Southern Co. (NYSE:SO) said Wednesday that Unit 3 at Vogtle nuclear plant in Waynesboro, Ga., has suffered yet another delay and is now not expected to come online until at least the second quarter of 2023, rather than the first quarter as previously predicted.
The utility disclosed the change in plans in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
According to the filing, Southern Nuclear was in the process of start-up and pre-operational testing for Unit 3 when it detected “vibrations associated with certain piping within the cooling system,” which it is currently “in the process of remediating.”
Details of the vibrations were not provided in the filing. Southern said it plans to file a license amendment request with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in hopes of speeding up the remediation process, but that initial criticality will not occur until February, and Unit 3 will not enter service until April.
Jacob Hawkins, a spokesperson for Georgia Power, said in an email to RTO Insider that the utility’s remediation plans include “strengthening the support for the pipes,” which must be done before progressing to initial criticality. Hawkins said Georgia Power is “focused on getting this project done right, with safety and quality first.”
The delay is expected to raise base capital costs for Georgia Power, the operator of the plant, by up to $15 million per month, not including additional costs for construction, support resources, or testing. Southern said it will share additional updates during its earnings call in February and warned of “ongoing or future challenges,” including management of contracts and vendors, and subcontractor performance.
Vogtle Unit 3 has been under construction since 2009, along with Unit 4; Units 1 and 2 at the site have been in operation since 1987 and 1989, respectively. They are the only reactors currently under construction in the U.S., and Southern is calling them “the first new nuclear units built in the United States in the last three decades.” When units 3 and 4 come online, Vogtle will be the only four-unit nuclear facility in the country.
The new units were originally intended to be operational by 2017, but the project has undergone numerous delays that provided considerable fuel for its detractors. Additional criticism has attached to the plant’s cost overruns; in its semi-annual progress report to the Georgia Public Service Commission in August, Georgia Power said total construction expenses up to that point were $8.2 billion, above the original approved cost of $7.3 billion, and the final cost would likely be more than $10.7 billion.
However, the project has its supporters as well; Nuclear Energy Institute CEO Maria Korsnick in 2021 praised management and staff at Southern for pressing on, “undeterred by a global pandemic [and] getting the job done.” (See Nuclear Key to Clean Energy Future, NEI Says.)
Georgia Power announced in October that it had begun loading fuel into Unit 3’s reactor core following the receipt of a 103(g) filing from the NRC in August, indicating that “the new unit has been constructed and will be operated in conformance with the combined license and NRC regulations.” Unit 4 completed cold hydro testing in December, the utility said, leaving hot functional testing, scheduled to begin this quarter, as the last major test remaining for the reactor.
ISO-NE is digging into the details on how it plans to measure the limitations of gas generators in its new capacity accreditation process.
At this week’s NEPOOL Markets Committee meeting, the grid operator continued laying out its proposed methods for de-rating gas resources in the winter, when they may have challenges getting fuel.
Under ISO-NE’s proposed framework, the capacity qualification process would include a determination of gas plants’ firm and non-firm capacities for the December to February period each year. The RTO is developing firm fuel requirements that the generators would have to meet in order to get a firm capacity rating.
And there would be a new way to rate what ISO-NE is calling “operationally limited resources,” which are those that are expected to be unable to get gas at all and would in turn be assigned zero qualified capacity for the winter period.
“Operationally limited resources are unlikely to receive gas on many cold days, let alone days when minimal non-firm gas is available for generators,” said Alexander Mattfolk, a consultant with Levitan & Associates, which is helping ISO-NE develop the new framework.
Also at the MC meeting this week, ISO-NE continued its explanation of its proposed day-ahead ancillary services market, which is intended to fill energy gaps in the day-ahead market and procure reserves that can start up quickly, in 10 or 30 minutes.
The project borrows heavily from ISO-NE’s previous Energy Security Improvements project, which ultimately failed at FERC.
In addition to reiterating the basics of the market, which includes a new constraint called the forecast energy requirement and a new product called the energy imbalance reserve, ISO-NE shared its plan for forecasting real-time LMPs.
The grid operator is planning to use a “Gaussian Mixture Model,” into which it will plug the day-ahead market load forecast, 24-hour lagged LMPs, the prices of gas and oil, weather forecasts and historical LMP data.
