Back
Overnight in early July last year, Vermont solar installer Bill Chidsey got a call that a grocery store he worked with in his village of Hardwick was flooded. He arrived to find feet of water in the Buffalo Mountain Market’s utility room, spilling over from the rising Lamoille River in a record-breaking rainstorm.
“The grocery store survived by an inch,” Chidsey said. “If it had rained fifteen more minutes, they’d have lost four compressors.”
He’s now helping the co-op build a net-zero energy system that will use solar power and recycled waste heat from the store’s refrigerators. But it’s going to be a long project — just one of countless examples Vermont has seen since last year of how sustainable rebuilds in the wake of a flood don’t happen quickly.
“I think we’re just getting started with this,” Chidsey said.
Advocates, utilities and state agencies have seen slow progress and mixed success since July 2023 in trying to replace flood-damaged home and business energy systems with more efficient, cost-effective, low-carbon technology. Now, they hope to redouble these efforts as part of a long-term recovery — both to keep people affected last year from falling through the cracks, and to be more resilient in the next storm.
“We consider that we’re now about to start ‘phase two,’ where we hope to go back and talk about energy systems,” said Sue Minter, who leads Capstone Community Action in central Vermont. “In the emergency — with winter and nowhere else to go, and oh, by the way, no contractors available, labor shortage, material shortage, crisis — we couldn’t do the transition work, but that doesn’t mean we won’t.”
More than a decade ago, Minter was the deputy secretary of Vermont’s Agency of Transportation when the 2011 Tropical Storm Irene — comparable in its severity to the 2023 floods — washed out hundreds of miles of roads and bridges across the state.
As the state’s Irene Recovery Officer, Minter spent the next two-plus years grappling with federal regulators and pushing through new policies and programs to rebuild “stronger, with resilience in mind,” she said. This included allowing easier upsizing of culverts and clearing development out of floodplains.
Many places with these post-Irene resilience upgrades and reforms saw less damage in the July 2023 floods as a result, Minter said. Vermont officials even came to a recent meeting of the Maine Climate Council, after a pair of weather disasters there, to talk about their approach to flood-resilient infrastructure.
“When you know you’re in an emergency, and you know everything has been destroyed, you also know it’s an opportunity to innovate … to rebuild differently,” Minter said.
Vermont, often called a potential haven for future climate migrants, is nonetheless seeing more frequent and intense rain and floods as one of its top impacts from human-caused climate change. The state also relies heavily on pricey, carbon-intensive heating oil.
After last year’s floods, Vermont leaders wanted to seize the moment to help affected residents make future-looking energy and efficiency upgrades on a widespread scale.
“They’re ripping out drywall, they’re having to update systems — this is the time to make sure that you do it properly,” said Efficiency Vermont supply chain engagement manager Steve Casey.
Efficiency Vermont, a statewide energy efficiency utility, created an emergency flood rebate program for affected homeowners and renters, reallocating $10 million in pandemic aid already set aside for low-income weatherization projects.
The new program offered up to $10,000 per household to repair or replace flood-damaged energy systems and other appliances, on top of existing funding for efficient electric heat pump water heaters and electrical panel upgrades. Similar rebates for damaged businesses were just raised to a $16,000 cap.
But uptake on this funding has been slow. As of January, only 155 households had received flood rebates of $5,100 apiece on average, according to state legislative testimony from Efficiency Vermont director Peter Walke.
It’s partly because the initial $10 million was “an overshoot to ensure we wouldn’t run out of funds,” allocated quickly “without knowing what the actual need would be,” said spokesperson Matthew Smith.
But people also ran into myriad barriers to using the money quickly.
Some lacked up-front cash to pay for upgrades that would be rebated later. In response, Efficiency Vermont has begun offering a 100% cost-coverage program for the lowest-income clients, where contractors are paid directly by the state. That program had paid out nearly $92,000 to 10 people as of January, per Walke’s testimony, with 58 more in the pipeline.
“The households that are still in significant need at this stage were vulnerable households to begin with,” Casey said. “We do have this repeating situation where flood events kind of just exacerbate some vulnerabilities for certain households.”
The timing of the 2023 floods was another complicating factor. The upcoming heating season loomed in the months after the disaster, and limited housing stock meant people couldn’t relocate from damaged homes, unlike after Tropical Storm Irene, said Sue Minter.
