Energy News Roundup: July 3-July 9

This week in regional energy news …

• Mass High Tech reports that smart grid spending in the next five years will exceed $45 billion.  ISO New England, meanwhile, announces sensor upgrades to the grid, funded with help from a federal smart grid grant.
• Dennis McGinn, of the thinktank CNA Military Advisory Board, which is composed of former armed services officers, is on a speaking tour throughout Maine to promote energy independence.
• With a demand level of 27,154 megawatts, July 6, 2010, ranks as the fourth-highest demand day of all time, according to ISO New England.  The past week’s heat wave has affected utilities and their customers throughout the Northeast.
• In order to “more expeditiously to align our regulations with our better understanding of the greenhouse gas implications of biomass energy,” Ian Bowles, the Secretary of Massachusetts’s Executive Office of Energy and Environment, directs the Department of Energy Resources (link will open PDF) to draft new rules pertaining to biomass incentives in the Bay State’s renewable portfolio standard.  Draft rules must be proposed by October 31 and final regulations approved before the end of 2010.  Check out reactions from CLF, the American Lung Association, and others.
• A former defense site in Moscow, Maine, is one of the latest locations identified for wind power in the state.
• Nova Scotia Power hopes to construct a $200 million, 345-kV transmission line between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and New Brunswick has signed a letter of intent to build a second nuclear reactor in the province.
• Maine may implement a first-in-the-world plan to sell carbon credits that result from successful home weatherizations.