Less than two weeks after Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham appointed new members to the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission, one member has resigned and the governor has named a replacement.
Lujan Grisham on Tuesday appointed James Ellison, principal grid analyst for the Grid Modernization Group at Sandia National Laboratories, to the three-member PRC. The appointment follows the resignation of Brian Moore, who said he didn’t meet the educational requirements for the job.
The PRC had been a five-member elected body since its formation in 1996 but transitioned on Jan. 1 to a three-member appointed panel. Lujan Grisham announced her appointments on Dec. 30. (See NM Rings in New Year with Reconfigured Utility Commission.)
The revamped PRC held its first meeting on Wednesday with commissioners Patrick O’Connell and Gabriel Aguilera participating because Ellison hadn’t been sworn in. The two commissioners decided that O’Connell will serve as PRC chairman.
Another item on the agenda was choosing a commissioner to serve on the SPP Regional State Committee. Aguilera expressed interest in the role, saying regional markets are one of his areas of expertise. But the commissioners agreed to wait until the next PRC meeting, when Ellison is expected to participate, to choose a representative.
Aguilera said the decision is an important one.
“In terms of regional markets, a lot of them are being designed right now, as we speak,” he said. “So, I do think that it is very important for us to be in those conversations to make sure that whatever solutions come out of those discussions represent a good outcome for New Mexicans.”
While Ellison did not participate in Wednesday’s meeting as a commissioner, he attended as a special guest and commented on the role of the PRC.
“The PRC is tasked with ensuring that the transition to renewables takes place, and that it takes place while preserving reliability and while ensuring that the cost of power be as low as reasonably possible,” Ellison said. “It’s certainly an honor to play a role in this transition.”
Moore, the PRC appointee who resigned, served in the state House of Representatives from 2001 to 2008 representing eastern New Mexico. He submitted a resume to the PRC Nominating Committee saying that he majored in business finance with statistical analysis at the University of Denver, but he never graduated from the school, a spokesperson for the governor told the Albuquerque Journal.
Under New Mexico statutes, PRC members must have a bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution of higher education and at least 10 years of experience in the energy sector or an area regulated by the commission.
Alternatively, the commissioner may have completed higher education resulting in a professional license or a post-graduate degree in a field related to an area regulated by the commission and have at least 10 years of experience.
A seven-member PRC Nominating Committee selected nine potential commissioners and sent their names to Lujan Grisham for consideration. The governor noted that the Nominating Committee vetted the candidates.
Hydro-Québec’s CEO stepped down this week, sending a shockwave through the Canadian energy sector that could reverberate into New England.
Sophie Brochu’s resignation came amid tensions between the utility and the Québec government, which has pushed to “lure new power-hungry industrial users to the province,” the Montreal Gazettereported on Tuesday.
Brochu had been CEO of HQ since 2020 and had said as recently as October that she would stay on “as long as the company’s governance framework remained ‘healthy,’” the Gazette wrote.
The leadership upheaval comes as New England continues to heavily rely on imports from Québec to keep its own grid in good condition. HQ and its U.S. partners have also struggled to site the New England Clean Energy Connect transmission line, intended to bring down even more Canadian hydropower to the areas of heaviest electricity demand in southern New England.
In 2021, New England imported 16% of its electricity from neighbors, with most of that (13,617 out of a total 18,718 GWh in imports) coming from Québec.
Push and Pull
HQ spokesperson Lynn St-Laurent told RTO Insider that the company “has been a committed energy partner to New England for several decades and there isn’t any reason at all to assume that this will change.”
The company’s strategic moves, however, have led some in the New England energy sector to wonder about the Canadian province’s ability to continue sending its power to the Northeast U.S.
In its recent history, HQ has had a “pretty aggressive stance to maximize the revenue of exports,” said Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association.
And the Canadian utility recently looked to build its presence in New England by buying Great River Hydro and its fleet of 13 generating stations in the region.
But in a strategic plan led by Brochu last year, HQ warned that its energy and capacity balances are going to tighten over the next few years, and that the region will need new supplies by 2026.
“Electricity demand is … expected to rise, even though the rate at which the new needs will materialize is uncertain. As a result, we must prioritize the uses that stand to create the greatest value for Québec,” the plan said.
