Back
SOLAR: Idaho approves its first ever renewable energy lease on state land and expects the proposed 300 MW solar, wind and storage project to generate up to $2 million annually for the state. (Idaho Press)
ALSO:
POLICY: Utah lawmakers and regulators look to shape energy policy around an “abundance mindset” that prioritizes increasing energy supplies rather than on developing clean resources or reducing emissions. (Utah News Dispatch)
OIL & GAS:
TRIBAL NATIONS: Tribal leaders from Western states hold a summit focused on ways to profit from and participate in the predicted clean energy, carbon capture and critical material mining booms. (Inside Climate News)
GEOTHERMAL: Nevada advocates push back on the federal Bureau of Land Management’s proposal to exempt geothermal exploration from environmental review, saying it will imperil the state’s scarce water resources. (Las Vegas Review-Journal)
CLIMATE: A poll finds voters are likely to shoot down a ballot initiative aimed at revoking Washington state’s landmark climate law and associated carbon cap-and-invest program. (King 5)
COAL: A Wyoming lawmaker worries federal regulators will slash a Powder River Basin coal mine’s potential future production by half and imperil dozens of jobs. (Cowboy State Daily)
TRANSPORTATION: Colorado advocates launch a campaign looking to restore passenger rail service to the state’s mountain communities. (Real Vail)
POLITICS: Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy attends an oil industry executive’s fundraiser for Donald Trump, fueling speculation he could garner a position in the candidate’s administration if elected. (Northern Journal)
A year ago, the U.S. announced ambitious plans to build large-scale clean hydrogen hubs. Now, 12 months later, those plans have advanced little and are still shrouded in uncertainty.
Last October, the U.S. Department of Energy picked seven consortiums across the country to receive up to $7 billion in federal grants. The goal of this startup money? To help the hubs attract tens of billions more in private-sector investment to pay for construction costs. These projects, located around the country, aim to bring together a wide array of organizations to scale up the production, storage, and transport of low- and zero-carbon hydrogen, which some experts view as a way to replace fossil fuels in industries such as steelmaking and aviation.
There’s still little publicly available information to indicate whether these “clean hydrogen hubs” are likely to attract the needed private sector investment, however. Just as opaque are their potential community and climate impacts.
Environmental groups, community advocates, and energy experts have grown concerned that the projects are off track — and increasingly dismayed that the DOE and the hub projects are not giving them the transparency needed to confirm or deny these worries.
This puts the DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, the agency responsible for the H2Hubs program, in a tricky position.
The $7 billion in H2Hub awards is being doled out in phases, over the course of many years. It’s OCED’s job to make sure the hubs are hitting the technical, financial, and community-benefit milestones needed to earn these disbursements.
The hydrogen hubs are a cornerstone of not only the Biden administration’s clean hydrogen strategy, but its overall approach to clean energy. Without the hubs, the U.S. may not be able to supply the tens of millions of tons per year of clean hydrogen needed to decarbonize key industries in the decades to come.
“We know that jump-starting a new clean energy economy in the U.S. is going to take time and public and private sector investment,” Kelly Cummins, OCED’s acting director, told Canary Media in an October interview. “To do that right and make sure it’s sustainable, we need to engage communities in a new way.”
However, community and environmental groups hounding the hydrogen hubs and DOE for information over the past year say that engagement isn’t happening. The Natural Resources Defense Council reported in May that “environmental justice advocates and frontline communities have largely been kept in the dark on key details and basic information about many of these projects.”
Since then, relatively little additional information has emerged. “We’re still struggling at this point to understand what’s really going on with the hubs,” said Morgan Rote, director of U.S. climate at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), another nonprofit group that’s been tracking the disconnect between hydrogen hubs and communities.
“I don’t think DOE is sitting on a whole wealth of information they’re not sharing,” Rote said. “But that makes it even more challenging — and it’s no wonder communities feel like they don’t have information, if the DOE doesn’t have information.”
Cummins acknowledged these frustrations.“The tension here is that we’re still in early days,” she said. “We’ve been working to engage communities and special interest groups. But we’re just at the start of this learning process.”
