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SOLAR: California regulators side with utilities and adopt rules slashing compensation for community solar providers and subscribers, raising concerns for the program’s future viability. (CalMatters)
ALSO:
TRANSITION: New Mexico regulators approve a utility’s proposed solar-plus-storage projects, even though they lie outside the school district most in need of revenue after the 2022 San Juan coal plant closure. (NM Political Report)
GRID: California energy officials expect 18.5 gigawatts of battery energy storage capacity added to the grid in recent years to lower the risk of outages this summer, but warn unanticipated events could still knock out power. (Bloomberg)
UTILITIES:
CLIMATE: Washington conservative groups ramp up spending on a campaign to rescind the state’s new carbon cap-and-invest program. (Crosscut)
OIL & GAS:
COAL:
WIND: Federal regulators extend the public comment period on proposed offshore wind leasing and development along Oregon’s coast. (KOBI)
POLLUTION: A California court orders the Port of Los Angeles and a shipping company to implement pollution control measures, resolving a decades-long legal battle waged by residents and environmental justice advocates. (news release)
COMMENTARY: A California columnist calls state regulators’ decision to trim incentives for community solar “the latest stain” on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s climate record. (Los Angeles Times)
As president and CEO of Green Mountain Power in Vermont, Mary Powell developed the first utility partnership with Tesla to attach residential Powerwall batteries to the grid, providing backup clean power for the utility when needed. Customers could earn money by essentially filling the batteries at night and dispatching them during the day, Powell explained in a 2016 interview with Energy News Network.
Today, such arrangements are increasingly promoted by clean energy advocates, who’ve dubbed distributed grid-connected batteries — plus solar — “virtual power plants” that allow homeowners and businesses to help out utilities during times of high demand. They’re also central to Powell’s current mission as head of the nation’s largest residential solar company.
Powell left Green Mountain in 2019 after two decades with the company, and in 2021 she became CEO of Sunrun. In an interview during a recent conference near Chicago, she spoke about how the culture of her former industry can slow the pace of innovation that’s much needed to address climate, cost and reliability concerns.
“You’re talking about a 100-plus-year-old system and way of thinking, and you compound that with the fact that utilities’ whole culture is built for ‘slow and no’ and ‘protect, preserve, defend.’ For so many years, it’s been a one-way system,” Powell said.
Virtual power plants are a prime example of the coming change. Powell said utilities’ experience with energy efficiency in recent decades provides a look at what might be coming for such pairings of solar and storage.
“I would say energy efficiency was the disruption — the first opportunity for utilities to start to think differently about their role and their mandate. And as we know, that took like 20 years, even for the most progressive utilities, to embrace.”
Utilities can generally choose to incorporate virtual power plants into their rate structures and grid services, and state regulators and legislatures can facilitate the concept through decisions, laws and policies that create incentives and provide standards. The Illinois legislature is considering a bill that would essentially allow the agency that procures power on behalf of utilities to contract with virtual power plants.
Green Mountain Power was an early adopter of energy storage under Powell’s leadership, and broader adoption of the technology is ramping up quickly. The U.S. Department of Energy noted in a 2023 report that, “deploying 80-160 GW of virtual power plants (VPPs) — tripling current scale — by 2030 could support rapid electrification while redirecting grid spending from peaker plants to participants and reducing overall grid costs.”
That means utilities will have to adapt quickly, and Powell sees a significant role for private developers in that transition. Powell describes Sunrun as a “clean energy lifestyle company,” branching into technologies like smart electric panels and EV charging.
“When you think about customers having heat pumps, when you think about them having electric vehicles, you make sure that you’re leveraging all of that in a way that’s beneficial for the grid and beneficial for the customer.”
That focus on the end users of electricity is in part a bet that utilities’ need for solar power will eventually catch up to consumer demand.
“When I went to Sunrun I said to the team, ‘We’ve got to stop wandering around trying to convince every Tom, Dick and Harry utility to utilize our resources.’ We’re doing it, we just need to scale as fast as we can.
“Because guess what, utilities are going to hit the wall, they are hitting the wall in some parts of the country, and they don’t have the ability to meet the kind of capacity demands that are projected over the next five years. They’re going to need our resources.”
Despite that expected market demand, Powell said legislative and regulatory bodies also have a role to “nudge utilities in the right direction.” Illinois in particular, she said, provides a strong example.
