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ELECTRIC VEHICLES: The Army Corps of Engineers will reassess the permit it awarded to Hyundai’s planned $7.6 billion electric vehicle and battery factory in Georgia because it says state and local agencies never mentioned the company’s plans to withdraw up to 6.6 million gallons per day from an underground aquifer used for drinking water. (Associated Press)
GRID:
SOLAR: Nonprofits plan to expand a solar cooperative in El Paso, Texas, even though higher inflation and interest rates dampened interest in the program this year. (El Paso Matters)
STORAGE:
OIL & GAS:
GEOTHERMAL: A Houston-based geothermal energy startup signs a deal to build a facility to eventually provide 150 MW to Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. (Houston Chronicle)
NUCLEAR: The director of a University of Kentucky energy center tells state lawmakers nuclear companies are increasingly considering building in the state, but construction of a new nuclear reactor won’t likely occur for at least a decade. (Kentucky Lantern)
CARBON CAPTURE: A Louisiana timber company sells carbon credits for unharvested trees on 100,000 acres, including more than $100 million worth of credits through the end of 2023. (WWNO)
CLIMATE:
COMMENTARY:
WIND: A NOAA Fisheries analysis says pile-driving work on the Vineyard Wind project is unlikely to pose a threat to whales or other marine life, but does expect some sea turtles will be vulnerable to vessel strikes. (State House News Service)
ALSO:
OIL & GAS:
GRID:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
UTILITIES: A hearing examiner’s report supports a Maine utility’s effort to avoid state regulatory review of its parent company’s acquisition by Iberdrola. (Portland Press Herald)
OVERSIGHT: Consumer and environmental groups push back on the New Hampshire PUC’s plan to introduce stricter requirements for groups or individuals to intervene in regulatory proceedings. (RTO Insider, subscription)
SOLAR: A Pennsylvania school board unanimously rejects a plan for a solar array on district property that would have brought in $200,000 a year in revenue. (Lancaster Online)
WASTE TO ENERGY: Neighbors push Connecticut regulators to hold a public hearing on plans to allow a waste-to-energy plant to burn medical waste. (WFSB)
EQUITY: Philadelphia is holding a series of neighborhood-level workshops as it plans a city-specific environmental justice mapping tool. (WHYY)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: More than a year after Tesla said it would open its Supercharger network to drivers of other electric vehicles, most chargers still remain inaccessible due to software delays and hardware shortages. (New York Times)
ALSO:
GEOTHERMAL:
OIL & GAS: Northeast states are leading the way in pursuing compensation from oil companies for economic damages from climate change. (Stateline)
GRID:
SOLAR:
CLIMATE: A study finds an increase in heat-related deaths between 2018 and 2023, with the vast majority of fatalities occurring in California, Arizona, Nevada and Texas. (Los Angeles Times)
GRID: Regional transmission experts say the buildup of energy-intensive data centers poses an “emerging risk” to grid reliability in the West. (OPB)
SOLAR:
CLEAN ENERGY: The U.S. Energy Department awards Arizona $1.7 million to fund commercial sector energy efficiency projects aimed at benefiting low-income and disadvantaged communities. (Solar Quarter)
STORAGE: A California startup raises $2 million to further develop a thermal energy storage system for industrial applications that uses bricks to convert electricity into heat. (Canary Media)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
ELECTRIFICATION: An Alaska city begins offering residents up to $500 to replace oil-based heating systems with electric heat pumps. (KTOO)
COAL: Data show 10 coal-fired generating units provide about one-third of Colorado’s power, but the facilities all are slated to close by 2031. (Colorado Sun)
OIL & GAS:
UTILITIES: Utah lawmakers raise concerns about the state’s largest utility’s proposed 36% rate hike. (Deseret News)
CLIMATE: A study finds an increase in heat-related deaths between 2018 and 2023, with the vast majority of fatalities occurring in California, Arizona, Nevada and Texas. (Los Angeles Times)
COMMENTARY: California energy analysts find undergrounding power lines is necessary to mitigate wildfire hazard in some areas, but urge utilities to use more cost-effective methods when possible. (Energy Institute at Haas)
CLEAN ENERGY: State policies could supercharge utility-scale clean energy deployment, but experts say too-rapid an expansion could strengthen opposition, and that local participation in the siting process is still key. (Utility Dive)
POLITICS:
GRID:
WIND:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Kentucky has attracted more than $11.5 billion in electric vehicle-related investments since 2020, but lagging vehicle sales and a partisan split over the industry create uncertainty about its future. (Louisville Courier-Journal)
COAL:
PIPELINES: Tribal leaders in northern Wisconsin continue their fight to shut down the Line 5 pipeline in the “Everglades of the North,” where they fear a spill would decimate areas for wild rice and fishing. (Inside Climate News)
SOLAR: A Swiss firm cancels plans to establish a solar cell manufacturing plant in Colorado, saying market distortions have rendered the project financially unviable. (Reuters)
EMISSIONS: North Carolina’s ratepayer advocate, Walmart, and other critics of Duke Energy’s initial decarbonization plan relent and endorse a settlement that includes construction of 9 GW of new natural gas plants and more solar. (Energy News Network)
COMMENTARY: A Harris campaign adviser calls for a “Clean Energy Marshall Plan” that would finance foreign investments in renewables and the creation of international clean energy supply chains and trade agreements. (Foreign Affairs)
An array of critics came out swinging in January when Duke Energy first filed its plans in North Carolina for one of the largest fossil fuel investments in the country.