How HQ responds to those needs is likely to have an impact on New England, said Dolan
“In a time of transition, it will be fascinating to see if there’s a continuation of that [aggressive stance] or if we see a shift to taking a more inward look, because Québec for the last several years and during Christmas Eve, has had serious internal supply issues,” Dolan said.
But St-Laurent noted that the strategic plan also calls for HQ to “increase our presence and operations in neighboring markets.”
Christmas Eve in the Spotlight
The events of Dec. 24 in New England are a clear example of the region’s reliance on Québec.
One of the key triggers in the buildup to the Christmas Eve energy shortage was a sudden drop in imports from HQ.
It occurred as the Canadian province was dealing with a major storm and transmission outages, which forced it to reduce its exports to New England.
“In Québec, they were fighting both an actual load that was well above their forecast and the outages on their transmission lines. They were battling their own issues,” said ISO-NE COO Vamsi Chadalavada at a recent NEPOOL meeting.
“The reduction of imports on Phase 2 over the day were because of what Québec was experiencing, but it did have a significant impact on us.”
The loss of imports combined with generation outages in New England ultimately led the grid operator to go into its Operating Procedure 4 for the first time since 2018, and to subsequently dish out $39 million in pay-for-performance penalties to generators.
HQ says it upheld its contracted capacity sale obligations and helped maintain reliability in New England during the event.
“HQ maintained a reasonable level of export throughout the period despite the loss of transmission capacity in Québec,” St-Laurent said. “In regards to its current capacity sale commitments in New England, HQ actually delivered more than what was committed during this period — 856 MW.”
The reductions were caused by HQ pulling back temporarily in the short-term spot market, she said.
But for NEPGA’s Dolan, the event was another example of the precarious nature of bringing in electricity from other regions.
“They didn’t pull back imports because they felt like it. They did it because they had a very high load show up on Christmas Eve,” he said. “It’s a provincially owned utility, and that’s exactly what they should do. But it does create questions and consequences for us as an importing region.”
St-Laurent said demand in Quebec on Dec. 24 was 31,510 MW, 9,000 MW short of its winter peak.
This story has been updated to include comment from Hydro-Quebec.
The man arrested last week in Las Vegas for damaging a major solar facility told police he had “no regret” over the incident and that the destruction of his car was necessary “for the future,” according to the police report shared with ERO Insider.
Officers with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police arrested 34-year-old Mohammad Mesmarian last Wednesday on charges of terrorism, arson, destruction of property and attempting to escape police custody. The officers said Mesmarian, a native of Iran, acted alone.
The booking photo of Mohammad Mesmarian | Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
Mesmarian allegedly burned his car at the Dry Lake Solar Plant, a 700-acre facility northeast of Las Vegas also known as the Mega Solar Array. The facility, which is operated by Invenergy, provides about 95% of the daily electricity needs for MGM Resorts’ Las Vegas properties, although the incident left it out of commission. An Invenergy spokesperson told ERO Insider that the plant is expected to be fully operational later this week.
Based on what he told police, as summarized in the report, it’s unclear whether Mesmarian actually knew what the array does, as he said he supports clean energy and wanted to destroy his car because it represented old, polluting technology.
“Mesmarian believes in harmony between species and does not approve of old forms of energy,” the report says. “Mesmarian indicated he burned the vehicle because it uses gasoline and oil, as well as produces carbon emissions.”
Employees Gone when Incident Occurred
The police report says Mesmarian drove his car, a red Toyota Camry with an Idaho license plate, through the security fence at the facility around 3:30 p.m. on Jan. 3. Employees were not present at the time, having left around 2:30 after completing a final site check for the day. Mesmarian then tried to drive through the security gate surrounding the plant’s main transformer, but his car got stuck. He used some tools to cut a wide enough opening to get in.
Once inside the transformer area, Mesmarian wandered around a bit; surveillance footage showed him apparently taking photos of the transformer and control house, turning some switches off and trying to get into the control room. Around midnight he drilled a hole in the car’s gas tank and soaked a rag with gasoline. He then put the rag in the engine compartment and used jumper cables to ignite it.
After the rag caught the rest of the engine compartment on fire, Mesmarian was able to get the car moving and watched as it entered the concrete retention pit beneath the transformer. He then sat in a chair and continued to watch the car burn until around 12:30 a.m., when he left.
