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October 2011 To our clients and friends: We present you with our October issue of Mintz Levin’s Green Building Newsletter.
As photovoltaic solar costs have dropped, and with the support of renewable portfolio standards and incentives from federal, state, and local governments, rooftop solar installations on commercial properties have become more attractive.
Evolving State Incentives for Solar Energy In July of this year, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy signed into law Senate Bill 1243, "An Act Concerning the Establishment of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and Planning for Connecticut's Energy Future."2 In addition to provisions intended to centralize state energy policy and promote energy efficiency, SB 1243 created incentives to foster solar energy use. The Connecticut legislation bears several similarities to a law enacted in Massachusetts three years earlier, which also included incentives to foster solar energy. Differences between these two state solar energy strategies reveal how policy goals for solar have changed in the intervening years and some of the lessons learned about how to foster its use. In particular, they reflect the influence of the stagnating US economy, the continuing struggles of solar developers to obtain financing to build their projects and the obvious economies of size available to larger, utility scale solar installations.
Privacy and the Smart Grid: Utilities Regulators and the Adoption of Smart Grid Data Protection Rules Privacy concerns have accompanied the rise of smart grid technologies as a means of helping utilities to efficiently deliver reliable, economic, and sustainable electricity services. By way of background, "smart grid" refers to the digital technology used to computerize and automate the traditional electric utility grid. This technology allows for two-way digital communication between a smart meter device installed at a consumer's home and the electric utility's network operations center regarding energy consumption for monitoring and billing purposes. » For more information on smart grid technology, click here.
Please contact these professionals for questions or comments regarding this edition: Gabriel Schnitzler David L. O’Connor Christian W. Termyn Julia M. Siripurapu Cynthia J. Larose Billy Najam Devon Cain
Click here to view our Energy and Clean Tech Connections newsletter. Click here to view archives, articles, and past legal updates.
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David M. Alin Frederick S. Armstrong Dean Atkins Brady Berg Scott Biel Joel R. Bloom Thomas R. Burton, III Allan Caggiano Susan E. Carlson Ralph A. Child Jonathan M. Cosco Andrew A. Dean Meryl J. Epstein Eric J. Freeman Stephen E. Friedberg Daniel O. Gaquin Jason W. Georgitis David A. Gilbert Jeremy D. Glaser William M. Hill Kevin M. Kappel Jennifer M. Kiely Phillip H. Lee Peter D. McCarthy Jeffrey J. McCourt Jeffrey A. Moerdler Mary Lee Moore Marilyn Newman David L. O'Connor Susan P. Phillips Jennifer Sacco Smith Gabriel Schnitzler Leslie Slater Samuel M. Starr Bryan M. Stockton Jennifer Sulla Sahir Surmeli Colin G. Van Dyke Maureen J. Walsh Peter B. Zlotnick |
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