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Transmission impossible: Are Democrats punting on permitting reform?
New England Clean Energy Connect, as the troubled Massachusetts project is called, is representative of a larger issue: Building new infrastructure in this country is a torturously slow process that often gets slowed down further by community opposition and legal challenges. Renewable and clean energy projects are particularly vulnerable to delay. Unlike natural gas pipelines, which are under the authority of an independent federal agency called the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, transmission lines are at the mercy of the states they run through. [ read more … ]
Solar Energy
Clean energy deployments tumble 22% in Q3 to 3-year low as delayed projects rise to 36 GW: report
Clean energy developers brought just 3.4 GW of new capacity online in the third quarter of this year, the least in three years, according to a new report from American Clean Power, which advocates for energy transition policies. Project delays accelerated during the third quarter, ACP said, in large part due to difficulties developers had in procuring solar panels. There were 14 GW delayed in the third quarter, and the total backlog of delayed projects now totals 36 GW. More than 60% of delayed projects are solar, according to the report. [ read more … ]
Biden Administration
How will DOE loan out $250B to make dirty energy systems clean?
The Inflation Reduction Act contains $369 billion in tax credits, grants and incentives meant to drive investment in new clean energy technology over the next decade, a fact that has been widely reported. But it also gives the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office the power to spur not just the building of new clean energy resources, but also the transformation of old or dirty energy infrastructure into new or modernized clean assets, and the revitalization of the communities where that old infrastructure now sits. In implementing the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment Program — also known as the Section 1706 program — the Loan Programs Office will be able to make up to $250 billion in low-interest loans. That’s an enormous opportunity: $250 billion is enough money to radically restructure entire swaths of the U.S. energy landscape. [ read more … ]
States
Texas plan to stop next grid disaster could cost customers billions
Texas utility regulators are considering a dramatic overhaul of the state’s energy market with the goal of preventing disasters like the widespread blackouts of winter 2021. But the plan they’ve given the most attention so far could siphon billions of dollars from electricity customers into the coffers of the state’s dominant fossil gas plants — all while doing little or nothing to improve electric reliability. That’s the stark conclusion of a report released last week by consultancy ICFon behalf of the Texas Consumers Association. It underscores rising concerns from consumer and energy industry groups that the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) is ignoring competing ideas for strengthening the state’s grid against extreme weather. [ read more … ]
New York City Is Using More Green Energy. But It Has a Storage Problem.
As the nation’s power grid grapples with the effects of aging infrastructure and climate change, new policies and mandates are meeting the moment. Earlier this year, Gov. Kathy Hochul doubled the state’s battery storage target to 6,000 megawatts. (About 1,000 megawatts can power a little over 200,000 homes in New York state.) Also, the new federal climate law extended and expanded a variety of investment tax credits associated with battery storage projects, which will most likely fuel investment in this sector by about $160 billion over the next 10 years, according to a recent analysis. [ read more … ]
Politics
How a GOP governor could derail New York’s climate law
New York has been a national laboratory for aggressive climate policy. But all that could be reversed on election night. The Empire State has banned fracking, blocked natural gas pipelines, committed to phasing out internal combustion engines for passenger vehicles and passed a climate law that would slash emissions 40 percent by the end of the decade. Rep. Lee Zeldin, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, wants to change that. [ read more … ]
Carbon Capture
Tech companies driving CO2 removal are in financial free fall
A handful of major corporations that founded the Frontier climate initiative have been rocked by financial and legal challenges, raising questions about their nearly $1 billion bid to remove carbon from the atmosphere. The valuations of four Frontier founders — Google parent company Alphabet Inc., Meta Platforms Inc., Shopify Inc., and Stripe Inc. — have collectively dropped by more than $1.5 trillion this year. The market capitalization of online payments platform Shopify and Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, have been particularly hard hit: Each has plummeted by more than 70 percent since the end of 2021. [ read more … ]
Markets
U.S. Sets Timeline for Oil Price Cap Enforcement
Russian oil that is set to be hit with European sanctions in early December can continue to be shipped without penalty as long as it is loaded onto ships by that deadline and reaches its global destinations by mid-January, the Treasury Department said on Monday. The announcement could provide some leeway for the Biden administration and its allies, which have been racing to finalize and impose a price cap on Russia’s oil exports before a European embargo on Russian oil goes into effect at the end of the year. [ read more … ]
EVs
Many in WA oppose gas-car ban, poll shows — but electric vehicle demand is high
So far, fully electric vehicles have made up an average of 6% of new vehicle registrations each month in Washington, according to the state Department of Licensing. That’s about double the monthly average in 2020. And nationwide, electric vehicle registrations were up 60% in the first three months of 2022, even as the overall market was down 18%. But according to a recent poll, Washingtonians may have mixed feelings about what Gov. Jay Inslee called a “critical milestone” in the climate change fight: a statewide ban on the sale of new gas cars by 2035. [ read more … ]
Note: News clips provided do not necessarily reflect the views of coalition or its member governors.