Back
This story was originally published by Stateline.
WATER VALLEY, Texas — On a recent day when the wind gusted close to 40 miles per hour, 82-year-old George Neill was making repairs on his ranch, oblivious to the nearby cluster of wind turbines churning the sky behind him.
“After about a year, you never know the things are here,” said Neill, who leases part of his West Texas property to an East Coast–based renewable energy company that placed three wind turbines on it four years ago.
Hundreds of other wind turbines stretch across this landscape, instantly visible to motorists traveling to nearby San Angelo and other towns. The turbines aren’t the only renewable energy producers amid the mesas: From a distance, a glistening array of solar panels resembles a small lake.
Texas is famous for producing oil and gas, but renewable energy has become deeply embedded in the state’s culture and economy. Texas led the nation in generating electricity from wind power and utility-scale solar power in 2023, and wind and solar energy projects contribute tax revenue to local governments and struggling school districts. Texas landowners are expected to receive nearly $30 billion in lease payments under current and expected projects, according to an industry study.
But in recent years, Texas has loosened its political embrace of alternative energy. For the second legislative session in a row, many Texas lawmakers are trying to derail or curb future renewable energy projects.
The shift is rooted in a number of factors, including the second Trump administration’s antipathy toward renewables and an aggressive recommitment to fossil fuels in Texas energy policy. There is lingering concern over the reliability of the state’s electrical grid, after all types of power sources failed during a devastating 2021 winter storm. Some people object to the aesthetics of wind and solar farms, or note that turbines and panels can harm some wildlife.
Texas is not alone. Once focused on stopping individual projects at the local level, renewable energy opponents have been making inroads in other state legislatures, too. They have received backing from the oil and gas industry. And they’ve been galvanized by the 2022 passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest-ever attempt to speed the transition to clean energy.
In neighboring Oklahoma, for example, hundreds of people rallied at the state Capitol in January to urge Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt to issue an executive order halting new wind and solar projects. Like Texas, Oklahoma is a major oil and natural gas producer, but it generated 45% of its total in-state electricity from renewable resources in 2023.
Stitt, a strong supporter of renewable energy, is highly unlikely to issue such an order. But he will leave office in two years, and several Republicans discussed as possible successors appeared at the rally. One of them, Attorney General Gentner Drummond, last month on social media criticized what he called “the green energy scam” and urged Stitt and state lawmakers to tighten wind farm rules during the current session.
In Arizona, the House earlier this year approved a bill that would bar wind farm projects within a dozen miles of any property zoned for residential use — a restriction that would apply to about 90% of the land in the state, according to an analysis by the Arizona Republic.
In Ohio, a 2021 law allowing county commissioners to create restricted areas where utility-scale solar and wind projects can’t be built has had a huge impact, as 26 Ohio counties have banned renewable energy projects. This year, GOP lawmakers have introduced legislation that would end all state solar subsidies.
And in Missouri, Republican legislators are pushing a bill that would raise taxes on farmers who lease their land for wind or solar energy projects.
The expanding opposition to renewables isn’t unexpected, said Joshua Rhodes, a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin who studies the power grid. He noted that wind, solar, and battery storage have rapidly become the “cheapest way to put more energy on the grid.”
“They’re victims of their own success,” he told Stateline. “They are relatively new players to the market, so there’s going to be pushback from incumbents.”
At the center of the current debate in Texas is state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, a Republican committee chair who has resurrected a 2023 bill that would require new utility-scale solar and wind projects to get permits from the state’s Public Utility Commission, regulations that aren’t imposed on projects for natural gas and other energy sources. The bill also calls for set-back requirements and cleanup funds.
Kolkhorst, in a statement to Stateline, called the legislation “a common-sense approach to the encroachment of wind and solar facilities being scattered across our great state with no consideration or safeguards for landowners or the environment.”
At an hourslong Senate committee hearing recently where opponents of Kolkhorst’s bill outnumbered supporters, farmers, ranchers, and small-town Texans sometimes found themselves on opposite sides, either arguing that sprawling wind farms and solar arrays are a lasting source of economic vitality or a threat to a beloved way of life.
“The land isn’t just a piece of property to us,” said Laurie Dihle, who lives on 154 acres in Franklin County with her husband. “It’s our home, our sanctuary, and a big part of who we are. When we look out across the road, we see rolling green pastures and trees. Now we’re facing the possibility of that view and so much more being replaced by a sprawling solar farm.”
Environmentalists and industry representatives view Kolkhorst’s bill as a roadblock in the march toward green energy. Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas, said the bill would open the door to “a really arbitrary discriminatory permitting regime,” requiring wind and solar developers to get permits that other energy producers do not have to have.
Describing herself as a “lifelong wildlife conservationist,” Kolkhorst said she introduced the bipartisan bill with nine other senators in an effort that “looks past the billions in wind and solar subsidies to instead focus on the total impact of these projects on our land, people, and wildlife.”
But oil and gas projects also can harm wildlife, and scientists note that the emissions released by fossil fuels worsen climate change disasters.
Insiders following the legislation, including Metzger, identify one of the bill’s major supporters as Kolkhorst donor Dan Friedkin, a billionaire Houston businessman.
Friedkin, chairman emeritus of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission, is owner and CEO of The Friedkin Group, a consortium of businesses and investments that includes Gulf States Toyota. Gulf States is one of the world’s largest distributors of Toyota vehicles and parts, with exclusive rights to sell Toyotas in Texas and four other states. Gulf States Toyota Inc. State PAC made four donations totaling $42,500 to Kolkhorst from October 2020 to October 2024, according to the Texas Ethics Commission.
Friedkin is a stunt pilot and outdoorsman with a ranch in South Texas. Neither he nor his lobbyist, Laird Doran, senior vice president for public and legal affairs at The Friedkin Group, returned phone calls from Stateline.
Texas lawmakers have filed dozens of wind- and solar-related bills this session, including measures aimed at restricting the placement of battery-storage facilities, curbing tax breaks and subsidies for renewable companies, and limiting the amount of electricity solar and wind projects contribute to the state’s power grid.
Republican state Sen. Phil King, for example, is pushing a bill that would mandate that 50% of all new electricity must come from natural gas, nuclear, or battery storage. King said solar and wind power should be part of the state’s energy mix, but he claims they aren’t reliable enough to serve as the foundation.
State Rep. Don McLaughlin, a Republican, has introduced legislation mandating a study of the economic impact of wind and solar projects on local communities, as well as noise and health effects, threats to wildlife, and the challenges of disassembling worn-out systems. Sweetwater, Texas, has thousands of composite blades piled up in “a windmill graveyard.”
But many rural GOP lawmakers whose districts long ago sprouted oil rigs and pumpjacks are now strong supporters of wind and solar power.
“It’s nonstop windmills on both side of the road for 70 miles,” said state Rep. John Smithee of Amarillo, describing a typical drive from his hometown in the Texas Panhandle to the Capitol in Austin. “Almost all of those [constituents] have benefited.”
State Rep. Drew Darby, whose northwest Texas district includes San Angelo and Water Valley, an unincorporated community of around 300, said revenue from wind power has resulted in countywide improvements and lease payments to property owners.
“It’s been a positive impact on rural effectiveness,” said Darby. “Landowners … are receiving nice payments for leasing the property.”