The initial planning grants are just the first step in what OCED expects to be an eight- to 12-year pathway to full-scale ramp-up and operations. Each stage will involve its own series of “go/no-go” decisions, with a “long list of deliverables and criteria,” Cummins said.
To date, only three hubs have been awarded first-phase planning grants of about $30 million each: the ARCHES hub in California; the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Association(PNWH2), which includes Oregon, Washington, and Montana; and the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2), which includes Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The remainder are still in the process of negotiating final approval for their first-phase funding.
“We’ll go through a review of all that — the financing, the technology, the community benefits — and then make a decision if they’re ready to move from Phase One to Phase Two,” she said. “And there are some instances where we might decide they are not moving to Phase Two.”
Less than 1 percent of global hydrogen production today is low-carbon. Of the roughly 90 million tons per year produced globally and 10 million tons per year in the U.S., almost all is derived from fossil gas.
Right now, the two main methods for making low- or zero-carbon hydrogen are far more expensive than dirty hydrogen — and also untested at scale. Those include so-called “blue hydrogen,” which is made from fossil gas combined with carbon capture, and “green hydrogen,” which is made by splitting water in electrolyzers powered by zero-carbon electricity.
The hydrogen hubs need about $40 billion in private-sector investment to match DOE’s $7 billion. That’s a tough sell for investors, given the uncertain economics involved both for would-be clean hydrogen producers and for the industries that must invest in retrofitting facilities, building new infrastructure, and reconfiguring how they do business in order to use it.
What’s more, the rules for a subsidy that could make clean hydrogen cost-competitive with dirty hydrogen — the 45V production tax credits created by the Inflation Reduction Act — have yet to be finalized.
Last December, the U.S. Treasury Department proposed rules that would require green-hydrogen producers to source newly built and consistently deliverable clean electricity — restrictions that energy analysts say are vital to ensure hydrogen production doesn’t end up increasing carbon emissions.
But those proposed rules are being challenged by a number of industry groups and politicians who say they’ll stifle the nascent industry — including the seven hydrogen hubs themselves. The Treasury Department aims to finalize the rules by January.
The regulations for blue hydrogen remain another point of contention. Only the California and Pacific Northwest hubs have pledged to not make hydrogen from fossil gas. Some hubs, such as the Appalachian hub, have made blue hydrogen a focus. But blue hydrogen has yet to be proven to be cost-effective at scale, and in some cases could lead to more carbon emissions than simply using fossil gas.
The unresolved nature of these regulations — and the projects themselves — makes it impossible to tell at this point whether the hubs will actually help fight climate change.
In a May letter to DOE, U.S. Representatives Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) and Donald S. Beyer Jr. (D-Virginia) complained that the agency has touted the potential for hydrogen made by the hubs to reduce carbon emissions by 25 million metric tons per year, but has “yet to publish the projected lifecycle emissions linked to the production of hydrogen.”
That information is “overdue and critical for us to fully understand the precise climate and public health impacts of the H2Hubs program,” the lawmakers wrote. “Scientists have warned that high levels of lifecycle emissions from hydrogen production could entirely cancel out any climate benefits from replacing fossil fuels with hydrogen.”
Cummins noted that DOE has responded to this request for information. “But the response was focused on the fact that we are evaluating every aspect of the production and use of hydrogen so that we can understand the impact on the environment,” she said — and much of that work remains to be done.
Though it may be early days for the hubs, advocates say the projects could be operating in a much more transparent way.
OCED released summaries of each hub’s commitment to community benefits immediately after the hubs were selected last October. Since then, OCED has held more than 70 meetings with more than 900 individuals and groups participating, Cummins said. The office has also briefed about 4,000 individuals and groups, including community members, environmental justice organizations, labor and workforce organizations, first responders, local businesses, energy professionals, elected tribal leaders, and local, state, and federal government officials.
The feedback from those meetings has led OCED to add new requirements for the hubs. The projects now must create public data reporting portals to share information as it’s finalized. They must develop community advisory structures that allow groups to provide feedback on plans as they’re developed. And they must “jointly evaluate or pursue negotiated agreements” on labor, workforce, health and safety, and community benefits plans.
