nuclear-news

Fight building in Connecticut against subsidies for nuclear power

Connecticut girds for nuclear power debate as critics line up against Millstone support bill Independent generators say allowing the Dominion plant to bid into renewable energy solicitations would undermine competition. Utility Dive, 23 Feb 17  The bill to provide support for Connecticut’s sole nuclear power plant has yet to be drafted, but the opposition is already lining up.

Connecticut legislators are picking up where they left off last year and drafting a bill that would essentially make nuclear power a Class Irenewable resource, making it eligible to participate in state solicitations for renewable energy resources.

The nuclear plant is not named – indeed, the legislation is not even drafted – but there is only one nuclear plant in Connecticut, Dominion Energy’s 2,110 MW Millstone plant in Waterford.

Dominion has not been as vocal as other nuclear operators such as Exelon, which has for years said that it would have to close at least two of its nuclear plants in Illinois if it did not get some form of financial relief……

Nuclear subsidies and their discontents

As some have analysts have predicted, Illinois and New York’s success with ZECs has emboldened other states to follow suit.

In 2016, the Connecticut Senate passed SB 344, which would have allowed nuclear plants to bid into state RFPs as a renewable resource, but the bill did not make it through the state’s House of Representatives.

Legislators in the state are now drafting a bill, SB 106, that would take up those same issues again.

In its Feb. 7 testimony filed with Connecticut’s General Assembly, the Electric Power Supply Association, a trade group for independent generators, used SB 344 as the basis of its comments on the assumption that the bill will provide the “framework” for the new SB 106.

SB 344 would have expanded the definition of “renewable” so that nuclear power could bid into the state’s clean energy solicitation and be eligible to be awarded a 10-year power purchase agreement……..http://www.utilitydive.com/news/connecticut-girds-for-nuclear-power-debate-as-critics-line-up-against-mills/436685/

February 25, 2017 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, politics, USA