Burned Phone Leads to Suspect
Employees began to arrive at the Dry Lake plant’s administrative offices around 6 the following morning but didn’t discover the damage and the remains of the car until around 11:30. That was when the site manager received his new credentials for the security system. Upon logging in, the manager realized there was a car smoldering in the concrete pit and directed the other employees to respond. After they put out the remaining embers, an employee called police; detectives from the counterterrorism unit were sent to investigate.
The car was too badly burned to find a license plate or vehicle identification number, but the detectives found a damaged iPhone in the back seat; after contacting Apple with the device’s IMEI number — which is unique to each phone — officers discovered that it was connected to an account in Mesmarian’s name. Officers then discovered Mesmarian’s Instagram account, which showed pictures purportedly taken in Arizona several days earlier of someone who looked like the person in the surveillance footage, wearing similar clothing.
Before the destruction was discovered, Mesmarian had actually had a run-in with police around 8 a.m., when employees of a nearby waste disposal site reported him trespassing. Reviewing video from the officers’ body cameras, detectives saw that Mesmarian was still wearing the clothes he apparently wore during the incident at the solar facility. During the encounter Mesmarian told officers he was in town with his mother, named Deborah, and worked odd jobs. The report does not say what police did, if anything, about the trespassing incident.
Staff at the waste site told detectives that Mesmarian had also been there the day before, driving a red Camry. They showed police photos of the car, which had an Idaho license plate registered to Deborah Mesmarian.
Police were able to track Mesmarian to a camping area, where they found him in a travel trailer bearing an Idaho plate. They took him into custody without incident, although he later tried to run away twice; both times officers were able to restrain him.
Confused Story from Accused
During his interrogation, Mesmarian described his memory of his acts at the solar facility. The account corresponded closely to the surveillance video, but he appeared confused on some elements. For example, he seemed to believe the plant was built or run by Tesla, and he initially referred to the transformer as a “computer” before being corrected by detectives.
It’s also unclear how Mesmarian got the car to move after lighting the engine compartment on fire. The incident report says he placed an object on the accelerator, but under interrogation, he said that didn’t work and had to jump out of the car while it was moving.
Regarding his motive, Mesmarian said he intended to burn the car — which he said belonged to his grandmother — as a protest against old, polluting technology. He got the idea while working on the car on New Year’s Eve, a few days after he arrived in Las Vegas, he said.
Mesmarian told detectives he “believed in clean sources of energy and was against carbon [emissions], as well as oil and coal energy.” Burning the car, he believed, would send a message to the public to “let go of the old forms of energy,” along with freeing him personally from “harmful memories of his past.” Asked if he would do the same thing again if he could go back in time before the incident, Mesmarian said, “Oh yeah. … No regret.”
Despite having no training related to electrical systems, Mesmarian believed he had made the facility “safe” by turning off the switches before he set the car on fire and denied that he was trying to sabotage it. When detectives pointed out that setting the fire inside the solar plant was dangerous, he told them he “figured [that] had been thought [of] ahead of time.” When further pressed he admitted that he knew he could have damaged the unit but that he did it for the greater good.
According to reports from local media, Mesmarian behaved erratically at a court appearance on Tuesday, interrupting other defendants’ proceedings to complain about the justice system to the point where the judge ordered him escorted out. During a hearing, for which Mesmarian was let back in, the judge ordered him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation ahead of a Jan. 31 appearance in state court.
Electric Attacks Continue
Mesmarian’s actions are at least the third high-profile disruption of U.S. electric facilities in a month. At the beginning of December, attackers damaged two substations run by Duke Energy in Moore County, N.C., with rifles, leaving 45,000 customers without power for days; no suspects have been identified and their motive is unknown. (See Duke Completes Power Restoration After NC Substation Attack.)
Later in the month four electric substations in Washington state were broken into and damaged on Christmas morning, cutting power to about 15,000 customers. The Justice Department has charged two men with carrying out all four attacks to cover up a burglary plot. (See Feds Charge Two in Wash. Substation Sabotage.)