But as the months have dragged on in the development of the company’s biennial carbon-reduction plan, some notable detractors have relented.
Just before expert witness testimony was set to begin in Raleigh late last month, the state-sanctioned ratepayer advocate, Public Staff, and Walmart endorsed a settlement with Duke on its blueprint, which includes building 9 gigawatts of new natural gas plants that the utility says could be converted to run on hydrogen in the future.
A few days later, the Carolinas Clean Energy Business Association, a consortium of solar and wind developers, announced it had signed on too.
The agreement, which contains some small concessions from the utility, led to low-key hearings that ended in less than two weeks. It makes it more likely that Duke will get what it wants from regulators by year’s end, including a greenlight, if not final approval, for three large new natural gas plants in the near term.
Chris Carmody, executive director of the Carolinas Clean Energy Business Association, says the proposed compromise also helps lock in forward progress on solar energy and batteries, however incremental.
“It’s a more aggressive solar spend. It’s a more aggressive storage spend,” he said. “Certainly, we would like to see more. But first of all, we like to see it going in the right direction.”
Clean energy advocates believe Duke’s push for new gas plants will harm the climate, since the plants’ associated releases of planet-warming methane will cancel out any benefits of reduced carbon pollution from smokestacks. At the same time, they say the investments could become useless by midcentury or sooner, before their book life is over, saddling ratepayers with costs that bring no benefits.
“There’s not much in it for their customers except unnecessary risk, cost, and more pollution,” Will Scott, southeast climate and clean energy director for the Environmental Defense Fund, wrote in a blog last month.
But Duke’s gas bubble has proved hard to burst. For one, the company’s predictions of massive future demand from new data centers are based in part on confidential business dealings that are challenging to rebut from the outside.
Unlike two years ago, when Duke proposed its first carbon reduction plan, no groups produced an independent model showing how Duke could meet demand without building new gas.
“We can talk about costs, or market conditions,” said Carmody. But, he said, “we did not do any modeling.”
Public Staff ran its own numbers and has urged more caution on new gas plants than Duke proposes. But the agency is unwavering that at least some are needed.
New Biden administration rules haven’t yet proved the death knell for gas that some expected. Duke is suing to overturn the rule, but it insists that building new plants that will run at half capacity is the most economical plan for compliance.
And even as Duke is proffering more gas, it’s also undeniably proposing more solar.
Clean energy backers still object to annual constraints on solar development the utility says are necessary. But the limits have increased from less than 1,000 megawatts per year in 2022 to over 1,300 megawatts. And the settlement would result in another 240 megawatts of solar than Duke had first proposed.
“It’s an iterative improvement,” said Carmody.
What’s more, the settlement opens a discussion with Duke about the scores of 5-megawatt solar projects across the state whose initial contracts will soon expire. A proposal for how to refit them could come in April of next year.
“This is a really important issue to our members,” said Carmody. “These are projects that could be repowered. They could be upgraded with storage. They could have significantly more efficient solar technology than was on them 15 or 20 years ago.”
Still, Carmody said his group tried to word the settlement in a way that left room for clean energy advocates to continue to advocate for less gas and steeper emissions cuts sooner — and that’s certainly their plan.
“Three power plants that will be really expensive to build and then operate for only a few years is just a ridiculous proposal,” the settlement notwithstanding, said Maggie Shober, research director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
“We remain hopeful that there’s a lot that the [commission] can do in this carbon plan proceeding and in their final order, to move us forward on a clean energy trajectory.”
Nick Jimenez, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, acknowledges the settlement stacks the deck somewhat against his clients.
