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COAL: A proposed contract extension could lock three Chicago suburbs and 29 downstate municipalities into relying on a major coal plant for decades to come. (Chicago Tribune)
ALSO: A Minnesota administrative law judge finds that Xcel Energy’s negligence contributed to a catastrophic coal plant equipment failure in 2011, and that customers should be compensated up to $34 million. (Star Tribune)
UTILITIES: Michigan regulators fine Consumers Energy $1 million after investigating complaints of malfunctioning smart meters and violating state rules on estimated billing practices. (Michigan Advance)
CLEAN ENERGY:
SOLAR: A solar project in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula shows how community solar can be deployed to help make electricity costs more affordable for low-income residents. (Inside Climate News)
EMISSIONS: Missouri’s attorney general sues five states, including Minnesota, over claims that their climate policies create emissions mandates for other states. (FOX 2)
RENEWABLES: Environmental groups accuse MidAmerican Energy of misleading customers by saying it supplied 100% renewable energy to customers while operating six coal plants. (E&E News, subscription)
CARBON CAPTURE: Experts say the absence of a price on carbon makes it difficult to quantify the economic benefits of carbon capture and storage for corn growers. (North Dakota Monitor)
GRID: City, state and federal officials celebrate the opening of a microgrid in a southside Chicago neighborhood that could be replicated elsewhere in the state. (Sun-Times)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Students at a Minnesota school district press administrators to buy an electric bus. (Star Tribune)
OIL & GAS:
NUCLEAR: Figuring out how to build cheaper nuclear plants will be key for the U.S. to take advantage of the technology and transition from fossil fuels, experts say. (The Atlantic)
CLIMATE: School districts across the northern U.S. that lack air conditioning confront the academic and health risks associated with rising temperatures. (Washington Post, subscription)
COMMENTARY: Wisconsin should celebrate, and accelerate, the state’s progress on retiring the last of its coal plants, an editorial board writes. (Wisconsin State Journal)
WIND: Washington Gov. Jay Inslee rejects a recommendation to slash the proposed Horse Heaven wind farm in half to protect wildlife and cultural sites in the southern part of the state, and suggests approving it at its original size. (Associated Press)
ALSO:
SOLAR:
CLEAN ENERGY:
NUCLEAR: A data center under development in a remote part of Wyoming agrees to purchase 100 MW of power from small modular nuclear reactor startup Oklo. (Data Center Dynamics)
ELECTRIFICATION: California advocates call on regulators to amend state energy codes to strongly encourage homeowners to replace broken or aging air conditioners with electric heat pumps. (Canary Media)
STORAGE: California residents push a ballot measure aimed at blocking a 600 MW battery energy storage system at a shuttered power plant in a tourist town on the state’s central coast. (Inside Climate News)
GRID: An NV Energy executive indicates the Nevada utility is poised to choose the California grid operator’s regional day-ahead power market over SPP’s competing one. (RTO Insider, subscription)
OIL & GAS:
GEOTHERMAL: Colorado awards 35 projects $7.7 million to research and develop geothermal energy. (Colorado Sun)
UTILITIES: Federal legislation that would exempt wildfire damage settlements from federal taxation stalls, potentially leaving some Oregon residents with high bills. (Oregonian)
MINING: The federal Bureau of Land Management seeks public input on a proposed copper mine expansion in southeastern Utah’s Lisbon Valley. (news release)
When the nonprofit Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2) began tracking where financial incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act were spurring clean energy manufacturing growth and jobs nationwide, Zach Amittay figured Virginia would snag the top slot in the Southeast.
So he was startled that the state has consistently lagged behind South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia since E2 began its research after the IRA became law in August 2022.
“Overall, Virginia pales in comparison to its neighbors, especially those farther South,” said Amittay, Southeast advocate for E2. “And that’s kind of an irony considering how Virginia’s framework for clean energy policies is driving demand for solar, electric vehicles, battery storage and offshore wind.”
Through April, companies have announced at least 305 major clean energy projects in 40 states and Puerto Rico, according to data E2 has gathered. Those projects are tied to 105,400-plus jobs and more than $123 billion in capital investments.
Of those 305 projects, just four — two connected to offshore wind, one to hydrogen and one to modernizing the electrical grid — have Virginia connections.
Meanwhile, Georgia has lured 27 projects, South Carolina, 24, and North Carolina, 19.
