The need to reduce fire risk is apparent, and we know how to do so through active forest management. Yet policy continues to slow those efforts down and that urgently needs to change.
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Dominion ordered to directly assign some transmission costs to data centers
Dominion Energy will need to change its transmission cost allocation policy to directly assign the cost of certain transmission infrastructure to the new large-load facilities — such as data centers — which made that infrastructure necessary, the Virginia State Corporation Commission said in an order filed July 31. The mandatory contribution in aid of construction,...
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Federal Grid Reforms Pick the Right Route and the Wrong Builder
The Department of Energy’s recent National Transmission Needs Study identifies several of these cases, where regions’ electricity costs would decline substantially if they were connected by a high-capacity transmission line. Providing these benefits to consumers, however, requires confronting not just the incentives that discourage utilities from building interregional lines, but the state laws that let incumbent monopolies control who builds them.
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Common Sense Returns to the Endangered Species Act
By rescinding the expansive regulatory definition of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act and returning to Justice Scalia’s narrower textual reading that limits “take” to direct actions against individual animals, federal agencies have struck a blow for property rights, reduced unnecessary land-use controls, and restored freer market incentives.
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Advisory Council on Historic Preservation Releases Section 106 Modernization
Congress is running short on time to pass a comprehensive permitting reform package before the lame duck this fall. On the table awaiting votes are bills reforming the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, and Clean Air Act. The National Historic Preservation Act, which has recently gained traction as a permitting barrier to projects, has received comparatively little attention in Congress.
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Federal government proposes Colorado River water use cuts for California, Arizona and Nevada
The federal government is proposing potentially steep cuts to water used by California, Arizona and Nevada, a major step toward figuring out the management of the dwindling Colorado River. The river provides water to states throughout the West, including drinking water and water for agricultural, industrial and municipal uses. As the West becomes drier, figuring out...
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The Wire Inside the Wire: Energy Capacity Hiding in Plain Sight
Building more is no substitute for building smarter. At times, this has been a challenge for America's energy infrastructure, particularly transmission. It is evident that the U.S. needs more transmission, but which transmission lines it builds matters for protecting ratepayers and keeping costs in check. An overwhelming number of House Members just reaffirmed this guiding principle for how America should approach the development of electric transmission.
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Leaked document reveals White House nuclear waste plan
The White House is pushing Congress to break a decades-long impasse around the handling of nuclear waste and entice states to get on board, according to a document obtained by POLITICO. The Trump administration is seeking changes to federal law to allow the Department of Energy to partner with states willing to store waste generated...
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Endangered Species Modernization and Genetic Rescue Will Flip The Script On Conservation
The 50-year era of “don’t-touch” conservation may have ended three weeks ago, after the Trump administration narrowed the definition of harm under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Harming an endangered species used to encompass damage to the land the species lives on. Landowners with endangered species were limited in how they could steward their plots of land. After all, endangered species’ recoveries relied on proactive efforts by landowners, which will remain intact regardless of the changing incentive structure of the ESA. The unnecessary penalties landowners had to incur were lifted, and conservation efforts will be able to fit the needs of the land and life rather than keeping the overburdening punishments of the ESA.
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Congress, amend the Endangered Species Act
The far-left environmental lobby has a problem with Rep. Bruce Westerman’s proposed amendments to the Endangered Species Act. The Sierra Club calls them “nothing short of a tragedy.” The Center for Biological Diversity simply calls it the “Extinction Act.” These slogans are alarming and completely disconnected from what the bill does and from the stubborn reality of a law that is failing...