With a decarbonizing electricity business and the West perennially coping with drought, pumped-storage projects would seem to be the ideal win-win solution. Carbon-free electricity is generated by water from an upper reservoir falling on a turbine. Water is then pumped from the lower reservoir back to the upper reservoir chiefly using renewable power to be used again and again. Federal legislation signed in October may provide a boost to pumped storage projects under development by lengthening the duration of preliminary permits issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The new law, named the Water Resources Development Act, extended the duration of a FERC preliminary permit for pumped-storage projects to four years.