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ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Indiana officials say a pilot highway construction project that charges electric vehicles as they drive has the potential to spur greater adoption and change how the public thinks about EVs. (Inside Climate News)
ALSO: Cedar Rapids, Iowa, seeks federal funding to replace five diesel buses in its transportation fleet with hybrid diesel-electric models. (Cedar Rapids Gazette)
OHIO: Lt. Gov. Jon Husted refuses to say whether he knew about a $1 million contribution in 2017 from FirstEnergy to a political group that supported his campaign for governor. (Ohio Capital Journal)
UTILITIES: Proposed legislation in Illinois would subject municipal power agencies to more state oversight and require integrated resource planning as companies face growing scrutiny over large coal portfolios. (Daily Herald)
SOLAR:
POLITICS:
GRID:
PIPELINES: Four Great Lakes tribes urge a Michigan appeals court to overturn state regulators’ approval of a permit allowing Enbridge to build an underwater tunnel in the Straits of Mackinac to house Line 5. (E&E News, subscription)
COAL: Michigan regulators block a utility from recovering more than $1 million in excess charges from unprofitable coal plants owned by the Ohio Valley Electric Corp., in contrast to Ohio regulators’ approach. (Checks & Balances Project)
NUCLEAR: The lengthy outage of a Minnesota nuclear plant late last year occurred after Xcel Energy workers drilled through cables that interrupted power to equipment, the utility disclosed to federal regulators. (Star Tribune)
COMMENTARY: A Wisconsin conservative group says recent polling indicates strong support for clean energy among young rural voters, a key demographic that will be crucial for future GOP success in elections. (Journal Sentinel)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: After setbacks to adopting electric vehicle sales targets in Maine and Connecticut, frustrated New England clean transportation advocates refocus on charging infrastructure and consumer education. (Energy News Network)
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POLICY:
OFFSHORE WIND: Boston’s mayor throws her support behind Avangrid Renewables’ bid to develop an offshore wind farm supporting Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, saying the city would purchase up to 15 MW from the site. (Boston.com)
SOLAR:
FOSSIL FUELS:
FUEL CELLS: Massachusetts’ governor and other top state officials visit Nuvera Fuel Cells in Billerica to announce $30 million in federal funds for the hydrogen fuel cell company. (Lowell Sun)
INCINERATION: Dozens of community and climate groups ask Maryland’s governor and legislative leaders to hold a vote on a bill to end subsidies for trash incineration plants. (Baltimore Brew)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Electric vehicle chargers are often inaccessible for people with disabilities, a growing problem as officials forecast millions more electric vehicles on roads in the coming years. (Mother Jones)
ALSO: After setbacks to adopting electric vehicle sales targets in Maine and Connecticut, frustrated New England clean transportation advocates refocus on charging infrastructure and consumer education. (Energy News Network)
CLEAN ENERGY:
HYDROGEN: As the U.S. Treasury Department tries to ensure its hydrogen tax credits go to projects involving clean energy, industry leaders say the federal rules will discourage nuclear-produced hydrogen and make projects prohibitively expensive. (E&E News)
OIL & GAS:
EMISSIONS: The U.S. EPA moves to lower inaccurately high soot measurements taken since 2017, potentially making it easier for some areas to meet new pollution standards. (E&E News)
CLIMATE:
CARBON CAPTURE: A Virginia company says it successfully used carbon capture technology to grow lettuce at an indoor farm. (Roanoke Times)
GRID: The ongoing legal dispute over a $649 million transmission line between Iowa and Wisconsin highlights differences between environmental and clean energy advocacy groups. (Inside Climate News)
WIND: After “inflammatory rhetoric” about renewables discouraged bids in last year’s offshore wind auction near Texas, federal officials are shifting their attention to areas off Louisiana instead. (Louisiana Illuminator)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A school district in northern Minnesota is among the first tribal school districts in the country to receive electric school buses under a new $5 billion federal program. (E&E News)
ALSO: After stopping production in late 2023, just a few thousand of General Motors’ best-selling electric vehicle — the Chevrolet Bolt — remain for sale. (Detroit Free Press)
HYDROGEN: Some companies challenge the narrative that industry players want to weaken proposed federal rules for lucrative hydrogen tax credits, maintaining that green hydrogen will be crucial to avoid increasing emissions. (Energy News Network)
AIR POLLUTION:
CLEAN ENERGY:
GRID: Clean energy and environmental groups urge federal regulators to reject grid operator Southwest Power Pool’s latest proposal to measure capacity that critics say discriminates against wind, solar and storage. (Utility Dive)
