Energy Efficiency News – Week of September 4, 2012

Utilities

The Thurston Public Utility District would have to pay at least $650 million to take over the local assets of Puget Sound Energy, according to a study commissioned by PSE. Thurston PUD will release its own public power feasibility study this week, which is expected to put the price tag closer to $150 million.
Source: The News Tribune

Southern California Edison has announced that radioactive fuel from the San Onofre nuclear power plant’s Unit 3 reactor will be moved into storage. The company is focusing on the less extensively damaged Unit 2, with no timetable for either restart.
Source: CBS Local

The Omaha Public Power District is encouraging thousands of extra customers to use its AC Management Program, which provides bill credits for users who agree to cycle their air conditioner systems during peak times. 7,500 customers have signed up since the program began earlier this year, and the OPPD hopes to add another 4000 be December.
Source: WOWT

The California Independent System Operator has accused an unnamed company of gaming the state’s electricity market. The company extracted $10.5 million in “excessive profits” since April, according to a filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Source: The Sacramento Bee

Utilities – Appointments

NiSource has name Jim Stanley Executive Vice President and Group CEO for NIPSCO. Stanley was most recently Senior Vice President and Chief Distribution Officer for Duke Energy, and previously President of Duke Energy Indiana.
Source: NiSource

FirstEnergy has named Anne Grealy as Executive Director of State Government Affairs. Most recently, Grealy served as director of Federal Regulatory Affairs in FirstEnergy’s Washington, D.C. office.
Source: PR Newswire

Northeast Utilities has named William PO. Herdegen III as President and Chief Operating Officer. Herdegen most recently was vice president of transmission and distribution operations at Kansas City Power & Light, and replaces Jeffrey Butler.
Source: The Day

Institutions, Cities & States

Hawaii has committed to weaning itself off fossil fuel by mandating 70 percent clean energy by 2030 — 40 percent from renewable sources such as wind, solar and geothermal and 30 percent from energy efficiency. Hawaii currently spends $4.5 billion a year on importing oil, but political leaders disagree on how best to achieve self-sufficiency.
Source: TradingCharts

North America

The White House issued an executive order supporting industrial energy efficiency and combined heat and power (CHP). It establishes a new national goal of 40 gigawatts of CHP capacity by 2020, a capital investment of $40-80 billion.
Source: The White House

According to a new report, ‘uninformed’ residential consumers will reduce energy use by an average of 7% when the electricity price rises, with ‘informed’ customers reducing by more than twice that amount. In In “Knowledge is (Less) Power: Experimental Evidence from Residential Energy Use,” Katrina Jessoe and David Rapson from UC Davis find that most people make rational economic choices if given access to real-time information on usage and prices.
Source: Forbes

International

The Chinese government is debating whether to create official channels for the public to be involved in deciding environmental issues. China does currently require local governments to conduct environmental assessments, but does not mandate that these reports be publicly disclosed.
Source: XinhuaNet

Australia will link its emissions trading scheme to the European Union’s from July 2015. Previous plans for a $15 floor price have been dropped, with current international prices of $9.80 lowering government revenue expectations.
Source: Herald Sun

Four Japanese utilities are preparing for rolling blackouts if they face power shortages in September. The companies, Kansai, Shikoku, Kyushu and Hokkaido have asked households and corporations to conserve power, but are forecasting demand above 95% of capacity in coming weeks.
Source: Daily Yomiuri Online

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Oban has said that his government is close to buying out the local interests of utility E.ON. E.ON is the largest distributor of household natural gas in the country, and the move is expected to cost around €2 billion.
Source: 4-Traders

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