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POLICY: New York’s comptroller releases an audit finding that the state energy siting office is too slow at approving big wind and solar developments and that permit applications often had missing or insufficient paperwork. (LoHud, Spectrum News 1)
ALSO:
OFFSHORE WIND:
GRID: Pennsylvania environmentalists cheer the end of plans to develop a major plastics chemical recycling plant in a cornfield, following their concerns it would be an energy-hungry and highly polluting facility. (Inside Climate News)
SOLAR:
UTILITIES: Pennsylvania utility commissioners unanimously vote to investigate a rate hike request from FirstEnergy equal to 34%. (Butler Eagle)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
COMMENTARY: A pediatric physical therapist and climate advocate writes that electrifying NJ Transit without regressive fare hikes is necessary to improve public health and air quality. (Star-Ledger)
Editor’s note: The following story has been updated to include responses from the Eastern Illini Electric Cooperative that were inadvertently overlooked prior to original publication.
An Illinois bill that started as a protection for solar-powered doorbells has developed into comprehensive proposed legislation to break down the barriers confronting rural electric cooperative members seeking to install solar.
Many residents and solar developers say the measure is sorely needed, since electric cooperative members often face arbitrary and changing interconnection, compensation and liability policies from the cooperatives.
Illinois HB5315, called a “Solar Bill of Rights” and introduced Feb. 29, would require the state’s more than 50 cooperatives and municipal utilities to allow net metering until a certain threshold of solar penetration is met, and develop “shared policy” on solar that must be approved by the Illinois Commerce Commission.
The bill would prohibit problematic requirements often reported by electric cooperative members, including complicated insurance requirements, lengthy interconnection processes and restrictions on system size, solar leases and power purchase agreements. People with solar would also continue under the same billing terms for 25 years after installing systems.
“Customers of municipal electric utility systems and rural electric cooperatives often do not have the same opportunities as customers of investor-owned utilities” to get solar, says the bill.
Scott Allen, renewable energy policy coordinator for the Citizens Utility Board, said the organization tends to get more calls about solar problems from electric cooperative members than customers of the two investor-owned-utilities that serve the majority of the state’s population.
“Members aren’t satisfied with their rates of compensation, the cost of engineering studies, and the fact that policies can change with little or no notice,” Allen said. “Many people invest in solar, and sign net metering agreements with a pretty good idea of how long it will take to recover their costs, then the policy changes, and their financial outlook changes dramatically. Members don’t have a clear understanding of how, or to whom they address their concerns. Often, the rules about addressing the [electric cooperative] board are unclear, and in some cases, it can take months to get a few minutes on the agenda.”
Mike Wilson, vice president of member and community relations for Eastern Illini Electric Cooperative, said the utility has heard concerns about difficulties installing solar at its board meetings, and in one recent such case, “the board listened intently to the concerns expressed and engaged in discussion with the member to address them.”
The 2021 Climate & Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA) required electric cooperatives to interconnect rooftop solar installations, but the cooperatives still institute size limits, requirements for expensive liability insurance and other barriers, critics say.
Electric cooperatives and municipal utilities are not regulated by the Illinois Commerce Commission in the same way it oversees investor-owned utilities ComEd and Ameren. The cooperatives were started as ways for rural residents to run their own electric systems democratically. But critics say the boards that administer the cooperatives often lack meaningful public input procedures, and have not made adequate efforts to embrace the clean energy economy. Proponents of cooperatives and municipal utilities meanwhile note that they offer citizens more direct control, at least theoretically, than investor-owned utilities, without a profit motive.
“Ultimately, we have concerns about any legislation that removes local governance from cooperatives, since that is one of our core principles,” Wilson said.
Allen emphasized the bill “is not about removing local control from any units of local government, it’s about making sure consumers are protected.”
“We’re trying to adopt a universal or semi universal standard for everybody across the state, where we have 30-plus municipal utilities, 25-26 distribution cooperatives, and they each have different policies, different ways they compensate their customers, and these policies can change whenever the board or city council wants to make that change,” he said. “It’s caused a lot of problems for individuals who got their system sized and financed based on one set of information, and the next year that information changes.”
The Association of Illinois Electric Cooperatives did not respond to requests for comment. Especially given potential pushback from electric cooperative interests, the bill may be unlikely to pass during the legislative session that ends May 24, in which case it would likely be reintroduced next year.