In Water Valley, taxes from the increased revenue paved the way for a tax-free bond election that enabled the town’s K-12 school to add an upscale weight room, a technical educational facility, and a “cafetorium” that serves as a dining room and performance hall. The school building had previously been so small that students had to eat in shifts.
The wind farm is expected to generate $123 million in local taxes over the 30-year life of the project, as well as more than $100 million in payments to landowners.
Neill, the West Texas rancher, said he takes the wind turbines in stride as he roams across his 1,700-acre spread.
He’s not at liberty to reveal the amount of his payments. He’s not getting rich, he said, but the money “makes a difference when you’re trying run a ranch.”
A first-of-its-kind pilot to electrify homes on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard is set to finish construction in the coming weeks — and it could offer a blueprint for decarbonizing low- and moderate-income households in Massachusetts and beyond.
The Cape and Vineyard Electrification Offering is designed to be a turnkey program that makes it financially feasible and logistically approachable for households of all income levels to adopt solar panels, heat pumps, and batteries, and to realize the amplified benefits of using the resources together. These technologies slash emissions, reduce utility bills, and increase a home’s resilience during power outages, but are often only adopted by wealthier households due to their upfront cost.
“We are going to be advancing this as a model that should be emulated by other states across the country that are trying to achieve decarbonization goals,” said Todd Olinsky-Paul, senior project director for the Clean Energy Group, a nonprofit that produced a new report about the program.
In total, the program is providing free or heavily subsidized solar panels and heat pumps to 55 participating households, 12 of which also received batteries at no cost. Work should be completed on the final participating home this month.
“This is the first and only instance where solar and battery storage are being presented in combination with electrification and traditional efficiency,” Olinsky-Paul said. “Instead of having several siloed programs, it’s all being presented to the customer in a package, which makes everything work together better.”
It’s a strategy that program planners hope can help address the disproportionate energy burden felt by lower-income residents of the region, where households making less than one-third of the area median income spent an average of 27% of their income on energy as of 2023, according to data from the U.S. Department of Energy. (The updated figure is unavailable because the federal tool that provided this data is no longer live.)
The initiative is a project of the Cape Light Compact, a unique regional organization that negotiates electric supply prices and administers energy-efficiency programming for the 21 towns on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. The compact first proposed the pilot in 2018, but regulators rejected the idea. The organization submitted a revised version in 2020 and 2021, but it wasn’t until 2023 that the state finally gave the program the green light.
An energy-efficiency contractor partners with each program participant to assess their home, then coordinates the necessary work, including any preparations that need to be completed before solar panels, heat pumps, or batteries can be put in. The batteries installed through the program are enrolled in ConnectedSolutions, a state program that pays battery owners who send power to the grid when needed. Because the pilot footed the bill for the batteries, these payments will go to the Cape Light Compact, rather than residents, to help defray the cost of the program.
Bringing the program to life was not always a smooth process. The original proposal called for 100 homes to participate in the pilot, but the final number fell well short of that target. Some homeowners who originally expressed interest were put off by the requirement to remove all fossil-fuel systems from their homes, particularly if they had recently invested in new gas or propane heating, said Stephen McCloskey, an analyst with the Cape Light Compact and the program manager for the pilot.
In some cases, homeowners balked at up-front costs. Moderate-income households that did not live in deed-restricted affordable housing had to pay 20% of the cost for heat pumps and any cost over $15,000 for solar panels. If a roof was too shady for solar, homeowners were responsible for removing trees and branches.
“At the end of the day, each customer and their decision-making process is different,” McCloskey said.
The original plan called for installing batteries in 25 participants’ homes, but unexpected limitations lowered that number, McCloskey said. Houses without basements, for example, couldn’t receive batteries. In some cases, the combined capacity of solar panels and a battery would have exceeded the local utility’s threshold for connecting a system to the grid.
The compact also had not fully accounted for the array of barriers that needed to be addressed before weatherization could be done. Some homes had mold or needed electrical upgrades. Others required roof work before solar panels could be installed.
These challenges are not dealbreakers but lessons learned for utilities or organizations that attempt to emulate the program in the future, McCloskey said. And Olinsky-Paul sees great potential for similar plans to be pursued nationwide. Nearly half of U.S. states have adopted 100% clean energy targets, he said, and distributed-energy programs like the Cape and Vineyard’s can make those goals more achievable by reducing the cost and strain electrification can create for the grid.
“If you’re going to do decarbonization, you have to do electrification,” Olinsky-Paul said. “And so there is going to be a huge need for some way of doing this without inadvertently causing massive new fossil-fuel use” to generate more power.
The Cape Light Compact intends to release a full report on the deployment of the pilot in August, but feedback so far has been very positive from participants who appreciate the turnkey approach to comprehensive electrification, McCloskey said.
“There are definitely things that whoever is facilitating that program would need to look at, to game plan for,” he said. “But this is a great model.”
Congressional Republicans are taking aim at the Inflation Reduction Act as they seek to slash federal spending.If they choose to repeal the law’s clean-energy tax credits entirely, it could cause energy bills around the country to rise significantly over the next five years, according to a new report by the Rhodium Group, an independent research organization. A repeal would affect some states more than others, with the deep-red state of Texas projected to get hit the hardest.
Rhodium’s report is not the only one to find that bills would rise with the repeal of key IRA tax credits. Research firm Energy Innovation conducted an analysis of several recent studies on the topic and found that repeal would cost households a total of $6 billion per year by 2030. By 2040, costs would balloon to $25 billion annually.
It’s not just households that would feel the pain. Industrial customers as a whole would spend between $8 billion and $14 billion more for energy each year if Inflation Reduction Act incentives are repealed.
Utility bills are already climbing across much of the country. Service shutoffs are on the rise. The Trump administration just eliminated the entire staff of a program that helps low-income households pay for heating and cooling.
Cutting IRA incentives that encourage the construction of solar, wind, and batteries would exacerbate these problems even as the Trump administration touts its commitment to affordable energy. That’s because clean energy is now the cheapest form of energy, and it’s only getting less expensive. There’s a reason that 93% of the power plants developers plan to build this year are carbon-free.
Congressional Republicans are divided on the issue of IRA tax credits, making it unclear exactly how things will play out. But it’s widely expected that the law will be modified to some extent.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said the approach will be “somewhere between a scalpel and a sledgehammer.” But attacking the law may be too appealing for GOP lawmakers to pass up; it’s an opportunity to cut federal spending, please Trump, and win culture-war points against clean energy all at once.
Still, there is growing support for the IRA among some of the Republican representatives whose constituents benefit most from the law. We’ll know soon if that’s enough to save key parts of it — and avoid spiking utility bills further.
On Wednesday, President Trump unveiled a suite of new tariffs that target pretty much every country and territory in the world — including some where nobody even lives. The full extent of the tariffs’ reach remains unclear, but wind developers, solar manufacturers, tech companies, automakers, and even fossil-fuel producers are already sweating.
The wind industry, already suffering under the Trump administration, is likely to face further setbacks. Wind turbines rely on components from around the world, even if they’re usually assembled in the U.S. The same is true for solar panels and batteries. Endri Lico, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie, told The New York Times that a 25% tariff on imports could raise the cost of building onshore wind turbines by 10% and renewable energy overall by 7% — and many of Trump’s tariffs exceed that 25% threshold.
Higher clean energy costs will pose a big challenge for tech companies looking to expand energy-hungry data centers to power AI, Semafor reports. Renewables are the cheapest, quickest way to add new power to the grid, especially amid yearslong waits for new gas turbines.