“Illinois has done an amazing job. Making sure that rooftop solar is considered as part of the RPS [Renewable Portfolio Standard] is really thoughtful policy. And I am encouraged with a lot of the conversations about how we could leverage storage more. So yeah, we’re very bullish about Illinois.”
Powell also said she has no regrets about leaving the utility sector to work at Sunrun.
“Frankly, even the fastest-moving utility was moving a little too slow for me. We weren’t scaling as fast as I would have loved us to be able to scale. It’s awesome to work on mission-driven work that you feel is valuable for the people you serve and for the planet at the same time.”
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: China’s plans to scale up production and dominate the electric vehicle market threatens Michigan’s marquee industry and poses an economic and national security threat to the U.S., experts say. (Bridge)
ALSO:
SOLAR: At least 27 Ohio counties have passed resolutions to block utility-scale solar projects as part of a state law that the state chamber of commerce says has “chased away investment in this state.” (WCMH)
PIPELINES:
GRID: Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin are among 21 states to join a Biden administration initiative that will provide financial and technical assistance to expand grid capacity and modernize existing transmission and distribution lines. (States Newsroom)
CLEAN ENERGY: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says $367 million in federal clean energy funding will help 28,000 low-income households with energy efficiency and solar upgrades. (Michigan Advance)
OIL & GAS: The National Transportation Safety Board is now investigating a deadly natural gas explosion that killed one person and injured seven others in downtown Youngstown, Ohio. (ABC News)
COAL: Alliant Energy plans to convert a coal plant in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, to run on natural gas in 2028. (WPR)
NUCLEAR: An Ohio nuclear plant closed for two days late last week so inspectors could find and repair a coolant leak before bringing the plant back online. (Cleveland.com)
COMMENTARY:
GRID: An Oregon utility invests in the proposed $3.2 billion North Plains Connector transmission project in Montana designed to link the Eastern and Western grids. (Montana Standard)
ALSO:
MINING:
SOLAR:
GEOTHERMAL:
POLLUTION: Advocates urge the U.S. EPA to force Wyoming to broaden the scope of and strengthen its regional haze implementation plan aimed at restoring “natural visibility” at national parks and wilderness areas. (WyoFile)
OIL & GAS:
TRANSPORTATION: Colorado advocates laud a city’s decision to eliminate minimum parking requirements for new development and replace them with limits, saying it will encourage public transit, walking and biking. (news release)
STORAGE: A Utah battery and flywheel manufacturer signs on to provide energy storage capacity and virtual power plant services to a commercial real estate firm’s properties. (news release)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: The Biden administration awards Western state school districts nearly $170 million to purchase electric buses. (Source NM)
A $156 million federal grant is expected to fund a transformative investment in residential solar for low-income households in Massachusetts, advocates and officials say.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Solar for All program awarded Massachusetts the money for its plans to provide zero-interest loans, financial subsidies, and technical assistance to solar projects benefiting low-income households and public housing facilities. The state’s proposal was largely designed to take advantage of existing programs and resources to maximize the impact of federal funding.
The grant is the largest any New England state received from the program, but well below the $250 million Massachusetts requested. Still, the state expects to go ahead with all the initiatives outlined in its application, though planners are now working to reallocate money across intended programs to maximize impact.
“We were shooting for the stars,” said Elizabeth Mahony, commissioner of the state Department of Energy Resources. “This was an extremely competitive award process.”
Solar for All is a $7 billion program created in 2022 by the Inflation Reduction Act, an economic stimulus bill that included $369 billion in spending on energy and climate change programs. Solar for All will give grants to states, territories, nonprofits, tribal governments, and municipalities to increase solar development with the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, creating energy savings for overburdened households, and building markets for renewable energy businesses. The grants will target low-income and other marginalized communities where renewable energy has historically been less accessible.
Last month, the EPA announced the selection of 60 applicants for grants ranging from $25 million to $250 million. Only five grantees received larger awards than Massachusetts; 22 received the same amount.
Massachusetts’ proposal is structured around initiatives in three program areas: small residential buildings, multi-family housing, and community solar. The programs will be administered by a coalition of agencies including the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, the Boston Housing Authority, and MassHousing.
