The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday announced $24 million in grants to support the development of next-generation concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP) technology, which generates heat for electricity production and industrial processing.
The awards were announced at the International Energy Agency’s Solar Power and Chemical Energy Systems conference, hosted by DOE in Albuquerque, N.M.
Five of the 10 grants focus on industrial uses, furthering the Industrial Heat Shot initiative that DOE laid out earlier this month with a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing operations by 85%, and its roadmap toward decarbonization of the industrial sector. (See DOE Roadmap Tackles Tough Industrial Carbon Emissions.)
Those projects are:
demonstrate a CSP process for decarbonizing the heating of limestone to 950 degrees Celsius, which could reduce the carbon emissions associated with manufacturing cement (Heliogen, Pasadena, Calif., $4.1 million);
optimize heat-transfer processes and designs associated with the production of solar-thermal production of cement (Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, N.M., $2.6 million);
develop and test designs of novel molten salt thermal energy storage tanks to enable on-demand delivery of carbon-free heat (Solar Dynamics, Broomfield, Colo., $2.3 million);
design and validate a highly efficient and scalable solar thermochemical reactor to produce hydrogen from water and sunlight (University of Florida, $2.2 million); and
develop a novel chemical reactor to decarbonize the production of propylene, a key precursor to many chemicals (University of Maryland College Park, $2 million).
The other five grants support Gen3 solid particle technology research projects:
deliver a preliminary design of a supercritical carbon-dioxide (sCO2) power block that is optimized for Gen3 CSP that uses solid particles (GE Research, Niskayuna, N.Y., $1.6 million);
develop a novel particle-based thermochemical energy storage system for CSP (Mississippi State University, $3.1 million);
design high-temperature mass flow sensors that use solid particles to move and store thermal energy for the reliable operation of Gen3 CSP systems (Sandia, $1 million);
design a modular slide gate system for control of particle flows in CSP receivers, in collaboration with an industrial valve manufacturer (Sandia, $1.9 million); and
develop a prototype particle-to-sCO2 heat exchanger using advanced design and manufacturing techniques (University of Wisconsin-Madison, $3.1 million).
In a news release, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said: “Solar-thermal technologies provide us with a significant opportunity to upgrade and reduce emissions of industrial plants across the nation while meeting America’s energy needs with reliable, around-the-clock power generation. DOE’s investments will drive the innovation necessary to build out a clean energy economy and meet our climate goals while diversifying the sources of dependable and readily available clean energy.”
Also Tuesday, DOE announced a roadmap developed by its National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to guide research and development into heliostats, the mirrors that follow the sun and concentrate sunlight onto receivers to create CSP.
Heliostats now represent 30 to 40% of the cost of a CSP system, and reducing their price tag is important to DOE’s goal of inexpensive CSP plants.
Heliocon — DOE’s Heliostat Consortium, a five-year, $25 million effort led by NREL, Sandia and the Australian Solar Thermal Research Institute — will work to implement the new heliostat roadmap. NREL on Tuesday issued a $3 million request for proposals to expand U.S. expertise in heliostats and increase the number of researchers working in the field.
The Biden administration said Tuesday it has approved electric vehicle charging plans for all 50 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico, opening the spigot on $1.5 billion to add chargers over 75,000 miles of highway nationwide.
The $1.5 billion in funding for fiscal years 2022 and 2023 is a down payment on the $5 billion in National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program funding authorized over five years under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Earlier this month, the administration announced it had approved EV infrastructure deployment plans for 35 states and $900 million in IIJA funding. (See FHWA Beats Sept. 30 Deadline for Approving States’ EV Charging Plans.)
For this initial round of funding, states were required to identify “alternative fueling corridors” — major state and interstate highways — where EV charging stations could be located every 50 miles. EVs can fully recharge in about an hour using the fast-charger ports now available.
The IIJA allowed state transportation officials to begin staffing and activities directly related to the development of their charging plans before they were approved.
In addition to reimbursing them for those costs, the federal funding can be spent on a variety of related activities, including upgrading and adding EV charging infrastructure; operation and maintenance costs of charging stations; stakeholder engagement; workforce development; data sharing; and mapping analysis.
The formula used for the allocations is based on states’ gasoline and diesel tax payments into the federal Highway Trust Fund. Ten percent of the NEVI funding will be subject to the discretion of the secretary of transportation to fill gaps in the national network.
