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The following story is the first in a series produced in collaboration with KAXE/KBXE, an independent, nonprofit community radio station that tells the stories of northern Minnesota.
World leaders in Dubai this week are concluding the latest United Nations conference on climate change, where experts and advocates repeated urgent pleas for governments to phase out fossil fuels and transition to clean energy.
In Minnesota, that change is underway. A new state law requires power companies to only sell clean electricity by 2040. Electric vehicle sales are growing, and energy efficient heat pumps are starting to replace gas furnaces — even in northern Minnesota.
But one of the biggest challenges for eliminating greenhouse gas emissions in Minnesota will be finding clean energy solutions for one of the state’s biggest industries: taconite mining. The state’s Iron Range supplies three-quarters of the raw material used to make domestic steel. Getting it out of the ground requires massive, diesel-powered trucks and other heavy-duty equipment for which less-polluting options aren’t yet widely available.
The steelmaking industry is facing pressure from customers and governments to reduce its climate impact, and Minnesota mine operators Cleveland-Cliffs and U.S. Steel are both exploring new fuels and technologies to help them meet sustainability goals.
According to the companies’ public statements to shareholders, the path forward is likely to include investments in new, more efficient vehicles and equipment, along with a switch to powering them with renewable electricity, biogas, or hydrogen instead of coal or gas.
U.S. Steel announced in April 2021 a goal to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Cleveland-Cliffs says it’s already exceeded its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 25% by 2030.
The transition to clean energy could create new economic opportunities for the Iron Range, experts say, including the possibility to process iron ore on-site into a cleaner, premium product.
A recent event hosted by the city of Duluth and the National Renewable Energy Lab called industrial decarbonization the “billion-dollar question for the Northland.” Rolf Weberg, leader of the University of Minnesota-Duluth’s Natural Resources Research Institute, says industrial operations have a real interest in reducing their carbon footprints.
“When you look globally between steel and concrete, that accounts for between 16-18% of carbon dioxide emissions globally,” Weberg explained. “Countries and industries are really trying to reduce their carbon footprint because we’re not meeting carbon goals across the globe.”
Weberg said NREL is interested in Minnesota because of its resources. Hydrogen, for example, is a clean-burning fuel that can be produced with no emissions using water and renewable energy – both relatively plentiful in Minnesota.
“(This includes) infrastructure for future energy, access to water — all of the things you need to have a hydrogen-based approach to preparing green iron and steel,” he said.
Aaron Brown, a Hibbing native and columnist who has written extensively about the region’s culture and economy, says the Iron Range is in a unique position to capitalize on new technologies and production methods designed to eliminate climate emissions. For example, one strategy steelmakers are exploring involves processing higher-grade iron pellets in electric arc furnaces, which is less geographically constrained by access to coal.
“What the new technology might do is create opportunities for entrepreneurs, and existing companies like Cleveland-Cliffs or U.S. Steel, to produce (steel) in Minnesota,” Brown said in a phone interview. “Now, whether that will happen or not, of course, is subject to speculation, but it is an opportunity to open up modern industry near the mouth of iron mines. And that should be very interesting to people in northern Minnesota.”
Minnesota’s Iron Range has experienced monumental shifts since settlers found iron-rich deposits there in the late 19th century. The giants of American industry — James J. Hill, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller — collectively created U.S. Steel, the world’s first billion-dollar company, with iron ore largely mined from the Iron Range.
Taconite is a hard, dense rock containing a mixture of silicates and magnetite. After it’s mined in vast open pits, it is crushed into a fine powder, with the magnetite extracted to eventually create marble-sized pellets that contain over 65% iron.
Mining efforts in the Mesabi Iron Range have focused on taconite ore, a lower-grade iron ore processed from vast pits, since the 1950s. Taconite mining transformed the region after underground mining depleted the high-grade hematite deposits. Forty million tons of iron ore are mined there each year.
That ore from Minnesota is shipped across the Great Lakes to plants from Chicago to Pittsburgh, where it is combined with coke, a product derived from coal that is shipped by rail from Appalachia to make steel.