The EV industry is also at risk. Most auto factories being built in the U.S. are focused on EVs and batteries, but they still rely on foreign metals and materials. Manufacturers and dealers fear sticker prices on cars could rise as much as $10,000 under the tariffs, Politico reports, exacerbating one of the biggest deterrents to EV adoption: high up-front costs.
The White House exempted imports of oil, gas, and refined products from the tariffs, alleviating fears for refiners that rely on crude oil imports. But oil prices still plunged Thursday morning, as investors worry the tariffs will slow economic growth and lower fuel demand around the world.
The potential slump in overall economic activity could result in one climate upside: a drop in emissions. “In the short-term, any decline is likely to have a positive impact on emissions reduction,” writes finance professor Rakesh Gupta in The Conversation. “We saw this effect during the COVID-19 pandemic, when global production and trade fell.”
But longer-term progress on U.S. clean energy manufacturing and deployment will likely stall if the announced tariffs hold, with implications that go far beyond decarbonization. Here’s how Vanessa Sciarra, vice president of trade and international competitiveness for American Clean Power, put it in a Thursday statement:
“The policy whiplash from these tariffs will ultimately undermine the ability to realize a domestic supply chain and will constrain efforts to deliver energy security and reliability for Americans.”
Illinois pushes for stronger vehicle emissions rules, despite House threats
Illinois advocates are pushing their state to embrace California’s nation-leading vehicle emissions standards, Canary Media’s Kari Lydersen reports — even as President Trump and House Republicans threaten to eliminate the rules.
Sixteen states and D.C. have adopted California’s zero-emission vehicle rules, and 10 have followed its Advanced Clean Trucks regulations. But to be enforceable, those rules needed a waiver from the U.S. EPA. President Trump has called for “terminating” those waivers. On Thursday, House Republicans introduced legislation that would roll the waivers back, even though the nation’s top legislative auditor ruled that they aren’t subject to congressional review.
Crushing the rules would be a setback not only for efforts to decarbonize transportation but to clean up local air quality, too. Illinois advocates said a key reason they’re pushing these rules is to rid places like Joliet and Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood of the air pollution caused by diesel trucking.
Offshore wind’s future keeps getting murkier
It was another bad week for offshore wind. Contract negotiations for the SouthCoast Wind project, planned for off Massachusetts’ coast, were delayed for a third time. And the developer of Maine’s first offshore wind array paused the floating project, citing industry uncertainty.
More setbacks could be on the way. Last month, the U.S. EPA revoked a permit for the Atlantic Shores development off the New Jersey coast — essentially delaying the project for years given the Trump administration’s pause on new offshore wind permitting. Wind opponents could take advantage of the Republican-run EPA to get more projects canceled, with some anti-wind groups telling Canary Media’s Clare Fieseler that agency head Lee Zeldin may be sympathetic to their cause.
Tesla’s sales slump: Chinese EV giant BYD’s sales grew 60% in the first quarter as it makes inroads beyond its home country, while Tesla’s global deliveries fell 13% over the same period amid consumer backlash against Elon Musk. (CNN, New York Times)
Home energy assistance gutted: The Trump administration fires the entire staff in charge of administering the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides roughly $4 billion annually to help families cover home heating and cooling costs. (Latitude Media)
Cleaning up landfills: In the absence of federal action on curbing landfill methane emissions — the U.S.’s third-largest source of methane pollution — Colorado, Michigan, and other states are stepping up with their own plans. (Canary Media)
Grading the grid: The American Society of Civil Engineers grades the U.S. electric grid a D+, down from the C- it got in 2021, amid a shortage of transformers, increase in severe weather, and lack of transmission capacity. (Utility Dive)
Congress’ rare climate win: The U.S. House overwhelmingly passes a bipartisan bill that would juice development and deployment of clean building materials — a rare win for emissions reduction efforts in Republican-held Congress. (Canary Media)
EV factories falter: More EV and battery factories were canceled in the first quarter of 2025 than were in the past two years combined, according to new data from Atlas Public Policy. (Washington Post)
Reduce, reuse … reconsider? Battery recycling company Li-Cycle, which last year received a $475 million federal loan to build a factory in New York, announces it could go out of business and doesn’t have enough money to meet the requirements to access the loan. (E&E News)
DOGE cuts catch on: Republican-led states look to mirror the federal Department of Government Efficiency’s approach to funding cuts, including by slashing regulators that oversee the oil and gas industry. (E&E News)
Landfills are a major problem for the climate: They’re the United States’ third-largest source of methane, a greenhouse gas that traps 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide in the short term. Last year, the federal government was poised to start reining in these emissions: In July, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would release new regulations to better detect and prevent methane leaks from landfills.
The Trump administration, which has announced its intention to cut the EPA’s budget by 65% or more, seems unlikely to follow through on these plans or any other policy limiting landfill emissions.
But in the absence of federal leadership, states like Michigan, Oregon, Colorado, and California are moving forward with their own plans. Regulatory efforts are underway among these climate leaders to implement stricter rules for landfill operators and require the use of novel technology, like drones and satellites that monitor leaks.
“These state regulations could be hugely impactful,” said Elizabeth Schroeder, the senior communications strategist at Industrious Labs, a nonprofit working to transform heavy industry. They not only have the potential to make a real dent on greenhouse gas emissions, Schroeder said, but could also set a national example for other states looking to curtail methane pollution.
Currently, the EPA requires landfill operators to cover trash to minimize odor, disease risk, and fire — a practice that also minimizes methane leaks. This usually looks like a layer of dirt or ash, followed by tarps. Operators of large landfills must also install extraction systems, networks of pipes that collect methane and other gases from inside the landfill. The extraction systems then pump these emissions to burn off at flares or, increasingly, to biogas energy projects. However, landfills are dynamic systems — over time, as waste breaks down and shifts, cover develops holes and pipes crack.
Maintenance is often imperfect. An analysis by the Environmental Defense Fund found that between 2021 and 2023, more than one-third of landfills had at least one violation of EPA standards. Operators of landfills that exceed a specific emissions threshold are supposed to conduct quarterly “walking” surveys for leaks. But experts say that these surveys are infrequent and often miss large portions of the landfill.
States have an opportunity to step up those standards — not only by lowering emissions limits but by improving the maintenance and monitoring of landfills, said Tom Frankiewicz, the waste-sector methane expert at climate-focused think tank RMI. “While we would love to see all this done comprehensively in one national-level regulation, it’s states that are taking the lead on deployment of advanced technology and setting new best practices for landfills.”
In 2010, California became the first state to develop standards for landfills that were stricter than federal rules. Those included a lower emissions threshold at which landfills had to install gas collection systems and a requirement that operators enclose flares so that the methane burns more efficiently. Other states, including Oregon and Washington, followed suit and in some respects even surpassed California, said Katherine Blauvelt, the circular-economy director for Industrious Labs. But despite this early progress, landfills in these states and elsewhere continue to spew methane and undermine climate goals.
Now, though, Colorado has taken the lead on a new generation of landfill emissions regulations. The state is developing what some experts are calling a first-of-a-kind program for monitoring and responding to methane leaks from landfills. As part of the initiative, Colorado plans to implement remote-sensing technologies, including fly-overs and satellites, to detect methane leaks, which operators would then be required to address.