SOLAR: Walmart partners with a national developer to build more than a dozen community solar projects across five states, including Illinois. (Solar Industry)
CLIMATE: A University of Michigan researcher argues in a new paper that the labor that goes into climate advocacy and fighting fossil fuel projects should be compensated. (Grist)
OIL & GAS: A North Dakota official says building infrastructure to transport carbon dioxide will be key to helping the state meet its oil and gas production potential. (KFYR)
COMMENTARY: An attorney and former director of the Nebraska Energy Office says a proposed bill would discourage renewable energy investments in the state by creating more red tape for developers. (Nebraska Examiner)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: California researchers find electric vehicle adoption in the Bay Area has led to a 2.6% annual decrease in automobile emissions. (Courthouse News)
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TRANSPORTATION:
OIL & GAS:
WIND: Developers bring a 152 MW wind power facility online in southeastern Idaho. (Renewables Now)
SOLAR: The Biden administration awards $19 million to projects in California, Oregon and Utah to help install solar panels over irrigation canals. (Courthouse News)
HYDROPOWER: Northwest officials predict low winter and spring precipitation levels will diminish this summer’s hydropower output from the region. (S&P Global)
CLIMATE: A Colorado ski area says it has reached its goal of operating on a net-zero carbon footprint a year ahead of schedule. (KDVR)
GRID: The Bonneville Power Administration’s staff recommends the agency join the Southwest Power Pool’s day-ahead power market rather than the California grid operator’s. (RTO Insider, subscription)
COAL:
NUCLEAR: A federal study predicts that converting a coal plant to an advanced nuclear reactor would add about 30 to 100 full-time jobs, a figure in line with projections for a Wyoming conversion. (Utility Dive)
After setbacks to adopting electric vehicle sales targets in Maine and Connecticut, New England clean transportation advocates are regrouping with a focus on charging infrastructure and consumer education.
Maine’s Board of Environmental Protection voted 4-2 on March 20 against adopting California’s Advanced Clean Cars II rules, which would have required electric or plug-in hybrids to make up 82% of new vehicle sales in the state by model year 2032.
Board members initially signaled support for the proposal, which came from a citizen petition last spring, before their first planned vote was delayed by a severe storm in December.
Last November, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, pulled a comparable proposal from legislative consideration after it was not expected to have the votes to pass.
Neither state had opted to consider California’s Advanced Clean Trucks standard, which sets similar targets for heavy-duty vehicle sales.
Maine and Connecticut are among more than a dozen states that have had earlier versions of California’s clean car standards on the books for years. Both states have also prioritized transportation emissions, the region’s biggest contributor to global warming, in their climate plans.
Some advocates fear progress in this sector will stall in these states until they adopt the updated California rules. They say debate over the standards was clouded by false and misleading claims, often pushed by fossil fuel industry groups, that have ramped up as part of the 2024 presidential campaign.
“It was really an attempt to confuse and agitate consumers, and unfortunately it was successful,” said Charles Rothenberger, the climate and energy attorney at the Connecticut nonprofit Save the Sound.
Even if Connecticut or Maine successfully revisits adopting the California rules next year, it would likely push implementation out to model year 2029 at the earliest, advocates said.
States that don’t use the new California standards will default to federal rules for reducing vehicle emissions. These rules were just overhauled but have a slower timeline than California’s, designed to accommodate states with lower EV sales rates than in much of New England, Rothenberger said.
“Standards that really cater to the laggards when it comes to EV adoption are really not beneficial to states that are well ahead of that curve,” he said. “I fear that it will lead to us losing ground to states that continue with the California standards,” such as Massachusetts and New York, Rothenberger added.
This could mean less choice and supply for both new and used electric vehicles as carmakers focus on those other states, he said.
In the meantime, Connecticut EV advocates are backing a bill in the General Assembly to allow state bonds for charging infrastructure and EV incentives and create an Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Coordinating Council to work with utility regulators on system planning, among other provisions.
Peter LaFond, the Maine program director for the Acadia Center, a regional nonprofit, said the delay in adopting California’s rules provides time for combating misconceptions and for utilizing increasing state and federal funds for charging infrastructure.
