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ELECTRIC VEHICLES: After setbacks to adopting electric vehicle sales targets in Maine and Connecticut, frustrated New England clean transportation advocates refocus on charging infrastructure and consumer education. (Energy News Network)
ALSO:
POLICY:
OFFSHORE WIND: Boston’s mayor throws her support behind Avangrid Renewables’ bid to develop an offshore wind farm supporting Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, saying the city would purchase up to 15 MW from the site. (Boston.com)
SOLAR:
FOSSIL FUELS:
FUEL CELLS: Massachusetts’ governor and other top state officials visit Nuvera Fuel Cells in Billerica to announce $30 million in federal funds for the hydrogen fuel cell company. (Lowell Sun)
INCINERATION: Dozens of community and climate groups ask Maryland’s governor and legislative leaders to hold a vote on a bill to end subsidies for trash incineration plants. (Baltimore Brew)
WIND: After “inflammatory rhetoric” about renewables discouraged bids in last year’s auction of offshore wind leases near Texas, federal officials are shifting their attention to areas off Louisiana instead. (Louisiana Illuminator)
ALSO:
CLEAN ENERGY:
OIL & GAS:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
HYDROGEN: Environmental advocates and residents who live near a proposed Appalachian hydrogen hub express concerns about the project’s potential to disrupt their lives and prolong the region’s dependence on fossil fuels. (WV Metro News)
CARBON CAPTURE: A Virginia company claims it successfully used carbon capture technology to grow lettuce at an indoor farm. (Roanoke Times)
CLIMATE:
GRID: Oklahoma lawmakers consider legislation to give utilities more of a stake in building electric transmission lines while moving oversight of bidding, construction and operations from federal to state officials. (NonDoc)
COMMENTARY: Federal money intended to fight climate change in Louisiana is set to pay for carbon capture projects that will perpetuate the oil and gas industry, writes a professor. (The Conversation)
COAL: North Dakota officials prepare to launch a court challenge against a forthcoming final federal rule that aims to cut mercury emissions from lignite coal-burning power plants. (North Dakota Monitor)
GRID:
UTILITIES:
SOLAR:
PIPELINES: In an unusual move, Iowa House Democrats provided no comments before unanimously approving a carbon pipeline siting bill, allowing Republican backers to champion the legislation as a win for property rights. (Bleeding Heartland)
CLEAN ENERGY:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Electric vehicle chargers are often inaccessible for people with disabilities, a growing problem as officials forecast millions more electric vehicles on roads in the coming years. (Mother Jones)
ALSO: After setbacks to adopting electric vehicle sales targets in Maine and Connecticut, frustrated New England clean transportation advocates refocus on charging infrastructure and consumer education. (Energy News Network)
CLEAN ENERGY:
HYDROGEN: As the U.S. Treasury Department tries to ensure its hydrogen tax credits go to projects involving clean energy, industry leaders say the federal rules will discourage nuclear-produced hydrogen and make projects prohibitively expensive. (E&E News)
OIL & GAS:
EMISSIONS: The U.S. EPA moves to lower inaccurately high soot measurements taken since 2017, potentially making it easier for some areas to meet new pollution standards. (E&E News)
CLIMATE:
CARBON CAPTURE: A Virginia company says it successfully used carbon capture technology to grow lettuce at an indoor farm. (Roanoke Times)
GRID: The ongoing legal dispute over a $649 million transmission line between Iowa and Wisconsin highlights differences between environmental and clean energy advocacy groups. (Inside Climate News)
WIND: After “inflammatory rhetoric” about renewables discouraged bids in last year’s offshore wind auction near Texas, federal officials are shifting their attention to areas off Louisiana instead. (Louisiana Illuminator)
After setbacks to adopting electric vehicle sales targets in Maine and Connecticut, New England clean transportation advocates are regrouping with a focus on charging infrastructure and consumer education.
Maine’s Board of Environmental Protection voted 4-2 on March 20 against adopting California’s Advanced Clean Cars II rules, which would have required electric or plug-in hybrids to make up 82% of new vehicle sales in the state by model year 2032.