“Colorado would be the first state to incorporate that into a rule where, instead of relying on voluntary follow-up, there would actually be requirements around mitigating emissions that are detected,” said Ellie Garland, a senior associate focusing on methane policy at RMI. A draft rule will be publicly available in April, with a final vote expected in August.
In addition, Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment is considering additional requirements for landfills that include stricter rules for the maintenance of cover and a lower threshold at which landfills are required to report and control emissions, Garland said. Currently only 15 of the state’s about 50 active landfills do this, although Colorado began requiring 35 more landfills to begin reporting emissions starting on March 31, said Clay Clarke, the manager of the climate change program at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Not all landfills are required to control emissions. That’s because smaller landfills don’t generate enough gas to collect and flare. Under proposed regulations, many of these landfills would need to pipe gas to biofilters — a system that uses microorganisms to digest methane.
Meanwhile, the California Air Resources Board is working to update its landfill emissions regulations. Under CARB’s anticipated timeline, these will take effect in 2027. Last December, the agency held a workshop to discuss potential new rules. Those included a lower safe limit for methane emissions, limits on how long operators can turn off their gas collection systems for landfill maintenance, and stricter rules for collecting gas at closed landfills. Under current regulations, landfill operators must collect gas for only 15 years after a landfill closes even though the area can continue to leak methane for 30 years or more. The agency is also considering regulations that would require some operators to install automated well-tuning technology that monitors and adjusts the gas-extraction system in real time.
One of the most promising new regulations CARB is considering is a “super-emitter” program for landfills, Blauvelt said. The EPA defines a super-emitter event as a plume of methane leaking at a rate of more than 100 kilograms per hour. In 2019, NASA scientists estimated that these highly concentrated leaks account for one-third of California’s methane emissions.
Between 2020 and 2023, CARB partnered with the University of Arizona and the nonprofit Carbon Mapper to track down super-emitter events by flying over landfills in planes equipped with sensors that can detect methane plumes. If Carbon Mapper identified a leak, it notified CARB, which would get in touch with the landfill owner. However, operators weren’t required to take action. Later analyses found that operators fixed about half of the reported leaks.
Updated rules could require landfill operators to swiftly respond to methane plumes. The program would be similar to the super-emitter program already in place for California’s oil and gas industry. That program requires operators to follow up with on-the-ground monitoring within five days of learning about a leak, come up with a repair plan 72 hours later, and fix the leak within two to 14 calendar days, depending on its severity.
The state is also looking into other remote-sensing technologies, like drones and on-the-ground infrared monitors, which would provide a more continuous and finer-resolution picture of methane emissions.
California emits the second largest share of greenhouse gases in the U.S. A recent Industrious Labs analysis found that if the state were to adopt these stricter regulations, it could reduce its landfill emissions 22% by 2030 and 64% by the end of the century.
Other states are renewing their efforts, too. In Oregon, newly proposed Senate Bill 726 would require landfill operators to deploy commercially available drones and advanced monitoring technologies (including satellite and airflight) to detect methane plumes across landfills.
Meanwhile, in Michigan, a climate bill passed in 2023 contains elements that could lead to landfills adopting better monitoring and detection. Senate Bill 271, which aims to accelerate the state’s transition to clean energy, identifies landfill biogas as a potential low-carbon fuel. “While the inclusion of recovered landfill gas as a clean energy source has come under scrutiny, there is a major silver lining,” Blauvelt wrote in an email. “Vital” language in the bill mandates that landfill operators collecting biogas use “best practices for methane gas collection and control,” as determined by Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy.
The department has yet to lay out what those “best practices” are, but better landfill cover, automated well-tuning technology, and advanced monitoring technology are all on the table, Blauvelt said.
“Given that Michigan is among the top ten states for methane emission from landfills, the potential to dramatically reduce methane and other harmful co-pollutants is enormous,” Blauvelt wrote in an email.
A 2024 analysis by Industrious Labs projected that if every state were to adopt these best practices, it could lead to a 56% drop in landfill methane emissions by 2050. Experts hope that as these climate leaders adopt stricter rules, more states will step up. In 2010, California showed that this ripple effect is possible, Blauvelt said. “The great news about this is, the solutions are known. The technology is sitting on the shelf.”
Under the Biden administration, the federal government gave out billions of dollars to companies looking to slash the planet-heating emissions from concrete, cement, and asphalt.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the future of that support for low-carbon materials has been thrown into question. The Environmental Protection Agency has already canceled millions of dollars in grants for the industries, and the administration is considering deep cuts to the Energy Department office in charge of a $6.3 billion industrial decarbonization program that includes major cement and concrete projects.
But bipartisan legislation the House of Representatives passed in a 350-73 vote last week would give the Department of Energy a clear mandate to develop a full program to research, develop, and deploy clean versions of the building materials.
Dubbed the IMPACT Act — short for the Innovative Mitigation Partnerships for Asphalt and Concrete Technologies Act — the bill marks just the first step of a push in Congress to bolster the nascent industry.
A second, separate bill introduced in the House just weeks ago as the 2.0 version of the legislation would allow state and municipal transportation departments to pledge to buy future output of manufacturers of low-carbon concrete, cement, and asphalt.
Sister legislation in the Senate combines features from both bills. Advocates say a bill that blends the legislation together could soon pass in both chambers as part of the next federal highway budget.
Concrete and asphalt together comprise nearly 2% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Most of concrete’s emissions stem from its key ingredient, cement, which on its own makes up as much as 8% of the world’s carbon output.
Since roughly half of all cement and concrete in the United States is sold to governments paving roads, patching sidewalks, and building bridges, giving state and local agencies the power to guarantee future purchases of green products could help startups in the space take off, said Erin Glabets, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts-based low-carbon cement maker Sublime Systems.
“Having the weight of the federal government and ultimately having that flow through the states to support the use of clean, innovative cements in our public infrastructure is really the best thing a company working in this field can ask for,” she said.
“We’re hopeful and enthusiastic,” she added. “That’s a really powerful buying signal.”
Unlike traditional manufacturers who use a carbon-intensive process to break down limestone in fossil-fueled kilns fired up to 1,400 degrees Celsius, the company makes a replacement for Portland cement — the most common variety — using electricity and alternative materials that don’t generate carbon as a byproduct.
Sublime is currently building its first commercial-scale plant in Holyoke, Massachusetts, with money it was awarded last year through the Energy Department’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) — the office established in 2021 under the bipartisan infrastructure law whose more than $20 billion budget is staring down Trump’s chopping block.
It’s not the only such project relying on support from the under-fire office. The federal government put up $500 million last year to equip Germany-based Heidelberg Materials’ new cement plant in Mitchell, Indiana, with hardware to capture and store carbon emissions.
The facility is a rare example of a carbon capture project backed by the Sierra Club, which typically opposes technology to filter CO2 emissions out of power plant smokestacks as a bid to prolong the use of fossil fuels.
Oakland, California-based startup Brimstone won a $189 million grant last March from the same office to build a first-of-a-kind commercial-scale plant to demonstrate its technology that converts calcium-bearing silicate rocks into Portland cement with significantly lower emissions.
In total, OCED pledged to support $1.5 billion worth of low-carbon cement and concrete projects through the Industrial Demonstrations Program.
Passage of the IMPACT Act comes as several states move forward with Buy Clean policies that aim to boost low-carbon building materials.
In 2017, California became the first state to pass such a law, and the California Air Resources Board in March released a draft decarbonization strategy for the cement sector.
