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SOLAR: A coalition of solar developers say they’ll lobby Virginia lawmakers to restrict local bans against such projects, spotlighting the local rejection of 33 utility-scale facilities totaling 3,236 MW over the past year and a half. (Virginia Mercury)
PIPELINES:
OIL & GAS:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
GRID:
FINANCE: Memphis, Tennessee, launches a “green bank” to fund energy efficiency, green infrastructure and renewable energy projects. (WREG)
OVERSIGHT: Critics complain that West Virginia officials scheduled meetings about a proposed ranking system for plugging gas wells and the planned Appalachian hydrogen hub at the same time, preventing concerned residents from attending both. (Charleston Gazette-Mail)
EMISSIONS:
CLIMATE: The Federal Emergency Management Agency has paid out more than $190 million so far to individuals in North Carolina for damage from Hurricane Helene, while thousands of Virginia residents and businesses apply for more. (Asheville Watchdog, Bristol Herald Courier)
UTILITIES: Florida Power & Light asks state regulators for a rate hike to recover $1.2 billion in costs for restoring power after hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton, and to replenish a storm fund. (News Service of Florida)
FOSSIL FUELS: West Virginia’s coal and gas leaders discuss ways to grow the market for their products at an energy conference, while the state’s Republican candidate for governor promises to fight federal regulation. (WV Metro News, Parkersburg News and Sentinel)
OFFSHORE WIND: Four offshore wind lease areas in the Gulf of Maine net nearly $22 million at auction, but four more parcels go unclaimed as the wind industry slows. (Maine Public)
ALSO:
HYDRO: Massachusetts consumers will pay an additional $521 million to help cover construction delays on a transmission line intended to import hydropower from Canada, though developers say the project should eventually yield savings. (CommonWealth Beacon)
STORAGE: A solar company and a utility partner to provide free batteries to more than 300 New York homes with solar panels to help clean up the grid at times of peak demand. (Canary Media)
CLIMATE: Massachusetts’ long-awaited climate bill stalls again, as the state House speaker announces plans to delay a vote until a new formal session is convened. (CommonWealth Beacon)
TRANSPORTATION: Philadelphia’s port authority receives $77.6 million in federal funds for electric cargo-moving equipment, sharing in the $3 billion Clean Ports grant program. (WHYY)
POLITICS:
SOLAR: Pennsylvania launches a $25 million grant program to help schools install solar panels to reduce energy expenses. (ABC27)
EMISSIONS: The U.S. EPA announces $3 billion to deploy zero-emission freight and ferry infrastructure to curb ports’ climate impacts. (Associated Press)
ALSO:
UTILITIES: Climate change and the clean energy transition add to complications for utilities looking to shore up system resilience. (Utility Dive)
GRID:
SOLAR:
POLITICS:
LITHIUM: The U.S. Energy Department finalizes a $2.26 billion loan to the controversial Thacker Pass lithium mine under development in Nevada as part of the Biden administration’s effort to bolster the domestic battery supply chain. (Reuters)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A nonprofit “green bank” launches a $250 million financing program to help small freight companies serving the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports purchase about 500 electric trucks. (Canary Media)
CLEAN ENERGY: The Biden administration awards Tri-State Generation $2.5 billion in loans and grants to retire existing coal plants and develop and acquire new clean energy capacity for its member cooperatives in Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Arizona. (Colorado Sun)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A nonprofit “green bank” launches a $250 million financing program to purchase about 500 electric trucks for freight companies serving the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports. (Canary Media)
LITHIUM: The U.S. Energy Department finalizes a $2.26 billion loan to the controversial Thacker Pass lithium mine under development in Nevada as part of the Biden administration’s effort to bolster the domestic battery supply chain. (Reuters)
UTILITIES:
OIL & GAS:
COAL:
SOLAR: An Oregon farm launches an agrivoltaics project consisting of a mobile tracking solar-plus-storage array that shades cool-weather crops from climate change-driven heat. (Microgrid Knowledge)
BATTERIES: A developer brings an 80 MW battery energy storage system online in California’s Central Valley. (news release)
POLITICS: Observers say Nevada’s debates over clean energy development and lithium mining are not falling along political lines and are unlikely to affect voters’ choice for president. (E&E News)
NUCLEAR: A mining company’s proposed uranium mill in an economically depressed Utah town shows little progress even though commodity prices remain high. (Salt Lake Tribune)
This article was originally published by CalMatters.
