northern Pass, a proposed $1.4 billion transmission line to deliver hydroelectric power from Quebec to New England.
Eversource anticipates the projects will create almost 2,000 jobs in the state.
More: Union Leader
NEW JERSEY
Controversial Pinelands Gas Pipeline Proposal Reappears Before BPU
A proposal to run a natural gas pipeline through the Pinelands that was blocked by the Pinelands Commission last year has reappeared, this time before the Board of Public Utilities. South Jersey Gas wants to construct the pipeline to deliver Marcellus Shale gas to the B.L. England generating station, which needs to switch from coal to natural gas or shut down.
The new proposal, which moves the pipeline connection point outside the protected Pinelands and restricts the line from adding any other natural gas customers, would go to the Pinelands Commission for consideration if it is approved by the BPU. The new proposal, amended as a “private development” project, would only need staff approval.
The Pinelands Commission deadlocked 7-7 in a January 2014 vote. But since then, Gov. Chris Christie named new members to the panel, a move seen by some environmentalists as a way to smooth the way for the project.
The company has said the project was amended to address concerns by environmentalists, but activists are already crying foul. “They’re trying to do an end around the Pinelands Commission,” said Doug O’Malley of Environment New Jersey. “This whole process has been extraordinary. The level of Christie administration influence is astonishing.”
More: Philly.com
NEW YORK
PSC Chair Zibelman Relinquishes Stock
Audrey Zibelman, chair of the Public Service Commission, is giving up her stock in Viridity Energy, the Philadelphia energy start-up she helped create and once led. Zibelman’s ownership of Viridity stock and her past professional connections to energy firms doing business in the state were the subject of a story published Tuesday by Capital New York.
Zibelman had previously disclosed her ownership of Viridity stock in state financial disclosure forms, where she valued the shares at more than $1,000. She told Capital New York that the shares had no “book value” and she received neither dividends nor any compensation from Viridity, which is privately held. She relinquished ownership of the shares for no compensation, her lawyer said.
Zibelman, a former PJM executive, left Viridity in 2013 to join the PSC. Viridity makes software that monitors energy usage for companies to help them reduce their energy costs. Zibelman was not required to give up her shares in Viridity under state law, but a letter to the company said she was surrendering them now “due to her current position.”
More: Times Union
NYPSC Reports Annual Service Quality Metrics
The Public Service Commission’s annual staff report found that most major electric and gas utilities in the state provided a satisfactory level of customer service in 2014.
All electric utilities met or exceeded the standards for performance on the measures of customer service with the exception of two utilities owned by National Grid. KeySpan Gas East will pay a negative revenue adjustment of $8.9 million while Niagara Mohawk will pay $2.54 million.
More: NYPSC
PSEG Long Island Seeks Bigger Bonus
PSEG Long Island is pressing the Long Island Power Authority for a bigger performance bonus in addition to its $45 million annual management fee.
Under contract terms with the state, PSEG is eligible for the bonus if it meets 20 different service metrics. PSEG last year met 19 of the 20. The company maintains that excess points earned in other categories should be applied to the one in which it fell short. The request would result in a bonus payment of $5.76 million — $288,417 more than the power authority believes it should pay.
The contract’s performance standards include average speed to answer phone calls, timely billing and customer satisfaction, among other measures. Under the contract, the maximum incentive payment is scheduled to increase next year to $8.7 million. PSEG’s management fee is also scheduled to increase to $73 million.
More: Newsday (subscription required)
NORTH CAROLINA
County Votes to Take Duke Coal Ash in Exchange for $19M
Chatham County officials voted 3-2 to accept a payment of nearly $19 million from Duke Energy to not oppose a landfill that will take coal ash from the utility, which is under political pressure to find a home for the estimated 150 million tons stored on 14 of its properties.
“I don’t think anyone is especially happy,” Commission Chairman Jim Crawford said. “This agreement gives the county a measure of control that it otherwise wouldn’t have.” The county says it might spend some of the proceeds on long-term insurance to protect itself from environmental problems caused by the coal ash after the landfill’s eventual closure.
The agreement will give the rural county south of Chapel Hill the right to demand groundwater sampling before and after the ash is moved to the landfill in Moncure. Duke has already agreed to pay another county $12 million to store ash at a second landfill site.
