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POLITICS: The Biden administration’s pattern of proposing tougher climate and emissions rules than it ends up implementing are a side effect of President Biden’s re-election bid, observers say. (E&E News)
OIL & GAS:
SOLAR: Solar generation is expected to briefly plunge in parts of the country during next month’s solar eclipse, but grid operators and electric utilities say they’re prepared with alternate energy sources to keep power flowing. (New York Times)
COAL: New Hampshire’s Granite Shore Power will shut down its last coal-fired power plants in 2025 and 2028, replacing them with solar, battery storage, and other clean energy and marking the end of coal in New England. (New Hampshire Bulletin)
OFFSHORE WIND: Four developers bid to build offshore wind projects off the Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island coasts, including two bids from Avangrid and SouthCoast Wind that are essentially rebids of recently retracted projects. (CT Mirror, Rhode Island Current)
NUCLEAR:
EMISSIONS: The U.S. EPA begins taking public comments on how it should regulate carbon emissions from existing gas plants and best practices for carbon capture technology. (E&E News, subscription)
TRANSPORTATION: California environmental justice advocates push back on proposed changes to the state’s low carbon fuel standard, saying it might lead to higher gas prices that disproportionately burden low-income communities. (Inside Climate News)
PIPELINES:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Ford plans to cut roughly two-thirds of its hourly workers at a Michigan plant building its electric F-150 as volume expectations drop. (Detroit Free Press)
OIL & GAS: The federal Bureau of Land Management finalizes its rule aimed at reducing methane emissions from oil and gas facilities on public and tribal lands by requiring operators to limit flaring and venting and detect and repair leaks. (Washington Post)
ALSO: Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon criticizes the U.S. EPA’s proposal to establish a fee on methane emissions from oil and gas facilities, saying it would economically harm the state. (Buckrail)
UTILITIES: California regulators propose a flat monthly utility fee for all electricity bills in an effort to reduce rates for low-income residents and to encourage electrification. (E&E News, subscription)
SOLAR:
TRANSPORTATION: California environmental justice advocates push back on proposed changes to the state’s low carbon fuel standard, saying it might lead to higher gas prices that disproportionately burden low-income communities. (Inside Climate News)
NUCLEAR: Washington state environmentalists and tribal leaders urge Gov. Jay Inslee to veto a budget earmark allocating $25 million to expedite advanced nuclear reactor deployment, saying the funds should go toward clean energy development. (Washington State Standard)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
CLIMATE: Climate advocates protest Amazon’s plans to connect its Oregon data centers to a natural gas pipeline slated for expansion, saying the use of fossil fuels adds to the company’s “carbon problems.” (Common Dreams)
ENERGY STORAGE: The first phase of a 680 MW battery energy storage facility in southern California is expected to go online this summer. (Patch)
HYDROPOWER: Federal lawmakers from Western states introduce legislation that would allocate $45 million to repair and upgrade Hoover Dam and its hydropower plant in Nevada. (Las Vegas Review-Journal)
MINING: Protesters who disrupted work at the Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada claim their action was necessary to save lives as they’re sued by the project’s developer. (KOLO)
TRANSITION:
To make south Louisiana’s oil and gas infrastructure more resilient to extreme weather, Entergy Louisiana wants to build a $441 million floating natural gas power plant as the land around it continues to vanish from a combination of sinking and sea-level rise.
A top Louisiana utility consumer advocate noted the “loop of irony” of adding even more greenhouse gasses to a region already suffering massive land loss because of climate change.
Entergy says the plant is necessary because in 2020, Hurricane Zeta took out a major transmission line serving the area, according to its filing with the Louisiana Public Service Commission. The company says the plant would be cheaper than building a new transmission line through wetlands and marshes, and it would not be “prudent or economic” to buy power on the open market. The company did not provide the cost to replace its downed transmission line.
Entergy Louisiana says its proposed 112-megawatt Bayou Power Station could disconnect from the grid and use the plant’s power to provide electricity to 7,000 residential, industrial and commercial including Port Fourchon, the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port and residents in Golden Meadow, Leeville and Grand Isle. The power station would have black-start capability — or the ability to rapidly start up and ramp down without being connected to other parts of the energy grid.
“This Project will directly address critical oil and gas customers in the system at Port Fourchon,” Entergy’s filing to the PSC. “The interconnection of the Project will add a resilient power source to the (Entergy Louisiana) grid and enable storm restoration options, following a significant weather event.”
The promises being made mirror those its sister company, Entergy New Orleans, used to convince the New Orleans City Council to approve a 128-MW natural gas plant in eastern New Orleans that came online in 2020. Entergy New Orleans said the $210 million plant would come online quickly after a storm to provide the city with power.