The EV charging funding is only one of the ways the Biden administration — which has set a goal that half of all new vehicles sales be zero-emissions vehicles by 2030 — hopes to spur decarbonize transportation, the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
The Department of Energy has $7 billion in funding to help develop a domestic EV battery supply chain. The recently approved Inflation Reduction Act will provide tax credits to purchasers of new and used EVs and $3 billion for expanding EV charging in economically disadvantaged communities.
But the expansion of the charging network may be choppy, as some states have warned federal officials that a lack of grid capacity may slow their plans.
PITTSBURGH — More than 6,000 people from 34 countries came to the Steel City last week for the Global Clean Energy Action Forum, which provided a preview of the national and international climate commitments that will be brought forward at the 27th UN Climate Conference of the Parties (COP27) set for Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, in November.
Here’s some of the highlights of what we heard.
Gates Excited by Federal Funding, Concerned About Reliability
Since Bill Gates founded Breakthrough Energy in 2015 to help create new technologies and eliminate the “green premium,” it has helped to finance 100 companies.
“The big positive surprise is that when we formed this company that would only invest in things that would have dramatic change for climate, that we had no problem finding those companies,” Gates said in an interview with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. “My biggest fear was we’d raise the money and say, ‘OK, here we go.’ And then people would say, ‘Are you kidding? You want to make steel with no emissions? That just can’t be done.’”
Among its investments are four hydrogen production companies that will take advantage of the tax credits in the new Inflation Reduction Act.
While Gates is excited by what the federal government’s funding will mean for new clean technologies, he worries that many people are underestimating the reliability challenges of the transition to a “green grid” under decarbonization and electrification.
“Based on their weather, geography, latitude … the nature of that clean grid, how you generate power, how you maintain reliability [will vary]. And people are very naive about how hard it is — that in very cold periods you to tend not to have any sun or wind and in very hot periods you tend not to have wind,” he said. “Take just the heating load. If you move that over to electricity to make it zero emission, it is absolutely gigantic. I mean it’s a peak that the electricity system never sees — that kind of a range of non-sheddable demand, because you’re talking about whether people freeze to death or not. …
“Without nuclear, if we try to do this without building a lot of onshore renewables, it’s far more difficult than people think,” he added.
Federal Government Flexes its Spending
The U.S. has begun “moving the needle” on electric vehicle sales in 2022, with EVs representing about 13% of light-duty purchases (excluding the U.S. Postal Service) this year, up from about 1.5% in 2021, said Andrew Mayock, federal chief sustainability officer for the White House.
With a fleet of about 640,000 vehicles, the government turns over about 50,000 vehicles a year, including 30,000 light-duty vehicles.
Speaking at a panel on the role of green procurement in driving decarbonization of heavy industry were, from left, Andrew Mayock, the White House; Nancy Gillis, World Economic Forum; Chris Ward, CDEO of Lehigh Hanson, and Maria Virginia Dundas, Ørsted. | Global Clean Energy Action Forum
The Postal Service represents one-third of the fleet. “And they’ve moved their commitment — just over the past year — from a 10% commitment to a 20% commitment to then announcing a 40% commitment to electrifying the fleet two weeks before the [Inflation Reduction Act] was passed and provided them another $3 billion to accelerate their work,” he said.
Mayock also spoke about the government’s effort to meet President Biden’s pledge to move to carbon-free electricity for all operations by 2030.
He said the federal government — the largest electricity buyer in the U.S. at 54 TWh a year — is taking guidance from the Clean Energy Buyers Association, a group of nearly 300 energy customers and partners committed to reaching a 90% carbon-free U.S. electricity system by 2030.
The group’s members have procured more than 52 GW of new, utility-scale renewable energy since 2014 — almost 40% of the clean energy capacity added over the period.
“We take a look at that playbook … and we’re gonna customize it to our U.S. government perspective and go into the market and demand as a customer clean electricity like our corporate colleagues have,” he said.
Energy Transition as ‘Peace’ Work
Granholm was ubiquitous at the conference, which she said attracted more than 6,000 people from 34 countries. “This is … not about debating targets anymore. It’s about implementation. It’s about results. It’s about action,” she said.
