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Xcel Energy Submits IRP to Provide Path to Achieve 100 Percent Carbon-free Energy by 2050

LCG, July 9, 2019--Northern States Power Company, doing business as Xcel Energy, submitted its 2020-2034 Upper Midwest Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission on July 1. Xcel Energy (Xcel) states that the IRP "charts the path toward achieving some of the most ambitious carbon reduction goals of any utility in the U.S. Specifically - we aim to reduce carbon emissions 80 percent by 2030, and provide 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2050."

Interest in Eastern Offshore Wind Projects Rising

LCG, July 5, 2019--Two bills were introduced in the U.S. Senate last week to extend the federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for offshore wind energy. Federal subsidies, together with offshore wind technology advances and states' plans to increase renewables, may spur rapid investments in offshore wind.

Hanford Clean-Up Analysis Timetable Shortened

LCG, July 14, 2003--An agreement between Washington State's Department of Ecology and the Department of Energy includes a change to the deadline for completing analysis of alternative clean-up methods at the Hanford nuclear power plant, cutting nine years off the originally planned duration.

Currently, vitrification is the leading technology for containing 54 million gallons of radioactive and other wastes, and would seal the waste in glass. The analysis to be undertaken would consider other methods to vitrification, which would be performed at a plant estimated to cost $5.7 billion. Without the agreement just reached, these studies would have lasted until 2014, but will now be completed by 2005.

The change has been tentatively approved by the Environmental Protection Agency. Changes to the proposed treatment plant's design would mean wastes at different level of radioactivity would be vitrified by separate melters. The plan also moves up the final date for containing the waste to 2028, from 2046. So far, at least 1 million gallons of waste has seeped into the soil from drums that were not designed to hold the waste beyond the passage of two decades.

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