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Commonwealth Fusion Systems just raised $863 million in additional funding as the company works to achieve the decades-old dream of commercializing nuclear fusion.
On Thursday, CFS said that, with its Series B2 funding round, the startup has raised about $3 billion in capital since it was spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018. That’s just under one-third of the $9.8 billion in total funding for fusion companies globally.
Seemingly every type of investor showed up for CFS’ latest funding round as the world’s interest in the long-promised, highly speculative technology continues to soar. Over three dozen names appear in the startup’s new announcement, including those of venture capitalists, sovereign wealth funds, private equity firms, individual investors, industrial firms, hedge funds, pension funds, and private banks.
CFS has ambitious plans to begin supplying one of its big-name investors — Google — with power in the next few years from a plant in Virginia.
“This funding recognizes CFS’ leadership role in developing a new technology that promises to be a reliable source of clean, almost limitless energy,” Bob Mumgaard, CEO and cofounder of CFS, said in an Aug. 28 press release. He said the company “will enable investors to have the opportunity to capitalize on the birth of a new global industry.”
To oversimplify, nuclear fusion — the source of the sun’s energy — involves converting hydrogen into plasma, which is then compressed and confined in a process that releases massive amounts of energy. Proponents say that fusion power plants could offer the best of nuclear energy — carbon-free electricity supplied around the clock — without the drawbacks of today’s nuclear fission plants, including the risk of catastrophic meltdowns and evergrowing stockpiles of radioactive waste.
Despite decades of research and billions of dollars in funding, fusion energy remains on the extremely early end of the technology-development curve. Yet a handful of recent engineering breakthroughs are giving fusion scientists and their deep-pocketed investors fresh hope that commercial fusion power could finally come to fruition.
Other startups such as Avalanche Energy, General Fusion, Helion Energy, TAE Technologies, Xcimer Energy, and Zap Energy have also raised jaw-dropping funding rounds in recent years from billionaires and investment funds. The Fusion Industry Association lists more than 50 companies working in the field, which together raised $2.64 billion in private and public funding in the past year — nearly three times more than in the previous year.
This growing fleet of fusion startups is pursuing a variety of technologies, such as systems using mighty laser beams or extremely high voltages. CFS is taking a magnetic approach.
At its site in Devens, Massachusetts, CFS is building a donut-shaped device called a tokamak that uses high-temperature superconducting magnets to contain and stabilize plasma during the nuclear reaction. The startup said it aims to have its SPARC reactor running by 2026 and to achieve another crucial milestone the following year: producing more energy in its reactor than is needed to power the machine.
CFS is also advancing its plans to build the world’s first grid-scale fusion power plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia, with the goal of putting power on the grid in the early 2030s. In June, Google agreed to buy half of the carbon-free electricity produced at the facility, which will go on a site owned by the utility Dominion Energy. Last week, Chesterfield County’s planning commission unanimously approved a conditional use permit for the 400-megawatt plant.
“We’re excited to make this longer-term bet on a technology with transformative potential to meet the world’s future energy demand, and support CFS in their efforts to reach the scientific and engineering milestones needed to get there,” Michael Terrell, head of advanced energy at Google, said in a June 30 press release.
Now all that’s left for CFS to do is prove its technology can work as promised.
The starting gun for the long-promised U.S. nuclear renaissance might have just gone off.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced late last week that it has granted several key approvals that Holtec International needs to restart Michigan’s 800-megawatt Palisades Nuclear Plant three years after the facility shut down. Although the project still needs to clear some federal hurdles, the NRC’s action signals its intention to give Holtec the full go-ahead.
If Holtec succeeds in bringing Palisades back online this year as promised, it would be the first nuclear plant in the U.S. to restart after being closed down. Remarkably, it would be just the second or third reactor to come back online in the global history of civilian nuclear power.
Holtec President Kelly Trice praised the NRC’s move in a statement, calling it “an unprecedented milestone in U.S. nuclear energy.” The company expects the plant to come back online before the end of the year — an extremely ambitious target given the uncharted regulatory territory of a reactor restart and the industry’s history of construction delays.