“Historically, the commission approves a lot of settlements,” he said. “It likes to see parties settle, especially when Duke and the Public Staff are involved.”
STORAGE: A growing number of Americans are buying home battery storage systems to counter power outages occurring as the grid faces higher demand and more extreme weather. (Associated Press)
GRID:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
EFFICIENCY: The U.S. Energy Department announces $53.6 million to expand weatherization efforts and clean energy installations benefitting low-income communities in 13 states and the Virgin Islands. (Utility Dive)
WIND: New Mexico is emerging as a wind energy powerhouse, trailing only Wyoming in new capacity this year, as state officials approve two new leases that could add another 550 megawatts. (Renewable Energy World, Albuquerque Business Journal)
FOSSIL FUELS: Rhode Island regulators decide that a liquefied natural gas facility that was supposed to only operate temporarily can stay online for another five years, despite the community’s noise, light and climate pollution concerns. (Newport Daily News)
COMMENTARY: A sustainability advocate says Los Angeles will need an “epic transportation reboot” to achieve a zero-emission Olympic Games in 2028. (Los Angeles Times)
Xcel Energy is proposing a new approach to powering the grid in Minnesota.
The utility recently told state regulators it wants to build a network of solar-powered energy storage hubs, located strategically on its grid and linked with technology so they can be operated in concert with each other.
The result would be what’s known as a “virtual power plant.” By simultaneously discharging the batteries, for example, the collection of distributed resources can function similar to a conventional power plant.
It’s a solution some clean energy advocates have long pushed for as an alternative to larger, centrally located projects that are more reliant on long-distance transmission and create fewer local economic benefits. Xcel’s new embrace of the concept likely reflects the evolving economics of clean energy and the urgency to replace generation from retiring coal-fired power plants.
“I welcome our now-agreement about the importance of distributed energy resources in their future procurement plans,” said John Farrell, director of the Energy Democracy Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
Virtual power plants use sophisticated software and technology to aggregate energy from batteries, smart thermostats, electric vehicles, storage and other connected devices. The clean energy nonprofit RMI predicts virtual power plants nationally could reduce peak loads by 60 gigawatts and cut annual energy expenditures by $17 billion by 2030.
Several utilities, as well as solar and storage companies, have developed virtual power plant programs around the country. Perhaps the best-known is National Grid’s ConnectedSolutions program in New England, which includes residential batteries, electric vehicle batteries, and thermostats.
In May, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed legislation requiring Xcel Energy to create a virtual power plant plan in that state by next February.
Xcel is pitching the Minnesota project on its own as part of its latest long-range resource plan. In a recent Public Utilities Commission filing, Xcel proposes combining 440 megawatts of solar power with 400 megawatts of battery storage at dispersed locations. Designed to be flexible, the program might add backup generation and energy efficiency measures in the future.
A virtual power plant, Xcel said, would save ratepayers money, improve reliability, accelerate clean energy development, and reduce energy disparities by playing assets in underserved communities. The “new approach equips us to confidently meet incoming load growth, deliver unique customer and community value, and support economic development,” the company said in its filing.
Kevin Coss, a spokesperson for the company, said the proposal “is part of a larger plan to better serve the grid and our customers while meeting anticipated growth in energy demand. The program would grow our distributed energy resources as a complement to our existing plans for additional utility-scale renewable and firm dispatchable generation to advance the clean energy transition.”
Clean energy advocates say the approach could reduce Xcel’s need to build more infrastructure at a time when electricity demand continues to grow and its fleet of aging fossil fuel plants reach closure dates.
A recent study in Illinois suggested that pairing solar with storage could be the most economical and environmentally beneficial way to maintain grid reliability as the state transitions to 100% clean energy.
“Utilities always treated distributed energy resources as something that happened to them and that they had to figure out how to accommodate because they were being told to,” said Will Kenworthy, Vote Solar’s Midwest regulatory director.
The company’s interest in more distributed resources could lead to a more flexible grid, one that helps mitigate substations congestion and allows it to store energy from wind farms for use during high-demand periods, Kenworthy said.
One area of disagreement between the utility and some clean energy advocates is who should own the facilities. Unlike in Colorado, Xcel is proposing to own the Minnesota solar and storage hubs itself, collecting money to build them — plus a rate of return — from ratepayers.
That’s not the best deal for customers, and it prevents local communities and developers from being able to share the financial benefits of distributed energy, said Farrell, of the Energy Democracy Initiative. If Xcel owns the virtual power plant, the cost could be higher than they would be with an open, competitive process.
