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ELECTRIC VEHICLES: The Biden administration is expected to announce new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles this week, extending Trump-era policies aimed at boosting domestic manufacturing. (New York Times)
ALSO:
POLITICS: A $6.6 million fuel industry ad campaign is targeting President Biden and Democratic Senate candidates over support for tougher emissions standards for cars. (NBC News)
GRID:
TRANSPORTATION: U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg calls for developers to emulate the public-private, transit-oriented real estate approach behind a high-speed rail line under construction between Las Vegas and southern California. (E&E News)
CLIMATE:
SOLAR: A northern Maine community of around 11,400 homes and businesses was able to run on only solar power last week for about 12 cumulative hours, a first-ever occurrence for utility Versant. (Maine Public Radio)
NORFOLK, Va. — Rainstorms at Tidewater Gardens public housing complex were anxiety-inducing enough. That dread among parents was only amplified when the skies opened up on schooldays.
Fast-pooling water would convert the low-lying community along the Elizabeth River floodplain into a soupy mess that trapped cars and made flippers a more fitting footwear choice than rubber boots.
“If it rained for just 10 minutes straight, it was flooded and you were stuck,” said Zenobia Wilson, a mother of three and resident of the public housing complex for 12 years. “We had to carry our children on our backs to get them to and from school.
“It was beyond boots because the water was up to our knees, every time.”
Norfolk is on the cusp of acting to tame the torrents that regularly saturated a marginalized neighborhood as climate change-induced rainfall intensifies.
Their proposed remedy is a massive endeavor to reshape both land use and water flow as the city of 233,000 plugs away at its ambitious St. Paul’s Transformation Project.
What’s called the Blue Greenway is the environmental centerpiece of the first phase of a hotly debated, $400 million undertaking to reinvent the housing, layout and vibe of a poor, majority Black community along the city’s neglected east-side waterfront.
Ideally, the linear park still in the design stage will blend the practical with the pretty to fabricate a linear 23-acre resource to capture storm water runoff, welcome back a slice of the natural world and appeal to picnickers and outdoor exercisers deprived of green spaces for decades.
Construction likely won’t begin until next spring, but landscape architect Tim Stromberg has been huddling with a team of engineers, environmental scientists, architects and other specialists for several years. They’re striving to turn a liability — stormwater runoff — into an asset.
“This area is a park desert,” said the 45-year-old principal with Norfolk-based Stromberg/Garrigan & Associates. “We see this as a health and wellness project.”
Most of the Blue Greenway will flow through the broad footprint of what was Tidewater Gardens, built in the early 1950s atop a tidal creek and a radiating network of wetlands.
The last of the red brick, barracks style apartments — where residents tangled regularly with leaks and mold infestations — was demolished in August 2023. The nearby Tidewater Park Elementary School, where parents dropped off their children, is shuttered and set to be torn down.
Just feet from the school, along bustling East Brambleton Avenue, crews will eventually “daylight” Newton’s Creek, constricted to an underground culvert for decades. That liquid spine of the Blue Greenway will wind its way south to the center of a pillar of east Norfolk’s Black community, the Basilica of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception.
Roughly three acres of newly constructed wetlands and the primary water channel — about the length of four football fields and up to 130 feet wide — will be the workhorses of the engineered project. They will play a gigantic role in filtering pollutants from absorbed runoff before it empties into the Elizabeth River and then the Chesapeake Bay.
Its price tag of up to $60 million will be covered with city dollars and federal grants.
Basically, it will resemble an elongated bathtub that is 8 to 9 feet deep. Its wide, encircling rim is designed as a necklace of green space dotted with amenities.
Norfolk, part of Virginia’s expansive Tidewater region, is trying to address warming of the planet on multiple fronts because of the well-documented double-whammy effect of climate change.
Not only are deluges more intense, but sea levels are rising faster here than anywhere else on the East Coast. The latter is exacerbated by a phenomenon called subsidence. Simply put, coastal lands are sinking because communities are withdrawing — and not replenishing — enormous quantities of groundwater.