Located on Lake Michigan and a two-hour drive from Chicago, the Palisades plant started producing electricity on New Year’s Eve 1971 and was shuttered a half-century later in May 2022 by utility Entergy because of cost issues. It was America’s eighth-oldest nuclear plant at the time of its closing, with a troubled history of temporary shutdowns due to equipment failures. Although its performance improved in the later years of the plant’s operation, Palisades closed 11 days ahead of its scheduled shutdown because of a reliability issue.
Holtec — whose main lines of business are decommissioning reactors and managing nuclear waste — bought the plant in June 2022. But just weeks into the decommissioning process, it made the surprise revelation that it intended to revive the plant instead. Up until that point, Holtec had no experience in constructing, operating, or restarting a nuclear power plant.
Despite that lack of experience, the relatively speedy NRC approval means that Holtec can now reinstall uranium fuel in the reactor as soon as August and begin the work of restarting the complex nuclear facility. About 600 full-time workers are currently employed at the plant.
Palisades is not the only shuttered reactor that’s being considered for reopening as part of the U.S. strategy to jump-start its flatlined nuclear industry. Last year, Microsoft announced a multibillion-dollar plan with plant operator Constellation Energy to restart Three Mile Island Unit 1 in Pennsylvania by 2028; it had been decommissioned in 2019 because of poor economics. Power provider NextEra Energy is also weighing reanimating Iowa’s only nuclear plant, the 50-year-old reactor at the Duane Arnold Energy Center, which closed in 2020 because of storm damage and cost issues.
Nuclear power has newfound social license in the U.S. Citizen support has climbed in recent years. The U.S., along with more than 20 other countries, vowed to triple nuclear power capacity by 2050 during the COP28 global climate conference in 2023.
Nuclear is now viewed by many as crucial to meeting the soaring electricity demand that’s being driven by an AI-spurred data-center frenzy along with the electrification of transportation and industry. Tech giants in particular are hungry for the clean, firm, 24/7 power that nuclear plants can provide, as their data centers crave round-the-clock electricity.
Aside from renaming post offices, bolstering nuclear power is the rare type of policy that can gain bipartisan agreement — the Biden administration initiated this atomic energy rally, and the Trump admin is maintaining its momentum.
Trump’s recent set of executive orders on nuclear power sped up the licensing process and minimized regulatory burdens, all in the service of fostering American “energy dominance.”
So it’s a good time to be a nuclear plant operator. Notoriously expensive nuclear reactors can now claim a bundle of incentives and subsidies. Consider all the goodies Holtec will be able to take advantage of.
Not everyone is enthusiastic about the Palisades reactor restart.
Kevin Kamps of anti-nuclear organization Beyond Nuclear told Canary Media that the NRC is “under tremendous pressure” and “bowing to Holtec’s schedule” as it “pushes the envelope on risk.”
He wrote in a statement, “The zombie reactor restart scheme is unneeded, insanely expensive for the public, and extremely high risk for health, safety, security, and the environment.”
The advocacy organization claims that Holtec “neglected critical safety maintenance from 2022 to 2024.” Beyond Nuclear is particularly worried about the impact of corrosion on a massive, expensive, and critical part of the reactor: the steam generator.
There are thousands of steam generator tubes in a pressurized water reactor like Palisades. In instances of corrosion, they are routinely re-sleeved or plugged, but Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear engineer and whistleblower, has testified in NRC proceedings that “the failure of a single tube would result in a release of radioactivity to the environment” and “a cascading failure of tubes could cause a reactor core meltdown and catastrophic release of hazardous radioactivity.”
Beyond Nuclear intends to appeal the NRC’s green light for restart once it’s finalized.
Unfortunately, restarting a few vintage plants would contribute little toward the broader goal of building hundreds of gigawatts of low-cost nuclear power. There just aren’t enough eligible decommissioned nuclear plants to make much of a difference.
Nuclear enthusiasts rave about the prospects for small modular reactors and other advanced reactors, with their novel designs, coolants, and fuels. But while those technologies are engineering marvels, they won’t do anything to drive down costs in the next few years.
