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The following commentary was written by Alli Gold Roberts, state policy director, and Zach Friedman, federal policy director, at Ceres. See our commentary guidelines for more information.
We are at a crucial period in the shift to electric vehicles. A growing number of companies are moving to electrify their corporate fleets to reduce costs on fuel and maintenance, and the auto industry is making significant investments into battery and vehicle production in the United States — recognizing they need to stay competitive in a changing global market toward clean cars and trucks.
Ambitious public policy — from federal tax credits to the clean vehicle standards adopted by a growing number of states — is helping to grow the market for electric vehicles. Still, there is more work to be done to create the strong, advanced domestic auto and trucking industries we need to meet the growing demand. Achieving that vision will require more collaboration, investments, and policy action. And much of that must go toward building out the infrastructure to support electric vehicles — the charging stations, the supply chains, the workforces, and more.
That is why Congress rightly included strategic investments in domestic electric vehicle and charging infrastructure manufacturing and deployment in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, a historic investment in U.S. competitiveness that was signed into law two years ago this week.
The law delivered on a generation of urgent calls to invest in U.S. infrastructure, and has already begun delivering billions upon billions of dollars to upgrade and modernize bridges, roads, tunnels, railways, airports, electric grids, water pipes, and much more. Widely supported by the public and private sectors alike, the bipartisan achievement is a testament to the virtue of good-faith collaboration to address a long-term challenge. And that includes building the infrastructure we need to create a more sustainable and forward-looking transportation system by supporting the growth of electric vehicles.
The law’s investments include programs designed to increase ease of electric vehicle charging. Most prominently is the creation of the first-ever national electric vehicle charging network, a $7.5 billion partnership between the federal and state governments. By helping to fund a half-million new chargers across the nation’s highways, the National Electric Vehicle Initiative will provide predictability to motorists that they will be able to charge up on the interstate system every 50 miles or so. Every state submitted a plan to participate in the program, with Ohio as the first to break ground at a charging station near Columbus in October and more states quickly following suit.
The package also brought a $7 billion investment to U.S. electric vehicle supply chains, helping to ensure the most crucial electric vehicle components are made, processed, and assembled here in the U.S. These programs will bolster U.S. energy security by reducing our dependency on international markets as electric vehicles grow in popularity.
And the law’s electric vehicle investments provide a robust foundation for the market to build upon. Manufacturers like Siemens, for example, have expanded their footprint in the U.S. to support the build-out of the charging network, including at a new manufacturing hub in Texas. And through their strike this fall, the United Auto Workers won union representation at battery plants that received investments under the bipartisan infrastructure law — including at Ultium Cells, a joint venture from General Motors that received a $2.5 billion Department of Energy loan for facilities in Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. This victory supports the creation of good-paying jobs and ensures workers and communities benefit from the clean vehicle transition.
At Ceres, the sustainability nonprofit where we each work with companies to support public policies that are good for the climate and the economy, we have seen firsthand as businesses increasingly prioritize technology and solutions that are good for the climate and for their bottom lines. That is why they are increasingly vocal advocates for public policies that help expand electric vehicle growth and reduce vehicle miles traveled.
In 2022, they pushed for passage of the nation’s largest-ever federal climate and clean energy investment, the Inflation Reduction Act and its tax credits designed to encourage both manufacturing and sales of electric vehicles in the U.S. — leading to even greater private investment in electric vehicle manufacturing and infrastructure. And this year, leading businesses are pushing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to finalize strong anti-pollution standards that would further accelerate the widespread adoption of electric and other clean vehicles, while also providing certainty for their investments, and strengthening the competitiveness of the U.S. auto and trucking industries.
Businesses have long been among the strongest champions of upgrades to the infrastructure the economy depends on, as seen in the strong corporate support for the 2021 infrastructure bill. And just like roads and bridges are key drivers of economic activity, electric vehicle growth and the ambitious policies to encourage it are only possible with the right infrastructure in place. Two years in, thanks to continued partnership between the public and private sectors, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is now beginning to deliver it.
New Hampshire’s Department of Energy has requested a $70 million federal grant to expand community solar programs for low-income residents, an infusion of funds that supporters said could lower energy bills, accelerate decarbonization, and perhaps even catalyze the development of much-needed affordable housing.
“It’s just going to be life-changing for the communities we do this with,” said Jeannie Oliver, a senior director at the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, which partnered with the state on the proposal.
The request is part of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Solar for All competitive grant program, created under the umbrella of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The goal of the $7 billion program is to increase access to solar for people living in low-income and disadvantaged communities. Up to 60 grants will be awarded.
Community solar is a model in which energy consumers own a stake in or subscribe to a share of output from a solar development. They then receive credits for a portion of the power sold back to the grid, offsetting their utility bill. Community solar is often considered an option for consumers who can’t or don’t want to install solar on their own home, but who still want to participate in the environmental or financial benefits of renewable energy.
New Hampshire authorized community solar in 2013, but it hasn’t gotten much traction. In the state, larger, non-municipal solar projects are only credited for generation on projects up to 1 megawatt in capacity. At that size, however, the finances just don’t work for developers, said Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of the nonprofit Clean Energy New Hampshire. It’s not until an array reaches around 3 megawatts – with net metering – that the economics start to make sense.
Reaching lower-income residents with community solar is even trickier. There are no easily available lists of what households qualify as low or moderate income, so acquiring customers can be prohibitively difficult.
An influx of federal money could change that equation. The grant money would be used to expand the existing program and to create new ones targeting affordable housing and resident-owned manufactured housing communities. The proposal calls for funding to be split between the state energy department, the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, and New Hampshire Housing.
If the grant is awarded, these partnerships will be key to maximizing the impact the funds can have on low- and moderate-income residents, said Joshua Elliott, director of the division of policy and programs at the New Hampshire Department of Energy.
