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CLEAN ENERGY: A federal green bank aims to channel $500 million to more than 75 community financial institutions to fund solar arrays, renewable energy apprenticeships, electrified public transit, and more in rural areas, with priority for projects in Appalachia. (Grist)
OIL & GAS: Experts say the lack of communication to neighboring residents about a fire at a large Louisiana refinery is an example of the embedded culture of secrecy around chemical plants and refineries in “Cancer Alley.” (Guardian)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
PIPELINES: A panel of federal judges seems skeptical of a lawsuit by environmental groups to reverse regulators’ 2023 approval of two pipelines to supply a liquified natural gas terminal in Louisiana. (Courthouse News Service)
STORAGE: Texas ranks just behind California for development of grid-scale battery systems, with 4,832 MW deployed in total. (Reuters)
GRID:
HYDROGEN: A West Virginia economic development board approves a forgivable $10 million loan for a hydrogen project. (Charleston Gazette-Mail)
UTILITIES:
CLIMATE:
Correction: David Porter, vice president of electrification and sustainable energy strategy at EPRI, spoke generally about the challenges and opportunities of constructing data centers and coordinating with utilities. He did not speak specifically about the Southwest Virginia project.
Will Payne and Will Clear are all too aware of the skeptics.
But those doubters only fuel the duo’s vision for Southwest Virginia. The former Virginia state energy office bureaucrats turned private-sector consultants have an ambitious plan to repurpose land and backfill local taxes in communities left behind by the coal industry’s decline, and also pioneer new models for powering data centers with local clean energy.
Data Center Ridge is one piece of a nonprofit venture — Energy DELTA Lab — designed to transform 65,000 mostly contiguous acres of minelands where coal was king for decades into test sites that advance energy innovation. The project has the backing of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who announced an agreement last November establishing a framework for developing the land.
“If I had a dollar for every time somebody asked why we’re wasting our time on this, I wouldn’t have to work,” Clear, a former chief deputy director with the state Department of Energy. “This isn’t a pipedream. What people need to understand is how long a project like this takes.”
The first phase involves persuading tech companies to build solar-powered data centers on up to 2,000 acres of the now-defunct Bullitt Mine in Wise County. The facilities would be able to tap into underground mine water to help cool their servers. Eventually, they say, other energy sources such as wind turbines, pumped hydro storage, or small nuclear reactors could be added across the larger property.
“This is a big idea and we need someone who can share that vision,” said Payne, managing partner of Coalfield Strategies LLC. “We need developers who believe in ramped-up clean energy.”
Glenn Davis, director of the Virginia Department of Energy, said a couple of key factors are driving the state’s interest in the lab. Many data center companies are exclusively seeking sites where they can access 100% clean energy, and new clean power generation could cushion the grid impact from the state’s booming data center sector.
“Southwest Virginia was the energy capital of the East Coast and I believe it will be again,” Davis said in an interview. “There’s a power void that needs to be filled and solar is part of that.”
DELTA, shorthand for Discovery, Education, Learning & Technology Accelerator Lab, is just one enterprise Davis is tracking as he coordinates Youngkin’s all-of-the-above Energy Plan.
Last fall, Youngkin said the intent is to attract private and public dollars to flesh out a portfolio that also draws wind, hydrogen, large-scale batteries, pumped-storage hydropower and eventually, perhaps, small modular nuclear reactors when and if that nascent technology matures. Any carbon-cutting realized by lab energy projects wouldn’t count toward Virginia’s landmark Clean Economy Act because the faraway area is served by a Lexington-based power company, Kentucky Utilities. The VCEA requires only the state’s largest investor-owned generators — Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power — to achieve a carbon-free grid by 2045 and 2050, respectively.
That doesn’t bother Youngkin, Davis said.
“What’s driving the governor’s interest is jobs, businesses and an improved quality of life,” said Davis, appointed as an agency head in April 2023. “We’re excited because the opportunity for growth there is larger than any other in the state.”
Dallas-based Energy Transfer owns the acreage, roughly 101 square miles. The lab is coordinating site development with Wise County officials and the landowner. Some of the acreage is still being mined for metallurgical coal, the type used for steelmaking and other industries. However, much of the property, including inactive Bullitt Mine, is being reclaimed.
On paper, the dozen or so projects on the drawing board, including Data Center Ridge, could generate 1,600-plus jobs, add 1 GW of new power and induce $8.25 billion in private investments, Payne said. First, however, they have to move beyond the conversation stage.