But that didn’t happen. After Hurricane Ida struck in August 2021, the entire city went dark, and it took almost three days for the New Orleans gas plant to become operational. The utility said using the plant’s quick-start capability wasn’t the safest way to restore power to the city.
“And so the question now is why should the Louisiana Public Service Commission approve (Bayou Power Station) seeing what happened only a handful of years ago,” asked Logan Atkinson Burke, executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy.
Burke noted the Bayou Power Station would cost twice as much as the New Orleans plant and produce less electricity.
The power generation portion of the project is estimated at $374.3 million, or roughly $3,318 per kilowatt, an amount twice as much as most other power generation costs, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. If the Public Service Commission approves the plant, the costs would trickle down to all of Entergy Louisiana’s 1.1 million customers through increased rates and charges.
In addition to approval of the plant within 120 days, Entergy has asked the PSC for permission to bypass the competitive bid process and hand the contract to its preselected contractor, Grand Isle Shipyards.
“An RFP (request for proposals) wouldn’t have produced a more qualified vendor at a better cost,” said David Freese, a spokesman for Entergy Louisiana. The plant would be built at the company’s shipyard and moved to Leeville for installation.
Before it narrowed its options, Entergy also considered combined-cycle gas turbines, solar and simple-cycle combustion turbines, Freese said. Offshore wind was not considered because of the costs of building a transmission line to the offshore turbines, the intermittent nature of wind and the potential impact of hurricanes on those turbines, he said.
Coastal researcher Alex Kolker, an associate professor at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium who specializes in oceanography, geology and climate science, said the region is prone to storms and extreme weather that is being made more intense by climate change.
Utility consumer advocate Burke said it appears the company is doubling down on its reliance on fossil fuels, ignoring the inherent climate risks.
“It’s very clear that we are in a in a loop of irony at this point where the hotter it gets, the more water there is, and the less land there is as a result of oil and gas extraction, all while Louisiana is so interconnected to those international oil and gas systems,” Burke said. “So we ‘need’ to build something that is incredibly vulnerable in a place that is vulnerable because of oil and gas.”
Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.
FOSSIL FUELS: President Biden campaigned on ending fossil fuel industry subsidies but has so far failed to break a century-old trend and keep them out of the federal budget. (New York Times)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
HYDROGEN: An analysis concludes that “blue” and “green” hydrogen could be cost competitive with natural gas by 2030, but that meeting national demand might consume two-thirds of the country’s current renewable electricity. (Utility Dive)
EMISSIONS:
POLICY:
OFFSHORE WIND: Federal ocean energy officials officially designate a 32 GW wind energy area in the Gulf of Maine that is 80% smaller than what was first marked as a potential leasing area and excludes fishing and lobstering areas. (Maine Public)
NUCLEAR: Oregon small modular reactor firm NuScale shifts from providing grid-scale power facilities to catering to “enormous energy consumers” such as data centers. (Utility Dive)
SOLAR:
UTILITIES: Minnesota regulators will soon require the state’s three largest gas utilities to file long-term plans that forecast how they will meet demand while aligning with state policy priorities. (Energy News Network)
PIPELINES: The South Dakota Supreme Court hears arguments in a case over whether a proposed carbon pipeline is a public commodity and thus eligible to survey private land and use eminent domain. (South Dakota Searchlight)
ALSO: Iowa lawmakers advance a bill that would allow either party in a utility eminent domain case to ask a district court to decide whether the project is a public necessity. (Cedar Rapids Gazette)
GRID:
SOLAR:
CLIMATE: Rapid City, South Dakota, will seek $50 million in federal climate funding after state officials declined to apply for the money. (South Dakota Searchlight)
RENEWABLES: As Michigan regulators collect public input on a new law giving the state final say on where clean energy projects can be built, a developer notes that projects need to be completed with landowner cooperation in the first place. (WWMT)
OIL & GAS: BP’s large oil refinery in northwestern Indiana resumes normal operations more than six weeks after a power outage prompted a temporary shutdown of the complex. (Associated Press)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Rivian is leasing space for what’s expected to be the electric vehicle startup’s second service center in Michigan. (Crain’s)
STORAGE: Western Michigan is poised for additional growth in battery storage production based on the number of suppliers currently operating there, economic development groups say. (Second Wave Media)
COMMENTARY:
CLIMATE: Colorado advocates worry proposed legislation aimed at luring more energy-intensive data centers to the state will put climate goals out of reach and drive up power costs. (CPR)
