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November 2, 2024

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Federal Lawsuit Challenges New York State Natural Gas Ban

A coalition of natural gas companies, homebuilders and unions have filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to overturn New York State’s ban on natural gas hookups in new construction. (See NY to Begin Banning Gas in New Construction in 2026.)

The New York State Builders Association, National Association of Home Builders, New York Propane Gas Association, locals of the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers, Mulhern Gas Co. and others filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York. It seeks to apply the same logic as a successful challenge of a ban in Berkeley, Calif. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said such bans are preempted by the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA). (See Impact of Berkeley Gas Ruling Debated.)

“As the only federal appellate court to have addressed this issue recognized, EPCA preempts state and local laws relating to the use of energy, such as gas, by covered appliances and equipment,” the suit said.

The suit alleges the prohibition is inconsistent with the public interest and consumer choice and would shift energy demand to the power grid.

The ban applies only to buildings of seven stories or less in height and also exempts commercial or industrial buildings above 100,000 square feet in “conditioned floor area.” But those exemptions go away starting in 2029, when it will apply to all new buildings.

“Plaintiffs support achieving the state’s climate goals, but with the majority of New York’s electric generating capacity coming from gas-fired power plants, banning gas in homes will do little if anything to advance those goals — and in all events, the state must comply with federal law,” the lawsuit said.

Although the ban doesn’t take effect until 2026, the plaintiffs said it already is chilling and undermining their businesses.

The EPCA was born out of the oil crisis in the 1970s and covers energy independence, domestic energy supplies and national security. It requires a practical approach to energy regulation, maintaining neutrality on energy sources and recognizing the need for a diverse supply of energy. The law includes regulations on appliances’ energy efficiency, which are meant to be uniform across the country. EPCA expressly preempts state and local regulations on the efficiency and energy use of products for which it sets standards, leaving narrow room for concurrent state and local regulations.

New York announced its ban just weeks after the Ninth Circuit overturned Berkeley’s ban, and the lawsuit argues the state’s rules do “exactly” what that court preempted.

EPCA has been changed a few times since the 1970s, including a 1987 amendment that specifically covers the preemption issue.

That change sought to reduce the regulatory and economic burdens on the appliance manufacturing industry through the establishment of national energy conservation standards for major residential appliances. Congress recognized that varying state standards would complicate design, production and marketing plans.

States can seek permission to establish their own standards, but that requires a showing of an unusual and compelling local interest and cannot be granted if the state regulation would lead to the unavailability of a product type or products of a particular performance class, the lawsuit said.

“New York’s gas ban falls within the heart of EPCA’s express preemption provisions,” the lawsuit said. “The gas ban is a regulation concerning the energy use of appliances covered by EPCA in that it ‘prevent[s] such appliances from using’ fossil fuels, such as propane or natural gas.”

The New York ban goes further into preempted territory than Berkeley’s because in addition to banning gas piping it also bans gas appliances from being installed in new buildings.

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Report Flags Unknown Effect of OSW on Ocean Ecology

A new report finds that the impact of offshore wind development on an endangered whale species in a key ecosystem will be hard to distinguish from the ongoing impacts of climate change.

The report looks at the Nantucket Shoals, a unique shallow area southeast of Massachusetts that supports an aggregation of the zooplankton consumed by the ton by the North Atlantic Right Whale, which migrates there to feed.

Nine federal wind lease areas are clustered in 900,000 acres just west of the shoals; two utility-scale wind farms are being built there now, and several others are in varying stages of development.

Full buildout would entail up to 700 turbines in a grid pattern across the area.

One of the regular talking points of offshore wind opponents is the effect of offshore wind power on the rare leviathans, roughly 340 of which are believed to remain in the world. Offshore wind opponents often focus on the risk of whales being struck by ships or harmed by construction noise, but the new report focuses instead on a more subtle effect: hydrodynamics — the structure and movement of ocean water — and how it would affect the ecosystem there.

“Potential Hydrodynamic Impacts of Offshore Wind Energy on Nantucket Shoals Regional Ecology: An Evaluation from Wind to Whales” was sponsored by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and compiled by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

Offshore wind development is new to the United States, so there is no domestic data from which to estimate its impacts on the shoals. Modeling limited data from North Sea wind farms suggests offshore wind can modify water circulation and ecology, the authors write, and the impacts can extend beyond the region of the wind farm.

But the North Sea is different from the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf.

The shallow area south of Nantucket already is known for its complex hydrodynamics and ecology, even before the first wind turbines start spinning: It can contain warm eddies that break off the Gulf Stream, bottom friction, tidal mixing and stratification.

It is the site of numerous shipwrecks, as well. For decades, lightships were stationed on the south edge of the shoals.

Copepods thrive there. A cubic meter of water can contain more than 100 of each of several of the tiny zooplankton species during the springtime peak. The North Atlantic Right Whale eats a few thousand pounds of zooplankton per day, and nothing else.