“North and South Carolina and Georgia are doing everything in their power to attract companies,” Amittay said. “They’re launching a full-court press by recruiting, offering state incentives and reducing tax liabilities. It shows they recognize this is the future of the economy and they want to be a part of that.”
E2, a national, nonpartisan group of investors, business leaders and professionals, launched its research project to bring more clarity to the IRA allocation process.
“For the average layperson, it’s inscrutable,” Amittay said. “We figured we could dedicate staff time to aggregating information and making it more digestible.”
Virginia has its share of success stories but needs to double down on efforts to entice more manufacturers that are part of the renewable energy supply chain, he noted. Deploying solar panels and wind turbines is only half of the clean energy equation.
“When it comes to attracting investments, the state is missing out by doing the opposite and, it seems, pushing them away.”
Christian Martinez, spokesman for Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, countered that take.
He pointed to the administration’s 2022 all-of-the-above Energy Plan as underscoring Virginia’s commitment to being a premier business location while also recognizing energy as a crucial productivity driver.
Without citing specifics, Martinez noted that Youngkin “looks forward to sharing details on several economic development opportunities … when they are ready.”
While state leaders can’t control company whims, Amittay and other clean energy advocates do directly blame Youngkin for nixing a proposal by Ford Motor Co. in late 2022 to build a plant to manufacture electric vehicle batteries on an industrial site in Pittsylvania County on the North Carolina border.
The automaker’s decision to partner with a Chinese company posed too high of a security risk, Youngkin said at the time.
“Virginians should be wary of Chinese communist intrusion into Virginia’s economy,” he said at his January 2023 State of the Commonwealth address, directing legislators to “send me a bill to prohibit dangerous foreign entities tied to the CCP from purchasing Virginia’s farmland.”
Youngkin’s concerns about China’s influence in this country could have been navigated so Virginia’s opportunity for the battery facility didn’t go up in smoke, Amittay said.
“At the time, he was trying to establish a national brand because he had bigger political ambitions,” he said about Youngkin’s presidential aspirations.
In February 2023, Ford announced that the battery plant would be built in Marshall, Michigan.
That loss not only hurt Virginia, Amittay said, but also cued companies that the state might be wary of rolling out the welcome mat to clean energy innovation.
Martinez said Youngkin’s concerns “that the Chinese Communist Party aims to dominate the world at the expense of the United States” were validated when Ford said last November it was scaling back its Michigan plans.
However, Ford explained it was curbing production capacity and employment expectations in Marshall — from 2,500 jobs 1,700 jobs — because of rising labor costs and consumers’ hesitancy to shift to electric vehicles.
At its core, the Inflation Reduction Act is a massive package that dedicates $369 billion over 10 years to clean energy innovation via tax credits, rebates and other incentives. Many of its programs are designed to boost domestic manufacturing jobs as the country transitions away from fossil fuels.
The latter is a signal to stateside and international businesses, Amittay said, that the United States is serious about tamping down the emissions of heat-trapping gases that are causing climate change.
Thus far, the pull of the IRA’s promise has convinced four companies, Hitachi Energy, Fugro, Lyon Shipyard and Topsoe, to either expand or put down roots in Virginia, according to E2’s database.
Topsoe, a Danish company that focuses on emissions reduction technology, is the latest entrant.
In mid-April, it released plans to spend $400 million on a factory in Chesterfield County, south of Richmond, to manufacture specialized solid oxide electrolyzer cells essential for producing green hydrogen. It would employ 150.
While Topsoe has started the permitting and design process, company spokesman Gabriel Martinez said no timeline is set yet.
“The final investment decision will be dependent on market demand and regulatory developments,” he said, adding that the green hydrogen would be produced by Topsoe’s customers, not on-site in Virginia.
If built, Topsoe’s largest U.S. investment would be eligible for up to $136 million in IRA incentives, Gabriel Martinez said.
Another European company, Fugro, is in the midst of bumping up the workforce at its Americas Center of Expertise for Offshore Wind in Norfolk. The Dutch geo-data business first landed in Virginia in 2007 when it was hired to help expand nearby Portsmouth’s Craney Island Marine Terminal operated by the state Port Authority.
A few years later, Fugro began pivoting to offshore wind as possibilities for the industry took shape in coastal Virginia and beyond, said Peter Tattersfield, who directs wind business development in the Americas.
Dominion Energy is on the verge of beginning offshore construction on its 176-turbine wind farm 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach. At peak capacity, it will generate 2.6 gigawatts of power.