Eight other states, including Colorado and Minnesota, have since followed suit on Buy Clean policies. But states have limited purchasing power compared to the federal government, and in any case procurement power itself is not enough for the industry to take off — research and development funding is needed, too.
That’s what makes the federal bills so significant, said Harry Manin, the Sierra Club’s deputy legislative director for industrial policy and trade.
“When it comes to the supply side, actual money to demonstrate these technologies has been more the bailiwick of the federal government,” he said.
While Democratic sponsors such as U.S. Rep. Valerie Foushee of North Carolina may see the bills as climate legislation, Manin said the GOP recognizes “it’s important to protect these industries domestically.”
“They understand tariffs aren’t enough,” Manin said.
To that end, he said, Sen. Bill Cassidy from Louisiana is working to convince fellow Republicans to back separate legislation that would establish a carbon border adjustment mechanism, sometimes called a carbon tariff, to slap levies on imports produced in heavily emitting countries such as China and India.
But the real selling point, Manin said, is that cleaner building materials will ultimately mean cheaper building materials.
“Yes, these materials come with a premium in the short term, but since we’ll eventually commercialize materials that take far less energy to make, ultimately we’re going to be lowering costs,” he said. “That’s why Republicans are so interested.”
Ground-source heat pumps, which tap into the stable temperatures found hundreds of feet beneath the Earth’s surface, are a super-efficient way to heat and cool homes. They’re also quite expensive to install in existing houses.
There’s a pretty straightforward reason: It’s hard to drill in a residential neighborhood. Hiring contractors to fit rigs into tight single-family yards and drill boreholes in places where utility infrastructure crisscrosses underfoot is a lot more complicated and expensive than installing an air-source heat pump, fossil-gas furnace, or other standard, aboveground HVAC systems.
But what if you could bore hundreds of holes at a time across a patch of cleared land and then build heat pump–equipped houses on top of them? That should be a lot cheaper. In fact, it could make ground-source heat pumps about as cheap as traditional HVAC offerings in newly built homes.
On Wednesday, Google X spinout Dandelion Energy and major U.S. homebuilder Lennar unveiled a partnership that aims to prove that proposition. The companies have pledged to build ground-source geothermal into more than 1,500 new homes in Colorado over the next two years, starting with Lennar’s Ken-Caryl Ranch development in Littleton, Colorado.
The goal is simple, Kathy Hannun, Dandelion’s founder and president, told Canary Media: “Can you get the up-front cost to be lower than everything else? Because then you have no reason not to do it.”
Just being able to tackle hundreds of boreholes at a time should more than halve the drilling costs that burden existing home retrofits, she said. Large-project economies of scale and designing homes around the high-efficiency heating and cooling that Dandelion’s system provides will yield further cost reductions, she said.
And by eliminating the need for new gas pipelines and reducing the peak electricity demands on the power grid, subdivisions built on this model could save a bundle on utilities as well, she said. That’s a key benefit cited in a January report from the Department of Energy, which found that widespread adoption of ground-source heat pumps, also known as geothermal heat pumps, could cut hundreds of gigawatts of peak demand and tens of billions of dollars in grid costs over the coming decades.
That study also found ground-source heat pumps could make a big dent in residential energy consumption and carbon emissions, particularly in climates where they outperform air-source heat pumps during cold winter weather.
But as it stands, the technology is in no more than 1% of U.S. homes, the report found. For comparison, air-source heat pumps are now in about 13% of U.S. homes.
The chief barrier, once again, is the up-front expense. Dandelion has spent the past eight years working to bring down those costs through a combination of technology and business-model innovation, and has done more than 1,000 home retrofits in the U.S. Northeast, targeting homes with high heating costs, many of which use expensive fuel oil.
To break into larger volume deployments, Dandelion has shifted its focus to new construction over the past two years or so, Hannun said. That pivot has naturally included Lennar, an investor in Dandelion that now owns about 10% of the startup, she said.
Lennar and Dandelion aren’t disclosing cost data for the homes they’re collaborating on in Colorado. But, Hannun said, “in a few markets, the up-front cost of geothermal today is less than conventional” heating.
That’s certainly the case in Colorado, where Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, has made geothermal energy, or “the heat beneath our feet,” as he’s dubbed it in various state and regional policy initiatives, a big part of the state’s broader decarbonization strategy.
Over the past few years, the state has passed legislation creating tax credits for heat pumps, including ground-source systems, and competitive grants for geothermal energy projects. It also passed a law in 2021 that spurred Xcel Energy, the state’s largest utility, to launch a Clean Heat Plan that will provide significant rebates to projects that improve energy efficiency and help customers switch from gas to electric heating.
“The rebates coming out of Xcel’s Clean Heat Plan played a really significant role in the ability of the Dandelion-Lennar investments to pan out,” said Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office, which manages state energy programs.
The government and utility incentives will also lower costs for people who aren’t buying these homes, because geothermal heat pump systems reduce the need for other utility infrastructure, he noted.
All-electric homes don’t need new gas pipeline extensions, the costs of which are typically recovered through increases on the bills of utility customers at large. And ground-source heat pumps need much less electricity than air-source heat pumps to keep homes warm during the coldest hours of the year, since they’re able to pull heat from deep underground thermal reservoirs rather than from cold outdoor air.
“There’s clearly some cost of putting in a geothermal system. But once it’s in there, it’s such an inexpensive approach to heating buildings,” Toor said. “If we can come up with creative ways to get these systems installed, we think it will help homeowners and businesses save money on their energy bills over the years.”
Power grids are sized to meet maximum electricity demand, so buildings that can reliably keep electricity use below certain limits minimize the need to build more grid infrastructure. These factors can make geothermal networks the least expensive option on a system-wide basis when the lifecycle costs of infrastructure and energy consumption are built in.
Xcel Energy is looking for ways to mitigate growing grid costs as it seeks regulatory approval to spend nearly $5 billion on its low-voltage distribution grid over the next five years, much of it to support growing power demand from heat pumps and electric vehicles.
“Based on our own research and forecasting, homes heated with ground-source heat pumps may require less electricity at peak and overall compared to homes with an air-source heat pump or resistance heating, therefore requiring fewer infrastructure investments on the grid,” Xcel spokesperson Tyler Bryant told Canary Media in an email. Xcel will study the grid impacts of Lennar and Dandelion Energy’s use of ground-source heat pumps to “inform future projects from a grid planning perspective.”
Hannun isn’t aware of other homebuilders embedding ground-source heat pumps into large-scale single-family construction, though they are being built into bigger buildings, including multifamily housing.
But there are similar, yet distinct, approaches for single-family homes to tap underground temperature reserves to save energy and cut carbon emissions.
One is thermal energy networks — projects that build the infrastructure needed for geothermal heat pumps at a campus-wide or neighborhood scale instead of serving just one home. Utilities in Massachusetts and New York are actively pursuing these projects as part of their states’ decarbonization strategies. Six other states, including California and Colorado, have passed legislation that allows or mandates gas utilities to develop demonstration projects or pilots, according to the Building Decarbonization Coalition.
“Geothermal heat pumps and thermal energy networks are a cost-effective way for utilities and developers to deliver clean, affordable heating and cooling, at scale, while minimizing strain on the electric grid,” said Ania Camargo, the nonprofit’s associate director of thermal networks. “The more geothermal systems we install, the better for the homeowner and the grid in the long run.”