A decade of surveys found the whales’ presence increasing in both the shoals and the wind energy areas, but this may be due to the zooplankton concentration increasing there or decreasing in other feeding areas.

Precautions are in place to protect whales and other large sea mammals from injury during construction of the Vineyard and South Fork wind projects, and they would presumably be imposed during future projects not yet approved.

When construction is complete, the more subtle effects addressed in the report would begin: Dozens of monopile foundations would create underwater wakes and dozens of rotors up to 900 feet in diameter would create concentrated wind wakes above the water.

Zooplankton could increase or decrease in productivity or concentration as a result, to the benefit or detriment to the whales that eat it. Or there might be no effect at all.

The complicating factor is that the baseline against which these effects will be measured is itself moving, because of the naturally shifting character of the shoals from one decade to the next and the effects of human-induced climate change.

The fishing industry and others concerned about ocean ecology have been unhappy that offshore wind development is progressing so ambitiously with such large gaps in knowledge about its impacts.

“The studies available about the effects and implications of wind farms on local ecosystems are not sufficient to say with absolute certainty whether the turbines would have effects on specific parts of the Nantucket Shoals ecology,” said Eileen Hofmann, a professor and eminent scholar in the department of ocean and earth sciences at Old Dominion University who chaired the report committee.

“But with everything we do know at this time, we conclude that those effects are difficult to compare to the impacts of all the other forces changing the hydrology in the region already, especially with the existing and future effects of climate change. Research and monitoring will be essential as these projects move forward in the Nantucket Shoals and other areas around the globe.”

The report recommended further observation during construction and continuing all the way through the operation and decommissioning phases.

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DOE Funds Studies of Heavy-duty EV Charging Network Needs

A consortium has begun working to anticipate the charging infrastructure needed in the next 20 years for heavy-duty electric trucks across nine Northeast states.

National Grid is leading the effort, which benefits from a $1.2 million grant from the Department of Energy. It will result in a road map predicting the supporting infrastructure needed for electrified transport of goods in one of the nation’s busiest areas.

Nearly 3,000 miles of interstate highway corridors in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New England will be examined, with major commercial zones such as the Port of New York and New Jersey folded in because of their traffic density.

National Grid will coordinate its efforts with CALSTART, which received a similar DOE grant to map out truck-charging needs across a smaller area running south to Georgia.

Combined, the two analyses will span 3,700 miles across 15 states and movement of more than 300 million tons of freight through East Coast ports.

Brian Wilkie, National Grid’s director of transportation electrification in New York, said 100 charging sites will be analyzed initially but their ranks will be winnowed down to about 30 as the “Northeast Freight Corridors Charging Plan” takes shape.

The final product will be offered as a starting point for decisions on how to prepare for electrification of heavy trucks, as is mandated in some states. Given the rapid technological evolution of vehicles, storage and charging, Wilkie said, the report will not be a final action plan but a road map for drawing up action plans.

The speed of transportation electrification is almost certain to exceed the speed of transmission development, he said, so it’s imperative to build infrastructure before the need arises — a concept traditionally anathema to transmission planners because of risk of overbuilt or stranded assets.

“Our infrastructure won’t be able to keep pace if we don’t start building ahead of the need,” Wilkie told NetZero Insider on Tuesday. “Given what we see in the [building] heating electrification space and the transportation electrification space, we’re not going to have much in the way of stranded assets.”

CALSTART President John Boesel pointed out the policy benefits of the study, as well. He said in a news release: “The I-95 Corridor project, once completed, will put into practice the integration of zero-emission vehicles, infrastructure and addressing climate-change issues that has been carried out in other areas of the country. The successful implementation of this project will put to rest the unfounded concerns of zero-emission opponents by demonstrating that this technology is both economically feasible and a benefit to all.”

There is no estimate at this point how many plugs and gigawatts would be needed for a Northeast truck charging network.

But in 2022, the first-in the nation “Electric Highways Study,” also led by National Grid, concluded a network of about six dozen fast-charging plazas would be needed for light- and heavy-duty vehicles just in New York and Massachusetts, each able to meet 2045 peak demand of 15 to 40 MW, perhaps even more.

That is like adding a mix of 72 athletic stadiums, small towns and large factories to the grid. With the associated upgrades in generation and transmission, it’s a major undertaking.

Add seven more states and include heavy-duty fast chargers drawing up to 1 MW each and the challenge of electrifying trucking becomes clearer, even if it cannot be quantified yet.

The new study builds on its predecessor but will take a broader perspective.

National Grid is joined in the effort by Clean Communities of Central New York, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management and RMI.

The effort is technology-neutral, and it must be, given that emissions-free transportation will evolve to a significant degree but in unknown directions over the next 20 years. The assumption is that hydrogen will account for only a small fraction of the heavy-duty fleet and that new wireless charging concepts will not be part of the mix.

Generation and transmission capacity are not part of the study because they are the purview of the RTOs in the nine-state region, but the RTOs’ input will be sought.

