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SOLAR: Western Shoshone tribal members in Nevada push back on the Biden administration’s federal land solar plan, saying it puts a sacred massacre site proposed for national monument status in the path of energy development. (Las Vegas Review Journal)
PUBLIC LANDS: Advocates warn a second Trump administration would shrink or eliminate national monuments in the West, reopening fragile lands to oil and gas drilling, mining and other development. (Los Angeles Times)
OIL & GAS: An oil-shipping firm agrees to pay $3.3 million to settle an environmental group’s lawsuit alleging the firm discharged petroleum coke pollutants into the San Francisco Bay. (Bay City News)
CLEAN ENERGY: The Biden administration proposes tweaking tax rules to make tribal-owned firms eligible for direct cash payments for clean energy projects. (E&E News, subscription)
UTILITIES:
GRID:
CLIMATE:
LITHIUM: A California lawmaker calls on Imperial County to rework a plan for dividing up lithium-related revenues, saying it does not comply with state law. (KPBS)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Trucking industry groups file a lawsuit seeking to block implementation of California’s clean fleets rules and zero-emission vehicle mandates. (Road & Track)
MINING: Wyoming lawmakers propose streamlining permitting for proposed rare earth element mines. (WyoFile)
CARBON CAPTURE: The U.S. Energy Department drafts a strategy for developing “dozens” of carbon capture and storage facilities by 2050 and building infrastructure, oversight, and a workforce to serve them. (E&E News, subscription; news release)
ALSO: Exxon Mobil announces it’s secured leases for 271,000 acres in waters off Texas for an offshore carbon capture project. (Reuters)
NUCLEAR: A newly updated U.S. Energy Department report makes a case for immediately launching a buildout of large-scale nuclear reactors in hopes of tripling the country’s current 100 GW of nuclear power capacity. (Canary Media)
COAL: Five of the biggest U.S. coal plants have set dates for closure or a shift to another fuel, and a sixth is reportedly planning to switch to natural gas as well. (Inside Climate News)
GRID:
UTILITIES: Oregon residents file a first-of-its-kind class-action lawsuit accusing the state’s largest natural gas utility of misleading customers about its carbon reduction plan and using that program’s funds to promote fossil fuels. (OPB)
POLITICS:
SOLAR:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Delaware will use $14.3 million in federal funding to install chargers along I-95 as part of a multistate effort to reduce the emissions of the trucking industry. (WHYY)
GRID: The flooding that accompanied Hurricane Helene could push utilities in Appalachia to rethink the region’s power grid, described by one official as a “really far-flung set of distribution lines going up into the hills and serving different communities.” (Grist)
ALSO:
CLIMATE:
SOLAR:
CARBON CAPTURE: Exxon Mobil announces it’s secured leases for 271,000 acres in waters off Texas for an offshore carbon capture project. (Reuters)
EFFICIENCY: Louisiana receives $32 million in federal funds to weatherize and improve energy efficiency at senior living complexes. (NOLA.com)
UTILITIES:
OIL & GAS:
PIPELINES: Federal regulators assert they have the power to extend the deadline for the Mountain Valley Pipeline to build a spur into North Carolina despite the objections of environmentalists. (West Virginia Public Broadcasting)
POLITICS:
COMMENTARY: As Virginia deals with a surge of data center development, state officials should keep an eye on a utility’s proposal in Ohio that would require data centers to pay for at least 90% of the power they ask for, regardless of whether they end up using all of it, writes a columnist. (Virginia Mercury)
From the World Economic Forum to utility industry magazines to the US Department of Energy, in recent years there’s been a growing refrain: how batteries can enable a net-zero electricity grid. Implicit in that statement is the idea that batteries can (and should) help lower grid emissions, increase the integration of zero-emissions renewable energy sources, and support overall power sector decarbonization. Yet battery energy storage is sometimes finding itself in the hot seat for exactly the opposite reason.
Earlier this year, a University of Michigan study focused on the PJM market (the large regional transmission organization covering all or part of 13 U.S. states plus Washington, D.C.) found that batteries sometimes increased grid emissions. While the U-M study was based on older data (from 2012 to 2014), its takeaways echo concerns we’ve heard before.
In the early 2010s, California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) — a major driver of the state’s behind-the-meter battery energy storage market — shifted its focus to specifically prioritize greenhouse gas reductions for the Golden State’s power grid. But then circa 2018 and 2019, analysis found that batteries were often increasing, rather than decreasing, grid emissions.
For the better part of a decade, batteries have been described as a Swiss Army knife of the power grid, capable of performing myriad functions — from customer-centric services such as backup power, peak shaving, solar self-consumption, and time-of-use energy arbitrage to grid-centric services such as frequency and voltage regulation, demand response, and mitigating renewables curtailment.