After Meredith Barnes and her husband purchased a home and started a lavender farm in central Illinois, they hoped to install solar. The Eastern Illini Electric Cooperative closed its net metering program in July 2020 after solar reached 5% of its load, with 430 households out of about 13,500 having solar.
“EIEC has developed local policies that seek to balance our ability to provide safe electric service that equitably recovers fixed costs, while also maintaining grid reliability and ensuring fairness to all members when providing credit for excess renewable generation,” Wilson said.
Barnes and her husband — who installed their array last year — receive only a low flat rate known as “excess electricity value” for power they send back to the grid.
Barnes noted that the flat rate is set annually, so households with solar don’t benefit if electricity prices rise, theoretically making solar more valuable. And the rate is much lower than the retail rate that cooperative members with net metering would get.
The bill would allow cooperatives to cap net metering at a set threshold, but the Illinois Commerce Commission would approve a “fair value of solar” that cooperatives and municipal utilities would be expected to offer through other billing structures.
“The equitable value of solar is definitely not what they’re paying us,” Barnes said. “They say [the flat rate] will go up, but when? There should be a minimum standard [paid for solar] across the state.”
Barnes said she’s had difficulty communicating with cooperative board members and understanding how the flat rate is set. Such lack of transparency is a common complaint among electric cooperatives, consumer and solar advocates say.
“The flat rate is very muddy. It’s just weird,” Barnes said. “The cooperative doesn’t like when you try to talk to them about it.”
Barnes tries to use as much of the electricity from her array as possible. “Since I have a farm and work from home, I can do laundry during the day, I can run the dishwasher during the day,” she said. “For someone who works at an office from 8 to 5, that’s not possible.”
Buying a battery to store their own energy was too expensive, she added.
“What we did is bought an electric vehicle and we only charge it when it’s sunny. It’s like our battery, I’m not sending as much back to the grid because I’m going to store it in my vehicle.”
The Solar Bill of Rights legislation does not address net metering or other policies for the state’s two investor-owned utilities, ComEd and Ameren, whose rates are determined in proceedings before the Illinois Commerce Commission. These utilities will end net metering in 2025, replacing it with a rebate for solar systems.
“We don’t want to compare investor-owned utilities to cooperatives,” said Allen. “There is an argument to be made that Ameren and ComEd have quite a bit more solar installed in their territories, they’ve kind of reached a decent threshold, whereas municipal utilities and cooperatives are lagging behind.”
When state Rep. Daniel Didech (D-59) and supporters began drafting the bill, it was meant to make sure that municipalities and counties couldn’t ban small solar collectors on the fronts of homes meant to power smart doorbells or other appliances. That language, still in the bill, expanded to ensure that these government bodies can’t ban solar arrays more generally. (The bill does not apply to shared roofs or buildings over 60 feet tall.)
A state law already bans homeowners associations from restricting solar for aesthetic or other reasons. But some Illinoisans still face restrictions from local government agencies. That was the case in the Chicago suburb of Sugar Grove until a village board meeting on April 16. There, board members overturned a ban on solar on front-facing rooftops, thanks to an energetic campaign by homeowners Becky Brocker and Mike Rayburn.
Advocates and solar developers say municipal restrictions like Sugar Grove had are actually rare. The only other well-known case is Kildeer, Illinois, which removed a total ban on solar in February and still prohibits front-facing arrays. But, advocates said, it’s still important to codify the right to solar statewide, especially as official opposition may arise more frequently as more and more people install solar.
“When [Didech] expanded the bill, he was thinking ahead that these sorts of covenants exist in places we don’t know about yet, just trying to get out ahead of any units of local government that might catch on to, ‘Hey, we can restrict solar for whatever reason we want to,’” said Allen.
John Delurey, deputy program director of the organization Vote Solar, noted that more than 75,000 small solar arrays have been installed statewide since the 2017 Future Energy Jobs Act created incentives. But preventing any future barriers to solar, and smoothing the way in electric cooperative territory, is crucial to make sure that growth continues, he said.
“In rural areas, counties may be the bodies with jurisdiction. I’m sure there are still people in Illinois having trouble because one person on a zoning committee doesn’t like solar,” said Delurey. “It drains everybody’s resources to roam around and play whack-a-mole with all these different rules.”
