Exelon Energy is a major generation company, and one that is pretty heavily invested in nuclear.  Over 93% of their 31,000 megawatt fleet is nuclear fueled, making Exelon the owner of Americas largest nuclear generation portfolio and the third largest nuclear fleet in the world.  However, the big news out of Exelon this past week was not a new nuclear proposal, but instead a major acquisition of renewable energy assets. 

North Carolina is leading the Southeast in the emerging new energy economy and our state's valuable sustainable energy businesses, local community leaders and organizations, educational institutions, and others are ready and eager to start new projects to make us a national leader. Below are just a few of the recent major announcements and innovations from across our state.

The North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association’s Board of Directors is elected annually by its membership.  In adherence with our bylaws, each member of NCSEA in good standing is entitled to one vote in the Board of Directors election.  The election results will be certified and announced at NCSEA’s Annual Membership Meeting, which will be held during the “MAKING ENERGY WORK” conference on Thursday, September 30^th in Winston-Salem.  Directors will serve for three years beginning on January 1, 2011.  One third of the Directors are elected each year and no Director can serve more than two consecutive terms.  Below you will find instructions on how to cast your ballot.

This past week a major magazine published an article with the title “Watts up – people habitually underestimate their energy consumption” that highlighted a study from this past July on energy consumption.  Among the study’s findings was that while people were good at ranking items by energy use (i.e. a desktop uses more energy than a laptop) they did not realize just how much more energy the desktop actually used.  As items got bigger (like washing machines and HVAC units) peoples guesses of the difference in energy use between items got much worse, sometimes underestimating energy use by over a factor of 10!  To make matters even worse, the study found that when people were asked to estimate energy savings they did the same thing.  In plain English – people thought that the everyday items used much less energy than they actually do and that “energy efficient” items saved much less energy than they actually were saving.  This misconception leads people to focus on smaller energy conservation actions and ignore larger energy efficiency measures as they think that the energy saved with either activity is pretty much the same – even though it is not.

The North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association (NCSEA) is seeking a dynamic Policy Analyst to help develop, promote and implement specific and systemic policies and solutions for the advancement of a sustainable energy economy in North Carolina.   The Policy Analyst will play a direct and collaborative role in creating opportunities in sustainable energy for North Carolina’s citizens, businesses and state and local governments.

In 2009, North Carolina ranked 10th in the nation for new solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity additions, adding 7.8 megawatts (MW) of solar to our electric grid. This is according to the Interstate Renewable Energy Council’s annual market report released in July – U.S. Solar Market Trends 2009. These numbers do not include solar thermal water heating (does not generate electricity), which has experienced similarly rapid market growth across North Carolina.

On August 3, 2010, the North Carolina Utilities Commission ("Commission") issued changes to the rules implementing NC's Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard (REPS), Rules R8-64 to R8-69.  The changes are mostly procedural, but will impact how the owners and operators of renewable energy facilities become eligible to produce qualifying Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) and otherwise comply with the REPS.  The new rules are set forth in the Commission's August 3rd Order in Docket E-100, Sub 113.

This past July the Utilities Commission considered an application by Duke Energy to register two test co-firings utilizing woody biomass with coal.  While the evidentiary portion of this hearing has closed, there has not been a final ruling from the Commission on the eligibility of these facilities to earn renewable energy credits (RECs), nor have they indicated which direction they are leaning.

The General Assembly declared to all competitors in the global renewable energy supply chain – home-grown and otherwise – that North Carolina is open for business.  On July 10, in an 84-19 vote legislators passed House Bill 1829 entitled “Renewable Energy Incentives", sending Governor Perdue a package of improved market based incentives for our state’s rapidly growing renewable energy and energy efficiency industries.