Back
SOLAR: Korean solar company Qcells expands its deal with a developer to provide 2 GW of modules from its Georgia factory for community solar projects by 2027 — the largest community solar partnership in U.S. history. (Korea Herald, news release)
ALSO:
OIL & GAS:
WIND: Dominion Energy begins installing turbine foundations as it continues building its 176-turbine offshore wind farm near Virginia. (WHRO)
RENEWABLES: A California firm agrees to purchase stakes in a 250 MW solar farm, a 226 MW wind farm and a 350 MW wind farm, all located in Texas. (Renewables Now)
HYDROGEN: The oil and gas industry’s lawsuit against the U.S. EPA questioning the process of developing clean hydrogen as a fuel for long-haul trucks grinds against efforts by Exxon Mobil and Chevron to champion the new technology. (Houston Chronicle)
COAL: A federal watchdog releases a report finding an agency’s process for distributing funding to states and tribes to clean up old coal mines is plagued by problems that have resulted in delays, poor tracking and confusion over the process. (E&E News)
NUCLEAR: West Virginia U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito calls on state officials to ensure they’ve prepared sites for the construction of small modular nuclear reactors after her legislation heads to President Biden for his signature. (WV News)
BUILDINGS: A North Carolina developer constructs 11 new homes built to federal Zero Energy Ready Home standards that are priced for first-time homebuyers. (WSOC)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A Texas school district will purchase 15 electric buses with $6.1 million in federal funding. (KXAS)
GRID:
CLIMATE:
COMMENTARY: Louisiana should engage communities around ports and leverage federal funding to reduce toxic emissions, environmental injustice and the potential for lawsuits, writes an activist. (The Advocate)
SOLAR: Supporters say establishing a community solar program in Michigan would help accomplish a range of climate, justice and economic development goals, though legislation still faces utility opposition. (Planet Detroit)
WIND:
CLIMATE: After arriving at an Iowa news station full of optimism, a meteorologist’s climate-focused reports soon met backlash and threats that led him to quit after two years. (New York Times)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Detroit’s three automakers should focus on selling gas-powered trucks to fund research and development that could bring down the cost of electric vehicles, a banking analyst says. (Detroit News)
RENEWABLES: An Iowa conservative clean energy group works to promote renewable energy as public sentiment and NIMBYism challenge new projects. (Cedar Rapids Gazette)
EMISSIONS: A national biofuels trade group joins oil companies and refineries in challenging new federal tailpipe emissions rules that could threaten both sectors. (Iowa Capital Dispatch)
UTILITIES: Michigan’s attorney general pushes back on DTE Energy’s attempt to require customers without smart meters to report their outages in order to receive bill credits, as opposed to receiving them automatically. (WDIV)
GRID:
COMMENTARY:
WIND: An energy company opens a 184 MW wind project in Mississippi, bucking the Southeast’s resistance to onshore wind power to supply energy to Amazon for regional data centers and logistics hubs. (Canary Media)
GRID:
UTILITIES: Federal regulators collect public comment as they reconsider whether to approve a real-time market consisting of Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, the Southern Company and other Southeast power companies. (Utility Dive)
SOLAR:
RENEWABLES: A Virginia county approves stricter rules around wind and solar projects after public outcry against a 2022 wind farm proposal. (Galax Gazette, subscription)
PIPELINES: As the Mountain Valley Pipeline finally enters service, advocates and opponents shift their attention to its proposed spur into North Carolina, which Duke Energy says could supply its proposed natural gas-fired plant buildout. (WVTF, West Virginia Public Broadcasting)
