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PIPELINES: The South Dakota Supreme Court hears arguments in a case over whether a proposed carbon pipeline is a public commodity and thus eligible to survey private land and use eminent domain. (South Dakota Searchlight)
ALSO: Iowa lawmakers advance a bill that would allow either party in a utility eminent domain case to ask a district court to decide whether the project is a public necessity. (Cedar Rapids Gazette)
GRID:
SOLAR:
CLIMATE: Rapid City, South Dakota, will seek $50 million in federal climate funding after state officials declined to apply for the money. (South Dakota Searchlight)
RENEWABLES: As Michigan regulators collect public input on a new law giving the state final say on where clean energy projects can be built, a developer notes that projects need to be completed with landowner cooperation in the first place. (WWMT)
OIL & GAS: BP’s large oil refinery in northwestern Indiana resumes normal operations more than six weeks after a power outage prompted a temporary shutdown of the complex. (Associated Press)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Rivian is leasing space for what’s expected to be the electric vehicle startup’s second service center in Michigan. (Crain’s)
STORAGE: Western Michigan is poised for additional growth in battery storage production based on the number of suppliers currently operating there, economic development groups say. (Second Wave Media)
COMMENTARY:
CLIMATE: Colorado advocates worry proposed legislation aimed at luring more energy-intensive data centers to the state will put climate goals out of reach and drive up power costs. (CPR)
ALSO: An advocacy group launches an ad campaign in Arizona and Montana urging residents to support the federal Securities and Exchange Commission’s new climate risk disclosure rules. (news release)
SOLAR: A California school district unveils a 17.5 MW solar-plus-storage network consisting of 40 projects across 31 sites. (news release)
STORAGE: A firm signs on to purchase all of the capacity of a 200 MW stand–alone battery energy storage system under construction in southern California. (Solar Industry)
UTILITIES:
OIL & GAS:
TRANSPORTATION: Colorado lawmakers propose levying a daily fee on car rentals to help fund public transit projects. (Colorado Public Radio)
CARBON CAPTURE: Oregon researchers discover a way to pull carbon dioxide from the air with vanadium, potentially boosting the nascent direct air carbon capture industry. (Oregon Capital Chronicle)
PUBLIC LANDS: U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, a Wyoming Republican, looks to block a management plan for 3.7 million acres of federal land in the state, claiming it would hamper energy development. (WyoFile)
COMMENTARY: Energy investors and experts call on the uranium industry to ensure mines and mills financially benefit affected tribal communities, regardless of property ownership. (Wilson Center)
GEOTHERMAL: Improved technology and federal incentives spur St. Paul, Minnesota’s school district to pursue geothermal heating and cooling as a way to cut emissions and building costs. (Energy News Network)
ALSO: The Potawatomi Tribe is installing a geothermal system at a Milwaukee casino and hotel to meet more than a quarter of the facility’s heating and cooling needs and reduce its carbon footprint. (Journal Sentinel)
SOLAR:
POWER PLANTS: Plans for a roughly $1 billion natural gas plant in far northwestern Wisconsin grow uncertain after a local planning board denies a land use request meant to advance the project. (Star Tribune)
PIPELINES: Michigan’s attorney general says a federal appeals court should send a pipeline dispute back to state court where the state can resume its case to shut down Line 5 in the Great Lakes. (MLive)
POLITICS: Republicans pounce on the U.S. EPA’s new tailpipe emission rules as a way to drive politically divided culture wars, accusing the Biden administration of taking away personal driving choices. (New York Times)
WIND: MidAmerican Energy installs sensors at three wind farms that flash red lights on turbines only when low-flying planes are nearby instead of continuously. (Yale Climate Connections)
GRID:
AIR POLLUTION: Chicago ranked second among U.S. cities for air pollution last year as dangerous fine particulate matter continued to exceed global guidelines and were made worse by Canadian wildfires. (Chicago Tribune)
COMMENTARY: Local restrictions on clean energy development deny communities a variety of social and economic benefits, a former law professor and clean energy advocate write. (Cleveland.com)
Geothermal heating and cooling is emerging as a go-to technology for St. Paul Public Schools as it seeks to renovate aging facilities in line with the district’s climate action plan.