The study is focused instead on point of delivery. National Grid is working with industry and other utilities to better estimate the need for chargers and the need for local infrastructure to support them, such as substations.

“One of the things that makes this transformational, one we’re very proud of, is traditionally, transportation planning has happened in one silo and utility planning has happened in another, and they’ve never really spoken to each another,” Wilkie said.

But now they are working together on an integrated structure, and this will be central to the success of the effort.

“It hasn’t been easy. We speak different languages, but here we’re trying to get all the right stakeholders in the room to have that conversation,” he said.

When the study wraps up, the report goes to DOE for consideration.

“We’re trying to make this plan as actionable as possible,” Wilkie said. “So, not just identifying the power needs but the utilities that we partner with will all be looking at, ‘How would you serve a load like that in that particular place in our territory?’”

That’s the underlying question the study seeks to address, if not completely answer.

“There’s a lot of unknowns about where all this charging will take place and what the power needs are,” he said. “We don’t know the exact number, but we know the numbers are pretty big.”

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3 MISO Sectors Vote to Recommend MTEP 23, Majority Silent

Just three of MISO’s 11 member sectors voted to support the RTO’s nearly $9 billion 2023 Transmission Expansion Plan (MTEP 23).

The Environmental, Transmission Owners and Transmission-Dependent Utilities sectors voted in favor of recommending MTEP proceed to the MISO Board of Directors for approval. Other sectors either abstained from voting or did not cast votes. No sectors registered opposition to the portfolio, so the motion to move MTEP 23 forward is considered passed. (See MISO PAC Considers Lower, $9B MTEP 23 Transmission Package.)

MTEP 23 now contains 572 new projects totaling almost $9 billion; 47% of that spending is destined for MISO South.

The low MTEP approval continues a trend of diminishing sector support for MTEP portfolios. In 2022, four sectors voted in favor of the $4 billion MTEP 22. In 2021, six sectors supported the $3 billion MTEP 21.

At an Oct. 18 Advisory Committee teleconference, WEC Energy Group’s Chris Plante asked why so many sectors didn’t register votes this year.

“For a sector to not submit a vote and not explain why, that’s concerning,” Plante said.

Three MISO sectors — the End-Use Customers Sector, Public Consumer Sector and the State Regulatory Sector — regularly abstain from voting on MTEP packages. This year, the Competitive Transmission Developers sector again joined in the abstentions.

LS Power’s Brenda Prokop said the volume of “other” category projects and baseline reliability projects this year was cause for concern among the Competitive Transmission Developers. She also said there’s little transparency into transmission owners’ cost estimates for the sector to confidently back the slate of projects.

Energy consultant Jim Dauphinais said the End-Use Customers Sector doesn’t weigh in on projects because it doesn’t have the resources to conduct a thorough vetting of all MTEP projects. He said his members’ positions on projects are best handled individually in state regulatory processes.

MISO and its System Planning Committee of the Board of Directors held the first of two meetings Oct. 17 to devote more review and discussion to MTEP 23 and the stakeholder comments attached to the draft report this year. MISO’s System Planning Committee typically holds just one meeting in November to consider the annual MTEP.

Senior Director of Transmission Planning Laura Rauch said, “given the magnitude of the projects,” directors needed more time to consider the most expensive MTEP in MISO’s history.

Rauch said most MTEP 23 projects are meant to solve reliability issues caused by localized load additions, especially in MISO South. She said MISO is not experiencing a regional, across-the-board increase in load that would justify regional project identification. She said MISO analyzed the largest MTEP 23 projects for potential as regionally cost-shared, market efficiency projects, but none could meet MISO’s minimum 1.25:1 benefit-to-cost requirement.

Rauch told directors that members’ comments this year on MTEP 23 likely will push MISO to consider HVDC and battery storage in future MTEP and long-range transmission plan (LRTP) portfolios.

She also touched on MISO delaying recommendation of the $260 million third phase of Entergy Louisiana’s Amite South reliability project into 2024 so it can better scrutinize the project.

“Certainly, we don’t think this is a bad project, but we need additional time for analysis,” Rauch said. She said MISO will bring the project back to board members once it completes its alternatives study on the project.

Rauch said the slew of large, reliability-driven projects in MISO South won’t impede MISO’s plans to focus on the South region for the third portfolio of its LRTP. MISO remains committed to discussing the scope of the third LRTP in 2024, Rauch said.

MTEP 23 will go before the full MISO Board of Directors for approval at their quarterly meeting on Dec. 7 in Orlando, Fla.

Relatedly, MISO this week launched a new MTEP Planning Portal, the nonpublic platform members use to submit and update MTEP project proposals.

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FERC Delays Ruling on Vistra Purchase of Energy Harbor

FERC issued an order Friday giving itself more time to review the proposed $6.3 billion purchase of Energy Harbor by Vistra, saying it will now rule on the application by April 11, 2024 (EC23-74).

Commissioner James Danly said he would file a dissent on the order “tolling time for action” at a later date.

