Dive Brief: State utility regulators and utilities such as American Electric Power and Southwestern Public Service Co. are urging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to approve the Southwest Power Pool’s fast-track interconnection proposal, according to filings at the agency on Thursday. However, NextEra Energy Resources, other independent power producers, clean energy trade groups and environmental groups asked FERC to reject the proposal, which they contend would give utilities and other “load-responsible entities” the sole ability to select projects for the process without state regulatory review. “We are concerned that [SPP’s Expedited Resource Adequacy Study] framework will undermine open access and enable preferential grid access for utility-affiliated generation, elevating the risk of uneconomic resources advancing through the queue, locking up transmission capacity, and raising costs for consumers,” the Clean Energy Buyers Association said in a filing. Dive Insight: Like some other grid operators, SPP is proposing to address near-term power supply needs by creating a temporary interconnection process that would run separately from its normal interconnection queue. SPP expects available capacity to drop below its reserve margins by 2027, according to its proposal, which it filed on May 22, a week after FERC rejected a similar proposal from the Midcontinent Independent System Operator. Under the proposal, load-responsible entities must verify whether a project can help close their resource adequacy deficiency, according to SPP. To enter the ERAS process, projects must meet readiness standards and other requirements. State oversight will help prevent utilities and other load-responsible entities from exercising undue preference, according to SPP. “LREs are subject to state regulation that mandates certain processes for resource selection and scrutinizes the prudence of the utility’s resource adequacy procurements, including ensuring cost-effective procurement to protect consumers,” the grid operator said in its proposal. The ERAS proposal was unanimously supported by the SPP Regional State Committee, which

Oil surged the most in more than three years after Israel carried out airstrikes against Iran, raising fears of a wider war in a region that accounts for a third of global crude production. West Texas Intermediate crude futures advanced more than 7% to settle near $73 a barrel, the biggest one-day jump since March 2022. The price of European natural gas — also a major Middle Eastern export — rallied, and haven demand pushed gold closer to a record. US President Donald Trump urged Tehran to make a deal “before it is too late,” in a post on Truth Social. The next attacks already being planned will be “even more brutal,” he said. The attack marks the most dramatic escalation yet in a conflict that has loomed in the background of the oil market for about 20 months, but had yet to result in a significant loss of barrels. A broader regional clash in the Middle East threatens a major rerouting of global oil flows by restricting supplies through the Strait of Hormuz in addition to the possible reduction of Iranian exports, with JPMorgan Chase & Co. pegging the potential impact at more than 2.1 million barrels a day.  Israel launched another round of attacks on several locations in Iran, including the Natanz nuclear site and Tabriz. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier said strikes targeted Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs and that the operation would continue until the threat was removed.  Hours after the first Israeli strikes, Tehran launched more than 100 drones, Israel Defence Forces said. Israel expects Iran to respond with missiles and further drone attacks, according to a military official. The Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a post on X that it will work with regional and international partners to urgently stop the aggression on Iran, taking

US President Donald Trump urged Iran to accept a nuclear deal to avoid further attacks, hours after Israel bombed the Islamic Republic’s atomic facilities and killed some of its top commanders. “There is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end,” Trump said on Truth Social. Tehran must make a deal “before it is too late,” he said. Israel said it struck around 100 targets across Iranian cities on Friday morning, using 200 planes. The attacks, which Israel has said will likely continue over the coming days, caused oil to surge as much as 13 percent, though it later pared its gains, and investors to buy havens such as gold and US Treasuries. Iran quickly responded by sending a wave of drones toward Israel, though it was unclear if they caused any damage. Some were intercepted over Jordan. Still, Israel expects Iran to retaliate with more drone strikes and also by firing ballistic missiles, according to a military official speaking on condition of anonymity. Explosions were heard across Tehran, Natanz – home to a key atomic site – and other cities, according to local and social media. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel “struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear-enrichment program.”  The head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami, and the military’s chief of staff, Mohammad Bagheri, were both killed, according to Iranian media. At least two other senior IRGC members also died. The United Nations’ atomic watchdog said there were no indications of increased radiation levels at Iran’s main uranium-enrichment site of Natanz, an early sign the strikes haven’t penetrated the layers of steel and concrete protecting the Islamic Republic’s nuclear stockpile. Still, Netanyahu said the strikes “will continue for as many days as it takes

