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Safety concerns are at the heart of opposition to a proposed carbon dioxide pipeline in central Illinois, which would connect an ethanol plant to a proposed sequestration site about six miles away.
The pipeline proposed by One Earth Energy is much shorter than carbon dioxide pipelines that were previously proposed in Illinois and then tabled by Navigator CO2 Ventures and Wolf Carbon Solutions. Those pipelines would have stretched through hundreds of miles of farmland.
But One Earth’s proposed pipeline starts just west of downtown Gibson City, at the company’s ethanol plant. Local leaders say county and city emergency responders, relying largely on volunteer firefighters, are ill-equipped to prepare for possible leaks or ruptures.
Ford County Emergency Management Agency and Local Emergency Planning Committee coordinator Terry Whitebird says the county cannot afford to do the necessary training and planning for a potential disaster and evacuation, as noted in testimony filed with the Illinois Commerce Commission, which will hold public hearings in May on the company’s request for a necessary certificate of authority.
It also cannot afford to buy electric municipal vehicles that could be necessary during a carbon dioxide leak, since gas and diesel vehicles can fail when the heavy gas displaces oxygen needed for combustion. That means ambulances and other emergency vehicles could be stalled just when they are needed to help rescue or evacuate residents.
Whitebird also noted that the local hospital has only eight patient rooms and one emergency physician on call, meaning it could be overwhelmed in case of a carbon dioxide leak. The next closest hospitals, in Bloomington and Champaign, are each 40 minutes away.
Opponents of carbon dioxide pipelines often point to a 2020 disaster in the tiny village of Satartia, Mississippi, where a Denbury Resources pipeline rupture and explosion left people sickened and struggling to breathe. At least 45 people were hospitalized, and some report lasting health impacts.
Whitebird envisioned a similar disaster unfolding in Gibson City, which has a much larger population of 3,400.
“The wind in this area is generally from west to east, and any leak or rupture will likely result in the CO2 gas drifting into Gibson City — a potential exposure of 25% of the population of the County,” says Whitebird’s testimony before the commerce commission.
Sally Lasser moved from Joliet, near Chicago, to cultivate forest and native prairie on land near Gibson City she named R Wildflower Farm & Fields, to honor her late father, Richard Lasser, who planted 5,000 trees on the land and put much of it in conservation easements.
One Earth’s proposed sequestration site is near Lasser’s land, and her name is on a list of affected landowners filed by the company. When Lasser first heard about the proposal, she was open to understanding the benefits to the local ethanol industry, and allowed the company to host a meeting on her porch last summer.
At first, “I was given no reason to be concerned about the danger of this project,” she said. She asked questions about truck traffic and lights during construction. Later on, other residents and advocates explained the risks of a carbon dioxide pipeline rupture.
“If I were to try to start my truck, it’s not going to start, so I’m going to take off on foot unless I have an electric car,” she said. “How do I know which direction to go in, because I can’t see (the carbon dioxide gas). Say the emergency responders have electric vehicles. Are they going to come to my farm and scour all 160 acres to find me? Are they going to look up in the loft of my barn because that’s where I was when I passed out from this?”
Local leaders and advocates have demanded that One Earth produce models of how a carbon dioxide plume would spread in case of a rupture, but pipeline developers are not required to do so. The company filed plume modeling with the commerce commission in late March, but it is considered confidential and can only be viewed by official stakeholders in the process.
Kathy Campbell, an audiologist and Southern Illinois University professor emeritus who has reviewed proposals for the Food and Drug Administration and other federal agencies, said she “had reservations” about the quality of the modeling.
Local leaders previously obtained modeling done by Navigator for its proposal, though the company never officially released that information. Campbell analyzed Navigator’s plume modeling to predict how a plume from One Earth’s pipeline might behave.
She concluded that residents closest to One Earth’s proposed pipeline would have no way to evacuate before being overcome by dangerous levels of carbon dioxide if the pipeline ruptured. Based on Navigator’s modeling, residents within 1,971 feet of the One Earth pipeline would be in the highest hazard zone, Campbell testified. One Earth’s proposal shows multiple residences and businesses within 1,200 feet of the pipeline, and at least two residences less than 700 feet away, based on GIS analysis by pipeline opponents.