SOLAR: Connecticut’s governor wants to allow the state’s schools to quadruple their solar panel use over the next few years by no longer holding them to an annual solar installation cap. (CT Post)
ALSO:
OFFSHORE WIND:
POLICY: A panel of energy experts says New York can’t meet its goal of achieving 70% renewable energy by 2030, citing a lack of available labor, the stakeholder process and insufficient transmission capacity. (RTO Insider, subscription)
EMISSIONS: New Jersey environment officials say the state’s net greenhouse gas emissions in 2021 were equivalent to 1.7% of the entire country’s gross emissions. (NJ Spotlight)
STORAGE: A new report from a coalition of public agencies finds four-hour battery storage projects would perform better than two-hour storage and new fossil fuel-fired peaker plants, factoring in air pollution, emissions and overall cost. (RTO Insider, subscription)
GRID: Constellation Energy is among those asking federal energy regulators to stick with the original results of PJM Interconnection’s last base capacity auction, but Maryland and Delaware commissioners and public advocates say doing so would more than double capacity costs in their zone. (Utility Dive)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
TRANSIT: In New York, a Republican lawmaker pushes his colleagues to repeal the Manhattan congestion toll pricing plan, slated to go into effect in two months despite confusion over who gets tolled and when. (NBC New York, Gothamist)
UTILITIES:
NUCLEAR: North Dakota officials say nuclear power may provide a long-term solution to help meet the state’s growing power demand as coal plants retire. (Prairie Public)
SOLAR:
EFFICIENCY: Wisconsin regulators will soon face decisions about how to structure $146 million in federally funded rebate programs for energy efficiency and electrification. (Capital Times)
UTILITIES:
CLEAN ENERGY: The school board in Madison, Wisconsin, sets a net-zero emissions goal by 2045, overriding a previous goal of using 100% renewable energy by 2040. (Wisconsin State Journal)
PIPELINES:
OIL & GAS: Industry groups in North Dakota claim the Biden administration’s plan to increase royalty fees and leasing rates for drilling on federal land to prevent well abandonment attempts to address a problem that doesn’t exist. (KFYR)
HYDROPOWER: University of Wisconsin researchers aim to boost the efficiency of hydropower turbines with a new method that limits problems caused by low water pressure. (Spectrum News)
COMMENTARY: An author and longtime nuclear energy reporter says a plan to restart a Michigan nuclear plant would waste billions of dollars when building out renewables would be a far better option. (Detroit Free Press)
Thanks to a new infusion of state funding, three projects benefiting traditionally under-resourced Black, Brown and Indigenous communities in the greater Chicago area have taken one important step closer to fruition.
Last week, the Illinois Climate Bank unanimously passed a resolution to authorize loan funds of up to $1.6 million for three community-based solar projects owned by Green Energy Justice Cooperative, launched in 2022 by Blacks in Green (BIG). This increases the total funding to $2.9 million for GEJC’s community solar projects, a portion of which is privately funded.
The money will be devoted to the pre-development phase of the project, including public outreach, an interconnection study, and a deposit for renewable energy credits awarded through the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA), said Naomi Davis, founder and CEO of Blacks in Green.
“Our $2.9 million in predevelopment costs include payments to our electric utility, ComEd — fees to connect our solar system to their grid and a 5% down payment for our renewable energy credits — like buying a house, you have the financing and the down payment,” Davis said.
“The sweet spot of this pre-development funding is what we invest in building relationships, educating them about the power of cooperative ownership and management, and collaborating with them to build a clean energy economy right where they live,” she said. “We’ve got two years before we flip the switch and start monthly savings and clean energy comfort… and between now and then we’ll be enrolling thousands of community subscribers in conversations for organizing, training and hopefully inspiring them.”
Energy self-sufficiency is one of the eight key principles of BIG’s Sustainable Square Mile concept, which the organization aims to replicate around the country.
“We say communities should own, develop, and manage their land and energy, and with our $10 million EPA Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Center (TCTAC) award, BIG is offering free/open source access to our energy justice portfolio, which includes this 9 MW solar project and community geothermal and wind,” said Davis in a news release.
“With our energy affordability bill before the Illinois General Assembly, and our energy auditing workforce launching this summer, we aim to connect the dots of community-driven, community-scale energy solutions for low and moderate-income communities across America.”