Fugro deploys specialized equipment such as buoys, sensors and robots to capture information about water currents, wind speeds, wave heights and soil types to create detailed maps of the ocean floor and the surrounding maritime environment. Scientists also study sea mammal and fish habitat.
“Wind developers need to know what they’re building their turbines on and where they should be installing cables,” Tattersfield said. “Basically, we build an earth model so they can feel confident about their projects.”
Fugro will steadily add professional jobs to keep pace with the Biden administration’s goal of achieving 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, he said. The company isn’t in line to receive IRA money directly. Instead, business will grow as more and more wind developers take advantage of generous IRA incentives.
“Our industry is still in its infancy, but we’re strategically positioned in Virginia,” Tattersfield said. “A wind developer is like a general contractor who has all the incentives to get the house built. If he’s successful, then all the subcontractors are pulled along toward success too.”
Relatedly, Norfolk-based Lyon Shipyard announced last fall that it would be spending $8.5 million to increase its capacity so it can provide a range of services for the commercial ships and vessels that attend to offshore wind farms. The ship repair company, active along the Elizabeth River since 1928, expects to add 134 jobs.
Meanwhile, Hitachi Energy is investing $37 million to add 26,000 square feet of production space to its power transformer building in Halifax County to support the manufacture of bigger transformers specifically designed for utility and renewable energy markets.
Transformers are a crucial piece of grid resiliency because they stabilize voltage to ensure power flows efficiently and reliably.
Steve McKinney, the head of Hitachi’s transformer business in North America, said he expects the addition to the existing 607,000 square foot plant in South Boston to be online by the end of 2025. Hitachi will hire 165 employees to its current on-site workforce of 450.
McKinney said there’s a “good possibility” Hitachi would tap into IRA incentives to offset equipment costs, but didn’t yet know a dollar figure.
The Virginia investment is just a tiny slice of the $1.5 billion Hitachi is pouring into its transformer capacity globally as demand for electricity explodes because of the growth of everything from data centers to electric vehicles.
“A lot of the grid network was built decades ago, and it’s time to upgrade,” he said. “Who would have thought five years ago we would be having this conversation about this level of investment in clean energy provided by the IRA?”
“We’re still in the early innings, but this is going to be transformational for the U.S.,” Amittay said about IRA infusions. “It’s complicated because there are a lot of technical details, a lot of agencies involved and some funding programs haven’t been rolled out yet.”
Despite those hurdles nationwide, Kim Jemaine, Virginia director for Advanced Energy United, isn’t confident that Youngkin has the will or the wherewithal to catch up with other states in the Southeast.
Her organization represents businesses intent on accelerating a clean energy transition.
In her eyes, the governor has spent too much time undermining the Virginia Clean Economy Act and promoting far-off energy sources such as small modular nuclear reactors.
“By touting an all-of-the-above policy, he’s missing research and development and manufacturing opportunities in other investment spaces,” Jemaine said. “What about batteries and long-term storage? There’s a ton of untapped potential there.”
She’s also worried that some of the initial excitement about transforming the Hampton Roads region into an offshore wind hub has fizzled since Youngkin took office in 2022. That political landscape means it’s easier for existing companies to expand than for new ones to move in.
With so much ground to make up, Amittay agreed, waiting around isn’t an option.
“We all know that the best time to plant a tree is 30 years ago, but the next best time is today. It’s time for Virginia to think about how it can plant some trees.”