Ultimately, doing all of that involves software algorithms that dictate when a battery energy storage system charges and discharges. Those algorithms typically co-optimize around various price signals. But it’s the marginal emissions of the power grid at the times a battery is charging vs. discharging that determines whether the battery causes a net decrease (or increase) in grid emissions.
Unless energy storage considers emissions in their control approach, there’s no guarantee that they’ll help decarbonize power grids. Energy journalist David Roberts summed it up well: “It’s a mistake to deploy batteries … as though they will inevitably reduce emissions. They’re a grid tech, not a decarbonization tech,” more akin to transmission lines that can equally carry dirty or clean power, agnostic to the electricity’s generation source and the associated carbon emissions. So, too, with batteries in the absence of the right signals.
To address the emissions increase caused by energy storage participating in SGIP, the rules of the program were revised with the goal of enabling the state’s participating behind-the-meter commercial and residential batteries to live up to their emissions-reducing promise. Almost immediately after the rule change, we started to see positive outcomes. A detailed impact evaluation published earlier this year by CPUC with analysis by Verdant gives a longer-term view of SGIP’s turnaround story.
Between 2018 and 2022 (the period covered by Verdant’s analysis), battery systems in California’s SGIP fully reversed course, flipping from causing a net increase in grid emissions to causing a significant net decrease in a resounding decarbonization success.
Now, energy storage has cemented its central role supporting California’s goal of achieving 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045. The state boasts more than 10 GW of installed battery capacity, and earlier this year, batteries became the single largest contributor to the state’s grid briefly during the evening peak. Grid-scale batteries charged on excess daytime solar are starting to displace natural gas power plants. And during this year’s solar eclipse, batteries charged on excess renewable energy carried California’s power sector through the temporary slump in solar PV generation.
California may be the country’s most-prominent example, but it’s hardly the only US state setting combinations of both emissions-reduction / net-zero emissions targets as well as energy storage goals. For just four examples, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — all members of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) — each have robust energy storage targets tied to 100% clean energy and GHG reduction goals. So does Michigan.
For energy storage to help these and other states achieve their clean energy goals, it will be crucial to learn from California’s SGIP growing pains — and using a true marginal emissions GHG signal, rather than a proxy metric, to inform batteries’ duty cycles. Just look at what has transpired in Texas and the ERCOT market.
The Lone Star State has been called “the hottest grid battery market in the country.” But analysis from Tierra Climate published in June 2024 in collaboration with REsurety, Grid Status, Modo Energy, and WattTime found that 92% of batteries in ERCOT increased grid emissions in 2023. This is largely because those batteries are not co-optimizing their operation in coordination with a carbon signal like SGIP’s GHG signal. That same report found that co-optimization with a carbon signal (or a carbon price) would move these battery energy storage assets from carbon increasing to carbon decreasing.
The US energy storage market is growing fast, with record-setting capacity additions in Q1 2024 and a staggering 75 GW of cumulative new capacity forecasted to come online during the period 2024–2028. If battery energy storage is to continue living up to its promise of enabling a net-zero grid, it’s more important than ever that state policies and battery control algorithms include a marginal emissions signal as part of their intelligence under the hood.
ELECTRIFICATION: California launches an $80 million program aimed at electrifying low and moderate-income households with rebates for heat pumps, appliances and efficiency upgrades. (Sacramento Bee)
CLIMATE:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Washington state allocates $100 million for 575 new electric vehicle charging sites, but an expert says the private sector must build thousands more to meet future demand. (Cascade PBS)
OIL & GAS:
SOLAR:
UTILITIES: The upcoming election for two seats on Montana’s utility regulatory commission comes as the state’s energy industry reckons with the federal push toward clean power and a court decision mandating climate be considered in energy permitting. (Montana Free Press)
NUCLEAR: Wyoming lawmakers advance legislation that would enable firms to establish temporary high-level radioactive waste storage facilities in the state. (WyoFile)
HYDROPOWER: An Oregon city brings an in-conduit hydropower installation online that is integrated into its drinking water system. (Hydro Review)
MINING: Arizona regulators advance a proposed copper mine in the southern part of the state by approving a tailings pipeline through state land. (Arizona Daily Star)
COMMENTARY:
UTILITIES: A new Sierra Club evaluation finds for the fourth year in a row that major U.S. utilities are off track to meet the Biden administration’s emissions reduction goals, and many are in a worse position than last year due to rising demand. (Canary Media)
CLEAN ENERGY:
NUCLEAR: A U.S. Department of Energy report suggests a new serialized approach for designing and building nuclear reactors that would lower upfront costs and meet rising power demand. (Utility Dive)
GRID:
CLIMATE:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
