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From the World Economic Forum to utility industry magazines to the US Department of Energy, in recent years there’s been a growing refrain: how batteries can enable a net-zero electricity grid. Implicit in that statement is the idea that batteries can (and should) help lower grid emissions, increase the integration of zero-emissions renewable energy sources, and support overall power sector decarbonization. Yet battery energy storage is sometimes finding itself in the hot seat for exactly the opposite reason.
Earlier this year, a University of Michigan study focused on the PJM market (the large regional transmission organization covering all or part of 13 U.S. states plus Washington, D.C.) found that batteries sometimes increased grid emissions. While the U-M study was based on older data (from 2012 to 2014), its takeaways echo concerns we’ve heard before.
In the early 2010s, California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) — a major driver of the state’s behind-the-meter battery energy storage market — shifted its focus to specifically prioritize greenhouse gas reductions for the Golden State’s power grid. But then circa 2018 and 2019, analysis found that batteries were often increasing, rather than decreasing, grid emissions.
For the better part of a decade, batteries have been described as a Swiss Army knife of the power grid, capable of performing myriad functions — from customer-centric services such as backup power, peak shaving, solar self-consumption, and time-of-use energy arbitrage to grid-centric services such as frequency and voltage regulation, demand response, and mitigating renewables curtailment.
Ultimately, doing all of that involves software algorithms that dictate when a battery energy storage system charges and discharges. Those algorithms typically co-optimize around various price signals. But it’s the marginal emissions of the power grid at the times a battery is charging vs. discharging that determines whether the battery causes a net decrease (or increase) in grid emissions.
Unless energy storage considers emissions in their control approach, there’s no guarantee that they’ll help decarbonize power grids. Energy journalist David Roberts summed it up well: “It’s a mistake to deploy batteries … as though they will inevitably reduce emissions. They’re a grid tech, not a decarbonization tech,” more akin to transmission lines that can equally carry dirty or clean power, agnostic to the electricity’s generation source and the associated carbon emissions. So, too, with batteries in the absence of the right signals.
To address the emissions increase caused by energy storage participating in SGIP, the rules of the program were revised with the goal of enabling the state’s participating behind-the-meter commercial and residential batteries to live up to their emissions-reducing promise. Almost immediately after the rule change, we started to see positive outcomes. A detailed impact evaluation published earlier this year by CPUC with analysis by Verdant gives a longer-term view of SGIP’s turnaround story.
Between 2018 and 2022 (the period covered by Verdant’s analysis), battery systems in California’s SGIP fully reversed course, flipping from causing a net increase in grid emissions to causing a significant net decrease in a resounding decarbonization success.
Now, energy storage has cemented its central role supporting California’s goal of achieving 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045. The state boasts more than 10 GW of installed battery capacity, and earlier this year, batteries became the single largest contributor to the state’s grid briefly during the evening peak. Grid-scale batteries charged on excess daytime solar are starting to displace natural gas power plants. And during this year’s solar eclipse, batteries charged on excess renewable energy carried California’s power sector through the temporary slump in solar PV generation.
California may be the country’s most-prominent example, but it’s hardly the only US state setting combinations of both emissions-reduction / net-zero emissions targets as well as energy storage goals. For just four examples, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — all members of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) — each have robust energy storage targets tied to 100% clean energy and GHG reduction goals. So does Michigan.
For energy storage to help these and other states achieve their clean energy goals, it will be crucial to learn from California’s SGIP growing pains — and using a true marginal emissions GHG signal, rather than a proxy metric, to inform batteries’ duty cycles. Just look at what has transpired in Texas and the ERCOT market.
The Lone Star State has been called “the hottest grid battery market in the country.” But analysis from Tierra Climate published in June 2024 in collaboration with REsurety, Grid Status, Modo Energy, and WattTime found that 92% of batteries in ERCOT increased grid emissions in 2023. This is largely because those batteries are not co-optimizing their operation in coordination with a carbon signal like SGIP’s GHG signal. That same report found that co-optimization with a carbon signal (or a carbon price) would move these battery energy storage assets from carbon increasing to carbon decreasing.
The US energy storage market is growing fast, with record-setting capacity additions in Q1 2024 and a staggering 75 GW of cumulative new capacity forecasted to come online during the period 2024–2028. If battery energy storage is to continue living up to its promise of enabling a net-zero grid, it’s more important than ever that state policies and battery control algorithms include a marginal emissions signal as part of their intelligence under the hood.
