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The following commentary was written by Laura Sherman. Sherman is president of the Michigan Energy Innovation Business Council, a trade organization of more than 140 advanced energy companies focused on improving the policy landscape for the advanced energy industry in Michigan. See our commentary guidelines for more information.
Michigan can grow its economy and add more well-paying jobs by realizing the clean energy goals set by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer with the adoption of state-level policies, according to a new analysis.
The report from 5 Lakes Energy and the Michigan Energy Innovation Business Council (Michigan EIBC), The Michigan Clean Energy Framework: Assessing the Economic and Health Benefits of Policies to Achieve Michigan’s Climate Goals, finds that clean energy and a strong economy go hand-in-hand. Using economic modeling tools developed by RMI, the report concludes that the Michigan Clean Energy Framework, a set of state-level policies to cut emissions, would lead to the creation of about 160,000 more jobs and over 2.5% higher state GDP growth by 2050.
Clean energy is an increasingly important part of Michigan’s economy. Gov. Whitmer declared that Michigan would be a part of the transition toward low-carbon energy when she set the goals and released the MI Healthy Climate Plan.
But still, more must be done to achieve those goals. Various pieces of legislation have been introduced in Lansing that would support the clean energy industry and cut emissions across the state’s economy. The policies modeled in the report include:
Instituting these policies will stimulate economic development and job growth that would otherwise not occur. The time is especially ripe for this type of economic development because of federal funding for emissions reductions offered by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Infrastructure, Investment, and Jobs Act (IIJA).
These federal laws offer billions of dollars in grants, rebates and tax credits for state and local governments, non-profit entities and businesses for clean energy projects. State level policies like those modeled would provide more avenues for clean energy investment, allowing the state to better take advantage of these federal opportunities, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in federal investment that would flow into Michigan. Much of that investment would be lost if these supportive state clean energy policies are not implemented.
What’s more, these economic benefits can be achieved while keeping household energy costs stable. The analysis found that because of clean energy policies that promote electric vehicle use and the electrification of home appliances and heating and cooling systems, the typical household would spend more on electricity but spend significantly less on gasoline and other fuels, leading to a decrease in total energy costs.
To illustrate how the private sector is already responding to the influx of federal funding and the prospect of additional state policies, as part of the report, Michigan EIBC surveyed and interviewed companies working in renewable energy, energy storage, electric vehicle charging, energy efficiency, construction and manufacturing. A majority of these companies plan to use federal grant opportunities from the IRA and IIJA to expand their business operations and workforce, with three-quarters planning to hire at least five more employees, and nearly half planning to hire 50 or more employees in the coming year.
These results show that clean energy policies are already driving economic growth and job creation, but also demonstrate the potential for even more investment and growth if the right policies are in place.
Michigan needs to establish policies that expand renewable energy and energy storage, allow Michiganders to generate their own electricity and protect their families from power outages, add charging infrastructure to enable more drivers to go electric, and improve the energy efficiency of our homes and businesses. As this report reveals, these policies would be a win-win for the state — reducing carbon emissions while also creating jobs, spurring economic growth and lowering energy costs.
A consortium of Minnesota electric cooperatives is preparing to apply for $970 million in federal funding that could help propel rural utilities toward the state’s 100% clean electricity target.
The state’s largest generation and transmission cooperative, Great River Energy, convened the group, which so far includes more than half of its members. The utilities are collaborating on an application for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Empowering Rural America, or New ERA, program.
The $9.7 billion program, created under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, is designed to help rural electric cooperatives pay for clean energy, carbon capture, energy storage and transmission projects. It represents the largest federal investment in rural electricity since the 1930s.
Great River Energy’s consortium includes proposals for solar, storage, distributed energy resource management systems and other initiatives. The program wants co-ops to propose “ways to get clean energy on the system to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and improve resiliency and reliability,” said Jamie Stallman, energy conservation and optimization specialist for Great River Energy.
A new report released Wednesday by the climate policy advocacy group Evergreen Action highlights the opportunity that rural cooperatives have under New ERA and other federal programs.
“Rural America deserves a thriving clean energy economy that’s affordable, reliable, and carbon-free,” said report author and Evergreen energy policy transition lead Mattea Mrkusic. “The IRA offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to strengthen [co-ops’] balance sheets and make clean electricity cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable for member-owners.”
The report details how generation and transmission cooperatives serving Minnesota could reduce or eliminate coal plants and provide members with less expensive electricity. The report said wind energy offers substantial savings over coal energy produced at Great River Energy’s two coal-fired plants.
Jeff Haase, director of member services, distributed energy resources and end use strategy for Great River Energy, said the money will help the company comply with the state’s new law requiring that utilities generate 100% of their electricity from carbon-free resources by 2040. The utility has a goal of being 90% carbon-free by 2037 and reducing natural gas generation to 5% of its load.
“GRE is well positioned to meet our goals, but we’re looking at the funding opportunities through the federal government as a way of helping to reduce the costs for our members,” Haase said.
Mrkusic said cooperatives could receive even more federal support by stacking incentives such as adders available if they serve low-income communities. Federal money could pay for 60% of a project’s costs in low-income areas, she said.
“Rural coops serve 92% of the ‘persistent poverty’ counties in the nation, so this is an equity issue, too,” Mrkusic said.
Minnesota Rural Electric Association CEO Darrick Moe said he and his organization’s members like the influx of federal money but are focused on projects that increase affordability and reliability.
Evergreen Action’s report calls for closing natural gas plants, a goal Moe does not endorse.
“I think this idea that we can only rely on solar and wind in the short term is not true,” Moe said. “I want to be careful not to say anything that contributes to that sentiment.”
Applications for the New ERA program are due in September. Stallman said planning has intensified as the deadlines approach. He continues to speak with cooperatives who have not joined and checks in with federal agricultural officials to let them know the proposal’s status and to hear feedback.
Applying as a consortium offers advantages, he said. It allows federal officials to evaluate the portfolio of projects more efficiently, and also “eases the burden” on individual members.
Federal agricultural officials have told Stallman the agency wants “fully baked” projects that co-ops will begin once receiving grant or loan money. The consortium continues to speak to members about joining the consortium while preparing the application.