“They got a really strong coalition of major players involved,” said Kyle Murray, Massachusetts program director for climate nonprofit the Acadia Center. “While it’s disappointing that we did not get the full award, I cannot stress enough how much this money is going to be a game-changer for getting solar to low-income and disadvantaged communities.”
The small residential portion of the programming — originally slated to receive $40 million — includes two main initiatives. The first would provide low-income households with zero-interest loans to pay for solar panels. The program would be modeled after the MassSave Heat Loan program and the Mass Solar Loan, which sunsetted in 2020, having made some 3,000 loans to low-income borrowers for the installation of solar panels.
“We’re going back to that and reviving it because it was quite successful,” Mahony said.
The initial proposal also allocated $65 million to programs that would install solar panels on affordable housing and public housing, with the benefits flowing to the residents. In housing developments where tenants pay for their own utilities, they would receive savings from lower electricity bills. In housing where utilities are included in the rent, that benefit could be something other than energy bill savings: free wi-fi or improved facilities, for example.
Another provision of the Inflation Reduction Act will further amplify the financial power of installing solar panels on public and affordable housing. In the past, nonprofits were not eligible to receive clean energy tax credits because they paid no taxes. Now, clean energy tax credits are available to nonprofits in the form of a direct payment.
“It means we can then bring more federal resources into the state of Massachusetts,” said Joel Wool, deputy administrator for sustainability and capital transformation for the Boston Housing Authority, which will be administering the public housing portions of the grant programming statewide. “Every dollar that we can save on operating costs in public housing is a dollar we can put into making housing better.”
The community solar segment of the plan builds upon the state’s existing Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target, or SMART, program. All community solar projects receiving grant money will have to meet SMART’s existing requirement that at least half of the project’s offtakers are low-income residential customers. Additional points will be given to projects that offer deeper savings, serve a higher percentage of low-income households, or have members — such as nonprofits or affordable housing facilities — that benefit the community.
At the same time, the state is in the process of updating SMART to meet current environmental and economic needs. The Solar for All community solar program is likely to be tightly interwoven with these changes, Mahony said.
“We’re really leaning in hard on SMART when it comes to community shared solar that serves low-income customers in a way we never have before,” she said.
Smaller pools of money in the original plan were to be used to fund upgrades — such as roof replacements or wiring updates — needed to prepare buildings for solar panels, and to provide outreach and community engagement, workforce development, and technical assistance.
In addition to the environmental benefits and the savings for low-income residents, backers of the plan expect the influx of funds to have a long-term effect on the growth and stability of all facets of the renewable energy industry.
“That really enables the commonwealth and surrounding states to make those investments in their workforce and their supply chain, knowing that there will be demand for that equipment and those services in the years ahead,” said Maggie Super Church, director of policies and programs for the Massachusetts Community Climate Bank, a part of MassHousing.
The state is now in the midst of negotiating the final grant contract with the EPA, a process it expects to conclude this spring. The goal is to start rolling out the first programs in the fall.
“The numbers are still striking for what we can do,” Mahony said. “It’s just going to look a little different than how we laid it out in the first place.”
WIND: A federal judge denies a request to halt Dominion Energy’s construction of a 2.6 GW offshore wind farm near Virginia by conservative groups who argue it will threaten endangered whales. (WHRO)
ALSO:
SOLAR:
OIL & GAS:
PIPELINES: A growing number of groups ask federal regulators to delay approval for the Mountain Valley Pipeline to begin service as construction crews continue to inch toward completion. (WDBJ)
OVERSIGHT: A Georgia energy regulator is criticized for bragging the state’s energy mix is “the cleanest and most reliable of any state in the nation” (it’s actually Vermont), even though its largest utility produces 60% of its power from fossil fuels. (Savannah Morning News)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: The Biden administration announces nearly $1 billion will go to about 530 school districts across the U.S. to fund the purchase of electric school buses. (States Newsroom)
HYDRO: The Tennessee Valley Authority rehabs a 10-acre island downstream from the site of its first hydroelectric dam and power plant. (Knoxville News Sentinel)
GRID:
CLIMATE:
COMMENTARY: Texas’ recent brush with severe storms should remind state lawmakers that climate change is worsening and they should back carbon-free energy instead of further incentivizing new natural gas-fired power plants, writes an editorial board. (Dallas Morning News)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: The Biden administration announces nearly $900 million for 500 school districts across the country to buy clean buses, most of them electric, in the latest round of Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding. (Canary Media)
ALSO: Electric vehicle charging companies see opportunity in Tesla’s Supercharger team layoffs, including by hiring former Tesla employees and building charging stations in lots whose owners previously planned to allow Superchargers. (E&E News)
SOLAR:
POLITICS: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, which opposed the Inflation Reduction Act before its passage, are now preparing to defend it if former President Trump wins the election this fall. (Politico)
WIND:
ELECTRIFICATION: Helping lower-income Americans electrify their homes could dramatically reduce fossil fuel use and drive $2 trillion in avoided health and social costs by 2050, an energy efficiency group finds. (Canary Media)
CLIMATE: The average person on Earth faced 26 more days of abnormal heat last year than they would’ve without human-caused climate change, a study finds. (New York Times)
GRID:
OIL & GAS: ConocoPhillips announces it will acquire Marathon Oil in an all-stock transaction worth $22.5 billion. (news release)
GEOTHERMAL: Utah’s geothermal industry says the federal Bureau of Land Management’s decision to defer 177,000 acres of energy leases until next year could imperil investments and development. (Deseret News)
CARBON CAPTURE: Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker says he will sign legislation that bans carbon pipelines until federal regulators adopt new safety regulations and that create more extensive monitoring at storage sites. (Capitol News Illinois)
GRID: California’s grid operator approves a $6.1 billion plan to build 26 new transmission projects and greenlights Pattern Energy’s proposal to tie the SunZia line into the state’s power network. (E&E News)
ALSO: An Arizona utility proposes constructing a high-voltage transmission line and substation in the Phoenix area to support new development. (Phoenix Independent)
UTILITIES: Oregon wineries and vineyards file a lawsuit seeking $100 million from PacifiCorp over its alleged role in sparking the 2020 Labor Day fires that damaged grapes and reduced harvests and sales. (Associated Press)
OIL & GAS: The federal Bureau of Land Management blocks oil and gas drilling and mining for 20 years around a complex cave system in southeastern New Mexico. (Carlsbad Current-Argus)
ELECTRIFICATION: More California cities suspend natural gas hookup bans after Berkeley’s ban was shot down by a federal court. (Planetizen)
CLEAN ENERGY:
WIND: Oregon regulators schedule a series of public meetings on proposed offshore wind leasing along the state’s southern coast. (Yachats News)
CLIMATE:
TRANSPORTATION: Republican congress members demand information on California’s high-speed rail project’s costs and delays and call it a “highly questionable endeavor.” (ABC News)
STORAGE: Southern California residents step up opposition to a proposed battery energy storage system after a blaze at a similar facility nearby occupied firefighters for over a week. (KPBS)
GEOTHERMAL:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: The Cow Creek Umpqua Tribe installs Oregon’s largest non-Tesla electric vehicle charging station at a tribally owned casino and travel center. (KTVL)
LITHIUM: Utah advocates and residents continue to push back against a proposed direct lithium extraction project over water use and potential aquifer contamination, even though the developers say it is “as green as possible.” (Utah News Dispatch)
If you’re not familiar with New England, two important things to know are A) electricity is expensive there and B) New Hampshire is a little different.
And while all of the states in the region have taken steps to reduce emissions, New Hampshire’s efforts have been more modest, in keeping with the state’s long-standing ethos of limited government.
Gov. Chris Sununu sought to capitalize on that distinction last week in a news release, which included the chart below, appearing to show dramatic rate increases in neighboring states with New Hampshire rates staying flat:
“While other states have let politics drive policy, New Hampshire has always put the ratepayer’s bottom line first,” the governor declared, “…and because of it, residential customers across New Hampshire have benefitted.”
Sununu’s administration made a similar claim in the state’s 2022 energy plan, blaming neighboring states for spiking electricity prices, which were mostly due to global natural gas shortages following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
But back to that chart. What exactly does “cost increase compared to NH” mean? What is this chart actually measuring?
On Friday, Boston Globe reporters Steven Porter and Amanda Gokee took a closer look at Sununu’s math, and found it to be misleading in three critical ways:
It uses a weird calculation: The governor’s release takes the monetary amount of the rate increases for different states and then calculates the percentage differences between those numbers. That means even though New Hampshire’s rates have gone up 28% since 2017, it appears as zero in the chart, because the difference between a number and itself is 0%. And Rhode Island’s 63% increase becomes 127%. The differences are real, but the chart exaggerates them.
