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OFFSHORE WIND: A newly completed, $42 million commercial port on the New Bedford, Massachusetts waterfront could host offshore wind operations. (Cape Cod Times)
ALSO:
FOSSIL FUELS: A Philadelphia refinery agrees to pay a settlement of $4.2 million, after the U.S. EPA found the owners failed to remedy corrosion that caused an explosion and fire in 2019. (Associated Press)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: New York is one of 40 cities in which ride-sharing option Uber Green will go fully electric, removing hybrid vehicles from its lineup. (NBC New York)`
AGRIVOLTAICS:
UTILITIES: FirstEnergy — a utility serving New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania — receives poor marks in a new Sierra Club report tracking utilities’ progress toward decarbonization. (Canary Media)
EQUITY: Energy efficiency contractors in Connecticut call on the state and private companies to improve the treatment of workers of color in the industry. (CT News Junkie)
NUCLEAR: A Maryland startup raises $45 million for its plan to build modular nuclear reactors at shipyards using existing labor and infrastructure. (DCInno, subscription)
RENEWABLES: The New York State Power Authority releases a draft plan identifying potential renewables projects across the state totaling as much as 3.5 GW of capacity. (news release)
TRANSIT: A new study recommends reviving a little-used rail line in Boston and adding electric train service to make commuting easier and attract more riders. (CommonWealth Beacon)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: “Every site is a snowflake:” Experts and local officials say equipment shortages, utility delays, and huge numbers of stakeholders are among issues stalling federal efforts to install public electric vehicle chargers. (E&E News)
NUCLEAR: The Biden administration says it’s looking to restart more decommissioned nuclear power plants alongside Michigan’s Palisades plant and Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island. (Reuters)
WORKFORCE: The International Energy Agency finds U.S. energy efficiency employers have had particular difficulty hiring skilled workers to construct and retrofit buildings. (Utility Dive)
SOLAR:
TRANSMISSION:
HYDROGEN: An Alaska geologist hunts for naturally occurring hydrogen reservoirs across the U.S., saying it could be a major new source of affordable carbon-free energy. (Inside Climate News)
EFFICIENCY: The U.S. Energy Department issues $1.1 million to a project researching ways to cool data centers and reduce their energy use. (Utility Dive)
POLITICS:
COMMENTARY: Energy consultants highlight the “encouraging and disconcerting” effects of big tech companies on the clean energy transition. (Utility Dive)
TRANSMISSION: A federal appeals court ruling likely removes the last major obstacle for a $1.5 billion transmission line project that would import hydropower from Canada into the New England grid. (Utility Dive)
NATURAL GAS:
HEATING: In Vermont, draft rules for a system to incentivize lower-carbon heating sources propose counting biomass, renewable natural gas, and hydrogen as clean fuels, sparking objections by climate advocates. (Canary Media)
BUILDINGS: Maryland advocates say legislation passed this year slowing down implementation of clean building standards is “a significant setback” for the state. (Maryland Matters)
SOLAR:
STORAGE: The Rhode Island Energy Facility Siting Board rules it has jurisdiction over large battery storage developments, allowing it to overrule local permitting decisions for these projects. (RTO Insider, subscription)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
TIDAL POWER: Despite local objections, a proposed tidal power project in Maine receives a key early permit from federal regulators, resurrecting a nearly identical plan that fizzled out in 2016. (Bangor Daily News)
COMMENTARY:
SOLAR: Hurricane Helene’s damage to a North Carolina town home to the purest quartz in the world highlights the solar industry’s precarious reliance on materials produced from a single location, especially in the face of escalating weather disasters. (Grist)
ALSO:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Hyundai begins producing electric SUVs at its new, $7.6 billion Georgia factory ahead of a grand opening planned for 2025. (Associated Press)
GRID:
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: A federal court hears arguments in a lawsuit by Louisiana community groups alleging a parish government “intentionally discriminated against Black residents” by placing polluting industrial facilities near majority-Black communities. (Associated Press)
OIL & GAS: A Houston-based pipeline company heads up emergency response to a 100-foot oil-laced saltwater geyser that erupted in a part of Texas that’s experienced a recent rash of earthquakes linked to wastewater injection. (Houston Chronicle)
CARBON CAPTURE: Texans testify to U.S. EPA officials about a planned carbon dioxide injection site in the Permian Basin that would be part of the largest direct air capture facility in the U.S. (Texas Tribune)
HYDROPOWER:
NUCLEAR: The U.S. Supreme Court agrees to review a ruling in a dispute over a company’s plans to store nuclear waste at a dump located in Texas’ Permian Basin. (Houston Chronicle)
UTILITIES: Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick calls for the resignation of CenterPoint Energy’s CEO due to the utility’s botched response to power outages in Houston caused by Hurricane Beryl. (Houston Chronicle)
COMMENTARY:
More than seven years after New Hampshire regulators first approved the idea of using community solar to create savings for low-income households, electric bill discounts are finally on the horizon for the first batch of participants.
