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WIND: Dominion Energy receives the final two federal approvals for its $9.8 billion 176-turbine offshore wind farm near Virginia, opening the way for the utility to begin construction in May. (Virginia Business)
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GRID: The Texas Supreme Court hears arguments over state regulators’ decision to raise energy prices to their maximum allowable levels to incentivize power production during the 2021 winter storm. (KUT)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
SOLAR: An energy company announces it’s obtained financing to move forward with a 600 MW solar farm in Texas. (Solar Industry)
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COAL:
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Correction: Oil companies will pay $7.4 million to settle a pipeline spill on Sac and Fox Nation land in Oklahoma. Yesterday’s edition of Southeast News included the wrong amount.
PIPELINES: Iowa lawmakers consider a bill that would give them power to block attempts by developers to secure eminent domain for a carbon pipeline. (Des Moines Register)
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OVERSIGHT: Documents show that Ohio regulators accepted utility companies’ claims of trade secrets to protect information about coal plant operations, even though the data was publicly available in some cases. (Checks & Balances Project)
BIOGAS: Environmental and farming groups say a 28-mile, $13.9 million renewable natural gas pipeline planned to serve four large dairies would lead to further consolidation in the agriculture sector. (Star Tribune)
EFFICIENCY: Energy efficiency has had a big year in Michigan as a new state law requires all utilities to offer energy-saving programs, federal rebates help offset residential investments, and Detroit starts measuring use in large buildings. (Planet Detroit)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Steel highway guardrails are not designed to withstand the force of electric vehicles, which are typically heavier than gasoline-powered cars, according to crash test data. (Associated Press)
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WIND: Dominion Energy receives the final two federal approvals for its $9.8 billion 176-turbine offshore wind farm near Virginia, opening the way for the utility to begin construction in May. (Virginia Business)
AFFORDABILITY: Vermont communities with low energy burdens also have the highest clean energy technology adoption rates, suggesting lower-income households aren’t getting the help they need. (Bennington Banner)
OIL & GAS:
COMMENTARY: A public policy professor says the demise of NuScale’s proposed small modular reactor project in Idaho shows the technology is too expensive and unproven and should be abandoned. (Utility Dive)
Member towns in New Hampshire’s year-old Community Power Coalition are reaping the benefits of banding together to buy electricity on their own.
As of Feb. 1, residential and small commercial customers in the coalition’s 16 active member communities will pay a base electricity rate of 8.1 cents per kilowatt-hour, a 26% reduction from their already-competitive rate of 10.9 cents per kWh.
Another 29 communities are planning to enjoy the lower rate after they launch their own programs this spring, effectively making the statewide coalition the second-largest electrical supplier in the state.
“The community power program has been a great success,” said Jackson Kaspari, resilience manager for the city of Dover and a member of the coalition’s board of directors. Since Dover launched its program last October, for example, residential and commercial customers have saved an estimated $500,000, he said.
The new rate, which will be in effect through July 31, is lower than the default residential rate offered by every other electric utility in the state: 24% below Unitil, 20% below the New Hampshire Electric Co-op, 17% below Liberty, and 2% below Eversource.
The estimated savings for customers in all member communities for the next six-month rate period is around $3.2 million, said Brian Callnan, the coalition’s first chief executive officer, and formerly the vice president of power resources and access at the New Hampshire Electric Co-op.
New Hampshire’s community power law, signed into law in 2019, authorizes municipalities to procure their own power, instead of buying it through their local distribution company. The distribution companies continue to deliver the electricity and handle billing.
The coalition uses the collective buying power of all of their residents and businesses to secure competitive rates in the wholesale market. Their ability to be flexible in the timing of energy procurements enables them to find value, Callnan said.
“We don’t have to purchase power at a given time period,” he said. In contrast, “the investor-owned utilities don’t have that flexibility” in their regulated procurement process.
The coalition’s base rate — called the Granite Basic — includes 24.3% renewable content, the minimum required under the state’s renewable portfolio standard. But customers may choose to pay slightly higher rates for greater proportions of renewable power.
Opting up to the highest level — the Clean 100, with 100% renewable power — would still only raise the average residential customer’s bill an estimated $29 a month over the basic rate, while eliminating more than two tons of carbon emissions per year, according to John Tabor, chair councilor of the Portsmouth Energy Advisory Committee.