Minnesota’s second-largest school district is also one of the city’s largest property owners, with 73 buildings containing more than 7.7 million square feet. Its climate action plan calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions at least 45% by 2030.
New technology and federal incentives have helped convince district leaders that geothermal is among its best options for slashing emissions from school buildings. The energy efficient systems pump refrigerant through a closed loop circuit of pipes that moves heat between buildings and below ground reservoirs.
Last year, the district completed a ground-source geothermal system while renovating the 1960s-era Johnson High School. This year, it’s installing a different type of system at two other schools that tap aquifers rather than the ground as a heating and cooling source.
The aquifer-based systems that will be used at Bruce Vento Elementary School and the nearly 100-year-old Hidden River Middle School were developed by a Twin Cities-based company called Darcy Solutions that specializes in water-based geothermal systems.
The company’s technology requires far fewer wells than conventional, ground-based systems, making them more practical for dense, urban neighborhoods. Darcy places heat exchangers directly into the wells, where they can capture heat from the constant, 52-degree groundwater.
Darcy’s system changed the school district’s thinking, said Tom Parent, the district’s executive director of operations and administration. The elementary school project required just five wells, compared to more than 150 ground source wells at Johnson High, which disrupted outdoor sports activities for two summers.
“We see a lot of promise,” Parent said. “This is an incredible leap in technology.”
Geothermal and aquifer-based systems could be an essential strategy for reducing emissions, along with energy efficiency, LED lighting, electric buses and solar energy, Parent said. Because many St. Paul schools have small footprints, Darcy’s system could become a go-to HVAC solution.
Traditional ground-source geothermal would have been “impossible” at either school because of their small sites, according to the district’s indoor air quality coordinator Angela Vreeland. Darcy’s geothermal systems also take up less interior space than traditional, fossil fuel heating systems.
In Minnesota, several trends are driving geothermal’s growth. Nearly all projects receiving state aid must follow the rigorous standards for energy efficiency. Matt Stringfellow, a manager with Kraus Anderson who works on geothermal installations, said that “any state-funded project pretty much requires that (geothermal) to meet their guidelines at this point.”
Another catalyst has been the Inflation Reduction Act. The law allows a commercial building owner installing geothermal to claim as much as a 30% tax credit. It will enable nonprofits to receive the equivalent amount in cash from the federal government.
Parent said the school district used federal money to pay for its first geothermal project and plans to submit paperwork to take advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act’s direct pay option for this year’s projects, too. While not the only driving force in selecting geothermal, it played a role, he said.
Robert Ed, Darcy’s director of marketing strategy, said geothermal is one of the only solutions for electrifying large buildings in cold climates. “There are other energy efficient technologies, but in a northern climate, being able to use geothermal energy and not having to expend a lot of energy to provide thermal capacity is a big advantage,” he said.
The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Belgium have been the primary users of geothermal aquifers, but Darcy aims to change that. Ed said the startup has expanded to Wisconsin and will now begin adding more states that have the right groundwater characteristics to work with its technology.
Parent said the Johnson project shows “just how viable (geothermal) can be under certain circumstances for our system. Now we’ve got two more projects underway with geoexchange systems; we’re learning how it can play a role in the continuous cycle of renewal in our buildings.”
Darcy advertises that its technology creates 70% fewer emissions and lower cooling costs than a traditional heating and cooling system. At Bruce Vento Elementary, named after a Minnesota congress member well-known for environmental advocacy, stakeholder engagement at the district level led to a desire to decrease energy intensity in buildings.
“Geothermal is the only way we are getting within spitting distance of what we want it to be able to do,” Parent said.
A Department of Energy analysis found retrofitting around 70% of buildings, combined with building envelope improvements, could bring a 13% reduction by 2050 in electricity demand.
Yet geothermal systems barely make a slice of the energy pie chart, producing less than 1% of the country’s energy capacity, according to the United States Department of Energy. The industry, however, is growing. Ground-source heat pump sales have grown by 3% annually, and the United States continues to be the international leader in geothermal energy.
The three schools will see significant savings over natural gas systems. Vreeland said the annual savings will be $143,000 at Hidden River Elementary and $200,000 at Bruce Vento. Both should pay for themselves in a decade. Johnson High’s savings will be $7 million over 30 years.
