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CLIMATE: New Hampshire’s new climate plan is unlikely to include emissions reduction targets, and will instead focus on voluntary measures, use of federal funds, and market-based solutions. (NHPR)
ALSO:
SOLAR: Commissioners in one Maryland county vote to tighten the requirements for solar installations on agricultural land as they face a flurry of interest from developers. (Baltimore Sun, subscription)
GEOTHERMAL: Communities in Massachusetts and Vermont are among those awarded federal funding to support the construction of geothermal heating and cooling networks. (Smart Cities Dive)
FOSSIL FUELS: A Pennsylvania oil and gas company will pay $2 million and reduce emissions at 49 facilities as part of a settlement of alleged Clean Air Act violations. (Allegheny Front)
BIOFUELS: In New York, biofuels suppliers tout their product as a lower-emissions option, though some worry their use would only slow progress toward electrification. (Times Union)
UTILITIES:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A New Jersey legislative committee votes for a two-year delay on the implementation of a rule that would require increasing sales of battery-powered vehicles. (NJ Spotlight News)
EFFICIENCY: Connecticut launches a pilot providing funding, training, and expertise to small manufacturing companies looking to implement energy efficiency measures or use renewable energy. (Hartford Business Journal)
COMMENTARY: The renewable energy industry in Maine has a positive effect on the economy and creates stable, good-paying jobs, and should not be blamed for rising energy costs, says the cofounder of a solar company. (Bangor Daily News, subscription)
GRID: Oklahoma’s incoming state house speaker tells a crowd the U.S. Energy Department has agreed to cancel the designation of a corridor across the state for a planned 645-mile transmission line due to widespread opposition from the community and elected officials. (KOSU, KOTV)
WIND: Texas shrimpers say they’re frustrated after a community meeting about a planned offshore wind farm ended less than five minutes after it began when the company representative left the room without answering questions. (KBMT)
SOLAR: A study finds nearly 30,000 Floridians installed solar panels in 2024 despite utility and political pushback against net metering, and that Florida could be on track to become the top-ranked residential solar state by 2028. (WUSF)
NUCLEAR: The U.S. Energy Department sets a ceiling of $3.4 billion over the next decade to spend on six companies in Tennessee to develop low-enriched uranium for nuclear reactors. (Knoxville News Sentinel)
STORAGE: A Texas energy storage company partners with a national homebuilder to add batteries to houses in 15 communities in the state. (San Antonio Express-News)
OIL & GAS:
OVERSIGHT:
PIPELINES: A September vehicle crash that resulted in a natural gas pipeline explosion raises awareness about the danger of above-ground gas transmission pipelines and their vulnerability to collisions. (Houston Landing)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
POLITICS: Louisiana Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy cultivates support for a bill to impose a carbon tariff on imported aluminum, cement, glass, iron, fertilizer and steel — but not foreign fossil fuels. (E&E News)
CLIMATE:
COMMENTARY:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: California’s energy commission votes to invest $1.4 billion in an emissions-free transportation plan that includes installing nearly 17,000 electric vehicle charging stations and hydrogen fueling infrastructure. (Utility Dive)
ALSO:
COAL: Wyoming and Montana file a lawsuit seeking to overturn the federal Bureau of Land Management’s ban on new coal leasing in the Powder River Basin, even though mining wouldn’t be affected until at least 2041 at the current rate of production. (WyoFile)
OIL & GAS:
CARBON CAPTURE: A firm proposes installing modular natural gas generating units with up to 1,000 MW of capacity in northern California using technology designed to capture all atmospheric emissions. (Power)
SOLAR: A developer begins construction on a 475 MW solar-plus-storage installation in northern Arizona near a coal plant slated to retire next year. (AZ Family)
TRANSITION: Colorado officials and advocates work to equitably transition an oil and gas-producing county to clean energy and other industries. (Aspen Journalism)
STORAGE: Data show California added 6,000 MWh of new grid-scale battery energy storage during the third quarter of 2024. (Solar Power World)
UTILITIES:
GRID:
WIND: Opponents of the recently greenlit Lava Ridge wind facility in southern Idaho consider waiting until President-elect Trump takes office to file a lawsuit seeking to reverse the federal approval. (Idaho Statesman)
COMMENTARY: Alaska is disproportionately struggling with the effects of climate change, an ocean advocate argues, and Trump’s efforts to open up the state’s oil and gas to extraction will only make matters worse. (Los Angeles Times)
WASHINGTON DC, December 3, 2024 – The American Clean Power Association (ACP) today released its latest Clean Power Quarterly Market Report, detailing a surge in clean energy deployment during Q3 2024, with 10.2 GW of clean energy capacity coming online. This record-setting quarter positions the industry to achieve a historic year in 2024, underscoring the strength of American clean power.