While carbon dioxide at low concentrations is harmless to humans, at higher concentrations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Department of Agriculture consider it a serious health hazard, both because of its toxicity and the fact that it displaces oxygen at ground level.
In a March 27 filing, One Earth promised that it would provide carbon dioxide monitors and emergency oxygen supplies to landowners along the route.
“Imagine if everyone along a pipeline corridor had to have oxygen, and know how to use it,” said Jenny Cassel, a senior attorney for Earthjustice who has worked on proposed state legislation to regulate such pipelines. “That’s pretty terrifying. What if a kid is home alone?”
Carbon dioxide is gaseous under normal atmospheric conditions, but can be turned to liquid at high pressure, for transport in pipelines. If that pressure is suddenly released, carbon dioxide converts to its solid state and takes on a frigid temperature, then evaporates or “melts” into gas.
“If there’s a rupture, it immediately turns into dry ice crystals — it comes out at negative 109 degrees,” explained Campbell, who lived in the path of the Navigator pipeline proposal. “If you breathe those or those hit your eyes, you get frostbite of the eyes, mouth, ears.”
The toxicity of carbon dioxide at high concentrations can also immediately damage the body, Campbell continued.
“And somehow you’re supposed to try to escape while your vision is going, your hearing is going.”
The frigid temperature of released high-pressure carbon dioxide also affects the steel pipelines, experts say, making them brittle and allowing a small rupture to quickly “unzip” into a major fissure.
At concentrations of 40,000 ppm, carbon dioxide is designated by the CDC as “immediately dangerous to life or health,” and lower concentrations are considered perilous for certain lengths of exposure, Campbell wrote in testimony before the commission. She cites academic studies predicting that dangerous levels could be reached within five minutes of a rupture.
“This pipeline does not provide any benefit to those whose lives are placed at risk along the pipeline,” Campbell’s testimony continued. “For them, the risk/benefit assessment is all risk and no benefit.”
Mark Maple, senior gas engineer for the Illinois Commerce Commission, emphasized safety risks in his testimony recommending the commission deny One Earth’s proposal.
“In my opinion the current safety regulations, as they pertain to carbon dioxide pipelines, are not sufficient to guarantee the public’s safety in all possible scenarios,” he testified. “Therefore, I cannot say with certainty that all citizens along the route will be safe if a rupture were to occur.”
While residents are concerned about the One Earth pipeline in its own right, they also fear its construction would mean more carbon dioxide pipeline proposals, to connect to One Earth’s pipeline and sequestration site.
One Earth’s original proposal called for a pipeline that could handle about 10 times the amount of carbon dioxide produced annually by the ethanol plant, and noted that the pipeline would serve third-party customers. In late March, the company revised its proposal to reduce the pipeline’s capacity, from a 16-inch to 12.75-inch diameter, though it said the pipeline still offers some capacity for additional users.
“Reducing the total potential capacity of the OES pipeline will reduce the volumes that could be released in the event of a pipeline leak or rupture and therefore the CO2 concentrations at various distances from the pipeline in the event of a break,” Mark Ditsworth, One Earth vice president of technology and special projects, said in testimony filed March 27.
REX American Resources, One Earth’s parent company, also owns ethanol plants in Iowa, Wisconsin, South Dakota and another town in Illinois. Residents worry that the company would seek to connect these plants to the sequestration site, to collect tax credits for carbon capture and sequestration.
The Navigator and Wolf pipelines were both proposed to connect multiple ethanol plants to sequestration sites in Illinois’ Mt. Simon sandstone geology. Both companies withdrew their proposals from commerce commission consideration last fall in the face of opposition from landowners. The commission invited Wolf to reapply if it addressed concerns and requests for more information.
Safety concerns are not the only area where critics say One Earth’s proposal is lacking. The company has not yet secured needed permits and approvals for the sequestration site it has proposed in neighboring McLean County. The Illinois Commerce Commission does not need to approve sequestration sites, but the county in December denied a necessary special use permit, and the company hasn’t obtained other state and federal permits.