The Empowering Rural America program does not require matching grants, he said. The federal government could fund the consortium’s $970 million proposal entirely through a grant or a grant and low-interest loans, Stallman said.
Spokesperson Rob Davis said that Connexus Energy, the state’s largest electric cooperative, is working on its own application and also seeking other federal money for clean energy projects.
“Where there’s an opportunity to create more value for our members we will participate and pursue them,” Davis said.
The federal government has not said when it plans to announce grant and loan recipients.
Correction: Connexus Energy is working on its own application for the federal Empowering Rural America program. An earlier version of this story mischaracterized its application.
The third powerline was the last straw for Marla Britton.
Her and her husband’s 40-acre farm near Brainerd, Minnesota, is already framed by electrical wires on the east and south. When she learned of plans for a new project running along the north end of her property, she took action.
Britton wrote to state utility regulators and contacted the companies behind the planned Northland Reliability Project. The 180-mile line will eventually make it easier to move clean electricity between central and northern Minnesota.
Soon, a utility representative was at her doorstep to discuss her concerns and ideas for rerouting the line where it would have less impact on her and her neighbors.
“They listened to me and wrote down what I said,” Britton said. “They agreed it was way too much for my property.”
It’s yet to be seen how Britton’s feedback will be reflected in the final route, but the interaction illustrates the type of engagement that project backers say they are aiming for with the project. Taking the time today to listen to property owners and adjust plans in response to their concerns, they hope, will lessen the likelihood of drawn-out legal or political battles delaying the project later.
The utilities building the project, Minnesota Power and Great River Energy, are using a playbook informed by an infamous rural revolt against a transmission line project through central Minnesota in the 1970s. In addition to lawsuits to try to block that project in court, opponents held large rallies, blocked construction workers, and vandalized utility equipment.
Great River Energy’s vice president and chief transmission officer, Priti Patel, still recalls a senior executive years ago giving her a copy of “Powerline: The First Battle of America’s Energy War,” a book about the battle co-authored by the late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, who was then a professor at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.
The book describes what utilities should not do when developing large power lines, such as overusing eminent domain for land acquisition and dismissing the fears and concerns of rural citizens.
“I still have that [book] on my desk, because it’s a reminder … of the importance of active inclusion of voices of impacted landowners, particularly in rural Minnesota,” Patel said.
With the Northland Reliability Project, landowner engagement so far has included in-person and virtual open houses, phone calls, one-on-one meetings, handouts, emails, and an inclusive website. With a price tag of $970 million, the double-circuit, 345-kilovolt line is one of two Minnesota projects that has been fast-tracked by the regional transmission grid operator MISO for completion by the decade’s end.
The project largely follows the same path as existing smaller capacity transmission lines the utilities own, which could also help make it less controversial, said Beth Soholt, executive director of the Clean Grid Alliance, which advocates for transmission and clean energy.
“It’s just easier to site and probably construct. We’re hoping these early lines take less time to build,” Soholt said.
The two utilities combined have held 27 workshops in six months. They will continue throughout the year, reaching out to every township and municipality along the way, in addition to landowners, tribes, agencies, snowmobile groups and ATV clubs, and other organizations, according to Patel. So far, no organized opposition has emerged.
A few landowners and agencies have had concerns, said Jim Atkinson, Minnesota Power’s environmental and real estate manager, but planners have been proposing workarounds that could satisfy them. The input from stakeholder meetings “has informed the design of our route quite a bit,” he said.
Christina Hayes, executive director of Americans for a Clean Energy Grid, said the two Minnesota utilities are following the best practice of early stakeholder engagement to avoid later potential litigation. Hayes said the gatherings allow power companies to meet opposition and change routes before presenting to public utility commissions.
“The Midwest is a model for the rest of the country,” Hayes said. Utilities have “fostered the sense of ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’ and ‘we’re all in this together,’ and that has done a lot to keep the lights on in the Midwest as these emergency electricity situations have arisen around extreme weather.”
Morrison County Commissioner Greg Blaine, a Stearns Electric Association and Great River Energy board member, has been representing the project at community meetings. He said the constituents and customers asked about rolling blackouts and polar vortexes that have affected the grid over the last few years. The outreach meetings “help answer some of the questions out there,” Blaine said.
He tells them the transmission project could be an economic engine for the county that will make development in this area easier. “This addresses a need,” he said.
That’s not to say the utilities and landowners have a harmonious relationship. St. Cloud attorney Nicholas Delaney said after landowners agree to easements for transmission lines, utilities sometimes play hardball during negotiations on issues such as severance damage. Landowners want utilities to help cover damage on areas outside of easements that may suffer from heavy machinery used to install pools and lines, Delaney said.
Minnesota law requires utilities to buy all or part of the properties of landowners who don’t agree to easements. Delaney said utilities move routes and try to establish good relationships to avoid the law because of the expense, and “because they’re not in the business of buying and selling land.” Under the federal Uniform Relocation Act, utilities could also have to pay moving fees, replacement housing differential costs and other charges of farmers who can prove they are being displaced by power lines.
The utilities will soon file a certificate of need and route permit with the Public Utilities Commission. If all goes according to plan, construction will start in 2027.
Correction: Minnesota Power and Great River Energy had not yet filed for a certificate of need and route permit as of the time of publication but were expected to do so soon. An earlier version of this story misstated the application’s status.
Large cross-country transmission lines carrying clean energy from remote rural areas to population centers will be a key strategy for reducing emissions.
But as a project in Minnesota illustrates, the grid puzzle is more complicated than that.
Connecting central and northern Minnesota, the Northland Reliability Project will reinforce the state’s electric grid with new transmission lines as fossil fuel-powered plants close and utilities rely on more clean energy generation.
The Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc., known as MISO, chose the Northland Reliability Project as one of 18 transmission projects in a more than $10 billion first tranche budget. The 180-mile-long project has the initial group’s second-highest budget: $970 million.
Transmission has been a challenging issue nationwide as utilities and customers transition to producing and consuming more clean energy. Rich in wind power, the Midwest is no different, with MISO having seen developers pull projects because of a lack of transmission.