In December 2023, the Illinois Power Agency recommended awarding the three solar projects, valued at $25.7 million, with $12.5 million in renewable energy credits. The three projects, located in Aurora, Naperville, and Romeoville, Illinois, would each generate 3 megawatts. Once completed, they will provide the dual benefit of lowering the disproportionate energy burden in BIPOC and low-income households, while providing a community stake in clean energy generation.
“When this project is completed over the next couple of years, it will be the largest non-governmental, non-utility, minority-community-owned solar project in Illinois. And as such, it will be the fulfillment of years of dreams and work by our Green Energy Justice Cooperative, to share middle-class jobs and wealth-building with historically deprived and distressed individuals and families throughout this area.” said Rev. Tony Pierce, GEJC board member and CEO of Sun Bright Energy, in a news release.
“In doing so, it will be the beginning of lifting these kinds of individuals and families from the bottom of our economic pyramid into the middle class,” Pierce said. “And it will therefore be the beginning of bringing some closure to the Black and White wealth gap that exists in metro Chicago; in addition to reducing the carbon footprint in our area, to reduce climate change.”
For Davis, this level of recognition and financial support reflects more than a decade of advocacy and effort to ensure energy independence for her community of West Woodlawn on Chicago’s South Side – and beyond.
“The cooperative (GEJC) that we organized and funded fits in with our overall mission because we have, as a stated pillar of our work [intend] to increase the rate at which neighbor-owned businesses are created and sustained,” Davis told the Energy News Network in December.
“We understand that the number one employer of Black folks in America is Black folks in America. And we are very committed in our understanding of the whole-system problem common to Black communities everywhere, that we are committed to being a solution.”
SOLAR: New Hampshire’s Supreme Court decides a town can’t block solar projects over aesthetic or property value fears if the project otherwise satisfies local ordinances. (New Hampshire Bulletin)
ALSO:
GAS:
RENEWABLE ENERGY:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
OFFSHORE WIND: With some residents for siting an offshore wind hub on Sears Island and others against it, officials in Searsport, Maine, are publicly neutral on the matter, which the town manager says local officials hold no sway over regardless. (WABI, Bangor Daily News)
FINANCE: A state board approves the formation of the New Jersey Green Bank to help make clean energy, zero-emission transportation and building decarbonization investments. (news release)
POLICY:
COAL: A former coal town in Washington state could serve as a model for Pennsylvania towns facing existential questions over a coal-free future. (WITF/StateImpact PA)
When you hear “geothermal,” what comes to mind?
Maybe it’s bubbling hot springs in Yellowstone, or that one volcano in Iceland that won’t stop erupting. (It still is, I checked).
Either way, it’s probably a massive field of heat and steam that you’d rather observe from afar, and not something you’d want in your backyard or the alleyway next to your apartment.
But a new generation of heat pumps are taking advantage of the Earth’s heat to both warm and cool big buildings and whole neighborhoods, no volcanoes required. Ground-source heat pumps work similarly to electric air-source heat pumps, which transfer heat in and out of a room to warm or cool it without need for fossil fuels, but find a more powerful and reliable source of heat in the Earth.
And they’re already taking off. Minnesota is piloting networked geothermal systems to keep government buildings, housing developments and schools warm through the winter and cool in the summer. A Chicago neighborhood wants to connect more than 100 homes to a networked system, squeezing boreholes in the alleys between buildings. And a Massachusetts gas utility has already unveiled networked geothermal in a Boston-area neighborhood, and is looking to repurpose existing infrastructure for future projects.
Despite their potential to slash emissions and low operating costs, for now, geothermal heat-pump systems remain too expensive for most homeowners and to install. But they’ve still got potential as a way to repurpose oil and gas drilling equipment and infrastructure, and could help pave a new, zero-emission path forward for the fossil fuel industry.