“Portsmouth Community Power customers could reduce their carbon footprint from electricity the same as if they converted their homes to solar panels, at a fraction of the cost,” Tabor said in a statement released at the time of the new rate announcement.
Currently, about 90% of customers have chosen to stay with the Granite Basic product, Callnan said.
The revenue from electricity sales cover the nonprofit coalition’s operating costs, with the balance going into reserves. Every member community is allocated their portion of the collected reserves in the nonprofit. Member communities will also have an opportunity to create a reserve fund on their own to pursue other energy-related projects in their towns, such as improving building efficiency or developing solar projects.
The coalition could potentially partner with a community hosting a solar project and take up some of that power, he said.
“Pretty much all the communities have ideas for projects or are working on projects,” Callnan said. “To me, that’s the exciting part of this — we can really make an impact on how a community uses energy. There are no renewable projects under development from within our communities right now, but we could see that happen in 2025.”
Dover’s energy commission is considering a multi-phased program to improve energy efficiency in their municipal buildings, Kaspari said. They have also evaluated some sites for building solar, such as at the city’s wastewater treatment facility, he said.
“Being a member of the coalition has given us new perspectives on a lot of things and opened the door for information sharing with other municipalities,” Kaspari said. “That’s one of the most powerful aspects of the coalition at this time — leaders in the energy sector talking to each other from across the state.”
Facing a massive projected increase in electricity demand, Duke Energy on Wednesday proposed what advocates called a “tripling down” of new gas plants and scuttling a 2030 deadline to significantly curb its carbon pollution.
An update of a proposal submitted last summer, the bid comes after the company warned in November that major new economic development projects would drive electricity sales “well above” its “historical experience.”
The amended plans show the company expects a 12% increase in demand by 2038, driven largely by more than two dozen economic development projects in both Carolinas that had made “commitments sufficient to justify inclusion” in the new load forecast.
To meet the increased demand in the near term while preparing for decarbonization mandates in the long term, Duke wants to build two more large, “hydrogen-capable” gas plants than it proposed in August. Some hydrogen fuel could theoretically be zero-emitting but is not yet commercially available, and critics call the technology speculative.
The company also proposes an additional smaller, single-cycle gas plant. In all, Duke recommends nearly 9 gigawatts of new gas before 2035, almost three times what it anticipated in its first blueprint to cut carbon pollution, approved at the end of 2022.
“This plan is tripling down on the coal-to-gas transition, saddling customers with risky investments in new polluting power plants and failing to deliver the clean energy future called for in state law,” said Will Scott, Southeast Climate & Clean Energy Director for the Environmental Defense Fund, in a prepared statement.
On the bright side for renewables, the company does recommend a smidge more solar and battery storage. And most significantly, it proposes 2.4 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035 — about two-thirds the size of the Kitty Hawk Wind energy area, the project off the Outer Banks that’s furthest along in development.
“Obviously, this is fantastic news, that we’re seeing offshore wind in the Carbon Plan,” said Katharine Kollins, president of the Southeastern Wind Coalition. But she flagged what appeared to be a lengthy and probably unnecessary study period in the new Duke filings.
“What all of the developers need is certainty and a path to market,” she said. “I think we need to make sure that we don’t get caught in a loop of trying to gather information, and bringing that back to the Utilities Commission, and then gathering more information.”
Duke also left its summer plans for retiring its coal plants largely unchanged, even moving up the timeline for closing one of its largest, the Roxboro 4 unit in Person County, to 2029.
“It’s nice to see that large, dirty capacity go away quicker,” said Justin Somelofske, regulatory counsel for the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association. But, he added, “the bad news is… they’re doing that to use the transmission assets to interconnect new gas.”
And though regulators had ordered Duke to file with its latest proposal “a portfolio that meets the 70% reduction by 2030,” as mandated by law, the utility doesn’t really do so. Instead, it appears to suggest in just one chart on one page that resources planned by 2035 could be built five years earlier.
“We were very happy with the [Utilities] Commission order requiring Duke to do that,” said Somelofske of the 2030 blueprint. “But it feels like Duke was checking a box, instead of making an earnest effort to find a viable path to achieve 70% by 2030.”