GRID: Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso say they will soon release a draft bill to reform permitting for transmission lines and other energy infrastructure, with Manchin saying a recent FERC rule is “a Band-Aid on Congress’s inaction.” (Utility Dive)
ALSO: A key question in FERC’s proposal to accelerate transmission line construction is how much utilities will profit, with outcomes expected to vary by state. (E&E News)
CLIMATE:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Auto industry analysts warn that a U.S. retrenchment on electric vehicles, including if a Republican takes the White House in November, would give up significant market share to China. (CQ Roll Call)
LITHIUM: Some residents of California’s Imperial Valley are skeptical the growing lithium extraction industry will bring economic development, saying previous clean energy booms failed to deliver permanent jobs or prosperity. (KPBS)
COAL:
UTILITIES: Duke Energy’s plan to build five large natural gas plants in the Carolinas is on a collision course with new Biden administration rules that would throttle the plants’ use in just eight years. (Energy News Network)
WIND: The developers of two Northeast offshore wind farms say they’ve canceled an agreement to use Dominion Energy’s new installation ship, saying only that “we have secured an alternative installation vessel.” (CT Examiner)
COAL: Residents in northwestern Indiana were potentially exposed to cancer-causing chemicals from coal ash, despite being told otherwise, for nearly a decade after a utility consultant included misleading soil samples that should have been dismissed from studies. (Indianapolis Star)
GRID:
NUCLEAR: Nuclear energy has made inroads with centrist Michigan Democrats for its potential economic and climate benefits, though some environmental groups say public funding would be better spent on other clean energy options. (MLive)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Auto industry analysts warn that a U.S. retrenchment on electric vehicles, including if a Republican takes the White House in November, would give up significant market share to China. (CQ Roll Call)
SOLAR:
CLIMATE: GOP attorneys general from 19 states argue that more than two dozen climate liability lawsuits nationwide that seek to hold fossil fuel companies accountable “threaten our way of life.” (E&E News, subscription)
SOLAR: Wyoming regulators greenlight a proposed 771 MW solar-plus-storage facility on private land near Cheyenne. (Casper Star-Tribune)
ALSO:
OVERSIGHT: Arizona residents push back after a county approves a proposed natural gas peaker plant next to a retirement community shortly after banning new utility-scale solar installations. (Guardian)
CLEAN ENERGY: The U.S. Energy Department awards over $2 million to community groups and nonprofits to fund clean energy projects, including ones in six Western states. (news release)
TRANSPORTATION: Colorado lawmakers pass legislation aimed at expediting proposed passenger rail service between Denver and coal transition communities in the western part of the state. (Colorado Newsline)
GRID: Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signs legislation requiring utilities to update their distribution grids to support state electrification and decarbonization goals. (news release)
OIL & GAS:
CLIMATE:
COAL: Right-wing Wyoming lawmakers call on Gov. Mark Gordon to sue the Biden administration over its proposal to halt new federal coal leases in the Powder River Basin. (Cowboy State Daily)
LITHIUM:
Duke Energy is already under fire in North Carolina for its plan to blow off a state deadline to curb carbon pollution while also building a massive new fleet of fossil fuel plants.
Now, the company’s blueprint is locked on a collision course with fresh rules from the Biden administration, which target coal and new natural gas plants and take effect in eight years.
“Duke is going to have to go back to the drawing board,” said David Neal, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, “and come up with an alternative that is compliant with the rules.”
While much focus on the long-awaited Biden rules has centered on coal, their impact on natural gas is arguably more significant. Duke isn’t alone among American utilities in being forced to re-examine long-term generation plans as a result.
“We think it’s important for every utility and every commission to take a step back,” said Amanda Levin, director of policy analysis with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
But even as the federal regulations underscore a law unique to the state, it’s not clear if North Carolina regulators will take a beat – or even if there’s time for them to corral Duke and an array of stakeholders to rework, vet, and approve a new carbon reduction and long-range plan due by the end of the year. That’s why many advocates say debate over the utility’s immediate next steps will be crucial.
“It’s going to be important to adopt a near-term action plan that really is ‘least regrets,’” said Neal, who’s representing numerous clean energy groups in the proceeding on Duke’s generation plans. “The new rules just put further emphasis on what we already knew was true: we’re going to have to accelerate the adoption of clean resources.”
Duke’s existing fleet of natural gas-fired plants aren’t affected by the new Biden rules. Nor are the smaller gas plants Duke proposes to occasionally satisfy peak demand and serve other limited roles on the electric grid.
But the company plans at least five large, combined-cycle plants in the Carolinas that are impacted by the rules. The four projected for North Carolina include a 1,360-megawatt plant in Roxboro, about an hour north of Durham, for which state regulators are now weighing a permit application.
Natural gas is a fossil fuel, but Duke deems the Roxboro plant and others like it essential to the zero-carbon electricity future that state law mandates by 2050. These baseload generators can back up sources like wind and solar to ensure reliability. At the point of combustion, they produce about half the carbon pollution of coal. And in theory, hydrogen molecules separated from chemical compounds could ultimately supplant gas as a fuel, bringing the plants’ carbon emissions down to almost nothing.
“Natural gas is available 24/7 — with fewer emissions than coal and at a lower cost than renewables alone,” Duke said on its website this year, around the time it asked regulators for permission to build the Roxboro plant. “The new [Roxboro] units would be designed to operate on carbon-free hydrogen in the future.”