COAL: Federal data shows four of West Virginia’s five coal-fired power plants produced less power in 2023 than any year since 2001. (West Virginia Public Broadcasting)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Hyundai announces the first vehicle it will produce this fall at its planned Georgia factory is its top-selling electric vehicle, the IONIQ 5. (Georgia Current)
NUCLEAR: West Virginia nuclear energy advocates hope a recently passed bill in the U.S. Senate will jumpstart the development of small nuclear reactors in the state. (WBOY)
OVERSIGHT: An Louisiana energy regulator announces he won’t seek reelection and will step down at the end of the year. (Louisiana Illuminator)
POLITICS: A new study finds large majorities of Louisianans support carbon capture, solar farms and offshore oil and gas drilling, regardless of their political affiliations. (Louisiana Illuminator)
COMMENTARY: A researcher finds Duke Energy overestimated the reliability of fossil fuels and the cost of renewables to justify its proposal to delay closing coal plants and build new gas plants in North Carolina, writes a staffer at a Southeast clean energy group. (Southern Alliance for Clean Energy)
CLEAN ENERGY: The world’s largest ever climate survey finds 54% of Americans want a quick transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, among the smallest majorities among counties polled. (The Guardian)
ALSO:
NUCLEAR: Congress overwhelmingly passes a bill to boost the development and building of advanced nuclear projects, marking a rare bipartisan energy win. (E&E News)
WIND: An energy company opens a 184 MW wind project in Mississippi, bucking the Southeast’s resistance to onshore wind power to supply energy to Amazon for regional data centers and logistics hubs. (Canary Media)
SOLAR:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
GRID:
HYDROPOWER: The Biden administration acknowledges that federally operated hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River have harmed salmon and the tribal nations reliant on them, bolstering efforts to decommission the facilities. (Associated Press)
PUBLIC LANDS: Wyoming and Utah file a lawsuit seeking to block the federal Bureau of Land Management’s new public land rule that puts conservation on a par with energy development, saying it threatens their resource-based economies. (WyoFile)
Have you had a conversation with ChatGPT, experimented with Google’s email-answering generator, or used an AI-enhanced search on Bing or Facebook? All those AI-enabled activities take a lot more data processing than a regular internet search or scroll. And more data processing means more data centers — and more electricity to power them. Analysts predict these facilities, which house servers that send and store tons of data, could account for as much as 9% of U.S. energy demand by 2030.
Virginia has earned the nickname of “Data Center Alley,” as it’s home to servers that see about 70% of global internet traffic, according to the Wall Street Journal. But as more devices connect to the internet and as AI drives up data demand, data center developers are looking for new places to locate these facilities.
With its cooler climate, abundant water, and relatively mild weather, the Midwest may serve that niche, the Energy News Network reports. And clean energy advocates say data centers could help juice renewable energy development; Microsoft, for example, has promised to build renewables in Wisconsin to help make up for the power its planned data centers will use. Former coal plants and industrial facilities also make good homes for data centers since they’re already connected to the power grid.
But data center proliferation across Virginia and the Southeast is also provides a cautionary tale for clean energy. Utilities across the region have announced plans to build new gas plants and keep coal plants open longer, often citing data centers’ energy needs as part of their reasoning.
Read more about the promise and perils of a Midwest data center boom at the Energy News Network.
