EarlyBird News

As companies ask their employees to work from home, residential energy usage has jumped over the past year. In comparison to 2016 – 2019, residential electricity usage increased by 10%, commercial decreased by 12%, and industrial decreased by 14%. Particularly, this has been the case in the most densely populated areas of the U.S such […]

The Department of Energy (DOE) just released its new Hydrogen Program Plan, outlining the strategic framework for researching and implementing hydrogen energy technologies. The program is designed to advance affordable production, transportation, storage, and use of hydrogen by different economic sectors and industries. It forms part of a cross departmental initiative with the Offices of […]

Over the past week, daily COVID-19 have been quickly increasing as Massachusetts slowly reopened businesses. This has seen a 300% increase in cases since Labor Day. Given this situation, Governor Charlie Baker has issued new orders and limits on face coverings, gatherings, and hours of operation for businesses. A state-wide mandate enforcing face coverings was […]

The utility regulators in Rhode Island have approved National Grid to increase natural gas rates in the state following the COVID-19 economic impacts of $30.7M. However, only half of the impact ($15.35M) will be transferred to ratepayers at first, and the rest will be deferred. On average instead of an average payment increase of $97 […]

Between September 22 and 24 Natural Gas prices experienced a 23% gain in prices closing at $2.248/mmBtu, the highest two-day gain since November 11, 2018. Part of this is attributed to increased usage, and lower buildup of storage. The average five-year build of storage for the week ending on September 1st has been of 80Bcf, […]

Recentlty CME Group, the world’s largest derivative exchange for different asset classes announced plans to launch the first ever water future. It is going to be based on the NASDAQ Veles California Water Index (NQH2) and is expected to be launched in late Q4 after regulatory approval. The initiative will serve as a tool for […]

Tidal Power What is tidal power? Tidal power is created by converting energy from the tides to electricity using turbines places underwater. Unlike the wind and the sun, tides are very predictable making it a very reliable method of harnessing energy. Recently, Verdant Power announced it is developing an $8M project to install tidal turbines […]

On July 14th 2020 the US Federal Appeals court decided to uphold Regulatory Commission Order 841 giving way for transmission grid operators to open their markets for participation of energy storage assets. Across deregulated regions in the U.S this means in a near future storage will be competing with other generation assets in the wholesale […]

Given California’s increase in frequency of wildfires the largest utility in the state, PG&E, has decided to cut power on days with exceptionally high winds to prevent power lines from starting fires. PG&E has admitted that Camp Fire from last November was began from a line that snapped during windy weather; Camp Fire did $16.5B […]

The new Vineyard Wind project seeks to help expand Massachusetts clean energy supply per the newest Renewable Portfolio Standard in producing a total of 800MW. Currently the three major utilities have sided with governor Baker’s administration on the initiative to surcharge customers for sourcing electricity from this project. On the other side of this is […]