Allete subsidiary Minnesota Power and generation and transmission cooperative Great River Energy will build the project from central Minnesota to the mining-intensive Iron Range. The project adds double-circuit 345-kilovolt transmission lines to a route where smaller lines will still operate.
Beth Soholt, executive director of Clean Grid Alliance, said Minnesota Power and Great River Energy wanted the project to improve reliability in their territories. The project “supports and beefs up the regional grid in this particular location,” she said. Because it crosses the borders of the utilities, they will build and own it, but MISO will pay for it.
Northland’s route runs near two retiring fossil plants and Xcel Energy’s Monticello nuclear energy plant. Owned by Minnesota Power, the Boswell Energy Center in Cohasset near the northern terminus will close in phases by 2035. The other coal plant, the Xcel-owned Sherburne County Generating Station also known as Sherco, will close by 2030.
Dan Gunderson, Minnesota Power’s vice president for transmission and distribution, said the Northland project “will be a critical element to ensure we have regional stability for our large customers in the northern part of the state,” he said.
Unlike most regional utilities primarily serving commercial and residential customers, Minnesota Power’s most significant customer base consists of mines that often draw enormous amounts of electricity for operations. Gunderson said the line would be a key element in meeting demand, especially in winter when it grows significantly.
Great River Energy’s vice president and chief transmission officer, Priti Patel, explained the challenge: “When we think of this energy transition, it’s not just about bringing in transmission to serve more renewables; it’s also about the fact that generation is retiring and retirements create the need for new transmission,” she said.
When baseload generation decreases, the geographical disparity of power sources increases and voltage stability concerns grow, Patel said.
The transmission line “is not directly connecting right now to any renewable generation specifically,” she said. “But part of this energy transition is maintaining reliability. And when you have baseload plants retiring and more renewables connecting, you need transmission to maintain the stability of the system.”
At least at the southern end of the line, Northland links to a Sherco substation. Xcel will be building a 460-megawatt solar plant at its Sherco site to generate electricity for the region and the Northland will likely carry some of it to customers. Earlier this year, Xcel proposed another solar array to bring the total output to 710 megawatts.
Soholt said MISO calls the first tranche investments “least regrets” transmission lines because studies demonstrated that the projects showed the most significant promise of adding reliability and resiliency, she said. Any new transmission will only help Minnesota meet its goal of generating electricity from carbon-free sources by 2040, Soholt said.
MISO’s long-range planning document points out that lines from south to northern Minnesota are 115 kV and 230 kV, not enough capacity for Minnesota Power to comfortably serve customers with power coming from the Twin Cities.
“This large geographical disparity in generation and weak transmission causes voltage stability concerns for a majority of the Minnesota system north of the Twin Cities,” MISO wrote.
No organized opposition has emerged, but Red Wing attorney Carol Overland has misgivings. A persistent critic of transmission line projects for decades, she contends that transmission capacity will grow as coal plants shut down. “There’s a lot of the system already existing that will have opened up capacity when coal plants shut down,” Overland said.
Utilities earn more profits from building transmission than from generating and selling electricity, she said, making them proponents of large projects. Since transmission costs fall to ratepayers, utilities benefit without taking much financial risk, Overland said.
Overland suggested that generating clean energy closer to where it will be consumed would decrease the need for transmission and offer a more stable grid. For the same amount of money that will be spent on transmission, “you could get a lot of solar [installed] where it is needed,” Overland said. “But [utilities] can’t get a rate of return on that.”
Construction is scheduled to begin in 2027 with the transmission project to be complete and carrying electricity by 2030.
Over the last five years, wind and solar farms have grown exponentially across Texas, transforming the state’s power grid and generating more electricity than ever this year amid the searing summer. The story has been different in El Paso, however.
Last month, solar farms across Texas produced more electricity in June than they did in all of 2018. Wind and solar farms combined last year to produce 31% of the electricity on the power grid that covers most of Texas outside of El Paso – which is operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT – and that’s grown to 35% of the state’s power through the first half of this year.
Yet in the Borderland, less than 3% of the electricity El Pasoans used last year came from renewable energy sources, a figure that pales in comparison to other utilities across both Texas and New Mexico.
A top El Paso Electric executive cautioned against comparing figures from EPE, a monopoly utility overseen by state regulators, to ERCOT, which is a deregulated, competitive market that electricity generators sell power into. Even so, El Paso Electric has initiated plans to shutter some of its aging natural gas power plant units and rely more on solar energy.
Last month, EPE began receiving power from the new Buena Vista solar farm, a 120-megawatt, 900-acre sea of solar panels outside of Chaparral, New Mexico. It’s the utility’s biggest-ever solar facility.
And El Paso Electric is planning to develop by 2025 four other big solar farms with 580 megawatts of capacity. The utility is also adding batteries at some of the solar farms to capture solar energy at midday and discharge the power onto the grid in the evening after the sun sets. One megawatt is enough to power a few hundred homes at once, depending on the time of day and temperature.
“We have a plan to get caught up,” Jessica Christianson, EPE’s vice president of sustainability and energy solutions, told El Paso Matters. “And I think that it’s a really methodical plan that takes into consideration the importance of clean energy and the environmental impact of our operations. But concurrently gives us an affordable and reliable solution.”
El Paso’s electricity today is far more likely to come from either the Palo Verde nuclear power plant west of Phoenix – the largest power plant in the country – or from EPE’s fleet of four local natural gas-fired power plants. Nuclear and gas-fired plants produced 84% of the region’s electricity in 2022, according to El Paso Electric.
“Resource mixes are variable between utilities,” said Jon Rea, a senior associate focused on carbon-free electricity with the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit energy research group based in Colorado. “But El Paso does stand out for having very little wind and solar in comparison to the rest of Texas.”
El Paso Electric in 2016 closed its only coal plant and shifted to heavier reliance on natural gas, which emits about half as much of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide as coal does. Meanwhile, across the ERCOT power grid, coal accounts for a shrinking but still significant portion of the state’s energy; last year coal-fired power plants produced almost 17% of the electricity generated in Texas.
“That was our big first step in our generation portfolio transition,” Christianson said of getting off of coal. “We really made that decision to get rid of the worst first.”