💸 Where climate funding goes: More than three quarters of the Inflation Reduction Act’s $34 billion of announced investments have gone to congressional districts represented by Republicans who voted against it, an analysis finds. (CNN)
⚛️ Small nuclear fires up: The U.S. Energy Department announces $900 million for small nuclear reactor development, which along with a bipartisan federal bill to reduce fees and speed permitting could boost the industry. (E&E News, The Hill)
🚘 Benefits for EV buyers: U.S. electric vehicle buyers have received more than $1 billion in point-of-sale rebates since the Treasury Department launched the instant incentives in January, discounting an estimated quarter of the 600,000 EVs sold so far this year. (E&E News)
🌊 Whatever floats your solar panel: Covering around 10% of the world’s lakes and reservoirs with floating solar panels could generate enough electricity to power the United Kingdom four times over, and could be used to cover all power use in some small countries, scientists find. (Grist)
⏳ What’s the holdup? Supply chain and interconnection delays are stalling large renewable energy projects across the Midwest, despite new efforts in Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan to speed up permitting. (Inside Climate News)
🏠 Use ‘em or lose ‘em: Inflation Reduction Act funding for home energy rebates will likely remain mostly unspent until after the November election; Trump allies have indicated he would revamp the program and jeopardize the funding if he is elected. (E&E News)
🛣️ Lining up grid wins: An organization pushing to build transmission lines along highways recently scored a legislative win in Minnesota, and now looks to expand the policy to other states. (Canary Media)
🔋 FERC fills up: The U.S. Senate confirms three nominees to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, filling the five-member board as it prepares to guide the nation’s grid buildout. (E&E News)
🛢️ Ten years later: Federal regulators approve the long-delayed Mountain Valley Pipeline to enter service after a decade of regulatory, legal and on-the-ground battles. (Roanoke Times)
NUCLEAR: The U.S. Energy Department announces $900 million for small nuclear reactor development, with most of the funding going to teams planning to build a small reactor plant and multi-reactor project. (E&E News)
ALSO:
PIPELINES:
RENEWABLES:
STORAGE: Stanford University researchers say they’ve found a novel way to store electric energy in liquid fuels, a potential way to retain intermittent renewable energy for when it’s needed. (The Independent)
GRID: Federal energy regulators want four grid operators to prove their rules for transmission owners to pay for and profit from network upgrade rules are fair. (Utility Dive)
EMISSIONS:
ELECTRIFICATION: A California startup develops software aimed at helping people cost-effectively pair home electrification and rooftop solar. (Canary Media)
COAL: A federal rule takes effect requiring stricter limits for silica dust that’s contributed to a spike in black lung disease. (WLKY)
Southeastern Wisconsin and the Chicago area are emerging as major players in the national data center explosion, most notably with Microsoft’s $3.3 billion planned data complex near Racine, Wisconsin.
Clean energy advocates in the region say data centers pose both a risk and an opportunity, as they can put major stress on the grid, prolong the lives of coal plants and spark new natural gas plants, but also facilitate significant renewable energy investment. Wisconsin utility We Energies, for example, cited demand from data centers in its recent requests to the Public Service Commission for 1,300 MW of new gas generation. Microsoft, meanwhile, has promised to build renewables in the state while also likely creating demand for new or continued fossil fuel energy.
The organization Data Center Map shows more than a hundred data centers in the Chicago area and a handful in Southeastern Wisconsin, often located on the site of former coal plants or industrial operations. A data center is underway on the site of the shuttered State Line coal plant just across the border from Chicago in Indiana. The data center developer T5 recently announced plans for four to six data centers totaling 480 MW of capacity and costing as much as $6 billion in the Illinois town of Grayslake near the Wisconsin border, adding to data centers it already runs in the region.
Virginia has long been known as “Data Center Alley,” with about 70% of global internet traffic passing through its servers, according to the Wall Street Journal. Dominion Energy said that because of data centers, its electricity demand in Virginia could quadruple and represent 40% of total demand in the state over the next 15 years. Georgia and Tennessee have also seen much data center construction and speculation. Utilities like TVA, Duke and Dominion have announced plans to build more gas plants and keep coal plants open longer in that region, along with building renewables.
Meanwhile, some experts say the Great Lakes region is an increasingly promising spot for data centers because of its cooler climate that reduces energy demand and the availability of water.
“There is no better place” for data centers than the Upper Midwest, said Josh Riedy, who helped design North Dakota’s first tier-three data center, referring to a data center with high reliability — on a scale of one to four tiers — that includes multiple power sources. Riedy also founded Thread, a grid maintenance software company that he’s marketing as especially helpful to serve data center demand.
“The Upper Midwest can export data around the globe,” Riedy said. We’re starting to see the tide turn, it’s just natural.”
