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Massachusetts is in the process of tripling the size of its first-in-the-nation vehicle fleet electrification program following a recent influx of federal money.
“We are really looking at the barriers, the challenges, the things that we need to figure out to get decarbonization to happen at scale,” said Emily Reichert, CEO of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center.
A $5 million infusion from the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act will allow the Massachusetts Fleet Advisor program to serve as many as 200 small businesses, nonprofits, and cities and towns served by municipal electric utilities, up from the original target of 65. The money will also allow the program to run through 2026.
The fleet advisor concept pioneered in Massachusetts is getting traction elsewhere. California launched a similar program in June 2023, and New Jersey will soon be introducing its own version.
“A lot of other states are taking notice and building on this model,” said Jordan Stutt, Northeast region senior director for CALSTART, the clean transportation nonprofit running the program for the state.
Transportation is responsible for 37% of Massachusetts’ greenhouse emissions, making the move to electric vehicles a vital element of the state’s strategy for going carbon neutral by 2050. In pursuit of this goal, the state’s incentive program provides rebates of $3,500 for eligible electric car purchases (with additional money available for low-income buyers), $7,500 for medium-duty electric vehicles, and from $15,000 to $90,000 for larger electric trucks.
Fleet vehicles, however, are a particularly important — and tricky — segment of the market. While personal vehicles generally spend most of the day parked, fleet cars and trucks tend to be driven for longer portions of the day, heightening their emissions impact. In Massachusetts, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles — which includes everything from a senior center’s mini-bus to a supermarket chain’s tractor-trailer — make up 3% of the vehicles on the road, yet produce 20% of the state’s transportation emissions.
At the same time, switching to electric is a more complicated process for fleet managers than it is for individual consumers. Organizations must consider their long-term budgeting, which vehicles will need replacing when, what available vehicles would meet their needs, and whether their infrastructure is suitable for charging stations. In many cases, decisions must be discussed and approved by multiple stakeholders, like a nonprofit’s board of directors or all of the partners in a business.
The numbers suggest fleets are making the conversion at a slower rate than personal owners. Since the state made electric fleet vehicles eligible for incentives in 2021 it has issued 227 rebates to light-duty fleet vehicles, 95 rebates for heavy-duty pickup trucks and similar vehicles, and seven rebates for larger trucks. During the same span, the incentive program issued nearly 28,000 rebates overall.
“There is a lot of planning work that goes into getting a fleet owner to the point where they can really take advantage of electrifying the fleet,” Reichert said.
The Massachusetts Fleet Advisor program was conceived in 2021 as a way to overcome some of these challenges. With initial funding of $1 million, the program was designed to offer no-cost fleet electrification assessment reports and procurement assistance to organizations with interest in moving away from fossil fuels but without the resources to do all the legwork involved.
“A small business owner that’s just worried about the day-to-day doesn’t have the time to look into all that,” said Jennifer Kritzler, CALSTART’s Northeast region deputy director. “Mass Fleet Advisor becomes a great resource to answer those questions.”
The process begins with a brief phone call in which an organization learns more about the program and whether it would be a good fit. To be eligible, an entity must have a fleet of at least three vehicles, at least one of which must be medium- or heavy-duty. Then, the organization answers questions about its current fleet, facilities, and goals.
The program has earmarked half of its funds to work in environmental justice neighborhoods: those with high populations of color or lower average incomes, which have traditionally borne a disproportionate share of environmental burdens. Fleets that are based in or regularly drive through these areas will fall into this segment.
“We’re really trying to include a focus not only on the emissions but on the benefits of reducing air pollution in communities that are highly affected by this,” Reichert said.
The initial communication is followed by a site visit. A recent site visit in the town of Ipswich involved touring town hall, the department of public works, and the Ipswich Electric Light Department. Consultants from program partner the Better Together Brain Trust talked to employees about how the town’s handful of electric vehicles are charged and deployed, what the current infrastructure is like, and what they are hoping or expecting to see as the town evolves toward greater use of electric vehicles.
The site visit helps reveal dynamics not captured by the questionnaire: In Ipswich, the assessors discovered that their initial thoughts about where chargers might work was complicated by the parking needs of the town’s council on aging.