On a separate but complementary climate front, the city is in the midst of advancing a gargantuan floodwall endeavor made up of tide gates, levees, pump stations and natural features such as oyster reefs and native vegetation along the shoreline. The federal government is covering 65% of the $2.6 billion project specifically designed to protect Norfolk from catastrophic storms. State and local funds are supposed to cover the remainder.
Preventing flooding is just one of the Greenway’s climate and health benefits. It also can clean the air and mitigate the urban heat island effect, which is especially harsh in congested cities where concentrations of asphalt and concrete raise temperatures to dangerous highs.
“Climate change is about adaptation,” Stromberg said about incorporating the Blue Greenway into a reimagined neighborhood. “That made us think about the scenarios of today and of the future.”
Once it’s built, “maintaining this will require five or six city departments,” Stromberg said. “This could serve as a model for how to repurpose a piece of land for a higher and better use.”
Landscape architects, he explained, tie the built and urban environments to natural systems.
“Creating something like this is a landscape architect’s dream,” Stromberg said about SGA’s largest project to date. “The reward when it’s built will be to see people using the space.”
After all, the handprints of former Tidewater Gardens residents are all over the Greenway’s blueprints.
While Stromberg’s team is handling the park’s technical infrastructure elements, they relied on input about amenities from Tidewater Gardens residents who called the 618-unit complex home until they were relocated two years ago.
“Listening is so crucial,” Stromberg said, about the joint brainstorming sessions that began in 2019. “We wanted to make sure we were extremely sensitive to the community’s needs.”
Preserving and protecting the canopy of thirsty and mature oaks, magnolias and other trees that once shaded the apartments was paramount for residents. They also wanted pavilions added for reunions, parties and cookouts.
Yet another request centered on access to walking paths, fitness equipment, a splash park, playgrounds, basketball courts, and lessons about birds, butterflies and native plants.
“These are simple requests and we want to honor them,” Stromberg said. “This is about giving people access to something they cherish.”
Greenway plans call for planting at least 300 trees, 5,000 shrubs and 200,000 grasses and flowers.
Balancing man-made and natural systems serves as a welcome mat for inclusivity, said Mike Fox, Stromberg’s colleague.
“With the wetlands come the butterflies and frogs and crickets,” Fox said. “That whole experience, being part of nature is what’s therapeutic and adds to visitors’ serenity.”
Stromberg is counting on the unique oasis to be a neighborhood magnet. He noted that it can be extended north of East Brambleton Avenue, near the former elementary school.
That expansion idea remains in the mix as Norfolk plans to eventually raze and reinvent two other nearby public housing complexes shortchanged on parks — Young Terrace and Calvert Square — in the next phases of the St. Paul’s transformation.
Also, the Blue Greenway will be at the centerpiece of a related city scheme to link the St. Paul’s neighborhood to the previously inaccessible Elizabeth River Trail, the expansive downtown waterfront and Norfolk’s more affluent west side.
For 60-plus years, the community has been isolated by loud, pedestrian-unfriendly, heavily trafficked roads and a tangle of on- and off-ramps, cloverleaf interchanges and overpasses feeding Interstate 264.
City officials are studying how to tackle a large-scale roadway makeover courtesy of a federal grant designed to heal past injustices inflicted on Black communities nationwide.
Tensions have festered about who will actually benefit from such wholesale changes.
For instance, activists with the New Virginia Majority accused the city of “saving the trees, not the people” with its Blue Greenway project. In tandem, they claim wealthier newcomers, not displaced former residents, will eventually become the majority in mixed-use housing being built near the site of Tidewater Gardens. To help prevent flooding, the new housing is being built on ground that has been elevated with at least seven feet of soil.
Stromberg is tuned in to how complicated and difficult these transitions are for cities. As the planet warms, they’re an even trickier balancing act for leaders trying to meet the needs of residents while also accounting for racist policies of the past.
“The jury is still out on what the success rate will be for the return of former Tidewater Gardens’ residents,” he said, adding he’s hoping the Blue Greenway will serve as a lure.
