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SOLAR: The Biden administration finalizes its Western solar plan aimed at expediting development on 31 million acres of federal land in 11 states. (Reuters)
ALSO: A Utah county postpones a deal to install a solar array at a local airport to gather more information, but says it plans to move forward with the project later. (Moab Times-Independent)
PUBLIC LANDS: Federal courts prepare to consider several lawsuits seeking to diminish a president’s power to ban future mining and oil and gas drilling on some federal lands via national monument designation. (Bloomberg Law)
EFFICIENCY: The U.S. Energy Department awards Western states and cities $115.2 million to develop, implement and upgrade building performance standards and energy codes for commercial and multi-family structures. (news release, RTO Insider, subscription)
CLIMATE: Colorado awards local governments $1.9 million to support climate action plans and efficiency and sustainable energy programs. (news release)
STORAGE:
GRID:
OIL & GAS:
POLLUTION: Alaska advocates call on federal regulators to ban cruise ship exhaust scrubbers, saying the air-pollution mitigation systems contaminate ocean water. (KTOO)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
CLEAN ENERGY: The National Science Foundation awards a Hawaii university $4.2 million for clean energy research and education. (Kauai Now)
Illinois has $30 million in incentives available for solar installations on multi-family buildings.
So far, though, the state program has not received any applications for such projects, according to Jan Gudell, Illinois Solar for All associate director at Elevate, the organization tasked with running the state program.
In urban areas like Chicago, residents of environmental justice and lower-income neighborhoods are highly likely to live in multi-family residential buildings where it is extremely difficult to install rooftop solar.
There is little incentive for a landlord to invest in solar that will provide cost savings to the tenants, and rooftops may need significant upgrades to handle solar. In condo buildings, homeowners association bureaucracy and other concerns must be navigated.
There’s also a lesser-known logistical and structural barrier — if solar is to be channeled to individual residential units behind the meter, a separate solar system is essentially needed for each unit — with separate inverters and wiring.
“That’s a lot of hardware, space and cost,” said Aliya Bagewadi, US director of strategic partnerships for Allume Energy, an Australian startup company that says it can address at least this part of the puzzle, by sending energy to individual units with only one inverter and system.
The company has served thousands of customers in Australia, New Zealand and Europe with its SolShare technology. Now it is rolling out in the U.S., in sunny southern states as well as Illinois, because of the state’s robust solar incentives.
“It’s inherently an energy equity issue,” said Bagewadi, who is based in Chicago. “We know [multi-family building residents] are much more likely to be lower-income, longer-term renters. We want to make sure those savings flow to people who can really benefit the most.”
Illinois isn’t alone in the lack of multi-family solar arrays. Solar developers and advocates have long noted the challenge nationwide, especially for affordable multi-family rental buildings. A 2022 study by Berkeley lab noted that in 2021, about 3% of solar installed in the U.S. was on multi-family buildings, mostly owner-occupied condos.
“Solar may be a non-starter in a rental multi-family property because the owner may be looking at a complex, expensive and time-consuming process, where they would have to consider the design, permitting, installation, interconnection, and cost for multiple systems,” said Gudell. “For many property owners, this may be unaffordable and unmanageable.”
A 2018 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that the majority of potential capacity for new solar serving low- and moderate-income customers is on renter-occupied multi-family rooftops. California passed a law in 2015 specifically to address the dearth of solar on multi-family buildings, promising to invest up to $1 billion by 2031.
There are typically several ways to handle rooftop solar on multi-family buildings.
In rental properties, the building owner can own the array, and use the energy to power common areas, like hallways, a pool or gym. Owners can also allocate a portion of the energy savings to tenants, by charging an amenity fee or otherwise collecting some revenue themselves.
Alternately, the energy can all be sent back to the grid, in areas with viable net metering policies, and the compensation can be shared with tenants or among condo owners, often referred to as virtual net metering. Community solar offers a similar situation — where the solar isn’t onsite at all, but residents can subscribe to partake in savings.