EPE today relies on the nuclear plant for about 45% of its power supply; across the rest of Texas, the state’s two major nuclear plants generated about 10% of its electricity. Nuclear power plants don’t produce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change – so including nuclear, EPE gets almost 48% of the region’s electricity from “carbon-free” sources.
Still, the amount of solar power generated by El Paso Electric remained virtually unchanged from 2016 through 2022. But over that same time, solar generation across the Texas grid multiplied several times over, from 420 gigawatt-hours in 2016 to over 24,000 gigawatt-hours last year.
El Paso Electric’s emissions “have generally been lower than the industry average,” Rea said, citing the utility’s lack of coal and its big reliance on nuclear power. “But that hasn’t changed much over time. They haven’t made a lot of progress or change in the last decade, and competing utilities that we see making a transition have been adding more wind and solar.”
While wind farms contributed a quarter of the power generated across ERCOT last year, El Paso Electric gets zero electricity from wind farms.
When EPE unveiled the Buena Vista solar farm in April, Christianson said solar farms are cheaper for the utility to receive power from than wind farms. That’s because the windiest areas of New Mexico are outside of EPE’s service territory, she said, and the utility would have to build costly transmission lines to ferry electricity from faraway wind farms into El Paso.
One mile of transmission towers and wires can cost a few million dollars to build.
“It’s not that we’re not pursuing wind, we just are doing this solar first,” Christianson told El Paso Matters in April.
“The quality of the wind that you want for generation, it’s a little bit outside of our service territory. So to make that cost-competitive is a little bit more of a challenge, because there will be necessary transmission upgrades,” she said.
By comparison, the other major investor-owned utilities in New Mexico – PNM and Xcel Energy – as of the end of 2022 maintained a collection of wind and solar farms far greater than El Paso Electric’s portfolio. PNM receives power from solar and wind farms totaling 1,040 megawatts of capacity, and Xcel Energy’s portfolio in its Texas and New Mexico service territory includes over 2,700 megawatts of mostly wind and some solar.
And CPS Energy in San Antonio gets power from a portfolio of almost 1,500 megawatts of wind and solar farms. And almost half of the electricity that city-owned Austin Energy generated last year came from solar and wind farms; its portfolio of renewables tops 2,700 megawatts. Austin Energy and CPS are city-owned utilities, but they also own their power plants and distribution systems like EPE does.
El Paso Electric’s current portfolio of solar farms, including the Buena Vista project that began operating in June, totals 239 megawatts.
EPE hasn’t “been a laggard in terms of emissions,” Rea of the Rocky Mountain Institute said. “But in terms of being climate-aligned with a low-carbon future, they are falling behind in making their transition.”
However, shifting off current power sources to renewables like wind and solar isn’t simple or cheap, said Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston.
One of the solar farms El Paso Electric is developing, a 150-megawatt solar facility in Fabens, is slated to start producing power in May 2025. EPE said the site will cost $218 million to develop and will raise the average El Paso household’s monthly electric bill by $2.68.
By comparison, a new 228-megawatt natural gas power plant unit that EPE is currently building – the Newman 6 unit near Chaparral – will cost at least $193 million, and raise El Paso households’ power bills by a minimum of $3 per month on average.
Transitioning to cleaner energy sources is “a capital expense that somebody’s going to have to take on,” Hirs said.
“If El Paso Electric says, ‘Hey, we’re going to go all green – which would make some people excited – that’s going to have a very high, significant cost,” he said.
There are cost and reliability concerns with natural gas, as well. The price for the natural gas that fuels a power plant can swing dramatically – whereas wind and solar farms don’t need fuel, water or as many employees to operate.
Household electric and gas bills shot up last year after the market price for natural gas doubled last summer from a year earlier. And natural gas supply lines froze up across much of Texas during the deadly February 2021 winter storm that blanketed the state, choking off the supply of gas and sending the price skyrocketing as utilities competed to buy the scarce fuel.
The shortage of natural gas prevented power plants from running and exacerbated the power shortage, which El Paso avoided. But El Pasoans are still paying extra fees on their monthly gas bills to pay off the high-priced natural gas purchased during the winter storm.
Still, Hirs argued that EPE has made progress by ditching coal in favor of cleaner-burning natural gas and nuclear energy. And he pointed out the EPE maintains a reliable system; El Pasoans typically experience fewer power outages than customers of most other similarly-sized utilities in Texas and New Mexico.
Rea said government incentives funneled through the federal Inflation Reduction Act and low-cost loans have made renewable energy investments more economical and could accelerate EPE’s shift to relying on sources of energy that produce less pollution. For reference, after the Newman 6 unit starts operating later this year, it will emit around 790,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the El Paso region’s air each year.
“A project that previously would have happened in 2030 or 2035 now makes economic sense to do in 2025 to 2030,” Rea said. “So it just moves up the timeline of making those investments in renewables because of all the tax incentives.”
Both Hirs and Rea agreed that within a decade, wind, solar farms and battery arrays will likely dominate the power grids in Texas and New Mexico, alongside some natural gas power plants on hand to help ensure there’s always enough electricity available.
Christianson said EPE is taking “meaningful” steps to generate more clean electricity in the coming years.
“Give us the opportunity to execute on this plan,” she said, “and you’re going to be really impressed with what you see from El Paso Electric in the next couple years.”
This article first appeared on El Paso Matters and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
As a historic 10-day heat wave threatened brownouts across California last summer, a small San Diego County school district did its part to help: It captured excess power from its electric school buses and sent it back to the state’s overwhelmed grid.
The eight school buses provided enough power for 452 homes each day of the heat wave, and the buses were recharged only during off hours when the grid was not strained.
California energy officials have high hopes that this new power source, called bidirectional charging, will boost California’s power supply as it ramps up its ambitious agenda of electrifying its cars, trucks and buses while switching to 100% clean energy.
Gov. Gavin Newsom called two-way charging technology a “game changer,” saying “this is the future” during a speech last September, about a week after the heat wave ended.
This year, a bill already approved by the state Senate in a 29-9 vote would require all new electric cars sold in California to be equipped with bidirectional technology by 2030. In the Assembly, two committees approved the bill earlier this month and it is now under consideration by a third.