Payne and Clear, DELTA’s chief advisers, are counting on their matchmaking skills to revive a region often depicted as down on its heels.
Clear grew up in Smyth County, east of Wise County. Payne recently moved to Washington County on the Virginia-Tennessee border. The Richmond native left a position as chief deputy at the state energy department in 2019 to direct InvestSWVA, an incubator invented to diversify the region’s economy and curb carbon emissions. Appalachian Grains was one of their previous energy-related joint ventures.
Tax revenues from data centers are the boost local governments need to fill the coal gap, they say.
“Plain and simple, public safety, education, health care, municipal services and other core government sources are at risk of falling off a cliff if we do nothing,” said Clear. “We’re trying to solve this crisis.”
Josh Levi, president of the Loudoun County-based Data Center Coalition, said Southwest Virginia shouldn’t be dismissed as too inaccessible or mountainous for data center development.
Recently, the burgeoning industry began expanding into off-the-beaten path “tertiary markets,” he said. For instance, he pointed to a deal Amazon Web Service announced this year to spend $10 billion on two data center complexes in Mississippi.
It was only a few years ago that the industry reached into secondary markets such as Columbus, Ohio, and San Antonio, Texas, after initially concentrating its investments primarily in Silicon Valley, New York-New Jersey, Dallas, Chicago, Northern Virginia, Atlanta and Phoenix.
In Virginia alone, there’s a southward shift as more data centers pop up around Fredericksburg and Richmond.
“What they’re doing is credible,” Levi said about Payne and Clear. “My understanding is that they have seen levels of interest from data center developers. Whether the opportunities they’re leveraging lines up with the business needs of data centers remains an open question.”
For instance, he said, Southwest Virginia might be the right fit for backing up federal data but less so for applications such as live-streaming video or trading stocks.
Loudoun County and surrounding Northern Virginia are home to almost 300 data centers, the biggest concentration of such campuses in the world. It’s the crossroads for roughly 70% of global internet traffic.
Prolific construction of the mega-buildings that make cloud computing possible — combined with the accompanying need for transmission lines for electricity and water for cooling — have caused an uproar among community activists alarmed about their impact on local infrastructure and the environment.
Such large-scale growth prompted a tongue-in-cheek comment from Democratic state Sen. Danica Roem about exporting data centers from Prince William, the county she represents, to Tazewell County, just east of the proposed Data Center Ridge.
In an interview with the Energy News Network, Roem said she would only support siting data centers in Southwest Virginia if the projects have widespread community buy-in, are powered with renewable energy and are built on reclaimed coal mines that don’t require clearcutting of forests, which serve as carbon dioxide sinks. Utility customers shouldn’t be saddled with paying for the expensive buildout of transmission infrastructure, she added.
“I don’t want to simply shift the problems we’re having here to Southwest Virginia and create problems for the residents there,” Roem said. “If they’re building data centers there, are they going to stop digging in my district?”
Roem has joined other legislators introducing bills aimed at reining in data center growth and controlling the resources the buildings require. For instance, compared to a typical office building, the U.S. Energy Department estimates one data center needs 50 times more electricity.
David Porter, vice president of electrification and sustainable energy strategy for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based Electric Power Research Institute, said there are numerous challenges and opportunities when it comes to coordinating data centers’ power needs with utilities.
“These data centers could be a really neat idea if they can work around a lot of potential hurdles,” Porter said. High on his checklist of potential limiting factors are access to a reliable electric grid connection, battery storage to fill gaps and “major league” fiber optic cable for communications.
He emphasized that even a modest number of data centers can’t rely on renewable energy 24/7. Backup power, typically provided by diesel-powered generators, is needed to keep the centers operating when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.
As well, he said, even larger data centers in the gigawatt range generate far fewer jobs than a manufacturing center.
Payne and Clear said they are far from naïve about the difficulty of solving grid and broadband issues, which they know will take years, not months, to remedy, and that the jobs will be impactful in a region where the average annual income is $42,000.
“In Southwest Virginia, we’ve seen plenty of manufacturers pick up and leave, and that wouldn’t be the case with wind turbines and data centers.”
Their models show that one 36 MW data center, considered to be a mid-size project, would generate about 50 jobs paying $134,300 a year. In an ideal scenario, the size of Data Center Ridge would eventually expand more than 25-fold to 1,000 MW.