Darcy is also installing aquifer-based geothermal systems at two schools in Winona in southeastern Minnesota. It also recently installed a system at Rochester’s City Hall.
Parent said geothermal may not be the answer to every HVAC renovation, but it shouldn’t’ be overlooked.
“We don’t see a world in which geothermal energy is our only solution path forward because of the idiosyncrasies of our building, funding, and timing,” he said. “But it seems to be more and more the right answer.”
CLIMATE: The continental U.S. experienced its warmest winter on record, during which average temperatures throughout the Midwest and Northeast exceeded past averages by as much as 10°F. (Axios)
ALSO:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
GRID: Four Congress members push the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to institute an incentive that would encourage the use of new technologies to increase capacity on existing and new transmission lines. (Utility Dive)
ELECTRIFICATION: A recent study shows electric heat pumps reduce emissions compared to other heating systems, even when they run on fossil-fueled grid power. (Canary Media)
CLEAN ENERGY:
CARBON CAPTURE: The developer of a multi-state carbon pipeline says it remains open to contracts that offtake the carbon for enhanced oil recovery, despite sworn testimony that the project is for underground storage. (Reuters)
OIL & GAS:
UTILITIES: Clean energy advocates applaud Minnesota’s largest gas utility for drafting a $105 million decarbonization plan, but say it doesn’t move fast enough to meet state emission-reduction targets. (Energy News Network)
EMISSIONS: U.S. oil and gas producers may be releasing three times more methane than official estimates, though scientists note most emissions come from a small fraction of facilities, potentially making the problem easier to solve. (Associated Press)
ALSO:
GRID:
CLIMATE:
OIL & GAS:
EFFICIENCY:
CLEAN ENERGY: The Department of Energy estimates a rapid adoption of renewable energy could save Alaskans more than $1 billion on utility bills by 2040. (Anchorage Daily News)
TRANSPORTATION: Members of California’s Air Resources Board say staff members are disregarding their concerns about the state’s emphasis on biofuels to reduce transportation emissions and are withholding key information. (Canary Media)
COMMENTARY: An electric vehicle rideshare company representative calls for federal incentives that encourage EV charging stations in cities and that cover both upfront costs and maintenance. (Utility Dive)
CLIMATE: Colorado climate advocates debate whether slashing fossil fuel demand, restricting oil and gas supplies or a combination of the two would be most effective in cutting greenhouse gas emissions. (Colorado Newsline)
ALSO: Washington state lawmakers allocate $30 million to provide fuel surcharge rebates to farmers and truckers not exempted from the state’s carbon cap-and-invest program. (Washington State Standards)
OIL & GAS:
SOLAR:
WIND:
CLEAN ENERGY: The Biden administration awards Mountain West tribal nations about $26 million to bring electricity to off-grid homes and fund clean energy systems. (KUNR)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A southern California port unveils the nation’s first all-electric tug boat and expects to begin operations next month. (San Diego Union-Tribune)
UTILITIES:
TRANSITION: A Navajo Nation nonprofit looks to convert a defunct rail line connecting a decommissioned coal mine and power plant in northern Arizona into a running and cycling trail. (Navajo-Hopi Observer)
ELECTRIFICATION: Colorado restaurants say switching from natural gas to electric induction stoves and ovens has improved their food quality and the kitchen atmosphere. (Rocky Mountain PBS)
COMMENTARY: A Montana advocate urges the federal government to stop leasing land to oil and gas companies, saying drilling will harm the state’s growing outdoor recreation economy. (Montana Standard)
OIL & GAS: A new study finds methane emissions from major oil fields are vastly underestimated, with more than 9% of produced natural gas escaping to the atmosphere in parts of New Mexico. (Associated Press)
ALSO:
CLEAN ENERGY: The Department of Energy estimates a rapid adoption of renewable energy could save Alaskans more than $1 billion on utility bills by 2040. (Anchorage Daily News)
CLIMATE:
TRANSPORTATION:
ELECTRIFICATION: Portland’s city council unanimously approves a ban on gasoline-powered leaf blowers that will be introduced gradually. (Oregonian)
SOLAR: Concerns about wildfires are driving opposition to a utility-scale solar farm in New Mexico. (Searchlight New Mexico)
NUCLEAR:
UTILITIES: Amid an effort to municipalize San Diego’s utilities, the city’s current investor-owned utility releases a report estimating the value of the city’s grid at $11 billion, but offers few specifics as to how it arrived at that figure. (KPBS)
POLICY: Pennsylvania’s governor reveals a climate action plan that would see the state operate a carbon pricing program and make utilities buy half of their power from mostly carbon-free resources by 2035. (Associated Press, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
FOSSIL FUELS:
OFFSHORE WIND: Barnstable, Massachusetts, officials says it’s “inexcusable” that they don’t have a seat on the state’s clean energy siting and infrastructure panel despite its offshore wind projects. (Cape Cod Times)
FINANCE: Climate activists say Maine’s public workers retirement system isn’t doing enough to divest from fossil fuel investments despite a state law mandating divestitment by 2026. (Portland Press Herald)
SOLAR:
GEOTHERMAL:
WORKFORCE: A new report from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center finds the state’s clean energy workforce has grown to 48,176 jobs, an 80% increase over 2010. (news release)
State legislation to halt expansion of natural gas infrastructure in Maine as soon as next year has been cut back into a package of studies that contemplate the role of gas in the state’s energy future.
Environmental advocates hope these studies will prove that continued reliance on gas is the wrong choice for public health, ratepayer pocketbooks and Maine’s climate goals, while the state’s gas utilities see the new version of the bill as a chance to explore roles for alternative fuels like hydrogen and biogas.
“The gas utilities are going to make a very strong case that they’re more part of the solution to climate change than part of the problem — [there is] a lot of skepticism about that,” said Bill Harwood, Maine’s Public Advocate for residential utility customers. “If they can’t make the case, then we will look at how we transition away from natural gas and toward wind, solar and electricity.”
Harwood wrote the initial proposal, which would have barred utilities from including the cost of new gas service lines and mains in residential and commercial customers’ rates starting in 2025 and would have told state regulators not to approve any expanded gas service.
This plan, which also included studies about the health effects of gas appliances and methane leaks and the economics of a climate-driven transition off it, quickly proved “very controversial,” Harwood said.
It drew opposition from the gas utilities, building trades, industrial sector and the Maine Governor’s Energy Office, which helps oversee the state’s climate plan.
Those stakeholders worked with environmental groups and Harwood’s office to craft a compromise amendment eliminating the proposed ban on gas expansions, which narrowly passed in a legislative committee last week.
The amendment proposes a state Public Utilities Commission inquiry on ways to plan and oversee utilities’ future gas investments in Maine; a Governor’s Energy Office study on the economic impacts of Maine’s existing gas service and its potential role in “supporting the transition to a low carbon future”; and a commission to study ways to ensure a just energy transition for Maine workers.
Jack Shapiro, the climate and clean energy director with the Natural Resources Council of Maine, which supported the original bill and worked on the amendment, said these studies should give legislators the evidence they need to start a real transition from gas and the industry’s favored alternative fuels.
“Our 2030 goals are six years away, and we’re seeing the impacts of climate change pretty starkly this winter,” Shapiro said. “We can’t go around and say, well, maybe this technology will evolve over time … we need to make sure we’re not chasing shadows here.”
The new version of the bill now heads to the full Democratically-controlled legislature for a vote and then potential signature by Maine Gov. Janet Mills, also a Democrat.
The Mills administration has been nationally lauded for pushing Maine residents to switch from heating oil to electric heat pumps, among other clean energy goals.
The Governor’s Energy Office declined to answer questions for this story about how the amended gas bill and their opposition to the original version align with state climate policy.
Maine’s targets include using 100% renewable electricity by 2040 and cutting greenhouse gas emissions 45% from 1990 levels by 2030 and 80% by 2050. Maine reached 51% renewable electricity in 2023 and was 25% below 1990 emissions as of 2019.
The Governor’s Energy Office is tasked with studying pathways to the renewable energy goal and is due to recommend one this year. The studies proposed in the amended gas bill would dig into the economics of where gas and pipelines may fit in.