A more direct solution to growing the U.S. nuclear fleet (and keeping up with a surging China) would be to build tried and tested models of big, traditional nuclear plants over and over again. Venture capital-funded consortia such as The Nuclear Co. and other parties are planning to do just that: deploy fleets of full-scale, licensed, and standardized reactor designs on sites with existing construction and operating licenses. It’s a strategy to avoid the first-of-a-kind shock of building a newer generation of reactor like Georgia’s Vogtle 3, which was years late and billions over budget.
Meanwhile, the NRC’s forthcoming approval of the Palisades recommissioning is a morale booster for the U.S. nuclear industry, which has needed to put some wins and megawatts on the board.
A correction was made on July 30, 2025: This story originally misstated which federal tax credits the Palisades plant would be eligible for if it restarted. The plant would be eligible for the 45Y production tax credit for new nuclear, not the 45U production tax credit for existing nuclear.
Since its founding back in 2010, Shine Technologies has raised nearly $800 million to deliver on the potential of generating cheap, abundant energy from fusion.
Like the dozens of other startups at work in this field, Shine Technologies has yet to crack the code on fusion, an energy source that has been 40 years away from commercialization for 50 years. But unlike those competitors, Shine is already generating real revenue — not by producing electricity but by essentially selling neutrons from the fusion reaction to industrial imaging and materials testing companies.
Governments, venture capitalists, tech billionaires, and other private investors around the world have pumped more than $7.1 billion into fusion companies, according to a July 2024 report by the Fusion Industry Association.
But despite almost a century of research since fusion’s discovery, engineers have been unable to achieve its holy grail: continuously generating more power than was used to create a fusion reaction in the first place. The fusion world uses a metric called the fusion energy gain factor, also known simply as Q, to measure that ratio. If a project was to achieve a Q greater than 1, it would achieve the much-sought-after energy-breakeven point.
But Shine has a different benchmark — at least for right now.
“If you talk to almost every fusion company on Earth, they’ll say, ‘We’re shooting for Q greater than 1.’ But we have a different Q — our Q is economic. It’s generating more dollars out than dollars in. That’s how you scale a company,” Greg Piefer, Shine’s CEO, said.
The fusion reaction is the primordial alchemical trick that powers our sun, propels spacecraft in science-fiction novels and, if the visionaries and true believers are correct, could meet humanity’s voracious energy needs in the centuries to come.
The reaction occurs in plasma, the fourth state of matter. The sun creates plasma by compressing and heating hydrogen to tens of millions of degrees, and it performs the miracle of fusion by confining that hydrogen, along with its variants, with its mammoth gravity.
Humans hoping to recreate the conditions of the sun on Earth have to rely on exotic magnets, Brobdingnagian laser-beam arrays, or other maximalist techniques.
These complex and expensive fusion machines compress and confine plasma in an attempt to bring two nuclei close enough to overcome their repellant electrostatic forces and fuse together. A successful, sustained fusion reaction would heat up a material surrounding the reactor, allowing it to boil water and drive the same sort of conventional steam turbine you’d find in a coal, gas, or traditional nuclear (fission) power plant.
Most of the fusion startups Canary Media has covered — such as Commonwealth Fusion Systems, TAE Technologies, Avalanche Energy, and Zap Energy — plan to take this steam-turbine approach to producing fusion power. Each company has its own (unproven) method for controlling the plasma and wringing out the heat. Some firms use a tokamak design, a very big, hollow donut-shaped hall in which the plasma circulates, or a twisted variant called a stellarator. Some aspirants confine the plasma with magnetic forces while others use high electrical currents or lasers to tame the atomic-particle soup.
So, which technology and approach is Shine using to solve the fusion riddle?
“I’m going to say something really trippy. As a fusion company, when it comes to energy production — I don’t know yet. … We have our own internal technological approach. I don’t think it’s any more likely than any other technological approach to prevail,” Piefer admitted. “You won’t hear that from any other fusion CEO in the whole world. But the truth is, it’s early innings, and we don’t know which fusion approach is going to be the most cost-effective.”
