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A TALE OF TWO COASTAL STATES: New York and California have set some of the nation’s most ambitious climate goals as they look to slash their carbon emissions by 40% and 48% by 2030, respectively, and bring more renewable sources online.
New York, for its part, is targeting 70% renewable generation by 2030, while California is aiming for 60%.
Yet the states both face major threats to success in those goals, according to regulators from both states. Here are some of the biggest takeaways from the latest reports.
Permitting and transmission woes continue: Neither California or New York can meet their clean energy goals without making significant improvements to their transmission and permitting processes.
New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who published a new analysis last week, outlined just how difficult this will be for the Empire State. California regulators also focused on this during a workshop last week.
According to New York Independent System Operator, meeting their 70% renewable generation by 2030 will require an increase of 78,073 GW hours—or a whopping 200% increase from 2022 production levels. (As a point of reference, New York added just 12.9 GW of total electricity generation— including both fossil fuel and renewables—in the last 20 years.)
Similar delays have plagued California: A 2023 report from the California Clean Air Task Force found that large-scale clean energy projects frequently require a decade or more per project before they are added to the grid, given the extensive coordination required between grid regulators and utilities. In fact, delayed projects took an average of three times as long as originally anticipated.
Without revisions to the state’s current planning and permitting processes, regulators said, it will be “tremendously difficult” for California to bring new generation online in time to meet its clean energy and climate goals.
California’s reliance on nascent technologies is a problem—as is its cap-and-trade system aimed at driving down emissions: California Air Resources Board officials admitted last week that they are facing significant hurdles in meeting their carbon emissions targets, citing problems with their reliance on still-emerging technologies such as carbon capture and green hydrogen, and criticisms over the state’s cap-and-trade system—a sort of emissions “trading system” that limits emissions from power plants, refineries, and factories while still allowing a degree of flexibility.
CARB deputy executive Rajinder Sahota noted that California’s green hydrogen technology would have to expand by 462 times its current levels to deliver on the state’s emissions reduction target. Failure to achieve that could push prices extraordinarily high under the cap-and-trade system.
“If those tools are not widely available by 2030 with a 48% target, then prices get very high in the program and that leads to leakage — production moving out of state to reduce emissions in state and comply with the program,” CARB’s Dave Clegern said.
In New York, regulators acknowledged a history of spotty incentives for developers that have led to further project delays. Both states say they are plagued by funding gaps, dated policies, and other regulations that do not allow them to bring projects online at the speed necessary.
The view from Washington: Both Republicans and Democrats have introduced legislation to speed up the approval of transmission projects through the NEPA process, though some progressives and environmental groups remain opposed.
Last month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued Order No. 2023, or the proposed rule that seeks to accelerate the connection of new energy projects to the power grid.
Described by FERC Chairman Willie Phillips as “historic,” the long-awaited proposal would help address the backlog of energy projects, and would subject U.S. grid operators and utilities to deadlines and penalties if they fail to meet their obligations on time.
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COLLAB TO ELECTRIFY GRID BY 2030: The Department of Energy is teaming up with industry partners, including Amazon, in an effort to help expand the adoption of electric vehicles, with the aim for the United States to reach its goal of completely electrifying the grid by 2030.
The effort, announced on Monday, is spearheaded by the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit research and development institute, with more than 500 stakeholders joining in the initiative, otherwise dubbed as “EV2Scale2030.” The collaborative was created to serve as a hub of information for the rollout of EVs.
The program is a three-year initiative that aims to provide stakeholders with key resources, including a 50-state map visualization identifying vehicle loads, grid impacts, utility lead times, and workforce requirements and costs, along with a platform that aims to define the cross-industry processes need to support the pace of large-scale electrification by 2030, as well as a data exchange platform for fleet operators and charging providers to allow energy companies to better plan and prioritize investments in grid upgrades. Read more on that here.