Newly built neighborhoods can also incorporate thermal energy networks. A shared geothermal system will serve the 7,500-home Whisper Valley development in Austin, Texas. In Colorado, the housing authority serving Steamboat Springs is studying a community geothermal system for a new housing development.
Under a state law passed last year, Xcel Energy is examining several “neighborhood-scale alternatives to the gas system that can include both electrification and thermal energy network or ground-source heat pumps,” Toor said.
Hannun agreed that shared thermal energy networks are an effective way to approach neighborhood-scale geothermal heating. But they’re also more complicated to build and administer than individual ground-source heat pumps, particularly for entities that aren’t a regulated utility with state-mandated authority to provide energy services to customers. Lennar and Dandelion opted for single-home ground loops to avoid any complications that could arise from getting lots of homeowners to commit to a shared system, she said.
Not all homebuilders will embrace the additional costs of ground-source geothermal, she said. Developers don’t pay utility bills, incentivizing them to choose the lowest-cost heating and cooling options available. At the same time, nationwide homebuilders like Lennar “often offer new products to homeowners to try to stand out,” Hannun said, and ground-source heating has “traditionally been a luxury system.”
It’s also a straightforward way to meet state or local energy-efficiency building codes, she added.
Air-source heat pumps are inherently more energy efficient than fossil-fueled furnaces, since they use energy to move heat from one place to another rather than to create heat directly. But ground-source heat pumps can be more than twice as efficient as air-source models.
“These homes will have the lowest operating cost for HVAC possible,” Hannun said. “The homeowners will spend less than if they were using air-source heat pumps or if they were using gas. And that will be locked in for the lifetime of that home because that ground loop is built to last.”
A coalition of environmental justice advocates is pushing Illinois to become the first Midwest state to adopt California’s Advanced Clean Trucks standards designed to spur a transition to zero-emission heavy-duty vehicles over the next decade.
“Air pollution is an equity issue,” Griselda Chavez, an environmental justice organizer with Warehouse Workers for Justice, said at a recent press conference. The group represents workers and residents in communities heavily impacted by warehouses, including the Chicago-area town of Joliet, a major logistics hub.
“Black, brown, and low-income communities in and around Joliet are disproportionately affected by diesel pollution, large amounts of truck traffic, and increasing growth of the warehouse industry,” Chavez said. “Those workers also go home to their families and go to schools that are surrounded by large amounts of truck traffic and poor air quality.”
The Illinois Pollution Control Board is considering adopting not only California’s clean truck standards but also the Golden State’s Advanced Clean Cars II program, which would phase out the sale of most non-electric passenger vehicles by 2035, and its stricter nitrogen oxide limits on heavy-duty vehicles. The deliberations are happening as the Trump administration seeks to block California’s unique authority to set vehicle emission standards that exceed federal rules.
Illinois advocates have focused mostly on the clean trucks program because of the health and environmental justice implications of diesel-powered trucks throughout the state. They are especially concerned about places like Joliet and Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, a largely immigrant community where warehouses have also proliferated.
In 2023, the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization worked with the Center for Neighborhood Technology on a truck-counting study that showed on one June day, an average of 1.5 heavy-duty trucks per minute drove along a residential street in the heart of the community.
Sally Burgess, downstate lead organizing representative for Sierra Club’s Illinois chapter, told the Pollution Control Board during a March 10 hearing that she counted more than 300 diesel-burning semi-trucks during the 65-mile drive between her home in central Illinois and the state’s capitol.
“All along our route, on both sides of the highway, farm fields, rustic barns, cows and other farm animals, some homes,” said Burgess. “Some would refer to it as a bucolic rural setting — clogged with diesel trucks.”
The Advanced Clean Trucks program would require manufacturers selling in Illinois to ensure that between 40% and 75% of their heavy-duty vehicle sales are zero-emissions by 2035, with the percentage depending on type of vehicle. They would have to sell higher percentages of electric medium-sized non-tractor trucks than pickup trucks and vans as well as larger tractor-trailers.
Manufacturers could also comply by purchasing credits from other companies that go beyond those targets, or by shifting credits from types of vehicles where they exceed the mandates.
“If, for example, a truck-maker sells a lot of zero-emission delivery vans but doesn’t offer a zero-emission version of their box trucks, they can convert their extra [pickup and van] credits into [midsize truck] credits and still maintain compliance,” said Trisha DelloIacono, head of policy for Calstart, a national nonprofit focused on clean transportation policy and market development, by email.
DelloIacono said demand for zero-emissions heavy-duty vehicles is so high that manufacturers should not have trouble meeting the sales targets if they make the inventory available. After a certain number of years, those that don’t comply either through electric vehicle sales or credit purchases could be fined.
Advocates say that the state mandates benefit people nationwide since they motivate manufacturers to increase their EV offerings.
Manufacturers including Daimler Truck’s Freightliner, Volvo, Navistar, GM, and Ford have introduced or increased sales of electric trucks since California adopted its clean trucks program, according to Calstart, and companies have also rolled out charging infrastructure and heavy-duty “charging-as-a-service” offerings that include installation, maintenance, and management.
“If Illinois adopts [the Advanced Clean Trucks program], we could expect to see new truck charging stations pop up at rest stops along major freight corridors like I-57, I-80, and I-70,” said DelloIacono. “This in turn would make it easier for fleet operators in nearby states to start adopting zero-emission trucks for regional-haul and long-haul routes.”
Ann Schreifels, who testified before the Pollution Control Board, said she saw firsthand how regulations drive industry innovation when she worked at the machinery manufacturing firm Caterpillar in Peoria, Illinois. Schreifels, who retired about five years ago, said she does not speak for the company but recalled how industry opposition to new federal emissions regulations gave way to progress once they took effect.
“The entire industry was against the regulations,” she told Canary Media. “Change is hard. It took the fuel manufacturers, suppliers, designers, software engineers all working together to solve the problem. But the end result was the company made the best engine they’d ever made — more fuel efficient, more reliable, more durable, it saved customers money. Despite the fact that industry is going to complain and lobby against regulations, that’s when innovation actually happens.”
A national association of small businesses told regulators they oppose the program and that it could drive businesses out of Illinois. But other companies have expressed support, including Kansas-based electric truck manufacturer Orange EV and Rivian, the electric pickup truck manufacturer with a factory in Normal, Illinois.
Tom Van Heeke, environmental and legal senior policy advisor at Rivian, said in an email, “The standards would set Illinois apart as the Midwest’s undisputed priority market for EVs, giving adjacent industries — from EV suppliers to charging providers — investment certainty while delivering EV choice and cleaner air to businesses and communities across the state.”
The federal Clean Air Act governs vehicle emissions but grants California the right to receive waivers from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allowing the state to impose stricter standards. A 1990 Clean Air Act amendment also lets other states adopt California’s standards.
President Donald Trump has long denounced California’s vehicle emissions programs and during his first term revoked the state’s waivers.
The Biden administration’s EPA granted California’s Advanced Clean Trucks waiver in 2023 and in December 2024 granted the state’s Advanced Clean Cars II waiver, letting it ban sales of new gas-powered cars by 2035.
On Jan. 13, ahead of Trump’s inauguration, California preemptively withdrew its request for a waiver to implement its Advanced Clean Fleets program that would have ordered all commercial trucking fleets to transition to zero-emissions between 2035 and 2042.