Spain’s largest renewable fund Qualitas Energy is the frontrunner to acquire clean-energy company Cubico Sustainable Investments, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Qualitas has emerged as the leading bidder for the business after interest from KKR & Co.’s ContourGlobal, the other remaining suitor, has cooled, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private. London-based Cubico is owned by Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and PSP Investments. The Canadian pension funds have been working with Bank of America Corp. on the potential deal, seeking a valuation of about EUR 7 billion ($7.9 billion), Bloomberg News reported last year. A sale of Cubico could rank as one of the largest renewable energy deals this year globally and comes at a time the US administration’s refocus on boosting oil and gas supplies has reduced investor appetite for such assets. Qualitas may consider bringing in partners to help fund the acquisition or seek to divest some of Cubico’s assets shortly after a deal is completed, one of the people said. There’s no certainty the deliberations will lead to a transaction, and ContourGlobal’s interest could still be rekindled, the people said.  Representatives for Qualitas, KKR, OTPP and PSP declined to comment. Cubico was launched in 2015 by its current owners alongside Spain’s largest lender, Banco Santander SA, which sold its stake a year later. The company’s portfolio includes onshore wind and solar assets as well as battery energy storage systems and transmission lines, according to its website. It has a total installed capacity of 2.8 gigawatts, as well as 450 megawatts under construction and a development pipeline of more than 17 gigawatts. The firm has more than 500 employees globally. Qualitas chiefly invests in energy transition and sustainability-related assets. It has raised EUR 4.6 billion since its inception in 2006,

Dive Brief: There were 30 weather-related events in the United States and Canada that caused more than $1 billion in damages last year, but “none resulted in operator-initiated load shed, unlike previous events of a similar scale,” the North American Electric Reliability Corp. said Thursday in its annual State of Reliability report. On whole, the bulk power system “remained reliable but challenged by adverse weather conditions and transitions in resource mix and usage,” according to the report. “Today’s transmission system is demonstrably more reliable and resilient with the severity and duration of outages declining,” the reliability watchdog said. The North American grid is challenged by the proliferation of large loads, such as data centers, and the operating profile of inverter-based resources, NERC said. But “reliability improvements were observed in areas with high concentrations of battery energy storage systems,” also known as BESS. Dive Insight: The size and speed with which data centers are expanding across the country presents “a significant near-term reliability challenge,” NERC said. Though there is uncertainty surrounding how much data center capacity will be built, and how quickly, experts agree they are driving up electricity demand. Data centers could account for 44% of U.S. electricity load growth from 2023 to 2028, Bain & Company said in an October analysis. These large loads can be developed faster than the generation and transmission infrastructure needed to support them, “resulting in lower system stability,” NERC said in its report. “Additionally, the voltage sensitivity and rapidly changing, often unpredictable, power usage of these facilities creates new operating challenges.” NERC said more accurate models of the operational characteristics of data centers “are essential to reliability to prevent instability caused by these large changes in electricity demand.” There was also more than 45 GW of new inverter-based capacity added to the bulk power system in

The popular levelized cost of electricity metric doesn’t consider several key variables that are important for long-term system planning and deep decarbonization, according to a Tuesday report from the Clean Air Task Force. LCOE is widely used by regulators and developers, but system planning “should rely on more in-depth analyses,” the task force said. The LCOE “is an economic assessment of the cost of the energy-generating system including all the costs over its lifetime: initial investment, operations and maintenance, cost of fuel, cost of capital,” according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “[The] LCOE is the minimum price at which energy must be sold for an energy project to break even.” Examining the LCOE does not consider a power system’s needs, CATF said, nor a technology’s generation profile or generation characteristics such as dispatchability and inertia. “While the cost of projects is relatively straightforward to estimate, the value of projects requires a system assessment of needs, which often requires complex modeling analysis,” the report said. LCOE “often does not account for the full electricity system cost necessary to deploy a generator at a large scale, such as the transmission and distribution infrastructure necessary to deliver power to consumers,” the report argued. Clean firm technologies like nuclear fission and fusion, geothermal, combustion with carbon capture and storage, and zero-carbon fuel combustion “have been shown to significantly reduce the cost of decarbonization despite having a higher LCOE than wind and solar due to their offsetting impacts on reducing infrastructure and costs,” the report said. CATF noted that others have recognized LCOE’s limitations and devised more comprehensive measures, like the International Energy Agency’s Value-Adjusted LCOE, or VALCOE. LCOE is a “good metric to track historical technology cost evolution,” the report said, but “jurisdiction-specific system-level analysis” would better serve “decarbonization policy, industry strategy, and