Board members initially signaled support for the proposal, which came from a citizen petition last spring, before their first planned vote was delayed by a severe storm in December.
Last November, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, pulled a comparable proposal from legislative consideration after it was not expected to have the votes to pass.
Neither state had opted to consider California’s Advanced Clean Trucks standard, which sets similar targets for heavy-duty vehicle sales.
Maine and Connecticut are among more than a dozen states that have had earlier versions of California’s clean car standards on the books for years. Both states have also prioritized transportation emissions, the region’s biggest contributor to global warming, in their climate plans.
Some advocates fear progress in this sector will stall in these states until they adopt the updated California rules. They say debate over the standards was clouded by false and misleading claims, often pushed by fossil fuel industry groups, that have ramped up as part of the 2024 presidential campaign.
“It was really an attempt to confuse and agitate consumers, and unfortunately it was successful,” said Charles Rothenberger, the climate and energy attorney at the Connecticut nonprofit Save the Sound.
Even if Connecticut or Maine successfully revisits adopting the California rules next year, it would likely push implementation out to model year 2029 at the earliest, advocates said.
States that don’t use the new California standards will default to federal rules for reducing vehicle emissions. These rules were just overhauled but have a slower timeline than California’s, designed to accommodate states with lower EV sales rates than in much of New England, Rothenberger said.
“Standards that really cater to the laggards when it comes to EV adoption are really not beneficial to states that are well ahead of that curve,” he said. “I fear that it will lead to us losing ground to states that continue with the California standards,” such as Massachusetts and New York, Rothenberger added.
This could mean less choice and supply for both new and used electric vehicles as carmakers focus on those other states, he said.
In the meantime, Connecticut EV advocates are backing a bill in the General Assembly to allow state bonds for charging infrastructure and EV incentives and create an Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Coordinating Council to work with utility regulators on system planning, among other provisions.
Peter LaFond, the Maine program director for the Acadia Center, a regional nonprofit, said the delay in adopting California’s rules provides time for combating misconceptions and for utilizing increasing state and federal funds for charging infrastructure.
“Every month that goes by, I think there’ll be more and more chargers, and once there are, I think people will see the clear advantages,” LaFond said. “(EVs and plug-in hybrids) lower the carbon footprint and they’re less expensive to operate, and the cold doesn’t present as much of a challenge as the misinformation would have you believe. I think education is going to be a big part of this.”
Scott Vlaun, the executive director of the Center for an Ecology-Based Economy, a nonprofit in the small western Maine town of Norway, said he sees a snowball effect of EV acceptance in his region.
“It’s happening, it’s just not happening fast enough,” Vlaun said. “This is the future, and if Maine doesn’t get its share, then … we’re going to be kind of stuck — in, especially rural Maine — with people driving beat-up, old, inefficient cars, and it’s not good for anybody.”
CEBE has led a push for a large public EV charger network in and around Norway, which Vlaun said has helped make EVs and hybrids a more common sight everywhere from Main Street to nearby ski resorts.
“We do this annual EV expo, and if you get people driving an F-150 Lightning, or a Chevy Bolt, depending on what their needs are, they get it,” he said. “So much of the misinformation — it’s almost comical, because it’s obvious that these people have never gotten behind the wheel of an electric car.”
Vlaun was speaking from his own EV parked at a public charger outside CEBE’s office, having just driven back from a meeting in Portland, Maine, about an hour away. He said he would have liked to take a train or bus instead of driving, but doesn’t have an easy option for doing so.
“We don’t see electric cars as a one-to-one replacement for gas cars,” he said. “We see electric vehicles as an interim step and a better solution to individual transportation than gas-powered vehicles — not the answer to the world’s transportation problems by any stretch.”
Advocates in Connecticut agreed that encouraging cleaner public transit, more walkable cities and less driving overall is as much or more important to reducing transportation emissions as EV adoption.
Those emissions are linked to disproportionate asthma rates, low school test scores and other adverse public health ripple effects in Connecticut, said Dr. Mark Mitchell, the co-chair of the Connecticut Equity and Environmental Justice Advisory Council.