A Duke spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment before this story was published. But the company’s filing makes clear it prefers a pathway to cutting its pollution 70% by 2035, if not 2037. That plan, it writes, is the “most reasonable, least cost, and least risk portfolio for planning purposes.”
As they have in the past, advocates say they’ll scrutinize Duke’s load projections as part of the Carbon Plan process this year. But the irony isn’t lost on them that much of the new demand is being driven by electric vehicle battery plants and other projects heralded as part of the clean energy transition. And some companies likely chose the state in part because of its commitment to decarbonizing the electricity sector.
“We don’t want to see Duke take a fundamentalist position to meet the challenge” of new demand, Somelofske said, “by doing what they’re comfortable with, and then potentially threatening future economic development.”
No matter what, the latest Duke filing is far from the last word on the subject. The state’s Utilities Commission has until the end of the year to greenlight or amend the Carbon Plan, and it has scheduled public and expert hearings through the spring and summer.
“We’re hopeful the Utilities Commission will require Duke to pursue a path that controls costs for customers,” Scott said, “while meeting North Carolina’s 2030 carbon emission reduction goal on time.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to provide more context on Duke Energy’s proposed power plant investments.
HYDROGEN: Indiana advocates worry that federally funded plans to create a Midwest hydrogen production hub built around natural gas and carbon sequestration could perpetuate local pollution. (Energy News Network)
NUCLEAR: The Biden administration is reportedly preparing to offer a conditional $1.5 billion loan to reopen a shuttered nuclear plant in southwestern Michigan. (Reuters)
MINING: A Michigan panel delays voting on a $50 million grant for a copper mining project in the far western Upper Peninsula, which the developer says would provide key materials for electric vehicles. (Bridge)
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ELECTRIC VEHICLES: A new report finds electric vehicles account for about 4.5% of new vehicle sales in Indiana, which is less than half the national rate. (Times of Northwest Indiana)
COAL: More than $3.1 million in federal funding is available this budget cycle to reclaim abandoned coal mines in North Dakota. (KXNET)
SOLAR: Two small manufacturers in Missouri receive a total of $90,000 in federal funding for onsite solar installations. (KBIA)
ELECTRIFICATION: A coalition of Minnesota advocacy groups seeks participants to help draft a roadmap for expanding home electrification as a climate strategy. (Spokesman-Recorder)
TRANSPORTATION: Michigan officials begin surveying residents on their attitudes toward replacing a gasoline tax with a road usage charge as more fuel efficient and electric vehicles are adopted. (WOOD-TV8)
GRID: Ameren completes upgrades to a 140-mile transmission line that utility officials say will improve reliability for seven southern Illinois counties. (KFVS)
CLIMATE: A community mapping project supported by NOAA scientists identifies the urban cores of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City as more vulnerable to dangerous heat than surrounding areas. (Gazette)
Correction: More than 11,000 natural gas storage wells across the U.S. may have a single barrier of failure that puts them at risk of a major methane leak. An item in yesterday’s digest mischaracterized their risk.
UTILITIES: The largest U.S. utilities have offered uneven support and sometimes conflicting positions while lobbying on climate policy in recent years, according to a nonprofit group’s new report. (Utility Dive)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
STORAGE: Global venture capital investment in energy storage soared to new records last year, with 86 deals totalling $9.2 billion in funding. (Utility Dive)
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EMISSIONS: The U.S. Energy Department allocates $254 million for projects to cut industrial greenhouse gas emissions. (Utility Dive)
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MINING: The mining industry aims for a rebrand as it becomes a necessary piece of the clean energy transition and looks to recruit young, climate-conscious employees. (Grist)
NUCLEAR: The Biden administration is reportedly preparing to offer a conditional $1.5 billion loan to reopen a shuttered nuclear plant in southwestern Michigan. (Reuters)
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CLIMATE: National business and agricultural groups sue California over new laws requiring large companies to disclose greenhouse gas emissions and other climate-related data, saying they overstep federal regulatory authority. (Associated Press)
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FOSSIL FUELS: Wyoming awards $157 million to six projects aimed at developing cleaner uses for fossil fuels. (Casper Star-Tribune)
COAL: Utah lawmakers introduce bills aimed at keeping coal plants running longer, but consumer advocates worry they could drive up rates. (Salt Lake Tribune)
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WIND: California regulators advance a proposed 60 MW floating wind turbine installation off the central coast that would power a U.S. Space Force base. (Offshore Wind)
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POLLUTION: Republican Utah lawmakers push back on state regulators’ proposal to limit gas-powered lawn equipment use in some areas when air quality is bad, saying it would restrict freedoms. (Salt Lake Tribune)
HYDROGEN: Wyoming awards a company $16 million for its proposed coal-to-hydrogen conversion plant with carbon capture and sequestration. (Power)
COMMENTARY: A former Arizona utility regulator says the state’s rapid adoption of grid-scale battery storage stabilizes the grid and gives consumers more energy options. (Arizona Republic)
Natural gas can have a huge climate impact before it even makes it to your furnace or stove.