At New Century Motorcycles in Alhambra, a handful of electric motorcycles are relegated to the back of the store, tucked behind the dirt bikes. The store sells one a month, at most, a salesperson said.
Motorcyclists have long loved their noisy, gas-powered machines that allow them to ride long distances on highways and remote roads with few fueling stops.
Now, in a nationwide first, California is planning new rules that ramp up sales of zero-emission motorcycles in its quest to clean the air and battle climate-warming gasses.
The regulations would impose a credit system for manufacturers so that 10% of motorcycles sold in California would be zero-emissions in 2028 and 50% in 2035, according to the state Air Resources Board. At the same time, a tighter standard for new gas-powered motorcycles would ratchet down their emissions for the first time in more than 25 years.
Under the proposed rules, more than 280,000 new electric or hydrogen motorcycles would be sold in California by 2045 — about eight times more than the total on its roads now. Electric motorcycles make up only 1% of current motorcycle sales.
The state Air Resources Board will vote on the proposed rules on Nov. 7 after a public hearing.
Motorcycles are more often used for recreation than for daily commutes, and they collectively emit far less pollution than gasoline-powered cars and diesel trucks. But a mile driven in a gas-powered motorcycle emits far more pollutants than a mile in a new gas-powered car — for the reactive gases that form smog, it’s a whopping 20 times more per mile, according to the air board.
In a state with the worst smog in the nation and unsafe levels of dangerous fine particles, air-quality officials say no source can be left unregulated: All vehicles powered by fossil fuels need to be cleaned up and transitioned to zero-emissions.
State officials hope more motorcyclists will be interested in the benefits that battery-powered motorcycles have to offer: low fueling costs and less maintenance.
But many motorcyclists point out California’s inadequate network of public charging stations and the limited range of electric models that are unsuitable for long-distance rides. They worry that the rule will limit the bikes they can choose in the future. Others say it could fill an untapped market for urban motorcyclists interested in fast bikes for short commutes.
“There is no infrastructure for electric vehicles,” Michael DiPiero of the American Brotherhood Aimed Towards Education of California, which represents motorcyclists, said in written comments to the air board. “We cannot support the needs we currently have for electricity as it is.”
Rob Smith, a motorcyclist from Santa Monica, owns an electric car and considers himself an environmentalist. But he’s not ready to switch to electric motorcycles — and he doesn’t think most motorcyclists are, either. They’re expensive, silent and have top ranges of about 100 miles.
“I do think it’s the future, I just don’t know about that timeline,” Smith said of the Air Resources Board’s proposal. “This is going to just hit a niche. Can you get to 50% with just that niche?”
Harley Davidson and the Motorcycle Industry Council, a group that represents manufacturers, didn’t respond to a request for comment about the proposed rules.
State officials said the regulation strikes a balance by moving toward electrification of motorcycles and catching up with European standards for gas-powered motorcycles yet still allowing California consumers to have a range of choices.
“We realized we couldn’t push to 100% because there will probably be some circumstances where zero-emission motorcycles won’t have access to infrastructure to plug up their bikes,” said Annette Hèbert, the air board’s deputy executive officer who oversees mobile source rules at its Southern California office.
Motorcycles make up less than half of 1% all vehicle miles traveled in California. But even though they’re a “very small part of the state’s overall transportation sector,” they contribute an “outsized portion of smog-forming pollutants,” air board officials said.
“Motorcycles (emissions) may look small when taken by themselves, but when you consider the additive effect to all those other small sources together, you can see why we’ve got to hit every little piece,” Hèbert said.
If California is to finally have healthy air as well as make progress in combating climate change, “we need to have this paradigm shift, because that’s the only way we’re going to get there,” she said.