But critics say this rationale is flawed in virtually every respect. The cost of natural gas is on the rise, and one recent study showed it was a major driver of recent Duke rate hikes in parts of North Carolina. In December 2022 during Winter Storm Elliott, gas plants failed when they were needed most — in the wee, frigid hours before the sun rose — helping to cause rolling blackouts that impacted half a million customers in the state. Drilling and transporting gas leaks methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more powerful than carbon, nearly canceling out reduced carbon pollution from smokestacks.
As for hydrogen, experts believe it can serve a small role in a zero-carbon economy — but mostly not in the power sector. Even if it’s carbon-free when burned, hydrogen made from fossil fuels is hardly nonpolluting and also inefficient. Hydrogen fuel produced from renewables should be reserved for limited applications, they say, such as long-distance aviation fuel or to power the few gas plants still running in the middle of the century.
“In our modeling,” said Levin, “hydrogen in the power sector is used just for that last 5% of the decarbonization of the entire grid.”
Still, the power plant rules promulgated by Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency don’t wrestle with reliability, ratepayer impacts or even methane leakage. They cover carbon dioxide pollution alone, and they’re designed to reduce what’s emitted from the smokestack by 90% beginning in 2032.
That limit is based on carbon capture — in which carbon dioxide is sequestered underground rather than released into the atmosphere — a technology widely viewed as infeasible in North Carolina because of its geology. And while other techniques that would achieve the same pollution cuts are allowed under the federal rules, none are yet ripe.
One candidate is now being developed at utility scale in Texas but won’t be deployed until at least three years from now. As for hydrogen, it would have to fuel 96% of Duke’s new baseload gas plants beginning in 2032 to meet the emissions limit — an impossible feat according to the company’s own communications with regulators.
Duke’s current forecast shows its gas fleet running on about 3% hydrogen beginning in 2041, then “holding steady until significantly more hydrogen is required to meet carbon-neutral by 2050,” to comply with state law. And in a brief discussion of the impending federal power plant rules in its August draft of its long-term plan, Duke noted:
“Hydrogen is an important and potentially transformational fuel for the future of the resource portfolio, [but] the volumes necessary to utilize the hydrogen compliance pathway are not thought to be achievable on the timelines presented.”
Thus, if regulators allow Duke to build large new baseload gas plants, the company can only run them 40% of the time or less, beginning in 2032 and until technology becomes viable to slash their emissions.
The Roxboro plant, which Duke plans to put into service at the beginning of 2029, would operate at its planned capacity for just three years in that case. Afterwards, its vaunted ability to provide around-the-clock electricity would be severely curtailed.
Multiply the Roxboro conundrum by five, and the mismatch between the Biden rules and Duke’s gas ambitions becomes clear.
In its August discussion of the expected Biden rules, Duke said it considered running its new combined-cycle baseload plants at 50%. Making up for the resulting difference between demand and supply, including building another large gas plant that would run at half-speed, would require an extra $3.6 billion, the company estimated.
Tyler Norris, a former vice president at Cypress Creek Renewables and a PhD candidate at Duke University, estimates that if the 6,800 megawatts of baseload gas plants Duke announced in January were planned to run at 75% and had to ratchet down to 40% operations, the difference would be greater still. Filling it only with solar could require 9,500 megawatts of capacity in a single year — nearly double what’s online in Duke’s territory today.
“That’s probably on the high end,” said Norris, but, “it’s a pretty huge gap. Something’s going to have to change in the plan.”
Then, there’s the question of whether it makes sense for ratepayers to pay to fill that gap, especially if they’re also shelling out full price for underutilized plants.
“We’re all paying for these plants that admittedly have to sit idle more than half of the time?” asked Dave Rogers, deputy director for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. “Should customers really be forced to pay for those?”
Adhering to the Biden rules on coal plants appears more straightforward.
Duke must shut down its entire coal fleet by the start of 2039, and any plants still running in 2032 must be fired partially with gas. The utility already plans to meet that deadline for eight of its 12 remaining coal smokestacks, covering six sites. Two outliers in Belews Creek, just outside Winston-Salem, can already be fueled with gas. That leaves two units in Roxboro, about an hour north of Durham, that the utility now plans to keep online until 2034.
“The logical thing is to retire that coal plant at least a couple of years earlier. Whatever replaces it will be lower cost,” said Rogers. “That’s the big thing in front of the commission as it pertains to the [coal plant] rules.”