“Every month that goes by, I think there’ll be more and more chargers, and once there are, I think people will see the clear advantages,” LaFond said. “(EVs and plug-in hybrids) lower the carbon footprint and they’re less expensive to operate, and the cold doesn’t present as much of a challenge as the misinformation would have you believe. I think education is going to be a big part of this.”
Scott Vlaun, the executive director of the Center for an Ecology-Based Economy, a nonprofit in the small western Maine town of Norway, said he sees a snowball effect of EV acceptance in his region.
“It’s happening, it’s just not happening fast enough,” Vlaun said. “This is the future, and if Maine doesn’t get its share, then … we’re going to be kind of stuck — in, especially rural Maine — with people driving beat-up, old, inefficient cars, and it’s not good for anybody.”
CEBE has led a push for a large public EV charger network in and around Norway, which Vlaun said has helped make EVs and hybrids a more common sight everywhere from Main Street to nearby ski resorts.
“We do this annual EV expo, and if you get people driving an F-150 Lightning, or a Chevy Bolt, depending on what their needs are, they get it,” he said. “So much of the misinformation — it’s almost comical, because it’s obvious that these people have never gotten behind the wheel of an electric car.”
Vlaun was speaking from his own EV parked at a public charger outside CEBE’s office, having just driven back from a meeting in Portland, Maine, about an hour away. He said he would have liked to take a train or bus instead of driving, but doesn’t have an easy option for doing so.
“We don’t see electric cars as a one-to-one replacement for gas cars,” he said. “We see electric vehicles as an interim step and a better solution to individual transportation than gas-powered vehicles — not the answer to the world’s transportation problems by any stretch.”
Advocates in Connecticut agreed that encouraging cleaner public transit, more walkable cities and less driving overall is as much or more important to reducing transportation emissions as EV adoption.
Those emissions are linked to disproportionate asthma rates, low school test scores and other adverse public health ripple effects in Connecticut, said Dr. Mark Mitchell, the co-chair of the Connecticut Equity and Environmental Justice Advisory Council.
“The people who have the least ability to afford cars and to drive suffer the most from the pollution caused by cars, and so we need to change that — we need to invest in public transportation and making cities walkable and bikeable,” he said. “We’re not going to get rid of cars… but we should make sure that the cars that drive through our communities are as clean as possible, as quickly as possible.”
Mitchell said he lives in an especially low-income part of Hartford, the state capital — one of the lowest-income cities on the East Coast, with a mostly Black and Latino population. Mitchell said many of his neighbors don’t drive at all and can’t afford new cars, so they don’t yet “see themselves in EVs.”
“But that’s not the point,” he said. “The point is that they’re very concerned about asthma, they’re very concerned about ADHD, they’re very concerned about school test scores.”
EV adoption across the state is one solution to those problems, he said.
Jayson Velazquez, the Acadia Center’s Hartford-based climate and energy justice policy associate, used the term “through-emissions” to describe pollution from diesel trucks and other vehicles that traverse low-income neighborhoods and communities of color in Connecticut’s cities en route to nearby highways.
Unlike those vehicles and their non-local drivers, Velazquez said, “the lasting health effects that come from that pollution don’t just get up and go.”
Despite concerns about misinformation, advocates acknowledged that they share certain concerns with opponents of the California rules — such as affordability, charging access, the sustainability of minerals mining to build batteries, and strain on the power grid from increasing EV use.
“There are real issues,” said Mitchell. “We do need to build up the infrastructure, both the charging infrastructure and the electric grid. … But until we set goals, we don’t know how quickly we need to do that. And it’s much easier to put things off if you don’t have a goal.”