The company has also not secured leases or easements from the approximately 20 landowners along the proposed pipeline route. Pipeline developers can invoke eminent domain to secure rights of way if the project is determined by the commission to be in the public interest.
In testimony, Maple said eminent domain is intended to make sure a minority of landowners can’t block a project that a majority supports. He testified that eminent domain might not be considered appropriate if the company has obtained few or no voluntary easements.
One Earth “has yet to acquire any of the necessary easements” for the pipeline, Maple’s testimony states. “This demonstrates that the Company has failed to show that it has negotiated, or even begun to negotiate, in good faith with landowners…The lack of progress with landowner negotiations at this stage of the proceeding is highly concerning.”
On March 27, the company filed testimony regarding a revised plan that shortened the planned route by a mile and reduced the number of injection wells planned at the sequestration site, from three to two. Ditsworth told the commission this was to address landowner “preferences.”
In testimony, Ditsworth said the company “has had significant success negotiating with landowners for necessary land rights” to build two injection wells for sequestration. He said the company had acquired the rights to almost all the pore space needed around one of the injection wells and almost half the pore space needed around another.
Lasser was glad to hear of the removal of one injection well and reduction in the size of the pipeline, but she is still deeply concerned about safety.
“I’m no longer sandwiched between two (injection) wells, but I’m still in too close a proximity, I would still be in great danger,” she said. “People need to realize how terribly unsafe it is. We need leaders that put people and their safety before private business.”
TRANSITION: The Tennessee Valley Authority announces it will close a huge coal-fired power plant near Knoxville, Tennessee, that was the site of a major coal ash spill, and replace it with a 1,500 MW natural gas plant by 2027. (Knoxville News Sentinel)
ALSO: Dominion Energy’s plans to build a new natural gas-fired power plant in Virginia raises questions whether it plans to meet a state goal to entirely transition away from fossil fuels by 2045. (Virginia Business)
GRID:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Georgia automakers warily eye the U.S. EPA’s newly proposed rules to limit vehicle emissions as they consider adding hybrids to planned electric vehicle factories, with only financially troubled Rivian offering unequivocal support. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
STORAGE: A battery materials maker secures a $103 million federal tax credit for its factory in Tennessee. (Chattanooga Times Free Press, subscription)
OIL & GAS:
PIPELINES: Mountain Valley Pipeline opponents call on Virginia’s environmental agency to issue a stop-work order after it fined the pipeline $34,000 for erosion and sediment violations from last fall. (Virginia Mercury)
NUCLEAR: The second of two new reactors at Georgia Power’s nuclear Plant Vogtle reaches 100% power for the first time and is expected to enter service by June, finally signaling an end to the plant’s long-delayed, over-budget expansion. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
OVERSIGHT:
COMMENTARY: Virginia’s data center boom is creating an energy crisis that threatens the power grid, drinking water sources, and the state’s commitment to transition from fossil fuels, writes a columnist. (Virginia Mercury)
BUILDINGS: The U.S. Department of Energy rolls out a blueprint for slashing new building emissions, saying the optional standards aimed at cutting construction emissions and power use could save consumers more than $100 billion in annual energy costs. (Courthouse News)
CLIMATE:
GRID:
CLEAN ENERGY:
NUCLEAR: Federal nuclear regulators need to more fully consider climate impacts when renewing nuclear plants’ licenses and considering a new wave of small reactors, a government watchdog says. (Utility Dive)
OIL & GAS:
CARBON CAPTURE:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Tesla sales slumped in the first quarter of 2024, suggesting the company’s long-held dominance in the U.S. electric vehicle market may be plateauing. (Axios)
GRID: California’s grid operator proposes $6.1 billion in transmission projects aimed at increasing reliability and providing access to solar, geothermal and wind resources in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and offshore. (Utility Dive)
ALSO:
UTILITIES: Arizona advocates campaign for positions on a Salt River Project’s board with hopes of prodding the Phoenix-area utility to adopt more clean energy generation. (Capital & Main)
SOLAR:
CLEAN ENERGY: Idaho lawmakers pass a resolution supporting clean energy technologies such as green hydrogen production and advanced nuclear reactors. (KMVT)
NUCLEAR: Bill Gates-backed TerraPower applies for a federal permit to construct a proposed 345 MW sodium-cooled nuclear reactor in a Wyoming coal town. (World Nuclear News)
HYDROPOWER: An Arizona utility moves forward with a proposed 1,000 to 2,000 MW pumped hydropower energy storage project outside Phoenix, but predicts construction wouldn’t begin until 2027. (KJZZ)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Colorado launches the nation’s first statewide electric bicycle tax credit giving residents a $450 discount at the point of sale. (CBS News)
OIL & GAS:
CLIMATE:
For years, utilities have grappled with how to handle the ever-growing number of solar and battery systems trying to connect to the lower-voltage grids that deliver power to customers. That’s especially true for midsize projects like, say, a solar array that might adorn the roof of a multiunit apartment complex or a community-solar project that generates power shared by hundreds of dispersed customers.