Projections abound regarding the way data centers — including those processing cryptocurrency and running AI applications — will increase energy demand nationally and end an era of stagnant load growth.
Last year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission predicted 4.7% load growth over the next five years, up from 2.6% previously estimated for five-year growth. Data centers “supercharged by the rise of artificial intelligence” will require between 9 and 13 more GW of electricity over the next five years, according to seven case studies analyzed in a December 2023 report by the Clean Grid Initiative, which does not include data center estimates for MISO or CAISO (California) regional transmission organizations. A McKinsey & Company report predicted 35 GW of total demand from data centers by 2030.
Load growth sparked by data centers comes on top of a shift from fossil fuels to electric heating, cooling and transportation. A 2022 report commissioned by Clean Wisconsin and RENEW Wisconsin found load growth could increase to 166% of 2022 levels with building and vehicle electrification needed to meet the state’s goals of net-zero emissions by 2050.
“Everything from data centers to manufacturing to AI to cryptocurrency,” said Sam Dunaiski, executive director of RENEW Wisconsin. “These all could be triggers for new load, and it all could be coming to Wisconsin, though it’s not unique to Wisconsin. Things like solar and battery manufacturing are coming online that ironically need new load growth too. We think the best way to meet that new load both environmentally and economically is through renewables and transmission to go along with it. This is a great opportunity for a low-cost renewable energy boom in the state.”
Along with the generation demand, Riedy noted, come needs for grid updates and resiliency, which can ultimately help the grid as a whole.
“If you’ve built and designed a data center, you know the nature of them is in many ways fundamentally different than most energized structures,” Riedy said. “Walmart, for example, is going to consume power, but it will have peaks, and constant power is important but not in the way it is to a data center. With crypto mining or AI model training, you see machines running at near peak performance around the clock. That’s producing a type of strain on the grid that has few comparisons.”
Microsoft’s energy plans — like many details about the massive data project — are not yet clear, and the company’s ambitious climate goals give advocates hope that the company will finance much new renewable generation either on-site or through power purchase agreements. The company has announced it will build a 250 MW solar array in Wisconsin.
But Microsoft will likely also purchase power from We Energies, fueling advocates’ worries about new natural gas generation and rate increases for regular customers.
The data center will be located on the sprawling site between Milwaukee and Chicago that was previously slated for an enormous LCD screen factory by the company Foxconn. That plan was repeatedly scaled back and then scrapped in the face of economic issues and local opposition.
Citizens Utility Board executive director Tom Content noted that “under state law passed for Foxconn, Microsoft is eligible for discounted market-based electricity rates. They would pay basically for the transmission and distribution, but a portion of their rates would just be set at wholesale market rate,” rather than the retail amount customers usually pay.
In February, a subsidiary of We Energies filed a plan with the Wisconsin Public Service Commission for an estimated $304 million in grid upgrades related to the Microsoft project. Public auditors filed a letter with the commission noting exemptions that allow less oversight because the project is in a special technology zone.
The Microsoft plan was touted by President Joe Biden as an example of reinvigorated Midwestern investment, but it has faced concerns about its energy and water use. Meanwhile Microsoft has faced setbacks globally in reaching its climate goals, in part because of the massive energy demand of artificial intelligence applications.
Advocates said utilities may use data centers to justify more investment that earns them a rate of return, even when it is not necessarily needed.
“We are concerned that there could be an overinflation of expected demand in order to capitalize on this trend and build more gas as a last-ditch effort,” said Ciaran Gallagher, energy and air manager for Clean Wisconsin.
“There’s a little bit of a sky-is-falling scenario here,” Dunaiski agreed. “In the early 2000s we saw this with load growth [projections] particularly around the internet. People thought the internet would cause our electricity generation needs to explode. They increased, but there were improvements that came with it — infrastructure getting more efficient, and software.”
That precedent raises questions about the rush to build out gas power to accommodate projected demand.