ELECTRIFICATION: California launches an $80 million program aimed at electrifying low and moderate-income households with rebates for heat pumps, appliances and efficiency upgrades. (Sacramento Bee)
CLIMATE:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Washington state allocates $100 million for 575 new electric vehicle charging sites, but an expert says the private sector must build thousands more to meet future demand. (Cascade PBS)
OIL & GAS:
SOLAR:
UTILITIES: The upcoming election for two seats on Montana’s utility regulatory commission comes as the state’s energy industry reckons with the federal push toward clean power and a court decision mandating climate be considered in energy permitting. (Montana Free Press)
NUCLEAR: Wyoming lawmakers advance legislation that would enable firms to establish temporary high-level radioactive waste storage facilities in the state. (WyoFile)
HYDROPOWER: An Oregon city brings an in-conduit hydropower installation online that is integrated into its drinking water system. (Hydro Review)
MINING: Arizona regulators advance a proposed copper mine in the southern part of the state by approving a tailings pipeline through state land. (Arizona Daily Star)
COMMENTARY:
UTILITIES: 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)
CLEAN ENERGY:
NUCLEAR: A U.S. Department of Energy report suggests a new serialized approach for designing and building nuclear reactors that would lower upfront costs and meet rising power demand. (Utility Dive)
GRID:
CLIMATE:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
OIL & GAS: Natural gas accounted for nearly half of the nation’s energy generation over the summer while coal fell to just 16%, leaving even West Virginia utilities considering a shift to gas. (West Virginia Public Broadcasting)
ELECTRIFICATION: California launches an $80 million program aimed at electrifying low and moderate-income households with rebates for heat pumps, appliances and efficiency upgrades. (Sacramento Bee)
OFFSHORE WIND: A newly completed, $42 million commercial port on the New Bedford, Massachusetts waterfront could host offshore wind operations. (Cape Cod Times)
ALSO:
FOSSIL FUELS: A Philadelphia refinery agrees to pay a settlement of $4.2 million, after the U.S. EPA found the owners failed to remedy corrosion that caused an explosion and fire in 2019. (Associated Press)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: New York is one of 40 cities in which ride-sharing option Uber Green will go fully electric, removing hybrid vehicles from its lineup. (NBC New York)`
AGRIVOLTAICS:
UTILITIES: FirstEnergy — a utility serving New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania — receives poor marks in a new Sierra Club report tracking utilities’ progress toward decarbonization. (Canary Media)
EQUITY: Energy efficiency contractors in Connecticut call on the state and private companies to improve the treatment of workers of color in the industry. (CT News Junkie)
NUCLEAR: A Maryland startup raises $45 million for its plan to build modular nuclear reactors at shipyards using existing labor and infrastructure. (DCInno, subscription)
RENEWABLES: The New York State Power Authority releases a draft plan identifying potential renewables projects across the state totaling as much as 3.5 GW of capacity. (news release)
TRANSIT: A new study recommends reviving a little-used rail line in Boston and adding electric train service to make commuting easier and attract more riders. (CommonWealth Beacon)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: “Every site is a snowflake:” Experts and local officials say equipment shortages, utility delays, and huge numbers of stakeholders are among issues stalling federal efforts to install public electric vehicle chargers. (E&E News)
NUCLEAR: The Biden administration says it’s looking to restart more decommissioned nuclear power plants alongside Michigan’s Palisades plant and Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island. (Reuters)
WORKFORCE: The International Energy Agency finds U.S. energy efficiency employers have had particular difficulty hiring skilled workers to construct and retrofit buildings. (Utility Dive)
SOLAR:
TRANSMISSION:
HYDROGEN: An Alaska geologist hunts for naturally occurring hydrogen reservoirs across the U.S., saying it could be a major new source of affordable carbon-free energy. (Inside Climate News)
EFFICIENCY: The U.S. Energy Department issues $1.1 million to a project researching ways to cool data centers and reduce their energy use. (Utility Dive)
POLITICS:
COMMENTARY: Energy consultants highlight the “encouraging and disconcerting” effects of big tech companies on the clean energy transition. (Utility Dive)
TRANSMISSION: A federal appeals court ruling likely removes the last major obstacle for a $1.5 billion transmission line project that would import hydropower from Canada into the New England grid. (Utility Dive)
NATURAL GAS:
HEATING: In Vermont, draft rules for a system to incentivize lower-carbon heating sources propose counting biomass, renewable natural gas, and hydrogen as clean fuels, sparking objections by climate advocates. (Canary Media)
BUILDINGS: Maryland advocates say legislation passed this year slowing down implementation of clean building standards is “a significant setback” for the state. (Maryland Matters)
SOLAR:
STORAGE: The Rhode Island Energy Facility Siting Board rules it has jurisdiction over large battery storage developments, allowing it to overrule local permitting decisions for these projects. (RTO Insider, subscription)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
