Energy

• Maryland’s General Assembly has passed a bill that calls for a 30% tax credit for the deployment of energy storage technologies that runs from 2018 through 2022. The credit is capped at $5,000 for residential storage projects and at $75,000 for commercial projects with an overall cap on credits awarded of $750,000 per year.The bill now goes to Gov. Larry Hogan (R), but it seems to have garnered enough votes – passing unanimously in the Senate and by 101-11 votes in the House – to avoid or survive a veto.

Regardless of how regulators resolve their investigation into an April 2 earthquake in southeastern Ohio, drilling and well operators in the area will almost certainly need to do more careful monitoring and reporting in the future, now that there’s a known seismic risk. “Any time an earthquake occurs, that’s an indication that there’s a fault there,” said geologist Michael Brudzinski at Miami University in Oxford.The magnitude 3.0 quake on April 2 took place at 7:58 a.m. in the Marietta unit of Wayne National Forest in southeastern Ohio. [node:read-more:link]

Researchers from Leigh University say emissions from coal-fired power plants can impact pregnant women 20 to 30 miles away from the source, leading to increased incidence of low birth weights. The paper, "The Impact of Prenatal Exposure to Power Plant Emissions on Birth Weight," is the first scholarly look at the prenatal effects of coal emissions. [node:read-more:link]

Nevada legislators are looking at several bills that would expand Nevada's renewable energy output. A study by the American Jobs Project, a nonprofit focused on creating jobs in clean energy sectors, identified solar and battery technology as the state's most promising fields. [node:read-more:link]

Experts in the industry have already pointed out, repeatedly, that the coal jobs are extremely unlikely to come back. The plight of the coal industry is more a function of changing energy markets and increased demand for natural gas than anything else. The chief executive of the nation's largest privately held coal operation said that Trump “can't bring coal back.” Another largely overlooked point about coal jobs is that there just aren't that many of them relative to other industries. [node:read-more:link]

Today, President Trump is poised to release a long-anticipated executive order to roll back the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration’s signature climate initiative.  The order is expected to be accompanied by directives to lift a moratorium on federal land coal leases and to cease the use of the social cost of carbon — all part of a broad campaign to dismantle environmental regulations on the power sector that Trump blames for the decline of the coal economy in the United States.  But while rescinding the rules could help slow coal power’s decline in the short term, analysts say it is [node:read-more:link]

On the same day President Donald Trump signed an executive order to end the Clean Power Plan, the world's largest beer company announced it would buy 100% of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2025. Anheuser-Busch InBev will start renewable energy shifts in Mexico, which is home to the company's largest brewery. The company will be buying power from a major wind and solar project being built in Mexico. AB InBev has joined RE100, a group of major global businesses committed to converting to 100% renewable energy. [node:read-more:link]

Solar industry jobs doubled in the Cleveland, Ohio area last year, driving about half of the state’s total job growth in the sector, according to new data released today by The Solar Foundation.  However, the industry’s future growth in Cuyahoga County and elsewhere in the state could be jeopardized by ongoing uncertainty over Ohio’s renewable portfolio standards.  The detailed data are a follow-up to a nationwide report released by the group last month. [node:read-more:link]

Many fossil fuel executives are celebrating President Trump’s move to dismantle the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. But their cheers are muted, because market forces and state initiatives continue to elevate coal’s rivals, especially natural gas and renewable energy. In coal’s favor, there is the new promise that federal lands will be open for leasing, ending an Obama-era moratorium. [node:read-more:link]

Maryland's Senate approved a ban on fracking in the state, a bill Gov. Larry Hogan has pledged to sign. Maryland would join Vermont as the only states that ban fracking through legislation. Vermont does not have the shale formations containing natural gas where fracking could be done but Maryland has it in the western part of the state. [node:read-more:link]