DELTA Lab recently collaborated with a local industrial facilities authority to offer a financial incentive for data center developers, Clear noted. It translates to Wise, Lee, Scott and Dickenson counties and the city of Norton offering a tax rate on data center equipment of 24 cents per $100 of assessed value. By far, it’s the lowest such rate in the state.
“The more persuasive argument for data centers here is about sustainability for local governments and their citizens,” Clear said. “This creates a new trajectory for tax collections for the next 50 years.”
The sites they’re eyeing for data centers are atop an estimated 6 billion to 10 billion gallons of underground 55-degree mine water, which offers a less-costly method for cooling the hot air generated by hundreds of servers.
It’s not an aquifer. Over the years, rainwater has been filtered by the limestone and sandstone as it trickled through fissures and cracks and landed in cavities created as coal deposits were removed. The pools of water are as deep as 1,000 feet below the surface.
Four years before ushering in DELTA Lab, Payne and Clear had procured a state grant to study the water supply. Since then, they have been collaborating with engineers to devise a closed-loop water system that could chill the centers and eventually pump the water back underground to be reused after the Earth removes the heat it absorbed.
Drilling of test wells by a geotechnical company is scheduled to begin this fall. That exploration is funded by the federal government and managed by the U.S. Department of Energy.
In the meantime, a looming challenge is securing the flow of electricity to and from Data Center Ridge. Even if on-site solar arrays with backup battery storage are the initial power source, the project needs to have sufficient substations, transmission lines and other infrastructure to tie into the grid. That way, excess electricity can be shipped out and “imported” electrons can fill any deficits.
Payne and Clear are talking with Kentucky Utilities — which does business in Wise and four other Virginia counties as Old Dominion Power — about upgrading and adding infrastructure. That analysis is part of a larger effort spearheaded by county officials to meet long-term energy demand in Southwest Virginia.
One plus, Clear said, is that siting the buildout of substations and transmission lines will be less difficult on property with one landowner. However, he also knows investor-owned utilities often aren’t keen on asking ratepayers to fund infrastructure built to serve one distant customer.
Davis said his agency would likely pursue federal Energy Department money to construct transmission infrastructure.
Data Center Ridge has the potential to boost the utility’s renewable energy portfolio, which is 1% of a generation energy mix that is heavy on coal, 84%, and natural gas, 15%.
Although every component of their blueprint presents a separate set of obstacles, the entrepreneurs say outsiders’ perception of Appalachia is the chief hindrance.
“Even after making our case since 2019, dispelling myths about the region is our first challenge in getting developers down here,” Payne said. “They think everybody is on meth and lives in shanties.”
They persist to prove their doubters wrong.
“Everything is teed up here to be executed,” Clear said. “It’s getting that first domino to drop that’s really important.”
This article was originally published by the Michigan Advance.
More than a year after 5 Lakes Energy released a report detailing more than $7.8 billion in federal investments available to fuel Michigan’s transition to clean energy, the consulting firm is taking stock of the state’s energy economy following the passage of multiple laws based on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s climate plan.
In November, the Democratic-led Michigan Legislature voted through a host of policies including goals for transitioning the state to 100% clean energy by 2040 and increasing the state’s energy waster reduction standards and efforts intended to streamline the permitting process by allowing the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) to approve large scale renewable energy projects provided they meet state requirements.
“The future of our energy sector — and a significant part of our economy — lies in clean energy. This report highlights how investments in clean energy fuels robust job growth across the U.S. energy sector, with Michigan playing a key role,” state Sen. Sue Shink (D-Northfield Twp.) said in a statement.
“Our historic Clean Energy Future legislation has positioned Michigan as a national leader in the fight against climate change, reducing household utility cost and safeguarding our air, water and public health, while creating good-paying jobs for people. This report proves that prioritizing clean energy isn’t just good for the environment — it’s also a powerful boost for our economy and American workers,” said Shink, who was a lead sponsor of one of the bills in the clean energy package.
By examining the interactions between the Inflation Reduction Act and Michigan’s suite of clean energy legislation, the report estimates Michigan families will save an average of $297 a year on their energy bill by 2030 and $713 a year by 2040 compared to if these policies were not enacted, saving Michiganders more than was predicted in the previous report.
Additionally, Michigan will bring in $15.6 billion in investments from the Inflation Reduction Act by 2030 and $30.7 billion by 2040. The state will also shrink its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 65% over the next six years, down 88% by 2040.
Michigan is also projected to save $7.3 billion by 2030 in avoided public health costs — such as deaths, hospitalizations and lost school and work days — with savings across the state totaling $27.8 billion by 2040.