“It made sense to leverage existing relationships,” he said. “We thought meeting people where they are rather than having them come to us whenever possible would make for an attractive proposal.”
The portion of the money going to the state energy department would be used to expand the existing program for low-to-moderate-income community solar. The program will fund some of the project if a majority of the power generated benefits low-income households and up to 100% of a new development if at least 80% of the participating households qualify as low-income.
The state program has awarded $1 million each of the last two years. Last year, it funded four developments with a total of 61 households participating. More money could help both by funding more projects, and making it easier for potential developers to plan, Elliott said.
“Having additional funding available consistently helps these organizations as they are trying to sketch out a project and figure out if it works,” Elliott said.
The Community Loan Fund’s portion would be used to help resident-owned manufactured home communities build solar arrays to service residents. A resident-owned community is a manufactured home park in which the residents have come together as in a cooperative to buy the land on which their homes sit, creating for themselves a more stable housing future.
The community loan fund has been working on developing community solar with these groups since 2018 when it led the creation of an array in the western New Hampshire city of Lebanon. Today, they have four projects either in operation or under construction.
“The reason that has been slow is that the financial barriers to low income solar are pretty immense,” said Oliver, who leads the organization’s resident-owned communities program. “What the Solar for All program would do is really help us scale up.”
The remaining money would flow through New Hampshire Housing, a public corporation that promotes housing affordability and access throughout the state. It already works closely with the state’s 18 public housing authorities, so it has relationships and experience with the low-income population the funded programs would be targeting.
Much of the New Hampshire Housing money would be used to connect renters in multifamily buildings with community solar.
Traditionally, bringing solar to renters has been difficult because of what is often called the split incentive – if tenants pay their own electricity bills, landlords have little motivation to spend money on solar panels when the renters will reap the financial benefits. The grant proposal would encourage landlords to take over tenants’ utility bills, and roll the cost into the rent, reflecting the discounts community solar would create.
“The Solar for All proposal takes a huge step in moving things in a more positive direction,” Evans-Brown said. “It’s giving landlords a carrot to figure this out.”
The EPA should be announcing the grant recipients in March 2024 and distributing the funds in July, Evans-Brown said. Solar projects using the money should start popping up by 2025.
If New Hampshire receives the grant, it could be transformative, supporters said, by both accelerating the state’s decarbonization efforts and making a significant difference for financially struggling households. In concert with other federal programs pouring money into home electrification and energy efficiency, the Solar for All funds could jumpstart significant and much-needed growth in green housing development, Evans-Brown said.
“The thing I am excited about is this influx of money is going to result in a large amount of multifamily, sustainable housing getting built that’s going to be really affordable,” Evans-Brown said. “I am really optimistic.”
Environmental groups filed an appeal Thursday, challenging recent decisions by an Ohio regulatory commission to allow drilling under a state park and two state wildlife areas.
Those decisions currently call for sections of Salt Fork State Park, Zepernick Wildlife Area and Valley Run Wildlife Area to be leased to the highest and best bidder, with the bidding period set to start in January.
Among other things, the groups say the Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission failed to consider all of the factors it was required to weigh under state law. The groups also allege that the commission failed to provide an opportunity for public hearing under state law.
Plans to drill under Ohio state parks and wildlife areas were jump-started earlier this year by House Bill 507, which began as a two-page bill about poultry regulations and grew to more than 80 pages when lawmakers heaped in provisions about natural gas and other unrelated topics last December. Environmental groups challenged the constitutionality of the law earlier this year, and that case is still pending.
The new case appealing the commission’s decisions was filed on Nov. 30 with the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas. A notice of appeal was also filed with the Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission.
Parties to the appeal include Save Ohio Parks, the Ohio Environmental Council, the Buckeye Environmental Network and Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. Lawyers at Earthjustice are acting as counsel, and the Ohio Environmental Council also has its own attorneys on the complaint.
HB 507 would have required approval of drilling under state-owned lands until the commission adopted a standard lease form and other rules to allow drilling on different parcels.
Now, under the law, Ohio statutory law calls for the commission to consider nine factors, including environmental impacts, effects on visitors or users of state-owned lands, public comments or objections, economic benefits and more. Commission Chair Ryan Richardson also recited those factors in an affidavit filed in the constitutional challenge case.
The opponents’ appeal alleges that the commission failed to duly consider all those factors. The commission also did not allow people attending the meetings to present testimony in opposition to particular proposals.
Even after the Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission adopted rules this spring, comments by its members indicated they still viewed HB 507 as a legislative mandate preventing them from rejecting parcel nominations outright.
“We’ve been directed to open these lands up,” Richardson said at a Sept. 18 commission meeting.
In a similar vein, commission member Jim McGregor told the Energy News Network this summer, “we have a mandate from the legislature that says we shall lease public lands for fracking.”
The commission did not discuss all the statutory factors for voting either yes or no at its Nov. 15 meeting. Yet it voted to allow opening up lands under the state park and wildlife areas for bid next quarter. No written opinion explaining the decisions has been posted on the commission’s website.
“The commission is not required to submit a written opinion, and they are not expecting to write one,” said Andy Chow, spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, in response to a question by the Energy News Network the next day. “And there is no appeals procedure.”
“The Commission’s refusal to issue a written decision, failure to engage in meaningful discussion of the statutory criteria, and its belief that decisions are not appealable, show a concerning disregard for the process and rigor contemplated by their statutory mandates,” said Megan Hunter, a lawyer for Earthjustice who is representing opponents in the appeal and in the constitutional challenge case.
“As seen in the Commission’s meetings, the Commission did not publicly consider all nine statutory factors prior to opening up Salt Fork State Park, Valley Run Wildlife Area, and Zepernick Wildlife Area for oil and gas development. The Commission should be held accountable for this failing,” she added.