“Gas isn’t coal, but we shouldn’t be striving for the second worst option, for the environment or for our pocket books,” Dunaiski continued. “If we build these gas plants, customers will be paying for them for the next 20, 30 years.”
Gallagher noted that the EPA’s new rules for gas plants make new gas investments even more questionable.
“All the gas plants proposed in Wisconsin and across the country in relation to this demand from data centers will have to comply with these standards, and by 2032 either run not very often or reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% through carbon capture and sequestration or low-carbon hydrogen,” Gallagher said. “That prompts the question: Is it worth the price tag to build these gas plants that could become stranded assets or have to spend additional money to comply with these rules?”
Using existing renewables or zero-emissions nuclear energy to power data centers can impact customers too. Content noted that this strategy “accomplishes the decarbonization goals for the tech companies and the reliability needs for the data center. But then you’re taking the fully depreciated, mostly paid-off asset on utilities’ books and having it serve one or two customers, and then the utilities will have to backfill that with a combination of natural gas, solar, storage, wind or future nuclear to serve the rest of the customers.”
“It’s on everybody’s mind how we’re going to tackle this in a way that ensures we don’t say no to economic development, but don’t make energy costs unaffordable,” said Content, noting that data centers have been a major topic of discussion among the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates – including at the organization’s conference in Madison in June.
“Different states are trying different approaches,” Content said. “There’s talk of changing the way utility costs are divided up — currently among residential, industrial and commercial — and dividing it up four ways, with data centers becoming their own entity. Tech companies are pouring a lot of money into the development of these things. They have the wherewithal to contribute mightily to these projects.”
Gallagher emphasized that renewable advocates are not opposed to data centers.
“We think data centers and the economic development that they can bring are not at odds with environmental protection and climate mitigation,” she said. “This can be a low-carbon industry but only if new additional renewables are built to supply all or most of their demands. We think that’s viable if renewables are cost-competitive with gas, and pairing renewables with storage can provide the type of reliability these data centers need.”
Riedy sees renewables and gas as a necessary mix to fuel data centers. While renewables’ intermittency might be seen as a barrier, he said renewables actually could have a unique role to play in energizing data centers – especially in the Midwest.
“In the heat of the day you’re delivering, so having alternate [energy] sources to peak-shave and normalize the cost of energizing that equipment is very important,” Riedy said. “It’s leading to a change in thinking around where to place data centers, that speaks to Wisconsin, the Dakotas.
“The old way of doing things was generate power in one place, and transmit it for thousands of miles. What data centers are understanding with their insatiable and constant need for power is they are more logically placed by power generation so you can buy that off-peak power, to maintain that load consistently. Since solar and wind overproduce [at certain times], if you can harness that imbalance it’s somewhat of a win-win.”
SOLAR: New Hampshire’s legislature fails to pass a bill to allow community power programs to use up to 5 MW of local solar projects after a state energy official writes that the measure “needs more thorough vetting.” (NHPR)
ALSO:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
PIPELINES: A federal circuit court denies the argument of an environmental group that federal energy regulators didn’t appropriately account for emissions or New York law when they approved a pipeline expansion project in that state and Pennsylvania. (Bloomberg Law, subscription)
GAS: A top Massachusetts lawmaker prepares a bill that would require consideration of less costly or polluting alternatives before authorization of new gas service extensions. (Boston Herald)
GRID:
POLICY:
TRANSIT:
CARBON CAPTURE: A Portland ocean carbon removal startup shuts down and lays off its employees, with its chief executive saying the voluntary carbon credits market had shrunk too much in recent months for the firm to stay afloat. (Portland Press Herald)
BATTERIES: New Hampshire legislators send a bill to the governor’s desk that would ban lithium-ion batteries from being disposed in regular trash to cut down on landfill fires. (New Hampshire Bulletin)
WIND: The first American-built offshore wind service operations vessel is unveiled in Providence, Rhode Island, to work on the nearby Revolution wind project. (WPRI)
CLEAN ENERGY: More than three quarters of the Inflation Reduction Act’s $34 billion of announced investments have gone to congressional districts represented by Republicans who voted against it, an analysis finds. (CNN)
ALSO: South Korean companies have invested in electric vehicle, solar panel and battery factories in Georgia that will employ the equivalent of small towns, and officials from both the U.S. and Korea are pushing for further collaboration. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, subscription)
OIL & GAS:
FINANCE:
OVERSIGHT: Industry groups and clean energy advocates cheer the appointments of three new members to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that give the five-member body a full quorum. (States Newsroom)
GRID:
PIPELINES:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Electric construction vehicles are slowly catching on, but charging limitations, short battery lives, and other challenges still make them impractical for bigger jobs. (Washington Post)
CARBON CAPTURE: North Dakota landowners unwilling to lease property for carbon storage raise concerns about health hazards, a lack of economic benefit and unfair treatment from the project developer. (North Dakota Monitor)
It’s become a biannual tradition.