This two-way charging has big potential — but also faces big obstacles. By 2035, California expects to have 12.5 million electric cars on the road, but it’s an open question how much California can rely on them to feed the grid. Automakers say the technology would add thousands of dollars to the cost of an electric car, and California’s utilities are still sorting out how to pay ratepayers for selling them the kilowatt hours.
The ability to use electric cars, trucks and buses to feed energy back into the grid would be especially helpful during peak times for energy use, such as heatwaves. But relying on vehicles as a year-round power source may not be practical — at least not yet.
“It’s a great idea conceptually…but we haven’t had the time to flesh out the details of what needs to happen for California to be able to power itself on electric vehicles,” said Orville Thomas, state policy director for CALSTART, a sustainable energy nonprofit.
“It should be on the menu of options that California has. Is it going to be the number one option? Definitely not.”
So far, its use has been limited in California. Pacific Gas and Electric has a pilot program — the first in the nation — that lets up to 1,000 residential customers with bidirectional chargers sell power back to the utility. Some school districts also are experimenting with it.
Only about half a dozen electric car models currently are equipped with bidirectional capabilities, including the Hyundai Ioniq 5, Nissan Leaf and Ford F-150 Lightning. Tesla announced recently that all its models will have it by 2025.
Electric vehicles convert one type of energy, alternating current electricity, into another, direct current, which is stored in a battery. Bidirectional charging means that an electric vehicle can convert the energy it has stored in its battery and send it to other sources, such as home appliances or back to the grid.
Willett M. Kempton, a University of Delaware professor who has studied bidirectional charging for more than two decades, said the vast majority of the time a vehicle is parked and not using electricity.
“Five percent of the time you’re using the car and you want to have enough energy — electricity or gasoline — to get to where you’re going and back. But most of the time, it’s just sitting there and some other use could be made of it,” he said.
Kempton said these vehicles, properly managed, could be sources of reserve energy, supplanting backup sources that burn fossil fuels.
Gregory Poilasne, co-founder and CEO of Nuvve Holding Corp., which sells electric fleet charging services, said a big challenge is that cars are unreliable energy assets. “At any time, somebody might come in and unplug the car,” he said. But he added, as the technology becomes more reliable and affordable, bidirectional cars and fleets should increase.
In Denmark, bidirectional charging earns electric vehicle fleet owners who sell power to the grid $3,000 per vehicle a year, Poilasne said, adding that this reduces the average total cost of electric car ownership by about 40%.
But citing the high cost, automakers oppose the Senate bill that would mandate the chargers for all new cars sold in California by 2030. It would increase the average cost of an electric car by $3,700, according to an opposition letter written by Curt Augustine of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents General Motors, Ford and other major auto companies.
About $3,000 of that cost would be adding battery capacity to meet warranty requirements, while other costs are for hardware and software.
“This technology is a competitive matter between vehicle manufacturers and should remain that way,” Augustine wrote. “Not all customers will see an advantage of bidirectional charging, and therefore, should not have to pay more for a technology that they will not use.”
Thomas of CALSTART agreed, saying it should be optional.
“There might be a situation where there are people that want to do it and will pay a little extra for a car that is bidirectional, but there will also be people that just want to use a vehicle for driving,” he said. “Do we raise the price of electric vehicles for everybody?”
But Sen. Nancy Skinner, a Democrat from Oakland who authored SB 233, said she wants to ensure that automakers don’t reserve the technology for only their higher-end models. She said since the relatively affordable Nissan Leaf has it, it can be widely available.
Skinner said all consumers would benefit from the technology by selling energy to the grid or using the energy in emergencies. But she said another important reason is that it could end reliance on diesel generators during power emergencies like during wildfires.
“If you have an EV you don’t need that diesel generator,” Skinner said. “Why would we want to encourage diesel generators? They’re extremely polluting.”
Jeffrey Lu, an air pollution specialist with the California Energy Commission’s vehicle-grid integration unit, said the state is working with owners to identify the best times to charge — called smart charging — to protect the grid. Bidirectional charging takes the concept a step further, he said.
The Energy Commission is not yet ready to say how reliant California will be on bidirectional charging to provide sufficient power and meet the state’s 2045 mandate for carbon-free electricity.
“We’re fairly early in this process. California is very committed to load flexibility broadly, but where that load flexibility specifically comes from, how many megawatts or gigawatts are coming from any particular kind of resource? We’re working on that,” he said.
California’s utilities are running pilot projects and studying how bidirectional charging might work and how electric car owners could be compensated for selling energy to the grid.
The California Public Utilities Commission has studied the issue for more than a decade, said spokesperson Terrie D. Prosper, including funding pilot projects and establishing two working groups.
Last year many utilities signed a “Vehicle to Everything” memorandum of understanding with car manufacturers, state agencies, the federal government and others seeking to accelerate all aspects of bidirectional charging.
Southern California Edison, which serves about 5 million businesses and residences, wants to go beyond using bidirectional charging as just an emergency backup.
Chanel Parson, Edison’s director of electrification, said the utility is working on a rate program that would allow customers to sell their power back to the grid every day of the year.
“By selling it back to the grid when our rates are more expensive, then that actually helps reduce customers’ energy bills. And it could be so economically attractive that they’re actually making money,” she said.
Pacific Gas and Electric, which serves 5.5 million electric customers in Northern California, said it is aggressively looking to build what it calls a robust vehicle-to-grid-integration. It has partnerships with BMW of North America, Ford Motor Company and General Motors exploring bidirectional charging.
The utility last year launched the nation’s first bidirectional charging pilot available to residential customers, offering up to 1,000 customers $2,500 for enrolling and up to an additional $2,175, depending on their participation.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power also is conducting a pilot project using a small fleet of its Nissan Leafs. The utility hopes the technology will eventually provide power during peak load times.
“Five years is definitely within reach,” said José María Paz, the utility’s project manager for vehicle-to-grid integration. “Technology is advancing quite fast.”
The electric school buses at the Cajon Valley Union School District in San Diego County are among a number of school district pilot projects in California. Experts see school buses as a good option for two-way charging because they have set routes and are often parked during peak load times between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Nationally, Nuvve has about 350 school buses connected to its platform.
At the Cajon Valley district, eight electric buses sent 767 kilowatt hours of power back to the grid during the heat wave between Aug. 17 and Sept. 9, according to Nuvve.