FERC issued a deficiency notice on the initial application in August.

The application had faced opposition from the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, who argued it would impact the retail market in the state. PJM’s Independent Market Monitor and the U.S. Department of Justice urged FERC to ensure it did not lead to market power issues in the RTO. (See Vistra’s Deal for Energy Harbor Runs into Opposition at FERC.)

Vistra owns 9,200 MW of fossil fuel generation in PJM’s territory, including in Ohio and Pennsylvania, the two states where Energy Harbor’s 4,000 MW (largely three nuclear plants) are located.

In comments filed in August, the Justice Department said FERC should focus on the interaction of Vistra’s Richland plant, a 369-MW gas-fired combustion turbine in Ohio, with Energy Harbor’s three nuclear plants. The plant runs 10 to 15% of the time, and Vistra often offers it near the clearing price, it said. Combined with the nuclear assets, which run all the time and are price takers, the Richland plant gives Vistra the ability and incentive to withhold power to raise the prices that the much larger nuclear plants get, the department said.

Both DOJ and the Monitor have argued FERC must look at smaller geographic markets because the nuclear plants and some of Vistra’s existing generation are not able to sell to the entire PJM footprint because of transmission constraints.

Vistra has said that no local market power concerns exist because there are no frequently binding transmission constraints that would limit its ability to sell power from the plants far and wide in PJM.

DOJ wants FERC to use a supply curve analysis in its review of the application, which is something the department argued for when the commission issued a Notice of Inquiry on its merger reviews in 2016. That NOI was never acted upon by FERC, and Vistra argued it would be unfair and lead to regulatory uncertainty to change the rules for its specific merger case.

In comments filed earlier last week, the IMM said that FERC’s own deficiency notice recognized that the local market power issues “cannot be ignored.”

Vistra has proposed selling off the Richland plant and a much smaller Stryker plant (a 16-MW oil-fired plant) to ease market power concerns, but the IMM said last week that the divestitures — even to a firm that owns no capacity in PJM — would do little to quell them. The sales would cut market power in some local markets created by transmission constraints, but the combined firm would still fail the three-pivotal-supplier (TPS) test too often.

“But the reduction in the number of hours that Vistra fails the TPS test is not large enough to conclude that the proposed divestiture of the Richland and Stryker units would resolve the market power concerns,” the Monitor said. “Even with the divestiture, Vistra would have market power with respect to local constraints in the PJM market. Exercise of that market power to raise prices would raise energy market revenues for the Energy Harbor nuclear units.”

Vistra also argued that its ownership of the three nuclear plants will put them in a better financial position, ensuring their continued operation and the local jobs and tax benefits they bring. Ohio Senate Majority Leader Rob McColley (R) wrote FERC a letter early this month extolling those economic benefits.

“All of Ohio will benefit from the operations and preservation of these plants by a capable and responsible owner like Vistra, which successfully operates other electric generation plants, including nuclear, across Ohio and the country,” McColley wrote.

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FERC OKs NextEra Request to Recover Abandoned Tx Costs

FERC on Friday granted NextEra Energy Transmission (NEET) Southwest’s request to recover 100% of “prudently incurred costs” to construct a competitive transmission project in New Mexico, should the project be abandoned or cancelled for reasons beyond its control (ER23-2630).

The commission agreed with NEET Southwest’s contention that the project faces certain regulatory, environmental and siting risks beyond the developer’s control that could lead to its abandonment. FERC said its abandoned plant incentive will address those risks by protecting NEET Southwest.

“Thus, we find that NEET Southwest has demonstrated a nexus between its requested incentive and its planned investment and that NEET Southwest has tailored its incentive rate request to its identification of risks and challenges associated with the project,” the commission said.

SPP awarded the NextEra subsidiary the Crossroad-Hobbs-Roadrunner 345-kV project in July. The project, 135 miles of double-circuit 345-kV lines at either end of the Hobbs generating substation, is estimated to cost $291.6 million and has a proposed in-service date of May 2026. (See SPP Awards NextEra 3rd Competitive Project.)

In August, NEET Southwest filed a request with FERC under Section 205 of the Federal Power Act and the commission’s 2012 policy statement on transmission incentives for incentive rate treatment.

The commission previously accepted the developer’s 2017 filing for a formula rate designed to be incorporated into SPP’s tariff. In its order, FERC also granted NEET Southwest’s request for several incentive rate treatments: a 50 basis point return on equity incentive for participating in an RTO or ISO; a regulatory asset for prudently incurred pre-commercial and formation costs for later recovery; and a hypothetical capital structure of 60% equity and 40% debt until its first transmission project is commercialized.

Commissioner Mark Christie concurred in a separate statement, but also called for FERC to revisit “the array of incentives offered to transmission developers.” Those include construction-work-in-progress and hypothetical capital structure incentives, and RTO participation adders.

“A core principle of utility law and regulation for decades is that consumers can only be forced to pay costs for assets that are ‘used and useful’ to them,” he wrote, noting that under Order 679, the commission may have to overlook that principle to address the “substantial challenges and risks” in building transmission facilities.