On the one hand, utilities have eyed such projects warily, fearing that if the solar panels or batteries inject too much power onto local circuits at moments when electricity demand is low, it might cause grid instability or safety problems. As a result, utilities have thrown up barriers that have delayed or halted grid connections.
But as advocates have been pointing out for over a decade, these distributed solar and battery resources can also be enormous assets: By holding back power when the grid doesn’t need it, and then sharing their extra power during periods of high demand, they can help alleviate grid strains and lower the cost of keeping the grid running for everyone.
It’s taken California regulators, utilities and clean-energy advocates nearly four years to hash out these conflicting ideas. But in mid-March, the California Public Utilities Commission approved new interconnection rules that take into account how, with the right structures in place, solar and solar-plus-battery systems can be more help than hazard to California’s overworked grid.
“This will open up opportunities for distributed energy resources to be designed in a way that aligns with grid needs,” said Sky Stanfield, an attorney who works with the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, the nonprofit group that’s been the main proponent of the new rules. “It’s a long time coming to recognize that distributed energy resources are a whole lot more helpful than they’re allowed to be — and that we don’t have to spend as much to upgrade the grid as a result.”
The “Limited Generation Profile option” just approved by the CPUC is a complicated set of regulations that determine how solar and solar-battery systems interact with the lower-voltage grids operated by California’s CPUC-regulated utilities Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric.
Today, those utilities make a simplistic set of assumptions when they consider the potential impacts of a project on the lower-voltage grid systems that carry power from substations to homes and businesses, Stanfield said — basically, that each project is producing its peak output at the time of least electricity demand from customers.
That’s pretty much how all U.S. utilities calculate the risks of new generation connecting to their grids, she noted. But this assumption is likely to yield findings that exaggerate how likely a project is to inject too much power onto local grid circuits.
To eliminate those perceived risks, utilities have demanded that project developers pay for grid upgrades themselves or have prevented the projects from connecting at all. Since those grid upgrades can cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars and take years to complete, the result either way tends to stop projects in their tracks.
The CPUC’s new policy takes a different tack, one well suited to larger-scale projects that are more likely to trigger grid upgrades. It will allow solar and battery projects to modulate how much power they send to the grid with the help of either solar inverters whose power-control systems can reduce power output from moment to moment or batteries that can soak up excess solar power and inject it back into the grid later.
Limited Generation Profile projects would be able to use these capabilities to alter their grid injections during different periods of the day, based on a set of schedules they can choose from. Those scheduling options are derived from the grid data available in the maps of hosting capacity from Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. (Here’s a snapshot of PG&E’s hosting-capacity map for a downtown section of the central California city of Bakersfield, with circuit capacity represented in red, orange, yellow and green.)
Most utilities in the U.S. haven’t been ordered by regulators to collect the detailed and accurate local grid data needed to create these kinds of maps, Stanfield noted. In fact, the Interstate Renewable Energy Council has played a key watchdog role in alerting the CPUC to problems with these maps as they’ve been developed over the past decade, as well as in making them more useful for customers and project developers looking for good spots to connect to the grid.