Hanwha Qcells said Wednesday it will spend $2.5 billion to develop a complete solar supply chain in the U.S., the largest solar investment in U.S. history, according to the Biden administration, and further evidence of industry’s response to the clean energy incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Seoul-based Hanwha said its Qcells unit will break ground in 2023 on a factory near Cartersville, Georgia, with capacity to make 3.3 GW of solar ingots, wafers, cells and finished panels.
The company also plans to expand the 300,000-square-foot factory it opened in 2019 in Dalton, Georgia, increasing it from 1.7 GW to 5.1 GW of solar panel capacity.
A worker at Qcells Dalton, Ga., plant prepares solar modules for shipping. | Qcells
The investments would give the company 8.4 GW of capacity by 2024. Qcells, which currently employs about 750 people in Georgia, will expand its workforce there to 4,000.
Hanwha says the buildout of a U.S. supply chain is central to its plan to evolve into an “energy solutions provider” and capitalize on the growth of the solar panel installation market, which is expected to more than double from 19 GW in 2022 to a projected 44 GW by 2026, according to Wood Mackenzie.
Qcells said its investments were triggered by the solar subsidies included in the IRA: It expects to collect $875 million per year by 2026 in investment tax credits and advanced manufacturing production credits.
Companies announced $40 billion in investments on 20 manufacturing facilities between August and December 2022, representing 7,000 new jobs and more than 13 GW of additional clean energy capacity, American Clean Power said in a recent report.
Shares of other solar stocks rose Wednesday following Hanwha’s announcement, with SolarEdge Technologies (NASDAQ:SEDG) shares up almost 6% on the day, while Shoals Technologies (NASDAQ:SHLS) was up 7.4% and Array Technologies (NASDAQ:ARRY) up 9.4%.
Mark Hagedorn, vice president of manufacturing services for Clean Energy Associates, which provides quality assurance, supply chain management and engineering services for the solar PV and battery storage industries, said the scale of the new facilities is creating unique siting challenges.
“If you look at a cell factory, whether it be solar or storage, the size of these things … is huge. They start in the hundreds of acres of space, with millions of square feet under the roof,” he said. “There’s clean rooms involved. There’s lots of power, there’s lots of water; all of that stuff has to be reduced, reused, recycled, optimized.”
Economic Development Agencies Look to Lure Growth
Hagedorn’s comments came at a Solar Energy Industries Association webinar Tuesday on how manufacturers can work with regional economic development agencies to evaluate potential sites for new factories.
“Sometimes we’re [involved] way earlier on in the process. Sometimes, the deals are at the two-yard line, and they need help to get over the goal line,” said Thomas Maynard, vice president of business development for the Greater Phoenix Economic Council.
Maynard said the IRA, which has an estimated $379 billion in clean energy subsidies, and the CHIPS Act, which will spend $54.2 billion to build domestic semiconductor manufacturing, have changed the role of the federal government, which had previously been “pretty hands off” on economic development. “The federal government definitely has a seat at the table and is driving a lot of growth,” he said.
Brock Herr, senior vice president of business retention, expansion and attraction for the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, said his agency has created an interagency affairs division to coordinate efforts with agencies responsible for environmental management, taxes and workforce development.
“We work with them on matters ranging from program and initiative development to make sure that we’re aligned across state government, but then also specific project items — you know, bring them in to facilitate a conversation on permitting,” he said. “We like to act as that concierge, if you will, so a company doesn’t have to cold call various government agencies and explain what they’re doing and why the state or the locality should treat it with the deference that it needs.”
Linda Bonelli, who leads the incentives group in Deloitte Tax LLP’s National Multistate Tax practice, said labor shortages are becoming an increasing concern for manufacturers looking to expand.
“Labor used to be something that … was not as big of a concern. That tends to be people’s No. 1 concern [now],” she said. “The skills we need may not be in that jurisdiction.”
Greater Phoenix’s Maynard had one parting piece of advice for dealing with regional development agencies.
“The ribbon cutting shouldn’t be the finish line. It shouldn’t be the end of the discussion,” he said. “It should be the start of the relationship.”
FERC on Monday approved PacifiCorp’s changes to its generator interconnection procedures that will allow it to use retiring generators’ interconnection capacity for new power plants in a process overseen by an independent coordinator (ER23-407).
