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Energy Industry Update Volume 23, Issue 2

ScottMadden

The Waiting (Is the Hardest Part)

This Energy Industry Update examines recent trends in the utility and energy industry, where stakeholders are waiting for new technologies to emerge to support energy transition and virtual power plants, or for the results of various regulatory initiatives relating to power plants, the grid, and gas-power coordination to be seen. In all of these cases, the "waiting" is indeed the hardest part for energy infrastructure development.

Highlights

Join more than 10,000 executives who rely on the EIU for the energy industry’s most important trends and data-driven insights. Highlights for each section of the latest EIU are below.

 

EPA’s Proposed Power Plant Rule: Third Time’s the Charm?

On May 11, 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed new CO2 emissions standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants. The EPA proposal puts those plants under a more rigorous compliance standard than they are currently subject to. The proposed rule is currently being debated by industry stakeholders.

Denmark’s Clean Energy Transition

Denmark is a proven leader in renewable energy. The country pioneered offshore wind and now exports technologies and services around the globe. Denmark’s next ambition is carbon neutrality. Recent legislation requires a 70% reduction in economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and net-zero by 2045.

Virtual Power Plants

For decades, utilities have partnered with customers enrolled in demand response programs. This partnership is expanding with the growth of “virtual power plants” or VPPs. A VPP can aggregate thousands of distributed energy resources (DERs) located in customer homes and businesses to provide critical services to the grid.

Natural Gas Utility Decarbonization

Some states are considering the future of natural gas as they implement state climate targets. Gas utilities seek flexibility in decarbonization approaches, exploring solutions to mitigate bill impacts and balance competing objectives: safety, reliability, and stranded costs versus rapid transition to meet climate targets.

Gas-Power Coordination

Cold weather events over the past decade or more have shown the continuing vulnerability of the power system to operating challenges in the natural gas system. With recent reliability events arising from Winter Storms Uri and Elliott, among others, gas and power system interdependence is again on the minds of policymakers.

FERC Homes In on Transmission

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (or FERC) has issued rules to reform the interconnection process by requiring grid operators to consider requests in batches and imposing financial commitments and tardiness penalties to keep the process moving. It has also ordered an update to planning rules to better consider extreme weather events in anticipation of a changing climate.

The Energy Industry in Charts

This is a graphical look at interesting facts and statistics in the energy industry.