“Vladimir Putin has shown autocrats everywhere that the world’s overreliance on fossil energy can be weaponized against us. And just as he underestimated Ukraine’s ferocious resolve, he underestimated the international community’s commitment and resolve for our clean energy future,” she said. “Now we see that more than just the key to solving climate change, the energy transition — making our nations secure by deploying our own clean energy — could be the great peace project of our time.”
At the forum’s opening reception on Sept. 21, Granholm also answered skeptics, “those who have been saying, ‘Oh, that clean energy economy, that renewable stuff, that just makes things more volatile, less sure.’ … What could be less volatile [than] renewable energy, when you see the prices continually move, but they’re going down. …
“And of course, the volatility of the fossil fuel market across the world now demonstrates … how important this is. It steeled our resolve,” she said.
Innovative Thinking Needed to Reduce Concrete Emissions
Chris Ward, CEO of cement and concrete producer Lehigh Hanson, said efforts to decarbonize the industry are being slowed by reluctance of engineers and others to accept change.
“We’re a cement manufacturer, but we’re also a concrete producer,” he said. “And we deliver a lot of concrete to those construction jobs. …
“The specifiers and engineers have to keep an open mind to new products,” he said. “Oftentimes, a hurdle that we have as a concrete manufacturer is that the specifiers and the engineers don’t want to move off what they’ve always done.”
Ward said two-thirds of the industry’s emissions come from the process itself, not from combustion. “So for us, it’s about infrastructure. It’s about investment. It’s about government policy that will step in and really help us make a step change in what we’re doing and give us the confidence to go out and make some of these step-change mega projects in partnership with the government in order to really drive improvement.”
In the meantime, Ward said, the industry is increasing its transparency. “Within 12 months, you should be able to see exactly what attributes of every cubic meter or cubic yard of concrete that delivers to a construction site, what the global warming potential is of that material,” he said.
Rebirth of US Nuclear Power
Kirsty Gogan, founder and managing partner of London-based TerraPraxis and an adviser to the British government, said nuclear power has a chance of a comeback in the U.S. with the placement of small modular reactors or advanced reactors in properties that were once coal-fired power plants, complete with high-voltage lines to the grid.
“We’re seeing incredible demand for coal-to-nuclear,” she said during a discussion led by the nuclear office of the U.S. Department of Energy. “There’s recognition in these communities about the potential to create a future for decades more of operations and for high-paying jobs. The utilities like it because they want to continue supplying reliable, dispatchable energy without emissions. …
“The question is, how do we do it quickly enough and at the scale needed. We’re working on a new system for repairing [the buildings that housed] coal-fired boilers … using a standardized building designed for manufacturing assembly.”
Last week, the DOE released a report concluding that “hundreds of coal plant sites across the country are eligible and appropriate for potential nuclear power plant sites [and] that 80% of the existing coal plants may be appropriate for this kind of transition,” said Kathryn Huff, assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy at the DOE and a nuclear engineer. “The report also found that using existing buildings and some of the electrical equipment would create significant savings.”
Gogan said the DOE should have little trouble finding former coal plant communities interested in nuclear power. “It’s interesting to see how many communities are already overturning historical moratoriums on nuclear in many, many states around the country.”
The Inflation Reduction Act allocated $250 billion for repurposing fossil fuel infrastructure, Huff said. That could include repairing coal plants, but the applications for that money need to be made by Dec. 31, 2026.
Still up in the air is how the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will deal with licensing and training of reactor operators.
GM Revving Up EV Manufacturing to 50% of US Vehicle Sales by 2030
GM chief economist Elaine Buckberg said the company is aiming to sell one million EVs in North America in 2025 and is projecting that by 2030, half of its annual U.S. sales will be electric. The company has committed $750 million to assist in the construction of public charging stations. GM has partnered with Pilot Flying J to build 2,000 fast charging stalls along major highways, all powered by renewable energy. The company is also collaborating with EVGo to build 3,250 charging stations in major metropolitan areas by 2026 and working with its local dealer network to locate another 40,000 public chargers in underserved parts of cities and in rural areas.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act allocated $7.5 billion to build out a network of 500,000 EV chargers, which GM supports, she said as an example of how the public benefit (fighting climate change) exceeds the private benefits involved in the federal subsidies to build EV charging stations.
