Smart Energy Decisions: Google Files for Utility Service Alternatives in Nevada

Google Inc. recently added its name to a growing list of corporations looking for alternatives to electric service from Nevada utility NV Energy.

The tech giant filed a petition with the Nevada Public Utilities Commission on April 25 asking for direction on how a new electric customer should go about obtaining permission to use a supplier alternative to NV Energy.

Over the last year, a series of high-profile electricity customers of the utility had applied for -- and in the case of MGM Resorts International, Wynn Resorts Ltd. and Switch were granted -- permission to stop buying their electricity from the utility under a 2001 energy crisis-era law. That route required the companies to pay notable exit fees, $87 million in the case of MGM, in order to do so.

Climate Central: Indian Solar Prices Hit New Low, Undercutting Fossil Fuels

Wholesale solar power prices have reached another record low in India, faster than analysts predicted and further undercutting the price of fossil fuel-generated power in the country.

The tumbling price of solar energy also increases the likelihood that India will meet -- and by its own predictions, exceed -- the renewable energy targets it set at the Paris climate accords in December 2015.

India is the world’s third-largest carbon polluter, with emissions forecast to at least double as it seeks to develop its economy and lift hundreds of millions of citizens out of poverty.

Ensuring it generates as much of that energy as possible from renewable sources is considered crucial to limiting catastrophic global temperature increases.

InsideClimate News: Inside the White House War Over the Paris Climate Treaty

Like Jean Valjean in the sewers, the White House is racing to elude the authorities of Paris, the city that gave its name to the binding 2015 treaty enlisting all nations to address the world's climate change crisis.

Put simply, President Donald Trump faces a choice between two routes -- one marked rejection, the other revision -- as he seeks to fulfill his campaign pledge to "cancel" the treaty.

That he has this choice stems from two competing impulses that shaped the text of the Paris climate agreement as nations sought to make it both effective and flexible.

The delicate balance they struck was to make the document binding but not compulsory, ambitious but not rigid. Now, that compromise is being manipulated by two factions, the rejectionists and the revisionists, inside the White House.

The Post and Courier: Reports of Impending Toshiba Bankruptcy Raise New Doubts About South Carolina Nuclear Project

The utilities building new reactors at a Midlands nuclear plant aren't saying what impact a potential Toshiba Corp. bankruptcy filing could have on the troubled construction project, even as more questions are being raised about the Japanese conglomerate's financial health.

"We haven’t been informed about a Toshiba bankruptcy filing, and we won’t speculate about one," Rhonda O'Banion, spokesperson for South Carolina Electric & Gas parent SCANA Corp., said this week.

Toshiba's business partners told The Wall Street Journal that they are bracing for a bankruptcy filing that could wipe out many of the Tokyo firm's commitments, including a guarantee to pay up to $1.7 billion in cost overruns at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in Jenkinsville.

IEEE Spectrum: How Much Does the U.S. Government Subsidize Electricity Generating Technologies?

Exactly what is a subsidy, who pays for them, and who benefits? Everybody in the energy business has an opinion but few people agree on any one answer. The American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas trade association, offers a fact sheet arguing that their industry isn’t subsidized; the Nuclear Energy Institute offers an analysis that reaches contrary conclusions. Renewables either receive disproportionate largess or are underfunded, depending on whom you ask.

These questions incite cross-talk, not cross-tabulation. But we elected to do the latter as part of a comprehensive, interdisciplinary research project called the Full Cost of Electricity (FCe-) conducted by the University of Texas at Austin Energy Institute. Our analysis of energy subsidies aims to estimate the magnitude of federal financial support offered to various electricity supply chains and technologies -- gas turbines, nuclear power plants, wind turbines -- from mine-mouth to wall socket.