PURPA started the industry on the road to restructuring and is one of the first laws that began the deregulation of energy companies. It was meant to promote energy conservation (reduce demand) and promote greater use of domestic energy and renewable energy (increase supply). Public administration, public policy, public management, planning, law, economics, engineering, environmental studies, nonprofit leadership, and related disciplines. Helping define utility policy and management as a visible area of scholarship and practice.
If you need assistance locating your organization’s local business rules, contact your local level support. This journal welcomes contributions that support and advance the UN’s sustainable development goals, in particular, SDG6 (Clean water and sanitation), SDG7 (Affordable and clean energy), and SDG9 (Industry innovation and infrastructure). QFs produce power from sources other than fossil fuels, or they make power using a combination of fossil fuels with renewable energy sources. PURPA was the only existing federal law that requires competition in the utility industry and the only law that encourages renewables, if it is cost competitive with conventional polluting resources, until the 2009 amendments to the Defense Production https://seoadder.info/the-key-elements-of-great-14/ Act and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
- Previous studies have found a significant correlation between the duration of power outages and whether the areas are minority-dominated/non-White.During Hurricane Irma in 2017, Florida counties with a high Hispanic or Latino population experienced longer outages than White-dominated counties.xli Another study found higher average duration of outages between 2002 and 2004 in American Indian communities than in all others.xlii
- One community-based initiative, We the People Michigan, identified disinvested grid infrastructure in Southeast Michigan being a key driver of inequities in power outagesxlv and has documented discriminatory patterns in grid modernization investments.xlvi More specifically, their analysis found that infrastructure hardening (which can include a wide range of activities from upgrading wires to trimming trees) schedules favor wealthier neighborhoods, while efforts for complete modernization of the grid favor industrial and municipal customers over residents.
- Governance, regulation, affordability, reliability, resilience, sustainability, equity, finance, planning, implementation, innovation, and institutional performance.
- This free market approach presented investment opportunity and government encouragement for more development of environment-friendly, renewable energy projects and technologies; the law created a market in which non-utility Independent Power Producers developed, and some energy market players failed.
We look forward to sharing these resources with participants and incorporating them into our community activities. We gratefully https://goodmanner.info/2019/07/11/short-course-on-experts-what-you-need-to-know/ acknowledge organizations that have expressed interest in, support for, or willingness to remain engaged with the development of this emerging community. The primary sources for the contact information listed here are official company sources, such as their corporate website and verified social media profiles. Our team also promptly updates and cross-checks data when verified company representatives report discrepancies in contact details.
Unplanned power plant outages fell sharply during 2025/26 winter storms: FERC-NERC report
One community-based initiative, We the People Michigan, identified disinvested grid infrastructure in Southeast Michigan being a key driver of inequities in power outagesxlv and has documented discriminatory patterns in grid modernization investments.xlvi More specifically, their analysis found that infrastructure hardening (which can include a wide range of activities from upgrading wires to trimming trees) schedules favor wealthier neighborhoods, while efforts for complete modernization of the grid favor industrial and municipal customers over residents. Another step toward reducing disparities in power outage impact includes establishing community-based criteria for prioritizing restoration efforts, such as health and economic vulnerabilities, population density, and neighborhoods with high historical outage trends.xlix Research has suggested that a key step in addressing disparities in power outages is prioritizing historically neglected neighborhoods in power restoration efforts once outages occur.l We are very grateful to the University of Chicago Press and Edward Elgar Publishing for supporting the development of the Utility Policy & Management community and helping connect our members with relevant scholarship and resources. PUCs are also modifying customer electricity rates and interconnection standards to support greater investment by families and businesses in energy efficiency, distributed renewable energy, and CHP. These policies often address infrastructure development, service standards, and mechanisms for promoting conservation and reducing environmental impact. The study found that the lowest priority areas for hardening have the highest rates of poverty and unemployment.xlvii The initiative has, as a result, called for transparency on the types of infrastructure hardening that take place in disinvested neighborhoods as well as prioritization of these neighborhoods for grid modernization.xlviii
- QFs produce power from sources other than fossil fuels, or they make power using a combination of fossil fuels with renewable energy sources.
- Contact Us about Energy Resources for State, Local, and Tribal Governments
- We look forward to sharing these resources with participants and incorporating them into our community activities.
- This journal welcomes contributions that support and advance the UN’s sustainable development goals, in particular, SDG6 (Clean water and sanitation), SDG7 (Affordable and clean energy), and SDG9 (Industry innovation and infrastructure).
- Enroll in your utility’s voluntary “Green Pricing” program, paying a premium to match your electricity usage with purchased renewable energy or RECs.
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They purchase and retire RECs on the customer’s behalf, sometimes investing in new local renewable generation. Water conservation keeps usage in lower-cost utility tiers, maximizing savings and potentially stabilizing future local water rates. Based on average rates, 10% waste on a typical bill can cost a household around $150 annually.
DOE’s Audrey Robertson on Growing US Critical Mineral Supply
267 would alter those regulations to make it easier for smaller plants to get approval quickly. According to the bill’s proponents, current regulations are unwieldy and represent a significant hurdle to creating more hydropower plants. If enacted, the bill would change some of https://www.pankisi.info/if-you-read-one-article-about-read-this-one-19/ the regulations in the United States surrounding hydropower by making it easier for smaller hydropower stations to be created. When oil prices went down, utilities had to honor the rates of those contracts, leading to high power prices. Critics of PURPA cited that power producers signed multi-year cost of electricity contracts at a time when energy prices were high.
The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and the American Public Power Association also supported FERC’s proposed changes. Investor-owned utility companies, represented by their national association the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), supported FERC’s proposed updates to PURPA. One idea for updating PURPA is to give more flexibility to individual states to use more competitive prices when setting QF rates. In September 2019, during a FERC hearing, its Chairman Neil Chatterjee voiced his support for making changes to PURPA in light of “tremendous technological advances in renewables” since passage of PURPA in 1978. In October 2018, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) made suggestions in a report that FERC should modernize PURPA for the energy sector.