Former FERC Commissioner Philip Moeller, who helped steer efforts to reform regional transmission system planning that became Order 1000, told an audience last week that it is time to take a look at compliance with the landmark 2010 rule.
Moeller told a TransForum East gathering in D.C. that he was “kind of a lukewarm supporter of Order 1000.” He decried what he called “Order 1000 fatigue,” saying that some compliance filings were on their third or fourth iteration, and he called for FERC to look at what is and isn’t working, and perhaps to make changes.
“I believe we’ve spent way, way, way too much time talking about the cost of transmission and way, way, way too little time talking about the value of transmission,” he said. “The debate really focuses on cost, whereas I think the debate really should focus on value.”
More: Electric Light & Power
Judge Dismisses Suit Challenging Va. Uranium Mining Moratorium
A U.S. District Court judge has dismissed a suit that sought to overturn Virginia’s 1982 moratorium on uranium mining.
Virginia Uranium and three other companies sued Gov. Terry McAuliffe and various other state officials after Virginia denied a permit to mine an estimated 119-million-ton uranium deposit in Pittsylvania County. Judge Jackson L. Kiser said that since the moratorium dates to 1982, long before McAuliffe was in office, current officials couldn’t be named in the suit.
Kiser also dismissed the plaintiffs’ argument that the federal Atomic Energy Act of 1954 gives the federal government sole regulatory authority over safety concerns at the heart of the state’s moratorium. The federal act, the judge said, “institutes no permitting regime respecting nonfederal uranium deposits’ conventional mining and does not otherwise regulate nonfederal uranium deposits or their conventional mining.”
More: Richmond Times-Dispatch
DOE Teams with Israel on Clean Energy Projects
The Department of Energy and Israel’s Ministry of National Infrastructure, Energy and Water Resources chose six joint American and Israeli clean energy projects to receive $5.1 million in funding. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said the Binational Industrial Research and Development Energy Program will help both countries develop cleaner energy.
The projects include remote metering and analytic tools for smart grids by Jerusalem-based Ayyeka Technologies and Michigan-based UIS Holdings ($1 million); and the development of software that would assess threats to birds by wind farms, by The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and New York-based Applied Biomathematics ($500,000).