Solar advocates, developers, lenders, and policymakers have all been working at state and federal levels to improve opportunities for virtual net metering and community solar.
These arrangements, however, can still be unattractive or impossible depending on state and utility policy. Community solar isn’t even legal in some states, and virtual net metering depends on utility participation.
The California law requiring solar on new multi-family construction up to three stories high exempts areas served by utilities that don’t offer virtual net metering.
SolShare avoids these challenges by sending electricity directly from the solar array to individual users, without involving utilities or the grid.
“You can do behind-the-meter with direct benefit to tenants,” said Bagewadi. “We’re physically pushing the electrons to multiple meters.”
Allume partners with solar installers and developers to help deploy rooftop solar on multi-family buildings, including by working with landlords to design financial structures that benefit both the building owner and tenants. In some cases, Allume acts as the solar developer itself.
With SolShare, a building owner or manager can allocate energy from a shared solar system, based on unit square footage, in equal amounts, or however they choose.
Where the technology is deployed in Australia and the UK, energy can be sent to different units on demand, Bagewadi explained. In the U.S., the rollout in Florida and Mississippi is being done with preset amounts that can be changed with 24 hours notice.
An Allume case study from a 64-unit Orlando apartment building with SolShare notes that a 392-kilowatt rooftop system resulted in savings of almost $100 per month for each unit, with electricity purchased from the grid reduced by almost 60%. While the idea is for residents to use solar behind the meter, excess solar can be sent to the grid. Adding an on-site battery to the mix lets residents use all the power on-site behind the meter, and makes solar power available when the grid is down.
Solar advocates hope the EPA’s $7 billion commitment to the federal equity-focused Solar for All program — separate from Illinois’s state program — will “further unlock multi-family solar,” in Bagewadi’s words.
Gudell said Elevate and other experts know there are many Illinoisans living in multi-family rental buildings that would qualify to have solar installed through Illinois Solar for All. They hope policy and technology evolve to match the available funding.
“We’ll need a solution that addresses the split incentive problem for rental situations, where the building owner cannot or will not subsidize solar for tenants; and the complexity of bringing solar to multiple electrical accounts at one building,” Gudell said.
“Adoption of a technology that allows for a single system to be split into shares, for use by multiple electrical account holders, could help in that it would simplify the design, permitting and installation process.”
GRID: A flood of new solar and battery capacity have kept Texas’ independent state power grid afloat as it sets a new record for peak demand, experts say, though some state lawmakers also credit a new conservation alert system. (Canary Media, KIII)
STORAGE:
SOLAR: A new report highlights Florida as a “solar powerhouse” in the Southeast, with more than 9,000 MW of capacity that’s expected to double by 2027. (WLRN)
OIL & GAS:
COAL: Federal attorneys argue that West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice’s coal companies shouldn’t have agreed to a settlement for unpaid mine safety fines if they can’t afford to pay. (WV Metro News)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
EFFICIENCY: Tennessee seeks more than $167 million in federal money for home energy rebates, but residents will likely have to wait until spring to begin applying. (Tennessee Lookout)
CLIMATE:
POLITICS: A young Democratic Florida Congress member uses his speech during the Democratic National Convention to spotlight the state’s exposure to climate change. (Florida Politics)
CLEAN ENERGY: The Department of Energy says clean energy jobs last year grew at twice the rate of other sectors, with unionization rates higher than in the broader energy industry. (Reuters)
CLIMATE:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: The Biden administration announces $521 million in grants for electric vehicle charging, and says the number of publicly available chargers has doubled since 2021. (Utility Dive)
GRID:
OIL & GAS:
UTILITIES: Illinois ratepayers have paid an extra $1.8 billion since 2015 by choosing alternative energy suppliers over traditional utilities like ComEd and Ameren, according to a consumer advocate’s analysis. (Daily Herald)
SOLAR: Opponents of a proposed 800 MW Ohio solar project may turn to the state Supreme Court to block the project after regulators denied repeated challenges. (WCMH)
COMMENTARY:
A pending youth climate lawsuit in Maine represents the latest iteration of legal strategies aimed at holding states accountable for emissions-cutting targets.