ALSO: An advocacy group launches an ad campaign in Arizona and Montana urging residents to support the federal Securities and Exchange Commission’s new climate risk disclosure rules. (news release)
SOLAR: A California school district unveils a 17.5 MW solar-plus-storage network consisting of 40 projects across 31 sites. (news release)
STORAGE: A firm signs on to purchase all of the capacity of a 200 MW stand–alone battery energy storage system under construction in southern California. (Solar Industry)
UTILITIES:
OIL & GAS:
TRANSPORTATION: Colorado lawmakers propose levying a daily fee on car rentals to help fund public transit projects. (Colorado Public Radio)
CARBON CAPTURE: Oregon researchers discover a way to pull carbon dioxide from the air with vanadium, potentially boosting the nascent direct air carbon capture industry. (Oregon Capital Chronicle)
PUBLIC LANDS: U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, a Wyoming Republican, looks to block a management plan for 3.7 million acres of federal land in the state, claiming it would hamper energy development. (WyoFile)
COMMENTARY: Energy investors and experts call on the uranium industry to ensure mines and mills financially benefit affected tribal communities, regardless of property ownership. (Wilson Center)
GEOTHERMAL: Improved technology and federal incentives spur St. Paul, Minnesota’s school district to pursue geothermal heating and cooling as a way to cut emissions and building costs. (Energy News Network)
ALSO: The Potawatomi Tribe is installing a geothermal system at a Milwaukee casino and hotel to meet more than a quarter of the facility’s heating and cooling needs and reduce its carbon footprint. (Journal Sentinel)
SOLAR:
POWER PLANTS: Plans for a roughly $1 billion natural gas plant in far northwestern Wisconsin grow uncertain after a local planning board denies a land use request meant to advance the project. (Star Tribune)
PIPELINES: Michigan’s attorney general says a federal appeals court should send a pipeline dispute back to state court where the state can resume its case to shut down Line 5 in the Great Lakes. (MLive)
POLITICS: Republicans pounce on the U.S. EPA’s new tailpipe emission rules as a way to drive politically divided culture wars, accusing the Biden administration of taking away personal driving choices. (New York Times)
WIND: MidAmerican Energy installs sensors at three wind farms that flash red lights on turbines only when low-flying planes are nearby instead of continuously. (Yale Climate Connections)
GRID:
AIR POLLUTION: Chicago ranked second among U.S. cities for air pollution last year as dangerous fine particulate matter continued to exceed global guidelines and were made worse by Canadian wildfires. (Chicago Tribune)
COMMENTARY: Local restrictions on clean energy development deny communities a variety of social and economic benefits, a former law professor and clean energy advocate write. (Cleveland.com)
Geothermal heating and cooling is emerging as a go-to technology for St. Paul Public Schools as it seeks to renovate aging facilities in line with the district’s climate action plan.
Minnesota’s second-largest school district is also one of the city’s largest property owners, with 73 buildings containing more than 7.7 million square feet. Its climate action plan calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions at least 45% by 2030.
New technology and federal incentives have helped convince district leaders that geothermal is among its best options for slashing emissions from school buildings. The energy efficient systems pump refrigerant through a closed loop circuit of pipes that moves heat between buildings and below ground reservoirs.
Last year, the district completed a ground-source geothermal system while renovating the 1960s-era Johnson High School. This year, it’s installing a different type of system at two other schools that tap aquifers rather than the ground as a heating and cooling source.
The aquifer-based systems that will be used at Bruce Vento Elementary School and the nearly 100-year-old Hidden River Middle School were developed by a Twin Cities-based company called Darcy Solutions that specializes in water-based geothermal systems.
The company’s technology requires far fewer wells than conventional, ground-based systems, making them more practical for dense, urban neighborhoods. Darcy places heat exchangers directly into the wells, where they can capture heat from the constant, 52-degree groundwater.
Darcy’s system changed the school district’s thinking, said Tom Parent, the district’s executive director of operations and administration. The elementary school project required just five wells, compared to more than 150 ground source wells at Johnson High, which disrupted outdoor sports activities for two summers.
“We see a lot of promise,” Parent said. “This is an incredible leap in technology.”
Geothermal and aquifer-based systems could be an essential strategy for reducing emissions, along with energy efficiency, LED lighting, electric buses and solar energy, Parent said. Because many St. Paul schools have small footprints, Darcy’s system could become a go-to HVAC solution.
Traditional ground-source geothermal would have been “impossible” at either school because of their small sites, according to the district’s indoor air quality coordinator Angela Vreeland. Darcy’s geothermal systems also take up less interior space than traditional, fossil fuel heating systems.