Since 2021, when North Carolina adopted a law requiring Duke Energy to zero out its carbon pollution, advocates have spent every other year poring over the company’s plans for supplying this state of 11 million with clean electricity.
As of late last month, the first phase of the new ritual is now complete: citizens turned out by the hundreds to public hearings around the state and submitted written comments; and dozens of organizations, businesses, and large customers filed testimony to the state’s Utilities Commission, charged with approving or amending Duke’s plan by year’s end.
A review of these comments shows clear dissatisfaction with Duke’s plan, which critics say is too reliant on gas and unproven technologies and too dismissive of resources like solar and battery storage.
But there are also a few powerful institutions pulling in the opposite direction. And their voices could grow louder in the coming months, as the state enters the next phase of in-person, expert witness hearings.
The law requires Duke to cut its carbon pollution by 70% by 2030 and at least 95% by midcentury, in line with scientists’ recommendations for avoiding catastrophic global warming. The statute directs regulators on the Utilities Commission to develop a plan to make that happen and to update the blueprint every two years.
Even as the popular, bipartisan measure moved through the legislative process, some critics worried it gave too much deference to Duke and did not make clear that regulators — not the utility — would chart the state’s path to a decarbonized electricity sector.
Still, after Duke in 2022 issued its first Carbon Plan proposal — a document covering hundreds of pages and including four different pathways for achieving net zero — a host of outside stakeholders put forward their own plans for the commission to mull, hoping the panel would pick and choose from them or even craft its own blueprint.
But in the end, after months upon months of expert hearings, public input, and thousands of pages of written testimony, the commission adopted Duke’s plan with few edits.
This first Carbon Plan order was largely nonbinding. But after regulators sided with Duke on virtually every major issue — from how much the company should drive energy efficiency to how much solar it can connect annually to the grid — advocates this year are taking a slightly different tack.
Rather than devise their own painstaking models to compete with Duke and its army of lawyers, engineers, and other experts, this time most organizations are starting with the company’s portfolios and critiquing key elements.
As in the lead up to the first Carbon Plan, this year Duke has proposed multiple routes to zero carbon by midcentury, with one clear preference. Offered in January after predicting a steep rise in electricity demand, that pathway is to add over 22 gigawatts of renewable energy and battery storage in the next decade, including from ocean-based wind turbines.
In the same time frame, the company wants to shutter most of its coal plants and add nearly 9 gigawatts of new gas plants, nearly three times the immediate build-out it proffered two years ago and one of the largest such proposals in the country. It also envisions two small nuclear plants of 300 megawatts each, about a seventh the size of the state’s largest nuclear plant outside Charlotte.
The company seeks to exploit exceptions in the state’s law to achieve a 70% cut in carbon emissions by 2035 instead of 2030. And while its plans to zero out its pollution are vague, they rest partially on building more nuclear reactors by 2050 and fueling any remaining gas plants with hydrogen – a technology still under development.