The case is one of a growing number responding to lagging progress on state climate laws that, in many cases, have now been on the books for years. What makes the Maine case unique is its targeted approach — focused on electric vehicle policy as a way to push the state forward on climate action.
The case, filed earlier this year by the nonprofits Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), Sierra Club and Maine Youth Action, argues that the Maine Department and Board of Environmental Protection have fallen short on their legal duty to pass rules that will help achieve Maine’s required emissions reductions.
“There are countless solutions for tackling these various sources of climate-warming pollution,” said CLF senior attorney Emily Green, who is based in Portland, Maine. “But you need something more to make sure that it’s all enough, that it all adds up, and that’s where enforceable standards come in.”
The Maine Attorney General’s office declined to comment, but has moved to dismiss the case. A ruling on next steps is now pending.
The case focuses on a 2019 state law that requires Maine to lower its greenhouse gas emissions 45% from 1990 levels by 2030 and 80% by 2050.
Statutes like this are “where the rubber meets the road,” said Columbia Law School professor Michael Gerrard, faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. “The regulations are the teeth, the specifics on who needs to do what.”
Such rules translate emissions goals into practical requirements for state executive agencies, processing legislative directive “into what polluters are required to do on a day-to-day basis,” said Jennifer Rushlow, an environmental law professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School.
Maine’s climate law said the state “shall adopt rules to ensure compliance” with the emissions targets, requiring those rules to prioritize reductions “by sectors that are the most significant sources.”
Transportation contributes more than half of Maine’s emissions, and Maine’s climate plan prioritized electric vehicle adoption as a result. But the state is a long way off from its EV targets. It has about 12,300 EVs on the road now, with climate plan goals of 41,000 by next year and 219,000 by 2030.
The CLF suit takes regulators to task for repeatedly failing to adopt California’s latest electric car and truck standards, which some states use as a more stringent alternative to federal rules.
Maine has used California’s Advanced Clean Cars I rule for years, but voted earlier this year against adopting Advanced Clean Cars II, which would have required increasing EV sales in the state over the next several years. It’s also chosen twice not to consider adopting the Advanced Clean Trucks rule.
CLF notes that the state’s climate law requires the adoption of rules that are “consistent with the climate action plan,” first released in 2020. A roadmap for meeting the plan’s transportation goals strongly recommended adopting Clean Cars II, calling it “the most important regulatory driver in the electrification of Maine’s light-duty vehicles in the next two decades.”
In its motion to dismiss the CLF case, the state argues that Maine’s climate law does not require regulators to adopt all climate plan recommendations, or particular ones, as rules.
The state has approved a handful of other rules under the climate law. Two focus on tracking emissions, and two others look at what Green called “narrow slices of the building sector,” the state’s second-largest emissions sector. These rules target hydrofluorocarbons and energy efficiency in appliances.
In their motion, attorneys for the state quote a Maine Supreme Court decision from a separate environmental case earlier this year to argue that it is “simply ‘too uncertain’ … whether future harms will occur that will ‘directly and continuously impact’ any of Plaintiffs’ members.”
CLF’s response lists a range of climate-linked harms that specific members of the plaintiff groups say they’ve already experienced, from increasing tick-borne illness and other health impacts to crop and flood damage.
“Climate change is here. Mainers are feeling the effects from a warming Gulf, from climate-driven storms,” Green said, adding that state lawmakers have repeatedly made similar statements in recent years. “Each day that passes with further inaction is a day wasted.”
The state also argues that the “shifting sands” of state and federal climate policies that could affect Maine’s targets create too much uncertainty around harms from a current lack of transportation rules.
In general, Gerrard said, such factors don’t negate the need for rulemaking. “We are way behind in reducing emissions, and so the fact that other things are happening isn’t going to solve the problem.”