“We’re getting absolutely the best information from the local experts,” said Nicole Voudren, president of the Better Together Brain Trust.
When the assessment is complete, it will provide truly useful information to the town, said Rick Mitchell, Ipswich climate resiliency manager.
“The results, when we see those, will provide a platform for intelligent decision-making,” he said. “We’ll have objective, independent, third-party information on the options. This helps summarize what would be a very labor-intensive undertaking in one place.”
Mass Fleet Advisor does not provide any money toward buying electric vehicles, nor does it require participants to make any purchases. However, up to 75 participants that decide to implement some or all of their plans will also be able to receive assistance with the procurement process: The fleet advisor program will help these participants locate appropriate vehicles, connect with dealers, apply for incentives, train their workforces, and develop standard operating procedures for the new vehicles.
“We’re really excited for this not to be a one-time thing, then we walk away,” Kritzler said. “We want to be a resource for folks as they go through their journey.”
So far, 50 organizations — from dry cleaners and lumberyards to universities and municipalities — have signed on to participate, and 20 completed reports have been delivered.
To make sure they are able to make full use of the new funds, the program partners are ramping up their marketing and recruitment efforts, reaching out to community organizations and chambers of commerce, and planning events that allow organizations to see and even drive electric trucks.
“I’ve found when you get someone behind the wheel of a truck, it’s the best tool for converting people to believing that electric vehicles can work for them,” Kritzler said.
SOLAR: Supporters say establishing a community solar program in Michigan would help accomplish a range of climate, justice and economic development goals, though legislation still faces utility opposition. (Planet Detroit)
WIND:
CLIMATE: After arriving at an Iowa news station full of optimism, a meteorologist’s climate-focused reports soon met backlash and threats that led him to quit after two years. (New York Times)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Detroit’s three automakers should focus on selling gas-powered trucks to fund research and development that could bring down the cost of electric vehicles, a banking analyst says. (Detroit News)
RENEWABLES: An Iowa conservative clean energy group works to promote renewable energy as public sentiment and NIMBYism challenge new projects. (Cedar Rapids Gazette)
EMISSIONS: A national biofuels trade group joins oil companies and refineries in challenging new federal tailpipe emissions rules that could threaten both sectors. (Iowa Capital Dispatch)
UTILITIES: Michigan’s attorney general pushes back on DTE Energy’s attempt to require customers without smart meters to report their outages in order to receive bill credits, as opposed to receiving them automatically. (WDIV)
GRID:
COMMENTARY:
WIND: An energy company opens a 184 MW wind project in Mississippi, bucking the Southeast’s resistance to onshore wind power to supply energy to Amazon for regional data centers and logistics hubs. (Canary Media)
GRID:
UTILITIES: Federal regulators collect public comment as they reconsider whether to approve a real-time market consisting of Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, the Southern Company and other Southeast power companies. (Utility Dive)
SOLAR:
RENEWABLES: A Virginia county approves stricter rules around wind and solar projects after public outcry against a 2022 wind farm proposal. (Galax Gazette, subscription)
PIPELINES: As the Mountain Valley Pipeline finally enters service, advocates and opponents shift their attention to its proposed spur into North Carolina, which Duke Energy says could supply its proposed natural gas-fired plant buildout. (WVTF, West Virginia Public Broadcasting)
COAL: Federal data shows four of West Virginia’s five coal-fired power plants produced less power in 2023 than any year since 2001. (West Virginia Public Broadcasting)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Hyundai announces the first vehicle it will produce this fall at its planned Georgia factory is its top-selling electric vehicle, the IONIQ 5. (Georgia Current)
NUCLEAR: West Virginia nuclear energy advocates hope a recently passed bill in the U.S. Senate will jumpstart the development of small nuclear reactors in the state. (WBOY)
OVERSIGHT: An Louisiana energy regulator announces he won’t seek reelection and will step down at the end of the year. (Louisiana Illuminator)
POLITICS: A new study finds large majorities of Louisianans support carbon capture, solar farms and offshore oil and gas drilling, regardless of their political affiliations. (Louisiana Illuminator)
COMMENTARY: A researcher finds Duke Energy overestimated the reliability of fossil fuels and the cost of renewables to justify its proposal to delay closing coal plants and build new gas plants in North Carolina, writes a staffer at a Southeast clean energy group. (Southern Alliance for Clean Energy)