“We’re really focused on three-way communication” between OCED, hub participants, and affected communities and other groups “to make sure anything we’re hearing back from the community is adequately addressed,” Cummins said. “That will determine whether we move forward to the next phase of the process.”
Environmental and community groups worry these requirements may still not prevent hub participants from running roughshod over communities, however.
In particular, many fear that participants — including oil and gas giants such as bp America, Chevron, Enbridge, EQT, ExxonMobil, Sempra Energy, and TC Energy — will subject communities already burdened with fossil fuel pollution to further harms from hydrogen production.
Communities have “questions around the transparency for the selection and planning process, how to monitor and evaluate community benefits plans, and to ensure there are sustained community benefits after the duration of the grants,” said Cihang Yuan, a senior program officer at the environmental nonprofit World Wildlife Fund. Other concerns include “more local impacts, such as hydrogen leakage or chemical disasters,” she said. “It’s definitely important for these hubs to have a solid plan for safety of operations.”
The secretive approach that hubs have taken to sharing information with potentially affected communities has added to these concerns. In California, the ARCHES hub requires meeting participants to sign non-disclosure agreements barring them from sharing information about the hub’s activities under threat of legal penalties.
“That’s something we can’t do,” said Theo Caretto, associate attorney at California-based environmental justice group Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), since it would bar community groups from sharing information with their constituents.
Those non-disclosure rules have remained in place at ARCHES and other hubs despite continual protests, forcing groups like CBE to wait for public information to dribble out. But one year in, “we’re having difficulty getting specifics on which projects are being funded,” Caretto said. “They’ve given out fact sheets and publications,” such as the map and chart below in a May report from ARCHES to DOE. “But those are still quite general and don’t give specifics about what each project is.”
The Ohio River Valley Institute has raised similar concerns about the ARCH2 project in Appalachia. In a May letter to DOE signed by 54 nonprofit and community groups, Tom Torres, the institute’s hydrogen campaign coordinator, said communities have had “no substantive opportunity to shape this proposal while negotiations continue behind closed doors.”
The saving grace, he wrote, is that “nothing so grievous has been done that cannot be undone. Money has yet to flow to these projects and ground has not been broken.”
Giving communities authority over how major energy infrastructure is planned and built would be a departure from how large industrial projects have historically been pursued.
“There is this dichotomy, this tension, between the project development deadlines and long-term robust engagement processes that will be needed to meet these community benefits plans obligations and gain community trust,” said Mona Dajani, global co-chair of energy, infrastructure and hydrogen at law firm Baker Botts and lead counsel for the HyVelocity hub in Texas.
DOE’s commitment to ensuring that hubs will meet the Biden administration’s Justice40 Initiative — its pledge to direct at least 40 percent of climate-related federal spending to communities “historically impacted by energy development and burdened with policies of exclusion and disinvestment,” as Dajani put it — heightens the importance of community involvement.
This will “add a lot of complexity to development processes. But they’re doing their best.
It’s definitely going to be challenging to be transparent when it’s not all finished,” Dajani said.
Amidst questions around community benefits and lifecycle carbon emissions, much of the hype that fueled oversized clean-hydrogen projections in the past few years has started to deflate. Major project announcements have been delayed or put in limbo, leading analysts to question whether ambitious government clean-hydrogen production targets can be reached in the coming decade.
This retrenchment is also a threat to U.S. hydrogen hubs, which must convince companies and their financial backers to commit to the tens of billions of dollars of investment needed to scale up clean hydrogen to compete against the fossil fuels it is meant to displace.
That challenge is already rearing its head at the Appalachian ARCH2 hub, a pet project of a lawmaker key to getting the hydrogen hub program passed as part of the 2022 Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill — retiring Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
Manchin praised the ARCH2 hub’s potential to revitalize the economy of his home state and the greater Appalachian region at an August event marking DOE’s approval of its first-phase grant. “I’m happy to know that I was able to play a part in this to be able to have a future for my children and grandchildren,” he said.
But, as is true for all of the hub projects at this point, it’s far from clear that ARCH2 will deliver on its promise of becoming a clean energy economic engine for the region.