TIDAL POWER: Despite local objections, a proposed tidal power project in Maine receives a key early permit from federal regulators, resurrecting a nearly identical plan that fizzled out in 2016. (Bangor Daily News)
COMMENTARY:
SOLAR: Hurricane Helene’s damage to a North Carolina town home to the purest quartz in the world highlights the solar industry’s precarious reliance on materials produced from a single location, especially in the face of escalating weather disasters. (Grist)
ALSO:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Hyundai begins producing electric SUVs at its new, $7.6 billion Georgia factory ahead of a grand opening planned for 2025. (Associated Press)
GRID:
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: A federal court hears arguments in a lawsuit by Louisiana community groups alleging a parish government “intentionally discriminated against Black residents” by placing polluting industrial facilities near majority-Black communities. (Associated Press)
OIL & GAS: A Houston-based pipeline company heads up emergency response to a 100-foot oil-laced saltwater geyser that erupted in a part of Texas that’s experienced a recent rash of earthquakes linked to wastewater injection. (Houston Chronicle)
CARBON CAPTURE: Texans testify to U.S. EPA officials about a planned carbon dioxide injection site in the Permian Basin that would be part of the largest direct air capture facility in the U.S. (Texas Tribune)
HYDROPOWER:
NUCLEAR: The U.S. Supreme Court agrees to review a ruling in a dispute over a company’s plans to store nuclear waste at a dump located in Texas’ Permian Basin. (Houston Chronicle)
UTILITIES: Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick calls for the resignation of CenterPoint Energy’s CEO due to the utility’s botched response to power outages in Houston caused by Hurricane Beryl. (Houston Chronicle)
COMMENTARY:
More than seven years after New Hampshire regulators first approved the idea of using community solar to create savings for low-income households, electric bill discounts are finally on the horizon for the first batch of participants.
“There has been this rhetoric that we want solar to benefit low-income people, but whenever we try to propose programs that will make that happen, they’ve been immensely slow to roll out,” said Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of the nonprofit Clean Energy New Hampshire. “But despite being frustrated, I am really glad this is finally happening.”
The state energy department is reviewing seven proposals for community solar arrays that will allocate a portion of the credits they receive for sending power onto the grid to low-income households in the form of credits on their monthly bills. The projects selected will work with the utilities to identify customers receiving discounted rates, who will be automatically enrolled in the program.
Community solar is widely considered an important strategy for extending the benefits of renewable energy to people unable to take advantage of rooftop solar. Nationally, some two-thirds of households can’t install solar panels, generally because they don’t own their home, don’t have a suitable roof, or can’t afford the cost of the array, said Kate Daniel, Northeast regional director for the Coalition for Community Solar Access. Those obstacles are particularly challenging for low-income households, which are more likely to rent, need costly roof repairs, or lack the cash or credit scores needed to pay for panels, she added.
Community solar, on the other hand, allows these households to buy renewable energy, supporting climate action and saving money. Recent research from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that community solar users have, on average, 23% lower incomes than rooftop solar adopters and are six times more likely to live in multifamily homes, suggesting community solar helps increase adoption of solar among these populations.
Many states — including New Hampshire’s northeastern neighbors like Massachusetts and New York — have created programs to encourage the development of community solar projects that provide financial benefits to low-income households. But New Hampshire is falling behind: A recent report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratories, a federally funded research center, identifies New Hampshire as the state with the smallest share of its solar production going to disadvantaged households.
“We really have to ask ourselves why that is,” Evans-Brown said.
The first mandate for utilities to develop a program using community solar to benefit low-income households came as part of the order establishing the state’s current net metering system in 2017. Before a program could get off the ground, the state legislature passed a 2019 bill boosting the net metering rate for community solar projects serving low-income households, and the state suspended the earlier requirement until 2021, declaring it could be redundant given the new bill.
In 2021, the state asked for — and received — an additional suspension until July 2022, arguing that it had only finalized the eligibility rules for the net metering adder in September 2020, and therefore the utilities should not have to develop their own programs until the adder had a full two years to potentially spark development.
Then, in July 2022, the legislature passed a bill requiring the creation of a new community solar program including projects totalling up to six megawatts of capacity each year, each providing at least 25% of the credits it generates to low- or moderate-income customers. Customers will be automatically enrolled, but given ten days to opt out.