CLEAN ENERGY: The world’s largest ever climate survey finds 54% of Americans want a quick transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, among the smallest majorities among counties polled. (The Guardian)
ALSO:
NUCLEAR: Congress overwhelmingly passes a bill to boost the development and building of advanced nuclear projects, marking a rare bipartisan energy win. (E&E News)
WIND: An energy company opens a 184 MW wind project in Mississippi, bucking the Southeast’s resistance to onshore wind power to supply energy to Amazon for regional data centers and logistics hubs. (Canary Media)
SOLAR:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
GRID:
HYDROPOWER: The Biden administration acknowledges that federally operated hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River have harmed salmon and the tribal nations reliant on them, bolstering efforts to decommission the facilities. (Associated Press)
PUBLIC LANDS: Wyoming and Utah file a lawsuit seeking to block the federal Bureau of Land Management’s new public land rule that puts conservation on a par with energy development, saying it threatens their resource-based economies. (WyoFile)
Have you had a conversation with ChatGPT, experimented with Google’s email-answering generator, or used an AI-enhanced search on Bing or Facebook? All those AI-enabled activities take a lot more data processing than a regular internet search or scroll. And more data processing means more data centers — and more electricity to power them. Analysts predict these facilities, which house servers that send and store tons of data, could account for as much as 9% of U.S. energy demand by 2030.
Virginia has earned the nickname of “Data Center Alley,” as it’s home to servers that see about 70% of global internet traffic, according to the Wall Street Journal. But as more devices connect to the internet and as AI drives up data demand, data center developers are looking for new places to locate these facilities.
With its cooler climate, abundant water, and relatively mild weather, the Midwest may serve that niche, the Energy News Network reports. And clean energy advocates say data centers could help juice renewable energy development; Microsoft, for example, has promised to build renewables in Wisconsin to help make up for the power its planned data centers will use. Former coal plants and industrial facilities also make good homes for data centers since they’re already connected to the power grid.
But data center proliferation across Virginia and the Southeast is also provides a cautionary tale for clean energy. Utilities across the region have announced plans to build new gas plants and keep coal plants open longer, often citing data centers’ energy needs as part of their reasoning.
Read more about the promise and perils of a Midwest data center boom at the Energy News Network.
💸 Where climate funding goes: More than three quarters of the Inflation Reduction Act’s $34 billion of announced investments have gone to congressional districts represented by Republicans who voted against it, an analysis finds. (CNN)
⚛️ Small nuclear fires up: The U.S. Energy Department announces $900 million for small nuclear reactor development, which along with a bipartisan federal bill to reduce fees and speed permitting could boost the industry. (E&E News, The Hill)
🚘 Benefits for EV buyers: U.S. electric vehicle buyers have received more than $1 billion in point-of-sale rebates since the Treasury Department launched the instant incentives in January, discounting an estimated quarter of the 600,000 EVs sold so far this year. (E&E News)
🌊 Whatever floats your solar panel: Covering around 10% of the world’s lakes and reservoirs with floating solar panels could generate enough electricity to power the United Kingdom four times over, and could be used to cover all power use in some small countries, scientists find. (Grist)
⏳ What’s the holdup? Supply chain and interconnection delays are stalling large renewable energy projects across the Midwest, despite new efforts in Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan to speed up permitting. (Inside Climate News)
🏠 Use ‘em or lose ‘em: Inflation Reduction Act funding for home energy rebates will likely remain mostly unspent until after the November election; Trump allies have indicated he would revamp the program and jeopardize the funding if he is elected. (E&E News)
🛣️ Lining up grid wins: An organization pushing to build transmission lines along highways recently scored a legislative win in Minnesota, and now looks to expand the policy to other states. (Canary Media)
🔋 FERC fills up: The U.S. Senate confirms three nominees to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, filling the five-member board as it prepares to guide the nation’s grid buildout. (E&E News)
🛢️ Ten years later: Federal regulators approve the long-delayed Mountain Valley Pipeline to enter service after a decade of regulatory, legal and on-the-ground battles. (Roanoke Times)
A new analysis says Vermont is not on track to meet its 2025 target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, with declines in thermal fossil fuel use driven mostly — though not entirely — by warming winters.