In Minnesota, several trends are driving geothermal’s growth. Nearly all projects receiving state aid must follow the rigorous standards for energy efficiency. Matt Stringfellow, a manager with Kraus Anderson who works on geothermal installations, said that “any state-funded project pretty much requires that (geothermal) to meet their guidelines at this point.”
Another catalyst has been the Inflation Reduction Act. The law allows a commercial building owner installing geothermal to claim as much as a 30% tax credit. It will enable nonprofits to receive the equivalent amount in cash from the federal government.
Parent said the school district used federal money to pay for its first geothermal project and plans to submit paperwork to take advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act’s direct pay option for this year’s projects, too. While not the only driving force in selecting geothermal, it played a role, he said.
Robert Ed, Darcy’s director of marketing strategy, said geothermal is one of the only solutions for electrifying large buildings in cold climates. “There are other energy efficient technologies, but in a northern climate, being able to use geothermal energy and not having to expend a lot of energy to provide thermal capacity is a big advantage,” he said.
The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Belgium have been the primary users of geothermal aquifers, but Darcy aims to change that. Ed said the startup has expanded to Wisconsin and will now begin adding more states that have the right groundwater characteristics to work with its technology.
Parent said the Johnson project shows “just how viable (geothermal) can be under certain circumstances for our system. Now we’ve got two more projects underway with geoexchange systems; we’re learning how it can play a role in the continuous cycle of renewal in our buildings.”
Darcy advertises that its technology creates 70% fewer emissions and lower cooling costs than a traditional heating and cooling system. At Bruce Vento Elementary, named after a Minnesota congress member well-known for environmental advocacy, stakeholder engagement at the district level led to a desire to decrease energy intensity in buildings.
“Geothermal is the only way we are getting within spitting distance of what we want it to be able to do,” Parent said.
A Department of Energy analysis found retrofitting around 70% of buildings, combined with building envelope improvements, could bring a 13% reduction by 2050 in electricity demand.
Yet geothermal systems barely make a slice of the energy pie chart, producing less than 1% of the country’s energy capacity, according to the United States Department of Energy. The industry, however, is growing. Ground-source heat pump sales have grown by 3% annually, and the United States continues to be the international leader in geothermal energy.
The three schools will see significant savings over natural gas systems. Vreeland said the annual savings will be $143,000 at Hidden River Elementary and $200,000 at Bruce Vento. Both should pay for themselves in a decade. Johnson High’s savings will be $7 million over 30 years.
Darcy is also installing aquifer-based geothermal systems at two schools in Winona in southeastern Minnesota. It also recently installed a system at Rochester’s City Hall.
Parent said geothermal may not be the answer to every HVAC renovation, but it shouldn’t’ be overlooked.
“We don’t see a world in which geothermal energy is our only solution path forward because of the idiosyncrasies of our building, funding, and timing,” he said. “But it seems to be more and more the right answer.”
CLIMATE: The continental U.S. experienced its warmest winter on record, during which average temperatures throughout the Midwest and Northeast exceeded past averages by as much as 10°F. (Axios)
ALSO:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
GRID: Four Congress members push the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to institute an incentive that would encourage the use of new technologies to increase capacity on existing and new transmission lines. (Utility Dive)
ELECTRIFICATION: A recent study shows electric heat pumps reduce emissions compared to other heating systems, even when they run on fossil-fueled grid power. (Canary Media)
CLEAN ENERGY:
CARBON CAPTURE: The developer of a multi-state carbon pipeline says it remains open to contracts that offtake the carbon for enhanced oil recovery, despite sworn testimony that the project is for underground storage. (Reuters)
OIL & GAS:
UTILITIES: Clean energy advocates applaud Minnesota’s largest gas utility for drafting a $105 million decarbonization plan, but say it doesn’t move fast enough to meet state emission-reduction targets. (Energy News Network)
EMISSIONS: U.S. oil and gas producers may be releasing three times more methane than official estimates, though scientists note most emissions come from a small fraction of facilities, potentially making the problem easier to solve. (Associated Press)
ALSO:
GRID:
CLIMATE:
OIL & GAS:
EFFICIENCY:
CLEAN ENERGY: The Department of Energy estimates a rapid adoption of renewable energy could save Alaskans more than $1 billion on utility bills by 2040. (Anchorage Daily News)
TRANSPORTATION: Members of California’s Air Resources Board say staff members are disregarding their concerns about the state’s emphasis on biofuels to reduce transportation emissions and are withholding key information. (Canary Media)
COMMENTARY: An electric vehicle rideshare company representative calls for federal incentives that encourage EV charging stations in cities and that cover both upfront costs and maintenance. (Utility Dive)
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