The EPA can revoke waivers through a lengthy process, as it did during the previous Trump administration, but Republicans have more recently proposed overturning waivers through the Congressional Review Act, which gives Congress power to invalidate rules within 60 days after they are passed. On March 6, the U.S. Government Accountability Office opined that California’s vehicle emissions waivers are not rules and hence immune from that law, affirming its similar 2023 finding.
Nonetheless, Chicago attorney Timothy French advised the Illinois Pollution Control Board during a March 11 hearing that these federal efforts make it more challenging for Illinois to adopt the Advanced Clean Trucks program.
“You have to factor all this in if you’re considering what proponents are asking you to do,” said French, who has represented trade organizations in regulatory proceedings and litigated before the U.S. Supreme Court and federal and state courts.
The Environmental Protection Agency revoked an essential Clean Air Act permit last month from Atlantic Shores, an offshore wind development slated to be built off the New Jersey coast. One of the main justifications was President Donald Trump’s January executive order calling for a halt and reexamination of the fledgling offshore wind industry.
The move suggests the agency, which has historically played a relatively small role in wind development, may be joining Trump’s assault on a renewable sector that many blue states are counting on to slash their planet-warming emissions and shore up grid reliability.
Lee Zeldin, one of President Trump’s first allies in Congress, now heads the EPA. Anti-wind groups have speculated in emails with Canary Media that Zeldin is sympathetic to their cause. One group has already submitted a “copycat” petition in hopes of convincing the agency to yank the same type of permit from Vineyard Wind in Massachusetts, a project expected to come online this year.
Permits are now the golden tickets of offshore wind.
Depending on the location and size of the project, an offshore wind farm needs to secure between eight and 10 federal permits before the first turbine can be built.
If you don’t already have them, you’re effectively locked out of building a wind farm over the next several years given Trump’s directive to freeze new permitting. Only nine projects in the U.S. — including Atlantic Shores — had all the necessary permits in hand when Trump took office again in January. But as indicated by the case of Atlantic Shores, even having all the paperwork in order may not be enough to keep projects from being crippled by the Trump administration’s assault on wind.
Most of the necessary federal permits are examined and issued by the Interior Department. But only the EPA or one of its regional delegates can give out the Clean Air Act permits that are required to ensure wind companies minimize air pollution during construction and operation.
The EPA appeals board has a history of pulling these permits from energy or industrial projects when appropriate, according to the letter of the Clean Air Act. Presidential orders are not typically a meaningful factor.
“It’s not unprecedented,” said Stan Meiburg, a former acting deputy administrator of the EPA, referring to the use of a presidential order in this kind of agency decision. “But it still seems unusual that you would cite it that heavily in a case.”
The decision comes as Zeldin moves to dramatically reshape the agency.
He has floated plans to cut 65% of its budget, is reportedly considering slashing 10% of its workforce, and has aggressively attempted to claw back $20 billion of funds Congress had already approved for clean energy projects. In early March, he released an extensive plan that aims to eliminate dozens of bedrock environmental regulations. The goal, he said in the statement, is to reorient the EPA around making it “more affordable to purchase a car, heat homes, and operate a business.”
It’s a remarkable shift not only for the agency but for Zeldin himself, who began his political career as a moderate blue state Republican before morphing into what The New York Times described in a recent profile as the cabinet’s “MAGA warrior.” As a congressman, he supported offshore wind and other renewable projects in his home state of New York.
That transformation was on display in his confirmation hearing held in January.
“When asked about wind power, he spouted fossil fuel–funded talking points about harms to marine life,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, at a meeting of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works to vote on Zeldin’s confirmation.
The EPA’s appeals board — which has a decades-long track record of independence — could now theoretically become caught up in Zeldin’s crusade against clean energy, too, argued Meiburg.
In 1992, the Environmental Appeals Board was formed as “an impartial appellate tribunal” to resolve regulatory disputes. The four-judge panel is staffed by long-time EPA attorneys who are senior career officials — not political appointees. In the agency’s early years, disputes were settled by the administrator directly, but the workload became overwhelming. In the three decades that followed its establishment, the board evolved from an extension of the administrator’s office to an independent body untethered from politics. According to a 2017 EPA document, unless a case requires another agency to weigh in, the board’s decisions “cannot be appealed to the EPA Administrator.” In other words, the board has the final say.
“The value of the Environmental Appeals Board as an institution has derived from the fact that they are seen as independent,” said Meiburg, who now serves as executive director of Wake Forest University’s Andrew Sabin Family Center for Environment and Sustainability. “And they want to make sure to preserve that independence and integrity because that’s the basis of some of their credibility.”
Zeldin could reverse course, exerting more political pressure on the board or firing its judges.
“The Environmental Appeals Board is independent of all EPA components outside the immediate office of the Office of the Administrator,” said an EPA spokesperson via email. “It is an impartial appellate tribunal established by regulation to hear administrative appeals under the major environmental statutes that EPA administers.”
On March 14, Environmental Appeals Board Judge Mary Kay Lynch ruled to “remand,” as EPA calls it, a Clean Air Act permit issued last September to Atlantic Shores. Companies can appeal the board’s remand decisions in federal court but, according to Meiburg, most of those appeals fail. Overall, less than 1% of the board’s final decisions have been reversed.
EPA officials working in the Region 2 office in the Northeast had recommended in February a reexamination of the permit, in light of Trump’s anti-wind order and in response to a formal petition, filed in October, from a local anti-wind group called Save Long Beach Island. Along with other concerns, the group had raised questions about the impact on wildlife at a nearby refuge.
Atlantic Shores contested the decision, which moved the dispute to the EAB judges’ desk.
The project’s lawyers argued that Trump’s anti-wind order — the EAB’s main justification for pulling the permit — should not be retroactively applied to a permit that was issued in September, well before his election.
But Judge Lynch wrote in her motion that the board has “broad discretion” in pulling permits, handing a win to the EPA officials and another blow to Atlantic Shores. The judges offered no opinion on the actual merits of the original petition about nearby wildlife, according to Meiburg.
The revoked permit came after the project was already faltering in the face of rising costs from inflation and waning support from the state’s lame-duck governor. Shell, one of the project’s partners, pulled out in January.
“Atlantic Shores is disappointed by the EPA’s decision to pull back its fully executed permit as regulatory certainty is critical to deploying major energy projects,” Atlantic Shores spokesperson Terence Kelly wrote in a statement.
Lawyers working in the environmental field expressed similar concerns.
“My first reaction was disappointment — these are projects that had gone through extensive review by the agency. It seems to be invoking a tangential issue here,” said Kate Sinding Daly of the Conservation Law Foundation, a nonprofit that has brought numerous cases to the agency’s appeals board.
She explained that Atlantic Shores’ air permit application will now be reexamined. Most revoked Clean Air Act permits are eventually reissued, sometimes with modifications, but it’s unclear what will happen with Zeldin at the helm given Trump’s order to halt permitting activity.
Sinding Daly also raised concern about the “copycat” petition submitted last week by Nantucket-based group ACK for Whales to challenge Vineyard Wind’s Clean Air Act permit.
That petition argues that the EPA did not properly anticipate emissions from wind turbine malfunctions, such as the Vineyard Wind blade accident, which left the developer with almost a year of extra at-sea work and thus created extra emissions from the ships working on the project. The wind farm is slated to come online later this year, feeding renewable energy from near Nantucket Sound to the state’s energy grid.