The report also broke down the economic impact of these policies on a more local level, breaking the state into 10 regions and examining the projected growth of jobs and the gross domestic product of those regions.
Alongside breaking down the economic impacts by region, the report also polled and interviewed 20 members of the Michigan Energy Innovation Business Council, a trade organization focused on supporting innovative energy technology.
In the survey, 75% of companies indicated they were hiring or understaffed, with 90% indicating they would need to hire or they would be understaffed in the next three years.
To further support Michigan’s clean energy, the report shares policy recommendations including additional state policies advancing the growth of clean energy and decarbonizing the state’s building and transportation sectors in line with Whitmer’s MI Healthy Climate Plan, continued investment into clean energy projects and monitoring and evaluation to ensure energy goals are met.
The report also advises lawmakers to enact a new policy on conducting cumulative impact assessments to determine the effects of retiring existing energy assets and building new projects, to ensure communities of color and low income communities and communities with a history of disinvestment can reap the benefits of clean energy.
Additionally, it recommends taking steps to reduce the amount households spend on their energy bills by ensuring that cost reductions for energy utilities translate into savings for customers.
In its final recommendation the report calls on the state to develop workforce training programs in support of the clean energy sector, placing a focus on ensuring opportunities for those transitioning away from traditional energy industries like those based in fossil fuels.
When it comes to transitioning from fossil fuels to clean energy, rural electric cooperatives often get stuck in neutral.
These small, member-owned utilities provide power to more than 40 million Americans in rural areas and suburbs that aren’t served by investor-owned or municipal utilities, according to the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. Many face unique financial, cultural and political barriers that have made it hard to move beyond coal and gas.
But for the past five years, environmentalists have been quietly working with co-op leaders to change that status quo, E&E News reports. A series of meetings between the two camps has helped many find common ground in the clean energy transition, like when Colorado environmentalists and Tri-State Generation and Transmission agreed that the coal-heavy co-op should seek federal funding to move past fossil fuels.
And now, that request is a success. Tri-State is one of 16 co-ops getting a piece of $7.3 billion from the Biden administration to help them purchase clean power or build it themselves. The Inflation Reduction Act funding is expected to unlock enough clean electricity to power an estimated 5 million rural households.
Another winning bidder comes from Ohio, where Buckeye Power will deploy renewables and energy storage as coal generation shuts down.
Read all the details about how a co-op/environmentalist collaboration turned into federal funding in this Energy News Network report from the archives.
🎓 Fossil fuels hit the books: A peer-reviewed study documents how oil and gas companies have “embedded” themselves at colleges and universities through donations, sponsored scholarships, and seats on governing boards, with researchers concluding academic integrity is “at risk.” (Floodlight, The Guardian)
☀️ Supercharging U.S. solar: The anticipated launch of Hanwha Qcells’ end-to-end solar factory in Georgia is expected to supercharge the U.S. solar supply chain, which has already quadrupled in the two years since the passage of a federal climate package. (Canary Media)
🔌 Politically charged: Unionized workers at an Ohio electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant lament the partisan divide over EVs, noting that the industry has helped preserve good-paying jobs. (Inside Climate News)
🏭 LNG fight continues: Gulf Coast residents and environmental groups turn to federal courts to try to block a wave of liquified natural gas export facilities they say haven’t been adequately vetted for their potential impacts on environmental justice, greenhouse gas emissions, fisheries and more. (Floodlight)
🛢️ Oil taps the climate law: Oil and gas producers plan to take advantage of a tax credit in the landmark federal climate package to inject carbon dioxide to squeeze more oil from the ground, but critics warn about a lack of federal oversight and uncertainty about the practice’s effectiveness. (E&E News)
🏠 Passive housing, aggressive efficiency: Some affordable housing developers embrace Passive House building standards that make homes highly energy-efficient with only slightly higher upfront costs. (Energy News Network)
🌬️ Wind’s PR nightmare: Vineyard Wind’s broken turbine blade, misinformation campaigns and a lack of forthrightness from offshore wind developers is causing a “public relations nightmare” for the industry. (Rhode Island Current)
🇺🇲 Plus, some politics
Solar customers and clean energy advocates are waiting to see if New Hampshire will continue its system for compensating customers who share excess power on the grid.
State regulators at a recent hearing seemed unconvinced about the policy’s benefits, despite support from utilities, customers, and hundreds of residents who submitted public comments on a proposed extension.