Timing also looms large. State law requires Duke to curb carbon emissions 70% by 2030, with two years’ wiggle room. If regulators authorize a nuclear or wind project that causes logistical delays beyond Duke’s control, the postponement could be indefinite. The company now hopes to exploit the latter loophole, with its preferred path to net zero achieving the 70% benchmark by 2035 or even 2037.
With their deadline of 2032, however, the Biden rules help bolster the case for Duke to rein in its carbon emissions sooner. Doing so wouldn’t just make it easier for the utility to meet the ultimate goal of near-zero emissions by midcentury. It would also significantly reduce overall carbon levels in the atmosphere.
“The thing about climate is it’s not just about achieving net zero in one year and one year only,” said Levin. “Climate is a cumulative emissions problem. If you’re doing status quo until the year you’ve made a net zero commitment, you’re not consistent with a 1.5 or 2 degree warming trajectory.”
Still, while advocates have long pressed Duke to build more battery storage, solar, and wind in place of gas and coal, making the switch in the complex utility modeling tools is no simple task, with a host of variables involved — from transmission capacity to reliability to siting.
“Duke has already submitted its modeling twice now. I doubt that either North or South Carolina commissions will want to do another round of that at this point,” said Maggie Shober, research director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, on a recent webinar about the Biden rules. But, she added, “this will absolutely come up in the process before the [North Carolina Utilities] commission.”
For its part, Duke hasn’t indicated any plans to re-do its projections.
“While we are analyzing the final rules, our view is that [they do] not change our path forward in North Carolina as we continue retiring our coal plants and supporting the state’s unprecedented growth with an all-of-the-above approach that’s designed to deliver affordability and reliability for customers,” company spokesperson Bill Norton said in an email. “Natural gas remains an essential resource in this diverse mix that can be dispatched to meet demand 24/7.”
If that position holds, and state regulators don’t seek to change it, it raises the stakes considerably for the “near-term action plan” expected as part of the plan due by the end of the year, as well as the permit application pending right now for the Roxboro plant.
That short-term plan, said advocates, shouldn’t just account for the risk of new gas resources and the timing of coal retirements, but also allow for more renewables by removing the annual connection caps Duke proposes for both battery and solar.
“I think this is an excellent opportunity,” said Norris, “to revisit the potential to achieve a higher interconnection rate for zero-carbon resources.”
OIL & GAS: Louisiana is home to about a third of the nearly 200 carbon storage wells seeking permits in the U.S., but watchdog groups warn the presence of at least 186,000 abandoned oil and gas wells could complicate the process and cause safety issues. (Verite News)
ALSO: A San Antonio company files for reorganizational bankruptcy and moves to withdraw from a partnership to build a $10 billion liquefied natural gas export terminal on the Gulf Coast. (San Antonio Report)
INDUSTRY: The Biden administration is banking on “green steel” factories in Mississippi and Ohio that will run on clean hydrogen to provide a model to decarbonize one of the world’s dirtiest industries. (Canary Media)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Nissan delays changes at a Mississippi factory to produce more electric vehicles due to concerns about customer demand. (CNN)
SOLAR:
CLEAN ENERGY: Virginia regulators approve three Dominion Energy battery projects, and Appalachian Power issues requests for battery, wind and solar projects as the two utilities aim to meet state decarbonization mandates. (Virginia Mercury)
POLITICS: Democrats say Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s refusal to rejoin a regional carbon market will cost the state $150 million annually, despite additional funding for state flood control programs. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
PIPELINES: A pipeline safety advocate discusses concerns about the Mountain Valley Pipeline after a section ruptured during water pressure testing. (West Virginia Public Broadcasting)
CLIMATE:
COMMENTARY:
UTILITIES: U.S. gas utilities are partnering with Habitat for Humanity affiliates to build “zero-net energy homes” with gas appliances in what critics call a “cynical PR stunt” to combat efforts to curb fossil fuel use. (The Guardian)
INDUSTRY: The Biden administration is banking on “green steel” factories in Mississippi and Ohio that will run on clean hydrogen to provide a model to decarbonize one of the world’s dirtiest industries. (Canary Media)
OIL & GAS: The Department of Energy is closing a 1-million-barrel Northeast gasoline reserve established in 2014 in response to Superstorm Sandy, releasing the fuel into the market at a time when summer driving ramps up. (Reuters)
POLLUTION: A Government Accountability Office report finds natural gas peaker plants, which are more likely to be located near poor and minority communities, emit more pollution than conventional power plants. (E&E News, subscription)
CO2 CAPTURE:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
WIND:
CLIMATE:
EFFICIENCY: Ohio regulators last week rejected most of an energy efficiency proposal by FirstEnergy, but said in their ruling that the state’s infamous 2019 utility law doesn’t necessarily prohibit such programs. (Energy News Network)
Few places in California are as unforgiving for driving an electric car as the remote and sparsely populated Imperial Valley.