“As some start to move back, I can see a second wave of former residents reconnecting to their neighborhood,” he said. “The key is that they have a sense of ownership.”
Susan Perry, director of the city’s Department of Housing and Community Development since 2021, has focused on resilience and alleviating poverty in her decade-plus career with local government.
Norfolk would have been remiss with this redevelopment project, she said, if it had stopped at simply replacing deteriorating housing and re-establishing a street grid to tether the neighborhood to downtown amenities.
The impact of soaring emissions of heat-trapping gases couldn’t be ignored.
“What we always say is that the Blue Greenway is our resilience strategy writ large,” Perry said. “It really will be a crown jewel of the neighborhood.”
This story was reported via participation in the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2023 National Fellowship. The Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Journalism provided training, mentoring and funding.
The Port of Cleveland is going electric.
One of the Great Lakes’ largest shipping ports is transforming part of a large warehouse into an “electrification hub” to anchor its emission-cutting efforts in the coming decades.
The project is among the Cleveland-Cuyahoga Port Authority’s first steps toward its goal of net-zero emissions for its own operations by 2050. The target does not include “Scope 3” emissions from the ships, trains, and trucks that come and go from the port, but officials hope the upgrades will support their emissions cuts as well.
“Upgrading the electric feed into the terminal is not the most exciting thing,” said Carly Beck, the port’s senior manager for planning, environment and information systems, but it’s a necessary foundation for all other parts of the port authority’s climate plan.
Shipping ports are a major source of not only climate emissions but also harmful air pollution for nearby communities. Fossil fuels power most of the cranes, vehicles, and other equipment used to move commodities and consumer goods around the globe. The United Nations estimates that global shipping is responsible for about 3% of emissions worldwide.
The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority became the first port on the Great Lakes to announce a net-zero emissions goal when its board unanimously approved its climate action plan last September. In February, the board approved spending $32 million from state and federal transportation grants to modernize the warehouse and make electrification upgrades.
Cleveland’s downtown port on Lake Erie handles about 13 million tons of cargo each year, from steel and iron ore to wind turbine parts and heavy machinery. Most goes to or comes from parts of Ohio and neighboring states via rail or truck.
“Lake Erie … sits at a very important position geographically as part of the Great Lakes,” said Dana Rodriguez, a senior analyst on global shipping at the Environmental Defense Fund.
The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, like many of its U.S. counterparts, is a public entity that owns and maintains infrastructure at the port. It contracts with a commercial operating company, Logistec, to run day-to-day operations.
The port considered multiple approaches for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, including hydrogen power, before deciding to focus its efforts on electrification, Beck said. All told, the port estimates full electrification will require roughly 5 to 7 megawatts of available power, she said. Design work for modernization and the electrification hub at the port’s Warehouse A is underway.
The port also is working with Logistec on a grant application for funds under the U.S. EPA’s Clean Ports Program, set up under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Roughly $2.8 billion in competitive grants are available for deploying zero-emission technology, with an additional $150 million for climate and air quality planning. The application is due May 28.
If successful, the port plans to add 2 megawatts of solar capacity on top of Warehouse A, which will provide a significant chunk of its anticipated electrical needs. Other funds would be used to start acquiring electric equipment for port operations, such as a large forklift.
Over time, the port plans to acquire additional equipment as and when machinery and funds become available, including replacements for a large crane and other material-handling equipment.
“It’s just a matter now of biting off chunks as we can,” Beck said. Timing for the acquisitions will also depend on when different types of electrical equipment become available, which will involve ongoing review.
Port Authority President and CEO Will Friedman said the electrification push fits with the port’s broader sustainability goals, including reducing water pollution in Lake Erie and managing dredged material more sustainably.
“We’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do. We have a social conscience here,” Friedman said.
The decision also should help the port stay competitive, especially as more companies consider the indirect emissions of their contractors.
“We think that’s going to be the future if you’re part of the supply chain network,” Friedman said, adding that ignoring greenhouse gas emissions really isn’t an option. “All industries are trying to figure out how they can decarbonize, and maritime shipping is certainly a part of that.”