Thanks to those improvements, California’s maps now contain accurate information on the hour-by-hour capacity of individual circuits.
With this data in hand, California’s three largest utilities and clean-energy project developers can finally agree on just how much power solar and battery projects can safely inject onto the grid during different periods of the day and night across each month of the year.
That amount may be close to zero during some stretches — say, on a circuit with many homes with rooftop solar systems during sunny and mild spring daylight hours, when self-generated solar power can exceed customer demand for electricity. Within those hours, Limited Generation Profile projects may export little or no energy at all.
But these “minimum-loading” conditions are relatively rare — and at other moments, that same grid circuit may be hungry for all the power it can get. That’s typically during hot summer and autumn evenings, when the state’s ample solar resources are fading away, yet electricity demand for air conditioning remains high — the same conditions that have caused statewide grid emergencies in recent years.
California’s power grid is struggling to deal with the wide swings between times when it has too much solar and times when all available resources still don’t provide enough electricity. In fact, the CPUC and state policymakers have made significant efforts to address this imbalance via state rooftop solar policy — which has reduced the value of solar delivered to the grid while promoting the value of batteries that can store power for when it’s needed — and with utility-scale power procurement policies, which have put gigawatts of batteries into operation over the past few years to store solar power for those evening hours when demand exceeds supply.
But until now, utility interconnection policy “has not taken into account, or enabled, distributed energy resources to differentiate when they produce power and when they don’t,” Stanfield said. That’s left interconnection policy misaligned with broader state policy imperatives for how best to use solar systems and batteries, she added.
It’s also put interconnection policy at odds with policy efforts to better manage growing distribution-grid costs, Stanfield noted. Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric are facing tens of billions of dollars of additional grid investment in the coming decades to supply the millions of electric vehicles, heat pumps and electric appliances that the state is asking consumers to adopt in order to reduce carbon emissions.
“Grid upgrades are expensive,” Stanfield said, “and we want to avoid them where we don’t need them” — particularly in cases where new solar and battery systems could actually help reduce grid strains.
Even more fundamentally, rules that bar more solar and battery power from reaching the grid based on outdated and inaccurate methods of determining their grid impacts will rob customers at large of the value those projects could provide.
That’s the conclusion reached by Amin Younes, an electric distribution planning and policy engineer with CPUC’s Public Advocates Office, which represents utility customers’ interests. Younes studied the potential for the Limited Generation Profile option to add more clean energy to California’s grids during hours when energy is in short supply.
This graphic from a presentation of his work indicates how widely the capacity of a typical distribution grid circuit can vary from hour to hour. In this case, limiting a solar or battery project to the minimum loading condition — the red line on the chart — would have forced a project to be sized to deliver no more than 1.5 megawatts of power of maximum capacity. But during many more hours of the year, that circuit could accept far more than that — often more than twice that minimum limit, or more than 3 megawatts of power.
According to his analysis, factoring in that extra capacity across the distribution circuits of all three utilities could add up to tens of billions of dollars per year in additional clean energy that could be delivered. And because that power would supply the grid at hours when electricity costs and threats of grid emergencies are the highest, that “could lower costs and increase grid reliability,” he said in an interview.
Finally, implementing the Limited Generation Profile option should allow solar and battery developers to avoid having to pay for grid upgrades and give them a much faster interconnection process, Stanfield said. And, if it works as planned, it could be a useful model for other states to follow.
In a 2021 blog post, the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit power-sector research group involved in a wide variety of utility technology projects, highlighted the need for more flexible interconnection policies across the U.S. to prevent the tens of billions of dollars of forecasted investment in EV charging, distributed solar and battery backup systems from being stalled out by grid constraints.
The conservative, expect-the-worst approach that most utilities take with interconnection processes may be a way to maintain grid reliability, the institute noted. But it can also “lower customer satisfaction and slow progress toward renewable energy targets.”
It’s important to distinguish the problems plaguing this class of clean energy from the similar but distinct issues blocking hundreds of gigawatts of utility-scale wind and solar farms from connecting to transmission grids across the country. The Interstate Renewable Energy Council’s work in California and other states has focused mainly on distribution grid interconnection policies, which cover everything from rooftop solar systems and home battery and EV charging installations to multi-megawatt solar and battery projects.