And while today’s cadre of fusion startups aims to provide power to the electrical grid in the 2030s or 2040s, Shine is following a different path to market.
“Fusion-energy people are trying to go from fusion not really having ever been used commercially for anything to it being the most reliable, cheapest form of generating energy,” said Piefer. “Everyone’s chasing the energy.”
Instead, Shine’s CEO wants his firm to scale the way historic deep-tech companies like semiconductor makers have done: “You start small with a market where you can make money right away, and then you iterate over time — and through that virtuous cycle of providing value and reinvesting a portion of it to make the technology better, you continue to access bigger and bigger markets.”
The market where Shine is making money now is the sale of neutrons for use in industrial imaging and materials testing. Piefer estimates that this will generate “on the order of $50 million of revenue in 2025.”
Shine will next move into medical-isotope production, then recycling spent nuclear fuel, and, ultimately, Piefer said, electrical power generation.
Producing medical isotopes requires fewer sustained reactions than producing power, and while net power is a ways away, the technology for isotope production is already available.
Medical isotopes are currently produced via nuclear fission, but if they can be produced via fusion, that would eliminate the need to use highly enriched uranium. And it could be a lucrative line of business: The global market for medical isotopes is about $6 billion a year.
“If you make a kilowatt-hour of fusion energy, you can sell that kilowatt-hour for maybe 5 cents,” he said. “But you can sell the other product of [deuterium-tritium] fusion reactions, neutrons, for as much as $100,000 per kilowatt-hour in certain markets.”
The prospect of getting a foot in that market drove Shine to break ground on a new facility in Wisconsin, which has already been licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It will be the largest isotope-production factory in the world when it comes online in a few years, according to Piefer. He claims that his firm is the only one that has successfully shepherded a new nuclear technology through the NRC process since the agency’s inception in 1974. The firm has also received tens of millions of dollars from the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration to support its isotope-production plans, including $32 million last summer.
Unlike the rest of the fusion-startup cohort, “we’re actually selling fusion,” the CEO said. “That’s an important differentiation because it means we get to practice fusion, which is ultimately what’s going to drive it to be cheaper” — and potentially pave the way for it to become a power source in the decades to come.
Correction: This article has been updated to correct the total amount of money Shine Technologies has raised to date.
A Michigan nuclear plant is looking to make history not once but twice over: First by restarting a reactor shuttered in 2022 and second with newly solidified plans to build the nation’s first small modular reactors.
Holtec International — the nuclear company best known for decommissioning shuttered plants and manufacturing the canisters that store spent fuel — bought the Palisades nuclear plant on the southeastern shore of Lake Michigan a month after utility giant Entergy took the financially troubled single-reactor facility offline.
Last year, the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office finalized a deal to give Holtec $1.52 billion to bring the 55-year-old, 800-megawatt pressurized water reactor back online. The company wants to plug the facility back into the grid by the end of this year.
Now Holtec plans to nearly double the electricity output from Palisades by building two of its own small modular reactors, or SMRs, at the site.
On Tuesday, top executives gathered at the facility in Covert Township, Michigan, to unveil blueprints for adding a pair of its proprietary SMR-300s and announce Hyundai Engineering and Construction Co. — the South Korean firm already working with the Florida-based Holtec to develop its 300-MW units internationally — as its partner in the debut U.S. project. Completing the reactor would be a first not just for the country but the company. While Holtec has disassembled reactors, it has yet to build one, much less its own design.
“If we can’t do it, I don’t know who else is going to do it,” Rick Springman, the president of Holtec’s Global Clean Energy Opportunities division, told Canary Media ahead of the event. “I really think we can be the horse America can ride to a clean-energy future and to enable AI and everything else we want to do in this global competition.”
First, Holtec will need the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s approval of its reactor design.
So far, the U.S. federal regulator has only approved one SMR, Oregon-based NuScale Power’s 50 MW unit. The first plant designed around NuScale’s reactors, a 720 MW station built on property owned by the Idaho National Laboratory to provide power to ratepayers in Utah, was scrapped in November 2023 amid rising costs.