Decarbonization makes sense for Cleveland and Cuyahoga County in the global scheme of things, said Grant Goodrich, executive director for the Great Lakes Energy Institute at Case Western Reserve University.
“Getting products in and out of Europe and being able to advertise and market that you can do it in a more emissions-friendly manner gives you a competitive advantage,” Goodrich said. The European Union already is pushing for the shipping sector to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and Goodrich expects that will ultimately become important in the American marketplace as well. Cutting greenhouse gases also could help attract more cruise ship business to Cleveland, he added.
The port’s regional nature likely will make some aspects of decarbonization easier. For starters, the port generally does not store fuel for ships on site. Ships typically fill up elsewhere, often from barges, depending on where they believe they can get the best deal, Friedman said. If a ship does need extra fuel while in Cleveland, trucks deliver it.
On the other hand, the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority has less bargaining power than some much larger ports on the East and West coasts. That limits its ability to increase fees, which makes grants and other types of funding particularly important.
The Cleveland-Cuyahoga Port Authority’s focus on Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions is consistent with the goals for a majority of other ports included in a March 2024 report from the Environmental Defense Fund and Arup. However, the report noted, the majority of total port emissions driving human-caused climate change generally are not within ports’ direct control and would fall into Scope 3.
“Action in the broader zone of user and community and industry influence, where impacts are often far greater and where potential benefits are significant, is lacking,” the EDF report said.
The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority’s upgrades include planning to provide power for some of those other indirect emissions.
“We don’t want to forget about Scope 3,” Beck said.
She added that the port anticipates offering incentives to encourage ships and others to reduce their emissions.
An example would be for ships to plug into electrical shore power, known as “cold ironing,” instead of running diesel engines while in port. Besides cutting greenhouse gas emissions, the process can also reduce pollution from particulate matter, nitrous oxides, hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide. The port also hopes to encourage independent operators to acquire electric tugboats and similar equipment.
“Port decarbonization is just one key piece of the full decarbonization equation,” said Rodriguez at the Environmental Defense Fund. “It is also up to the trucking and shipping sectors to meet the ports halfway and contribute to the decarbonization efforts. In an effort to reach net zero by 2050, all stakeholders must play their part.”
COAL: Stalled efforts to redevelop a former coal plant property in Indiana reflect a broader struggle for local officials who face legal obstacles when seeking to repurpose contaminated power plant sites. (Inside Climate News)
ALSO: An Iowa Environmental Council study says pollution from two MidAmerican coal plants over a 20-year period caused 165 premature deaths and higher rates of asthma, COPD and heart disease. (Radio Iowa)
PIPELINES: After Iowa legislation to limit the use of eminent domain for carbon capture pipelines fails for a third straight year, lawmakers and activists vow to try again next year. (Cedar Rapids Gazette)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: General Motors will stop producing the Chevrolet Malibu and invest $390 million in a Kansas assembly plant to make more electric vehicles. (Reuters)
FOSSIL FUELS: Ohio House lawmakers pass a bill allowing a facility that burns coal to produce coke used in the steelmaking process to claim renewable energy credits. (Cleveland.com, subscription)
CLEAN TECH: Researchers at a national laboratory in Iowa are researching ways to convert non-recyclable plastic into fuels, oils and other materials. (Iowa Capital Dispatch)
GRID:
SOLAR:
CLIMATE: Michigan becomes the latest state to propose a constitutional amendment to enshrine clean water, air, soil and a stable climate as a fundamental right, which in some states has led to limits on oil and gas drilling. (Planet Detroit)
EFFICIENCY:
COMMENTARY: An Ohio farmer says the East Palestine train derailment that damaged his property also opened his eyes to the benefits of clean energy and a proposed community solar bill. (Columbus Dispatch)
OIL & GAS: A Navajo Nation resident and advocate pushes back against an oil and gas company’s proposal to convert a water well into a wastewater injection site near his family’s home. (Capital & Main)
ALSO:
CLIMATE: California Gov. Gavin Newsom touts $11 billion in climate projects funded by the state’s greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program over the last decade, but critics say the efforts haven’t done enough to reduce pollution. (Los Angeles Times)
SOLAR:
CLEAN ENERGY:
UTILITIES: An Arizona nonprofit prepares to help a growing number of Phoenix residents pay their utility bills after experiencing unprecedented demand for the aid last summer. (ABC 15)
COAL: Mining companies in Wyoming hint at potential layoffs at Powder River Basin facilities after larger-than-expected production decreases. (WyoFile)
HYDROGEN: A company breaks ground on a $550 million green hydrogen production hub in Arizona. (Hoodline)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
TRANSMISSION:
COMMENTARY: A California editorial board urges Los Angeles leaders to make climate goals legally enforceable and “not mere aspirations to be shrugged off by finger-pointing bureaucrats.” (Los Angeles Times)
To understand the stakes of cleaning up the most-polluting vehicles on our roads, look no further than Charlotte.