Still, Duke’s focus is on the immediate term. In its January filing, it sought support for “pursuing near-term actions that align with [its preferred pathway] as the most reasonable, least cost, least risk plan to reliably transition the system and prudently plan for the needs of…customers at this time.”
Numerous commenters questioned that assertion, including the company’s premise that ratcheting down emissions more slowly than the law prescribes presents a “lower execution risk.”
Perhaps most notably, the Clean Energy Buyers Association, a group of 400 major corporations from a range of sectors with their own sustainability targets, argued forcefully against delaying the 2030 target.
“The ability of [our] members that are Duke customers to meet their clean energy commitments depends in large part on how clean Duke’s resource mix is,” the association’s Kyle Davis said in written testimony. He went on to say regulators should “only” approve a near-term plan that would allow Duke to cut its pollution 70% by decade’s end.
Similarly, a group of local government Duke customers with climate goals, including major cities Raleigh and Greensboro and small college towns Boone and Davidson, noted that Duke’s energy mix would dictate whether they could meet their aims.
“Due to the urgency of the climate crisis and the implications to the health and well-being of the constituents we serve,” the cities and counties wrote, “it is imperative that the 2030 target be met in the timelines specified in [the law.]”
Testifying for the office of the Attorney General Josh Stein, expert witness Edward Burgess noted that the commission has not yet abandoned the 2030 deadline and that, according to the law, the 70% cut could only slip past 2032 under “very specific conditions” that have not been met.
Regulators haven’t authorized a nuclear or wind project that has been delayed beyond Duke’s control, he asserted, and a delay wasn’t necessary to maintain the “adequacy and reliability of the existing grid.”
Recognizing Duke’s latest increased demand projections, Burgess urged commissioners to “set a clear directive for Duke to achieve the Interim Target by no later than 2032.” Otherwise, said the witness for the attorney general, the public interest would be harmed by the “increase [in] the cumulative tons of CO2 emitted, which would remain in the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years.”
The process by which Duke maps its generation plans over the next decade is complex and time intensive. But it’s aided by a computer modeling program that weighs various factors including costs to produce an optimal generation mix.
This method produces more solar and battery storage each year than Duke thinks is possible or appropriate to connect to the grid, so the company imposes manual limits on the computer program. Critics call that step unnecessary and damaging to the project of curbing carbon emissions in a least-cost manner.
“Solar [photovoltaic] is the cheapest source of carbon-free electrons on the grid now and for the foreseeable future,” testified expert witness John Michael Hagerty on behalf of the Carolinas Clean Energy Business Association. “All things being equal, the more generation… that Duke can get from solar PV instead of other resources, the cheaper it will be for Duke to comply with carbon reduction targets.”
Michael Goggin, an expert witness for the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association and clean energy groups represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center, analyzed other grid operators around the country and estimated that Duke could connect around 4 gigawatts of solar and storage annually, compared to the upper limit of 2.8 gigawatts suggested by the utility.
“Duke’s arbitrary limits on solar and battery interconnection should be greatly increased if not eliminated,” Goggin wrote. “These limits do not reflect reality, and there are many potential solutions to the interconnection challenges Duke claims in its attempt to justify these limits.”
While numerous commenters were happy to see Duke move much more ambitiously toward offshore wind than it did two years ago, they noted the utility’s projected 2.4 gigawatts — enough to power about a million homes — fell significantly short of the near-term potential in ocean wind areas off the state’s coast.
“The Carolina Long Bay projects have the potential to reach more than 2 gigawatts, and the Kitty Hawk Projects have the potential to reach nearly 3.5 gigawatts,” two employees of wind company Avangrid testified. “Therefore, there is additional offshore wind resource beyond the Preferred Portfolio request available to North Carolina.”