“This commission is highly skeptical of anything involving energy efficiency or clean energy, and focused almost solely on cost,” said Nick Krakoff, senior attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation in New Hampshire.
These compensation plans, generally referred to as net metering, are widely considered one of the most effective policies for encouraging more solar adoption. Recently, however, several states have changed or considered changing their programs, as utilities object that the policies are too costly and some politicians and policymakers push for more purely market-based approaches.
New Hampshire’s net metering rules haven’t been modified since they were established in 2017. The state’s public utilities commission opened a case to consider the question of whether and how to adjust the rules in September 2022. A year into the proceedings, the state’s major electric utilities — Eversource, Liberty Utilities, and Unitil — came out in support of continuing the existing system of net metering, despite the tendency of utilities nationwide to consistently push for lower net metering rates. The move was a welcome surprise for environmental advocates.
“If you don’t have a compensation rate that’s high enough, you’re not going to have customers that are going to want to invest in solar panels or other renewable energy,” Krakoff said.
In early August, a diverse coalition including the utilities, the Conservation Law Foundation, Clean Energy New Hampshire, Granite State Hydropower Association, Standard Power of America, and Walmart reached a settlement agreement about the future of the policy.
The agreement calls for the state to keep the current net metering structure in place for two years; at the end of two years, utilities would propose time-of-use rates for net metering, so the compensation rate more closely matches the real-time value of the power being sent into the grid. Also, any projects that join the net metering program during those two years will receive the same compensation for 20 years before transitioning into whatever new system is created by then (currently the compensation ends in 2040).
An influx of public comments has also reflected wide support for the tenets of the agreement. Nearly 450 comments were submitted since the beginning of the year, more than Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of Clean Energy New Hampshire, has ever seen in a public utilities case, he said. The vast majority urge the commission to maintain the current net metering system.
Peterborough resident Brian Stiefel was among those who filed comments. He and his wife installed 37 solar panels on their home in 2021, at a cost of $51,000. Though the solar doesn’t fully cover their electric bills, it provides $2,000 to $3,000 in savings per year, in large part due to net metering.
“A big part of the decision to do this was the fact that the state would approve us for net metering,” Stiefel said in an interview. “If that’s going to change it could have a significant financial impact on everybody who has panels and is set up with net metering.”
However, clean energy advocates say they have seen some signs in recent months that the commission might not be paying much attention to the benefits the system creates, while seeking out evidence that net metering creates a cost burden for consumers who aren’t part of the program.
“The concern is that the chair is looking for a cost shift and is going to do whatever it takes to find one,” Evans-Brown said.
Last spring, the commissioner requested a series of records in the case, several focused on gathering information about other states’ net metering programs — information that did not seem relevant to the decisions needed in New Hampshire, Evans-Brown said. The commission also requested, in a different docket, information about stranded cost recovery, which it then placed into the record on the net metering case as well, a move energy advocates interpreted as an attempt to focus on costs to the exclusion of benefits.
Then, in hearings on August 20 and 22, the commissioners asked questions that seemed focused on finding costs being passed on to consumers, even though there is simply no such evidence on the record, Krakoff said.
Advocates’ concerns are magnified by the commission’s history: In 2021, the commission drastically reduced funding for the state’s energy efficiency rebate and incentives. Though the utilities, consumer advocates, and environmental groups had come to an agreement to raise funding for the programs, the commission claimed that the program would burden consumers and that the state should focus on promoting market-based energy efficiency services.
Current commission chair Daniel Goldner was one of the commissioners who signed the energy efficiency decision. During his confirmation hearing earlier that year, Goldner expressed skepticism about climate science, and advocates raised concerns about his lack of experience in the energy field.
“They expressed strong skepticism of energy efficiency and actually gutted the program,” Krakoff said, comparing that case to the present-day net metering proceedings. “It’s very concerning.”
Now advocates, homeowners, and other stakeholders can only wait to see what the commission decides and when they decide it. An order could come by the end of the year, said Evans-Brown, or the commissioners could decide to push the matter well into the new year — there are no deadlines set on the process.
Should the commission in some way reject the settlement, there is still hope the legislature would take action to protect net metering. As part of the proceeding, state Sens. Kevin Avard, Howard Pearl, and David Watters submitted a letter explaining their belief that reducing net metering compensation would be against the goals of the legislature.
“It is the intent of the legislature to preserve a viable net metering program in the state of New Hampshire, and we will take action to do so if necessary,” they wrote.