“There has been this rhetoric that we want solar to benefit low-income people, but whenever we try to propose programs that will make that happen, they’ve been immensely slow to roll out,” said Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of the nonprofit Clean Energy New Hampshire. “But despite being frustrated, I am really glad this is finally happening.”
The state energy department is reviewing seven proposals for community solar arrays that will allocate a portion of the credits they receive for sending power onto the grid to low-income households in the form of credits on their monthly bills. The projects selected will work with the utilities to identify customers receiving discounted rates, who will be automatically enrolled in the program.
Community solar is widely considered an important strategy for extending the benefits of renewable energy to people unable to take advantage of rooftop solar. Nationally, some two-thirds of households can’t install solar panels, generally because they don’t own their home, don’t have a suitable roof, or can’t afford the cost of the array, said Kate Daniel, Northeast regional director for the Coalition for Community Solar Access. Those obstacles are particularly challenging for low-income households, which are more likely to rent, need costly roof repairs, or lack the cash or credit scores needed to pay for panels, she added.
Community solar, on the other hand, allows these households to buy renewable energy, supporting climate action and saving money. Recent research from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that community solar users have, on average, 23% lower incomes than rooftop solar adopters and are six times more likely to live in multifamily homes, suggesting community solar helps increase adoption of solar among these populations.
Many states — including New Hampshire’s northeastern neighbors like Massachusetts and New York — have created programs to encourage the development of community solar projects that provide financial benefits to low-income households. But New Hampshire is falling behind: A recent report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratories, a federally funded research center, identifies New Hampshire as the state with the smallest share of its solar production going to disadvantaged households.
“We really have to ask ourselves why that is,” Evans-Brown said.
The first mandate for utilities to develop a program using community solar to benefit low-income households came as part of the order establishing the state’s current net metering system in 2017. Before a program could get off the ground, the state legislature passed a 2019 bill boosting the net metering rate for community solar projects serving low-income households, and the state suspended the earlier requirement until 2021, declaring it could be redundant given the new bill.
In 2021, the state asked for — and received — an additional suspension until July 2022, arguing that it had only finalized the eligibility rules for the net metering adder in September 2020, and therefore the utilities should not have to develop their own programs until the adder had a full two years to potentially spark development.
Then, in July 2022, the legislature passed a bill requiring the creation of a new community solar program including projects totalling up to six megawatts of capacity each year, each providing at least 25% of the credits it generates to low- or moderate-income customers. Customers will be automatically enrolled, but given ten days to opt out.
This program opened for proposals in December 2023, with a deadline of February 29, 2024. The state is now reviewing the seven proposals it received. If the applications total more than the six-megawatt cap, priority will be given to projects proposing greater benefits for low-income households.
“We are hammering out some of the final details with the utilities before we make the official designations,” said Joshua Elliott, director of policy and programs for the New Hampshire energy department. “Once we get the details of the processes finalized, we expect this process to move far more quickly in the future.”
There are elements of the program to like, advocates said.
Traditionally, it has been difficult for solar developers to cost-effectively find and recruit low-income customers for community solar. New Hampshire’s strategy of working with utilities to automatically enroll households that have already been identified streamlines the process. The state’s plan to review the program each year is also a strength, said Kirt Mayland, a visiting professor at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law and Graduate School.
Uncertainties remain, however. Enrolling customers from the utilities’ electric assistance programs may be more efficient for developers, but it runs the risk of missing a lot of low-income households that are eligible for the discounted rate but not signed up. To reach the largest possible number of potential subscribers, a program should also accept households enrolled in other means-tested programs, like Medicaid or SNAP, or even simply allow customers to self-attest their qualifying income.
“The evidence on states with self-attestation has found there is very little fraud — it really does get over the barriers,” said Daniel, who is not very familiar with the New Hampshire program but has worked extensively with community solar in best practices.
The small size of the program could mean small savings for each participating household, Mayland said.
“There’s a concern about how much money is actually getting placed on the low-income customer’s bill — sometimes it doesn’t blow you away,” he said. “It’s to be determined whether it’s an effective program to help out the low-income community in New Hampshire.”
CORRECTION: Alabama Power has not promised to line coal ash pits as part of an EPA settlement, an item in Thursday’s newsletter incorrectly stated that it had.