Californians breathe some of the nation’s unhealthiest air and vehicles account for the majority of that pollution. The Los Angeles basin has for decades topped the list of cities with the worst ozone, a key ingredient of smog, according to the American Lung Association. Ozone and particle pollution can trigger asthma and heart attacks, as well as other diseases.
The motorcycle regulation would lead to an estimated $649 million in savings from reduced mortality and avoided hospitalizations and illnesses associated with motorcycle emissions, according to the Air Resources Board.
By 2045, the rules are expected to eliminate about 20,000 tons of reactive gases and nitrogen oxides that form smog, and 33 tons of fine particulate matter. That would be about half of the emissions from all California motorcycles.
California is proposing a tiered credit system for manufacturers. Companies that produce high speed, freeway-capable motorcycles with large battery capacities — those that typically produce the most emissions — will get the most credits. Low-speed bikes with low range will get the least.
Companies comply with the rule by producing zero-emission motorcycles for credits or trading their credits with other companies. A manufacturer, for instance, could comply with its 50% target by making and selling 25% electric motorcycles and then purchasing credits for the remaining 25% from an all-electric motorcycle company. Manufacturers would also get bonus credits for producing and selling zero-emission bikes before 2029.
Additionally, starting with 2029 models, the regulation will require new gas-powered motorcycles to follow more stringent European Union standards for exhaust emissions and use better on-board engine diagnostic equipment to detect faults in their emissions systems.
Several manufacturers, including Harley Davison, Ducati and Kawasaki, already make electric bikes, and some companies, like Zero and Verge, build exclusively electric bikes. Energica, an electric bike startup, recently filed for bankruptcy due to increased costs and supply issues.
An electric motorcycle purchased in 2020 cost on average $5,365 more than a gas-powered one. State officials estimated an electric bike would save $215 annually in fuel and maintenance costs.
State officials said electric motorcycles may also appeal to low income motorcyclists who live in apartments and find charging an electric car near their residence more difficult. Less expensive electric motorcycles may be small enough to take inside apartments to charge or come with removable batteries that can be charged overnight.
But officials stressed that the regulation’s intent isn’t to convert car drivers to motorcyclists. Instead, it’s an added option for motorcyclists looking for a more cost effective mode of transportation.
At a Harley Davidson dealer in Marina Del Rey, Live Wire brand electric motorcycles are visible as soon as customers enter the showroom. The dealer sells two or three electric Live Wire motorcycles monthly, said Justin Fraiser, a sales representative at the dealer.
“There are a lot of people in the Harley world stuck on combustion engines,” Fraiser said. But he’s not one of them. “It’s the evolution of things. Eventually, it’s gonna happen.”
Smith, the motorcyclist from Santa Monica, said he thinks electric motorcycles are the future, but they’re not quite ready for “prime time.”
Smith said California has been a leader in climate solutions “for good reason.” He said he cares about reducing emissions and protecting the environment. He is a partner in a venture capital firm that invests in startups that make electric bikes.
But he prefers his “loud and obnoxious” Ducati motorcycle for its better range (up to 200 miles) and for safety reasons — car drivers can hear him coming behind them.
Smith said the state should focus on cutting emissions from new motorcycles with internal combustion engines and was pleased to hear that was part of the regulation.
Karen Butterfield, a motorcyclist from San Diego, agreed that, for her, an electric motorcycle won’t work.
She’s a member of the Southern California Motorcycling Association, which gathers for long-distance trips, from Mexico to Canada and throughout the U.S. They ride for hundreds of miles without stopping, something that an electric one couldn’t do with existing charging network problems.
But she said there’s a massive untapped market in young riders because she thinks electric motorcycles are generally easier to use.
“I think it’s a good thing for motorcycling in the sense that a smaller electric bike would help people get into motorcycling,” she said. “The generations that are coming seem to be more environmentally conscious too, which is a good thing. I think there’s a market there, they just need to find it.”
Adrian Martinez, an attorney for climate advocate Earthjustice, said the organization supports the proposal, but called it conservative. The group was pushing for 100% electric motorcycles in a similar timeline.
