Facilities that achieve 60 percent efficiency will be eligible for a full REC per megawatt-hour.

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Ted Wiley, an Aquion vice president, tells me the company is currently deploying in the kilowatt-hour scale, but will have megawatt-hour systems online next year.

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In fact, government and power plant data show that burning woody biomass releases 1.5 times as much carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour generated as coal, according to the Massachusetts Environmental Energy Alliance.

FORBES: Massachusetts Addresses "Biomass Loophole" and Limits Subsidies

Specifically, the regulations require that biomass facilities must be 50 percent efficient slightly better than a state-of-the-art, coal-fired power plant to be eligible for one-half of a renewable energy certificate (REC) per megawatt-hour.

FORBES: Massachusetts Addresses "Biomass Loophole" and Limits Subsidies

The rule for existing sources, now under development, would work like this: Because coal and gas are combined in a single category, the EPA would cap an average rate of, say, 1, 400 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour.

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Similarly, solar thermal energy--which harnesses the heat of the sun to generate steam-powered turbines--consumes more than 2, 600 liters of water per megawatt hour, 200 liters more than coal-powered generation needs to produce the same energy.

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Tracking website Blockchain logged 982 megawatt hours of electricity consumption over a 24-hour period by Bitcoin miners around the world.

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Higgins intends to attach to the line 200 megawatts (peak output) of windmills, ostensibly generating electricity at a cost of 7 cents a kilowatt-hour, and has contracted to buy all the output of a 65-megawatt solar plant that would be an eco-loss-leader costing 25 cents per kwh.

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May 18, approximately 200-350 megawatts of wind generation per hour, totaling about 1, 400 megawatt hours, were impacted.

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