Only four fast-charging public stations are spread across the valley’s vast 4,500 square miles just north of the US-Mexico border, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. That means if you’re Greg Gelman — one of only about 1,200 Imperial County residents who own an electric car — traveling almost anywhere is a maddening logistical challenge.
“It’s been, I won’t say a nightmare, but it’s been very, very, very inconvenient,” Gelman said on a recent afternoon as he charged his all-electric Mercedes-Benz at a charging station in a Bank of America parking lot in El Centro. “Would I do it again? No.”
California’s electric charging “deserts” like the Imperial Valley pose one of the biggest obstacles to the state’s efforts to combat climate change and air pollution by electrifying cars and trucks.
Experts say the slow installation of chargers in California’s remote regions could jeopardize the state’s phaseout of new gas-powered cars. Under the state’s mandate, 35% of sales of 2026 models must be zero-emissions, ramping up to 68% in 2030 and 100% in 2035.
Nestled in the desert in California’s far southeast corner, Imperial County ranks dead last in electric car ownership among California counties with populations of 100,000 or more, according to a CalMatters analysis of 2023 data. Only 7 out of every 1,000 cars are battery-powered there, compared with 51 out of every 1,000 statewide.
High poverty and unemployment are a major factor in the region’s slow transition to electric cars, but its lack of public chargers are a big drawback, too.
People living in rural, low-income regions like the Imperial Valley have the least access to electric car chargers, according to a state Energy Commission analysis. More than two-thirds of California’s low-income residents are a 10-minute drive or longer from a publicly available fast charger.
Luis Olmedo, executive director of El Comite Civico del Valle, a nonprofit advocating for environmental justice, has battled for years against the Imperial Valley’s unhealthy air. Now he is making a bid to become its go-to supplier of charging stations for zero-emissions cars.
Olmedo isn’t waiting for businesses or the state to make chargers a reality in Imperial County. Instead, his group has embarked on a $5-million, high-stakes crusade to build a network of 40 fast chargers at various locations. It’s an open question whether his somewhat quixotic endeavor will succeed.
Electric car chargers “are an opportunity for us to be able to breathe cleaner air,” Olmedo said. “It’s about equity. It’s about justice. It’s about making sure that everybody has chargers.”
Esther Conrad, a researcher at Stanford University who focuses on environmental sustainability, said getting chargers in places like Imperial County is critical to California’s effort to transition to electric vehicles in an equitable way. Apartment dwellers and others who don’t have charging at home need nearby and reliable places to charge.
“When you have a rural community that’s low-income and distant from other locations, it’s incredibly important to enable people to get places where they need to go,” Conrad said.
A car is essential for traversing Imperial County, which is the most sparsely populated county in Southern California.
Its neighborhoods are vast distances from urban centers that provide the services that residents need: El Centro — its biggest town, home to about 44,000 people — is much closer to Mexicali, Mexico, than it is to San Diego, which is about a two-hour drive away, or Riverside, nearly three hours. Its highways and roads cross boundless fields of lettuce and other crops that give way to strip malls, apartments and suburban tracts — and then even more crops and open desert.
If you drive an electric car the 109 miles from El Centro to Palm Springs, your route takes you through farmland, desert and around California’s largest lake, the Salton Sea, which is also one of its biggest environmental calamities.
The Salton Sea has been receding in recent years, causing toxic dust to blow into Imperial Valley towns. The region’s air quality is among the worst in the state, with dust storms and a brown haze emanating from agricultural burning and factories in the valley or from across the border in Mexicali, a city of a million people.
About 16% of Imperial County’s 179,000 residents have asthma, higher than the state average. The air violates national health standards for both fine particles, or soot, as well as ozone, the main ingredient of smog; both pollutants can trigger asthma attacks and other respiratory diseases.
More than 85% of Imperial County’s residents are Latino, and Spanish is widely spoken here. Agriculture is a major employer, and many businesses are dependent on cross-border trade and traffic from Mexico. The county’s median household income is $53,847, much lower than the statewide median, and 21% of people live in poverty.