“California has such dramatic air pollution problems that we’ve realized that we aren’t in a position to pick and choose,” Martinez said. “We basically need to get to zero emissions everywhere feasible.”
But some motorcyclists believe that mandating electric motorcycle technology isn’t necessary for a vehicle that produces relatively small emissions compared to other vehicles. People ride motorcycles as a hobby, to socialize with other motorcyclists and ride in the mountains or other remote areas.
Some people ride motorcycles as their main form of transportation, and electric motorcycles may appeal to those folks, but it’s a small percentage, said Chris Real, president of DPS Technical, a technical services company for motorcyclists.
Real said he thinks the regulation “won’t move the needle at all” in reducing emissions because most motorcyclists don’t put many miles on their bikes.
“Some consumers will adopt it, and some consumers won’t,” he said. “So very regional consumers, urban consumers that only ride you 20 or 30 miles, it won’t impact them at all. But for somebody that has to make a 100 mile commute or something, that’s not going to be viable.”
ELECTRIFICATION: A California startup will receive a $32 million contract to design and install 10,000 induction stoves using standard 120-volt outlets in New York City public housing units. (Heatmap News)
OFFSHORE WIND:
FOSSIL FUELS: Environmental advocates push for the closure of two fossil fuel-fired “peaker” power plants in Brooklyn that only run a few times a year. (Gothamist)
CLIMATE:
BIOMASS: Vermont’s first food-waste-to-renewable-energy plant opens, with plans to use anaerobic digestion to process waste from the state’s food industry. (news release)
HEAT PUMPS: Long Island has already exceeded state goals for heat pump installations by 2025, and is a leader in electric vehicle adoption as well, say officials. (Newsday, subscription)
TRANSPORTATION:
SOLAR: A new solar installation in Vermont, one of the state’s largest, uses tracking technology to follow the sun and maximize power generation. (Renewable Energy Magazine)
COMMENTARY: Massachusetts is putting too much emphasis on offshore wind development and should give greater consideration to nuclear power, says an advocate for a pro-nuclear organization. (CommonWealth Beacon)
UTILITIES: Xcel Energy tells Colorado regulators that climate change, wildfire risk and litigation have prompted insurers to increase the utility’s premiums by nearly 400% over last year. (CPR)
ALSO: Wyoming lawmakers look to craft policies to attract more energy-intensive data centers to the state and help utilities deal with associated power demand increases. (WyoFile)
ELECTRIFICATION: A public-private partnership launches a project aimed at decarbonizing a Colorado manufactured-home community by replacing gas appliances with electric ones, bringing in solar power and making other efficiency upgrades. (Utility Dive)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
LITHIUM:
POLLUTION: Colorado advocates urge federal regulators to classify the state’s heavily populated Front Range as an “extreme” ozone violator following an abnormally smoggy summer. (CPR)
SOLAR:
CLIMATE:
POLITICS: U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat, touts his support for the SunZia transmission project in a campaign ad, signaling the party’s potential shift toward pushing clean energy infrastructure. (HuffPost)
CLEAN ENERGY: Advocates call on Alaska to tap into its largely unrealized clean energy potential after a report finds the state acquires 2.6% of its electricity from solar, wind and geothermal sources. (Renewable Energy World)
UTILITIES: Kentucky’s largest utility plans as much as 1,000 MW of new solar by 2035 along with four new natural gas plants as it anticipates a surge in demand from data centers. (Kentucky Lantern)
ALSO: Florida Power & Light says it will seek nearly $1.2 billion from ratepayers to cover costs from hurricane damage this year. (CBS News)
OVERSIGHT:
OFFSHORE WIND: Dominion Energy completes its acquisition of an offshore wind lease area off North Carolina, which could add as much as 3 GW of new capacity. (Recharge)
GRID:
SOLAR:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: VW-owned Scout Motors unveils a new retro-designed SUV and pickup to be produced at its South Carolina plant. (Car and Driver)
OIL & GAS: Despite legal challenges, Oklahoma legislators stand by a state law creating a blacklist of financial institutions with climate goals with the aim to “stop Oklahoma pension dollars from being hijacked to further non-financial social causes.” (Oklahoma Watch)
LITHIUM: The Biden administration greenlights the proposed Rhyolite Ridge lithium and boron mine in Nevada even though advocates insist the work will drive the endangered Tiehm’s buckwheat to extinction. (Associated Press)