MINING: The U.S. Energy Department conditionally agrees to loan more than $2 billion to the controversial Thacker Pass lithium mine under development in northern Nevada. (Associated Press)
ALSO:
BATTERIES: Hawaii lawmakers consider legislation aimed at encouraging or requiring automakers to recycle spent electric vehicle batteries. (Honolulu Star-Advertiser)
CLIMATE: An analysis predicts California cannot meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals by 2030 unless it triples efforts to slash carbon emissions, attributing the backslide to a post-pandemic surge in driving and electricity demand. (Los Angeles Times)
WIND: Oregon regulators seek public input on a proposed 300 MW wind facility in the northeastern part of the state. (East Oregonian)
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CLEAN ENERGY:
OIL & GAS:
FOSSIL FUELS: A Utah researcher predicts the state’s coal, oil and natural gas production will continue to climb in the near future even as new hydrogen, geothermal and solar facilities come online. (Deseret News)
UTILITIES: San Diego public power advocates predict establishing a municipal utility would cost $3.5 billion, but current utility SDG&E estimates it could amount to nearly three times as much. (San Diego Union-Tribune, subscription)
NUCLEAR:
STORAGE: A battery company that powers cars made by Tesla, Volkswagen and BMW has become the latest front in the conflict between China and the U.S. after Duke Energy says it will stop using the batteries after concerns over their use on a Marine Corps base in North Carolina. (Guardian)
ALSO: A Texas-based clean-energy and battery developer is working on a tool for grid batteries to measure the cleanliness of emissions, which could appeal to projects with clients bound by strict carbon-accounting standards. (Canary Media)
GRID: Southeast utilities are juicing their near-term forecasts for power demand amid the construction of data centers, cryptocurrency operations, marijuana farms and electric vehicle factories. (Floodlight)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
WIND:
SOLAR: A Florida utility announces a 2-acre solar facility on a pond, which it claims is the largest floating solar array in the U.S. (Solar Industry)
OIL & GAS: Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm receives a frosty welcome at a Houston energy conference because of the Biden administration’s pause on approving permits for liquified natural gas export terminals. (Houston Chronicle)
EFFICIENCY:
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: A report by Virginia officials finds the numerous programs to assist low-income residents with energy bills fall short of need. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
CLIMATE: Texas’ historic wildfires were triggered by malfunctioning electrical infrastructure and amplified by climate change, providing a possible glimpse of the future as state officials continue to resist regulations on the oil and gas industry. (Sierra)
EMISSIONS: A new report finds Louisiana, Texas and other states have significantly subsidized plastics manufacturers, only for those plants to repeatedly violate air pollution rules into vulnerable neighborhoods primarily occupied by people of color. (DeSmog)
OVERSIGHT: Florida lawmakers pass numerous bills to override existing city and county ordinances, including one to prevent local governments from mandating heat-exposure protections for outdoor workers. (WLRN, Inside Climate News)
MINING: Georgia moves closer to approving a titanium mine just outside the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, amping up an already raging fight over protecting America’s largest intact blackwater swamp. (Washington Post)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A new Biden administration plan aims to build electric semi-truck chargers along high-traffic sections of highway across the country, largely in the Northeast, on the West Coast, and in Texas. (The Hill)
ALSO:
POLITICS: President Biden’s proposed 2025 federal budget includes more funding for community energy programs, transmission planning and permitting, and offshore wind siting and construction, among other clean energy programs. (Utility Dive)
CLIMATE:
GRID:
FINANCE: The U.S. EPA prepares to announce $20 billion for nonprofits to expand lending for climate and clean energy projects in low-income communities. (Politico)
UTILITIES: Over 1,000 victims of last year’s deadly Maui wildfires plan to sue Hawaiian Electric and other entities, alleging the utility’s equipment sparked the blaze. (Hawaii News Now)
MATERIALS: The closure of three U.S. aluminum manufacturing plants could threaten the transition to clean energy and electrification, experts say. (E&E News)
ELECTRIFICATION: Colorado restaurants say switching from natural gas to electric induction stoves and ovens has improved their food quality and the kitchen atmosphere. (Rocky Mountain PBS)
CARBON CAPTURE: A North Dakota electric cooperative is betting a $2 billion carbon capture project will allow a coal-fired power plant to comply with Minnesota law, but critics say the plan is absurdly complicated and expensive compared to alternatives. (MPR News)
OIL & GAS:
BIOFUELS: California advocates call on the state to overhaul its low-carbon fuel standard program to support and fund electric vehicles and charging infrastructure rather than biofuels. (Canary Media)
OIL & GAS: U.S. Coast Guard officials say an oil sheen spotted off southern California’s coast last week may have emanated from a natural seep on the ocean floor. (ABC News)
COAL:
SOLAR: New Mexico’s Supreme Court rejects investor-owned utilities’ bid to loosen the state’s community solar program’s rules. (Albuquerque Journal)
GRID: Federal regulators approve new rules allowing California’s grid operator to participate in an extended day-ahead power market once it goes live. (RTO Insider, subscription)
CLEAN ENERGY: A California power agency awards cities in the northern part of the state $11.5 million to help fund clean energy-related projects. (Daily Journal)
CLIMATE: The U.S. Energy Department awards five New Mexico startups over $6 million to research, develop and scale up climate technology. (news release)
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