Christie said he previously questioned the commission’s determination of “whether ‘substantial challenges and risks’ exist when granting the abandoned plant incentive and other incentives has become nothing more than a check-the-box exercise.”

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Car Industry: NJ Consumers Wary EV Adopters

Consumers shy away from buying electric vehicles in New Jersey because of the high price and lack of charging infrastructure, and they’ll still be reluctant even if the state adopts California’s Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II) rules, representatives of the vehicle sales and manufacturing sectors said at an energy conference last week.

Car manufacturers and dealers said they’re committed to the transition from gas to electric vehicles. But the ACC II rules don’t consider consumer attitudes.

Executives from the New Jersey Coalition of Automotive Retailers (NJ CAR) and North American Subaru voiced their concerns at a conference organized by New Jersey Business and Industry Association (NJBIA).

The ACC II rules require manufacturers to make EVs a steadily increasing portion of their car sales in New Jersey until all new vehicles sales are EVs in 2035. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which is accepting public comment on the rules until Oct. 20, is moving to adopt ACC II by the end of the year so they affect the 2027 car model year. The NJBIA is leading a coalition of businesses that oppose the rules. (See NJ’s Push Toward Clean Cars Rule Sparks Vigorous Debate.)

“When a consumer comes into the showroom, and they start shopping for a new car, and they are an ‘EV Intender,’ what winds up happening in the process is that they typically drive out with a hybrid or a plug-in,” said Jim Appleton, president of NJ CAR, referring to a hybrid gas-electric vehicle or a plug-in battery vehicle that also operates with gas.

One reason is that an EV can be $10,000 to $15,000 above the price of a gasoline vehicle, he said. Another reason is the lack of public chargers.

“If they are in a dealership, if they’re a multiple unit dwelling person, if they don’t live in a house with a garage where they can charge their vehicle every night, most consumers are walking out the door because they just don’t trust that the infrastructure is there,” he said.

Matt Forman, director of government and regulatory affairs for Camden, N.J.-based Subaru, said that although New Jersey is reasonably highly ranked in the nation by raw numbers of EVs, its charging infrastructure is lagging.  The state is about sixth in the nation by the number of registered EVs, but has only about one charger per 40 EVs, when it needs one per seven EVs, he said.

“That’s the, I’d say, the biggest challenge,” Forman said. “That gap is growing. So for this to succeed, we need to see investment in charging, which traditionally is not the role of an OEM. But you’re starting to see OEMs actually putting money in charging.”

Panel on EVs and Advanced Clean Cars II rules at New Jersey Business and Industry Conference in Edison, N.J. From left: Jim Appleton, president of the New Jersey Coalition of Automotive Retailers (NJ CAR); Matt Forman, director of government and regulatory affairs for North American Subaru | © RTO Insider LLC

Sales Mandate

New Jersey had about 123,000 EVs in June, according to ChargeEVC, a pro-EV lobbying organization. But that’s a tiny proportion of the estimated 6 million light-duty vehicles registered in the state.

There are about 1,645 Level 2 chargers and 755 Direct Current Fast Chargers in the state, according to the DEP’s Drive Green website. And the state added another $12.7 million to incentive programs designed to encourage developers to install chargers at tourist sites, in multi-unit dwellings and in other locations. (See NJ to Add 400 EV Chargers with $12.7M Investment.)

Although New Jersey has a strong EV purchase incentive program, the weakness in the ACC II is that it focuses on sales to stimulate EV buyers, Appleton said. The regulation starts with a 35% ZEV sales requirement for model year 2026, increasing to 68% in 2030 before reaching 100% in 2035.

“The rule requires manufacturers to send cars, but unfortunately, it doesn’t require consumers to buy them,” he said. “Manufacturers will build what government mandates and they will ship them to dealers who’d be happy to sell them. But the flaw in this program has always been that it lacks a mechanism to require consumers to buy them.”

However, proponents of the rules — including government officials and environmental groups — say climate change requires an urgent, rapid uptake in EV adoption and the ACC II rules will trigger a much faster uptake than the state otherwise would see. Transportation is New Jersey’s biggest emissions source, generating about 40% of greenhouse gases.

Appleton said one impact of the ACC II is that it “corrupts the marketplace,” so that manufacturers will respond to the diminishing number of gas vehicles that can be sold in the state by focusing only on selling higher priced vehicles that give them a larger profit margin. He predicted the state’s dealers nevertheless would suffer as buyers seek gas vehicles out of state.

“I’m sure there’ll be dealers in Idaho, who will be trying to unload their inventory here in New Jersey, and they’ll be reaching out to you and you’ll be able to go online and buy a car in Idaho and they’ll flatbed it here in the state of New Jersey,” he said. “And the dealerships that do business here will lose business.”