2024 marked a breakout year for nuclear power in the U.S., as Congress passed new legislation to streamline reactor regulations, Microsoft put up $16 billion to reopen the mothballed unit at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island, and SMR developers lined up major deals with Amazon and Google.
Yet no SMR developer got the green light from the NRC to become the nation’s second certified design.
“Most of our competitors are essentially offering the technology but don’t want to take any risk,” Springman said.
In other words, those developers will design and license the technology and make money off the intellectual property, he said, but utilities and construction firms must provide the financing, time, and materials.
“You have this stagnation where no one wants to stand behind the project,” Springman said. “Enter Holtec. We can manufacture the parts, build the plant, and arrange the financing for the project. We can also manage the spent fuel … and we can decommission the plant at end of life. We can do the entire spectrum of the project. There’s no U.S. company that can offer all of that.”
Holtec is betting its decades of manufacturing know-how, experience managing complex nuclear projects, and early engagement with federal regulators will secure approval fast enough to construct both its SMRs in the next five years — a breakneck speed by the standards of reactor construction.
The only two new reactors built from scratch in the U.S. in decades were completed at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in northern Georgia last spring. The pair of 1,100 MW Westinghouse AP1000s followed the NRC’s part 52 combined licensing pathway, which granted approval to build and operate the reactors. While the approach was meant to get the units online faster than the traditional licensing process, the design tweaks that needed to be made during the first-of-a-kind build required repeatedly going back to the NRC for approvals that delayed the project and helped drive it billions of dollars over budget.
Instead, Holtec said it would follow the traditional part 50 process, which requires the company to obtain the construction and operating licenses separately.
“We prefer part 50 because we believe on a first-of-a-kind project, there’s less regulatory risk and more flexibility in that process to allow for learnings during construction,” Springman said.
Holtec started talks with the NRC five years ago and “over the last three years really stepped up engagement” by submitting white papers and topical reports, he said.
The company said it plans to submit the first part of its construction permit application in the first quarter of 2026 and the second part in the second quarter of 2027, then apply for an operating license in the first three months of 2029.
Thanks to conversations already underway, Springman said, Holtec will have incorporated the NRC’s feedback into its application by the time it submits paperwork. “They know it’s coming, and we have reduced risk from a regulatory perspective,” he said.
Already, Holtec updated the design of its SMR, nearly doubling the output of the proposed machine from 160 MW to the 300 MW model the company is now planning to build. Research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests the cheapest reactor to build in the U.S. next, however, would be another AP1000, since the design is settled and the size allows power-plant owners to benefit from economies of scale.
“I love the idea of restoring nuclear operation to sites that have lost it, and I love even more building new reactors where we had fewer,” said Mark Nelson, a nuclear engineer and founder of the consultancy Radiant Energy Group. “It’ll be interesting to see whether the right size of reactor is smaller or larger in the future.”
Despite some pushback from antinuclear groups, the project is gaining local political backing. In December, the board of commissioners in Michigan’s Van Buren County voted to support construction of the SMRs.
“I’m thrilled — it’d be historic,” said Shawn Connors, 69, a retired technical publisher who grew up in Kalamazoo, owns a condo in South Haven, about five miles north of the Palisades plant, and now volunteers as an advocate for nuclear power. “Palisades might become the focus of the world because this is where you can have the old [pressurized water reactor] operating and two new SMRs operating right next to it. You’ve got the old and the new right there together.”
