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When conveyor belt manufacturer Wire Belt opened its new facility in Bedford, N.H., last fall, the company looked forward to saving money and fighting climate change with a 2,400-panel solar array installed on the roof.
Four months later, however, Wire Belt’s solar panels lie dormant as the company waits for its utility to hook the project up to the grid. It’s an example of the often long and unpredictable interconnection delays facing large solar projects in New Hampshire and nationwide.
Wire Belt president Jon Greer was among those who testified at a January hearing in support of state legislation that aims to streamline this connection process, a proposal that is receiving broad support from climate advocates and the business community, including companies like Wire Belt, whose monthly power bills approach $60,000.
Sen. Kevin Avard, chairman of the Senate energy and natural resources committee, who introduced the bill, said it’s time to fix the system.
“We just want to make sure that the people who took advantage of solar have the opportunity to utilize the good clean energy, hopefully at a lower price,” Avard said.
Currently, utilities determine their own process for approving interconnection requests for projects larger than 100 kilowatts. The bill calls for the New Hampshire Department of Energy to draft and assess rules that would create a uniform policy for all utilities to use, with the goal of making the process smoother and more predictable.
“Right now there are no guardrails, no timelines, there’s no real obligation to hurry,” said Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of the nonprofit Clean Energy New Hampshire. “This is where, if you’re a regulated monopoly, regulators are supposed to step in.”
Wire Belt is not the only business feeling discouraged. Russ Greenlaw, senior vice president of sales for the Associated Grocers of New England, explained at the hearing that the delays make it difficult for members to commit to spending money on solar developments when it is so unclear when they would be able to see benefits to their bottom line.
“There’s just a complete lack of clarity and predictability around the process,” said Heidi Kroll, director of government relations for New Hampshire law firm Gallagher, Callahan & Gartrell.
Interconnection issues are not limited to New Hampshire. Though each state has its own approach, the basics are the same: New renewable energy projects that want to hook up to the grid have to submit interconnection requests to the utility. The utility evaluates the project and its impact on the grid, then decides whether any upgrades are necessary to accommodate the new power source before approving it for connection.
Residential arrays and other small projects are often approved quickly: Eversource, which serves 71% of New Hampshire’s households, expects to receive as many as 5,000 interconnection requests this year and to approve 95% of them within days.
However, in New Hampshire and many other states, the surge in larger renewable energy developments has created logjams in this process as utilities try to figure out how much the grid can bear and how to accommodate additional power — how to balance the benefits of renewable energy supply with the strain the new generators put on the grid.
“Interconnection is one of the biggest barriers right now to getting clean energy done,” Evans-Brown said.
And most states do not yet have systems in place that are keeping up with these challenges. Freeing the Grid, a nonprofit initiative that grades states on their interconnection policies, found that only six states — none in New England — and the District of Columbia scored above a C. New Hampshire was among the 17 states earning a D.
Eversource, New Hampshire’s largest utility, has a queue of just under 100 projects needing further study. Unitil, which serves about 10% of the state’s customers, has four larger projects in the waiting line — three since the fall and one since late spring — representing the significant majority of the pending load.
New Hampshire has taken early steps to address its interconnection problem. In July 2022, the legislature asked the state to investigate and make recommendations. The resulting report, released in December 2023, concluded that there are indeed “considerable technical, operating, processing, and procedural challenges,” to adding growing amounts of renewable energy to the grid.
The report called for the creation of two working groups — one focused on technical and engineering problems and solutions, and another for administrative and process issues — to further assess the situation and provide solutions.
For many stakeholders, however, this proposed approach is not nearly robust enough, prompting a bipartisan group of legislators to back the current bill.
The original bill would have required the state to begin a rulemaking process within 45 days and adopt final rules by the end of 2024. This timeline, however, would not have been possible within the department’s rulemaking process, said Joshua Elliott, director of the energy department’s division of policy and programs. The legislation was then amended to call for “a proceeding to examine and assess draft rules to be adopted” rather than a final rulemaking.
“The bill as introduced was not implementable,” Elliott said. “As amended, the bill both gives the department the resources to accomplish this task and a timeline that is implementable.”
Some advocates, however, aren’t convinced that the amended bill has enough specificity and force to make the needed difference.