TRANSITION: West Virginia officials embrace a plan to convert a long-troubled coal plant into a coal-powered facility to produce hydrogen and graphite, but the project has stalled as the company running it juggles multiple projects and a history of loan defaults. (Floodlight/Mountain State Spotlight)
EMISSIONS: “It’s all smoke and mirrors:” Former Texas employees blow the whistle on the state’s pollution monitoring team, which analysis finds has been systematically weakened dating back to the early fracking boom in 2010. (Inside Climate News)
HELENE:
GRID: Federal officials offer up to $360 million to support a $2.6 billion project to link Texas’ standalone grid with a high-voltage transmission line running 320 miles from Mississippi through Louisiana to Texas. (Houston Chronicle)
WORKFORCE: Virginia industry leaders call for the state to support more workforce programs to train workers to fill shortages of electricians, mechanics and technicians, as well as for the emerging electric vehicle industry. (Virginia Mercury)
PIPELINES: Federal regulators tell a court they have good reason to grant the Mountain Valley Pipeline three more years to complete an extension into North Carolina, since they were waiting for the project to receive federal permits for its main line. (Bloomberg, subscription)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: West Virginia residents increasingly consider switching to electric vehicles because of a wave of new all-terrain vehicles and a program that lets them test drive four different models. (WV News)
OIL & GAS: A Congress member says Texas oil companies that withdrew from Russia because of U.S. sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine are now being targeted for breach-of-contract lawsuits. (Houston Chronicle)
COAL:
POLITICS:
COMMENTARY:
COAL: Clean energy advocates push back on Duke Energy’s new plan to extend the life of the country’s second-largest coal plant, the Gibson plant in Indiana, by three years to 2038 to meet rising electricity demand. (Inside Climate News)
CLEAN ENERGY:
UTILITIES: Protesters outside We Energies’ headquarters in Milwaukee call on the utility to invest in more renewable energy instead of gas plants, and to limit requests for rate increases. (Wisconsin Public Radio)
GRID: A new U.S. Energy Department study identifies parts of U.S. grid territories that could be suitable for new transmission interconnections. (Utility Dive)
OIL & GAS: The Ohio Supreme Court rejects a company’s effort to block a gas pipeline from traversing its property in Maumee after raising safety and environmental concerns. (Ohio Capital Journal)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
CLIMATE: Researchers in northern Minnesota are testing different formulations for biochar, a charcoal-like material that advocates say stores carbon dioxide that would have otherwise been released into the atmosphere. (MPR News)
NUCLEAR: Regulators and lawmakers should do more to make nuclear reactor licensing more accessible and craft regulations that allow existing reactors to support data centers and hydrogen producers, panelists say during a clean energy conference. (Utility Dive)
COMMENTARY: Advocates continue to see longstanding failures in enforcing groundwater protections from the widespread injection of oil and gas drilling wastewater, including in Ohio. (Natural Resources Defense Council)
CORRECTION: The owners of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant are seeking a $1.6 billion loan guarantee; an item in yesterday’s newsletter listed the wrong amount.
EMISSIONS: Global natural gas exports are responsible for far more emissions than coal exports, researchers find, concluding there is “no need for LNG as an interim energy source” as countries phase out coal. (The Guardian)
COAL:
NUCLEAR: Regulators and lawmakers should do more to make nuclear reactor licensing more accessible and craft regulations that allow existing reactors to support data centers and hydrogen producers, panelists say during a clean energy conference. (Utility Dive)
EQUITY: A solar technician training course in Boston aims to build a more diverse workforce to accelerate the rate of solar installations and help residents of underserved communities. (WBUR)
POLITICS:
OIL & GAS: ConocoPhillips signs a $300 million deal to acquire some of Chevron’s oil and gas facilities on Alaska’s North Slope, bucking the trend of large companies selling out to private firms. (Alaska Beacon)
CARBON CAPTURE: The U.S. Interior Department is two years behind in crafting rules for offshore carbon sequestration, but expects to finish this year. (E&E News)
HYDROGEN: The U.S. Treasury Department will finalize its clean hydrogen tax credit rules by the end of the year, a deputy secretary says. (Heatmap)
This article was originally published by the New Jersey Monitor.
After a scorching summer that saw electricity bills soar, experts told lawmakers Wednesday that they should eschew costly utility mandates, invest in technology like carbon capture, and avoid shutting down power plants before replacement power sources are up and running.
Wednesday’s hearing of the Assembly’s utilities committee was called to address complaints from South Jersey residents about dramatic electric bill spikes, and it came in the midst of New Jersey’s push for broader electrification that could push power demand yet higher.