An unlikely collaboration between a Kentucky coalfield county and Kentucky’s largest city began when a former high school English teacher, Megan Downey, walked into the Lawrence County courthouse in Louisa in August.
Inspired by a personal desire to find ways to tackle the impacts of climate change, Downey had launched a nonprofit called The Solar Collaborative last year in Virginia dedicated to helping Appalachian communities transition to renewable energy.
She had been pitching an idea to local governments across Eastern Kentucky: Seek some of the billions in federal funding up for grabs in the Solar for All competition. Through the competition, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to invest $7 billion through 60 grants to states, local governments, nonprofits and tribal governments to “increase access to affordable, resilient, and clean solar energy for millions of low-income households.” The money comes from the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
When Downey talked with Deputy Judge-Executive Vince Doty about the opportunity, he agreed “within minutes” to sign up.
“He’s the biggest advocate, I think, in the whole region for this type of project,” Downey said. “A lot of low-income communities don’t have access to that economic savings that’s associated with solar, and so it’s just one more way in which a wealth gap is continuing to increase.”
Doty brought other Eastern Kentucky counties on board for an application to the competition; judge-executives in Lawrence, Johnson, Martin, Floyd, Pike, Boyd, Greenup counties all wrote letters of support. After learning they had both submitted letters of intent to apply for the federal funding, the mountain counties teamed up with Louisville’s government to submit a unified application that could provide affordable access to solar energy for thousands of low-income homes in Kentucky from its largest cities to its rural Appalachian counties.
It’s one of two competing applications from Kentucky. The other was submitted by the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet; solar advocates say it could be a significant boost for the use of residential solar across the state.
Advocates argue more distributed solar, for example via solar panels on rooftops, could mean utility bill savings for Kentuckians and a curbing of greenhouse gas emissions connected to Kentucky’s fossil fuel-reliant electricity grid.
For Doty, seeking funding for solar was foremost about easing the financial burden of his constituents in a region that faces continued economic challenges from the decline of the coal industry. Lawrence County is one of 20 Eastern Kentucky counties served by electric utility Kentucky Power, which has the highest monthly residential utility bills in Kentucky, according to a state analysis.
“We always try to put our citizens first,” Doty said. “If there’s a chance that we can save somebody $300 a month off their electric bill, that’s worth trying for.”
Both the Louisville-Eastern Kentucky and state government proposals are wide in scope, highlighting specific ideas for how to use tens of millions of dollars in federal funding. Both applications could mean integrating solar energy into thousands of homes, whether through direct ownership of rooftop solar installations or better access to existing or planned community solar projects.
The Louisville-Eastern Kentucky application is asking for $150 million to be spent over five years, proposing:
Downey said Doty had advocated in a number of meetings as the Louisville-Eastern Kentucky application was being developed that it was a “non-negotiable” that Kentuckians should own the solar installations themselves
The application anticipates, if awarded funding, at least a 20% energy bill reduction for approximately 7,300 households in Kentucky taking part in the proposal. Households that ultimately receive a six-kilowatt solar installation for free could see energy bill reductions up to 50%, according to the application.
“If you put solar on your home, you immediately have benefits economically from the savings that you garner. It also increases the value of your home,” Downey said. “So this has the potential for a really significant impact if you look at it over 25 years as far as wealth generation goes.”
The Louisville-Eastern Kentucky application estimates the results of the funding would add another approximate 44 megawatts of distributed solar power onto Kentucky’s grid. That would increase distributed solar in the state by about 70%, with 63.5 megawatts of distributed solar already in Kentucky.
The application also estimates about 1,300 “green jobs” will be created through the proposed solar investment. Steve Ricketts, the board chair of the advocacy group Kentucky Solar Energy Society, said while construction work associated with larger, utility-scale solar projects is temporary, ending once the project is completed, those workers also can work on installing solar in their own communities.
“They can be working on homes in their own town, they can be working on businesses and around town. So the two are incredibly complementary, and, frankly, have to go together to make it all work,” Ricketts said.
Sumedha Rao, the executive director of Louisville Metro Government’s Office of Sustainability, said the estimates of solar power added, households helped and renewable energy jobs created through the funding proposal are somewhat conservative and that the impact of the grant could be even more.
Given that Kentucky has historically relied on fossil fuels, she said, a transition to renewables can be a “scary proposition” for some Kentuckians. But she believes the Solar for All grant competition has a lot of upside with helping the state transition economically.
“We really feel like this is something that can have a massive impact for years to come,” Rao said.
The Solar for All application submitted by state officials leads with its own idea of how residential solar can be deployed across the state, particularly in areas hit by devastating floods and tornadoes in recent years.
Requesting $100 million from the Solar for All competition, one of the state’s proposals is to put residential solar and an electricity battery storage system on 850 “disaster recovery” homes that could result in 70% utility bill savings for each home — or up to $1,000 in annual bill savings per home — over the course of 20 years.
For Kenya Stump, the executive director of the state’s Office of Energy Policy, eliminating most of the energy bills is just one way to help people recovering from natural disasters who may have lost every material thing they own.
“If they can live in a home from here on out that is more resilient, that also has the burden of that kind of cost is no longer there — shouldn’t we kind of strive for that?” Stump said.
Stump said in many instances low-income Kentuckians live in homes that are old and energy inefficient, leading to higher energy usage and subsequently higher utility bills. She said by enrolling LIHEAP recipients in community solar programs — such as ones offered by East Kentucky Power Cooperative and Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities (LG&E and KU) — they can get a direct credit on their bill and get more value from the utilized renewable energy.
“The energy regardless of the source will just still leak out” of poorly insulated, inefficient homes, Stump said. “We also hope that this will incentivize the growth of more municipal and utility community solar offerings that would be eligible to have LIHEAP carve-outs as well.”