In a report released this week, the Ohio River Valley Institute noted that several projects initially identified as part of the ARCH2 plan have since dropped out. Those include Canadian gas producer and pipeline owner TC Energy and industrial chemicals giant Chemours, which canceled plans to develop two green hydrogen production sites in West Virginia.
“The various hydrogen hubs and their individual projects are much more tenuous than many people imagine,” Sean O’Leary, senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute and the author of the report, told Canary Media. “These projects are still heavily dependent on private markets to come up with the funds.”
In an attempt to fill the gap left by those departures, ARCH2 recently issued a call for companies to propose projects, which could receive up to $110 million if selected. “Originally you could argue that we had projects that were seeking federal funds,” O’Leary said. “Now, we have federal funds seeking projects.”
Cummins said that OCED has anticipated that hub participants may drop out or be added throughout the early stages. “That’s OK. We don’t want a company that for any reason doesn’t want to participate to be stuck in something they don’t see as economically viable.”
At the same time, OCED will vet new entrants on the same criteria applied to those that initially applied: “Are they technically feasible? Do we see a path to financial viability? What does their workforce plan look like? And finally, what do their community benefits look like?”
In an email to Canary Media, T.R. Massey, spokesperson for Battelle, the research organization managing the ARCH2 hub, echoed a key refrain about the projects: “The important context to remember is these new hydrogen hubs, including ARCH2, have just entered the first phase.”
GRID: The U.S. Energy Department announces $2 billion in grants to shore up and expand the power grid, including a previously announced $612 million for areas wracked by Hurricanes Helene and Milton. (Canary Media)
ALSO:
POLITICS:
NUCLEAR: After years of declining interest, many state lawmakers have opened the door to nuclear energy development as tech companies push for carbon-free energy to power data centers. (Associated Press)
GEOTHERMAL: The federal Bureau of Land Management approves a 2,000 MW enhanced geothermal energy project in southwest Utah, and proposes streamlining permitting for geothermal projects on federal land. (E&E News)
HYDROGEN: A report finds a third of the projects planned as part of an Appalachian hydrogen hub in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania already have been scrapped, raising questions about the federally funded project’s viability. (Inside Climate News)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: General Motors’ CEO affirms the company is still committed to phasing out combustion car sales by 2035, and says GM will start making a profit on electric vehicles this year. (New York Times)
CARBON CAPTURE: Meta says it will match the U.S. Energy Department’s $35 million investment to kickstart a carbon market. (Utility Dive)
WIND: Offshore wind saw advancements in federal permitting and construction on ports and projects in the third quarter this year, but private investment has slowed in advance of the election, an industry group finds. (Utility Dive)
GEOTHERMAL: The federal Bureau of Land Management approves the Fervo Cape enhanced geothermal energy project in southwest Utah, which is expected to generate up to 2,000 MW when fully built out. (Washington Post)
ALSO: The Biden administration proposes exempting small-scale geothermal exploration on federal land from environmental review in an effort to accelerate development. (news release)
NUCLEAR POWER:
OIL & GAS: The U.S. EPA fines Hilcorp Energy $9.4 million by emitting nearly 2,000 tons of methane and other pollutants in violation of federal and state laws at its oil and gas facilities in northwestern New Mexico. (news release)
GRID:
UTILITIES: Arizona regulators respond to lawsuits accusing them of skirting state law when exempting a proposed 200 MW natural gas plant from environmental review by considering each 50 MW unit separately. (Arizona Capitol Times)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
PUBLIC LANDS: The federal Bureau of Land Management finalizes land use plans for western Colorado aimed at protecting big game and sage grouse habitat from oil and gas development. (news release)
SOLAR: California community choice aggregators sign up to acquire 394 MW of solar power and 171 MW of battery storage capacity. (Solar Industry)
MINING: Eighty-five religious organizations file a brief supporting Apache advocates’ lawsuit seeking to block a proposed land exchange and copper mine in central Arizona. (ICT)
SOLAR: After Hurricane Helene disabled more than 350 electrical substations in western North Carolina, advocates call for widespread installation of solar-plus-storage microgrids as a more effective climate resiliency investment than storm-hardening traditional grid infrastructure. (Canary Media)