“It is not explicitly clear that a rulemaking is required, and it doesn’t give any deadline,” Evans-Brown said. “It was a valuable hearing — that’s a big step — but I am very skeptical that the [department] is taking this problem seriously.”
The Senate’s energy and natural resources committee voted unanimously in mid-February to recommend passage of the amended bill, and legislators are eager to see it passed and hopefully help ease a longstanding problem.
“What’s the pause, what’s the hiccup?” Avard said. “It’s nothing complicated.”
Editor’s note: The headline on this article was updated to clarify that interconnection delays are only affecting projects over 100 kW.
WIND: The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center purchases the 42-acre waterfront site of a former coal- and oil-fired power plant in Salem to build a second terminal for offshore wind development. (Boston Globe)
ALSO:
OIL & GAS:
NUCLEAR: Massachusetts’ attorney general files a civil lawsuit against the firm handling the Pilgrim nuclear plant decommissioning over air pollution concerns stemming from the site demolition. (CommonWealth Beacon)
HYDROPOWER: As Québec and the Northeast U.S. both look to take advantage of Canadian hydropower to hit renewable energy goals, Hydro-Québec looks to long-duration storage to fulfill its contracts. (RTO Insider, subscription)
SOLAR:
BUILDINGS: With last summer’s floods in mind, Vermont lawmakers consider a bill to require a state permit to build in river corridors, but the state’s governor says he’ll likely veto it, citing a shift in land use responsibility and a lack of resources to execute. (VT Digger)
UTILITIES:
OVERSIGHT: A new Virginia commission to provide state lawmakers more guidance on increasingly complicated utility and energy bills could give new life to stalled proposals to restrict utilities’ spending and introduce more competition for wind and solar. (Energy News Network)
TRANSITION:
STORAGE: Texas looks set to outpace California in construction of new battery storage facilities, just one year after it surpassed California in large-scale solar power capacity. (Canary Media)
SOLAR:
WIND: Dominion Energy says Virginia ratepayers won’t be affected by its sale of a 50% stake in its offshore wind farm to an investment firm. (Virginia Mercury)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
OIL & GAS:
COAL:
UTILITIES:
CLIMATE: Federal officials expand the heat scale that signals the severity of heat stress on corals after record-high ocean temperatures last year led to a severe mass bleaching event near Florida. (E&E News, subscription)
SOLAR: A solar moratorium and fierce opposition by residents lead a Tennessee county board to deny a 150 MW solar farm with plans to send power to a data center and the Tennessee Valley Authority; developers say they may sue to reverse the decision. (Memphis Commercial Appeal)
ALSO:
EMISSIONS: Researchers say Louisiana’s $3 billion coastal restoration project to build 21 square miles of land with mud from the Mississippi River could earn about $530 million through carbon offsets sold to businesses. (NOLA)
OIL & GAS:
STORAGE: Battery company LG Chem secures a $19 billion contract with General Motors as it builds a $3.2 billion factory in Tennessee. (WKRN)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
GRID: A municipal Virginia utility completes construction of a new substation to power two industrial parks, with plans for more grid upgrades. (Danville Register & Bee)
POLLUTION: A class action lawsuit alleges Duke Energy used motor and transformer oil laden with PCBs as “mosquito control” at a South Carolina lake. (Chronicle-Independent)
NUCLEAR: Kentucky lawmakers advance a bill to prepare the state for an anticipated surge in nuclear power production. (Associated Press)
CRYPTOCURRENCY: A judge rules in favor of Texas cryptocurrency companies’ challenge to efforts by the U.S. Department of Energy to collect data on the sector’s energy consumption. (International Business Times)
BIOMASS: A wood pellet producer with numerous factories in the Southeast approaches a crucial deadline for a bond payment that could lead to a bankruptcy filing. (Wilmington StarNews)
CLIMATE:
POLITICS: Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves calls for the state to become “masters of all energy,” from oil and gas development to solar power. (Associated Press)
COMMENTARY: After suffering a significant legislative loss last year, Dominion Energy is scaling up its campaign contributions to Virginia lawmakers and has given more than $11 million so far in the 2023-2024 cycle, writes an energy columnist. (Virginia Mercury)
BUILDINGS: Maine receives a $10 million federal grant to install specially designed heat pumps in mobile homes, with a specific focus on small towns. (Maine Public)