But what if coal were taken out of this equation? New shifts in technology are moving toward using specially formulated iron briquettes in electric arc furnaces instead of lower-grade iron materials in coal-powered blast furnaces. And Iron Range taconite plant owners Cleveland-Cliffs and U.S. Steel are both increasing production of a new type of iron pellet that does not require coal-powered blast furnaces to process into steel. Electricity can be used instead, meaning a rail connection to coal mines may no longer be necessary for processing the raw material into steel.
These direct reduced-grade pellets are a metallic iron product instead of an iron oxide product like taconite. And they require less energy to process. The company did not respond to interview requests, but its website lists the environmental benefits of these pellets.
“If we converted United Taconite’s full standard pellet production … net greenhouse gas emissions would decrease by approximately 370,000 tons per year,” Cleveland-Cliffs states.
U.S. Steel announced in 2022 plans to break ground on a new $150 million direct reduced iron production facility near Keewatin on the Range. In November 2022, the company announced Keetac was the selected site for the expanded operation. Keetac currently employs about 400 people.
“Keetac’s high quality ore body and long mine life makes it the best choice for DR-grade pellet capabilities. We will have the ability to produce both blast furnace and DR-grade pellets at Keetac in the future. These actions will allow us to become increasingly self-sufficient to feed our mini mills segment with key metallics.”
Weberg defines “green” iron and steel as having no fossil fuels involved at any point in its production.
“Our iron industry in Minnesota has been working toward this for some time,” Weberg said. “Our colleagues at Cleveland-Cliffs and at U.S. Steel have been making significant progress with direct reduced grade pellets.”
Brown speculated about a possible future with steel created using hydrogen power and what that could mean for the Iron Range.
“What hydrogen steel might do for Minnesota is create the opportunity … for efficient and profitable steel production near where the mining occurs — an opportunity that doesn’t exist now because the cost of getting the coke and coal … to Minnesota is prohibitive,” Brown said.
As in decades before, the ebbs and flows of the global steel market will continue to impact the Iron Range. As policymakers and manufacturers look toward a sustainable future, the Iron Range may be well poised to prosper in a new, green economy built on the industrious foundation of its core: mining.
COAL: Appalachian Power considers what to do with the site of a Virginia coal-fired power plant that was shuttered in 2014, and whether it can transport accumulated coal ash there to a West Virginia landfill. (WVTF)
ALSO: Georgia Power presses to keep two coal-fired power plants open a decade longer than planned, despite one’s ranking in a recent study as the second most deadly polluter among U.S. coal plants. (Georgia Public Broadcasting)
STORAGE: Duke Energy disconnects large, Chinese-made batteries at a Marine Corps base in North Carolina after officials express security concerns about the manufacturer’s ties to China’s Communist Party. (Reuters)
SOLAR:
EFFICIENCY: Louisiana regulators prepare to vote on long-awaited energy efficiency rules to require utilities to implement various power-saving measures and technologies. (Louisiana Illuminator)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
OIL & GAS:
NUCLEAR:
GRID: A Democrat and a Republican newly elected to the Virginia legislature join a coalition to announce a new state advocacy group that will push for stronger oversight of the state’s booming data center industry. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
CLIMATE: Florida struggles to deal with dramatically varying amounts of rainfall, from record deluges on its southeast coast to a drought along the Gulf Coast. (Associated Press)
UTILITIES: A columnist explains the confusing methodology behind how utilities pay North Carolina property taxes. (Asheville Watchdog)
COMMENTARY:
ELECTRIFICATION: A new Massachusetts policy aims to push the state away from natural gas heating, and at least 11 other states — including four in the Northeast — could take similar action. (Inside Climate News)
OIL & GAS: Exxon settles a 2016 lawsuit over the climate preparedness of a Boston-area petroleum storage terminal, agreeing to confidential terms that intervening environmentalists say protect the community. (E&E News)
GRID:
OFFSHORE WIND:
TRANSPORTATION: New York City’s council passes a new measure to accelerate protected bike lane development by changing the public comment process required. (Brooklyn Daily Eagle)
AFFORDABILITY: A Connecticut nonprofit’s new report shows the state’s energy affordability gap has grown 37% since last year, finding almost 250,000 households paid more than 6% of their income on energy bills. (CT Examiner)
CLIMATE:
BUILDINGS: The developers of a community of solar-powered homes in Ellicott City, Maryland, say the new houses will be certified by the U.S. Department of Energy to be up to 50% more energy efficient than a typical new home. (Washington Post)
SOLAR: After over a decade of discussion, a Pennsylvania farming family finally adds a solar roof to one of their barns with the help of a roughly $229,000 federal rural energy grant. (Lancaster Farming)
SOLAR: Minnesota solar advocates say a recent change in how Xcel Energy manages its substations is unnecessarily limiting solar development. (Energy News Network)
ALSO:
LINE 5:
CO2 PIPELINES:
UTILITIES: Minnesota regulators approve interim electric and gas rate increases for infrastructure and clean energy investments from Xcel Energy and Minnesota Power. (Star Tribune)
GRID: Cuyahoga County in northern Ohio is set to launch what officials say is the first electric microgrid utility in the United States that will build three projects near Cleveland. (Morning Journal)
BIOENERGY:
CLEAN ENERGY: Missouri officials are preparing to distribute millions of dollars in federal funding for grid infrastructure investments, electrification and clean energy work training. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
COAL: University of North Dakota researchers say they have found a feasible and economic way to extract critical metals from lignite coal. (MPR)
SOLAR: New U.S. solar installations are expected to reach a record 33 GW by the end of this year, but growth is expected to slow in 2024, according to a new industry report. (Reuters)
ALSO: Minnesota solar advocates say a recent change in how Xcel Energy manages its substations is unnecessarily limiting solar development. (Energy News Network)
CLEAN ENERGY:
CLIMATE:
CARBON CAPTURE: Environmental groups raise concerns about a proposal to store captured carbon dioxide beneath U.S. Forest Service lands. (Floodlight)
OIL & GAS: A new report finds “excess profits” in the oil industry and other sectors exacerbated inflation in 2022. (CNBC)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
MATERIALS:
ELECTRIFICATION:
COAL: Georgia Power presses to keep two coal-fired power plants open a decade longer than planned, despite one’s ranking in a recent study as the second most deadly polluter among U.S. coal plants. (Georgia Public Broadcasting)
This article originally appeared on Planet Detroit.
Advocates across Michigan celebrated last week as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed into law a package of energy bills targeting 100% clean power by 2040, positioning Michigan as a national climate leader.
But environmental justice advocates say the legislation, dubbed the “Clean Energy Future” package by supporters, had a major omission by making no provision for community solar, which allows residents to subscribe to third-party-owned solar arrays in exchange for energy bill credits.
The Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition (MEJC) is pushing for the passage of Senate Bills 152 and 153 and House Bills 4464 and 4465, introduced in the spring, which would enable community solar in Michigan.
But so far, none of the bills have come up for a vote, although the House Committee on Energy, Communications and Technology heard testimony on the House bills in November.
“It’s no secret that we are not very happy with the Clean Energy Future package,” Roshan Krishnan, policy associate at MEJC, told Planet Detroit. Krishnan said enabling community solar would accelerate solar buildout in the state and reduce demand for carbon capture and biofuels — polluting technologies included in the bill package — which MEJC opposes.
Backers say community solar, more accessible to lower-income customers and those living in multifamily housing, is crucial to building equity into the energy transition. They tout other benefits like improved energy reliability and lower bills for renters and others who can’t install rooftop solar.
But they say Michigan utilities are wielding their influence and political spending in Lansing to block legislation enabling community solar owned by third parties, even though the concept enjoys bipartisan support.
Michigan’s two largest investor-owned utilities, DTE Energy and Consumers Energy, have long fought laws enabling community solar. They argue such laws are unnecessary and would add costs for other customers. And they’ve spent millions in the last two years to influence lawmakers as such laws were being considered.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 22 states and the District of Columbia have policies in place that enable community solar. Most projects are concentrated in four states: Minnesota, New York, Massachusetts and Florida.
Ed Rivet, executive director of the nonprofit Michigan Conservative Energy Forum, told Planet Detroit he believes the public’s increasing embrace of renewable energy could give groups like his leverage to pressure lawmakers to bring community solar to Michigan.
“Part of our work … is to say to legislators, ‘Look, people want to do this in your district. Republicans and Democrats alike want to do this. Go ahead and ask folks in your district and see what you find’,” Rivet said.