Year-to-date installations now total 29.6 GW, representing an impressive 86 percent increase over the same period in 2023. This growth highlights how clean energy resources have solidified themselves as an affordable and reliable source of power for communities across the country. The U.S. has now deployed 294 GW of clean power capacity—enough energy to power 72 million American homes.
“American-made clean power is meeting the moment, providing the resources necessary to continue delivering affordable and reliable power to communities across the country. The record pace of clean power installations is delivering not only for the power grid but for the U.S. economy,” said John Hensley, ACP’s SVP of Markets and Policy Analysis. “The impacts of the industry’s investments are vast, keeping America competitive on the global economic stage and enhancing our energy and national security.”
Additional Key Highlights:
A scaled-down version of the report is available to the public, with the full Clean Power Quarterly Market Report | Q3 2024 available only to ACP members.
The American Clean Power Association (ACP) is the leading voice of today’s multi-tech clean energy industry, representing over 800 energy storage, wind, utility-scale solar, clean hydrogen and transmission companies. ACP is committed to meeting America’s national security, economic and climate goals with fast-growing, low-cost, and reliable domestic power.
Follow ACP on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and learn more at cleanpower.org.
The following commentary was written by Carrie Zalewski, former Chair of the Illinois Commerce Commission and currently vice president of markets and transmission at the American Clean Power Association; and Brent Bailey, former Mississippi Public Service Commissioner and current vice president of operations at Efficient Power & Light LLC. See our commentary guidelines for more information.
Building the power grid of the future requires deploying every available tool in the present.
When it comes to electricity generation, energy wonks often reference an “all-the-above” strategy, which includes all available power sources — fossil fuels, renewable energy, and storage technologies. But generation is just one part of the reliability and affordability equation.
The Midwestern transmission grid must also evolve and adopt an “all-the-above” mentality to withstand increasingly frequent extreme weather events and support rapidly growing power demand while ensuring reliable and low-cost electricity for consumers. This is no small task. As such, policymakers and grid operators must carefully consider all near-term and long-term solutions.
New high-voltage transmission lines are essential to ensure the grid of the future is prepared for surging load growth. But new transmission line development and construction can take many years. To address immediate needs, there are other solutions that can improve capacity in the near term. Enter: advanced grid technologies.
Significant technological advancements are available now that can come online in one to three years compared to the decade or so it takes to build new transmission lines. Such advancements include: grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) — hardware and/or software that can increase the capacity and efficiency of existing transmission lines most hours of the year — as well as high-performance conductors (HPCs) — which offer greater capacity and efficiency benefits compared to traditional conductors.
While these advanced grid technologies cannot provide enough capacity to meet long-term system needs, they are relatively inexpensive and drive enormous cost savings until we can bring regional backbone lines into service. Deploying GETs and HPCs in the near term to help meet projected demand growth while simultaneously planning and constructing new regional and interregional transmission lines is key to ensuring the delivery of reliable, low-cost power across the Midwest.