Green said that while Maine has made strides on expanding EV charging infrastructure, for example, “the actual standards are necessary to give that transition the push it needs.”
“Binding rules can basically act as a backstop,” she said. “They can ensure the accountability that the investment and the rebates and the education and outreach, on their own, can’t do.”
The suit’s transportation focus is notable, experts said. “I would say the energy sector is targeted more frequently, and especially the fossil fuel sector,” Gerrard said. Other climate-adjacent transportation cases have focused on vehicle emissions standards, biofuel mandates or highway projects, he said.
Rushlow sees the Maine case as a blend of a 2016 suit, also from CLF, which found that Massachusetts wasn’t fulfilling its 2008 emissions-cutting law, and a suit against the Hawaii Department of Transportation, where a recent settlement will require the decarbonization of Hawaii’s transportation sector by 2045.
Rushlow worked with CLF on the Massachusetts case, but is not involved in the Maine suit and reviewed it after being asked to comment for this story. She said the Maine case lays out why having regulations on transportation emissions is “not just a wish” of the state climate council, but a legal requirement.
“The lawsuits that get really broad can get kind of lost to politics,” said Rushlow. “These lawsuits that are more narrow and focused on the language of particular state laws, I think, can stand a good chance.”
She said there are also more “hooks” to do this at the state level than federally. Gerrard agreed that it’s easier to bring cases under specific statutes than “a constitutional provision or a common law doctrine.”
Both the Hawaii case and the landmark Held v. Montana, which is now on appeal before that state’s Supreme Court, successfully took a state constitutional approach, using their legally given rights to a clean and healthful environment to push for climate progress.
Practical legal results aren’t the only positive impact these cases can have, Rushlow said: “There’s also outcomes in the zeitgeist and public opinion.” Though Juliana v. United States failed in court, she said, it “really drew a lot of attention to the future harm we’re causing our youth — and the current harm.”
But she sees increasing potential for success among a greater share of climate lawsuits just in the past few years, as plaintiffs learn more about how courts are likely to receive different approaches.
“It feels to me like progress is being made,” she said. “But the courts are never the first place you want to go when you’re looking for rapid, systemic change. They’re slow, they’re backward-looking, they’re conservative. And so it’s a challenging forum for the kind of change we need, and yet necessary.”
In Maine, climate groups initially tried a regulatory petition to push for the passage of Clean Cars II.
“When it became entirely evident that that was not going to happen, our hand was sort of forced,” Green said.
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: The Army Corps of Engineers will reassess the permit it awarded to Hyundai’s planned $7.6 billion electric vehicle and battery factory in Georgia because it says state and local agencies never mentioned the company’s plans to withdraw up to 6.6 million gallons per day from an underground aquifer used for drinking water. (Associated Press)
GRID:
SOLAR: Nonprofits plan to expand a solar cooperative in El Paso, Texas, even though higher inflation and interest rates dampened interest in the program this year. (El Paso Matters)
STORAGE:
OIL & GAS:
GEOTHERMAL: A Houston-based geothermal energy startup signs a deal to build a facility to eventually provide 150 MW to Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. (Houston Chronicle)
NUCLEAR: The director of a University of Kentucky energy center tells state lawmakers nuclear companies are increasingly considering building in the state, but construction of a new nuclear reactor won’t likely occur for at least a decade. (Kentucky Lantern)
CARBON CAPTURE: A Louisiana timber company sells carbon credits for unharvested trees on 100,000 acres, including more than $100 million worth of credits through the end of 2023. (WWNO)
CLIMATE:
COMMENTARY:
WIND: A NOAA Fisheries analysis says pile-driving work on the Vineyard Wind project is unlikely to pose a threat to whales or other marine life, but does expect some sea turtles will be vulnerable to vessel strikes. (State House News Service)