NUCLEAR: Eight current or former coal plant sites in Indiana could potentially host small modular nuclear reactors and help the state meet its growing energy demand, according to a new Purdue University study. (Indiana Capital Chronicle)
PIPELINES: Minnesota regulators rescind a permit to rebuild a petroleum pipeline near a culturally significant site to tribes and will require the company to conduct an archeology study after pushback from several tribal nations. (Sahan Journal)
CLIMATE: A U.S. Senate committee is expected to next week consider Trump’s interior secretary nominee Doug Burgum, who championed carbon capture and storage while governor of North Dakota. (Washington Post)
SOLAR:
EMISSIONS: Coal and natural gas plants represent more than two-thirds of the facilities that release the most greenhouse gases across several Midwest states, according to an analysis of federal data. (WFYI)
UTILITIES:
BATTERIES: Western Michigan county officials pass a resolution withdrawing support for a large proposed battery manufacturing plant, citing public opposition to the plan. (WOOD-TV8)
POLITICS: Former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan takes the stand during his federal corruption trial, insisting he never traded his public office for private gain, including for former associates who allegedly got jobs at ComEd in exchange for favorable legislation. (Chicago Sun-Times)
WIND: President-elect Trump promises that “no new windmills” will be built in the U.S. once he takes office, despite the industry’s growth in GOP-leaning states like Iowa and his inability to control private-sector investments. (New York Times)
EFFICIENCY: Wisconsin starts rolling out programs for homeowners to secure energy efficiency rebates through the Inflation Reduction Act. (WCCO)
COMMENTARY:
NUCLEAR: Maryland-based Constellation Energy signs a $1 billion deal to provide nuclear power and energy efficiency services to 13 federal agencies, marking the first time the U.S. has used a major energy purchase to support nuclear power as a clean energy source. (Reuters)
ALSO: An energy company threatens to sue federal regulators for denying its proposal to expand an Amazon data center located at a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. (E&E News, subscription)
CLIMATE:
OFFSHORE WIND:
EFFICIENCY: Massachusetts’ newest energy efficiency plan targets rental properties, covering the entire cost of weatherization in some cities and protecting tenants against rent hikes intended to pay for more efficient heating equipment. (Boston Globe)
SOLAR:
FRACKING: Scientists find contamination in freshwater mussels consistent with the chemical signatures of wastewater produced by fracking in western Pennsylvania. (Inside Climate News)
TRANSPORTATION: A New Jersey judge agrees to hear a request for a last-minute restraining order against New York’s plan to impose a congestion price on cars entering parts of Manhattan starting this weekend. (4 New York)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Hearing from building owners concerned about the risk of fire from indoor e-bike charging, New York City expands an initiative allowing multifamily buildings to apply for sidewalk space to install charging cabinets. (Streetsblog)
CLEAN ENERGY: A University of Maryland researcher receives $7.8 million to develop and test a system that uses fermented ocean microbes to power marine sensing devices for scientific or national security applications. (Maryland Today)
Ohio environmental advocates are questioning the intent of a pending state law that would add nuclear power to the state’s legal definition of “green” energy.
House Bill 308’s sponsors say the legislation is meant to signal that Ohio is open for business when it comes to nuclear power research and development, but critics warn the language could have broader implications in the future.
“Legislators don’t just put something into the code unless it has meaning and purpose and value,” said Megan Hunter, an attorney with Earthjustice, one of several environmental groups challenging a similar 2022 state law that classified natural gas as a “green” energy source. “Why would you do this if it has no impact or meaning or effect?”
Critics fear the language could be used to greenwash power plants or divert public funding from renewable energy projects, though the bill’s sponsors deny that motive.
“It doesn’t promise any incentives or anything beyond simply placing nuclear under the category of green energy in the Ohio Revised Code,” said state Rep. Sean Brennan, a Democrat from Parma who co-sponsored the nuclear legislation with Republican state Rep. Dick Stein of Norwalk.
The General Assembly passed the nuclear legislation on Dec. 11. As of Thursday it was awaiting Gov. Mike DeWine’s signature.
Brennan said the question of why the language should be in a law instead of just a resolution didn’t come up in discussions with Stein, who initially asked him to cosponsor the bill.
Stein said the legislation is “about sending a signal to the market that Ohio wants to be a partner and won’t be an impediment,” in contrast to other states that don’t want nuclear energy. He said he hopes it will help attract jobs and federal funding, building on last year’s creation of a state nuclear development authority.
Stein would not speculate on follow-up steps lawmakers might take, saying his term in the House of Representatives ends this month.
Ohio does not currently have state incentives or policy preferences for “green” energy. The state’s renewable energy standard essentially ended in 2019 as a result of House Bill 6, the coal and nuclear bailout law at the heart of the state’s ongoing corruption scandal. Opponents testifying against the current legislation, though, said they worry the definition will be used to water down future clean energy policies.