“We’re hopeful that our petition to EPA will be carefully reviewed as we believe our concerns are valid,” said Amy DiSibio, a member of ACK for Whales, in an email.
Sinding Daly said the group’s petition addresses a more narrow provision in the law and pointed out that it’s been submitted years after the original air permit was issued, instead of just weeks, like with Atlantic Shores. She doubts that the Massachusetts petition will be successful. But when asked about potential “copycat” Clean Air Act petitions elsewhere, directed at other U.S. wind projects, she said she still considers them a “threat.”
Historically, she said, the agency has focused on protecting public health and the environment. But the remit is different now under Zeldin — and the EPA has just enough permitting authority over large infrastructure projects to slow down turbine installations in line with the Trump 2.0 mandate.
Want to know why EV chargers can be so hard to connect to crowded urban power grids? Just look to San Francisco’s latest public charging station, opened by startup Revel last week.
At first glance, the station, Revel’s first foray outside of its home city of New York, doesn’t seem like it should be that tricky for Northern California utility Pacific Gas & Electric to connect. It’s a fairly small parking lot in the city’s Mission District, right next to a major freeway, featuring a fairly standard number of high-speed chargers — 12 — that are available 24/7.
But when all those chargers are used at once, the total demand on the grid adds up to 1.3 megawatts, Neema Yazdi, a strategic analyst on PG&E’s clean energy transportation team, said at the ribbon-cutting event last week. That’s equivalent to roughly one-quarter of the power demand of the city’s tallest building, the 1.4-million-square-foot, 61-story Salesforce Tower.
“That’s a big feat for a utility to energize,” he said — “and to do something like that is impossible without the close collaboration of our customers.”
More such challenges and collaborations are on the way. Revel plans to start construction this year on seven more Bay Area sites with a total of 125 fast-charging plugs. It’s an ambitious pace in a state with notoriously long wait times to bring EV charging hubs online.
One way Revel hopes to achieve this plan is by entering two of its upcoming stations into a new PG&E program to fast-track EV charging hubs. On one condition, that is: Station operators have to be willing to reduce the power that chargers can deliver at the times when PG&E’s grid can’t handle the maximum draw. PG&E and Revel will pursue this “flexible service connection” approach at one site in the city of Oakland and another near San Francisco International Airport.
Under standard utility practice, customers can’t connect if their maximum power draw threatens to overtax the grid, even if only during a handful of hours per year when grid demand peaks. That’s despite the fact that many EV charging sites are highly unlikely to have enough vehicles charging at once to reach that limit — and that they can theoretically dial back their power use during those critical hours.
Flexible service turns that theoretical capability into an operational reality. The process is straightforward: PG&E forecasts its grid needs and, a day ahead of time, sends customers instructions for when they need to curtail power use.
Both customers and utility win out, Yazdi said. Customers can “connect quickly and more seamlessly” and charge at full capacity most of the time, as they wait for PG&E to complete grid upgrades that will eventually remove the constraints they face during peak hours.
PG&E, meanwhile, gets to expand EV charging more quickly than it would otherwise be able to. That’s not just good for meeting the state’s carbon-cutting goals but for reducing rates for customers at large. That’s because the program helps reduce immediate pressure on PG&E to make grid upgrades, which are a primary driver of rising electricity rates in its territory, while also quickly expanding its electricity sales.
“Only a few utilities in the United States are doing this nowadays,” Yazdi said. “This is really forward-thinking, and we’re really excited about it.”
So are the authors of a February Environmental Defense Fund report that highlights PG&E’s leading position among U.S. utilities on the flexible connection front. Southern California Edison is pursuing a similar pilot project, the report notes, and utilities and regulators in Illinois and Colorado are exploring approaches to flexible interconnection as well.
Finding ways for EV charging stations to connect more rapidly provides “both economic benefits to the fleet that can put its newly acquired vehicles and chargers to work, and societal benefits where these electric trucks and buses are displacing fossil fuel vehicles earlier than otherwise possible,” the report’s authors wrote.
It took PG&E more than a year to establish, test, and gain confidence in the underlying technology needed to complete its first flexible interconnection at a Tesla charging complex in California’s Central Valley late last year.
With initial projects proving the technology is reliable, PG&E started looking to expand its use of flexible connections, including at several more EV charging sites in the Central Valley — and Revel’s two sites in the Bay Area.
Revel has been working with PG&E for about 18 months to identify sites and plan for its flexible connection projects, said Jake Potent, the company’s vice president of corporate affairs. “There are a lot of times we don’t go forward because we’re grid-constrained.”
In New York City, Revel has already built five locations serving a total of 88 fast chargers and plans to more than triple that number to 267 chargers by the end of the year. But finding spots with enough grid capacity to serve those concentrated power demands hasn’t been easy, Paul Suhey, Revel’s chief operating officer and cofounder, told Canary Media back in 2021.
At last week’s ribbon-cutting, Suhey emphasized that building urban fast-charging stations is “kind of hard — well, it’s really hard. It doesn’t happen overnight.”
But finding ways to fit megawatt-scale charging into cities is important for localities in states like New York and California, which have set aggressive goals to end sales of new gasoline-fueled cars by 2035. EVs now make up about one-third of passenger vehicle sales in San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie said at last week’s event, well above the national share of around 8%.
Those adoption numbers gave Revel confidence its fast chargers would get enough use to earn back its costs, Suhey told Canary Media. In New York City, where EV adoption is lower, Revel also operates an all-EV rideshare fleet rather than relying solely on public customers to make the economics of its charging sites work out. New York City and California have mandates for rideshare companies to switch to EVs over the coming years, which further heightens the need for charging sites.
Cities also struggle to bring public charging stations into neighborhoods where most people rent their homes, said Joe Piasecki, public affairs and policy coordinator for the San Francisco Environment Department.
That’s a big problem: Most people charge their EVs at home, but renters face an uphill battle in convincing landlords to install EV chargers on their behalf. That means renters tend to be disproportionately reliant on public EV charging while also having worse access to it. About 70% of San Francisco residents live in multifamily housing, Piasecki said.
The economics of urban EV charging have been helped along in California and New York by regulator-approved programs that instruct utilities to cover the costs of “make-ready” infrastructure — digging trenches, installing transformers and switchgear, and other work required to connect charging stations to the grid — that the site developer might otherwise bear. Similar programs support EV charger installations in Illinois, Massachusetts, and other states.
But make-ready work is just one of the expenses that EV charging creates. Sometimes, big sites might force utilities to upgrade the substations serving entire neighborhoods. Flexible interconnection can allow utilities to postpone those “upstream” upgrades until they can be conducted as part of a broader strategic grid expansion plan.
Demand for those upgrades will increase as high-speed charging expands — and as the latest generation of chargers requires even more power to charge vehicles faster. Electrify America’s flagship indoor charging station in San Francisco, which houses 20 high-speed chargers, required PG&E to deliver high-voltage power typically reserved for transmission grids and major industrial customers.
Public fast chargers aren’t the only option, of course. Slower Level 2 chargers can be installed in garages, along curbs, or into street lights. Even slower Level 1 chargers could offer overnight charging options for multifamily buildings.
But fast chargers that replicate the experience of fueling up at a gas station are widely seen as a vital amenity to expand the pool of people willing to switch to an EV. “Without widespread, easy to use, convenient, reliable fast charging, dreams of EV adoption are just that — dreams,” Suhey said.
.svg)
