August 13, 2009

Feed-in Tariffs Waste Resources and Make It Harder to Meet Europe’s Renewable Energy Goals

Michael Giberson Feed-in tariffs waste resources and make it harder to meet Europe’s renewable energy goals according to a guest post by Omar Abbosh on the Financial Times Energysource blog, at least in the absence of a single, integrated electric power market in Europe.  Abbosh, a managing director at Accenture, notes that generous feed-in tariffs …

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Does “Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is” Make Betting a Free Speech Issue?

Michael Giberson Miriam Cherry and Robert Rogers explore the interaction of “Prediction Markets and the First Amendment.”  If prediction markets are “expressive,” does that mean that U.S. government actions that constrain prediction market development potentially raise First Amendment issues on free speech grounds? The authors propose a way forward in which courts, at least until …

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Who Controls Access to Consumer Power Consumption Data?

Michael Giberson In Pennsylvania, a debate over how non-utility electricity retailers get access to a customer’s power use data.  The new rule allows an energy retailer to gain consumer data based only on oral assurance to the PUC that the customer wants their utility to release it, even if the customer had previously requested that …

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The Unequivocal Superiority of the Feed-in Tariffs for Renewable Power?

Michael Giberson At the IEEE Spectrum’s EnergyWise blog, Bill Sweet discusses one implication of current low power prices: even with generous subsidies, a potential wind or solar power plant project may not be profitable if power prices are expected to stay low. Sweet seems to believe this is a problem that requires a solution.  In …

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