ALSO:
HYDROGEN:
NUCLEAR: Kentucky and West Virginia are among the states where lawmakers have opened the door to nuclear energy development as tech companies push for carbon-free energy to power data centers. (Associated Press)
OIL & GAS:
PIPELINES: The launch of operations at the 580-mile Matterhorn Express pipeline has opened up distribution bottlenecks from the Permian Basin, reversing price trends and incentivizing operators to increase production. (Reuters)
HYDROPOWER: Public opposition helped defeat a proposal to build new dams around Asheville in the ‘60s and ‘70s, which contributed to the flooding of the city by the French Broad River during Hurricane Helene. (The Dispatch)
GRID: Regional grid operator PJM asks federal regulators for a six-month delay in its next auction after environmental groups file a complaint alleging it could unnecessarily cost ratepayers an extra $14.5 billion. (Dominion Post)
UTILITIES:
OVERSIGHT: Louisiana voters consider three candidates for a seat on the state’s powerful energy regulatory board. (Louisiana Illuminator)
ADVOCACY: A former NFL player discusses his involvement in the Sierra Club’s campaign against coal-fired power in western North Carolina led him to become a lobbyist with the organization. (Sierra)
More Minnesota cities are turning to utility customers to fund climate and sustainability projects.
The Twin Cities suburb of Eagan is among the latest municipalities to begin collecting what’s known as a “franchise fee” from gas and electric companies in exchange for allowing pipelines, power lines and other infrastructure in public rights-of-way. The charges are typically passed on to customers in the form of a small monthly line item on their utility bills.
As is the case with a growing number of cities, Eagan leaders last year decided to dedicate funds from its franchise fees toward its climate and sustainability efforts. It hired its first sustainability coordinator and is drafting a climate action plan that will be implemented in part with the expected $1.5 million in annual franchise fee revenue.
“It’s hard to launch a sustainability initiative without a way to sustain it,” said Gillian Catano, the city’s sustainability coordinator. “This helps us with long-term planning and allows us to work on projects supporting our operations and to support projects in the community.”
Cities have collected franchise fees from public utilities for decades, but today the charges are emerging as a potentially important revenue source to help budget-strapped local governments make progress toward climate targets. In the Twin Cities, Minneapolis has long used the fees to fund sustainability work, and St. Paul is considering a plan to do the same. Other examples include the suburbs of Edina and Hopkins.
“We’ve seen a growing number of cities, across Minnesota and nationally, leveraging utility franchise fees as a tool to fund climate action and sustainability efforts,” said Julia Eagles, associate director of utility and regulatory strategy for the Institute for Market Transformation, a national nonprofit that promotes public policy to reduce building emissions. “It reflects a broader shift towards cities seeking stable, locally controlled funding sources for urgent climate priorities.”
A National Renewable Energy Laboratory research paper in 2021 found over 3,600 municipalities collect franchise fees from their utilities and 13% use part of that money for clean energy-related projects. The work being funded by franchise fees include energy efficiency programs, municipal fleet electrification, solar panel installations, and other clean energy-related investments.
Abby Finis, a consultant who works with local governments on climate action, said in the past, many cities added the fees into the general fund to pay for various city services. What’s different now, she said, is that more communities are tying them to sustainability staff and projects.
“The franchise fee is something that’s already set up, and you can increase it a little bit without hurting people’s wallets too much,” Finis said.
However, Finis cautioned that the money doesn’t “get anywhere near the amount needed to reach our goals.”
Sometimes cities are maximizing those dollars by using them to leverage additional funds, such as through the federal Inflation Reduction Act or Minnesota’s ECO (Energy Conservation and Optimization) Act, she said.
Minneapolis uses its franchise fees to fund a unique partnership between the city and utilities Xcel Energy and CenterPoint Energy. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s research highlighted the partnership, which was intended to accelerate progress toward the city’s climate goals but has faced questions about its effectiveness. The city increased its franchise fee in 2023, a per-household increase of about $12 per year, according to Patrick Hanlon, the city’s deputy coordinator for sustainability.