Working with Nuvve, the buses power up when energy is less expensive, said Tysen Brodwolf, the district’s transportation director. Brodwolf said there are still several quirks, including the chargers not communicating properly with the grid or someone improperly plugging in a bus.
“But we’re getting there every day,” Brodwolf said. “We’re working through all those bumps and obviously, when you take on a pilot project, you have to take that into consideration that things aren’t necessarily going to go smoothly.”
New Hampshire — long an outlier among New England states on climate action — is on its way to creating a new climate plan for the first time in 14 years.
The state budget adopted last week includes a $3 million federal grant from a program intended to support the development of climate action plans across the country.
“We’re definitely very excited about this — we think it’s a great opportunity for the state,” said Chris Skoglund, director of energy transition at the nonprofit Clean Energy New Hampshire.
Among residents there is a widespread sense of pride in New Hampshire’s tendency to follow its own path and buck conventional wisdom, an attitude that extends firmly into energy and climate policies, advocates have said. The state is not necessarily against climate action, but is determined to make its own policies, its own way, rather than just repeating the choices of other states, said Meredith Hatfield, associate director for policy and government relations for the Nature Conservancy in New Hampshire.
Today, while the other New England states all have, to various degrees, ambitious state-mandated climate goals and updated climate plans, New Hampshire has no binding targets for lowering emissions or reducing fossil fuel use.
“There’s a sentiment among some people in New Hampshire that we aren’t going to follow the traditional recipe — we like to figure things out on our own,” Hatfield said. “We are making progress, but it’s just not fast enough.”
In 2009, the state developed a broad-based climate action plan that incorporated the work of dozens of stakeholders across diverse fields. Though that document had some influence on legislation in subsequent years, it was never codified into law or updated after its initial release.
The federal Inflation Reduction Act, which became law in August 2022, created an opportunity for New Hampshire to dive back into climate planning.
The law includes $5 billion for the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program. Of this total, $250 million has been designated to help states, local governments, tribes, and territories develop or update plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Another $4.6 billion will then be available to help implement these plans.
When applications for the first phase of the program opened in late February, the state’s Department of Environmental Services jumped at the chance and applied. At the end of June, the state adopted a two-year, $15.2 billion budget that included this grant money in the department funding, an essential step in pushing the climate plan project forward.
The state is now in final discussions with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency about minor revisions to how much of the grant money will be spent on what elements of the planning process, said Michael Fitzgerald, assistant director of the state environmental services department. Though early plans are still tentative, the money will likely pay for new positions to manage the process, as well as a broad outreach strategy intended to gather feedback from a range of stakeholders, Fitzgerald said.
“We’re planning on doing focused work in disadvantaged areas,” he said. “There are requirements that there be consideration of ensuring benefits go to environmental justice areas.”
Grants are likely to be awarded in July and August, according to information from the EPA. States and territories that receive the grants will have until March 1, 2024, to deliver their completed plans. The EPA anticipates announcing the final details for the implementation grants in September 2023, with applications likely being due the following April.
Four states — Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, and South Dakota — declined to apply for the planning grant money. The remaining 46, as well as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, all submitted applications.
Advocates are optimistic that the new plan, when completed, could gain more traction than its predecessor.
There was a lot to like about the 2009 plan, Skoglund said. By convening so many people with such a wide range of expertise, he said, the plan was able to build widespread knowledge of, and support for, climate action.
And advocates said it did have some impact on state climate and energy policy. New Hampshire’s energy efficiency goals and energy performance targets for new buildings were influenced by the plan, Skoglund said. The plan also bolstered the state’s continued participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and helped spark an investigation into grid modernization in the state.
Implementation, however, never gained momentum and there were no efforts made to keep the plan up-to-date.
“There was no follow-up to keep that conversation going at high levels,” Skoglund said. “But we didn’t continue that, so we are now a decade behind.”
This time around, advocates would like to see the state replicate the strengths of the 2009 process, particularly the inclusion of a wide range of voices, while making more impact on policy changes. They expect — and hope for — the ultimate plan to have a strong focus on the economic development, cost savings, and job creation that a shift to clean energy can offer, backed up by rigorous analysis.
“People are aware of what is happening and they are concerned about it,” Hatfield said. “We need to do a better job of connecting the solutions with what people are worried about.”
Though the national conversation about climate action has become more polarized in recent years, New Hampshire’s unique character might make the state a place where a broad consensus can be reached, advocates said. The deep national divide between the parties isn’t as evident in pragmatic New Hampshire, where opportunities to save money could carry more weight than the chance to score partisan points, said Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of Clean Energy New Hampshire.
“There still is a surprising amount of bipartisanship,” he said. “I think money-saving clean energy technologies can be popular here on a bipartisan basis.”
A coast-to-coast electric vehicle road relay recently stopped in Cleveland and highlighted the need for equity in the transition to electric vehicles.
Drive Electric Northeast Ohio welcomed the Route Zero Road Trip for its June 11 stop at the new headquarters of the Cleveland Foundation.
The foundation chose the location to promote equitable growth in the Midtown and Hough neighborhoods, a historically redlined area where a majority of residents are Black and median household incomes are less than half of Ohio’s statewide median.
The Route Zero Road Trip is an electric vehicle tour from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., that began last month. Drive Electric Northeast Ohio worked with the Cleveland Foundation to host the stop at the foundation’s new headquarters, which features a solar-powered carport, to draw attention to the neighborhoods and the importance of making sure that people at all income levels can take advantage of the shift toward electrification.
“We believe everyone should be able to access EVs and to have a clean energy charging infrastructure providing benefits beyond just a clean, quiet, fun ride,” said Michael Benson, vice president of Drive Electric Northeast Ohio. He’s also a co-owner of Command Consulting, a Wadsworth firm that advises on electrification, microgrids and shared services.
Beyond being electric car enthusiasts, Drive Electric Northeast Ohio focuses more broadly on electrification, Benson said, particularly the “chicken-egg problem of EVs and EV charging.” Ideally, he said, batteries could store electricity from solar arrays, which then could charge electric vehicles.
Both solar energy and the development of electric car charging in the area appealed to Keith Benford, who attended the Route Zero Road Trip event and said he lives in the Midtown-Hough neighborhood.