The largest city in North Carolina, it’s at the crossroads of two major trucking routes, with 17,000 trips per day spewing smog- and soot-forming pollutants that consistently rank the metro area among the nation’s 100 worst for air quality.
It’s also a burgeoning epicenter for electric vehicle manufacturing and research, home to many of the state’s 40-plus businesses that are already playing a role in the medium- and heavy-duty electric vehicle supply chain.
Clean transportation advocates say the air quality and economy in Charlotte and throughout the state stand to benefit from new Biden administration tailpipe emission rules for heavy-duty trucks, which account for an outsized share of the region’s climate emissions and air pollution.
“The Heavy Duty Rules are a critical step forward in establishing a ‘federal floor’ for clean trucks all across the country,” said Aaron Viles, campaigns director with the Electrification Coalition.
But they also say there’s still a need for other policies to usher in a new generation of electric trucks and buses, including a state-based rule scuttled by the GOP-controlled legislature last year.
The transportation sector is the largest source of global warming pollution and the country. Cleaning it up, experts say, means phasing in new electric vehicles of all shapes and sizes, reducing our use of passenger vehicles overall, and powering the grid with renewable energy.
The transition is not without hurdles. Would-be electric vehicle owners and fleet managers worry about a lack of charging infrastructure. And while the costs of electric-powered vehicles are falling steadily and the price of operating them is minimal, potential consumers still balk at their relatively high sticker price.
What’s more, many of the vested interests that revolve around gas and diesel vehicles prefer the status quo, and they extend well beyond the oil industry — including dealers who make money from oil changes and other routine repairs, fueling stations, and manufacturers of engine components.
But climate advocates say overcoming these obstacles has rewards beyond just reducing greenhouse gasses and avoiding catastrophic global warming. In North Carolina, that’s especially true when it comes to cleaning up heavy duty vehicles.
Though trucks, buses and the like make up a tiny fraction of all vehicles on the road, they account for over a quarter of the North Carolina transportation sector’s smog-forming pollutants and nearly a third of its soot-forming emissions, per state officials. Zero-emission vehicles would help curb this pollution.
The transition to heavy-duty electric vehicles could also benefit North Carolina’s economy, with dozens of industries across the state already invested in component production, assembly, or other aspects of the supply chain, according to a 2021 database compiled by the Environmental Defense Fund.
“When you look at where the electric vehicle supply chain investments are going, it’s really clustered in a number of leading states,” said Will Scott, Southeast climate and clean energy director with Environmental Defense Fund. “And North Carolina is among those.”
Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who is term-limited after this year, had sought first to garner these benefits with the Advanced Clean Truck rule. Initiated with an October 2022 executive order, the measure requires manufacturers to sell increasing numbers of electric trucks, buses, and other large vehicles. California pioneered the standard, and it has been adopted by 10 other states.
But after prodding from the North Carolina Chamber, Republicans who control the General Assembly balked, passing a provision in the state budget to prevent the rule.
“Government mandates and intervention into the market would stifle… innovation and investment,” the Chamber wrote on its website after the budget language prevailed, “as well as increase costs in new trucks, on which nearly all of our members rely.”