The commission has already approved similar rules for Dominion Energy South Carolina, Public Service Company of Colorado and Duke Energy’s utilities in the South.
PacifiCorp argued that its new rules are superior to FERC’s pro forma interconnection rules because they create efficiencies by using existing interconnection capacity of retiring facilities, cutting interconnection timelines and uncertainty for new plants that use the process. Using existing interconnection capacity means that no new lines will have to be built to reliably connect power plants.
The Western Power Trading Forum told FERC that the independent coordinator was needed to minimize possible anticompetitive impacts from PacifiCorp reusing its old plants’ interconnection capacity, especially when the new generators use a different fuel.
TerraPower supported the rules, which it plans to use in the development of its Natrium nuclear reactor demonstration project at the site of PacifiCorp’s coal-fired Naughton Power Plant, where the remaining two units are set to retire in 2025.
FERC conditionally accepted the rules, subject to PacifiCorp fixing a typographical error on one of its tariff sheets.
“We find that PacifiCorp’s proposed generator replacement process provides substantial benefits and, in combination with the safeguards against unduly discriminatory implementation provided by the proposed independent coordinator, satisfies the consistent with or superior to standard with respect to the pro forma” large generator interconnection procedures, FERC said.
The generator replacement rules are similar to ones FERC has approved for other utilities in the past, and they should produce the same benefits, the commission said. They will create efficiencies by using existing interconnection facilities at retiring facilities; reduce interconnection timelines; save money for customers by decreasing new construction; and cut interconnection-related uncertainty in generation resource planning.
While PacifiCorp owns “a significant share” of the existing generation on its system, FERC said the replacement model would provide benefits, as it comes with the independent consultant’s review.
The order drew a dissent from Commissioner Allison Clements, who said PacifiCorp failed to show that the proposal is consistent with or superior to FERC’s pro forma interconnection rules.
“In particular, protesters make compelling arguments, not present in those previous generator replacement rights proceedings, highlighting the potential for anticompetitive outcomes under PacifiCorp’s proposal,” Clements said. “Based on the record before us, I cannot conclude that the benefits of this proposal outweigh the potential significant negative impacts on open access and competition in the PacifiCorp region.”
The main question is whether PacifiCorp will be able to retain up to 5,000 MW of interconnection rights in perpetuity without any opportunity for new generation to gain access to it. Clements said that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected similar rules for Xcel Energy because of concerns of their anticompetitive effects and potential for undue discrimination.
The White House Council on Environmental Quality on Monday released updated guidelines for federal agencies performing environmental reviews, requiring them to include a detailed quantification of a project’s greenhouse gas emissions, the estimated social costs of those emissions, and their impacts on climate change and community resilience.
Environmental assessments required under the National Environmental Policy Act should quantify a project’s “GHG emissions; place GHG emissions in appropriate context and disclose relevant GHG emissions and relevant climate impacts; and identify alternatives and mitigation measures to avoid or reduce GHG emissions,” CEQ said in the new guidelines published in the Federal Register on Monday.
The issuance started a 60-day comment period, but the guidelines will go into effect immediately on an “interim” basis, CEQ said. Potential revisions may be made before they are finalized.
According to a 2020 review by CEQ, NEPA environmental reviews can take anywhere from two to more than six years, making them a major factor in the long permitting times for large energy projects on public land in the U.S., be they utility-scale solar, natural gas pipelines or interstate transmission.
The new guidelines lay out detailed recommendations for NEPA reviews, for example, saying quantification of a project’s GHG emissions should include both separate analyses of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen oxide emissions, as well as an aggregated total, factoring in “each pollutant’s global warming potential.”
“Where feasible, agencies should also present annual GHG emission increases and reductions,’” the guidelines say. “This is particularly important where a proposed action presents both reasonably foreseeable GHG emissions increases and reductions.”
They also say that “the relative minor and short-term GHG emissions associated with construction of certain renewable energy projects, such as utility-scale solar and offshore wind, should not warrant a detailed analysis of lifetime GHG emissions.”
Clean energy alternatives to fossil fuel projects also get a boost in the guidelines, which frame them as “in line with the urgency of the climate crisis,” as well as U.S. national and global climate commitments. While noting that neither NEPA nor CEQ require agencies to go with a project with the lowest net GHG emissions, the guidelines say, “agencies should evaluate reasonable alternatives that may have lower GHG emissions, which could include technically and economically feasible clean energy alternatives.”