“The people who have the least ability to afford cars and to drive suffer the most from the pollution caused by cars, and so we need to change that — we need to invest in public transportation and making cities walkable and bikeable,” he said. “We’re not going to get rid of cars… but we should make sure that the cars that drive through our communities are as clean as possible, as quickly as possible.”
Mitchell said he lives in an especially low-income part of Hartford, the state capital — one of the lowest-income cities on the East Coast, with a mostly Black and Latino population. Mitchell said many of his neighbors don’t drive at all and can’t afford new cars, so they don’t yet “see themselves in EVs.”
“But that’s not the point,” he said. “The point is that they’re very concerned about asthma, they’re very concerned about ADHD, they’re very concerned about school test scores.”
EV adoption across the state is one solution to those problems, he said.
Jayson Velazquez, the Acadia Center’s Hartford-based climate and energy justice policy associate, used the term “through-emissions” to describe pollution from diesel trucks and other vehicles that traverse low-income neighborhoods and communities of color in Connecticut’s cities en route to nearby highways.
Unlike those vehicles and their non-local drivers, Velazquez said, “the lasting health effects that come from that pollution don’t just get up and go.”
Despite concerns about misinformation, advocates acknowledged that they share certain concerns with opponents of the California rules — such as affordability, charging access, the sustainability of minerals mining to build batteries, and strain on the power grid from increasing EV use.
“There are real issues,” said Mitchell. “We do need to build up the infrastructure, both the charging infrastructure and the electric grid. … But until we set goals, we don’t know how quickly we need to do that. And it’s much easier to put things off if you don’t have a goal.”
POWER PLANTS: As economic growth drives new electricity demand, utilities such as Georgia Power look to natural gas as a quick fix, but customers and clean energy advocates say the strategy lacks ambition and ignores the giant pool of federal money currently available for cleaner alternatives. (Grist/WABE)
ALSO: A new report urges state regulators to be skeptical about “a panicked rush” to build new gas plants and says utilities could mitigate near-term load growth with a myriad of tech and policy solutions. (Latitude Media)
GRID: Software and smart meters are unlocking new potential for price-based demand response — using variable rates to change customer behavior — with Georgia Power and Entergy Louisiana among the utilities exploring the concept as a way to manage loads. (Utility Dive)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: The shift to electric vehicles in North Carolina is happening faster than state officials anticipated, with electric vehicle registrations surpassing a state goal two years ahead of schedule with more than 80,000 on the road. (WRAL)
SOLAR: The developer of a Virginia solar project informs county officials that it is withdrawing its application for a special use permit. (Farmville Herald)
COAL:
CLIMATE: Indoor farming offers producers steady growing conditions amid increasingly unpredictable weather, but their energy consumption represents a potential threat that could worsen climate change. (Washington Post)
COMMENTARY: Duke Energy’s proposed carbon plan in North Carolina ignores a 2030 emissions target, doubles down on fossil fuels, and leans too heavily on expensive, unproven technology, an advocacy group writes. (SELC)
CLEAN ENERGY: A new report ranks Illinois best in the country for state policy that supports community ownership of clean energy, while most states earn failing grades. (Canary Media)
PIPELINES:
COAL: A federal judge criticizes Ameren for drawn-out legal proceedings involving remedies for a Missouri coal plant that repeatedly violated the Clean Air Act. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
RENEWABLES:
OIL & GAS: An Ohio agency has investigated 26 oil and gas incidents over the past five years in a single county, and more than 1,500 incidents statewide over the same period. (Athens County Independent)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
BIOFUELS: Minnesota biofuel advocates are still waiting on the Biden administration’s analysis of which fuel stocks could capture lucrative tax credits to produce sustainable jet fuel. (Star Tribune)
EFFICIENCY: At a stop in Madison, Wisconsin, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and residents tout the benefits of energy efficiency and federal clean energy investments. (Wisconsin Examiner)
COMMENTARY: Former Ohio U.S. Senate candidate Tim Ryan abandons his populist brand as a spokesperson for big oil and gas companies that are opposed to halting liquefied natural gas exports, a Sierra Club leader writes. (Columbus Dispatch)
TRANSPORTATION: The Biden administration announces a new rule that aims to ensure 25% of all new long-haul trucks and 40% of medium-duty trucks are zero-emission by 2032, earning praise from environmental groups but concern from truck and engine manufacturers. (New York Times, NPR)
ALSO:
POWER PLANTS:
CLIMATE:
CLEAN ENERGY: A new report ranks Illinois best in the country for state policy that supports community ownership of clean energy, while most states earn failing grades. (Canary Media)
GRID: Software and smart meters are unlocking new potential for price-based demand response, using variable rates to change customer behavior. (Utility Dive)
OIL & GAS: Hundreds of people attend a public hearing in Colorado to debate proposed legislation to ban oil and gas drilling in the state by 2030. (CBS News)
NUCLEAR: A court vacates a company’s license to develop an interim spent nuclear reactor fuel repository in southeastern New Mexico, saying federal regulators lacked authority to issue the permit. (Carlsbad Current-Argus)
OFFSHORE WIND:
The Maine House rejected a bill Wednesday that would direct regulators to explore performance-based ratemaking for Central Maine Power and Versant, which last year beat back a referendum to replace the companies with a consumer-owned model.