Now the discovery of lithium, used to manufacture EV batteries, at the Salton Sea has the potential to transform the region’s economy. State officials say the deposit could produce 600,000 tons a year, valued at $7.2 billion, and assist the U.S. as it tries to foster a domestic electric car industry that rivals China’s.
But Olmedo worries that when the mineral is removed from the valley, it won’t meaningfully change people’s livelihoods or their health. He points to examples in the developing world where local people have been left behind as extractive industries take what they need.
“We’re about to extract, perhaps, the world’s supply of lithium here, yet we don’t even have the simplest, the lowest of offerings, which is: Let’s build you chargers,” Olmedo said.
Last year, electric cars were only 5% of all new cars sold in Imperial County, compared with 25% statewide. Getting chargers into low-income and rural places will become more and more important as California struggles to meet its ambitious climate targets.
The Energy Commission estimates that California will need 1.01 million chargers outside of private homes by 2030 and 2.11 million by 2035, when more than 15 million electric cars are expected on the roads. So far the state has only about 105,000 nonprivate chargers.
Nick Nigro, founder of Atlas Public Policy, which researches the electric car market, said charging companies won’t locate chargers in regions with few electric vehicles.
“You need revenue, and if the EVs aren’t there, then your customers aren’t necessarily there, so you do have a legitimate chicken and egg problem,” Nigro said. “We have to look to public policy to help that market failure.”
The Biden administration will invest $384 million in California’s electric car infrastructure over five years. And state officials are investing almost $2 billion in grants for funding zero-emission vehicle chargers over the next four years, including some special grants in rural, inland areas for up to $80,000 per charger. Olmedo says the funding has been insufficient so he’s had to turn to donations and other sources of funding.
Patty Monahan, one of five members of the California Energy Commission, said “it’s particularly important that we see chargers” in the Imperial Valley and other low-income counties with poor air quality.
Imperial Valley has only four fast-charging stations open for public use, where chargers are capable of juicing batteries up to 80% in under an hour, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Three are in El Centro, with one exclusively for Teslas; another is in the border town of Calexico and was recently installed by El Comite. Six other stations offer only slower chargers.
Olmedo envisions a network of 40 publicly accessible chargers throughout the valley. El Comite is expecting funding from the California Energy Commission, and has received donations from Waverley Streets Foundation, the United Auto Workers and General Motors. The group is seeking more state funding.
Olmedo acknowledged that he is facing a slew of challenges with his project, including some local opposition and the high cost of installation and maintenance.
At a warehouse in the city of Imperial where El Comite stores the chargers, Jose Flores, project manager for the group’s charging initiative, said he and three colleagues spent four days in Santa Ana, about 200 miles north, at a facility managed by BTC, the company that makes the chargers that El Comite is installing.
They received training on installation and maintenance techniques, and discussed how not all chargers can be used by all electric vehicles. He learned about payment and cooling systems, and that the chargers might need more frequent maintenance because of Imperial Valley’s harsh desert conditions.
“We’re like a testing ground because we have poor air quality here due to the Salton Sea and being in a desert,” he said.
El Comite installed its first charger at its Brawley headquarters in 2022. Last December, El Civico pressed ahead with a more ambitious project: Four of their fast chargers are now operating in a park in the border town of Calexico.
Chris Aldaz, 35, a U.S. Postal Service worker who lives in Calexico, charges at home, but at times uses chargers at the group’s Brawley headquarters that people can use for free. It is a Level 2, which can take several hours to charge.
“The reason why I wanted to get an EV was that it was cheaper,” Aldaz told CalMatters. “I don’t want to be spending all this money on gas, and on maintenance, and it was better for the environment.”
Nevertheless, Olmedo’s electric car chargers have become a local political issue.
Maritza Hurtado, Calexico’s ex-mayor, and coordinator of a City Council recall campaign, said it was inappropriate for El Comite to have built four electric car chargers in a downtown park. The chargers were a distraction “from our police needs and our actual community infrastructure needs,” Hurtado said at a public hearing at the county’s utility, the Imperial Irrigation District, in January. She declined to speak to CalMatters.
“We had no idea they were going to take our parkland,” Hurtado said at the hearing. “It is very upsetting and disrespectful to our community for Comite Civico to come to Calexico and take our land.”
Olmedo hopes that the chargers ultimately will be something the county’s Latino community takes pride in.
“Put this in perspective: It’s a farmworker-founded organization, an environmental justice organization, that is building the infrastructure. It’s not the lithium industry. It’s us, building it for ourselves.”
Data journalist Erica Yee contributed to this report.
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