While the fuel releases fewer carbon emissions than coal when it’s burned, it’s mostly made up of methane — a planet-warming gas that’s far more potent than carbon in the short term if it leaks from gas infrastructure. And at thousands of gas storage wells across the U.S., leaks are more likely than storage site owners may be accounting for. As many as 11,446 storage wells could have a single point of failure, meaning only one thing has to go wrong for a leak to start, Floodlight’s analysis of a new report finds.
Those potential disasters could look just like what happened at the Rager Mountain storage site in November 2022.
At the Pennsylvania site, a heavily corroded gas storage well broke below the ground, sending methane aboveground and into the air. The leak wasn’t stopped for two weeks, and by then, it had released the equivalent of the annual greenhouse gas emissions from 300,000 gas-powered cars. Bloomberg even labelled it the worst climate disaster of the year.
And there’s more than just a climate risk. Storage fields essentially work as “a huge battery system” that keeps fuel ready to use in power plants and home heating, researcher Drew Michanowicz told Floodlight. Leaks jeopardize that supply.
It all makes for a big challenge for federal and state regulators as they work to keep energy resources secure and cut down on a big source of methane emissions.
Read the whole story from Floodlight here.
🚢 Hitting pause on gas: The Biden administration pauses all approvals of new liquefied natural gas export facilities to further review their climate and other impacts, crediting “the calls of young people and frontline communities” for its decision. (E&E News)
🏭 Fossil fuel switch: States are dependent on hundreds of millions of dollars of annual fossil fuel revenues that pay for schools and roads, and they’ll need to find other funding sources as they transition to renewables. (Axios)
🌎 Devastating climate impacts: Researchers estimate climate change has killed at least 4 million people around the world since 2000, crediting increasingly extreme weather for excess deaths. (Grist)
🏫 Building solar resilience: FEMA will soon start putting solar panels on schools, hospitals and other public buildings when they’re rebuilt after disasters, with the hopes of boosting resilience in future extreme weather events. (New York Times)
💸 Going public: In the face of high electric rates and unreliable power, several communities around the country are pushing to replace investor-owned utilities with public, resident-owned power companies. (Grist)
💰 Pro-propane: A propane industry lobbying group has spent millions of dollars over the past two years to promote the fuel as a clean energy source, even though it’s a byproduct of oil and gas refining. (The Guardian/Heated)
☀️ Solar for everyone: A solar nonprofit matches socially conscious investors’ cash with lower-income homeowners to spread the benefits of clean energy in a Minneapolis neighborhood. (Energy News Network)
🚘 An EV charging solution: Advocates say making many Level 1 charging outlets available to renters in large buildings could do more to convince them to adopt electric vehicles than installing a few faster charging ports. (Grist)
SOLAR: Texas breaks its record for the amount of grid power coming from solar, with more than 15 GW of solar providing 36% of power on the grid on Sunday. (KUT)
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EFFICIENCY: Louisiana regulators narrowly vote to approve new energy efficiency rules during a raucous meeting in which protestors chanted, “Vote! Vote! Vote!” over a commissioner’s speech. (Louisiana Illuminator)
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UTILITIES: The Southern Group’s Florida lobbying firm staffs up. (Florida Politics)
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