Right now, Maine uses less gas than almost any other state, especially in the residential sector, where supply is concentrated mostly in the far southern part of the state. Federal data shows gas serves about 8% of Maine’s home heating needs, for example, while heating oil supplies 56%.
But Maine’s four gas utilities are growing. Analysis by Harwood’s office found they’ve installed more than 100 miles of new pipe, an 8% increase, and added more than 6,000 new customers, a 12% increase, since 2019.
“We don’t want the gas utilities to continue to expand, business as usual, and then turn around and present the bill to those ratepayers who are taking natural gas once the dust settles,” Harwood said. “What we were trying to do in the original (bill) was stop expansion, but not interfere right now with their (the utilities’) continued ability to deliver gas to those customers who have already made the investment.”
To state Rep. Sophie Warren (D-Scarborough), who sits on the legislature’s energy committee, the amendment marks a pragmatic but disheartening approach to getting anything on this topic passed.
“I feel in some ways ashamed to be voting for something that is so far from what could have been good and useful and necessary,” Warren said to fellow legislators on the committee before voting in favor of the amendment March 7.
Warren, who is in her second term and graduated from college in 2019, said in a later interview that she and others of her generation want to see more urgency and less incrementalism from Maine politicians on issues like this. She raised concerns about how much influence the gas industry had on the amendment, which she sees as in direct conflict with the need to go completely fossil-free to fight climate change.
“I really fear that we could be getting away from what science demands, what justice demands,” she said. “We can’t be, in this year of 2024, saying that natural gas is a partner in that. We have to understand that our goal must be far more ambitious.”
Alec O’Meara, the director of external affairs for Unitil, one of Maine’s gas providers, said the state’s outsized reliance on fuels like heating oil means lower-carbon gas can still aid in decarbonization.
“We have opportunities to help reduce (emissions) today,” he said, “and we see opportunities to use gas infrastructure to help deliver renewable energy in the future as well.”
The governor’s office study in the new version of the bill would be required to be consistent with state climate policy while considering ways to do that, including with green hydrogen (made from water using renewable energy), biogas from farms (sometimes called “renewable natural gas”), and district-scale geothermal electricity.
“We see our infrastructure really as a pipeline infrastructure,” said Lizzy Reinholt, a senior vice president with Summit Utilities, another of Maine’s gas providers. “Much like we focus on creating policy and regulatory frameworks to reduce the emissions intensity of the electrons running in the wires above us, we think it’s just as incumbent on the state to focus on how we reduce the emissions intensity of the molecules in the pipes.”
It’s not clear yet whether hydrogen or biogas would be considered “renewable” for Maine’s climate goals. But environmental groups have cast doubt on these fuels’ value as part of the state’s energy transition.
“We already know that alternative fuels, like hydrogen and renewable natural gas, are not economic, efficient or scalable climate solutions for heating,” said Emily Green, a senior attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation in Maine, another nonprofit that backed the original bill and helped with the amendment. “We are confident that the state’s (proposed) reports will reach that conclusion.”
A 2019 study from the American Gas Foundation found that Maine could produce about 19.6 trillion Btu of biogas per year if it maxed out production from farms, landfills and more. That would replace about a third of Maine’s already low yearly natural gas consumption, according to federal data.
Summit spent $20 million on an anaerobic digester in Clinton, Maine, that turns cow manure from dairy farms into biogas — enough to supply nearly half of the company’s residential load in Maine.
That customer base is a very small part of a small utility sector in the state. Compared to Unitil’s 27,000 residential customers, Summit has fewer than 5,000 in Maine — a third of what the company has built its system for, according to Harwood, who has sparred with Summit over its rates and growth in recent years.
Reinholt argued that Harwood’s original bill would have prematurely limited exploration of these and other approaches as potential “levers that we can pull” in Maine’s climate efforts.
Still, Harwood and others said the proposed studies in the amendment will take up precious time on the way to Maine’s climate goals and to scientists’ predicted future harms if emissions don’t decline sharply.
“Time is our enemy, and we’d all like to see these … decisions made sooner rather than later,” Harwood said. “But there’s only so much resources available in state government. This is the best we can get.”
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