In response to the growing concern regarding climate change and the desire to make Puerto Rico more environmentally sustainable, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló announced a commitment to reduce Puerto Rico’s carbon emissions by 50% within the next five years – “the most ambitious agenda of any US state government.” The Governor’s commitment is part of a broader pledge called “The Puerto Rico Pledge for Climate Change” which also includes, among other things, plans to increase resiliency investments and to support conservation research. Of particular note, the pledge “emphasizes the need to transform the island’s antiquated power grid into a modern, resilient energy network, with a long-term goal of de
In furtherance of New York’s Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) process, the New York Public Service Commission (PSC) made updates to its Standardized Interconnection Requirements (SIR), “…to make it easier for renewable distributed generators, including energy storage systems, to connect to the state's electric grid.” Over the course of the past year, PSC has made several comprehensive efforts to ensure “the deployment of good, clean energy projects.” The most recent of these efforts were mobilized this past October and included “improved technical screens to identify projects that could be fast-tracked, enhanced metering and performance standards, new interconnection rules for larger projec
This month, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) issued a draft plan involving the New York Bight, which could ensure up to 9.6 gigawatts of offshore wind energy. The identified wind energy area (WEA) lease tracts consist of up to 793,862 acres; the draft WEAs are smaller than those initially identified during the public comment process, which was met with objections from the commercial fishing industry. Providing for transit lanes seems to be a priority related to the envisioned project: despite being in the draft phase, “BOEM has already put developers with New England leases on notice that they will be required to set aside vessel transit lanes, one demand from the comme