These provisions, contained in a few sentences in the 14 pages that the guidelines take up in the Federal Register, received immediate support from clean energy trade groups.
“The interim guidance will enable clean energy developers to move forward with projects, particularly on federal lands, that not only reduce climate impacts from the power sector, but that also create jobs and add economic benefits for communities in areas where solar projects are sited,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association.
The American Clean Power Association also issued a positive review. “The guidance appropriately recognizes that agency resources and time should not be spent reviewing the relatively minor and short-term greenhouse gas emissions associated with construction of clean energy projects and infrastructure that will provide large net emissions reductions over the course of their life.”
‘Should,’ not ‘Shall’
Industry analysts ClearView Energy Partners see the guidelines as evidence of a White House “lean into greening” strategies. But, ClearView says, the guidelines also set a de facto bottom line of zero GHG emissions as the minimum “significance level for purposes of triggering review under NEPA.”
“The lack of a specific significance level also eliminates a bright line below which a project can be deemed to be ‘not significant’ for purposes of NEPA,” ClearView said in its analysis of the guidelines.
ClearView also points to the guidelines’ warning that “NEPA requires more than a statement that emissions from a proposed [project] or its alternatives represent only a small fraction of global or domestic emissions.”
The intent of the guidelines is to treat all federal projects the same, ClearView says. “The CEQ makes clear that all projects must quantify direct emissions, and that only projects with ‘small’ GHG emissions may be able to use less detailed analysis of lifetime emissions due to overall negative carbon emissions of the project.”
Further, the guidelines could nudge FERC and other agencies toward more in-depth analysis and quantification of GHG emissions. ClearView references FERC’s practice of not evaluating a project’s upstream or downstream emissions, arguing that it lacks jurisdiction to request such information from a project applicant. Rather, the guidelines say agencies should “seek to obtain the information needed to quantify GHG emissions” by requesting or requiring it from project applicants.
Here, ClearView sees an opening for the kind of litigation that can delay or derail a project.
“We think the interim guidance creates a significant, and potentially insurmountable, obstacle to agencies relying on a ‘don’t ask’ strategy to limit the scope of GHG reviews in the future,” ClearView says. “Now project opponents have strong grounds for appeals if they challenge an agency to make such inquiries in order to make upstream (or downstream emissions) estimates and the agency fails to do so.”
ClearView expects plenty of opposition to the guidelines from the fossil fuel industry and congressional Republicans, who may argue that CEQ has gone “well beyond the statutory requirements of NEPA.”
But, ClearView says, CEQ avoided using the word “shall,” which signals hard and fast obligations, and instead provided agencies and itself cover by “strongly recommending” the guidelines “should” be followed.
CEQ also stakes out its interpretation of NEPA’s jurisdiction on GHG emissions in the introduction to the guidelines. “Climate change is a fundamental environmental issue, and its effects on the human environment fall squarely in NEPA’s purview.”
Permitting Reform Preview
On the same day the CEQ guidelines were published, Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.) introduced a bill that would cut NEPA review for mining projects to 12 months for an environmental assessment and 24 months for an environmental impact statement. The bill would also require that appeals against a permit be filed within 120 days of a project approval.
Under NEPA, an environmental assessment is an initial study to determine whether a project will have significant impacts requiring a full review and environmental impact statement.
Some of the other key recommendations in the CEQ guidelines include that:
agencies should “leverage early planning processes” to incorporate GHG emissions quantification and analysis of climate impacts and options for mitigation from the very beginning of environmental reviews;
such early planning should also include consideration of impacts on and active engagement with low-income, minority and other environmental justice communities;
along with the quantification of GHG emissions, agencies should perform an analysis of the social cost of emissions, as opposed to a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis;
the impacts of climate change ― such as extreme weather, drought and wildfires ― on a project over time should also be factored into the environmental review; and
quantification of a project’s GHG emissions should also be “contextualized” in terms of impacts on international, national, state and local climate goals.
ClearView sees this last provision as “bringing global dynamics home in requiring federal agencies to discuss the impacts of a project with a large GHG footprint in context of international commitments and federal policy. It could allow for agencies to determine that a project’s GHG emissions [are] contrary to emission targets or goals established.”