“HB 308 will enable the manipulation of public funds into private, corporate hands,” said Pat Marida, a coordinator for the Ohio Nuclear-Free Network, in her December 13 testimony. Also, she said, “there is nothing ‘green’ about nuclear power,” referring to radioactive waste, which continues to be stored at power plant sites.
Future state programs might offer funding or other advantages for projects that meet the state’s definition of “green” energy, for example. And even if the definition doesn’t open doors to new government funding, it could provide cover to private companies that want to count gas and nuclear energy toward their climate or clean energy targets, another advocate warned.
“Insidiously, it does potentially become important,” said Nathan Alley, conservation manager for the Sierra Club of Ohio. Many companies have adopted clean energy goals, he noted. “This might telegraph to them that they could invest in nuclear energy and achieve the same climate and/or energy goals as if they invest in solar or wind.”
Ohio lawmakers aren’t the only ones who want to define natural gas and nuclear power as “green energy.” Model legislation finalized by the American Legislative Exchange Council this fall does the same thing. ALEC is a Koch-linked group that has long opposed renewable energy and actions to address climate change.
ALEC’s model bill would have its definition “apply to all programs in the state that fund any ‘green energy’ or ‘clean energy’ initiatives.” Another model ALEC bill would define nuclear energy as “clean energy” and put it on a par with renewable energy.
A coalition of environmental groups is currently challenging House Bill 507, Ohio’s 2022 law that labeled natural gas as “green energy,” arguing in court that the way in which it was passed violated the state constitution. The groups say last-minute amendments violated provisions that require bills to deal with a single subject – the initial two-page bill dealt with chickens – and call for at least three hearings in each house of the General Assembly where lawmakers can hear testimony from supporters and opponents.
That lawsuit has been briefed and is currently awaiting a decision from Judge Kimberly Cocroft at the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas. HB 308 should not affect that case, said Hunter and Alley.
As with HB 507, though, lawmakers added last-minute amendments to HB 308. One of those would extend lease terms for drilling under state park and wildlife areas from three years to five years. That was unacceptable to Brennan, who voted against the Senate amendments when it came back to the Ohio House.
Still, he supports what he views as the main purpose of the legislation: attracting more nuclear power to Ohio. In his view, solar and wind won’t be enough to meet growing energy demands while shifting away from fossil fuels in order to address climate change. “I believe nuclear is going to be hugely important for our energy independence, and hopefully Ohio will become an exporter of electricity in the future.”
Hunter wasn’t surprised that lawmakers made last-minute amendments to the bill. For her, it shows the importance of the ongoing litigation over HB 507.
“Those constitutional protections are there for a reason,” she said. “And seeing the General Assembly have blatant disregard for them again and again harms Ohioans. It deprives them of these constitutional rights.”
NUCLEAR: The Biden administration today plans to release a blueprint for an additional 200 GW of nuclear power by 2050, a proposal that has bipartisan support and is likely to survive the incoming Trump administration. (Bloomberg)
OVERSIGHT:
CLIMATE: White House climate advisor John Podesta tells attendees at the COP 29 summit that “the work to contain climate change is going to continue in the United States” and calls on the private sector and state and local governments to lead the way. (The Hill)
CLEAN ENERGY:
GRID: A company working to cut roughly a year off the grid interconnection process receives a $49.5 million federal grant to roll out its software in eight states. (Canary Media)
OIL & GAS: The EPA finalizes a Biden administration rule to charge fees for venting or flaring natural gas, which, because it is linked to the Inflation Reduction Act, will require congressional approval to overturn. (CNN)
HYDROGEN: Advocates say developers are not listening to their environmental justice concerns as the process of building federally supported hydrogen hubs ramps up in Pennsylvania and other targeted areas. (The Daily Climate)