Resolving the question through legislative action, however, would leave the matter open and undecided for even longer, making it harder to encourage solar development in the state, advocates noted.
“We were expecting this to be a challenging docket when this was first announced,” Evans-Brown said. “It’s frustrating, but not surprising.”
UTILITIES: The Biden administration awards rural electric cooperatives $9.7 billion in grants and loans to expedite the clean energy transition, with about $1.1 billion going to three Colorado coops. (Big Pivots)
ALSO: Arizona regulators approve a proposed high-voltage overhead power line through midtown Tucson following pushback from residents and city officials. (Arizona Daily Star)
SOLAR: The U.S. EPA awards the Hopi Tribe in Arizona $20 million to bring solar power to about 900 off-grid homes. (KNAU)
BUILDINGS: The U.S. Energy Department awards Colorado $20 million to help implement its building performance standards aimed at cutting large structures’ carbon emissions, with the funds targeting disadvantaged communities. (Canary Media)
CLIMATE:
OIL & GAS: Colorado regulators plug and reclaim 25 oil and gas wells in the western part of the state that were abandoned when the operating company went bankrupt. (Grand Junction Sentinel)
HYDROPOWER: The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in southwestern Colorado completes construction on an irrigation-integrated hydropower system that harnesses excess pressure in water pipes. (Hydro Review)
STORAGE: A fire breaks out in a grid-scale battery energy storage installation in a San Diego suburb as county officials consider banning new facilities until stricter fire safety restrictions are in place. (KUSI, Voice of San Diego)
WIND:
COMMENTARY: An economist argues that more federal just transition efforts should be directed toward oil and gas communities to help devise holistic economic development strategies. (The Conversation)
WIND: Federal officials give US Wind’s 2 GW offshore wind project off the Maryland and Delaware coastline its final approval, although local officials have previously threatened to sue if the project got this far. (Capital News Service, Maryland Matters)
RENEWABLE ENERGY:
SOLAR: Advocates say Pennsylvania’s largest-ever solar facility, the 220 MW Great Cove project, shows how renewable energy has a place in the fracking-heavy state. (E&E News, subscription)
EQUITY:
BUILDINGS:
GRID: A PJM Interconnection executive says the grid operator could propose an accelerated interconnection approval process for shovel-ready generation projects. (Utility Dive)
BATTERIES: A Burlington, Vermont, concert series this summer took its usual diesel generators out of service and replaced them with 1.3 MWh of battery electric generators. (news release)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: In Massachusetts, Eversource customers begin seeing a relatively new electric vehicle program fee delineated on their bills that was previously tucked into the general delivery charges. (WCVB)
COMMENTARY:
CLEAN ENERGY: President Biden today will announce $7.3 billion for rural energy cooperatives to build or purchase clean electricity, enough to power as much as 20% of the nation’s rural homes. (The Hill)
OIL & GAS:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
GRID:
WIND: Global warming could shift wind patterns, creating more potential for offshore wind power generation, new research shows. (The Guardian)
UTILITIES:
SOLAR:
CLEAN ENERGY: A national report identifies thousands of planned, under construction and recently completed clean energy projects that could be eligible for labor-related Inflation Reduction Act incentives, including more than 80 in Wisconsin. (WPR)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
WIND: Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory are developing wind turbines made from recyclable plant material that would avoid the need to send them to landfills. (New York Times)
GRID: A University of Minnesota professor says grid reliability measures like underground power lines, energy storage systems and climate resilience hubs are needed amid aging grid infrastructure and more extreme weather. (MPR)
CARBON CAPTURE: Western Michigan University receives a $5 million federal grant to advance research on commercial-scale carbon capture and storage. (WOOD-TV8)
BIOGAS: Michigan clean water advocates call on state regulators to deny a permit for a biogas production plant that an owner says is needed to remain profitable. (Michigan Advance)
EFFICIENCY: Kansas City, Missouri, receives a $9 million federal Inflation Reduction Act grant to improve energy efficiency in city buildings. (KCTV)
SOLAR:
BIOFUELS: Minnesota will award more than $3.3 million to gas stations to upgrade or replace gas infrastructure to support biofuels with higher levels of ethanol. (Center Square)
COMMENTARY: A Minnesota columnist says it would be easier and cheaper for taxpayers to phase out ethanol plants and grow less corn than building billions of dollars in carbon pipelines to bury emissions underground. (Star Tribune)
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)
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