The study, released last month by the Vermont nonprofit Energy Action Network, also shows signs of progress: Though rising temperatures are still the main driver of lower heating fuel sales, weatherization and electric heat pump adoption are starting to have a greater impact.
“Vermont’s efforts… are, ironically, being aided by the very global heating that we are working to do our part to help minimize,” the study says. “Relying on warmer winters to reduce emissions from fossil heating fuel use is not a sustainable strategy. … What [the warming trend] means for temperatures — and therefore fuel use — in any given year is still subject to variation and unpredictability.”
Like most other New England states, Vermont relies heavily on heating oil and, to a lesser degree, propane and utility gas, to heat buildings. This makes the building sector a close second to transportation in terms of the biggest contributors to planet-warming emissions in Vermont and many of its neighbors.
Vermont’s statutory climate targets, adopted in 2020, aim to cut these emissions by 26% below 2005 levels by next year, with higher targets in the coming decades.
“It’s technically possible” that Vermont will meet its thermal emissions goal for next year, but “at this point, primarily dependent on how warm or cold the fall and early winter heating season is at the end of 2024,” EAN executive director Jared Duval said. The transportation sector would need to see a nearly unprecedented one-year decline.
On the whole, EAN says it’s “exceedingly unlikely” that Vermont will meet its 2025 goal.
EAN found that heat pump adoption and weatherization are not happening fast enough, and what’s more, the current trend sets Vermont up for a Pyrrhic victory at best: Rising temperatures in the upcoming heating season would have to be at least as pronounced as in last year’s record-warm winter in order to reduce fuel use enough to meet the 2025 target for the thermal sector.
Either way, warming alone won’t get Vermont to its 2030 target of a 40% drop in emissions over 1990 levels, Duval said. The state wants to end up at an 80% reduction by 2050.
“The only durable way to reduce emissions in line with our science-based commitments is to increase the scale and pace of non-fossil fuel heating solutions and transportation solutions,” he said.
The EAN study found that fuel sales tend to decline alongside heating degree days: a measurement of days when it’s cold enough to kick on the heat. Vermont is seeing fewer of these days overall as temperatures warm.
“The reduction in fossil heating fuel sales as winters have been warming is not surprising,” Duval said. “Historically, fossil heating fuel use and therefore greenhouse gas emissions have largely tracked with heating demand, with warmer winters corresponding with less fossil fuel use and colder winters with more fossil fuel use. The good news is that’s not the whole story.”
In recent years, he said, fuel sales have begun to “decouple” from the warming trend to which they were once more closely linked. From 2018 to 2023, EAN found that Vermont fuel sales declined 12% while heating degree days only declined 8%.
“Fossil heating fuel sales are declining even more than you would expect just from warmer winters alone,” Duval said. “And that’s because many non-fossil fuel heating solutions are being adopted.”
From 2018 to 2022, EAN found, Vermont saw a 34% increase in weatherization projects and more than 50,000 more cold-climate heat pumps installed in homes and businesses, with a 3.3% increase in the number of homes that said they use electricity as their primary heating fuel.
The upshot: The number of cold days explains 50% of Vermont’s declining fuel use from 2018 to 2023, while heat pump growth explains as much as 28% and other efficient upgrades explain a further 15%. The remaining 7% of the decline couldn’t easily be broken down and could partly be from people shifting to wood heat during periods of high fuel prices, Duval said.
“In order to achieve thermal sector emissions reduction targets without relying primarily on an abnormal amount of winter warming, significantly more displacement and/or replacement of fossil heating fuel… will be necessary,” the study says. Upgrades like heat pumps will lead to more sustainable emissions cuts, it says, “no matter what the weather-dependent heating needs in Vermont will be going forward.”
EAN is nonpartisan and doesn’t take policy positions, but research analyst Lena Stier said this data suggests that expanding Vermont’s energy workforce and tackling heat pumps and weatherization in tandem would spur faster progress on emissions cuts, while keeping costs low.