The new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency measure, issued this spring, is less ambitious than the California one. But with the Advanced Clean Truck rule essentially dead in the state, advocates say the federal regulation is welcome.
“States that don’t have ACT will now have a federal policy that can support cleaning up our medium- and heavy-duty transportation sectors,” said Stan Cross, transportation director for Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
In an effort to mollify the industry, Biden officials made their rule “technology neutral,” meaning it would require manufacturers meet a certain tailpipe pollution limit rather than sell a certain percentage of electric vehicles.
The Electrification Coalition says that means the federal rule will result in lower overall electric sales for most classes of vehicles. For instance, the Biden rule is expected to result in as little as 5% of new tractor cab sales bring electric by 2032, depending on class on weight. The California standard, by contrast, requires 40% of all heavy-duty tractor sales to be zero-emitting – and most likely electric, though other technologies qualify.
Still, when it comes to less air and global warming pollution, cleaning up trucks and buses nationwide has an obvious advantage over a patchwork of states doing so. Overall, the Biden administration expects its rule to avoid 1 billion tons of greenhouse gasses.
There’s also value in Biden attacking transportation sector pollution nationally, piece by piece, Cross said. The administration has already promulgated similar rules for passenger cars and trucks, and standards for port equipment, off-road vehicles, and more are still forthcoming.
“They’re doing the math, and they’re thinking about these standards in a comprehensive and holistic way,” said Cross. “They can look at all of our ports, all of our marine traffic, all of our airports, all of our plane traffic, all of our off-road construction — and set standards that will get us where we need to be.”
In a state like North Carolina, home to several major interstates and their truck traffic, cleaning up trucks beyond state borders will also help reduce health-threatening air pollution. An American Lung Association analysis of states with major trucking routes, for example, found that if all heavy-duty vehicle sales were electric by 2040, the state could avoid over 1,700 premature deaths and hundreds of thousands of lost work days.
Those benefits would be crucial for Charlotte, which consistently ranks among the 100 most polluted cities in America for smog-and soot-forming pollution in the Lung Association’s annual State of the Air report.
“Charlotte advocates for clean air, which includes using electric transportation,” Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles said in a written statement praising the new rules.
And for North Carolina businesses in the medium- and heavy-duty electric vehicle supply chain, the prospect of a national market is clearly better than customers in a smattering of states.
Anything that accelerates the trend toward electric vehicles, Scott said, will come back to the state in the form of jobs and economic activity.
“North Carolina has put itself in a good position to capture a lot of those benefits,” he said.
Still, the nationwide rule has a major downside for fleet managers from North Carolina cities and corporations that have commitments to go all-electric. The supply of heavy-duty electric vehicles is still relatively low, and the states who have adopted the Advanced Clean Trucks Rule will get first dibs on it.
The problem could be especially acute in the near term, during which manufacturers can satisfy national requirements just by catering to the 11 states with the more advanced rule.
“ACT puts your state in pole position for the limited amount of zero-emission, trucks and buses that are going to be coming off of assembly lines,” Cross said.
Indeed, that’s part of why advocates supporting the federal standard say they’ll keep looking for opportunities to pass the Advanced Clean Truck Rule in the state.
And though it has little chance of passage, Cooper’s budget this year removes last year’s prohibition on the stronger clean truck standard and includes funding for electric vehicle infrastructure.
“We applaud the governor for taking these steps to end oil’s monopoly on our transportation systems,” said Anne Blair, the Electrification Coalition’s vice president of policy. “But there is still much more that needs to be done to ensure North Carolina and the country are not left behind as the world shifts to electric transportation.”