While these types of interconnection problems can stymie even smaller-scale home rooftop solar systems, the bigger challenges tend to arise with larger-scale installations like community-solar systems that generate power for many different customers (in California, for example, most projects under 1 megawatt in generation capacity aren’t responsible for paying for grid upgrades). In many states, growing grid-upgrade costs and maddeningly slow interconnection timelines have become increasingly significant roadblocks to connecting these mid-sized projects.
In Minnesota, solar and consumer groups are fighting a utility policy that can assign hundreds of thousands of dollars in grid-upgrade costs to relatively small rooftop solar and community “solar garden” projects. In the community-solar-rich state of Massachusetts, some developers are stuck waiting for years for grid studies to allow projects to move forward.
States including New York, Minnesota and Massachusetts have begun to explore flexible interconnection policies — the more general term for the approach California is taking, according to Stanfield — but only through pilot projects or laborious “non-wires solutions” programs run by utilities. They have yet to embrace a standard way for clean energy developers to work with utilities.
Most other U.S. utilities haven’t been compelled by state law and regulatory mandates to produce the detailed distribution-grid-level data collection and hosting capacity analyses that enable the CPUC’s Limited Generation Profile approach, Stanfield noted. But these kinds of tools are starting to be developed in other states. That’s an important precursor to enable flexible interconnection, she said.
To be fair, utilities have very good reasons to take a conservative, safety-first approach to interconnection. After all, they’re responsible for keeping grids safe and reliable — and distributed energy resources represent potential disruptions to those grids that utilities can’t directly control.
That’s why California’s Limited Generation Profile option won’t go into effect until nine months after certain power-system control technologies are certified by the Underwriters Laboratory standards organization as being able to reliably perform according to schedule. That’s expected to happen sometime within the coming year, Stanfield said.
Utilities have also been concerned that changes on their grids could leave circuits susceptible to dangerous conditions. CPUC’s new policy does allow utilities to curtail a project during emergencies or request a change to the project’s schedule in the highly unlikely circumstance of a “sustained load reduction” on a grid circuit — namely, if a major customer using that circuit closes down and permanently reduces electricity demand.
But under the new rules, utilities are largely required to honor the schedules they’ve agreed to with solar and battery projects, and to take on reasonable costs of grid upgrades to manage them. That’s a vital feature for any successful flexible-interconnection process, Stanfield said, because project developers secure investment for projects based on some level of certainty about how much power they’ll be able to sell over the project’s lifetimes.
Any utility program that injects too much uncertainty into that prospect — by, for example, retaining the right to unilaterally curtail a project’s grid exports without a clear and provable grid problem to justify it — won’t work for developers, she said.
“A flexible interconnection solution, if it’s modeled and can show what the impacts are going to be, might give developers a lot more certainty and more comfort,” said David Gahl, executive director of the Solar and Storage Industries Institute, during a November event held by the Interstate Renewable Energy Council. That nonprofit is leading a flexible-interconnection pilot project in New York state that’s funded by The U.S. Department of Energy’s Interconnection Innovation e-Xchange program.
Utopia Hill, CEO of Reactivate, a joint venture developing community-solar projects for disadvantaged communities, also noted at the November event that the key to future flexible-interconnection processes is increasing their predictability. “If we can’t get financing parties comfortable with that, we can’t get the funding to build the projects,” she said.
It’s still not clear if the CPUC’s Limited Generation Profile rules will meet that need for California solar and battery developers, said Kevin Luo, interconnection policy advisor for the California Solar & Storage Association trade group. One big question is whether the scheduling options approved by the CPUC will actually allow developers to design moneymaking projects.
“That’s one of the reasons why we pushed so hard for customers to be able to pick their own schedules,” he said — an option that the CPUC denied. “Nobody has done the forecasting work necessary to have the confidence in any one schedule.”