ALSO:
OIL & GAS:
GRID:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
UTILITIES: A hearing examiner’s report supports a Maine utility’s effort to avoid state regulatory review of its parent company’s acquisition by Iberdrola. (Portland Press Herald)
OVERSIGHT: Consumer and environmental groups push back on the New Hampshire PUC’s plan to introduce stricter requirements for groups or individuals to intervene in regulatory proceedings. (RTO Insider, subscription)
SOLAR: A Pennsylvania school board unanimously rejects a plan for a solar array on district property that would have brought in $200,000 a year in revenue. (Lancaster Online)
WASTE TO ENERGY: Neighbors push Connecticut regulators to hold a public hearing on plans to allow a waste-to-energy plant to burn medical waste. (WFSB)
EQUITY: Philadelphia is holding a series of neighborhood-level workshops as it plans a city-specific environmental justice mapping tool. (WHYY)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: More than a year after Tesla said it would open its Supercharger network to drivers of other electric vehicles, most chargers still remain inaccessible due to software delays and hardware shortages. (New York Times)
ALSO:
GEOTHERMAL:
OIL & GAS: Northeast states are leading the way in pursuing compensation from oil companies for economic damages from climate change. (Stateline)
GRID:
SOLAR:
CLIMATE: A study finds an increase in heat-related deaths between 2018 and 2023, with the vast majority of fatalities occurring in California, Arizona, Nevada and Texas. (Los Angeles Times)
GRID: Regional transmission experts say the buildup of energy-intensive data centers poses an “emerging risk” to grid reliability in the West. (OPB)
SOLAR:
CLEAN ENERGY: The U.S. Energy Department awards Arizona $1.7 million to fund commercial sector energy efficiency projects aimed at benefiting low-income and disadvantaged communities. (Solar Quarter)
STORAGE: A California startup raises $2 million to further develop a thermal energy storage system for industrial applications that uses bricks to convert electricity into heat. (Canary Media)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
ELECTRIFICATION: An Alaska city begins offering residents up to $500 to replace oil-based heating systems with electric heat pumps. (KTOO)
COAL: Data show 10 coal-fired generating units provide about one-third of Colorado’s power, but the facilities all are slated to close by 2031. (Colorado Sun)
OIL & GAS:
UTILITIES: Utah lawmakers raise concerns about the state’s largest utility’s proposed 36% rate hike. (Deseret News)
CLIMATE: A study finds an increase in heat-related deaths between 2018 and 2023, with the vast majority of fatalities occurring in California, Arizona, Nevada and Texas. (Los Angeles Times)
COMMENTARY: California energy analysts find undergrounding power lines is necessary to mitigate wildfire hazard in some areas, but urge utilities to use more cost-effective methods when possible. (Energy Institute at Haas)
CLEAN ENERGY: State policies could supercharge utility-scale clean energy deployment, but experts say too-rapid an expansion could strengthen opposition, and that local participation in the siting process is still key. (Utility Dive)
POLITICS:
GRID:
WIND:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Kentucky has attracted more than $11.5 billion in electric vehicle-related investments since 2020, but lagging vehicle sales and a partisan split over the industry create uncertainty about its future. (Louisville Courier-Journal)
COAL:
PIPELINES: Tribal leaders in northern Wisconsin continue their fight to shut down the Line 5 pipeline in the “Everglades of the North,” where they fear a spill would decimate areas for wild rice and fishing. (Inside Climate News)
SOLAR: A Swiss firm cancels plans to establish a solar cell manufacturing plant in Colorado, saying market distortions have rendered the project financially unviable. (Reuters)
EMISSIONS: North Carolina’s ratepayer advocate, Walmart, and other critics of Duke Energy’s initial decarbonization plan relent and endorse a settlement that includes construction of 9 GW of new natural gas plants and more solar. (Energy News Network)
COMMENTARY: A Harris campaign adviser calls for a “Clean Energy Marshall Plan” that would finance foreign investments in renewables and the creation of international clean energy supply chains and trade agreements. (Foreign Affairs)
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