Some stakeholders involved in the Louisville-Eastern Kentucky application, while supportive of community solar projects in general, were skeptical of using Solar for All funds on such projects out of concerns that some community solar models, specifically LG&E and KU’s “Solar Share” program, subsidize an asset of an investor-owned utility with taxpayer funds.
Stump said while stakeholders may wish some existing community solar projects were designed differently, it’s what is currently offered by Kentucky utilities and “can provide some benefit” to low-income Kentuckians that haven’t been able to take advantage.
The two Kentucky applications submitted to Solar for All do align on ways to boost the workforce needed to install residential solar on homes, though Stump added that developing a renewable energy workforce needs to be paced with the deployment of solar.
“That’s our greatest challenge is to make sure we get the timing right so that it aligns with the deployment of projects. We don’t want to give someone hope, and then there not be any work,” Stump said.
For Stump, the Solar for All competition is just one federal program and incentive among many that will ultimately “shift and transform our energy landscape.”
Lane Boldman, the executive director of the environmental advocacy group Kentucky Conservation Coalition, believes both applications are “really solid” but points out the federal government is only giving out 60 grants. Competition for the grants is stiff: More than 30 states have submitted notices that they’re applying along with a number of local governments and nonprofits across the country.
Lawrence County and Louisville decided to collaborate, in part, to increase the chances that their Solar for All application would get awarded. The stakeholders with Lawrence County and Louisville also tried unsuccessfully to unify their application with the state’s proposal.
Boldman said a big question became if a single grant application could ask for enough funding to cover all of the “great ideas” being proposed for the competition.
“The decision really was that it was better to keep them as two separate applications,” Boldman said. “I have to say that I think both grants are very strong and deserving, and so we just have to wait and see what the federal government decides.”
A group of Massachusetts solar installers are working with the state to modify fire codes that they say are too restrictive and are limiting the scale of residential solar arrays.
“We are not at the finish line, but both sides have been extremely cooperative and collaborative,” said Nick D’Arbeloff, vice president of commercial for SunBug Solar and the vice president of the Solar Energy Business Association of New England. “The dialogue is producing good results.”
At the heart of the debate are provisions of the most recent state fire code, which went into effect in December 2022.
For the first time, the code includes restrictions on the positioning of rooftop solar arrays intended to make it easier and safer for firefighters to move around on top of burning houses. The code calls for a setback from the ridgeline of a roof, leaving enough space for firefighters to cut into the roof to ventilate the home and allow smoke to escape. It also requires pathways through and around panels so firefighters can get where they need to go.
“It sets requirements on how much space is necessary or required to be there so firefighters can travel unimpeded by solar panels,” said Jake Wark, spokesman for the state Department of Fire Services.
The solar industry objected to the changes for a few reasons. The setbacks and pathways required mean reducing the total area of just about every rooftop array from 10% to 20%, and smaller arrays mean less revenue for installers. Some potential customers even pulled out entirely because the economics of the system didn’t work for them with fewer panels.
Some installers also objected that clearing so much room for firefighters isn’t necessary. All modern solar installations, they said, include a switch that can instantly stop the flow of any electricity through the panels, which would allow firefighters to easily and safely break through with a swing of an axe. The state, however, was not convinced these switches could be thrown quickly enough or provide enough safety.
“Panels always provide an electrocution hazard,” Wark said.
The suddenness of the new code also made for a rough transition, installers said. For years, similar rules have been part of the national model code many states use as a template for their own codes. In Massachusetts, however, the solar provisions had always been removed, with the understanding that the state building code would eventually address the issue, Wark said. So the solar rules in the new fire code were unexpected by many in the industry.
“The transition was absolutely awful, and we ended up having to redesign a lot of arrays,” said Mark Durrenberger, president of solar installation company New England Clean Energy. “The code we’re answering to is not entirely clear, so it leaves lots of room for interpretation”.
The municipal code officials in charge of inspecting solar installations were also caught somewhat unprepared. From town to town, building and fire inspectors interpreted the rules with different degrees of stringency. Sometimes, Durrenberger said, they just got it plain wrong – in one case applying the rules for residential installations to an array atop a barn – for example. For installers working on projects in multiple towns, the whole situation was rife with uncertainty.
“Fire chiefs weren’t necessarily as prepared as they perhaps should have been with regards to how best to review designs and enforce this new code,” D’Arbeloff said.
In the face of this upheaval, the Solar Energy Business Association of New England, MassSolar, and the Northeast Clean Energy Council reached out to the state to see if they could find a compromise. The Department of Fire Services agreed to create a working group, including representatives of the solar industry, to look for solutions. Several months in, the participants have made significant headway, and the solar industry has accepted the need to make some concessions.
“The solar industry’s concern was that we would be unable to put in place a system capable of offsetting the full load of the household as a result of these setbacks,” D’Arbeloff said. “While that still may be the case, we fully understand why compromise is called for here.”
Whatever adjustments to the rules come out of the process, both sides will have to take responsibility for making implementation go as smoothly as possible, D’Arbeloff said. The Department of Fire Services will need to offer additional training in the new code, but installers will also have to make sure their designs and drawings clearly communicate the ways in which their plans adhere to the rules.
There is still plenty of work to do, but Durrenberger is hopeful that a modified code will be in place some time next year.
“I suspect that there will be a lot of back-and-forth to try to refine the language,” he said “With luck, maybe at the beginning of next year, we’ll have a revised fire code that can take back some of the roof we lost.”
Automaker Stellantis has made some big climate promises. But behind the scenes, it’s lobbied against efforts to hold the company accountable to those commitments. So have dozens of other major companies, according to a new report from the environmental group InfluenceMap.