“It’s the new technology. They’re going with all-electric cars. And we can kind of capitalize on that by having charging stations in our area, and having the solar arrays.” Benford said. “We’ve got a lot of building that’s going to happen around here in our neighborhood. And that would be a perfect opportunity when the buildings come up to have solar.”
People in the Hough neighborhood have already shown interest in developing clean energy. The Hough Block Club has been working for several years to develop a community-based solar array in the area.
“Everyone in that group is committed to the project, but the timeline is getting stretched out a little bit longer,” said Jonathan Welle, executive director of Cleveland Owns, which has provided technical assistance to the Hough Block Club. While there’s no definite date for completion, the Hough Block Club had an environmental assessment completed earlier this year, Welle added.
Neither Cleveland Owns nor the Hough Block Club organized the electric car event on June 11. Yet Welle agreed that Hough and other disadvantaged neighborhoods should be at the table as electrification, the move to electric vehicles, and other parts of the clean energy transition continue.
The neighborhood “has been a center of disinvestment and capital strike for decades, due to racism and systemic injustice,” Welle said. So, he added, residents there can help create a new system to avoid those problems.
The City of Cleveland’s Office of Sustainability & Climate Justice also is working to get more electric vehicle charging capacity in the city’s neighborhoods. A charging station opened last fall at the Frederick Douglass Recreation Center in the Lee-Harvard neighborhood. The Cleveland Foundation’s chargers are currently available only to staff and visitors.
Several others are in the works, said Elizabeth Lehman, who is the built environment project manager at the city’s Office of Sustainability & Climate Justice. Two stations with a total of four ports will be at the Canal Basin parking lot near the Cuyahoga River. A station with two ports will go in at Cleveland Hopkins Airport’s red lot. And charging stations for the West Side Market and the downtown Willard Garage are part of a recently approved project by the Northeast Ohio Area Coordinating Agency, whose list of planned charging sites also includes dozens more locations throughout its five-county planning area, including several Cleveland Public Library branches.
Additionally, the city of Cleveland requested bids earlier this year for installing electric chargers throughout the city. “We hope to have a vendor selected soon,” Lehman said. “This project will also help us to determine the total number of stations that we hope to have available citywide over the next couple of years.”
The city’s bidding documents note that preference will be given to contractors who plan to work in communities that are marginalized, underserved and overburdened by pollution, based on the federal government’s Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool. The tool shows most areas in the city are disadvantaged and would qualify under the criteria.
Preference will also go to contractors who can propose a no-cost or low-cost rate structure for low-to-moderate income consumers, specifically for those who use charging stations within the city’s business districts, the bidding materials said.
A March addendum to the bidding materials also noted the city’s intent to support the winning bidder in pursuing federal funding under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act. The Joint Office of Energy and Transportation’s website currently shows July 28 as the deadline for some of those grants.
The following commentary was written by Deana Dennis, senior manager for Midwest state policy at Ceres. See our commentary guidelines for more information.
Michigan has been a manufacturing powerhouse for the Midwest and the U.S. for generations, so it’s no surprise to see it riding the massive wave of investment into clean energy manufacturing that is sweeping the nation. Since last fall, the state has seen major corporations announce more than $8 billion worth of projects and thousands of jobs to build batteries, electric vehicles, and other clean transportation solutions that honor Michigan’s history as an industrial base while seizing this opportunity to super-charge the state’s economic future.
Similar projects are popping up across the country, thanks in large part to the federal incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. Passed last year, the nation’s largest-ever climate law is designed to cut carbon pollution while establishing the U.S. as the global leader in clean energy manufacturing, supply chains, and deployment. Already, states from all regions and governed by both parties are welcoming the huge influx of clean energy and advanced manufacturing projects.
But the activity is especially resonant in Michigan — and not only because the scale of investment is so enormous. It also represents a quick return on the state’s efforts to establish itself as a clean energy leader. It was just last year that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer unveiled the MI Healthy Climate Plan, the state’s first-ever roadmap toward tackling the climate crisis by achieving a net zero economy by 2050.
While the Healthy Climate Plan is already sending a strong signal to industry, it has not yet been implemented. The plan features many important goals, such as preventing the worst impacts of climate change and addressing environmental injustices, such as air and water pollution, that unfairly harm marginalized communities. But at its unveiling, officials also emphasized that it was an economic plan. By positioning Michigan as a climate leader, they argued, the state stood to capture economic development and create legions of good jobs as companies seek out forward-looking business environments forged by strong clean energy policies.
That proved prescient: today, Michigan is a clear beneficiary of the clean energy boom in the U.S., and the state has both the federal Inflation Reduction Act and the promise of the MI Healthy Climate Plan to thank for it.
The powerful mix of public policy and private investment shows why leading companies and investors have been strong champions for ambitious federal and state climate policy. Thousands of companies across the U.S. — including more than two dozen S&P 100 companies — supported the climate measures in the Inflation Reduction Act. And the MI Healthy Climate Plan was celebrated by 15 major companies operating in Michigan, including General Motors, Ford, and Siemens. Business leaders recognize that clean energy investment comes with the promise of jobs, lower utility costs, energy security, and a more sustainable and less risky economic future.
It’s exciting to think we’re only beginning to see these many economic benefits surface in Michigan. But as other states move to pass climate and clean energy policies to prove they are open for business, Michigan policymakers can and should bolster this momentum by taking action to implement the Healthy Climate Plan.
Michigan lawmakers seem to recognize the unprecedented opportunity before them. They recently introduced the MI Clean Energy Future Plan, an ambitious suite of clean energy legislation that supports the Healthy Climate Plan. It’s highlighted by a new target of 100% clean electricity by 2035 — a policy that is both bold and feasible, and essential to meeting the state’s climate goals and fully capitalizing on this moment.
With the right policies in place, analysts believe Michigan can attract $26 billion in clean energy investment while dramatically improving public health in the coming years. It’s no wonder why. History has shown that this is a state with the industrial workforce and know-how to be a key engine of innovation not just for the U.S., but across the world. Let’s pass a 100% clean electricity standard this session to take full advantage of the opportunities of the clean energy economy and make Michigan the place where companies choose to build it.