Nor are California’s solar policies and market dynamics aligned to support the 1-megawatt-and-up projects that the Limited Generation Profile option would be best suited to, Stanfield said. California lacks effective policies to promote the development of multi-megawatt, distribution-grid-connected community-solar projects or large-scale rooftop solar projects on warehouses or apartment complexes that would be eligible for the new interconnection treatment — although solar and environmental-justice groups are pushing regulators and lawmakers to change that.
Even so, Stanfield said, starting with a schedule-based approach at least begins to align utilities’ grid needs with the imperative to add far more solar and batteries to California’s grid. That way, “you can start to get some of the benefits now — and then we can build on that further.”
The Biden administration’s lucrative incentives for hydrogen are slated to only go to “green” producers who use newly built clean energy sources to make the fuel — and some hydrogen producers aren’t happy about it.
Clean hydrogen has the potential to be a low- or zero-emission alternative to fossil fuels, and could clean up energy-intensive industries like steelmaking and heavy-duty transportation. But it’s not economical to produce just yet.
That’s why the Inflation Reduction Act established the 45V tax credit to help incentivize hydrogen that’s produced with clean energy under these three conditions:
Many companies, including federally backed hydrogen hubs, have pushed back against the rules, saying they will make their projects economically unviable.
But they’re not the only voice out there, Kari Lydersen reports for the Energy News Network. Companies like Hy Stor Energy and Q Hydrogen say they’re committed to producing clean hydrogen, and want the Treasury to only reward fuel that’s produced from new clean energy sources.
Without these parameters, producing hydrogen could actually end up driving up emissions, environmental advocates and academics say. That’s why Hy Stor Energy wants to build new renewable energy, use it to produce hydrogen, and then store it in a network of underground salt caverns for use when renewables can’t meet power demand. Q Hydrogen meanwhile draws its electricity from a nearby hydroelectric plant, and aims to sell its clean fuel to industrial users that otherwise would rely on fossil fuels.
Read more about these hydrogen innovators at the Energy News Network.
— Kathryn Krawczyk
🛑 Coal exports on hold: The bridge collapse in Baltimore is blocking access to the U.S.’s second-largest port for coal exports and will likely disrupt the industry for at least six weeks. (E&E News)
♿ Are EVs really for everyone? 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)
🚛 Rolling toward zero-emission trucks: The U.S. EPA announces a new rule that aims to get more zero-emission heavy- and medium-duty trucks on the road by 2032, earning praise from environmental groups but concern from truck and engine manufacturers. (New York Times, NPR)
🏥 Efficiency saves lives: Appliance energy efficiency standards reduced emissions and prevented as many as 4,400 pollution-related deaths in 2017, researchers find, making a case for even stronger requirements. (Utility Dive)
⛵ Offshore wins: Over the past week, four developers bid to build offshore wind projects off the Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island coasts, and the federal Interior Department approved three large offshore wind farms. (CT Mirror, E&E News, Associated Press)
🏭 Passing on gas: As economic growth drives new electricity demand, utilities look to natural gas as a quick fix, but customers and clean energy advocates say the strategy lacks ambition and ignores the giant pool of federal money currently available for cleaner alternatives. (Grist/WABE)
🌱 Greenhouse effect: Indoor farming offers producers steady growing conditions amid increasingly unpredictable weather, but their energy consumption represents a potential threat that could worsen climate change. (Washington Post)
👀 Eyes on state climate policy: A new searchable database aims to reveal how lobbying is derailing climate policy in 17 state legislatures. (Inside Climate News)
🗑️ Trash’s emissions impact: Landfills release an average of three times more methane than they report to federal regulators, a study of 1,200 landfills across the country finds. (New York Times)
OFFSHORE WIND: The Biden administration gives the greenlight to two New England offshore wind farms — the Park City and Commonwealth wind projects — bringing the country one-third of the way to the president’s offshore wind goal. (E&E News, Bloomberg)
ALSO: Rhode Island officials unveil a new tool to help them avoid locating projects — like offshore wind and aquaculture facilities — where recreational fishers enjoy going. (ecoRI)