It cherry-picks the start and end points: The governor’s analysis compares January 2017 to February 2024, disregarding fluctuations in between. The 2022-23 gas shortage we mentioned a little bit ago? New Hampshire had the highest rates in the region for nearly six months during that time. For the most part, New Hampshire’s rates have been slightly below the regional average, according to EIA data cited by the Globe.
It leaves out an important state: Vermont, New Hampshire’s neighbor to the west, has had lower rates than New Hampshire for most of the period since 2017, despite relatively aggressive clean energy requirements. “If energy and climate goals were driving this trend, why is Vermont so affordable?” asked Sam Evans-Brown, director of Clean Energy New Hampshire, in the Globe article.
While it’s true that New Hampshire’s rates are lower than other states at the moment, the price spikes of 2022 suggest there is a more nuanced conversation to be had about the role of clean energy policy in shaping what customers pay.
“Comparing two points in time in this way just invites spurious conclusions,” Evans-Brown said.
🚗 EVs revving up again: Worrying headlines earlier this year didn’t tell the whole story: most electric vehicle makers have seen scorching sales growth, even as GM and Tesla struggle to find momentum. (Bloomberg)
🍳 Full of hot gas?: U.S. gas utilities are partnering with Habitat for Humanity affiliates to build “zero-net energy homes” with gas appliances in what critics call a “cynical PR stunt” to combat efforts to curb fossil fuel use. (The Guardian)
🌤️Solar pushback: Colorado counties temporarily ban utility-scale solar developments on private land following residents’ opposition, slowing the state’s energy transition. (Denver Post)
💲 The right rate at the right time: Minnesota consumer advocates say Xcel Energy’s proposed time-of-use pricing is too aggressive, with a pilot program proving to be expensive for customers without achieving a goal of reducing peak demand. (Star Tribune)
🌲 Clarifying climate claims: The Biden administration issues federal guidelines around the use of voluntary carbon offsets, as studies have undercut the credibility of such products to deliver their promised benefits. (New York Times)
🏗️ Cleaning up industry: The Biden administration is banking on “green steel” factories in Mississippi and Ohio that will run on clean hydrogen to provide a model to decarbonize one of the world’s dirtiest industries. (Canary Media)
COAL: A proposed contract extension could lock three Chicago suburbs and 29 downstate municipalities into relying on a major coal plant for decades to come. (Chicago Tribune)
ALSO: A Minnesota administrative law judge finds that Xcel Energy’s negligence contributed to a catastrophic coal plant equipment failure in 2011, and that customers should be compensated up to $34 million. (Star Tribune)
UTILITIES: Michigan regulators fine Consumers Energy $1 million after investigating complaints of malfunctioning smart meters and violating state rules on estimated billing practices. (Michigan Advance)
CLEAN ENERGY:
SOLAR: A solar project in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula shows how community solar can be deployed to help make electricity costs more affordable for low-income residents. (Inside Climate News)
EMISSIONS: Missouri’s attorney general sues five states, including Minnesota, over claims that their climate policies create emissions mandates for other states. (FOX 2)
RENEWABLES: Environmental groups accuse MidAmerican Energy of misleading customers by saying it supplied 100% renewable energy to customers while operating six coal plants. (E&E News, subscription)
CARBON CAPTURE: Experts say the absence of a price on carbon makes it difficult to quantify the economic benefits of carbon capture and storage for corn growers. (North Dakota Monitor)
GRID: City, state and federal officials celebrate the opening of a microgrid in a southside Chicago neighborhood that could be replicated elsewhere in the state. (Sun-Times)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Students at a Minnesota school district press administrators to buy an electric bus. (Star Tribune)
OIL & GAS:
NUCLEAR: Figuring out how to build cheaper nuclear plants will be key for the U.S. to take advantage of the technology and transition from fossil fuels, experts say. (The Atlantic)
CLIMATE: School districts across the northern U.S. that lack air conditioning confront the academic and health risks associated with rising temperatures. (Washington Post, subscription)
COMMENTARY: Wisconsin should celebrate, and accelerate, the state’s progress on retiring the last of its coal plants, an editorial board writes. (Wisconsin State Journal)
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