No, City Councilor Andreas Addison was never trying to ban cars in Richmond.
All along, his gambit to scrap parking space requirements for developers was about curtailing sprawl. It’s expected to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases in an evolving capital city that prizes walking, bicycling and ready access to public transit.
Addison is jubilant that the council has joined cities such as Seattle, Buffalo, Raleigh and Hartford by voting in late April to repeal decades-old zoning rules that forced new residential and commercial buildings to have a certain number of dedicated, off-street parking spots.
Instead, that number will be set by property owners and developers.
“It has been a journey,” Addison said about the conversations he initiated two years ago with anybody who would listen. “Usually the first reaction was, ‘Oh my God, you’re getting rid of parking.’”
That attitude matured as he explained his ordinance’s environmental benefits and how eradicating parking minimums could free up space for affordable and additional housing.
“I was surprised at how smooth and easy it was,” he said about the unanimous votes, first by the city Planning Commission and then by the council. “Even opponents who had spoken out against it, when they saw the writing on the wall, they said, ‘Fine.’”
Surveying the big parking picture, he envisions the new measure will “reinvent paved space” by introducing the concept of shared parking in off-street lots. Before, those spaces could only be used for the particular purpose laid out in the zoning code.
In conjunction, he is urging the city to streamline smartphone parking applications and windshield parking permits. The latter would better allow residents of popular neighborhoods to regularly access street parking near their homes.
For years, Addison, a gym owner who is an active walker, bicyclist and ride-sharer, was puzzled by the abundance of parking lots in the city empty during certain times. He realized most of them were designated for one specific use, which constrained access.
A city analysis of 50 large residential, commercial and mixed-use developments constructed over a recent five-year period confirmed his suspicions that regulations were contributing to a single-use parking glut. The study revealed that developers had built 12,600-plus spaces — more than double the 4,800 spaces required by rules.
“When that data was presented, I realized we don’t have a parking problem,” Addison said. “We have a lack-of-access-to-parking problem.”
Clean transportation specialists at the Washington, D.C.-based American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy have kudos for Richmond and other cities thinking holistically about shrinking their carbon footprints.
“Land-use decisions are often forgotten in conversations about climate change,” said Shruti Vaidyanathan, the organization’s transportation program director. “We need to get people to think beyond electrification.
“Yes, electric vehicles will be a significant part of how we reduce emissions in the transportation sector, but we need to consider more than that.”
Auto-centric development since World War II has turned huge chunks of land into parking lots that could be dedicated instead to more compact communities where people can go car-free, she said.
“Places like Richmond are where electrification and other opportunities come together with creative people-focused transportation policy,” she said. “That’s when vehicle miles traveled, a big component of emissions, go down significantly.”
While vehicle miles traveled tapered off appreciably across the country during COVID-19, preliminary numbers indicate they are creeping back to pre-pandemic levels — which showed little sign of ebbing.
In Richmond, for instance, those annual figures stood at 1.97 billion miles in 2019, according to state Department of Transportation figures. That’s up from 1.79 billion miles in 2009.
Stewart Schwartz, president of the Richmond Partnership for Smarter Growth, said eliminating mandatory parking minimums would advance the goals of the city’s climate action plan, RVAGreen 2050.
Briefly, that plan calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. The baseline year is 2008.
The ordinance “is an essential tool to foster a city that is more affordable and dynamic while also minimizing car traffic, carbon emissions, and noise,” he wrote in a letter to the city Planning Commission. “At the same time, it must be combined with other initiatives.”
For instance, Schwartz urged the city to focus on safer walking conditions while also expanding public transit and adding lanes, sharing, parking and electric bikes to Richmond’s bicycling infrastructure.
The Greater Richmond Transit Company is heeding that plea. GRTC continues to offer fare-free buses, a policy instituted in March 2020 with the onset of the pandemic.
“Going fare-free has been a great tool for expanding our pool of ridership beyond our pre-pandemic numbers,” GRTC spokesperson Henry Bendon said. “Plus, we can offer more reliable and efficient bus service because customers don’t have to stop at the front of the bus to pay.”
One of the biggest boosters to ridership is the Pulse, a high-capacity, high-frequency rapid transit bus line that serves a busy 7.6-mile corridor along Broad and Main streets. It began operating five years ago as a congestion-reducing measure.
“We are in the process of expanding that type of service,” Bendon said. “You don’t sit in traffic. The reality is, people rely on this bus system. We continue to improve service and we’re really proud of that.”
Statewide, transportation of all methods accounts for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2019, the sector accounted for 52.5% of those emissions, according to calculations from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Much of that is because annual vehicle miles traveled in Virginia alone continue to rise — from 81 billion miles in 2009 to 85.4 billion miles in 2019 — according to the Federal Highway Administration.
City Councilor Katherine Jordan told her constituents that she supported the idea of stamping out parking minimums because cars are the No.1 source of greenhouse gas emissions in Richmond.
“Clearly, eliminating parking minimums will not ‘fix’ the climate crisis or our housing crisis, but I do believe this change will have a positive, cumulative impact on both,” she wrote in a memo.
Jordan, who served as a member of the Green City Commission before being elected, said “the walkable, historic, mixed-use and neighborhoods we love, like the Fan, Jackson Ward, and Carver could not be built today, in part because of onerous parking requirements for residential development.”
She also noted that the cost of building parking — between $10,000 to $40,000 per space — is a burden for neighborhood businesses and also saddles residents with higher rents and mortgages. That money would be better spent on filling the housing gap, she added.
Her sentiments have been echoed by city planners and others in Mayor Levar Stoney’s administration.
Collectively, they have emphasized that the ordinance eliminating parking minimums aligns with Richmond 300: A Guide for Growth, which was adopted in 2020. The master plan outlines specifics for a vision of sustainability, innovation and equity the city wants to achieve by 2037, its tricentennial year.
Both Jordan and Addison serve on the council’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation Committee.
Addison is hopeful Richmond’s decision to scale back on parking lots can be a model for other Virginia cities intent on reshaping how people move around.
That antiquated requirement meant a missed opportunity for growth, he said. “Changing it forces Richmond to be strategic about its future.”
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