The maker of Chrysler, Jeep and other big-name auto brands pledged last year that half of the vehicles it sells will be electric by 2030. It’s building two electric vehicle battery plants in the U.S. to help achieve that goal, and it also agreed to protect workers’ futures in the EV transition in its recent deal with the United Auto Workers. And those EV goals are just part of its plan to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2038.
But away from the public eye, Stellantis is actually working against stronger vehicle emissions regulations, InfluenceMap found. Just this summer, the company told the U.S. EPA it opposed stronger greenhouse gas emissions regulations for heavy-duty vehicles, reports the nonprofit news outlet Sludge. It later pushed for weaker emission standards for light-duty vehicles, too.
The automaker isn’t alone. InfluenceMap’s report accuses dozens of other companies of “greenwashing” as they publicly claim they’re shooting for net-zero while working against climate action behind the scenes. The list includes Delta Air Lines, ExxonMobil and several utilities and manufacturers.
You can find the whole report here, and read more from Sludge.
🖥️ AI’s energy impact: The proliferation of AI-powered smart devices is bound to spike energy demand; analysts recently speculated that the technology’s use worldwide could someday match all of Ireland’s energy use and significantly drive up global emissions. (Verge)
💰 A new life for fossil fuel towns: A new analysis finds a big piece of wind, solar, battery and manufacturing investment spurred by the federal climate law is going to communities that have long been economically dependent on fossil fuels. (Washington Post)
🚘 EVs’ ups and downs: U.S. electric vehicle sales are up nearly 50% so far this year compared to last, though clean energy and EV manufacturers still face mounting financial and supply chain challenges. (Canary Media, E&E News)
🤑 Money (and fossil fuels) to burn: Twelve of the world’s wealthiest people produce greenhouse gas emissions equal to more than 2 million homes via their private jets, financial investments, and other luxury purchases, researchers find. (Guardian)
🪖 Pumping up heat pumps: The Biden administration deploys the Defense Production Act — a measure usually used to boost manufacturing during wartime — to speed manufacturing of electric heat pumps. (The Hill)
🚪 Meet the solar sales bros: A wave of door-to-door solar “sales bros” with little actual knowledge of the technology and a tendency to lie to close sales could threaten consumer confidence in the clean energy transition. (Time)
♻️ Second wind: In downtown Cleveland, old wind turbine blades are getting a new life as benches and tables. (Bloomberg)
👀 Peer pressure on climate: While a new climate agreement between the U.S. and China lacks specific goals, concrete promises from the two nations could encourage further action at this year’s COP28 climate summit. (Inside Climate News)
🔋 A new life for EV batteries: A California project tests using old electric vehicle batteries to store solar power — a recycling solution that could reduce the need for mining more materials. (Grist)
A pair of community microgrid projects in Massachusetts are already helping to inspire similar projects in the state before construction has even begun.
The city of Chelsea and Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood are each developing projects that supporters hope can become powerful case studies for the potential of microgrids to increase resilience and create other benefits for residents.
Chelsea has ordered equipment for a microgrid that will connect municipal facilities, and is targeting a construction date in the second half of 2024. Chinatown is finalizing plans for a system to provide solar power and backup energy storage to a 200-unit affordable housing apartment building.
“We do see this serving as a model for the nation if we can pull it off,” said Alexander Train, Chelsea’s director of housing and community development.
The list of communities considering whether to follow their lead includes Cambridge, Lynn, and Milton.
In the broadest sense, microgrids are small-scale energy systems in which power is produced, distributed, and consumed, typically all within a self-contained area such as a college campus or hospital complex. Microgrids can often operate independently from the main grid, providing continuous power, even in case of disruptions to the regional supply, and can help cut energy costs.
Though they come in all configurations and sizes, microgrids have historically generated power with fossil fuels. But as the transition to sustainable energy accelerates, more organizations are looking at ways to combine renewable energy and battery storage to create cleaner microgrids.
Several years ago, semi-retired engineer David Dayton saw in this evolving model an opportunity to improve the health and safety of environmental justice communities — areas that bear a disproportionate environmental burden and are often home to many low-income residents and people of color.
Solar panels could cut energy costs, while batteries could provide power to critical facilities, such as municipal buildings, community centers, and senior housing, in case of power outages. Batteries could also be used to sell power back to the main grid to help pay for the system.
To get this vision off the ground, Dayton reached out to organizations he was familiar with, including the Green Justice Coalition and private companies Peregrine Energy Group and Synapse Energy Economics. The participants identified Chelsea and Chinatown as good candidates for a community microgrid. Both communities have high populations of immigrants and people of color, and both have median household incomes well below the average for the area. And they are vulnerable to climate change impacts including flooding and dangerous temperatures as the result of the urban heat island effect.
In 2018, the group Dayton assembled acquired grants from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center for feasibility studies in the two communities.
The model developed during this process proposes to create the nation’s first community-owned “virtual microgrid.” The designs use cloud-based software to connect solar installations and batteries in locations that aren’t necessarily adjacent to each other, a departure from the conventional model in which the components of the microgrid are physically connected. This approach allows more flexibility in deciding what facilities can participate, particularly helpful when a community would like to include vital facilities that are geographically spread out.
“It’s a microgrid without borders,” Dayton said. “We can add any building to the network at any time — they don’t have to be contiguous.”
Today, the first two projects are making progress. In Chelsea, a design has been created that includes 500 kilowatt-hour batteries at both the police station and city hall, as well as a 400 kilowatt solar array at the department of public works facility. Plans are already in the works to start gathering more community input by the end of the year about expanding the system to other essential locations such as senior housing, churches, or health care centers.
“We want this system to proliferate as fast as we possibly can,” Train said.