“It was a pretty minimal increase for residential customers,” Hanlon said. Projects funded partly by franchise fees have saved city residents more than $150 million annually in energy costs and helped weatherize more than 5,000 low-income units, he added.
Hanlon is also mayor of the nearby suburb of Hopkins, which recently started using its franchise fees to pay for solar, e-bike and electric vehicle charging initiatives.
St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter recently proposed charging residential franchise fees to fund weatherization, tree planting, and pay the salary of a new climate action coordinator.
In the past, St. Paul’s climate action budget has come from general funds and grants.
“This would be the first uniquely dedicated funding for the city’s broad portfolio of climate work,” said Russ Stark, the city’s chief resilience officer.
Edina began using franchise fees for clean energy projects in 2015. Today, according to sustainability manager Marisa Bayer, the suburb commits about $950,000 annually from franchise fees for its sustainability programs, most of which is invested in city operations to improve efficiency, add renewable energy, and electrify municipal buildings and transportation. The money also funds a sustainable building ordinance and other policy measures.
“The great thing is that because we have this dedicated funding source, we can move forward with projects, either identified in our capital improvement plans or supported by our community,” Bayer said. “We don’t have to go to council every year or rely solely on grants to help fund this work.”
Correction: Edina commits $950,000 annually from its franchise fees for sustainability programs. An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the number.
BATTERIES: General Motors pledges $625 million to help fund the contested Thacker Pass lithium mine under development in Nevada in an effort to boost battery material’s domestic supplies. (Las Vegas Review-Journal)
ALSO:
OIL & GAS:
BIOFUELS: The U.S. Energy Department tentatively awards a Montana biodiesel refinery $1.44 billion in loan guarantees to produce sustainable aviation fuels from leftover animal fats and greases. (Canary Media)
UTILITIES: Xcel Energy submits its just transition plan to Colorado regulators proposing to replace closing coal plants and meet increasing demand with a mix of new wind, solar, geothermal and gas generators, battery storage and a nuclear reactor. (CPR)
CLIMATE: Legal experts say a 2019 court ruling would probably shield California’s and Washington’s carbon markets from a potential Trump administration’s likely challenges. (E&E News)
CARBON CAPTURE:
WIND: A Bill Gates-backed startup says it has secured $14 million for a proposed wind facility in Wyoming that would use the firm’s horizontal-axis turbines. (Power)
GRID: The Bonneville Power Administration proposes spending about $3 billion on 13 transmission and substation projects designed to bolster its grid to accommodate increasing renewables and growing power demand. (Idaho Capital Sun)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Pacific Gas & Electric launches a bidirectional electric vehicle charging program compensating customers for discharging EV batteries back to the grid during high demand. (PV Magazine)
HYDROGEN: A southern California transit agency opens a liquid hydrogen-based fueling station for its bus fleet. (news release)
COAL: Colorado officials launch an effort to extinguish underground coal seam fires in an abandoned mine near Boulder. (CBS News Colorado)
COMMENTARY: A California energy executive calls on local governments to comply with a state law requiring instant residential solar permitting and to force homeowners associations to eliminate red tape for rooftop installations. (Fresno Bee)
EMISSIONS: The U.S. Supreme Court declines to pause the Biden administration’s power plant emissions rule as it faces legal challenges, though Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s opinion suggests those challenges may ultimately be successful. (Associated Press, E&E News)
ALSO:
NUCLEAR:
CLEAN ENERGY: A growing number of cities across Minnesota and the U.S. are funding climate and clean energy projects with franchise fees collected from utilities using public rights-of-way for infrastructure. (Energy News Network)
COAL: An Alabama coal-fired power plant is named as the U.S. EPA’s top greenhouse gas polluter for the ninth year in a row, but owner Alabama Power has no plans to retire the plant or convert it to natural gas. (Inside Climate News)
LITHIUM: General Motors pledges $625 million to help fund the contested Thacker Pass lithium mine under development in Nevada in an effort to boost battery material’s domestic supplies. (Las Vegas Review-Journal)
