Tag Archives: Nuclear Power

On Friday, Connecticut announced that it had reached agreement with Dominion, Eversource, and United Illuminating to keep the Millstone nuclear plant operating for 10 more years.  Not coincidentally, on the same day, the six New England Governors announced their “Commitment to Regional Cooperation on Energy Issues.”  An important element of that commitment is to work with ISO New England:

to evaluate market-based mechanisms that value the contribution that existing nuclear generation resources make to regional energy security and winter reliability.… More

Yesterday, FERC terminated the docket it opened in response to DOE Secretary Perry’s September proposal to compensate generators who maintain a 90-day fuel supply on-site.  The intent of the proposal was to compensate generators who provide reliability and resilience attributes to the grid.

The decision was unanimous, though there were several concurrences.  The commissioners were not persuaded that there is a reliability problem that requires immediate,… More

Governor Baker recently submitted Senate Bill No. 1965 to the Legislature.  It calls for utilities to solicit long-term purchases of renewable energy.  We are talking about as much as 1/3 of Massachusetts’ annual electricity use over a 15-25 year period.  Two rationales are often provided to justify the large purchase of Canadian hydropower.  First, cheap hydropower will ameliorate the high cost of electricity.  Second, it will help Massachusetts attain its initial Global Warming Solutions Act goal of reducing GHG emissions by 25% below 1990 levels by 2020. … More