In Chinatown, project developers have had to scale back their initial ambitions of connecting several multifamily housing buildings. They are now focused on serving Masspike Towers, a privately owned development of 190 affordable units, before expanding. The plan, still being finalized, is to build a solar installation and share the savings across all residents in a model similar to community solar. Battery storage will help keep common areas powered and extensive energy efficiency measures will reduce overall consumption.
“Our goal is to bring the benefits of clean energy and decarbonization incentives to a low-income urban community that has historically missed out on a lot of those benefits,” said Lydia Lowe, executive director of the Chinatown Community Land Trust, one of the community partners in the project
As work has progressed in Chelsea and Chinatown, other communities have started to wonder about the possibilities. And the two ongoing projects are offering valuable lessons about how to make community microgrids work.
Financing has emerged as a potential major sticking point. In Chelsea, where the city will own the system, the city council voted to provide $4 million in funding to the project. That money – along with federal support, the savings created by solar generation, and the revenue from selling stored powerback onto the grid – is enough to get the project up and running. Building on municipal sites that each have only one tenant also helps simplify the design and logistics.
In Chinatown, however, the city is providing some funding, but not enough to cover the entire project, making it more challenging to structure the financing in a way that is affordable yet satisfies potential investors.
“It is a little bit tougher. We were able to get the city on board in Chelsea,” said Sari Kayyali, microgrid manager for the two projects. “We’ve been working with them to find a workable scope that can pay back investors in a timely manner.”
The work thus far has also highlighted the importance of the community-led ethos that distinguishes the approach from other microgrids, which are generally privately owned and operated. From the beginning, Dayton and other planners felt it was essential to the underlying mission of environmental justice that community members have a lot of say in determining the goals, design, and operations of these community microgrids. In both Chelsea and Chinatown, the planners divided the $75,000 each community received, dedicating half to engineering and technical planning, and giving the other half to community organizations to conduct outreach and education.
In Chelsea, these efforts were key to securing the microrid’s future: The strong support of the community helped sway a few skeptical city councilors to vote for funding for the project, said Elena González, technical director of Climable, a nonprofit that has conducted community engagement and outreach for Chelsea, Chinatown, and Cambridge.
But the importance of community involvement is far more than just strategic, supporters said.
“These microgrid projects empower communities and give them a role in the way that energy development happens,” González said. “This is something that has a huge impact in people’s lives and it is important that the community leads.”
This commentary was submitted by Sneha Ayyagari, a Clean Energy Leadership Institute Fellow and a Program Manager for Clean Energy Initiative at the Greenlining Institute. See our commentary guidelines for more information.
Winter is coming, and having resilient homes is crucial in climate disasters. For instance, Texans were woefully unprepared for Storm Uri which resulted in 246 deaths. While my family shivered under blankets, temperatures in our house stayed safe since we had insulation and a heat pump that kicked into gear when we had short periods of power. It was devastating hearing of families living in poorly insulated homes exposed to hypothermia. Weatherizing buildings and switching to efficient systems like heat pumps can be lifesaving in extreme weather and generally be more comfortable and can save residents money.
However, for more than a third of residents living in rental housing, accessing incentive programs that allow them to make these upgrades in their homes is very difficult. These barriers are especially high for residents in multifamily affordable housing and mobile homes where many people who are most susceptible to heat-related illnesses live.
States and local governments should implement federal funding with renters in mind. The Department of Energy’s Home Energy Rebates (HER) program provides $8.8B in rebate funding for energy efficiency and electrification projects and an additional $200M for states to develop complementary contractor training programs. States can provide their most vulnerable residents health, economic, and environmental benefits by prioritizing low-income renters in their applications for Home Energy Rebate funding.
To ensure the benefits of this program reach tenants, states should:
Renters should not have to fear that their landlords would use building upgrades as a reason to raise rents or displace them (as has happened in construction projects including apartment renovations in Los Angeles). At a minimum, HER guidance states that the owner must agree to rent the dwelling to a low-income tenant and cannot increase rent as a result of energy improvements for two years. Tenants must also have written notice of their rights in a specific and verifiable mechanism. States should go further to specify clear enforcement and penalties. They should ensure that tenants have access to legal services and support in reporting violations without fear of retaliation. Administrators should prohibit rent increases due to HER or at least extend the window of preventing rent increases to at least 10 years following the precedent of other programs.
In addition to building decarbonization programs, states should adopt policies such as rental efficiency standards, rental registries, eviction protections, and rent-stabilization measures to preserve affordability and increase the quality of rental housing. State and local renter protections such as California’s Transformative Communities Draft Program Guidelines and Berkeley’s Existing Buildings Electrification Strategy include a list of tenant protections and anti-displacement resources.
States have many resources from tenant advocates, environmental justice leaders, and policy groups to build from. This letter led by Just Solutions Collective in collaboration with 60 environmental justice, housing, workforce, and environmental organizations has detailed recommendations on reducing barriers for tenants. Strategic Actions for a Just Economy shared recommendations on developing a tenant protection plan to prevent rent burden, limit evictions, minimize disruptions to tenants, and design enforcement and penalty systems. The Greenlining’s Equitable Building Decarbonization Framework shares how to design a community-led approach to implementation. Just Solutions Collective provides recommendations on ensuring access to low income renters, and Green and Healthy Homes Initiative and Building Decarbonization Coalition shares lessons learned from past federal building retrofit programs. Other resources include American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy’s webinars and Energy Innovation’s report on ways to design effective outreach strategies.
Regional and local community based organizations should be compensated to be part of the program administration team and help with outreach, implementation, and evaluation of the Home Energy program. The HER application also requires that states create Community Benefits Plans that describe anticipated economic and direct benefits especially for disadvantaged communities. As states develop their community benefits plans, they should ensure that benefits to low income tenants are prioritized within the scope of the goals.