“In 2023, July, people had to get into their homes as quickly as possible,” she said. “You always have to have life and safety first.”
The repairs and retrofits needed most urgently were not simple. Many people’s water and space heating systems and electrical panels were in basements, “the first place to flood,” said Casey.
Parts of Vermont are trying to change this norm — Waterbury, for example, requires basements to be above flood elevation in new or substantially improved home construction, among other flood protections.
Chidsey, the solar installer in Hardwick, said he and his electrician have tried to shift to putting electrical panels on the outside of homes, with any indoor subpanels out of the basement. Ideally, he said, the cellar becomes “just a hole in the ground that holds up the house, because water comes in often now.”
But moving HVAC infrastructure out of a vulnerable basement, whether to meet a local requirement or voluntarily, isn’t easy, especially after major damage, Casey said. People may not have a ready space for that equipment on the first floor, or may need mold remediation before taking on serious flood-proofing.
It means that the advocates working to facilitate upgrades have had to take a long view.
Last fall, Efficiency Vermont, Capstone, the state’s utilities and a range of other partners stood up a new system of Vermont Energy Recovery Teams, who went into damaged homes to help people plan and prioritize repairs before winter, including coordinating holistically across contractors and funding sources.
Some homes were able to switch straight to heat pumps as a cheaper, cleaner method of water and space heating, officials said. But for many, a replacement oil or gas system was the simplest short-term option.
Efficiency Vermont does not normally offer incentives for installing fossil fuel systems, but made exceptions for high-efficiency Energy Star-rated models as part of its flood recovery rebate program.
“In every case, we looked for something that was more efficient than what they had before,” said Vermont Gas energy innovation director Richard Donnelly, who was part of many recovery team home visits.
In each of those visits, the teams would take note of residents’ long-term needs and goals for decarbonization, resilience, comfort and lower energy burdens, with an emphasis on heat pumps.
“We left off with sort of the promise that we’ll be back,” said Vermont Gas CEO Neale Lunderville — that “there’s money available for some of these technologies, that we can help you with the same process.”
The recovery teams are now under the umbrella of GreenSavingSmart, a pilot energy and financial coaching program for low-income residents run by the Vermont Community Action Partnership. They’ll soon begin revisiting last fall’s clients to facilitate a new round of resilient improvements.
“In the grand scheme of things, it’s a hopeful pathway to allow these households to have — once they’re fully made whole and recovered from all of this — a lower energy burden and cost burden than the situation they were in to begin with,” said Steve Spatz, an account manager on the supply chain team at Efficiency Vermont. “It really is an opportunity to … upgrade the conditions for the household.”
A pair of cousins who want to lease land for a contested solar project in central Ohio say a vocal minority is trying to interfere with their property rights.
“I have rights as an owner, farmer and investor that shouldn’t be limited by a small group of individuals who are opposed to any solar development,” said Richard Piar. He and Ethan Robertson jointly own two parcels of property in Knox County, which they want to lease to developer Open Road Renewables for the proposed 120 megawatt Frasier Solar project.
Much of the public debate surrounding the project has pitted local groups that oppose solar energy on agricultural land against the developer and clean energy advocates. But for the cousins, the project is a way to bring in new revenue and help keep the land in the fourth-generation farm family.
“Solar gives my family opportunities it otherwise would not have for a financial future,” Piar said.
Robertson is now seeking to intervene in the Ohio Power Siting Board case that will decide the project’s fate, and the cousins recently shared with Energy News Network how the project is important to them and their property rights.
“When someone who is not a farmer can tell us farmers what we can do with our land, it creates a slippery slope for property rights,” Piar said.
Concerns about conservation also factored into the cousins’ decision to lease the land, which the solar farm will have to restore at the end of the project. In Robertson’s view, those terms counter opponents’ arguments about blocking the project to protect farmland, especially when much of it – on the outskirts of Mount Vernon in Clinton and Miller townships, about an hour’s drive from Columbus – could otherwise become residential subdivisions.
“My children are nine, seven and five years old. This project is a key way to protect our land from the many ways this county may change over the next four decades,” Robertson said.
And much of the land in the Frasier Solar project will still be used for agricultural purposes while the solar project is in operation. On March 8, Open Road Renewables and New Slate Land Management announced they signed a letter of intent to use sheep grazing to manage vegetation for the project.