EAN based its estimates of fuel use and emissions impacts from heat pumps on the official assumptions of a state-approved technical manual, which Duval said may be overly optimistic. But Stier said the reality could differ.
“We’ve heard anecdotally that a lot of people who have installed heat pumps in their homes… are kind of primarily using them for cooling in the summer,” she said. “So our kind of assumption is that, in reality, it would be a smaller share of that (fossil fuel use) reduction coming from heat pumps.”
While fuel use declined overall in the study period, he said this came mostly from people using less heating oil specifically — propane sales actually increased in the same period.
Duval noted that propane is cheaper than oil on paper, but actually costs more to use because it generates heat less efficiently than oil does.
“Once you look at that, then heat pumps become that much more attractive,” he said.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated for clarity.
OIL & GAS: A federal judge orders BNSF Railway to pay nearly $400 million to the Swinomish Tribe for violating an easement agreement by repeatedly running 100-car oil trains across its land in Washington state. (Associated Press)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
TRANSPORTATION: Colorado regulators find a Denver-area transit agency failed to address escalating light rail maintenance problems that have slowed trains and stymied service. (CPR)
CLEAN ENERGY:
SOLAR:
ELECTRIFICATION: A California startup develops software aimed at helping people cost-effectively pair home electrification and rooftop solar. (Canary Media)
UTILITIES:
CLIMATE: Conservation groups call on the Biden administration to define extreme heat and wildfire smoke as major disasters and unlock relief funding for affected local governments. (Los Angeles Times)
NUCLEAR: Federal regulators seek public input on a Bill Gates-backed plan to build an advanced nuclear reactor in a Wyoming coal community. (WyoFile)
MINING: State and federal regulators approve a uranium mining firm’s proposed exploratory drilling project in western Colorado. (Resource World)
NUCLEAR: The U.S. Energy Department announces $900 million for small nuclear reactor development, with most of the funding going to teams planning to build a small reactor plant and multi-reactor project. (E&E News)
ALSO:
PIPELINES:
RENEWABLES:
STORAGE: Stanford University researchers say they’ve found a novel way to store electric energy in liquid fuels, a potential way to retain intermittent renewable energy for when it’s needed. (The Independent)
GRID: Federal energy regulators want four grid operators to prove their rules for transmission owners to pay for and profit from network upgrade rules are fair. (Utility Dive)
EMISSIONS:
ELECTRIFICATION: A California startup develops software aimed at helping people cost-effectively pair home electrification and rooftop solar. (Canary Media)
COAL: A federal rule takes effect requiring stricter limits for silica dust that’s contributed to a spike in black lung disease. (WLKY)
Southeastern Wisconsin and the Chicago area are emerging as major players in the national data center explosion, most notably with Microsoft’s $3.3 billion planned data complex near Racine, Wisconsin.
Clean energy advocates in the region say data centers pose both a risk and an opportunity, as they can put major stress on the grid, prolong the lives of coal plants and spark new natural gas plants, but also facilitate significant renewable energy investment. Wisconsin utility We Energies, for example, cited demand from data centers in its recent requests to the Public Service Commission for 1,300 MW of new gas generation. Microsoft, meanwhile, has promised to build renewables in the state while also likely creating demand for new or continued fossil fuel energy.
The organization Data Center Map shows more than a hundred data centers in the Chicago area and a handful in Southeastern Wisconsin, often located on the site of former coal plants or industrial operations. A data center is underway on the site of the shuttered State Line coal plant just across the border from Chicago in Indiana. The data center developer T5 recently announced plans for four to six data centers totaling 480 MW of capacity and costing as much as $6 billion in the Illinois town of Grayslake near the Wisconsin border, adding to data centers it already runs in the region.
Virginia has long been known as “Data Center Alley,” with about 70% of global internet traffic passing through its servers, according to the Wall Street Journal. Dominion Energy said that because of data centers, its electricity demand in Virginia could quadruple and represent 40% of total demand in the state over the next 15 years. Georgia and Tennessee have also seen much data center construction and speculation. Utilities like TVA, Duke and Dominion have announced plans to build more gas plants and keep coal plants open longer in that region, along with building renewables.