MISO, the central U.S. grid operator, is considering a second portfolio of transmission projects aimed at creating a regional backbone of long-distance lines that will enable power to flow across the Upper and Central Midwest. These transmission lines will build upon investments made in the first tranche of projects, approved by the grid operator in 2022, which began to lay the groundwork for an evolution of the system.
The second batch of potential projects aims to “reliably and efficiently enable MISO member goals and load growth,” delivering benefits that significantly outweigh costs. Across much of the current system, MISO found that at least 10% of facilities are overloaded and annual curtailments exceed 15%, meaning available generators are forced offline because there is not enough grid capacity to carry their power.
MISO will also soon consider transmission projects for the Southern region of MISO as well as measures to increase the flow of electricity between the MISO regions. A regional problem requires regional solutions, including well-vetted, long-distance transmission lines.
Additionally, there is a significant need for greater interregional transmission capacity between MISO and its neighbors. The U.S. Department of Energy identified especially high congestion between the Midwest and Plains states. This means there are bottlenecks in the system that hinder the ability to deliver electricity between these areas. As a result, more interregional transmission ties from MISO to the Plains would offer considerable consumer benefits in the form of increased reliability and decreased costs when affordable clean energy can be accessed and transmitted back to MISO members.
Building the grid of the future will require every technology at our disposal. It’s critical that grid operators and state regulators consider and implement all transmission technology tools when planning and building a system that will enhance national security, facilitate regional economic development, and withstand new and growing reliability threats for generations to come.
This story was originally published by Canary Media.
California has long led the way on electric vehicles, but another Western state is challenging the Golden State’s top spot.
Between July and September, nearly 25 percent of the vehicles registered in Colorado were electric or plug-in hybrids. In California, that figure was just over 24 percent. It’s not enough to crown Colorado the new undisputed leader in EVs, but it’s a notable milestone — no other state has ever surpassed California in terms of EV registrations, according to James Di Filippo, principal policy analyst at Atlas Public Policy.
It’s the culmination of a “pretty dramatic” trend line for Colorado’s EV adoption since the start of 2023, Di Filippo said. Coloradans bought just over 41,000 EVs last year, up from roughly 23,000 in 2022.
Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, announced the accomplishment last week, touting it as a sign of the state’s commitment to reaching its climate goals and improving air quality. “This new data shows that demand for EVs continues to increase and especially with competitive state and federal rebates, drastically cutting the cost of an EV and saving people money,” Polis said in a press release.
Colorado has some of the most generous incentives for EV sales in the country, Di Filippo said. Its policies and incentives have helped make the cars more affordable, while the state’s investments in charging infrastructure have made owning an electric car more practical.
All Coloradans can receive a $5,000 state tax credit for purchasing or leasing a new EV or plug-in hybrid priced up to $80,000. That credit is available through the end of this year, then will decrease to $3,500 starting in 2025. EVs valued under $35,000 are eligible for an additional tax credit of $2,500 — for a total potential state credit of $7,500.
Through the Vehicle Exchange Colorado program, income-qualified residents can trade in old or highly polluting gas cars in exchange for a $6,000 rebate to put toward a new EV or plug-in hybrid purchase or lease, or $4,000 for a used one.
The state tax credits and the vehicle-exchange rebates can be combined with federal tax credits, which currently offer up to $7,500 for a new EV lease or purchase or $4,000 for a used EV.
The state has also worked over the past few years to install more public chargers. There are currently over 5,500 public charging ports across Colorado. This year, the state plans to install another 576 ports using $5 million in funding from the Colorado Energy Office.
In 2020, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that 580,000 zero-emission vehicles would be sold in the U.S. in 2023. But actual sales last year were almost two and a half times greater at 1.43 million. This year, Cox Automotive expects sales to climb even higher, despite gloomy forecasts issued by some analysts earlier in 2024.
According to estimates from Kelley Blue Book, EV sales made up 8.9 percent of all vehicle sales in the country in the third quarter of this year — the highest share ever recorded, and an increase from 7.8 percent in the same time period last year.