Brad Carothers, who runs New Slate, lives in Knox County and raises Katahdin sheep. When a letter came from Open Road Renewables about the Frasier Solar project, he reached out to the company.
“One of the main issues new and emerging farmers face is access to land,” Carothers said. “We’re a first-generation business. And so land is not something that I have from previous generations to utilize. And so this is how we can expand our business.”
Under Ohio law, a landowner generally gets to control who has access to real property and how it is used, including the right to lease it to others. Zoning can restrict some uses to certain areas, such as industrial or commercial activities.
For electric generation facilities, however, state law and rulings of the power siting board generally take precedence, except as provided in Senate Bill 52, said Jacob Bryce Elkin, one of Robertson’s lawyers who is with the Renewable Energy Legal Defense Initiative at Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.
The 2021 law lets counties ban solar projects from parts of their territory, but only if they were not already in the grid operator’s queue when the law became effective.
“Frasier Solar clearly fits the bill to be grandfathered” under that exception, wrote Ohio Rep. Bill Seitz in a Feb. 23 letter urging the Ohio Power Siting Board to approve the project. Under the law, one county and one township representative will serve as ad hoc board members on the case.
Elkin also noted that while the Knox County Commissioners decided to ban wind farms in 2022, the same resolution said they would allow large solar facilities. So, because of SB 52, “if the OPSB grants the approval for the project, there’s nothing in local law that prohibits this project from being developed,” he said.
Yet when Knox Smart Development, an anonymously funded group opposing the solar project, hosted a program last month, speakers there talked about zoning and hypothetical situations that don’t apply to the solar farm case.
“For anybody preaching property rights, I always just like to ask them flat out: Does that mean you want to just ban or abolish all zoning?” said Jared Yost, a Mount Vernon resident who incorporated the group. Surely, he suggested at the Feb. 24 event, landowners wouldn’t want a chemical plant going in next door or sewage flowing into their yards.
Kevon Martis, a frequent opponent of renewable energy projects, took a similar tack, suggesting no one would want a 24-hour truck stop or adult bookstore next door – uses already governed by local zoning rules.
“Everybody says, ‘I should be able to do what I want on my private property,’” Martis said. “And while they may mean that about them, they never mean that about their neighbors.”
A company official with Open Road Renewables was denied entry to the group’s Nov. 30 “town hall meeting” on the project. The group’s events have also denigrated the perspective of farmers and other landowners who will benefit from solar.
“In this project and a lot of projects like this, it’s easy for the supporters of the project to have their voices drowned out by a vocal minority of people opposing the project,” Elkin said.
Even aside from SB 52, zoning doesn’t let governments arbitrarily limit people’s use of their property, Elkin said. Instead, it needs to be rationally related to legitimate land use concerns.
“The onus is really on the opponents to put forward a case that’s grounded in fact, and they haven’t done that,” Elkin said.
Filings by Preserve Knox County and Knox Smart Development in the Ohio Power Siting Board case claim the Frasier Solar project could interfere with adjacent owners’ property rights. And Robert Bryce, a former fellow with the Manhattan Institute, which has been linked to fossil fuel interests, claimed it was “BS” to think solar projects wouldn’t hurt property values in an area.
Among other things, Bryce cited a 2023 study in the journal Energy Policy by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Connecticut. The study team’s analysis of 1.8 million real estate transactions found, on average, a 1.5% impact on sale prices for homes within half a mile of a solar project.
However, data for the study ranged from 2003 through 2020, which wouldn’t necessarily reflect the current real estate market. The study also didn’t compare the effects on property values near projects with or without measures to prevent potential negative impacts, although the authors did note that developers or policymakers have various tools to employ, such as landscape measures or compensation for neighbors.
The Ohio Power Siting Board revised its rules for solar farms after the Berkeley Lab study came out. The rule changes require setbacks from property lines, homes and roads. The rules also call for “aesthetically fitting” fencing and other requirements.
Open Road Renewables also stressed steps it takes to accommodate nearby landowners.
“We offer good neighbor agreements at all of our solar projects, and they generally include some sort of compensation,” said Craig Adair, the company’s vice president for development. Payments compensate for periodic disturbances during construction, while also letting neighbors benefit financially from the project, he explained.
Payments also encourage many neighbors to cooperate by sharing drainage tile information. That helps the company protect against problems with drainage or even improve local conditions, said Open Road president Cyrus Tashakori.