POLICY: Vermont lawmakers pass a bill making utilities purchase only renewably sourced power by 2035, though the governor is expected to veto the bill over cost concerns. (Seven Days)
ALSO: A top Connecticut Democrat says he intends to force a vote on two bills that Republican lawmakers want to block, including one that declares a climate crisis in the state. (CT Mirror)
FOSSIL FUELS:
SOLAR:
BUILDINGS: Pennsylvania lawmakers advance minimum appliance efficiency standards that would conserve enough energy to power more than 56,000 homes in a year. (WTAJ)
BIOENERGY: A trio of developers detail plans to bring a combined heat and power system to northern Maine that would be fueled by waste wood from the state’s forest industry and “enabled by super-critical carbon dioxide.” (Mainebiz)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Six newly installed electric vehicle fast chargers at a New York City wastewater facility help the city reach 2,000 municipal chargers. (news release)
TRANSIT: Although New York City is poised to kick off traffic congestion pricing next month, similar ideas in Boston are having a tough time getting off the ground. (Boston Globe)
WIND: The head of an anti-wind group files an open meetings law complaint against Nantucket over a wind development working group’s meeting that she says should’ve been public. (Nantucket Current)
RENEWABLE ENERGY: New York energy officials grant $175,000 to a Finger Lakes-area town to help it continue undertaking renewable energy and decarbonization projects. (Finger Lakes Times)
COMMENTARY:
GRID: The U.S. Energy Department announces 10 areas across the country where it intends to use unprecedented federal power to quickly fund and build major transmission projects that connect regional grids. (Canary Media)
CLEAN ENERGY:
POLICY: Of the $1.1 trillion the Biden administration has passed for infrastructure spending, emissions reduction measures, and other priorities, just $125 billion has so far been spent, an analysis finds. (Politico)
OIL & GAS:
CARBON CAPTURE: A $100 million competition that seeks innovative ways to capture and sequester carbon announces a list of finalists. (Canary Media)
UTILITIES: Two years after California lawmakers passed a proposed fixed monthly utility charge designed to slash electricity use and reduce low-income residents’ bills, advocates say it has amounted to a gift for utilities. (Los Angeles Times)
STORAGE: The U.S. Energy Department seeks input on potential manufacturing and design challenges that could affect grid-scale battery storage deployment. (Utility Dive)
EFFICIENCY: Minnesota clean energy advocates say the state can make significant strides in reducing carbon emissions and saving energy costs by adopting updated building codes. (MPR News)
UTILITIES: PacifiCorp’s parent company plans to sell off some assets if states do not limit utilities’ wildfire-related liabilities, saying it will not “throw good money after bad” as it faces a flurry of blaze-related lawsuits. (E&E News)
ALSO:
OIL & GAS:
STORAGE: Observers expect the nation’s grid-scale battery storage capacity to double this year, with California, Arizona and Texas seeing the largest growth. (New York Times)
SOLAR: The SunPower solar company lays off another 71 workers at one of its southern California facilities. (San Diego Union-Tribune)
WIND: The federal Bureau of Land Management nears a decision on a proposed wind facility in southern Idaho that would be visible from a World War II-era incarceration camp and national historic site. (E&E News, subscription)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: The nation’s first solar-powered electric big-rig charging depot opens in southern California. (KBAK)
GRID: Unusually strong winds batter utility equipment in Colorado, leaving at least 10,000 customers without power. (CPR)
TRANSPORTATION:
COMMENTARY:
OIL & GAS: The U.S. EPA announces new methane reporting rules for oil and gas facilities, which studies show have long underreported emissions. (news release; E&E News, subscription)
ALSO:
NUCLEAR: The U.S. Senate passes a bill to ban imports of Russian uranium, unlocking $2.7 billion in federal funding for domestic nuclear fuel production. (Utility Dive)
GRID:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
SOLAR:
UTILITIES: PacifiCorp’s parent company plans to sell off some assets if states do not limit utilities’ wildfire-related liabilities, saying it will not “throw good money after bad” as it faces a flurry of fire-related lawsuits. (E&E News)
CLEAN ENERGY: Illinois lawmakers are working on a clean energy and transit bill package that could be a follow up to a 2021 climate law and target gas-sector emissions, battery storage and electric fleet vehicles. (Capitol News Illinois)
EFFICIENCY: Experienced contractors suggest important questions to ask when hiring someone to install electric appliances and make other efficient home improvements. (Washington Post)
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