GRID:
OVERSIGHT: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul appoints a former state commissioner and an environmental advocate to fill two open seats on the state’s Public Service Commission. (E&E News, subscription)
UTILITIES: Maine lawmakers discuss a bill that would allow state regulators to use utilities’ performance as a basis for ratemaking. (Portland Press Herald)
SOLAR:
TRANSPORTATION: New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy proposes a tax on large corporations to fund mass transit. (Daily Record)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
HYDROGEN:
CARBON CAPTURE: New York lawmakers advance a bill that would ban the use of carbon dioxide injection to extract natural gas, in response to a developer’s plan for the state’s Southern Tier. (Waterfront Online)
GEOTHERMAL: Bard College in upstate New York plans a new geothermal system to provide heating and cooling to the campus library. (ThinkGeoEnergy)
CLEAN ENERGY: The Biden administration allocates $366 million for clean energy development on tribal land and rural areas, including solar and hydropower projects in Washington, Alaska and Arizona. (Associated Press, Anchorage Daily News, Arizona Republic)
ALSO: The U.S. Energy Department seeks clean energy development proposals at its WIPP nuclear waste disposal facility in southern New Mexico. (news release)
SOLAR:
UTILITIES:
OIL & GAS: Data show states hold 1.6 million acres of land within tribal nations, some of which is leased for oil and gas drilling. (High Country News)
DIVESTMENT: Oregon lawmakers near a final vote on a bill that would divest the state’s public employee retirement system from coal-related stocks. (Oregon Capital Chronicle)
ELECTRIFICATION: A California city replaces its natural gas hookup ban with efficiency standards encouraging the use of electric heat pumps and water heaters. (Palo Alto Online)
GRID: NV Energy tells regulators its proposed Greenlink transmission project in Nevada is $433 million over budget, a cost likely to be borne by ratepayers. (Las Vegas Review-Journal)
CLIMATE:
POLITICS: Far-right Wyoming lawmakers look to defund an energy grant program that has supported carbon capture and sequestration and hydrogen production research in the past. (WyoFile)
COMMENTARY: A California columnist argues a slowdown in electric vehicle sales is less concerning than America’s apparent inability to transition away from its car-centric culture. (Los Angeles Times)
SOLAR: A clean energy group’s analysis finds a $7 billion federal program is on track to help more than 700,000 lower-income households install solar and storage systems, making it the largest such investment in U.S. history. (Canary Media)
ALSO: A Cornell University researcher studies what types of crops can best co-exist with solar panels on New York farms. (Spectrum News)
HYDROGEN: The U.S. Energy Department reportedly wants the Treasury to relax its guidance for clean hydrogen incentives, saying the strict rules threaten the industry’s expansion. (E&E News)
CLIMATE:
CLEAN ENERGY: A new report estimates a worker shortage of 1.1 million people across 20 occupations that are crucial for rolling out the Biden administration’s clean energy agenda. (E&E News, subscription)
STORAGE: At least 30 startups look to store renewable power by heating up rocks and other materials, hoping thermal storage can solve solar and wind’s intermittency challenges. (Canary Media)
GRID:
OIL & GAS:
GEOTHERMAL: Oil and gas companies are ramping up investments in geothermal power, betting that drilling for underground heat could be their key into the clean energy industry. (Wall Street Journal, subscription)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Ford electric vehicle owners can now use Tesla public chargers, but they first must get a free adapter from Ford. (ABC News)
NUCLEAR: The U.S. House advances a bill to speed environmental reviews for new nuclear reactors, which it will have to reconcile with the Senate’s nuclear legislation. (The Hill)
UTILITIES: The FirstEnergy scandal unfolding in Ohio is part of a resurgence of fraud and corruption in the U.S. utility sector that come as those companies aim to spend billions of dollars in clean energy initiatives. (Floodlight/Mother Jones)
ALSO:
PIPELINES:
SOLAR: A pollinator scorecard developed at Michigan State University helps solar developers mitigate the effects of utility-scale projects when applying for permits. (Interlochen Public Radio)
POLLUTION: Newly proposed legislation in Minnesota would require stronger testing at polluting facilities, and increase penalties for violations, in environmental justice areas. (Sahan Journal)