More: The News & Observer
NC WARN Sets up Test Case on State’s Solar Rules
Solar advocacy group NC WARN has built a 5.2-kW solar array on the roof of a Greensboro church and is selling the power back to the church at half the rate charged by the local utility to test the state’s laws prohibiting solar energy sales to anybody but the local utility.
The group wants the Utilities Commission to find the arrangement to be a public service, allowing the church to avoid the upfront solar installation costs. The organization’s executive director, Jim Warren, says his group will go to the courts if the NCUC denies its request.
Duke Energy spokesman Randy Wheeless said NC WARN’s attempt to win third-party status appears as though it “wants to get into the electric utility business but is asking the commission for a free pass to avoid the rules and regulation that come with being a utility.”
More: Charlotte Business Journal
NORTH DAKOTA
Regulators Deny Xcel’s Application to Charge Customers for Minn. Solar
The Public Service Commission denied Xcel Energy’s application to make state customers pay for the cost of solar projects mandated in neighboring Minnesota.
Xcel’s application for an advanced determination of prudence, or ADP, for 187 MW of solar from three Minnesota projects would have allowed some of the costs to be passed through to North Dakota customers. The projects were designed to meet a 2013 Minnesota renewable energy mandate.
The commission ruled that Xcel did not prove that the solar projects were cost effective and that North Dakota customers would benefit from them. “I don’t believe North Dakota customers should have to pay for the result of policies in a state that they didn’t have a say in passing,” PSC Chairwoman Julie Fedorchak said. Xcel included the costs in its rate cases for customers in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin and parts of Michigan.
More: Pioneer Press
PENNSYLVANIA
High Court Will Hear Appeal of Ruling that Kept PPL Records Secret
The state Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal of an open-records ruling that kept the details secret of a $60,000 fine paid by PPL Electric Utilities.
The Public Utility Commission fined PPL after a whistleblower complained that the utility diverted work crews to restore customers during a storm outage in 2011, forcing other customers to endure a longer outage. An appeals court upheld the PUC’s decision to reject a request by news media outlets to disclose details of the incident.
More: The Morning Call
RHODE ISLAND
Legislature Seeks to Rein in Increases
Legislation is moving forward that would remove a restriction preventing the Public Utilities Commission from taking into account how decoupled revenues from energy usage are affecting a utility’s cost of capital.
The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Susan Sosnowski, is aimed at National Grid and would allow possible lower costs of capital to be considered in determining the profits the company is allowed under the decoupling statute. Decoupling was approved by the legislature in 2010 to encourage more aggressive energy efficiency programs. If the bill is passed, it could come into play the next time National Grid proposes a rate increase. National Grid is not opposed to the change, according to a spokesman for the company.
The bill was among a flurry of legislation that was introduced this year after National Grid imposed hefty rate increases. Most of the retaliatory measures aimed at National Grid, such as proposals to cap rate increases, failed to make headway.
More: Providence Journal
VERMONT
Developer Increases Lake Cleanup Commitment
The developer of a transmission line that would be buried beneath the bottom of Lake Champlain said that it would pay $284 million to clean up the lake and to promote renewable energy in the state in exchange for an agreement from the Conservation Law Foundation to drop its opposition to the project.
TDI-New England plans to spend $1.2 billion to lay a 154-mile 1,000-MW power line from the Canadian border to the town of Ludlow by burying the cable at the bottom of Lake Champlain for most of its route. (See Lake Champlain Cable into New England Progresses.)
Previously, TDI had agreed to contribute more than $160 million to reduce the cable impact, which would stir up sediment and have minor effects on underwater life and human uses of the lake.
More: Boston Globe
WISCONSIN
Board Softens Stance on Employees’ Work on Climate Issues
A state board that banned its nine employees from working on climate change issues after discovering that its executive secretary served on a global warming task force years ago has relaxed its stance after receiving intense public backlash.
The Board of Commissioners of Public Lands, a three-member body, voted 2-1 for the ban after learning about the climate change work of Tia Nelson, the board’s executive secretary and the daughter of Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson.
Last week, Democratic Secretary of State Doug La Follette, who had cast the only dissenting vote on the ban, proposed relaxing the restrictions ban to prohibit staff only from advocating for global warming policy changes. “It is sensible for our staff to talk about climate change when appropriate,” La Follette said. “It’s just logical. We don’t want our staff to be advocating. We don’t want them on the stump.”
More: Associated Press