Stacking and braiding federal funding with other state, local, and utility housing, energy, and building retrofits programs can maximize benefits to renters while streamlining the effort of property owners applying for multiple programs. Philadelphia’s Built to Last and Washington’s Weatherization and Health are good examples of holistic programs.
Families shouldn’t have to choose between affording rent and having a safe and healthy place to live, especially in the face of climate disasters. States have a historic opportunity to drastically improve the lives of tenants. By collaborating with tenants, state energy offices can create strong applications in 2024 that ensure healthy, affordable, and climate-resilient housing for all.
Northern Indiana Public Service Co. is planning to build a 400-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant that critics say is unnecessary, out of step with clean energy goals, and happening outside the usual planning process.
In September, the utility asked the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission for a needed certificate of public convenience and necessity to build the $643 million peaker plant on the site of the retiring R.M. Schahfer coal plant in Jasper County in central Indiana.
The utility, known as NIPSCO, says it needs the plant to provide power during times of high demand, since it will be phasing out coal by 2028 and transitioning to renewables.
“Energy from renewable resources does not follow the load,” David Walter, NIPSCO vice president for power delivery, testified before the commission. “In order to have generation available when the load is there but sufficient energy from renewable resources is not, it is critical to have sufficient fast-starting, quick-ramping dispatchable generation,” meaning the natural gas plant.
NIPSCO also says the plant could be converted to run on natural gas blended with hydrogen — a fuel being pushed by the U.S. Department of Energy, including with the recent funding of regional hydrogen hubs.
Groups with intervenor status — including Citizens Action Coalition and the Industrial Group of NIPSCO customers — are in the process of filing testimony about the proposed gas plant, due Dec. 12.
Just Transition Northwest Indiana legislative director Susan Thomas said the organization “is actively opposing this build-out of what will most likely be only an occasional-use facility that either prolongs the use of fossil fuels for another 50 years or will be rendered obsolete due to more stringent climate regulations in the future.”
Currently, NIPSCO’s generation mix is 43% coal, 26% natural gas, 17% solar and 15% wind. In its 2018 integrated resource plan, NIPSCO proposed to close all its coal plants by 2028, and keep running its existing Sugar Creek natural gas plant.
NIPSCO told the commission in recent testimony that by 2028, it expects to get 31% of its capacity from natural gas-fired power, 13% from wind and 55% from solar plus storage.
NIPSCO’s 2021 integrated resource plan called for 300 MW of natural gas. In its September filing, NIPSCO said that the proposal for a 400-megawatt gas plant is based on a recent analysis including “market shifts” since 2021, like rule changes in the MISO wholesale market and passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.
“They’re backsliding off their 2018 commitment,” is how Thomas sees it.
NIPSCO had originally planned to retire two units of the Schahfer coal plant in 2023, but had to extend to 2025 because of delays in getting planned solar online, it told the commission. Two more units at Schahfer are scheduled to close by 2028, and existing gas-fired peaking units at that site are scheduled to close in 2026. NIPSCO’s Michigan City coal plant is scheduled to close by 2026.
Citizens Action Coalition program director Ben Inskeep noted that NIPSCO has another integrated resource plan due next fall. He said that process would be the appropriate place to explore and explain the need for new gas peaker capacity, offering more chances for public scrutiny and input.
“We’ve had great dialogue with them in the [integrated resource planning] stakeholder process in the past; they’ve been receptive to feedback,” Inskeep said. “One of the sad parts about this proceeding is it’s a step backwards in the process with them; it kind of breaks trust when you have an understanding about how things will operate and you’ve been successful, and then they’ve gone outside the process to come up with a different answer.”
Walter told the commission that NIPSCO could not wait to launch the gas plant request during the 2024 integrated resource planning process, since that would delay plant construction “until late 2027 at the earliest,” while the company said it needs the capacity by 2026.
Advocates say that rather than constructing a natural gas plant to fill gaps in renewable generation, NIPSCO could buy power from the MISO wholesale market, while also reducing energy needs through demand response and energy efficiency programs.
Inskeep said the math behind the gas plant proposal is especially tricky given that it depends on both wholesale power prices in the future, and natural gas prices, for NIPSCO to supply its own plant. Natural gas prices have been particularly volatile over time, severely impacted by things like the fracking boom and the Ukraine-Russia war.
“They’re saying that additional capacity will give them the ability to basically buy less electricity from the MISO wholesale power market, an insurance mechanism so they’re not buying wholesale energy during the few hours of the year when the solar and wind they are building might not be operating,” Inskeep said. “Whether this resource meets the cost-benefit analysis is unclear to me. Is it really going to make the gas plant worth it, even if you don’t take into consideration the climate change and local pollution impacts?”
Opponents are also worried that NIPSCO is for the first time proposing to construct the plant itself, hiring individual contractors rather than hiring one firm to oversee the entire process.
“They’ve never built a plant on their own, but now they’re going to freelance this,” Thomas said. “Where will there be transparency in this process? The potential for cost overruns is rampant.”
Under Indiana law, a company can bill ratepayers for a “construction work in progress,” long before it is “used and useful,” the usual standard for recouping cost and a profit from ratepayers.
Kevin Blissmer, regulatory manager for NIPSCO’s parent company, testified to the commission that this arrangement actually saves ratepayers money, since they are paying costs upfront rather than later, including costs the company took on to finance its investment. Blissmer said billing ratepayers while construction is ongoing would mean a difference of $149 million in financing savings over the project’s life.
But the Citizens Action Coalition website describes the group’s concerns with construction work in progress, saying it “converts consumers into involuntary investors, placing the burden of up front financing costs onto them. The costs end up on their bills sooner, before they ever receive electricity from the plant in question, and there is little recourse should the costs skyrocket or the project be abandoned.”