Meanwhile, some experts say the Great Lakes region is an increasingly promising spot for data centers because of its cooler climate that reduces energy demand and the availability of water.
“There is no better place” for data centers than the Upper Midwest, said Josh Riedy, who helped design North Dakota’s first tier-three data center, referring to a data center with high reliability — on a scale of one to four tiers — that includes multiple power sources. Riedy also founded Thread, a grid maintenance software company that he’s marketing as especially helpful to serve data center demand.
“The Upper Midwest can export data around the globe,” Riedy said. We’re starting to see the tide turn, it’s just natural.”
Projections abound regarding the way data centers — including those processing cryptocurrency and running AI applications — will increase energy demand nationally and end an era of stagnant load growth.
Last year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission predicted 4.7% load growth over the next five years, up from 2.6% previously estimated for five-year growth. Data centers “supercharged by the rise of artificial intelligence” will require between 9 and 13 more GW of electricity over the next five years, according to seven case studies analyzed in a December 2023 report by the Clean Grid Initiative, which does not include data center estimates for MISO or CAISO (California) regional transmission organizations. A McKinsey & Company report predicted 35 GW of total demand from data centers by 2030.
Load growth sparked by data centers comes on top of a shift from fossil fuels to electric heating, cooling and transportation. A 2022 report commissioned by Clean Wisconsin and RENEW Wisconsin found load growth could increase to 166% of 2022 levels with building and vehicle electrification needed to meet the state’s goals of net-zero emissions by 2050.
“Everything from data centers to manufacturing to AI to cryptocurrency,” said Sam Dunaiski, executive director of RENEW Wisconsin. “These all could be triggers for new load, and it all could be coming to Wisconsin, though it’s not unique to Wisconsin. Things like solar and battery manufacturing are coming online that ironically need new load growth too. We think the best way to meet that new load both environmentally and economically is through renewables and transmission to go along with it. This is a great opportunity for a low-cost renewable energy boom in the state.”
Along with the generation demand, Riedy noted, come needs for grid updates and resiliency, which can ultimately help the grid as a whole.
“If you’ve built and designed a data center, you know the nature of them is in many ways fundamentally different than most energized structures,” Riedy said. “Walmart, for example, is going to consume power, but it will have peaks, and constant power is important but not in the way it is to a data center. With crypto mining or AI model training, you see machines running at near peak performance around the clock. That’s producing a type of strain on the grid that has few comparisons.”
Microsoft’s energy plans — like many details about the massive data project — are not yet clear, and the company’s ambitious climate goals give advocates hope that the company will finance much new renewable generation either on-site or through power purchase agreements. The company has announced it will build a 250 MW solar array in Wisconsin.
But Microsoft will likely also purchase power from We Energies, fueling advocates’ worries about new natural gas generation and rate increases for regular customers.
The data center will be located on the sprawling site between Milwaukee and Chicago that was previously slated for an enormous LCD screen factory by the company Foxconn. That plan was repeatedly scaled back and then scrapped in the face of economic issues and local opposition.
Citizens Utility Board executive director Tom Content noted that “under state law passed for Foxconn, Microsoft is eligible for discounted market-based electricity rates. They would pay basically for the transmission and distribution, but a portion of their rates would just be set at wholesale market rate,” rather than the retail amount customers usually pay.
In February, a subsidiary of We Energies filed a plan with the Wisconsin Public Service Commission for an estimated $304 million in grid upgrades related to the Microsoft project. Public auditors filed a letter with the commission noting exemptions that allow less oversight because the project is in a special technology zone.
The Microsoft plan was touted by President Joe Biden as an example of reinvigorated Midwestern investment, but it has faced concerns about its energy and water use. Meanwhile Microsoft has faced setbacks globally in reaching its climate goals, in part because of the massive energy demand of artificial intelligence applications.
Advocates said utilities may use data centers to justify more investment that earns them a rate of return, even when it is not necessarily needed.
“We are concerned that there could be an overinflation of expected demand in order to capitalize on this trend and build more gas as a last-ditch effort,” said Ciaran Gallagher, energy and air manager for Clean Wisconsin.