The Biden administration set a goal for EVs to make up half of all new vehicle sales by 2030. As of this February, sales were on track to meet that goal, though the picture is more uncertain heading into the second Trump administration. The president-elect reportedly plans to eliminate federal EV tax credits and roll back Environmental Protection Agency tailpipe emissions rules — against the wishes of the nation’s largest automakers, including Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis.
Transportation is the single largest category of carbon emissions in the country, at 28 percent, driven mainly by trucks, SUVs, and other road vehicles.
Colorado has an even more aggressive EV goal than the federal government, aiming for 82 percent of all car sales to be electric by 2032. Looking ahead, EV registrations and sales in the state likely won’t continue to outpace California, Di Filippo said, since “the trend line for California is still steeper overall.”
“This isn’t necessarily a story of Colorado just beating California out right,” he said. “This is really a story of EV success.”
UTILITIES: S&P downgrades the credit rating of three Connecticut utilities, with executives blaming state regulators for rejecting rate increases as costs increase. (CT Insider)
ALSO: New Jersey lawmakers advance a bill that would require utilities to alert customers mid-month if their energy usage is unusually high. (New Jersey Monitor)
CLIMATE:
OVERSIGHT: New Hampshire’s consumer advocate is backing legislation to clarify the authorities of the state’s Public Utilities Commission and its recently created Department of Energy. (New Hampshire Bulletin)
WIND: A labor leader says Maine should reach out to other states to help support a deepwater port for offshore wind construction, after multiple attempts to secure federal funds have failed. (Maine Public)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: New Jersey has surpassed 200,000 electric vehicle registrations, but an advocate says a lack of charging stations and shifting tax credits make it unlikely the state will hit its goal of 330,000 by next year. (NJ.com)
SOLAR:
COMMENTARY:
GRID: Google partners with a climate investor and a clean energy developer to build renewable power and storage projects co-located with data centers, with a goal of reducing the centers’ anticipated demand on the grid. (Canary Media)
ALSO:
OIL & GAS:
POLITICS:
CLIMATE: Expressing concern for the state’s fossil fuel industries, two Pennsylvania lawmakers say they plan legislation to remove the state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and require legislative approval for future agreements. (Indiana Gazette)
WIND: A labor leader says Maine should reach out to other states to help support a deepwater port for offshore wind construction, after multiple attempts to secure federal funds have failed. (Maine Public)
STORAGE: A Georgia company announces that its battery recycling facility will produce and market lithium carbonate — an important component in electric vehicle batteries that until now has only been mined. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
EFFICIENCY: Milwaukee officials seek local manufacturing of highly efficient wall panels for prefabricated homes to resolve challenges of building net-zero modular homes for low-income residents. (Energy News Network)
Living in a net-zero home is often a luxury for those who can afford solar panels, state-of-the-art HVAC and other innovations and renovations.
But lower-income people are those who could benefit most from energy cost savings, and those who suffer most from extreme climate. Milwaukee is trying to address this disconnect by building net-zero homes for low-income buyers in partnership with Habitat for Humanity, a marquee project of the city’s 2023 Climate and Equity Plan.
In September, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $3.4 million grant that will go toward Milwaukee’s construction of 35 homes on vacant lots in disadvantaged neighborhoods and the opening of a factory to make wall panels for net-zero manufactured homes.
City leaders have found the undertaking more challenging than expected, especially on the factory front. But they hope overcoming roadblocks will help create a new local and regional market for energy-efficient, affordable prefabricated homes, while also training a new generation of architects in the sector through partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning.
“It remains an ambitious project,” said Milwaukee environmental sustainability director Erick Shambarger. “We’re trying to support equity, climate, new technology, manufacturing. It takes some time, but we’re excited about it and looking forward to making it a success.”
Panelized, prefabricated homes can be built relatively cheaply, but making them highly energy efficient is a different story. A handful of small companies nationwide make the wall panels used in such construction to highly energy-efficient standards, but transporting the panels is expensive and creates greenhouse gas emissions.