GRID: Minnesota is among states across the country considering legislation on grid-enhancing technologies that maximize current transmission and increases renewable energy capacity. (E&E News)
RENEWABLES: A northeastern Ohio county plans to take action soon on requests from multiple townships to ban utility-scale wind and solar development. (WKBN)
BIOGAS:
COMMENTARY: Minnesota clean energy and environmental advocates say state lawmakers can help cut emissions from two major sectors — agriculture and transportation — with a proposed clean transportation standard. (MinnPost)
COAL: Utah lawmakers pass a bill that would allow the state to purchase a coal power plant slated to transition to natural gas and hydrogen production in coming years. (Deseret News)
OIL & GAS:
WIND:
SOLAR:
UTILITIES:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A company shuts down its 425-employee electric bus manufacturing facility in southern California, citing supply chain constraints and rising costs. (Mercury News)
TRANSPORTATION: The Biden administration awards Colorado $84 million to support public transit. (KDVR)
CLIMATE:
NUCLEAR: The U.S. House passes a bill that would streamline advanced nuclear reactor permitting and support developers in overcoming regulatory hurdles. (Deseret News)
HYDROGEN: Chevron plans to develop a 5 MW solar-powered hydrogen production facility in California’s Central Valley. (Solar Industry Magazine)
⛷️ Good morning! Kathryn is just back from a much-deserved vacation and will return to the Weekly next week.
Meanwhile, gather ’round! We need to talk about hydrogen.
In theory, hydrogen sounds like a miracle fuel. Split water molecules with clean power, use the hydrogen to fuel everything from trucks to steelmaking, boom: endless clean energy. Doesn’t that sound nice?
Reality, of course, is never that simple, and with all the news about hydrogen hubs and the rainbow of green vs. blue vs. pink and so on, it’s easy to get lost.
But if you only have the bandwidth for one hydrogen story right now, it should be the debate over a tax credit called 45V, that could have major implications for future emissions.
As reporter Kari Lydersen explained in a story earlier this month, draft rules for the 45V tax credit require “green” hydrogen to be produced by new, adjacent renewable energy to qualify, much like the illustration above.
But promoters of hydrogen hubs, which energy writer David Roberts has dismissively dubbed “subsidy-farming machines,” sent a letter Monday urging the Treasury Department to allow green hydrogen produced from existing renewable energy to qualify, arguing the proposed rules are so strict they’ll be unable to bring productions costs down quickly enough to meet federal goals.
Earthjustice attorney Lauren Piette calls that a “loophole” that will simply divert existing clean energy capacity that would then be backfilled by coal and gas generation, potentially causing a net increase in emissions and spiking utility bills.
Beyond grid implications, advocates are also warning of other unintended climate consequences if hydrogen is not used or handled carefully — potentially creating more heat-trapping emissions than burning natural gas.
🚘 Something we can agree on: While policies to phase out gasoline cars have become politically polarized, a study finds electric vehicles are popular with Democrats and Republicans alike. (CNN)
🌊 A milestone for offshore wind: Vineyard Wind last week became the first large-scale offshore wind farm in the U.S. to begin delivering power, a step Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey calls “a turning point in the clean energy transition.” (Associated Press)
🏡 Building tension: Policies to improve energy efficiency in housing have faced strong opposition from builders associations, who frequently deploy inflated cost estimates to fight code upgrades. (Washington Post)
✅ Just in case: Federal regulators are scrambling to implement policies to cut heat-trapping emissions and meet U.S. climate obligations in case the White House changes hands after the 2024 election. (Bloomberg)
💡 Looking to the future: State and local governments are preparing applications for a $5 billion federal grant program to implement big ideas in climate action plans. (Energy News Network)
🏢 Greener cities: A Chicago environmental justice organization is helping to build out a geothermal heating and cooling network on the city’s South Side. (Grist)
👷 Learning from history: A new weatherization jobs resource hub in Wisconsin is part of advocates’ effort to avoid the boom-and-bust cycle that followed previous increases in federal energy efficiency funding. (Energy News Network)
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