OIL & GAS:
GRID: Backers of the California grid operator’s Western day-ahead power market and transmission organization expect state lawmakers to pass legislation allowing for regional governance. (RTO Insider, subscription)
HYDROGEN: Developers propose an off-grid, solar-powered green hydrogen production facility and distribution hub in California’s Inland Empire. (news release)
UTILITIES:
CARBON CAPTURE: A California county allocates $900,000 toward a project designed to convert wildfire mitigation waste into carbon-sequestering biochar. (The Union)
CLIMATE:
TRANSPORTATION: Colorado local officials and advocates urge the state to expand a proposed passenger rail line to several other communities in the western part of the state. (Vail Daily)
COMMENTARY: A Colorado journalist says a U.S. EPA enforcement action against an oil and gas operator in New Mexico may herald a new era for the San Juan Basin energy “sacrifice zone.” (Land Desk)
This story was originally published by the Iowa Capital Dispatch.
BOONE – Engineers at Critical Materials Recycling break apart circuit boards, old transmissions and decommissioned wind turbines to extract and recycle rare earth materials.
Most recycling facilities extract things like copper and aluminum from the same scraps, but few know how to break down the batteries, meaning those rare earth material components are often lost.
Rare earth materials are a series of elements with properties like conduction or magnetism that make them essential to electronics. They’re also part of the 10%-15% of wind turbine materials that are not currently recycled.
Iowa-based Critical Materials Recycling was selected by the U.S. Department of Energy as one of six companies to receive a $500,000 cash prize and $100,000 in assistance from national laboratories. Twenty projects were selected in the initial phase of the DOE prize and awarded smaller sums, $75,000, to further develop their concepts.
The $5.1 million Wind Turbine Materials Recycling prize was funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law as part of its efforts to achieve a carbon-pollution-free power sector by 2035.
Dan Bina, Critical Materials Recycling president and CEO, said his company was already interested in wind turbine recycling but the DOE funding expedited and prioritized the project.
“The prize will give us the funding to be able to do that initial leg work, and we’ll build a team to make it happen much sooner and probably much better,” Bina said.
Tyler Christoffel, a technology manager for materials manufacturing and design innovation at the DOE wind energy technologies office, said a big goal of the office is to create a circular economy.
“Basically looking at the ways that we can make our materials more sustainable, be able to reuse them, make them go further,” Christoffel said.
He said about 90% of the turbines, mostly the parts made of steel and concrete, have an established recycling process.
“The work in the program was really focusing on those materials that have been hard to recycle so far, developing technologies so that you can more cost effectively recycle them and then get them into secondary markets,” Christoffel said.
Those materials include the fiber reinforced composites that make up the blades, housing components and the rare earth materials found in the turbine generators.
Christoffel said increasing recycling infrastructure and technology will help reduce waste at all stages of the turbines, from the production process, to the end of life and updating stages that occur less frequently.
Critical materials recycling is a big focus for the department across various industries, not just wind technology. Most of that research is going on at the Critical Materials Innovation Hub led by Ames National Laboratory, here in Iowa.
Ikenna Nlebedim, a scientist at the hub who worked with Critical Materials Recycling, said rare earth recycling is “a key strategy” for U.S. sustainability, security and technological advancement.
“Recycling rare earth elements is crucial for the United States, particularly in the context of wind generators, electronic waste (e-waste), and electric vehicles,” Nlebedim said. “It helps reduce the environmental damage caused by mining and processing, conserves finite resources, and supports a circular economy by reusing materials.”
Most of these minerals are mined overseas, with a majority coming from China, which spurred of the U.S. to develop better recycling capacity.
Critical Materials Recycling worked with the Ames National Laboratory to use an acid-free dissolution recycling (ADR) process that has little to no waste, saves more of the metal components and doesn’t expose technicians to dangerous acids.