The city sought a local manufacturer, but an initial request for proposals yielded no viable candidates. Now the city and UWM professors are working with the Rocky Mountain Institute to convince a qualified company to open a site in Milwaukee to make energy-efficient panelized home components at commercial scale, for both the city and private customers.
“It’s such a great fit for Milwaukee,” said Lucas Toffoli, a principal in RMI’s carbon-free buildings program. “It’s a city that has a very strong blue-collar tradition, so the idea of bringing back some manufacturing, and leveling up the home-building capacity of the city feels very congruent with the spirit of Milwaukee.”
And panelized homes could be a cornerstone of affordable, energy-efficient housing nationwide if the sector was better organized and incentivized, RMI argues — a goal that Milwaukee could help further.
“Local action always drives a message in a way that federal action doesn’t,” Toffoli said. “It will be even more important under the incoming presidential administration and Congress. Having this project getting started at the local level in an important Midwestern city is a way to help ensure that progress continues at some level, even if it’s less of a priority at the federal level.”
Habitat for Humanity builds its own panels in its Milwaukee warehouse, and is working on an energy-efficient panelized design that it hope will yield the first net-zero affordable homes in 2025. Milwaukee has yet to select a developer for the DOE-funded program, but Milwaukee Habitat was a partner in the DOE grant and CEO Brian Sonderman said the organization is hopeful it will be chosen during an RFP process.
Single-family homes are typically “stick built” from the ground up, with 2×4 or similar boards forming a skeleton and then, one by one, walls. Panelized homes involve walls transported intact to the site.
Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity often uses a hybrid method wherein walls are “stick built” laying on their side in the Habitat warehouse, and then brought to the site where volunteers help assemble the new house.
There are various other methods of making panels that don’t involve lumber, UWM Associate Professor Alexander Timmer explained, and making these models highly energy efficient is still an emerging and decentralized field.
“It’s the chicken-or-the-egg problem in some sense,” Timmer said, since component manufacturers don’t know if there’s a market for energy-efficient panelized homes, and developers don’t build the homes because few component suppliers exist.
Wall panels can involve two sheets of plywood with insulation in between, or a steel interior surrounded by rigid insulation, among other models.
“With 2x4s, any small crew can build a home,” said Timmer. “With panelized, you need a factory, specialized tools, specialized knowledge. The hope is we are graduating architects into the market who know these technologies and techniques, and can design them to high energy efficiency standards. The city needs architects and builders who want to do these things and feel comfortable doing them.”
Toffoli touted the benefits of net-zero homes beyond the carbon emissions and utility bill savings.
“There’s less draftiness, greater comfort throughout the whole home,” said Toffoli. “In addition to making the heater run less to warm the air, there’s a big comfort benefit and acoustic benefit,” with little noise or pollutants filtering into the well-sealed home.
“In the middle of a severe Wisconsin winter storm, [if] power goes out for everyone, you have a home that can basically ride through harsh conditions passively much better,” Toffoli added.
Toffoli said examples in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts show panelized, highly energy-efficient homes can be built at costs not much greater than standard market panelized homes. A different design, including thinner studs and more insulation, means less heat or cold is transported from the outside in. Insulation and highly efficient windows cost more than market rate, but smaller appliances can be used because of the efficiency, helping to mitigate the cost increase.
He said mass production of net-zero panelized homes is much more efficient and cost-effective than stick-built energy-efficient homes.
“You don’t need to, every time, find a contractor who understands the proper sequence of control layers for a very high-performance wall,” Toffoli said. “It’s been done in part in a factory where they’re plugging and chugging on a design that’s been validated and repeated.”
The DOE grant includes $1 million for Milwaukee to incentivize construction of the panel factory, $40,000 each toward 25 homes, plus funds for administration and other costs. Shambarger said $40,000 per home will cover the construction cost difference between an affordable home that merely complies with building codes, and one that is net-zero – meeting federal standards with a highly efficient envelope, an electric heat pump and solar panels.