OSW Developers Unbowed

In a separate panel, offshore wind (OSW) developers acknowledged the sector faces tougher opposition than in the past, but say they have no intention to back away from a key piece of the state’s energy future.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat it — it is really rough out there on the ground level,” said Crystal Pruitt, external affairs lead for Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, one of three projects approved by the state. She said it’s difficult “having conversations with communities, having conversations with elected (officials) and policymakers and just seeing the turn of faith away from the policy goals that they were so supportive of.”

The conference followed the release on Sept. 28 of a poll by Stockton University that showed that 50% of those polled support the installation of wind turbines off the New Jersey coast, down from 80% in 2019. The poll was the second to show dramatically diminished support. A Monmouth University Polling Institute poll released on Aug. 29 showed support for offshore wind had dropped from more than 82% in the early 1980s to 54% now. (See Poll Shows Drop in Support for Offshore Wind in NJ.)

New Jersey is in the middle of its third offshore wind solicitation, having backed the 1,100-MW Ocean Wind 1 project in the first, in 2019, and the 1,148-MW Ocean Wind 2 and the 1,510-MW Atlantic Shores projects in 2021.

The polls follow months of growing opposition from Jersey Shore residents and representatives of the tourism and fishing industries who fear the turbines will harm business. Some opponents have seized on a series of whale deaths to boost opposition to the projects, depicting the deaths as potentially tied to the preliminary undersea work underway in preparation for the OSW projects.

State and federal investigators looking into the deaths say there’s no evidence the deaths are linked to the offshore work.

The developers also have faced challenges from rising costs and supply chain difficulties, which have raised questions about the economic feasibility of some projects.

Janice Fuller, mid-Atlantic president of Anbaric, a transmission development company, acknowledged the sector has faced some “negative attention, not just in New Jersey” but in multiple states in recent months. But she cast the downturn as “rationalization” from the unduly high support and expectations early on.

“We were very aggressive, set some really aggressive targets,” she said. “And right now the industry and the world, because of things that are outside of New Jersey’s control, are adjusting. Timelines are being adjusted, prices are being adjusted and a realistic schedule is going to emerge from that.”

“This is a little bit of a bump in the road, unfortunately,” she said, and blamed “misinformation about the industry and its impacts.”

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NYPA Names Exec to Head New Renewable Development Effort

The New York Power Authority has named a new executive to guide it into its expanded role as developer of large-scale renewable energy generation.

Vennela Yadhati assumed the new position of vice president of renewable project development last week, several months after passage of legislation that gave NYPA a larger role in the state’s push to carry out a clean energy transition.

She told NetZero Insider that NYPA’s first strategic plan for doing this will be formulated next year, and the process of conferring with stakeholders and state agencies on priorities for that plan is underway now, so she could not be specific about what types of projects NYPA will pursue, or where. But it will entail consensus-building, she said.

The decision to expand NYPA’s development effort grew from the push by some advocates to make the state’s energy sector more democratic and responsible to residents rather than investors. Generation and transmission development is a blend of finding the right technology for a project, convincing everyone affected by the project that it would benefit them and finding a way to pay for it. Yadhati has grounding in all three, and she expects to need it.

“How much of each is something we’ll have to figure out,” she said.

Renewable energy development, of course, is not new at all for NYPA. It was created in 1931 and is now the largest state-owned power organization in the U.S. It operates 1,400 circuit-miles of transmission, two of the largest hydropower plants in the nation and one of the largest pumped-hydro storage facilities. It even operated nuclear reactors at one time.

“NYPA has been doing large energy infrastructure forever,” Yadhati said. “I am in a fortunate and very pleasant spot right now because I can leverage all of what we have built internally.”

Yadhati is an engineer by training, first in her native Hyderabad, India, then at Missouri University. She most recently worked in development for Ørsted, and during a previous stint with NYPA, she was a distributed energy resources manager. In White Plains, where she now lives, she is a member of the city’s Planning Board and a board member of Sustainable Westchester.

All of this gives her a wide basis not only in planning projects but gathering the consensus needed to get them built. The team at NYPA and whatever private developers the agency works with will bring with them an equally varied set of skills, none of which will stand out as more valuable than the others.

“It’s not one taking priority over the other; the ultimate [combination] is consensus and community outreach and engagement,” Yadhati said.

Projects must be emissions-free; they must be acceptable to those around them; and they must be financeable.

“That is going to be key,” Yadhati said. “Because when we talk about best value and best fit, it can’t just be the environmental benefits; it has to come along with the economic sustainability as well.”

The question is posed to her: Will NYPA look for the path of least resistance? For example, the 1,160-MW pumped storage project NYPA built in the Catskill Mountains is already a half-century old, and it will still far outlast any of the battery energy storage systems being built today.

But to build new pumped storage would be an order of magnitude more difficult than to site dozens of battery systems. And one pales at the thought of trying to site a new large-scale nuclear plant in the Empire State.

Does NYPA therefore aim for batteries — or whatever technology easily can get New York closer to its statutory goals of 70% renewable electricity by 2030 and 100% zero-emissions by 2040?