SOLAR: Homeowners looking to install rooftop solar panels often run into a dilemma when they learn their roofs will need to be replaced before the lifespan of their array expires. (Grist)
HYDROGEN: A large hydrogen fuel production facility in upstate New York was expected to make the state an industry leader, but work on the project has halted and its future is uncertain. (Heatmap News)
BIOFUELS:
NUCLEAR: A Maryland-based company that makes small modular nuclear reactors announces a $500 million round of funding, led by Amazon as it looks for clean energy sources for its increasingly power-hungry data centers. (Washington Post)
ALSO: The owners of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant order a $100 million transformer, a major step in its plan to restart operations. (Reuters)
FOSSIL FUELS: A group of New York prosecutors argues they could press criminal charges against oil companies for their role in fueling hurricanes and other climate disasters. (The Guardian)
BUILDINGS:
HYDROGEN: A large hydrogen fuel production facility in upstate New York was expected to make the state an industry leader, but work on the project has halted and its future is uncertain. (Heatmap News)
EMISSIONS:
OFFSHORE WIND:
CLEAN ENERGY: Massachusetts awards $1.75 million in grants to help cities and towns fund energy efficiency projects, climate planning, and clean energy campaigns. (WWLP)
GRID: Maine utilities make grid updates they say will make the power system more reliable as the number of serious storms increases. (News Center Maine)
COMMENTARY: New York’s $5 billion state energy efficiency program needs to do a better job reaching low-income residents and communities of color, says an environmental justice advocate. (City Limits)
Electric vehicle charging stations share a dilemma with their fossil fuel counterparts: they both only make small profits off the power or fuel they sell, and sometimes even lose money.
Alan Jenn, a University of California at Davis professor who studies EVs, summed it up to the Washington Post: “You can’t survive on just selling electrons.”
Allow a new study to make a business suggestion. Shops, restaurants and hotels within 300 feet of an EV charging station tend to see higher sales than other businesses without a charger nearby, according to the study published in the scientific journal Nature. So like gas stations that make back some of their lost profits by selling days-old sandwiches, businesses could try adding EV chargers to bring in customers.
That strategy has already worked on me. If I’m headed on a long road trip in my EV, I always plan to stay at a hotel with at least a Level 2 charger in walking distance. I’ve also been guilty of stopping at a shopping plaza and buying something just because I need to charge my car, especially in the winter, when sitting in a cold car isn’t so fun.
And these charger-adjacent businesses don’t have to be a collection of big box stores. Some companies are building charging lounges that look a lot like what you’d find in an airport, complete with Wi-Fi, comfy chairs, and restaurants, Bloomberg reports — so pack a book and have a seat.
⚛️ Feds want a nuclear buildout… A newly updated U.S. Energy Department report makes a case for immediately launching a buildout of large-scale nuclear reactors in hopes of tripling the country’s current 100 GW of nuclear power capacity. (Canary Media)
💸 … but is it possible? Georgia Power’s expansion of a nuclear plant cost more than twice its original budget, took 15 years to build and contributed to its original contractors going bankrupt, suggesting a widespread expansion of nuclear power will be costly and take longer than expected. (Floodlight)
🌀 Resilient rebuild: President Biden announces $612 million for six projects to improve electric grid resilience in hurricane-affected communities. (NPR)
⚡ Tribes’ energy challenge: Tribal nations often feel the impact of fossil fuel plant shutdowns, but many lack the needed funding to build clean energy projects and connect them to the grid, a tribal clean energy group says. (Utility Dive)
📈 Getting off track: A new Sierra Club evaluation finds for the fourth year in a row that major U.S. utilities are off track to meet the Biden administration’s emissions reduction goals, and many are in a worse position than last year due to rising demand. (Canary Media)
🕳️ Carbon capture roadmap: The U.S. Energy Department drafts a strategy for developing “dozens” of carbon capture and storage facilities by 2050 and building infrastructure, oversight, and a workforce to serve them. (E&E News, subscription; news release)
🛢️ Fighting fossil fuels: Black women lead a group of Louisiana nonprofits and grassroots organizations fighting the expansion of oil, gas and petrochemicals. (Floodlight)
🇺🇸 Plus, some politics
.svg)