OFFSHORE WIND: A coalition of East Coast states moves ahead with plans for a compensation fund to mitigate the financial impact offshore wind could have on commercial fishermen. (SeafoodSource)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: While some analysts predict a “U.S. battery boom” as Trump removes restrictions on mining, others note that policy support across the entire supply chain will be necessary to grow the electric vehicle industry. (E&E News)
POLITICS: As Tesla CEO Elon Musk continues to enjoy outsized influence over the Trump transition, a source reveals he spent nearly $200 million supporting the former president’s reelection. (Al Jazeera, Associated Press)
COMMENTARY: The executive director of the Sierra Club says “we will not go backward” on clean energy, predicting market forces and state opposition will thwart some of Trump’s efforts to roll back climate policy. (Chicago Sun-Times)
NUCLEAR: Worker training is ramping up at a shuttered Michigan nuclear plant that within the next year aims to become the first U.S. reactor to restart after being closed. (Michigan Advance)
CLEAN ENERGY: Midwest clean energy experts say the incoming Trump administration will no doubt usher in a renewed commitment to domestic oil and gas production, but remain hopeful that clean energy investments will continue. (MPR News)
RENEWABLES: Dozens of Michigan communities band together to file a legal appeal of the state’s new renewable energy siting regulations that give final authority over projects to state regulators. (MLive, subscription)
FOSSIL FUELS: The Sierra Club criticizes Wisconsin regulators’ recent approval of We Energies’ rate increases that they say are driven by previous bad investments in fossil fuels. (Wisconsin Examiner)
GRID: The president of grid operator MISO says natural gas plants could be built to meet data centers’ short-term power needs and transition to backup power sources as clean energy plays a bigger role on the grid. (Utility Dive)
UTILITIES:
EMISSIONS: The U.S. oil industry makes five policy requests to the incoming Trump administration, including repealing tailpipe and fuel economy standards that would be key for reducing transportation emissions. (Inside Climate News)
BATTERIES:
SOLAR: A developer reaches an agreement to build two commercial solar projects in Wisconsin before handing over ownership to Wisconsin Public Service Corp. and Madison Gas and Electric. (Solar Industry)
BIOFUELS: A Michigan fuel supplier aims to increase biofuel sales by 2.5 million gallons per year by installing new fuel dispensers with help from a $4.2 million federal grant. (County Press)
NUCLEAR: Shuttered nuclear reactors in Michigan, Iowa and Pennsylvania are the country’s most obvious candidates for restarting, a nuclear expert says, adding that others in the U.S. would be long-shots. (Utility Dive)
POLLUTION: Michigan’s coal-based steel and coke facilities contribute to about 40-80 premature deaths and more than 20,000 asthma cases a year, according to a new report from an advocacy and research group. (Planet Detroit)
BIOGAS: Michigan officials approve hundreds of millions of dollars in tax-exempt bonds that would help Chevron and other entities complete several facilities that convert farm waste to renewable natural gas. (WOOD-TV8)
WIND: Zoning officials in eastern Iowa continue work on a draft ordinance for new wind regulations nearly a year and a half after enacting a moratorium on commercial projects. (Telegraph Herald)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: An Illinois county board leader resigns from his position after taking a job with a Chinese-owned company that’s building a controversial EV battery plant there. (Chicago Tribune, subscription)
BIOFUELS: The Iowa Sierra Club calls a $1 million federal rural clean energy grant for an ethanol producer a “boondoggle.” (Iowa Capital Dispatch)
SOLAR: Minnesota loses its effort to send back to state court a case claiming a group of companies marketing loans for residential solar panels violated consumer protection laws. (Bloomberg Law, subscription)
CARBON CAPTURE: The U.S. Department of Energy awards $518 million to develop 23 carbon capture and storage projects across 19 states, which are still being negotiated and face environmental review. (E&E News, subscription)
POLITICS: Attorneys for former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and his close associate plan to strongly challenge prosecutors’ theory about Madigan exchanging favorable legislation with jobs for his allies. (Chicago Sun-Times)
STORAGE: Long-duration energy storage startup Form Energy, which is developing a commercial pilot project with a Minnesota utility, recently raised $405 million in capital to scale up the company. (Utility Dive)
GRID: Illinois consumer advocates push back on Ameren’s more than $300 million rate increase request to help pay for grid infrastructure projects, saying the amount is excessive. (WEEK)
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