Rivet said utilities’ influence in Lansing is the major hurdle to passing community solar legislation.
“If there’s resistance to the legislation being adopted, it’s coming from a singular vantage point, that being the utilities,” he said.
DTE and Consumers are unequivocal in their opposition to community solar. DTE spokesperson Peter Ternes told Planet Detroit the proposed community solar legislation is “unnecessary” and would “allow developers to cherry-pick customers and force the utility’s remaining customers to subsidize the program – challenging affordability for our customers.”
Consumers spokesperson Brian Wheeler also called the legislation “unnecessary,” warning that it would allow “unregulated, out-of-state solar developers” to have “unfiltered access to the grid while pushing for a premium price for their own solar projects at the expense of low-income customers.”
Ternes and Wheeler each endorsed their respective companies’ utility-owned programs, DTE’s MIGreenPower and Consumers’ Solar Gardens, where residents voluntarily charge extra bills to support utility-owned solar developments.
Rivet criticized these programs, noting they are designed so customers pay more for clean energy without receiving a financial benefit for investing in a power source that is cleaner and often cheaper than others.
There’s little doubt utilities are spending resources to influence legislators. Utility watchdog group Energy and Policy Institute revealed that political action committees (PACs) tied to DTE and Consumers gave nearly $500,000 to campaign accounts for Whitmer, state legislators and state party funds in 2023 while renewable energy legislation was being considered, with 80% of legislators taking money from these PACs.
The analysis showed that key Democratic lawmakers received far more than other party members this year. For example, House Speaker Joe Tate (D-Detroit) took $30,000 from utilities, and Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks (D-Grand Rapids) received $15,500.
In 2022, DTE-affiliated dark money groups gave $2 million to Democratic groups.
A 2021 study from Michigan State University found that enabling community solar would create thousands of jobs over the next 25 years and bring $1.5 billion in economic benefits.
And advocates say it would better position the state to compete for grants through the $7 billion federal Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund for projects that reduce or avoid planet-warming emissions, emphasizing low-income and disadvantaged communities.
But they say the greatest potential benefits lie in creating opportunities for low-income residents to lower their energy bills and access more reliable power. Residential customers in Michigan pay the highest rates in the Midwest, and DTE and Consumers are some of the worst utilities in the nation for the duration of blackouts. On Dec. 1, the Michigan Public Service Commission approved a $368 million rate increase for DTE that would add $6.51 to the average customer’s monthly bill.
HB 4464 would require 30% of each community solar project to go to low-income households or service organizations.
In comments to the Michigan House Energy, Communications, and Technology Committee in November, Dr. Elizabeth Del Buono, president of Michigan Clinicians for Climate Action, said community solar would also be a win for public health.
Del Buono said community solar will make the grid more reliable during power outages when paired with battery storage, “thereby protecting the health of vulnerable patients dependent on electricity to breathe and be mobile.”
According to John Richter, senior policy analyst at the nonprofit Great Lakes Renewable Energy Association, additional legislation would be in order if community solar did pass.
That would include raising the state’s “solar cap,” which sets the percentage of peak yearly load that a utility must buy from distributed energy producers.
The Clean Energy Future package raised this number from 1% to 10%, but State Sen. Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor) introduced Senate Bill 362 this year to remove the cap. Irwin’s bill would also restore “net metering,” where rooftop solar customers are credited for energy put back on the grid at the same retail rate they pay for electricity.
Following intense utility lobbying, net metering was replaced by an “inflow-outflow” tariff in 2018, which deducts transmission costs from credits. That change increased the time to recoup up-front costs for the average rooftop solar producer from roughly nine years to 13 years.
Richter said that if these credits aren’t increased, “it would basically be pointless” to try to make community solar projects work economically for residents and developers.
But with Democrats losing their majority in the Michigan House in 2024, community solar may be one of the few energy priorities that could move forward, according to Rivet.
“Because it does have bipartisan support, it at least has a chance of being the next round of dialogue on energy policy,” he said.
Krishnan is less optimistic.
“Nothing is going to move unless the leadership actually steps up to the plate and does it,” he said. “And they’ve shown absolutely no inclination that they are willing to do so, which I think is frankly reflective of their extreme lack of commitment to environmental justice.”