— Kathryn Krawczyk
🚗 EVs go farther: While the average electric vehicle today gets the equivalent of 106 miles per gallon, new technology could double that number to more than 200 in the coming decades, a report suggests. (Washington Post)
🏭 Questioning a gas buildout: Utilities across the Southeast want to build new natural gas-fired power plants to meet escalating power demand, even though advocates say clean energy and battery storage can handle the job. (Canary Media)
🔌Grid waitlist grows: About 2.6 TW of power projects — 95% of them solar, battery and wind developments — were waiting to connect to the U.S. grid at the end of last year, up 27% from the year before. (Utility Dive)
🍳 Electrification’s still simmering: Clean energy advocates and professional cooks continue to work to electrify restaurant kitchens and homes in Berkeley, California, even after a court shot down the city’s natural gas-hookup ban. (Guardian)
💵 Cleaner for cheaper: The U.S. Interior Department finalizes a rule that will cut fees as much as 80% for solar and wind projects on federal land as it celebrates a milestone of permitting more than 25 GW of renewable projects under President Biden. (The Hill, Reuters)
📄 Getting clean energy to tribes: An Indigenous researcher says tribes need application support, better access to information, and resources to build better infrastructure, in addition to funding to adopt clean energy. (Grist)
📦 Prime charging: Amazon has installed more than 17,000 electric vehicle chargers at its warehouses over the last two years, making it the biggest U.S. private charging operator as it easily surpasses competitors’ clean vehicle goals. (Bloomberg)
🧩 Steel the deal: Experts discuss the pitfalls and potential for green hydrogen to clean up the emissions-heavy steelmaking industry. (Canary Media)
SOLAR: Critics charge that Duke Energy’s revised green tariff program in North Carolina will do little to accelerate new renewable development because it requires large customers to choose from projects among losing bids in the utility’s solar procurement process. (Energy News Network)
ALSO:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Construction has stalled on Vietnamese electric vehicle maker VinFast’s planned North Carolina factory after the company revised its plans for a smaller building footprint but hasn’t yet submitted new documents to the state. (Raleigh News & Observer, WRAL)
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: Republican attorneys general from Florida and 22 other states petition the U.S. EPA to stop taking race into account when regulating pollution. (Floodlight)
GRID:
UTILITIES:
COAL: Democratic U.S. senators in Virginia and West Virginia applaud a new federal rule to more tightly regulate silica dust, which factors into black lung disease. (Bluefield Daily Telegraph)
EMISSIONS:
CLIMATE: Advocates and families of people incarcerated in Louisiana prisons say the state has failed to protect prisoners from extreme summer heat, while officials say they’ve asked for state funding to install air conditioning in two prisons. (Verite News)
NUCLEAR: Virginia lawmakers approve Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s changes to a bill that allows utilities to seek regulatory approval to charge customers for the cost of developing small modular nuclear reactors. (Cardinal News)
TRANSMISSION: A Colorado think tank finds Western states are poised to generate billions of dollars by exporting clean energy to other regions, but only if they can significantly expand the power grid. (Inside Climate News)
MINING: Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren proposes requiring mining companies to notify the tribe and post a bond prior to transporting uranium across tribal land. (Fronteras)
OIL & GAS: Colorado lawmakers advance legislation that would limit the length of trains passing through the state as a way to reduce the risk of spilling crude oil or other hazardous materials. (Colorado Sun)
CLIMATE:
TRANSITION:
SOLAR:
STORAGE: A California community choice aggregator agrees to purchase 180 MW of power from a battery energy storage system under development in the San Francisco area. (Energy Storage News)
UTILITIES:
CARBON CAPTURE: Alaska lawmakers remove minimum payment requirements from a carbon capture bill, saying the legislation is aimed at encouraging fossil fuel development, not raising revenue. (Alaska Beacon)
BIOFUELS: The operator of a Colorado power plant fueled with beetle-killed trees closes the facility, saying it is not financially viable. (Vail Daily)
POLICY: Maryland environmentalists say they have a lot to celebrate after the state’s most recent legislative session, but also several setbacks, including failed bills to stop trash incineration subsidies and permitting changes to reduce further pollution in disadvantaged communities. (Bay Journal)
ALSO: Maryland’s chief sustainability officer says a budget amendment that delays building efficiency measures would put the state years behind on its climate goals and risk federal funding. (WBAL)
WIND:
HYDROPOWER:
SOLAR:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
RENEWABLE ENERGY:
BIOGAS: An anaerobic digester company based in the Boston suburbs aims to hire up to 100 more workers in the next year as it looks toward its goal of opening 100 waste-to-gas facilities. (Boston Business Journal)
BUILDINGS: Federal energy officials grant $158 million in Inflation Reduction Act funds to New York to help homeowners pay for energy efficiency upgrades. (NCPR)
UTILITIES: Although New York’s Assembly is considering a bill to fully municipalize the Long Island Power Authority, state senators have yet to introduce such legislation. (TBR News Media)
INCINERATION: A new documentary highlights the plight and resilience of residents of a suburban Philadelphia city burdened with air pollution from a trash incineration plant. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
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