Jason Stanek, executive director of government services for PJM Interconnection, the grid operator for New Jersey and 12 other states, said New Jersey should not advance policies that shut down power sources unless they have replacements that are operating.
The state’s last two coal-fired power plants closed in 2022, and wind projects meant to boost its generation capacity have faced cost and other hurdles.
“To minimize rate impacts, we would respectfully request avoiding any policies that are designed to push resources off the system before we have an equal and equivalent amount of replacement resources,” Stanek said.
Swings in energy supply and demand can put pressure on rates, especially when supply falls as demand rises.
Stanek noted electricity prices at its annual July capacity auction surged nearly nine times higher than the previous year. Utilities procure electricity through the auction and sell it to ratepayers at cost but can generate a profit from transmission, among other things.
Rate Counsel Brian Lipman said the higher auction prices would add between $12 and $15 to customers’ monthly electricity bills beginning in June.
Improvements to energy efficiency had helped tamp down on demand for more electricity generation in recent decades, though that trend has since reversed, Board of Public Utilities President Christine Guhl-Sadovy told the committee.
Growing electrification, increased uptake in electric vehicles and their charges, and surging demand for data centers spurred by a boom in artificial intelligence are set to push New Jersey’s energy needs up significantly, said Assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo (D-Mercer), the committee’s chairman.
“If you have a quick charging station, they use 100 amps. That’s the amount of power that’s in a small residential house,” said DeAngelo, an electrician by trade. “As we’re moving New Jersey across and increasing our bandwidth and the need for data — be mindful as AI is coming into the picture and becoming more prominent — one data center that they’re talking about building is going to need 800 (megawatts).”
That data center alone would consume nearly a quarter of the electricity produced by three nuclear power plants in South Jersey that, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, accounted for 43.5% of the state’s energy generation in 2022. Combined, the plants produce 3,457 megawatts of electricity.
Some suggested New Jersey’s ambitious renewable energy goals, which call for the state to draw 100% of its power from renewable sources by 2035, wouldn’t help the state meet electricity demand in the short run.
“We need to be moving towards that clean energy future, but we also need to be investing in some of the technologies of where we are today. There are technologies that can help out the use of natural gas, like carbon capture,” said Rich Henning, president and CEO of the New Jersey Utility Association.
Others suggested regulatory changes would push power prices down.
Lipman, the rate counsel, said changes to federal rules that would include more electric capacity in PJM auctions would push down rates, and he urged an end to legislative mandates that forced utilities to invest in infrastructure or raise other costs passed along to ratepayers, like a $300 million annual subsidy to the state’s nuclear plants that is due to lapse on June 1.
In New Jersey, most utilities can earn 9.6 cents for every dollar invested in addition to recouping their expenses. Those costs are typically borne by ratepayers.
“We’re forcing them to invest, and they’re not doing that for free. They’re coming back and they’re seeking their money,” Lipman said, adding new oversight of transmission could also control costs.
NUCLEAR: The owners of Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear plant are seeking a $1.6 billion, taxpayer-backed federal loan guarantee to help finance its plans to restart and sell electricity to Microsoft. (Washington Post)
ALSO: The Three Mile Island plant will need extensive and rigorous safety inspections if it is to come online again to provide power. (Scientific American)
WIND:
GRID: PJM Interconnection refuses to let power generators add battery storage to facilities that have surplus grid capacity, confounding clean energy advocates. (Canary Media)
NATURAL GAS: A proposal to build a natural gas power plant in Newark, New Jersey – the fourth in the same neighborhood – faces intense local opposition from residents who say the plan runs counter to the state’s renewable energy goals. (NJ Spotlight News)
OIL & GAS: A Pennsylvania Republican introduces a bill that would sell state alternative energy credits and use the funds to cap abandoned oil and gas wells. (Pennsylvania Business Report)
SOLAR:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Electric vehicle ownership in Connecticut is concentrated in wealthy Fairfield County, raising questions about how the state can better encourage more widespread adoption. (CT Post)
TRANSPORTATION: Vermont is holding public meetings as part of its investigation into the possibility of using a cap-and-invest strategy to lower emissions from transportation in the state. (WCAX)
BUILDINGS: A 17-story Boston office building is the first commercial project to use cement made by a Massachusetts company with technology to significantly reduce emissions during the production process. (CommonWealth Beacon)
CLARIFICATION: A Pennsylvania solar bill would not require developers to pay up front for future costs of removing panels. An item in yesterday’s newsletter mischaracterized the bill.
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