A year after the federal government promised new rules governing how electric vehicles can qualify for tax credits, the Treasury Department’s official guidance is finally here.
The Biden administration rolled out the guidance last week, including tests to determine if a car contains enough U.S.-made components to qualify for all or some of a $7,500 credit. Vehicles that contain parts or materials from China and a few other countries won’t qualify for full incentives.
The Treasury Department hasn’t yet published a list of what EVs meet the new requirements, which would take effect next year. But an auto industry trade group said the 20 models that currently qualify for federal incentives will continue to do so, E&E News reports.
The new rules could cause problems for Ford and other automakers that have licensed Chinese technology for their EVs. They could lose out on a piece of $6 billion in federal grants for U.S.-made EVs, and sales could suffer in comparison to automakers that qualify for federal tax credits.
Meanwhile, some car buyers could still be apprehensive about the lack of public EV chargers in many parts of the country. Two years ago, Congress allocated $7.5 billion to build tens of thousands of EV chargers, but as Politico reports, the program still hasn’t funded any charger projects, and states and charging companies say complicated requirements to receive the funds are to blame.
How the Biden administration navigates EV chargers, tax credits and more will determine just how quickly Americans decide to swap out their gas cars — and whether the White House can reach its EV deployment goals.
🏭 Methane in the crosshairs: The U.S. EPA unveils new methane emissions standards that will require oil and natural gas producers to upgrade equipment and regularly inspect their pipelines and infrastructure for leaks. (E&E News)
💡 Time to get efficient: The world needs to double the pace at which it’s deploying energy efficiency measures, such as installing heat pumps and LED lightbulbs, if it hopes to meet global climate goals, the International Energy Agency says. (Reuters)
☑️ Biden’s climate to-do list: Environmental advocates release a to-do list of climate actions they want President Biden to take in the last year of his term, including a slew of EPA regulations and other Cabinet-level actions. (Washington Post)
🚘 UAW’s next step: After a successful strike against the Big Three automakers, the United Auto Workers announces plans to organize workers at three non-union electric vehicle companies. (CNN)
☀️ Made in the USA: A solar company says it’ll soon build arrays out of U.S.-produced materials, which could be the first projects to qualify for federal tax credits with domestic production requirements. (Bloomberg)
📉 California’s solar collapse: California rooftop solar installations have plummeted by up to 85% since regulators slashed the rates utilities pay for excess solar power sent back to the grid, according to an industry group. (Canary Media)
👷Tribes turn to solar: Indigenous entrepreneurs in North Dakota and elsewhere are building solar farms on reservations, and training tribal members to install them. (BBC)
World leaders gathered in Dubai last week and through the weekend to discuss climate action. Here are some of the highlights:
A 128-year-old Cleveland-area industrial equipment manufacturer is among the newest makers of fast chargers for the growing electric vehicle market.
Lincoln Electric’s new Velion DC fast charger adapts and adds to technology the company has used for its welding machines and other heavy-duty power equipment.
The innovation is an example of how more U.S. manufacturers outside of the energy sector are beginning to find sometimes unexpected opportunities to participate in the country’s growing clean energy economy.
It all started almost two years ago when a group of senior engineers walked into president and CEO Chris Mapes’ office and explained the similarities between direct-current electric vehicle chargers and the plasma and electronics equipment the company has long manufactured, adding: “We think we can make these.”
“If you were to open up a welding machine or a plasma cutting machine, you would see power electronics,” Mapes explained, following a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Euclid, Ohio, last week for the company’s new fast charger product. Software engineering works with printed circuit boards to manage power, similar to what happens in a DC fast charger.
The company already has its own printed circuit board manufacturing facility. The innovation challenge was developing software to let a charger interface with any electric vehicle. When people plug in a vehicle, it and the charger go through a series of electronic messages and “handshakes.” Those share information about the car and the charger, as well as details about how much electricity is needed, signals and feedback for a precharge test, and then the actual charge.
Reliability has been a challenge for electric vehicle charging. Drivers can plan trips to stop at charging stations along the way, but out-of-order chargers can cause frustration and derail trips. That all adds to range anxiety.
