Bloomberg: Customers Could Pay $2.5 Billion for Nuclear Plants That Never Get Built

U.S. electricity consumers could end up paying more than $2.5 billion for nuclear plants that never get built.

Utilities including Duke Energy Corp., Dominion Resources Inc. and NextEra Energy Inc. are being allowed by regulators to charge $1.7 billion for reactors that exist only on paper, according to company disclosures and regulatory filings. Duke and Dominion could seek approval to have ratepayers pony up at least another $839 million, the filings show.

The Hill: Trump Pledges 'Energy Revolution'

Donald Trump promised Monday to bring about an “energy revolution” if he is elected president.

In a speech laying out his economic agenda, the Republican nominee contrasted his plans with what he framed as the destructive policies from President Obama and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

“Clinton not only embraces President Obama’s job-killing energy restrictions, but wants to expand them, including going after oil and natural gas production that employs some 10 million Americans,” Trump said.

MassLive: Mass. Governor Charlie Baker Signs Hydropower, Wind Bill Into Law

Massachusetts is poised to purchase more of its energy from renewable sources than ever before, under a new law signed Monday by Gov. Charlie Baker.

"Through solicitation and procurement of long-term contracts for hydro and wind power, Massachusetts and New England can remain a leader in clean and renewable energy production," Baker said.

Baker, a Republican, said the work is just beginning. "The real heavy lifting on this starts now," Baker said. "They've given us a framework to work with, but now we actually have to do something with it."

InsideClimate News: In Corporate March to Clean Energy, Utilities Not Required

A curious thing happened while U.S. utilities were focusing on cheap fracked gas, expensive nuclear power, what to do about coal, and how to fight renewable energy models that threatened their bottom line.

Some of the nation's largest corporations decided not to wait for utilities and took their interest in renewable energy into their own hands. They bought their own clean power. And they bought it directly from the companies that produced it. No utility middleman needed.

This clean power revolt, led by some of the biggest corporate energy consumers, is the latest threat to the power purchase and delivery system that's been in place since Thomas Edison invented it.

Guardian: How Florida and Colorado Are Trying to Build Smart Cities From the Ground Up

Masdar, on the edges of Abu Dhabi, was billed as the world’s first sustainable city when it was conceived in 2006. It was intended to be a zero-carbon, zero-waste city, with smart technology embedded across all the city’s functions. A decade on and ambitions have cooled. The completion date has moved from 2016 to 2030 and city authorities have said it won’t achieve the original aim of being a net zero-emissions city.

In South Korea, the purpose-built city of Songdo was built on land reclaimed from the Yellow Sea. It is an “aerotropolis” -- where an airport, in this case Incheon, is the anchor for a city rather than vice versa. Planned as “the world’s smartest city,” it has sensors embedded into everything from waste management systems to roads, tracking citizens by measuring consumption, emissions and other activities. Yet the tech-driven city remains under-populated and unfinished.

While these cities may not have lived up to their original promise, new, smaller-scale projects, spearheaded by private companies, are aiming to act as laboratories for smart city planning.