CARBON CAPTURE EQUALS MILLIONS IN HEALTH BENEFITS, STUDY SAYS – Adding amine-based carbon capture to a facility results in $6.8 to $481.2 million in heath benefits per year in each region examined, according to a new study from the Great Plains Institute.
The study, which uses EPA data to identify 54 facilities across 10 regions, examines how amine-based carbon capture within seven industries can reduce harmful pollutants, leading to better air quality and public health. The seven industries that were looked at include cement, coal power plants, ethanol, fertilizer and ammonia, iron and steel, natural gas power plants, and petroleum refineries.
The results: Installing carbon capture provided annual health benefits for all industries, the study says. The largest health benefits were seen in cement, coal, and petroleum refineries – but the cost of capture and amount of health benefits varies by facility.
Additionally, the report compares the health benefits at each facility to the tax credit for permanent storage of carbon and cost of capture – and found that the value of the tax credit is greater than the cost of carbon capture of certain industries, including ethanol, fertilizer and ammonia, iron and steel, and some coal and natural gas power plants. Most cement facilities, petroleum refineries, along with one coal power plant, had a capture cost greater than the tax credit – but the combined economic value of health benefits and the tax credit was greater than the remaining cost of capture. However, the study also found that carbon capture at most natural gas facilities, some cement facilities, coal power plants, and one petroleum refinery provided health benefits, but ultimately the total economic value of the tax credit and the health benefits combined was less than the cost of carbon capture. Read the study here.
EUROPE BAKES UNDER HEAT WAVE—BUT NEW SOLAR IS HELPING: Solar power is playing a key role in helping Europe avert power outages and blackouts during the searing heat wave that has blanketed the continent for weeks, prompting a massive increase in demand for AC.
Spain, for its part, added a record 4.5 GW of new solar capacity in 2022, the country’s grid operator said. The new installations provided nearly 24% of new capacity in July, up from 16% last year.
Higher solar output has also been crucial for Greece, another country that has seen blisteringly high temperatures.The country relied on solar for 3.5 GW of its total power demand at its peak demand, officials said, out of a total 10.35 GW.
And even countries that have not been hit quite as hard by the heatwave, such as Belgium, have used solar energy to cover more than 100% of their excess demand during the hottest parts of the day. “Without the additional solar, the system stability impact would have turned out much worse,” Refinitiv power analyst Nathalie Gerl told Reuters.
Drought conditions have reduced hydropower generation for the second summer in a row—prompting industry groups to speed up investments in new solar additions and storage as the EU works to deliver on its emissions targets.
BIDEN EXPECTED TO BLOCK URANIUM MINING NEAR GRAND CANYON: President Joe Biden is expected to designate the area around the Grand Canyon a national monument to protect it from uranium mining, according to multiple reports.
For years, leaders of local tribes and environmentalists have been advocating to protect areas near the park from uranium mining, which they argue would threaten aquifers and water supplies. They have requested the administration to double the protected area around the canyon by including the 1.1 million acres of public lands in a Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon National Monument.
SCIENTISTS REPORT SECOND NUCLEAR FUSION BREAKTHROUGH AT HIGHER YIELD: Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have repeated their landmark nuclear fusion reaction achieved in December for a second time, but with a higher energy yield—a major development that could move the world one small step closer to achieving an effectively limitless source of clean energy.
“We can confirm the experiment produced a higher yield than the December test.” Paul Rhien, a spokesman for the lab, told the Financial Times.
After the analysis of the July experiment is concluded, Rhein said, they will report them at scientific conferences and in peer-reviewed publications.
DOE hailed the lab’s first fusion reaction in December as a “major scientific breakthrough decades in the making that will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power” once the technology is scaled up at a commercial level—still a long ways away.
The Rundown
Wall Street Journal Opinion Washington has energy production all wrong
Bloomberg US considers phased hydrogen tax-credit plan in bid to balance industry, activists
Reuters Siemens Energy books $2.4 billion in charges on wind turbines