Steve Sumner, vice president for corporate innovation, said some other EV chargers “were born out of designs and manufacturing strategies that were more appropriate for lab-grade equipment — something that would see its whole life inside in perfect conditions.” In the real world, rain, snow, cold temperatures, hot temperatures, wind, dust and other factors can mess with electronics.
“What Lincoln Electric’s really known for, besides being a very good power conversion company, is making devices that last and live their whole lives outside,” Sumner said, noting that the company’s industrial products have been used on ships, in deserts and even in Antarctica. Likewise, the new charger is “purpose-built for ruggedness in the field.”
One reason for that reliability is that the company coats its printed circuit boards with a clear plastic epoxy. Two circuit boards go together in a metal casing to make 50-kilowatt modules.
Three of those modules make up the heart of the charger’s power tower, which typically sits behind a fence near a grid connection. The relatively few electrical connections between the modules and other parts of the equipment also provide protection from the elements.
“Because it’s so ‘simple’ and clean in design, and well protected, that’s where we believe the inherent reliability comes from,” Sumner said.
As an established company that began in the United States, Lincoln Electric was already compliant with Federal Highway Administration’s Buy America standards, levy standards and other regulatory programs, said Sheila Cockburn, who works with the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Joint Office of Energy and Transportation that advises on those standards.
“They’re leveraging their current technology to enter a newer market,” Cockburn said. “And they’ve been smart in being able to see the vision of where things are going and being able to pivot to use what they have to supply the new market.”
The move is an example of how companies can play a role in the clean energy economy, even if they aren’t currently part of the energy sector, said Rick Stockburger, president and CEO of BRITE Energy Innovators, based in Warren, Ohio. The organization acts as a hub to provide business and technical expertise to entrepreneurs looking to serve the energy sector.
“It’s exactly the type of leadership we need to see from all of our legacy manufacturers in developing new products,” Stockburger said.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and other recent federal policies and funding programs can help private manufacturers make that transition.
“If you look at what came down in legislation from the past three years, we’re not leaving behind American manufacturing like we did with the solar tax credits in the Obama administration,” Stockburger said. “We put American-made caveats in all of these bills.” And he looks forward to seeing what comes next from other companies.
“The one thing I’ll never underestimate is the power of American innovation,” Stockburger said. “There are just really, really smart people that look at opportunity and frankly are interested in seizing it.”
A year after the war in Ukraine drove record-high fossil fuel prices for winter heating in oil-dependent Maine, demand for efficient electric heat pumps remains steady despite new challenges.
Spikes in fuel prices don’t tend to immediately translate to increased heat pump demand, officials said, but rather may spark new interest in oil and gas alternatives and other ways to cut back on heating costs.
“We do see a lot more visits (after a price spike) to the Efficiency Maine website and call center, looking for information about rebates and how to find a contractor,” said Michael Stoddard, the executive director of the quasi-governmental agency, which provides rebates for energy-saving upgrades.
In the months after such a spike, he said, heat pump contractors may start to get busier with new jobs.
“Traditionally these consumers were curious to learn if they could save money by switching to propane or natural gas, or burning firewood or pellets,” he said. “But now it seems they are mostly interested in switching to heat pumps because they cost less to operate and deliver air conditioning in the summer.”
Many Maine contractors say summer is their busiest time for this reason, and have been booked out months on heat pump installations since well before heating oil prices neared $7 a gallon a year ago.
“I am busy all year round,” said Sam Black, the owner and operator of Blacks Heat Pumps in Glenburn. He said he’s already had a few prospective customers ask about new rebates expected from the Inflation Reduction Act in 2024. Maine is still deciding on how it will allocate billions in funding from that package.
A note on the website of Midcoast Energy Systems, an HVAC contractor based in Damariscotta, Maine, says “manufacturer and distribution supply chain issues” have been making it tough to maintain a consistent heat pump inventory.
“Unfortunately, this does delay our ability to schedule installs as quickly and regularly as we’d like,” the company’s website says. “We are, however, doing the best we can with these market restrictions to work with customers as efficiently as possible.”
In the year since last winter’s fuel price crisis, Black has also heard “a lot of complaining” from his heat pump customers about high electricity rates. Already among the highest in the contiguous U.S., these rates increased sharply in Maine in January 2023.
