by Grace Kurdian As I sat in the morning conference session of RETECH 2009 and listened to the line-up of speakers, I couldn't help but think that for the renewable energy industry, this is much more than a conference/expo; this could be the equivalent of Davos (though more broadly accessible) in terms of bringing together leaders from industry, government, NGOs, and legal and other professional services to discuss the status of the industry, critical issues and where we are moving in policy and legislation.  Disclaimer: I haven't ever even been invited to Davos (but would go if asked).&...

Our special counsel, Paul Cellucci, is the former ambassador to Canada.  We caught him right after President Obama’s trip to Canada and asked a few questions.   What’s the bottom line on President Obama’s meetings with Prime Minister Harper?   Clearly the President went to Canada to collaborate and not to confront. We saw that dramatically in his comments on the scary Buy American provisions of the stimulus bill. He told Canadians that worldwide recession is not the time to start restricting trade. He pledged that the U.S. would abide by all of its international obligations....

by Grace Kurdian   With the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Tax Act of 2009, the States will be receiving money targeted toward the encouragement of, among other things, growth of the renewable energy industry and job preservation/creation.  I heard just yesterday from New Jersey's Board of Public Utilities ("BPU") how it is planning to allocate the funds targeted toward encouragement of projects within its sphere.  If you've got a "shovel ready" project, turn your attention to the BPU next week, when Staff will propose parameters for the ...

By Frances Ruml Beckley The American Recovery and Reinvestment Tax Act of 2009 was signed into law by President Obama today.  It includes several significant extensions to existing incentives for clean energy and also some new programs.  The legislation is estimated to be worth almost $20 billion to renewable energy industries over the next decade.  Even the most jaded amongst us has to agree that that's enough for quite a few solar panels and windmills and biomass engines.  When compared to prior law, more of the incentives are provided in the form of immediate credi...

We wrote last week about the state of Florida's insurance market with the withdrawal of State Farm from Florida, potentially driving 700,000 policyholders to the state-funded Citizens Property Insurance Corporation. We'd like to follow up on one aspect of that issue - hurricane risk driving an insurer out of the market - and look at a report in Business Insurance about reduced capacity in the offshore windstorm market. Specifically, Advent Capital (Holdings)) PLC has stopped writing that coverage. This is part of a larger trend that we are following in the marketplace. According to the article...

NEWARK, Feb. 6 -- Carrier Clinic, a Belle Mead, NJ-based healthcare center, recently signed a contract with a solar developer that allows the non-profit institution to benefit from federal renewable energy investment tax credits and other renewable incentives with a state-of-the-art financing structure.  The contract supports development of a large-scale solar photovoltaic array that will provide up to 50% of the electrical power for the not-for-profit healthcare provider for 25 years. Institutions interested in tapping into renewable energy are increasingly turning to the so-c...

Last week State Farm, the country's largest home and auto insurer, and Florida's second-largest home insurer (over 700,000 policies) announced that it was withdrawing from the Florida homeowners insurance market. It wanted to raise its rates by almost fifty percent and the Florida regulators refused. State Farm's announcement coincidentally is timed with an announcement of a different sort in connection with a report on the largest home insurer in Florida: Citizens Property Insurance Corp, the state-created insurer of last resort. (Wikipedia refers to it as the insurer of only resort for som...