“To me — part of this is coming from the engineer inside of me — they’re not competing technologies per se; they are complementary,” Yadhati said.

There is a growing need for immediate short-duration storage, and electrochemical technology meets this need, she explained. In the longer term, long-duration storage will be indispensable, and that could be hydrogen, pumped hydro, some other technology or, most likely, a combination of multiple technologies.

“They each have their own place,” Yadhati said. “That’s where I say we’re going to keep it technology-agnostic.”

The legislation that expanded NYPA’s role, the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA), laid out a laundry list of objectives ranging from building power plants to aiding disadvantaged communities, alone or in partnership with the private sector.

The broad range of possibilities is why creating the strategic plan is the first step in the process, and one of Yadhati’s first major duties. She said there are many verbs in the directive — plan, design, develop, construct, own, operate, maintain — but they are not all binding, nor is it clear that they will have equal weight in every region or for every project.

“The conferral process will help us identify where the gaps are in the industry and what best value NYPA can offer,” she said.

Yadhati spoke to NetZero Insider on Thursday, her fourth day in the new position. She laughed at the suggestion that the job would be like herding cats — but she did not protest the comparison.

The BPRA, and the fight surrounding it, is a good illustration of the dynamics at play. It was a darling of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party that controls New York government, but initially it did not gain enough traction for passage.

Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) in her 2023-2024 budget plan included provisions derided as “BPRA Lite,” and the battle was underway, with progressives fighting for stronger measures, and private-sector energy developers opposed to even the weakened measures lobbying just as hard but unsuccessfully.

During the process, Justin Driscoll, then acting president of NYPA, was cast as insufficiently supportive of the stronger measures and was tarred to the point that the Senate refused to hold a confirmation vote on his nomination to be president. (He became president anyway, through a quirk in state law.)

New York is not unique in having a slow, complicated and expensive siting and permitting process, or a long wait for interconnection, but it often seems more so than in other states. With a strong home-rule tradition and some significant regional political differences, many stakeholders need to be pushed or coaxed to the table.

NYPA is not exempt from any of these pressures, nor does it have an endless supply of revenue like the water flowing down the Niagara River.

What it does have in its favor, Yadhati said, is a long history in the communities where it operates — it is a known commodity, whether for the 2.6-GW Niagara Power Project it brought online in 1961, or for the recent distributed solar projects it partnered on that yield a few megawatts apiece.

NYPA expects to continue with small DER projects (up to 5 MW), but the focus of this new push will be large-scale renewables that feed 20 MW or more into the wholesale market.

“The economies of scale do offer additional benefits, another thing we want to leverage and take advantage of,” she said.

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NYISO Anticipates Increased Load in Western, Central NY

NYISO did not identify any new near-term reliability issues in its third-quarter Short-Term Assessment of Reliability (STAR) released Friday, but it does anticipate significant load increases in western and central New York that could warrant more attention depending on how a previously identified supply shortfall in New York City is addressed.

In its previous STAR in July, the ISO identified a potential shortfall of up to 446 MW by 2025 because of peaker plants retiring to comply with state Department of Environmental Conservation regulations to limit nitrogen oxide emissions. (See NYC to Fall 446 MW Short for 2025, NYISO Reports.)

Last week’s STAR notes that NYISO has reduced that figure by 20 MW, but “this potential reduction does not eliminate the need and has a negligible impact of the findings in” last quarter’s report.

More significant, it said, “is the inclusion of additional large load projects primarily in western and central New York, many of which are currently undergoing a load interconnection study.” It expects the state’s large loads to increase by about 500 MW by 2025, reducing the state’s reliability margin to less than 100 MW during normal operating conditions. “The rapid growth of large load projects poses a risk to the future reliability of the New York grid if it is not matched with the equivalent addition of new resources,” NYISO said.

According to NYISO’s 2023 Gold Book, the large load projects are mostly new cryptocurrency mining and data centers. They also include the planned 1,250-acre Science & Technology Advanced Manufacturing Park (STAMP) in Genesee County in the west and a green hydrogen facility in Massena, along the Canadian border in the north.

Projected summer large load peak forecasts by NYCA zones (2024-2033) | NYISO

“While there is potential for a deficient statewide system margin in 2025, the primary driver is the New York City deficiency already identified,” the report said. “Depending on the solution to the New York City reliability need, the potential statewide deficiency may be mitigated.”

The planned addition of the Champlain Hudson Power Express transmission project would help the New York City shortfall, but it is not expected to go into service until summer 2026. (See Champlain Hudson Converter Station Breaks Ground in NYC.)

Without any additional resources, according to the report, a heat wave with temperatures of 95 to 98 degrees Fahrenheit in 2025 could lead to up to a 555-MW transmission security margin deficiency in New York City and over 1 GW statewide. The CHPE project would help alleviate that risk in subsequent years, but only until 2029, after which margins would decrease again.