Robertson, Piar and other potential lessors are not alone when it comes to valuing property rights in Knox County.
Resident Steve Rex said he attended a Knox Smart Development meeting, which he felt was one-sided and presented inaccurate claims. Property owners shouldn’t have to worry about what other people think about how they use their land, he noted.
Franklin Brown, another Knox County resident, took exception to solar opponents trying to limit the rights of property owners for the Frasier Solar project. “The same conservative people say, ‘Well, we don’t want government up in our faces,’” Brown said. “But oh, here they do?”
The Ohio Power Siting Board is supposed to use statutory factors to decide whether a project moves ahead, rather than the number of supporters or opponents. However, the board has referred to local opposition in some past decisions blocking solar projects. The board will hold a public hearing on the Frasier Solar Project on April 4 at the Knox Memorial Theatre in Mount Vernon. The evidentiary hearing is currently scheduled for April 29.
CLEAN ENERGY: For every dollar the Inflation Reduction Act put toward clean energy incentives, policy analysts say the private sector has matched $5.47, totaling nearly $750 billion in the first year after the law passed. (Grist)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
CLIMATE:
OIL & GAS:
COAL:
PIPELINES:
BUILDINGS: A New York City public housing pilot project currently underway shows promise in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and making apartments more comfortable through window-mounted heat pumps. (Associated Press)
GRID: Connecticut regulators approve the first round of pilot projects in a new program aimed at testing innovative hardware and software to decarbonize the electric grid. (Energy News Network)
MINING: Tribal nation citizens urge a federal human rights commission to push back on a predicted uranium mining boom, saying Indigenous communities continue to suffer from Cold War-era extraction of the fuel. (Inside Climate News)
BIOFUELS: California advocates call on the state to overhaul its low-carbon fuel standard program to support and fund electric vehicles and charging infrastructure rather than biofuels. (Canary Media)
COMMENTARY: An ecologist suggests that solar projects designed to have synergy with agriculture and ecosystems can preserve farmland and natural environments as the U.S. builds out solar arrays. (The Conversation)
OIL & GAS: Oregon regulators reject climate plans from all three of the state’s natural gas utilities, saying they are overly optimistic about the prospects for “renewable” gas and hydrogen. (Oregon Capital Chronicle)
ALSO: New Mexico regulators reject a utility’s plan for a liquified natural gas storage facility, saying the benefits don’t justify the cost. (Source NM)
CARBON CAPTURE: A California company has raised $80 million for a proposed direct-air carbon capture facility in Wyoming. (Canary Media)
WIND:
SOLAR: A cannabis company proposes a 102 MW solar project to help power its research facility in rural New Mexico. (Renewables Now)
ENERGY STORAGE:
CLIMATE:
OVERSIGHT:
UTILITIES: Hawaii lawmakers debate a bill that would allow the state’s largest utility to securitize a bond to help pay for wildfire costs. (KITV)
EFFICIENCY: A landmark federal courthouse in Salt Lake City is undergoing extensive energy efficiency upgrades, with an aim of eventually reaching net-zero status. (Salt Lake Tribune)
TRANSPORTATION: Utah data shows both electric and hybrid vehicles are becoming more popular, but those sales are dwarfed by a surge in pickups and SUVs. (Salt Lake Tribune, subscription)
COMMENTARY:
SOLAR: To get around New Hampshire’s 5 MW solar net metering cap, the town of Bow plans to develop 6 MW of capacity across three municipal sites — double the capacity of the largest array in the state. (Concord Monitor)
ALSO:
OFFSHORE WIND: The head of the Connecticut Port Authority says New York’s selection of the Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind projects promises more turbine assembly activity at the New London state pier. (The Day)
GRID:
CONSUMERS: Maryland lawmakers advance new residential ratepayer protections for those purchasing power from retail suppliers, including a price cap over the standard service offer. (Associated Press)
HYDROPOWER: Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, considers whether to remove or restore a former hydroelectric dam that provides an attractive backdrop for daily life but is structurally unsound. (Bangor Daily News)
CLIMATE:
COMMENTARY: New Hampshire’s consumer advocate writes that Eversource Energy is undertaking a $400 million transmission line upgrade project in a way that indicates the utility is “hoping nobody, or almost nobody, will notice.” (In-Depth NH)
HYDROGEN: Pennsylvania’s governor says at a divisive public meeting that the state is “all in when it comes to the hydrogen hubs,” but environmentalists say the hard-to-reach location of the meeting shows a lack of interest in community engagement. (WHYY)