“There’s a little bit of a sky-is-falling scenario here,” Dunaiski agreed. “In the early 2000s we saw this with load growth [projections] particularly around the internet. People thought the internet would cause our electricity generation needs to explode. They increased, but there were improvements that came with it — infrastructure getting more efficient, and software.”
That precedent raises questions about the rush to build out gas power to accommodate projected demand.
“Gas isn’t coal, but we shouldn’t be striving for the second worst option, for the environment or for our pocket books,” Dunaiski continued. “If we build these gas plants, customers will be paying for them for the next 20, 30 years.”
Gallagher noted that the EPA’s new rules for gas plants make new gas investments even more questionable.
“All the gas plants proposed in Wisconsin and across the country in relation to this demand from data centers will have to comply with these standards, and by 2032 either run not very often or reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% through carbon capture and sequestration or low-carbon hydrogen,” Gallagher said. “That prompts the question: Is it worth the price tag to build these gas plants that could become stranded assets or have to spend additional money to comply with these rules?”
Using existing renewables or zero-emissions nuclear energy to power data centers can impact customers too. Content noted that this strategy “accomplishes the decarbonization goals for the tech companies and the reliability needs for the data center. But then you’re taking the fully depreciated, mostly paid-off asset on utilities’ books and having it serve one or two customers, and then the utilities will have to backfill that with a combination of natural gas, solar, storage, wind or future nuclear to serve the rest of the customers.”
“It’s on everybody’s mind how we’re going to tackle this in a way that ensures we don’t say no to economic development, but don’t make energy costs unaffordable,” said Content, noting that data centers have been a major topic of discussion among the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates – including at the organization’s conference in Madison in June.
“Different states are trying different approaches,” Content said. “There’s talk of changing the way utility costs are divided up — currently among residential, industrial and commercial — and dividing it up four ways, with data centers becoming their own entity. Tech companies are pouring a lot of money into the development of these things. They have the wherewithal to contribute mightily to these projects.”
Gallagher emphasized that renewable advocates are not opposed to data centers.
“We think data centers and the economic development that they can bring are not at odds with environmental protection and climate mitigation,” she said. “This can be a low-carbon industry but only if new additional renewables are built to supply all or most of their demands. We think that’s viable if renewables are cost-competitive with gas, and pairing renewables with storage can provide the type of reliability these data centers need.”
Riedy sees renewables and gas as a necessary mix to fuel data centers. While renewables’ intermittency might be seen as a barrier, he said renewables actually could have a unique role to play in energizing data centers – especially in the Midwest.
“In the heat of the day you’re delivering, so having alternate [energy] sources to peak-shave and normalize the cost of energizing that equipment is very important,” Riedy said. “It’s leading to a change in thinking around where to place data centers, that speaks to Wisconsin, the Dakotas.
“The old way of doing things was generate power in one place, and transmit it for thousands of miles. What data centers are understanding with their insatiable and constant need for power is they are more logically placed by power generation so you can buy that off-peak power, to maintain that load consistently. Since solar and wind overproduce [at certain times], if you can harness that imbalance it’s somewhat of a win-win.”
SOLAR: New Hampshire’s legislature fails to pass a bill to allow community power programs to use up to 5 MW of local solar projects after a state energy official writes that the measure “needs more thorough vetting.” (NHPR)
ALSO:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
PIPELINES: A federal circuit court denies the argument of an environmental group that federal energy regulators didn’t appropriately account for emissions or New York law when they approved a pipeline expansion project in that state and Pennsylvania. (Bloomberg Law, subscription)
GAS: A top Massachusetts lawmaker prepares a bill that would require consideration of less costly or polluting alternatives before authorization of new gas service extensions. (Boston Herald)
GRID:
POLICY:
TRANSIT:
CARBON CAPTURE: A Portland ocean carbon removal startup shuts down and lays off its employees, with its chief executive saying the voluntary carbon credits market had shrunk too much in recent months for the firm to stay afloat. (Portland Press Herald)
BATTERIES: New Hampshire legislators send a bill to the governor’s desk that would ban lithium-ion batteries from being disposed in regular trash to cut down on landfill fires. (New Hampshire Bulletin)
WIND: The first American-built offshore wind service operations vessel is unveiled in Providence, Rhode Island, to work on the nearby Revolution wind project. (WPRI)
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