RENSSELAER, N.Y. — NYISO on Wednesday presented the Installed Capacity Working Group/Market Issues Working Group with a proposed timeline for finalizing tariff revisions related to capacity resource interconnection service (CRIS) expiration and transfer rules for deactivated facilities looking to adjust their unexpired CRIS rights.
The ISO’s Nikolai Tubbs told stakeholders that NYISO would be finalizing the discussion on tariff provisions related to the CRIS project, which has been an extended ongoing process. (See “Tariff Revisions on CRIS,” Study: NYISO Dynamic Reserves Could Lower Congestion, Costs.)
Currently, NYISO anticipates these new provisions to go into effect in the second quarter, or 60 days after they have been filed with FERC toward the end of the first quarter.
Scott Leuthauser of Hydro Quebec Energy Services asked about the status of external CRIS and whether it would be affected by any of the proposed revisions. NYISO attorney Sara Keegan answered that those rights would be unaffected.
Howard Fromer, who represents the Bayonne Energy Center, asked when NYISO expected the proposed requirements for CRIS transfers would go into effect and what the ISO meant by “functional requirements,” which NYISO expects to be their 2023 deliverable.
Zach Smith, vice president at NYISO, responded that “all of the rules will become effective upon FERC acceptance,” including the requirements related to CRIS transfers.
Smith then clarified that the functional requirements that NYISO is seeking to deliver by the fourth quarter relate to partial CRIS expiration, and the ISO “needs software tools to facilitate the partial CRIS tracking.” Smith also told stakeholders that the first time NYISO will “expire someone under the new partial CRIS rules would be three years from the effective date.”
Mark Younger, president of Hudson Energy Economics, thought it was confusing that NYISO “have the deliverable for this year called ‘functional requirements,’ when, in fact, the real deliverable is implementation.”
Doreen Saia, an attorney with Greenberg Traurig, asked whether the tariff revisions specifically related to the same-location CRIS transfers rules, would be impacted by the Class Year 2023 base case lockdown.
Keegan responded that it would not, and that, “regardless of this filing, CRIS transfers would be requested by the class year start date.”
NYISO will seek approval for the proposed CRIS tariff revisions at both the Jan. 18 Business Issues Committee and Jan. 25 Management Committee meetings.
The U.S. Department of the Interior announced on Monday that Elizabeth Klein has been named director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which oversees offshore energy and mineral resources.
She will replace Amanda Lefton, who has run BOEM since the start of the Biden administration and is resigning effective Jan. 19.
Under Lefton, BOEM approved the country’s first two commercial-scale offshore wind projects and has held three offshore wind lease auctions. The three lease auctions included a record-breaking sale off New York and the first-ever sale off the West Coast.
“Liz has been an invaluable asset at the department since Day 1, and we are thrilled she is taking on this new role,” Interior Chief of Staff Rachael Taylor said. “The Interior Department is leading the effort to foster a clean energy future, and Liz will be critical to our efforts to meet the president’s ambitious goals to deploy affordable clean energy to power homes across America and create good-paying jobs in the growing offshore wind industry.”
Klein, who currently serves as senior adviser to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, was previously nominated for deputy secretary of the department, but that was withdrawn early in President Biden’s term after opposition from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).
This is Klein’s third stint at DOI, having worked at the department during the Clinton and Obama administrations. Before joining the Biden administration, she was deputy director of the New York University School of Law’s State Energy & Environmental Impact Center, which supports state attorneys general when they defend, enforce and promote laws and policies on clean energy and the environment.
Klein was a key architect of the Obama administration’s work to create a new offshore wind industry and leasing program.
The American Clean Power Association thanked Lefton for helping lay the foundation to get to 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030 and welcomed BOEM’s new boss.
“We also are excited to work with Elizabeth Klein, who brings a wealth of experience to BOEM, having worked in the highest levels of the Department of the Interior under Presidents Obama and Biden,” ACP Vice President for Offshore Wind Josh Kaplowitz said. “The offshore wind industry looks forward to ongoing collaboration with incoming Director Klein and her team to accelerate offshore wind energy development and deployment, while creating jobs for American workers and investing in American communities.”