The House voted 75-67 against LD 2172, sponsored by Rep. Gerry Runte (D-York). Republicans largely opposed the legislation but a handful of Democrats also voted against it. The proposal then moved to the Senate on Thursday, where it was tabled, meaning it will be taken up at a later date.
Runte’s bill would require the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to examine performance-based metrics that could be implemented for utilities and conduct that examination every three years thereafter. Generally speaking, performance-based ratemaking (PBR) creates specific benchmarks for utilities to meet. The utilities could then get rewarded if they meet the targets or be penalized if they don’t.
The performance of Maine’s primary investor-owned utilities, CMP and Versant, has been a frequent topic of discussion in recent years. The companies’ relative unpopularity with Mainers, frustration with their quality of service and concerns about their for-profit business model spurred the referendum last fall to replace CMP and Versant with a nonprofit, consumer-owned utility. However, Mainers voted down the measure amid a deluge of spending against the proposal.
During Wednesday’s debate in the House, Rep. Sophia Warren, a Democrat from Scarborough, argued there isn’t sufficient evidence that LD 2172 would benefit ratepayers and improve the utility system.
“We cannot with any guarantee know the outcome of this legislation, and I believe that is a potentially quite harmful consequence we must take seriously,” said Warren, adding that she would support a targeted study on PBR policies in Maine.
Warren — a critic of CMP and Versant who supported the referendum to replace the companies — also pushed back against proponents who have argued that the bill will hasten Maine’s clean energy transition. She said nothing in the legislation ties a utility’s performance to making the grid more sustainable.
Republican Rep. Steven Foster of Dexter also expressed opposition to the bill. Among other issues, Foster argued that some parts of the proposal are duplicative of a 2022 bill that requires the PUC to adopt rules for CMP and Versant. Specifically, the PUC was tasked under that law with creating quantitative metrics around service quality along with coming up with a report card to evaluate utilities.
Runte said LD 2172 is meant to build on that previous measure. And he added that if the state wants CMP and Versant to perform better, it needs to create rules that incentivize the companies to further Maine’s grid-related policy goals — which he argued is currently lacking.
“LD 2172 attempts to solve this problem by directing the PUC to begin a process to define how we want our utilities to perform in the 21st century, as well as consider modern models of utility regulation that better align a utility’s performance with these new goals,” he said.
Under Runte’s proposal, the PUC would have to establish goals and evaluate options for creating metrics to determine how well utilities meet certain criteria. In creating those goals, PUC would have to keep in mind the following: benefit to ratepayers, promotion of cost efficiency and affordability, increased planning for extreme weather and climate hazards, a comprehensive response to outages, and support of renewable resource and greenhouse gas reduction goals. The goals would also have to be consistent with the state’s climate action plan.
Runte said the process for coming up with goals for utilities to meet and metrics to evaluate them is kept deliberately flexible in the bill, giving appropriate latitude to the PUC to determine what will work best for Maine and to adjust policies as needed.