The state’s Department of Commerce has taken a keen interest in offshore wind because of its vast potential for economic development. Jennifer Mundt, an assistant secretary at the Department, implored regulators and Duke to “set a path forward… that directs the deployment of at least 6.0 gigawatts of offshore wind by the mid-2030s.”
Such development is achievable with the Carolina Long Bay and Kitty Hawk areas, she said, and “will unlock billions in capital expenditures and tens of thousands of good-paying jobs for North Carolinians, and boost Duke towards its mandate to achieve carbon neutrality by mid-century – a true win-win-win scenario.”
A pair of experts testifying for the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association noted that Duke would benefit from being a “second mover” on offshore wind in the United States: it could learn from the many other projects underway on the Eastern seaboard without putting ratepayers at risk.
In contrast, John O’Brien and Philip Moor warned that for small modular nuclear reactors, “it is unclear when the Companies will be a second mover… the only approved project design…has been cancelled, and the closest designs… are under development by TerraPower and the Tennessee Valley Authority.”
Indeed, while most clean energy advocates believe large, existing, emissions-free nuclear power plants can play a vital role in curbing carbon pollution, several say Duke’s near-term pursuit of as-yet unproven small modular reactors over more readily available alternatives is a mistake.
“Given the long lead-times, nuclear experts have found that [small modular reactors] will do nothing to address climate change, as the technology is too little, too late,” Grant Smith, senior energy policy advisor with Environmental Working Group, testified on behalf of his group, Durham nonprofit NC WARN, and others.
Numerous stakeholders criticized Duke’s plan to build 10 new gas plants in the next decade, half of which would be large baseload plants forced by new federal rules to run 40% of the time or less. Not only would Duke customers be on the hook for these underutilized plants, critics argued, they’d also be subject to erratic fuel prices.
“In North Carolina, this volatility was at the heart of hundreds of millions of dollars of recent fuel cost increases approved by the commission,” expert witness Evan Hansen testified on behalf of Appalachian Voices. “The Companies’ proposed aggressive build-out of natural gas-fired power plants will only increase their exposure, and their ratepayers’ exposure, to the future volatility of natural gas prices.”
The company’s strategy of converting gas plants to run on hydrogen molecules separated from other compounds as late as 2049 also strains credulity for some.
“Duke’s general plan to build new natural gas-firing facilities and then transition those facilities to 100% hydrogen-firing faces significant technical uncertainty, infrastructure hurdles and costs,” testified William McAleb for the Environmental Defense Fund. The plants, he said, “are not necessary to maintain grid reliability, may never be co-fired with hydrogen, and will likely raise rates.”
The Clean Energy Buyers Association also suggested that Duke’s plan to supply its members with gas-fired electricity could backfire, causing the state to lose economic development projects and the utility to lose new customers.
“Some of the new load that Duke is forecasting may not materialize if Duke increases the carbon intensity of its resource mix as it has proposed to do in this docket, since some of the customers bringing new load… have clean energy targets,” the association’s Davis wrote.
If that happens, he said, “and Duke overbuilds with fossil fuel capacity, it would result in higher costs for existing customers and make it more difficult for existing customers to meet their sustainability targets.”
Amid all this criticism, support for Duke’s approach stood out, especially where the timeline is concerned.
Testifying for the Carolina Industrial Group for Fair Industrial Rates, a powerful consortium of manufacturers and other large Duke customers, Brian Collins asserted, “there is increased cost and risk in reliably meeting the interim 70% target by 2030. As a result, I recommend that the Commission not require Duke to meet the 70% emission reductions target by 2030.”
Public Staff, the state-sanctioned ratepayer advocate, believes that compliance with the interim pollution cut is possible by 2034 but not before. And the state’s 26 electric cooperatives, which buy electricity wholesale from Duke, expressed some concern about the speed of transmission upgrades necessary to add renewable energy to the grid fast enough.
A technical conference is scheduled for next week in Raleigh, and what is likely to be weeks of expert-witness hearings begin July 22.
.svg)