The increase was largely due to the same geopolitical factors that made heating oil so expensive last winter — constrained global fossil fuel supplies and high prices, especially for fracked gas, which powers much of the New England grid and also supplies far more heating in most of the region outside Maine.
By the same token, Maine regulators announced this week that electric rates will be reduced in 2024. “This is a much different scenario than we saw last year at this time, with natural gas prices coming down significantly since then,” said state Public Utilities Commission chair Phil Bartlett in a statement.
People who installed a heat pump in summer 2022, Black said, may have been caught off guard by a high electric bill after the new rates took effect at the height of the cold season — though an electric bill for one or two home heat pumps would still be far less than a typical oil bill, even at more average prices.
The Maine Governor’s Energy Office tracks heating fuel prices on a weekly basis. They reported that the high heating oil price in the state was $4.65 per gallon as of Nov. 13, 2023, compared to $6.74 in the same week in 2022. In that week, even the low-end oil price was higher than the current highest price in the state.
Kerosene prices were above $7 per gallon last November and now stand at $4.99 on average in Maine. Propane for home heating has decreased in price by about a quarter, down to just over $3 a gallon to end November.
“As we approach winter, energy prices are expected to be lower than the prior two years,” said energy office director Dan Burgess in a Nov. 9 press release announcing a state guide to saving money on home heat. “However, volatile energy markets around the world continue to impact heating bills here at home.”
Maine relies more on oil for home heat than any other state, but this is slowly changing. The state said in its press release that about 56% of Mainers used heating oil in 2022, down from more than 60% in much of the past decade, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Electric heat users increased from about 6% of the state’s population to nearly 11% in the same period.
“From 2018-2022, Maine saw a 10 percent decrease in heating oil as a primary fuel for home heating with an increase in households utilizing electricity during that time,” the state energy office said in its release. “The period coincides with record adoption of high efficiency air source heat pumps in Maine.”
Efficiency Maine did not have data immediately available to illustrate the relationship between heat pump demand and fossil fuel prices. But the agency told The New York Times that as of early November, they’d given rebates for more than 32,000 new heat pumps so far in 2023, compared to 28,000 last year.
The state announced this past summer that it had surpassed a target of installing 100,000 new heat pumps by 2025. Gov. Janet Mills upped the goal to 175,000 more heat pumps by 2027.
The state climate plan, due for its first four-year update at the end of next year, seeks to encourage more multi-unit or “whole home” heat pump systems as total fossil fuel replacements by 2030. Officials have said these goals are directly based on modeled reductions in carbon emissions.
EMISSIONS: The U.S. EPA is set to release new methane regulations tomorrow as the oil and gas industry contends the proposed rules clash with other federal and state standards. (E&E News)
SOLAR: California rooftop solar installations have plummeted by up to 85% since regulators slashed net-metering rates in April, putting some 17,000 jobs at risk by the end of the year, according to an industry group. (Canary Media)
CLIMATE: Environmental advocates release a to-do list of climate actions they want President Biden to take in the last year of his term, including a slew of EPA regulations and other Cabinet-level actions. (Washington Post)
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has taken steps toward including environmental justice in its decisions but still has further to go, advocates say. (Utility Dive)
WIND:
POLITICS:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: General Motors’ chief financial officer expects the automaker to start making a profit on electric vehicle sales in 2025 as it produces higher-margin models. (Associated Press)
COAL: West Virginia’s fund to clean up abandoned coal mines is sagging so badly that even one bankruptcy by a significant mining company could wipe it out and leave state taxpayers stuck paying for cleanup costs. (Mountain State Spotlight/ProPublica)
OIL & GAS:
STORAGE: Georgia leans into battery storage to leverage around-the-clock power from its rapidly growing solar energy sector, highlighted by Georgia Power’s impending completion of a 65 MW battery facility. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
GRID: Utility regulators in PJM’s region urge the grid operator to shift from a reactive planning approach to more proactive and affordable ways of planning grid reliability. (Utility Dive)
NUCLEAR: TerraPower and a mining company partner on an effort to restore domestic uranium supply chains and to fuel the Bill Gates-backed firm’s proposed advanced nuclear reactor in Wyoming. (Cowboy State Daily)
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