The bill would further require that the commission get input from various stakeholders, mandate that the PUC provide a summary of its performance-based ratemaking actions, task the organization with coming up with recommendations for forming a regulatory policy group within the commission, and require the PUC to implement emerging reforms if such changes better align with state goals.
Runte pointed out that 17 states have approved similar reforms, although Warren noted that just two states have moved to extensively implement PBR policies, and she argued the experience of one of those states — Connecticut — has not been positive.
But Rep. Valli Geiger (D-Rockland) said that although Mainers voted down the November referendum to replace CMP and Versant, that doesn’t mean they are happy with the service provided by the companies. She said implementing PBR would provide the state the tools to bring the utilities into alignment with important goals, particularly when it comes to the clean energy transition.
Both CMP and Versant have been tepid about the bill. During a committee hearing earlier this year, a representative from Versant said the company is willing to take initial steps toward performance-based ratemaking but called for the goals established by the PUC to be brought back to lawmakers for review. And CMP argued the time isn’t right for Runte’s bill because lawmakers should first see how recent regulations, like the 2022 bill, work out.
Burning all the oil and gas from new discoveries and newly approved projects since 2021 would emit at least 14.1bn tonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO2), according to Carbon Brief analysis of Global Energy Monitor (GEM) data.
This would be equivalent to more than an entire year’s worth of China’s emissions.
It includes 8GtCO2 from new oil and gas reserves discovered in 2022-23 and another 6GtCO2 from projects that were approved for development over the same period.
These have all gone ahead since the International Energy Agency (IEA) concluded, in 2021, that “no new oil and gas fields” would be required if the world were to limit global warming to 1.5C .
Since then, world leaders gathering at the COP28 summit at the end of 2023 have also agreed to “transition away from fossil fuels”.
Despite this, nations such as Guyana and Namibia are emerging as entirely new hotspots for oil and gas development. At the same time, major historic fossil-fuel producers, such as the US and Iran, are still going ahead with large new projects.
Additionally, oil majors such as TotalEnergies and Shell that have made public commitments to climate action, are among the biggest players investing in new oil and gas extraction around the world.
In 2021, the IEA issued its first “net-zero roadmap”, setting out a pathway for the world to limit warming to 1.5C. The influential agency concluded that:
“Beyond projects already committed as of 2021, there are no new oil-and-gas fields approved for development in our pathway.”
This statement has become a rallying cry for campaigners and leaders pushing for a phase out of fossil fuels.
The IEA has since clarified that there would be no need for new oil and gas developments if the world gets on track for 1.5C. It has also slightly softened its language, by allowing for new oil and gas projects with a “short-lead time” within its 1.5C scenario.
Yet it has also warned of the risk of “overinvestment” in new developments, noting that current spending is “almost double” what would be needed under its 1.5C pathway.
In any case, the IEA’s message has been widely ignored by oil and gas companies, which have continued to search for new extraction opportunities.
In its new global oil and gas extraction tracker, GEM identifies 50 new sites discovered in 2022 and 2023, after the IEA issued its initial net-zero roadmap. The oil and gas reserves from these projects amount to 20.3m barrels of oil equivalent (Mboe).
The tracker also identified a further 45 projects that have reached “final investment decision” (FID) since the IEA’s roadmap, with an extra 16Mboe of reserves. FID is the point at which companies decide to move ahead with a project’s construction and development.
If all the oil and gas in the newly discovered reserves is burned in the coming years, an extra 8GtCO2 would be released into the atmosphere, according to Carbon Brief analysis. Adding the reserves discovered between 2022-23 brings this total to 14.1GtCO2.
This is equivalent to more than one-third of the CO2 emissions from global energy use in 2022, or all the emissions from burning oil that year, as shown in the chart below.
These findings are in line with mounting evidence that both company and government plans for fossil fuels are not aligned with their own climate goals.
According to the most recent UN Environment Programme “production gap” report, companies are planning for gas and oil production that is 82% and 29% higher, respectively, than would be needed in a 1.5C pathway.
The remaining “carbon budget” of emissions that can be released while retaining a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5C is just 275GtCO2, according to the Global Carbon Budget consortium of scientists. Burning all of the contents of the new oil and gas schemes identified by GEM would use up 5% of this remaining budget.