Nlebedim, who led the research, said the hub invented the process in 2015 and has worked with TdVib, Bina’s other company that produces a very specific type of material used in sonar-like technologies. Bina’s team commercialized the process with its Critical Materials Recycling company.
“ADR is both environmentally friendly and efficient, eliminating the need for pre-heating and reducing pollution, making it a greener alternative to traditional methods,” Nlebedim said in a statement.
The DOE prize went to Critical Materials Recycling to apply the acid-free dissolution process to wind turbines.
The first step in the process is to break apart the various “feedstocks,” — a wind turbine, car part or other electronics brought to the company — into their components.
Computer hard drives, already shredded by the technology companies for security purposes, get tossed in a rock-tumbler like machine with a copper salt that Bina said selectively dissolves the rare earth materials and pulls them out into a solution.
The rest of the hard drive, which has copper, gold and aluminum, can go to a more traditional recycler after CMR has extracted the approximately 2% rare earth materials from the hard drives.
“We insert ourselves into the process, and actually add value, because now there’s more copper,” Bina said.
The process is more or less the same moving up the line to larger, discarded magnets and the “swarf,” which is like magnet sawdust, accumulated from cutting them to size.
Bigger items, like a transmission from a sedan or the generator of a wind turbine, have to be taken apart before they undergo the same process. Some of these magnets can also be recut and used again in various components.
Each type of magnet has a slightly different process, but Bina said they go through a selective leaching process, like the hard drives in the copper salt tumbler, and come out as a rare earth solution.
The solution then goes through a series of tanks where it is precipitated into a solid form and cleaned to a rare earth material that Bina said is “exactly” like what a buyer would find on the open market.
Bina said the water used in the process goes through treatment and filtration and can be used again.
“We’re not using any strong acids throughout the entire process, we don’t produce any hazardous waste, and we almost have no waste whatsoever,” Bina said.
An acid process would break down everything but rare earth materials, which are typically such a small portion of the electronic that it rarely makes financial sense to do. Critical Materials Recycling pulls the copper and aluminum to sell to smelters, to make up for the cost of gathering the rare earth materials.
“In order to get the rare earth from something like this, you have to valorize everything,” Bina said.
Soon, as part of the second phase of the DOE prize, Bina said his team will process several of the big, 4-megawatt or larger, turbines.
“Not just looking to see if we can do it, but actually doing it,” Bina said.
He said part of the challenge is building a team and the partnerships to operate. He doesn’t have a contract in place but has been in conversation with big energy and wind companies in Iowa to work into their decommissioning plans.
A spokesperson with MidAmerican Energy said the company was aware of Critical Materials Recycling and wrote a letter of support for its project with DOE.
“We look forward to seeing how the company develops and we embrace the potential for additional recycling and disposal options,” the statement read. “The more options, the better.”
Some of the other recipients of the DOE prize are developing processes for recycling wind turbine blades, which had proven to be rather difficult, as more than one company has run into problems processing the blades quickly enough.
MidAmerican has partnered, in the past, with a company that was later sued by the state for leaving piles of wind turbine blades, destined for recycling, around the state. MidAmerican has since partnered with another facility in Fairfax for recycling the blades.
Bina hopes wind turbines become a large part of his business, which he has plans to expand into a larger space soon. But, since wind turbines are typically decommissioned en masse at intervals of 10 or 20 years, the other items, like hard drives and swarf will be constant inputs for the plant.
“We have seen numerous pieces of these feedstocks just getting thrown away, in our eyes, the rare earth anyways, because there just isn’t that technology, that industry in place to capture them,” Bina said. “
The team in Boone is at the beginning of the growing industry.
“Rare earth recycling, five years or so ago, was unheard of,” Bina said.
Christoffel said the development of a circular economy of these expensive materials will help the U.S. to more sustainably build out expanded wind and solar infrastructure.
“It’ll provide some insulation to our supply and help us to ensure a more sustainable build out of clean energy domestically,” Christoffel said.
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