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United States and Canada Announce Joint Efforts to Combat Climate Change, Focus on Methane Emissions

 April 6, 2016

Two weeks ago, President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the United States and Canada would increase cooperation to pursue several initiatives aimed at combating climate change. The leaders committed their respective countries to signing the Paris Climate Agreement “…as soon as feasible” and working together to assist developing nations to implement the measures agreed upon in Paris. Closer to home, both nations announced joint regulatory efforts to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 40% to 45% below 2012 levels by 2025.


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Utility of the Future Implications on Cybersecurity: A Spotlight on New York’s Reforming the Energy Vision

 April 6, 2016

The utility grid of the future is starting to emerge from a confluence of technology, economic, and regulatory developments that are leading to increased interconnectivity and data exchange amongst stakeholders. While these new technologies have the ability to revitalize aging energy infrastructure, executives and regulators are becoming increasingly concerned with the resulting cybersecurity implications. Many of the new cybersecurity risks facing smart grids are related to the interconnection of once-static assets via smart devices and an increasing number of two-way data flows between utilities, vendors, and customers. In today’s world where sophisticated hackers are rapidly and continually enhancing their tools and techniques, large energy corporations responsible for securing billions of dollars in assets are having a hard time keeping up.


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Successful People Strategy

 April 5, 2016

In today’s world, businesses are continually being challenged to create value faster, be innovative, and stay ahead of their peers. To accomplish this, businesses need to be able to leverage their greatest asset, which is not necessarily their products, machinery, or technology. A company’s greatest asset is its human capital—its people—and managing this asset is essentially HR’s main challenge today. As an HR leader, you are probably asking yourself, “How do we enable our businesses to be innovative, create value, or be a visionary if we do not leverage our people effectively to achieve our company’s vision or our goals? And how do we do all of this in a world where talent is scarce?”


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International Payroll Administration – Implementation Management

 March 17, 2016

The first two articles in this series, “Solutions for Improving Global Service Delivery” and “Transition Planning for a Global Payroll Solution,” provided an understanding of the worldwide payroll solution landscape and how to prepare for your transition to a global payroll model. The third article in the series, “Stakeholder Management for Implementing a Global Payroll Solution,” focused on effective stakeholder management. The final area of focus in our series is implementation management.


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Green Mountain Power Offers Customer Battery Systems

 March 1, 2016

In December 2015, Green Mountain Power (GMP) became the first utility to lease and sell Tesla Powerwall batteries directly to customers. The battery systems can be paired with small-scale solar to store locally generated energy, or it can be used without solar as a battery to store power from the grid.


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New York DPS Staff Proposal Closes the Door on Utility Ownership of Large-Scale Renewables, Mostly

 March 1, 2016

On January 25, 2016, the New York Department of Public Service (DPS) Staff issued the “Staff White Paper on Clean Energy Standard.” The white paper is the latest Staff filing in what has been considered Track 3 of New York’s Reforming the Energy Vision (REV). Initially, Track 3 was focused solely on Large-Scale Renewables (LSR), and was kicked off in the summer of 2015 when New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) released a LSR Development Options paper followed by a technical conference and comments from stakeholders. On January 21, 2016, the proceeding was expanded to also include the development and implementation of a Clean Energy Standard (CES) in order to more comprehensively meet the goals outlined in the New York State Energy Plan.


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A Lifeline for New York’s Troubled Nukes?

 February 24, 2016

On January 25, 2016, the New York Department of Public Service Staff issued a white paper on the Clean Energy Standard (CES), as part of a REV-related proceeding (Reforming the Energy Vision). As directed by Governor Andrew Cuomo in late 2015, the white paper addresses four policy objectives of the CES, which are to:


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Net-Energy Metering 2.0 in California

 February 24, 2016

With the original Net-Energy Metering (NEM) tariff due to expire, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) filed a decision regarding the successor tariff. The number of installations permissible under the initial NEM tariff is approaching the cap (398K of 410K as of September 2015), thus requiring a successor tariff in the midst of several related ongoing proceedings. The NEM successor tariff proposal extends the NEM policy for new interconnections through at least 2019, with some notable modifications to reflect costs to the utility and better align payments across the rate base.


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Dominion Resources to Buy Questar Corporation

 February 17, 2016

In February 2016, Dominion Resources announced the acquisition of Questar Corporation for $4.4 billion. Richmond, Virginia-based Dominion operates electric utilities in Virginia and North Carolina, local gas distribution companies (LDCs) in Ohio and West Virginia, and electric transmission and electric generation businesses. Dominion also is the general partner and majority owner of Dominion Midstream, a master limited partnership with storage assets and gas pipelines on the East Coast. Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, Questar is a natural gas distribution, pipeline, storage, and cost-of-service gas supply company that serves nearly one million homes and businesses in Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho. Questar also owns about 3,400 miles of gas transmission pipeline and 56 billion cubic feet of working gas storage.


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SEPA Fact-Finding Missions: Exploring the Energy Market

 February 16, 2016

Supreme Court Grants Stay of Clean Power Plan

 February 15, 2016

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay in West Virginia et al. v. EPA et al, a lawsuit filed by dozens of states and industry groups challenging the constitutionality of the Environmental Protections Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan. By granting a stay, the U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited the EPA from engaging in actions to implement or enforce the Clean Power Plan, pending the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which currently has jurisdiction over the case. To obtain the stay, the opponents of the rule had to show that their case had a legitimate chance of succeeding based on the facts of the case and that irreparable harm would occur if the stay was not granted.


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What’s the True Cost of Clean Power Plan Compliance?

 February 15, 2016

We previously wrote about a November study conducted by the National Economic Research Associates (NERA)1, which found that compliance with the Clean Power Plan (CPP) under optimized least-cost scenarios2 will result in average energy sector expenditure increases between $29 and $39 billion per year relative to projected baseline conditions (i.e., without the CPP). The effect, in turn, is a reported average annual increase in electricity rates of 11%–14%.


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