The ISO is considering keeping certain peaker plants operational beyond the DEC’s mandated retirement dates, as allowed under certain conditions set by the department, but only as a last resort if projects like the CHPE do enter service on time, the report said.

New York Control Area demand forecast (2024-2033) | NYISO

“As we have noted in previous STAR reports, if there are insufficient solutions to the 2025 reliability need, then [NYISO] may very well have to extend at least some of the peakers that are subject to the DEC’s regulations,” Zach Smith, ISO vice president of system and resource planning, said during the New York State Reliability Council’s Executive Committee meeting last week. “We’re working diligently to identify solutions and hope to publish a short-term report describing those solutions and our findings within the next few months.”

The third-quarter STAR also flagged a transmission security issue in the Central Hudson area, driven by the assumed unavailability of certain generators because of the peaker rule. But because the relevant generators in the region did not provide complete deactivation notices before the STAR was conducted, the ISO only identified the issue for informational purposes and could not evaluate whether the deactivations would cause a reliability need.

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Grain Belt Express HVDC Line Clears Final State Approval

Chicago-based developer Invenergy Transmission’s $7 billion, 800-mile Grain Belt Express HVDC line secured the final of its state approvals last week with Missouri agreeing to the line’s expanded design.

The Missouri Public Service Commission issued an Oct. 12 order granting the last of Invenergy’s state siting approvals. The 4-1 decision allows the developer to amend its existing certificate of convenience and necessity to complete the line’s more comprehensive design in two phases (EA-2023-0017).

Last summer, Invenergy Transmission said it planned to increase capacity of the Grain Belt Express to 5 GW by relocating and expanding the line’s midpoint converter station from 500 MW to 2.5 GW and adding a 40-mile delivery line, dubbed the Grain Belt Express Tiger Connector. (See Invenergy Announces Grain Belt Express Expansion.)

Missouri regulators said increasing the merchant line’s capacity, moving the converter station and adding the Tiger Connector will better interconnect “multiple regions to improve the reliability and resiliency of the grid for Missourians and national security.”

“This will help guard against price spikes and outages such as those experienced by Winter Storms Uri and Elliot,” the commission added. It said the HVDC converter can “serve as a critical grid asset to ensure grid stability.”

The Missouri PSC expects the line to result in $17.6 billion in savings to Missouri ratepayers and $7.6 billion in social benefits.

“There can be no debate that our energy future will require more diversity in energy resources, particularly renewable resources. We are witnessing a worldwide, long-term and comprehensive movement toward renewable energy. The energy on the project provides great promise as a source for affordable, reliable, safe and environmentally friendly energy that will increase resiliency of the grid. The project will facilitate this movement in Missouri [and] will thereby benefit Missouri citizens,” the Missouri PSC said.

Invenergy Transmission said the approval “provides the necessary certainty about power delivery to support ongoing and upcoming commercial contracting efforts.” The company will finance and build the line in two phases, starting with the first phase between southwest Kansas and northeast Missouri. Invenergy reports it has acquired 95% of the easements for the first phase.

Grain Belt Express required approvals from Kansas, Missouri and Illinois.

The Kansas Corporation Commission in mid-June granted a similar amended approval to expedite the Grain Belt Express in two phases. The KCC said amending its approval was in the public interest “because it expedites the benefits of the project to Kansas, while maintaining all of the safeguards.”

The Illinois Commerce Commission put its stamp of approval on Grain Belt Express in March.

“We thank the state leaders in Kansas, Missouri and Illinois who have thoughtfully considered the tremendous benefits of Grain Belt Express,” Shashank Sane, executive vice president and head of transmission at Invenergy, said in a press release.

“Now that Grain Belt Express has received every state approval needed to construct the first phase and 95% of the main line easements are already acquired, we are more confident than ever that 39 communities across Missouri will be able to receive clean, homegrown energy that will save millions in lower electricity costs each year,” Missouri Public Utility Alliance CEO John Twitty said in a statement.

Several other groups support the line, including industrial and manufacturing groups in Illinois and Missouri, clean power organizations, consumer advocates and a government office in Kansas dedicated to development.

“Lower energy costs are a major advantage for Missouri businesses, but it will only remain so if we can continue to increase our energy supply to meet demand and modernize the grid through state-of-the-art energy projects like the Grain Belt Express,” Associated Industries of Missouri CEO Ray McCarty said in a statement. “The approval of this transmission line and the ability to bring five times as much power to Missouri as originally planned will not only help us tap a significant source of domestic energy, but also help improve reliability and affordability for the Missouri business community.”

The Missouri Farm Bureau remains opposed to the line and expressed disappointment with the order.

In a statement, MOFB President Garrett Hawkins said the PSC’s decision dismisses the right of landowners and puts “a lot of faith in [Invenergy] to do the right thing, when they have a track record of failing to do so time and time again.”

“It is simply wrong that landowners along Invenergy’s proposed route are forced to sell their land at a time — and to a buyer — not of their choosing, to forever host a line they do not want,” Hawkins said.