MINING: A Maine legislative committee advances new environmental regulations that companies would have to fulfill before getting mineral extraction exemptions to the state’s open pit mining ban, ahead of allowing testing in Newry’s lithium-rich mineral deposit. (Portland Press Herald)
HYDROPOWER: A Vermont utility wants to give its unprofitable but popular Green River Reservoir dam to the state to spare ratepayers the cost of operating it, and a study is underway now to see how much it would cost the state to take over. (VT Digger, WCAX)
CLEAN ENERGY:
GRID: In Maryland, top environmentalists and lawmakers hash out a compromise to lower environmental processes for data centers in exchange for earmarked tax revenue for clean energy and climate program funding. (Maryland Matters)
FOSSIL FUELS:
TIDAL: A developer files a preliminary permit application with federal energy regulators to resurrect a tidal power project on northeastern Maine’s Pennamaquan River, but the adjacent town says such development would harm native fish. (Bangor Daily News)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: At a press conference on delivery workers, New York City’s mayor declines to answer questions about required e-bike registration and creating a battery swap program codified into law last fall. (Streetsblog)
CLIMATE: Maine’s working waterfronts are heavily exposed to symptoms of the climate crisis, including rising sea levels and extreme storms, but aren’t uniformly prepared to mitigate their circumstances. (Bangor Daily News)
SOLAR: A developer schedules a public open house so northern New York community members living near their proposed 200 MW solar farm can learn more and ask questions. (NNY360)
SOLAR: Virginia regulators approve a total of 764 MW in new solar power for Dominion Power, including four new solar farms totaling 329 MW plus 13 power purchase agreements with independent projects. (Richmond Times-Dispatch, Power Engineering)
ALSO:
OVERSIGHT:
CARBON CAPTURE:
COAL:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
WIND: Dominion Energy agrees to pay $290,000 to a Virginia city and $650,000 to a historic lighthouse to compensate for the visual impacts of its planned offshore wind farm. (WTKR)
OIL & GAS:
GRID:
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)
COAL: Rocky Mountain Power cancels plans to close two Utah coal plants by 2032 and replace them with nuclear reactors after a court blocks a federal ozone-pollution rule in the state. (Salt Lake Tribune)
ALSO: Federal regulators block a Montana law that would have allowed coal mines to violate water quality standards for a limited time after finding it didn’t meet minimum requirements. (Daily Montanan)
OIL & GAS: Advocates say a California city’s primary news source refuses to report on a Chevron petroleum refinery’s pollution and accidents because the oil company owns the outlet. (Floodlight)
SOLAR:
WIND: Oregon’s commercial fishing industry calls on Gov. Tina Kotek to urge the Biden administration to postpone a planned offshore wind lease auction until the state finalizes its roadmap for the development. (Oregonian)
EFFICIENCY: The U.S. Energy Department awards a Colorado company $22 million to implement an aluminum milling process that requires less heating and cooling. (Colorado Sun)
TRANSPORTATION: New Mexico seeks $577 million in federal grants to help establish hydrogen fueling and electric vehicle charging centers for long-haul freight trucks along Interstate 40, and to fund a clean truck incentive program. (news release)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A court rejects Tesla’s bid to dismiss a federal lawsuit accusing the company of widespread racism at its factory in California. (East Bay Times)
NUCLEAR: Washington state researchers work to develop new nuclear reactor cooling methods that will remain effective as the climate warms. (news release)
MINING: Southern Nevada residents and advocates push back on a proposed lithium extraction project in the Amargosa Valley, saying it could affect drinking water wells and endangered species’ habitats. (Nevada Current)
GEOTHERMAL: Colorado begins offering investment and production tax credits for researching, developing and producing geothermal energy. (news release)
GRID: Washington state researchers develop grid resilience-quantifying software aimed at determining how likely an extreme weather event is to cause a power outage. (news release)
CLIMATE: Oregon regulators begin revamping the state’s climate program that was invalidated by a federal court last year, with the goal of establishing new greenhouse gas reduction rules by the end of the year. (OPB)
COMMENTARY: A California university professor urges the Biden administration to revise its proposed Western Solar Plan to better align with conservation goals. (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
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