Farrell pointed to the recent opposition to an Xcel electric vehicle charging plan in which it sought to own all of the chargers. Convenience stores and gas stations argued Xcel had an unfair market advantage as the incumbent utility and would own too much of the state’s charging network. Xcel withdrew the proposal in 2023 after regulators reduced the charging network’s size.
As Xcel’s plan evolves, Farrell wants Xcel to allow businesses, homeowners, and aggregators to also participate by selling their battery capacity or demand response into the program.
The Minnesota Solar Energy Industries Association, which promotes battery storage, also takes a dim view of Xcel owning a virtual power plant.
“This is an area where competition would likely provide better service, lower cost and more choice to ratepayers,” said regulatory and policy affairs director Curtis Zaun. “Monopolies are not particularly good at providing the best service at a reasonable rate because that is inconsistent with their investors’ interests.”
Virtual power plants are different than demand response, such as thermostat savings programs, in that they add value to the grid “without any change needed to the homeowner’s behavior,” said Amy Heart, senior vice president for policy at Sunrun, a home solar and storage company that participates in virtual power plants in the Northeast and in Texas, California, and Puerto Rico.
Heart said the “devil is in the details” when creating a robust demand response program. A program in Arizona failed, she said, because of the underperformance of the single company it selected to aggregate resources.
Sunrun developed a virtual power plant in four New England states, enrolling more than 5,000 solar and storage customers to share their capacity on the grid. In the summer of 2022, Sunrun’s virtual power plant shared more than 1.8 gigawatt hours of electricity.
Typically, Sunrun customers agree under contract to share a portion of their battery backup 30 to 60 times annually for three hours or less for each event. The process is automated, with Sunrun’s software connecting to customer batteries and sending utilities power during high-demand times or predictable peak loads. Customers receive payment for the electricity provided.
Heart said the best systems are open to individual customers and aggregators using different battery storage brands. Giving a virtual power plant “room to grow, breathe, and adapt will be important,” she added.
The Xcel virtual power plant proposal is part of the multi-year Upper Midwest Integrated Resource Plan, which regulators have been reviewing and will likely approve, with many changes, later this year.
TRANSIT: New York’s governor says she’ll have a new Manhattan congestion tolling plan by the end of the year following her decision to delay the original plan, citing London’s gradual toll increase as a possible model. (Newsday)
ALSO: Some New Yorkers worry about the impact heavy rains will have this hurricane season on the city’s subway system, recalling station evacuations and floods that have occurred despite the city’s resilience efforts. (The City)
WIND:
SOLAR:
GRID:
COAL: Two top coal producers, Arch Resources and Consol Energy, plan to merge to form Core Natural Resources, which will be based out of the Pittsburgh suburb where Consol currently has its headquarters. (Associated Press)
NUCLEAR: In Massachusetts, the firm decommissioning the Pilgrim nuclear plant claims the state has no right to stop it from discharging radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay. (WBUR)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A Rhode Island startup wants more boaters to swap their gas-guzzling outboard engines for their quiet, battery-powered models. (Boston Globe)
RENEWABLE POWER: New York’s energy research agency grants almost $200,000 to the Finger Lakes village of Montour Falls for a small solar array, an electric truck and other renewable investments. (Finger Lakes 1)
AFFORDABILITY: Some Connecticut ratepayers are arguing for a boycott of the public benefits charge amid rising utility bills. (Hartford Courant)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Ford scraps a new electric vehicle model and pushes back the start of production from 2025 to 2027 at its BlueOval electric vehicle and battery factory in Tennessee so it can use lower-cost battery technology. (Tennessee Lookout; Commercial Appeal)
SOLAR:
COAL:
OIL & GAS:
HYDROPOWER: Duke Energy wants to further expand a South Carolina pumped storage battery project after recent upgrades that added 320 MW of capacity. (Greenville News)
POLITICS:
HYDROGEN: West Virginia U.S. Sens. Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito cut the ribbon on a state office for the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub. (Parkersburg News and Sentinel)
BUILDINGS: Developers in Austin, Texas, increasingly build with climate change in mind and aim to partner with electric utilities given the fragility of the state power grid. (Austin Monitor)
UTILITIES:
COMMENTARY: Recent calls by West Virginia’s oil and gas industry to remove regulatory constraints disingenuously promise lower energy prices while exacerbating climate change and downplaying its effects on residents who live near projects like the Mountain Valley Pipeline, writes an environmental activist. (Parkersburg News and Sentinel)
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