Shambarger noted that the city funding and business will not be enough to motivate a company to build a new factory in Milwaukee.
“Any company is going to have to have a customer base” beyond the city orders, Shambarger said. “We’ll have to make sure other housing developers like the product that companies have, that it’s cost effective. One of the things we learned the first time around is most of the developers really didn’t understand how to do net-zero energy. We want to make sure the product we select fits within Milwaukee neighborhoods, will work in our climate, has buy-in from the community.”
Local jobs would be created by the factory, which is slated to be in Century City, the neighborhood with the most vacant manufacturing space.
“Overall with the climate and equity plan, we are trying to create good-paying jobs that people want,” Shambarger said. “That often means the trades. One of the things attractive about building housing components in a factory is it offers steady year-round employment, rather than having to go on unemployment for the winter,” as many building tradespeople do.
Sonderman said that in the past, Milwaukee Habitat has put solar on some homes, but little else specifically to lower energy costs.
“Clearly if there was a really substantial market for developers who were interested and willing to do this work, the reality is Habitat wouldn’t be the first call,” he said. “It’s something new. One of the things we’re looking forward to is sharing with our Habitat network in the state and other developers and builders, so we build some confidence this can be done efficiently and cost-effectively.”
Net-zero homes are not only a way to fight climate change, but an environmental and economic justice issue in predominantly Black neighborhoods scarred by redlining and disinvestment, where the majority of residents are renters, Sonderman added.
“Even for the individuals who don’t live in that home but live in the neighborhood, it breathes hope, it says that our neighborhood is being invested in,” Sonderman said. “That matters deeply for the residents of Lindsay Heights, Harambee, Midtown and elsewhere. To take a project like this and see it come to fruition has tremendous ripple effect in a positive way.”
Several other Habitat chapters nationwide are building net-zero homes, including in Colorado, Illinois and Oregon.
Milwaukee Habitat is planning to build 34 homes in 2025 and up to 60 homes annually by 2028. Sonderman said they will make as many as possible net-zero.
“We’re not in a capacity to be the full-scale factory [Shambarger] was envisioning,” he said. “But we believe we’ll be able to supply the walls we need to build dozens and dozens of net-zero homes in the future.”
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A Michigan economic development program that has invested $1 billion in five electric vehicle battery plants faces growing criticism for producing fewer jobs than promised, but backers urge patience. (Bridge)
ALSO: EV maker Rivian begins opening its rapid-charging network to drivers of all compatible vehicles, including at locations in Illinois and Michigan. (Automotive Dive)
OIL & GAS: An Ohio panel votes to open hundreds of acres of state parkland for hydraulic fracturing while selecting bids for drilling in a wildlife area. (Columbus Dispatch)
CARBON CAPTURE: The latest delays for a proposed North Dakota carbon capture project cap a year with few signs of progress for U.S. coal plant owners considering carbon capture retrofits. (Inside Climate News)
SOLAR: The U.S. solar industry is set to break installation records this year while meeting manufacturing milestones as the Inflation Reduction Act bolsters the industry. (Canary Media)
NUCLEAR: Some farmers in the agriculture-dominant region of southwestern Michigan are concerned about potential damage to land and water if a shuttered nuclear plant there is restarted. (Investigate Midwest)
WIND:
POLITICS: Labor unions UAW and SEIU announce their support for Michigan legislation that would block utilities from directly or indirectly making campaign contributions to candidates, parties or non-candidate committees. (Michigan Advance)
CLIMATE: Leaders of Illinois environmental and labor groups seek to find common ground on climate issues like mass transit: “We’re going to get more done if we’re aligned.” (Chicago Tribune, subscription)
GRID:
EFFICIENCY: An Illinois program trains students predominantly in Black and Brown communities for energy efficiency jobs. (Yale Climate Connections)
BIOGAS:
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