Moreover, the GEM report points out that new projects take, on average, 11 years to start producing significant amounts of oil and gas. This means that most will not enter production until the 2030s.
By this point, according to the IEA, fossil-fuel demand would have fallen by “more than 25%” if the world gets on to a 1.5C-compliant pathway.
GEM also notes that its analysis likely underestimates the scale of new fossil fuel developments. It excludes smaller sites and those where the size has not been publicly announced, such as new gas fields discovered in Saudi Arabia in 2022.
The IEA updated its net-zero scenario in 2023 to reflect the continued expansion of fossil-fuel projects since its previous report. It stated that:
“No new long lead time conventional oil and gas projects need to be approved for development.”
It added that falling demand for fossil fuels “may also mean that a number of high cost projects come to an end before they reach the end of their technical lifetimes”, again if the world gets onto a 1.5C pathway.
To reflect the IEA’s new language around avoiding “long lead time” and “conventional” projects, GEM excludes expansions of existing projects and “unconventional” sites from its analysis. The report notes that including them would roughly quadruple the size of the reserves that reached a FID in 2022-23.
Many oil companies have made it clear that they do not intend to wind down their fossil-fuel operations in the near future.
This is true even for those that have made commitments to climate action, such as Shell and TotalEnergies. (Some oil majors have also watered down their pledges in recent months.)
As the chart below shows, many of the companies with the largest share of new oil and gas schemes have also announced net-zero targets.
The top rankings are dominated by publicly traded oil majors, such as ExxonMobil, and national companies, such as the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) – which is led by COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber. Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, is missing from the GEM tracker, likely due to the lack of data from Saudi Arabia.
The emissions that could result from new gas fields run by the state-owned National Iranian Oil Company alone amount to 1,700MtCO2, according to Carbon Brief analysis. This is higher than the annual carbon footprint of Brazil.
Meanwhile, oil and gas in new projects being developed by TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil could generate roughly 1,000MtCO2 – equivalent to Japan’s annual total – for each company.
At the recent CERAWeek industry conference, many oil and gas industry leaders argued against a transition to cleaner forms of energy. For example, Saudi Aramco chief executive Amin Nasser told attendees: “We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas.”
As companies continue searching for more oil and gas, executives have consistently emphasised that demand for fossil fuels, rather than production, is the problem.
Most recently, in an interview with Fortune, ExxonMobil chief executive Darren Woods placed the blame on the public, who he said “aren’t willing to spend the money” on low-carbon alternatives.
New nations, mainly in the global south, are opening up as “global hotspots” for oil and gas projects, according to GEM.
Notably, Guyana is set to have the highest oil production growth through to 2035. Over the past two years, it has already been the site of more new oil and gas discoveries than any other country. Namibia has also opened up as a major new frontier in fossil-fuel extraction.
The chart below shows how nations that have recently been targeted for oil and gas exploration, now make up a large portion of new discoveries and developments.
The expansion of oil and gas production in the global south is a highly politicised topic.
Many African leaders, in particular, argue that their countries are entitled to exploit their natural resources in order to bring benefits to their people, as global-north countries have done. At COP28, African Group chair Collins Nzovu stated that oil and gas were “crucial for Africa’s development”.
(It is worth noting that, according to GEM’s analysis, companies based in the global north such as ExxonMobil, Hess Corporation and TotalEnergies own most of the reserves in the new global-south projects.)
Meanwhile, wealthy oil producers such as the US, Norway and the UAE justify their continued fossil-fuel extraction by saying their production emissions are relatively low. Others, such as the UK, argue that they need to exploit domestic reserves to preserve their energy security.
Even in a 1.5C scenario, the IEA still includes a significantly reduced amount of oil and gas use in 2050. Most of it goes towards making petrochemicals and producing hydrogen fuel.
However, in last year’s report on the position of the oil and gas industry in the net-zero transition, the agency also emphasises that this does not mean everyone can continue producing.
“Many producers say they will be the ones to keep producing throughout transitions and beyond. They cannot all be right,” it concludes.
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