In July, NIPSCO announced its first two Indiana solar farms are operating: a 265-megawatt solar farm in Jasper County, not far from the Schahfer coal plant, and a 200-megawatt array in White County. In April, NIPSCO signed a power purchase agreement with a 198-megawatt wind farm in Jasper County.
In its September filing, NIPSCO said the gas plant meets the state 21st Century Energy Policy Development Task Force’s recommended five pillars, helping to ensure reliability and resiliency, stability, affordability, and environmental sustainability.
But Inskeep called building the gas plant on the retiring coal plant site a “missed opportunity,” since it precludes the chance to put wind and solar on the site and utilize the existing grid interconnections, without having to go through the otherwise lengthy process to interconnect new solar and wind to MISO’s grid.
Clean energy advocates have also asked NIPSCO to focus on reducing peak demand rather than building more generation.
“Solutions are there and available,” Thomas said. “We’re not even giving those solutions a fair chance. They should have considered energy storage, demand response or purchase from the MISO market before they did this.”
This commentary was submitted by Holly Caggiano, Ph.D., assistant professor in the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia, and Sara Constantino, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Psychology Department and the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University. See our commentary guidelines for more information.
After paying our monthly utility bills, most of us take for granted the complex network of infrastructure and institutions that keep the lights on. This is changing. The average monthly electricity bill for residential customers nationally increased 13% from 2021 to 2022, rising from $121 to $137 a month, while climate change and aging and mismanaged electrical infrastructure have contributed to a string of disastrous wildfires. Confronted with rising costs of living and the urgent need to protect the environment, people across the country are taking a serious look at how their utilities are owned and operated.
Electric utilities, which can act as generators, distributors and/or service providers, play a key role in the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. For decades, a small number of for-profit, investor-owned utilities (IOUs) have powered most of the country. On November 7th, Maine challenged this model with Ballot Question 3, The Pine Tree Power initiative, proposing a transformation of the state’s two largest IOUs into a non-profit, democratically-managed public utility.
Before the vote, the Washington Post dubbed Maine the “epicenter” of the nation’s growing anger with electric utilities. Customer approval ratings of Central Maine Power (CMP) and Versant–the state’s two largest IOUs, owned by parent companies in Spain and Canada–are among the lowest in the country, but Maine is just one of an increasing number of states where people are raising concerns. Groups across the country have called for public takeover of IOUs, claiming investors prioritize profit over system maintenance, disregard consumer safety, and delay climate action.
While many IOUs have embraced climate action on paper, their actions say otherwise. One recent study found that electric utilities have pushed climate delay, doubt, and denial over multiple decades, promoting messaging explicitly designed to absolve inaction. Reporting also reveals widespread corruption and attempts to halt regulation to encourage clean energy and reduce ratepayer costs. Climate activism group 350.org labeled CMP one of the biggest anti-climate lobbyists in Maine.
IOUs have also been implicated in destructive and deadly wildfires. Hawaiian Electric Company recently acknowledged responsibility for the Maui wildfires—they failed to shut off power despite high winds and dry conditions. California’s PG&E narrowly avoided a trial on manslaughter charges for their role in the 2020 Zogg fire that killed four. IOUs know that the public is worried by their questionable safety records, responding with expensive PR campaigns. These tactics come from an old playbook. In The Big Myth, Erik M. Conway and Naomi Oreskes describe 1920s propaganda campaigns to push privatization that ushered in higher rates for homeowners and bigger profits for corporations. A century later, we’re back to questioning this model.
Private utilities in Maine spent millions lobbying against the ballot initiative and the governor was vocally opposed. We ran a survey with the Climate and Community Project to learn more about how Mainers were feeling in the lead up to the vote. We found that Mainers are overwhelmingly concerned about keeping the lights on, with 88% of respondents very or somewhat worried about current and future energy costs. And despite the lobbying efforts of the private utilities, most respondents believe that their utilities should be locally owned and operated (55%) and not-for-profit (66%).
While these sentiments weren’t reflected in the election results, the reasons are nuanced. Our data suggests that many Mainers weren’t rejecting public-ownership itself, but were looking for a more fully realized plan, citing ambiguities about how the takeover would be financed, if costs would be passed to consumers, and if it would hold up in court—67% of our respondents thought it was somewhat or very likely that Pine Tree would face legal and regulatory challenges.
Despite investor-owned utilities pouring money into campaigns to oppose public power, there is growing momentum to reconsider how our power systems are owned and operated. One recent success is New York’s Build Public Renewables Act, which passed into law in May. After four years of organizing by Public Power NY, a coalition of more than twenty community organizations, the law authorizes the New York Power Authority to build renewable energy projects that help meet the state’s climate goals and include strong labor standards. Municipalization of utilities is also a hot topic in Western states, with ongoing organizing in California and Texas.
Some supporters of the Pine Tree Power campaign hoped that a win would fuel more initiatives across the country. In our poll, 41% of respondents thought it was somewhat or very likely that if passed, Pine Tree Power would spark a larger cross-state movement towards public ownership of energy resources. Despite Mainers choosing to stick with their current model for now, the ballot initiative brought national attention to the issue and has encouraged many to question the status quo. Rather than signaling the end of the road for public power in Maine, this vote could be the beginning of a sustained conversation about transforming our utilities. The research, organizing and discussions that went into the Pine Tree campaign provide a foundation for future efforts to improve the service, safety and sustainability of our energy infrastructure—and start to shift the energy narrative about what is possible, and desirable.
In Maine, we saw how the movement for public power united people across demographic and party lines. Rural or urban, Democrat or Republican, we all deserve access to clean, affordable, and reliable electricity. Climate change is forcing us to reconsider how we produce energy but it doesn’t need to stop there. This is an opportunity to reimagine who owns energy infrastructure and whose interests it serves.
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