This program opened for proposals in December 2023, with a deadline of February 29, 2024. The state is now reviewing the seven proposals it received. If the applications total more than the six-megawatt cap, priority will be given to projects proposing greater benefits for low-income households.
“We are hammering out some of the final details with the utilities before we make the official designations,” said Joshua Elliott, director of policy and programs for the New Hampshire energy department. “Once we get the details of the processes finalized, we expect this process to move far more quickly in the future.”
There are elements of the program to like, advocates said.
Traditionally, it has been difficult for solar developers to cost-effectively find and recruit low-income customers for community solar. New Hampshire’s strategy of working with utilities to automatically enroll households that have already been identified streamlines the process. The state’s plan to review the program each year is also a strength, said Kirt Mayland, a visiting professor at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law and Graduate School.
Uncertainties remain, however. Enrolling customers from the utilities’ electric assistance programs may be more efficient for developers, but it runs the risk of missing a lot of low-income households that are eligible for the discounted rate but not signed up. To reach the largest possible number of potential subscribers, a program should also accept households enrolled in other means-tested programs, like Medicaid or SNAP, or even simply allow customers to self-attest their qualifying income.
“The evidence on states with self-attestation has found there is very little fraud — it really does get over the barriers,” said Daniel, who is not very familiar with the New Hampshire program but has worked extensively with community solar in best practices.
The small size of the program could mean small savings for each participating household, Mayland said.
“There’s a concern about how much money is actually getting placed on the low-income customer’s bill — sometimes it doesn’t blow you away,” he said. “It’s to be determined whether it’s an effective program to help out the low-income community in New Hampshire.”
CORRECTION: Alabama Power has not promised to line coal ash pits as part of an EPA settlement, an item in Thursday’s newsletter incorrectly stated that it had.
TRANSITION: West Virginia officials embrace a plan to convert a long-troubled coal plant into a coal-powered facility to produce hydrogen and graphite, but the project has stalled as the company running it juggles multiple projects and a history of loan defaults. (Floodlight/Mountain State Spotlight)
EMISSIONS: “It’s all smoke and mirrors:” Former Texas employees blow the whistle on the state’s pollution monitoring team, which analysis finds has been systematically weakened dating back to the early fracking boom in 2010. (Inside Climate News)
HELENE:
GRID: Federal officials offer up to $360 million to support a $2.6 billion project to link Texas’ standalone grid with a high-voltage transmission line running 320 miles from Mississippi through Louisiana to Texas. (Houston Chronicle)
WORKFORCE: Virginia industry leaders call for the state to support more workforce programs to train workers to fill shortages of electricians, mechanics and technicians, as well as for the emerging electric vehicle industry. (Virginia Mercury)
PIPELINES: Federal regulators tell a court they have good reason to grant the Mountain Valley Pipeline three more years to complete an extension into North Carolina, since they were waiting for the project to receive federal permits for its main line. (Bloomberg, subscription)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: West Virginia residents increasingly consider switching to electric vehicles because of a wave of new all-terrain vehicles and a program that lets them test drive four different models. (WV News)
OIL & GAS: A Congress member says Texas oil companies that withdrew from Russia because of U.S. sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine are now being targeted for breach-of-contract lawsuits. (Houston Chronicle)
COAL:
POLITICS:
COMMENTARY:
COAL: Clean energy advocates push back on Duke Energy’s new plan to extend the life of the country’s second-largest coal plant, the Gibson plant in Indiana, by three years to 2038 to meet rising electricity demand. (Inside Climate News)
CLEAN ENERGY:
UTILITIES: Protesters outside We Energies’ headquarters in Milwaukee call on the utility to invest in more renewable energy instead of gas plants, and to limit requests for rate increases. (Wisconsin Public Radio)
GRID: A new U.S. Energy Department study identifies parts of U.S. grid territories that could be suitable for new transmission interconnections. (Utility Dive)
OIL & GAS: The Ohio Supreme Court rejects a company’s effort to block a gas pipeline from traversing its property in Maumee after raising safety and environmental concerns. (Ohio Capital Journal)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
CLIMATE: Researchers in northern Minnesota are testing different formulations for biochar, a charcoal-like material that advocates say stores carbon dioxide that would have otherwise been released into the atmosphere. (MPR News)
NUCLEAR: Regulators and lawmakers should do more to make nuclear reactor licensing more accessible and craft regulations that allow existing reactors to support data centers and hydrogen producers, panelists say during a clean energy conference. (Utility Dive)
COMMENTARY: Advocates continue to see longstanding failures in enforcing groundwater protections from the widespread injection of oil and gas drilling wastewater, including in Ohio. (Natural Resources Defense Council)
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