FOSSIL FUELS:
SOLAR: In New York, Niagara County’s environmental coordinator says the county’s solar panel recycling law is improving end-of-life panel management, but not all solar projects are complying. (Union-Sun & Journal)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
GRID: New Jersey lawmakers mull the potential impact of two bills, which would codify a gubernatorial order to have all electricity sales involve clean energy by 2035 and spend $300 million on grid upgrades. (RTO Insider, subscription)
POLICY:
STORMS: Massachusetts plans to appeal federal emergency management officials’ decision to not issue a major disaster declaration over the severe flooding that swept through the state in September. (Associated Press)
CLIMATE: The president of the New York Farm Bureau says his farmers support climate action but worry the push for electrification comes before electric farm equipment can handle the long hours required. (Spectrum News 1)
TRANSIT: Two Somerville, Massachusetts, council members plan to introduce a resolution to remove “unnecessary” parking spaces from new developments to help meet climate goals. (Boston Herald)
OFFSHORE WIND: Ørsted and Eversource begin sending power from their 132 MW South Fork wind project to the New York grid, the country’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm to open. (Associated Press, Bloomberg)
ALSO: Federal regulators approve an interconnection agreement for the 810 MW Empire Wind offshore project between New York’s grid operator and utility Con Edison. (news release)
CLEAN ENERGY: Maryland legislators advance legislation to stop local jurisdictions from banning or limiting certain renewable energy resources, including incineration facilities, but some municipalities say it supersedes their zoning authority. (Frederick News-Post)
FOSSIL FUELS: A development group finishes dismantling a former oil refinery in south Philadelphia, once the East Coast’s largest such facility, and begins construction on an industrial space and life sciences lab. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
CLIMATE:
SOLAR:
UTILITIES:
CLEAN VEHICLES:
PIPELINES: Residents who live along the Mountain Valley Pipeline complain that Virginia regulators are ignoring erosion and pollution complaints as construction nears completion. (WVTF)
ALSO: The Mountain Valley Pipeline’s biggest stakeholder announces it will merge with its former owner, Pittsburgh gas company EQT, in a $5.5 billion stock deal. (Cardinal News; Bloomberg, subscription)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
SOLAR:
OIL & GAS:
COAL:
UTILITIES: The prosecution rests and defense begins its case in the trial of two former executives who are accused of scheming to collect bonuses by privatizing Jacksonville, Florida’s municipal utility. (WTLV)
CLIMATE:
EMISSIONS: North Carolina’s new climate plan says that increasing support for low-income housing weatherization, upgrading energy efficiency in government buildings, and other measures to trim energy usage could get the state 60% of the way to its 2030 emissions reduction target. (Energy News Network)
ALSO:
OVERSIGHT: A South Carolina energy regulator resigns in protest of legislation to facilitate a natural gas-fired power plant that critics warn limits public engagement and offers a blank check to the power industry. (The State, Post and Courier)
BIOMASS: Wood pellet producer Enviva files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and plans to restructure after reaching agreements with creditors to significantly reduce its debt. (Wilmington StarNews, Associated Press)
CLEAN ENERGY:
SOLAR: Rural health centers in Tennessee consider applying for a federal grant to install solar microgrids to maintain critical services during power outages. (WPLN)
OIL & GAS:
GRID: An Arkansas electric cooperative receives nearly $50 million in federal funding to install hundreds of miles of power lines and fiber-optic lines. (Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
CLIMATE: A lawyer representing one of the landowners suing a Texas utility over a downed power line says damages from the enormous wildfires that resulted could exceed $1 billion. (KXAN)
OIL & GAS: The data center building boom and resurgence in manufacturing have spiked power demand in the Southeast, prompting utilities to propose building dozens of new natural gas-fired power plants. (New York Times)
ALSO:
EFFICIENCY: A Virginia company offers a free online calculator to help homeowners navigate federal tax credits and point-of-sale rebates for efficient appliances. (Energy News Network)
EMISSIONS:
CLIMATE:
OVERSIGHT:
BIOMASS:
COAL: The Southeast is home to five of the 14 coal plants that closed in the U.S. last year, but power generators are still largely looking to natural gas to replace that capacity. (Inside Climate News)
COMMENTARY:
.svg)