OIL & GAS: Natural gas accounted for nearly half of the nation’s energy generation over the summer while coal fell to just 16%, leaving even West Virginia utilities considering a shift to gas. (West Virginia Public Broadcasting)
ELECTRIFICATION: California launches an $80 million program aimed at electrifying low and moderate-income households with rebates for heat pumps, appliances and efficiency upgrades. (Sacramento Bee)
OFFSHORE WIND: A newly completed, $42 million commercial port on the New Bedford, Massachusetts waterfront could host offshore wind operations. (Cape Cod Times)
ALSO:
FOSSIL FUELS: A Philadelphia refinery agrees to pay a settlement of $4.2 million, after the U.S. EPA found the owners failed to remedy corrosion that caused an explosion and fire in 2019. (Associated Press)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: New York is one of 40 cities in which ride-sharing option Uber Green will go fully electric, removing hybrid vehicles from its lineup. (NBC New York)`
AGRIVOLTAICS:
UTILITIES: FirstEnergy — a utility serving New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania — receives poor marks in a new Sierra Club report tracking utilities’ progress toward decarbonization. (Canary Media)
EQUITY: Energy efficiency contractors in Connecticut call on the state and private companies to improve the treatment of workers of color in the industry. (CT News Junkie)
NUCLEAR: A Maryland startup raises $45 million for its plan to build modular nuclear reactors at shipyards using existing labor and infrastructure. (DCInno, subscription)
RENEWABLES: The New York State Power Authority releases a draft plan identifying potential renewables projects across the state totaling as much as 3.5 GW of capacity. (news release)
TRANSIT: A new study recommends reviving a little-used rail line in Boston and adding electric train service to make commuting easier and attract more riders. (CommonWealth Beacon)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: “Every site is a snowflake:” Experts and local officials say equipment shortages, utility delays, and huge numbers of stakeholders are among issues stalling federal efforts to install public electric vehicle chargers. (E&E News)
NUCLEAR: The Biden administration says it’s looking to restart more decommissioned nuclear power plants alongside Michigan’s Palisades plant and Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island. (Reuters)
WORKFORCE: The International Energy Agency finds U.S. energy efficiency employers have had particular difficulty hiring skilled workers to construct and retrofit buildings. (Utility Dive)
SOLAR:
TRANSMISSION:
HYDROGEN: An Alaska geologist hunts for naturally occurring hydrogen reservoirs across the U.S., saying it could be a major new source of affordable carbon-free energy. (Inside Climate News)
EFFICIENCY: The U.S. Energy Department issues $1.1 million to a project researching ways to cool data centers and reduce their energy use. (Utility Dive)
POLITICS:
COMMENTARY: Energy consultants highlight the “encouraging and disconcerting” effects of big tech companies on the clean energy transition. (Utility Dive)
TRANSMISSION: A federal appeals court ruling likely removes the last major obstacle for a $1.5 billion transmission line project that would import hydropower from Canada into the New England grid. (Utility Dive)
NATURAL GAS:
HEATING: In Vermont, draft rules for a system to incentivize lower-carbon heating sources propose counting biomass, renewable natural gas, and hydrogen as clean fuels, sparking objections by climate advocates. (Canary Media)
BUILDINGS: Maryland advocates say legislation passed this year slowing down implementation of clean building standards is “a significant setback” for the state. (Maryland Matters)
SOLAR:
STORAGE: The Rhode Island Energy Facility Siting Board rules it has jurisdiction over large battery storage developments, allowing it to overrule local permitting decisions for these projects. (RTO Insider, subscription)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
TIDAL POWER: Despite local objections, a proposed tidal power project in Maine receives a key early permit from federal regulators, resurrecting a nearly identical plan that fizzled out in 2016. (Bangor Daily News)
COMMENTARY:
SOLAR: Hurricane Helene’s damage to a North Carolina town home to the purest quartz in the world highlights the solar industry’s precarious reliance on materials produced from a single location, especially in the face of escalating weather disasters. (Grist)
ALSO:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Hyundai begins producing electric SUVs at its new, $7.6 billion Georgia factory ahead of a grand opening planned for 2025. (Associated Press)
GRID:
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: A federal court hears arguments in a lawsuit by Louisiana community groups alleging a parish government “intentionally discriminated against Black residents” by placing polluting industrial facilities near majority-Black communities. (Associated Press)
OIL & GAS: A Houston-based pipeline company heads up emergency response to a 100-foot oil-laced saltwater geyser that erupted in a part of Texas that’s experienced a recent rash of earthquakes linked to wastewater injection. (Houston Chronicle)
CARBON CAPTURE: Texans testify to U.S. EPA officials about a planned carbon dioxide injection site in the Permian Basin that would be part of the largest direct air capture facility in the U.S. (Texas Tribune)
HYDROPOWER:
NUCLEAR: The U.S. Supreme Court agrees to review a ruling in a dispute over a company’s plans to store nuclear waste at a dump located in Texas’ Permian Basin. (Houston Chronicle)
UTILITIES: Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick calls for the resignation of CenterPoint Energy’s CEO due to the utility’s botched response to power outages in Houston caused by Hurricane Beryl. (Houston Chronicle)
COMMENTARY:
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