Buckberg’s comments came during a fast-paced panel discussion focused on how to accelerate the replacement of conventional gasoline and diesel vehicles with electric power trains, a transition which several European participants pointed out will reduce the need to import oil and refined products. Not discussed during the conversation was how local utilities will be involved.
A Call to Action
The GCEAF also included meetings of the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM), an international consortium started during the Obama administration, and Mission Innovation — both of which were focused on new initiatives and commitments to be carried forward to COP27 in Egypt.
At the CEM’s opening session, Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had triggered “the first true global energy crisis,” but also “a turning point in the history of energy.”
He pointed to the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act as a strong reason for optimism. “It is not big news; it is very big news,” Birol said. “When you get the numbers, 400 billion U.S. dollars for clean energy, and it will be multiplied by the private money. In my view, my personal view, it is the single most important action on global energy and climate after Paris 2015,” when the Paris Climate Accord was signed, committing nations around the world to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C.
While hailing the IRA as “an amazing piece of legislation,” U.S. Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry stressed the critical importance of private sector investment.
“No government is going to solve this problem. No government has enough money to be able to solve this problem,” Kerry said, pointing to figures from the UN and IEA estimating that up to $4.5 trillion in clean energy investment per year will be needed over the next three years to reach the world’s climate goals.
“The private sector is the entity that has the trillions of dollars,” he said, but it’s “not deployable. It’s there sort of in asset management hands. But these are going to have to be bankable deals, which means our trade is going to be making more bankable deals faster, and engineering with countries the ability to streamline decision-making, to get the playing field to be one where contracts and decision-making at one-stop-shops and so forth, are available. This can happen.”
‘Mother, May I?’
What will the grid of the future look like, and what will be needed to move beyond today’s interconnection issues?
Speaking at a panel on the grid of the future, Exelon COO Calvin Butler stressed that a clean grid must also be a reliable grid. Utilities are the providers of both first and last resort, Butler said. “You don’t get to this [energy] transition or transformation without us.”
Exelon has a $29 billion capital plan for the next four years, Butler said. “People ask, ‘Is that about reliability or is that about bringing distributed energy resources onto the system?’ The answer is yes,” he said. “Because a more resilient system allows you to have that bidirectional communication, allows your IT systems to talk; it allows the security of the network. You can’t get there without one.”
But Jeff Weiss, CEO of Distributed Sun, a community solar developer based in Washington, D.C., said utilities’ interconnection processes are still slowing the transition.
“Most people doing development and with capital get to the point that they say to the utility, ‘Mother, may I, pretty please, with sugar on top ― I have an opportunity ― may I please touch your grid?’ Generally speaking, the answer is ‘No! Keep your hands off my grid. … I need my grid to work.’”
Still, after working with utilities in 15 states, Weiss believes “there’s actually a good partnership to be had. We get them … to understand that what we’re really doing together — and we can help you through the door too — is the frontline of innovation. This is what the 21st century is all about; it’s about grid upgrades. We need you all to rebuild the transmission grid.”
Conservatives’ vision for a clean energy future includes contributions from natural gas, nuclear and hydrogen; domestic mineral mining; and fewer regulatory hurdles, according to speakers in the online National Clean Energy Week Policy Symposium this week.
At times, politicians’ views contrasted with the industry experts invited to speak at the symposium.
Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) | National Clean Energy Week
Appearing onscreen in front of a painting of an oil well, U.S. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) said he hoped that conversations on energy production in an era of climate change continue to be “based on reality and not ideology.”
Armstrong said Europe’s continuing energy crisis shows the importance of U.S. energy independence. He said the U.S. should expand its natural gas infrastructure and shouldn’t be “demonized” for its fracking.
In his message, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) presented an alternate narrative to the one offered by many Democrats and said fossil fuels play an important part in it.
“While Democrats wage a war on our oil and gas producers, we know that America’s a leader in reducing emissions, and that natural gas we produce here at home is cleaner than Russian natural gas,” he said during a Tuesday keynote. “We know the importance of investing in domestic energy and mineral production to maintain energy security and protect our supply chain from China.”
McCarthy thanked Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (CRES) for its advocacy.
“House Republicans prioritize comprehensive permitting reform and elimination of regulations on energy and infrastructure costs that delay projects and increase costs,” he said. “We look forward to partnering with you to achieve these goals.”
Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) said Europe’s and California’s recent energy hardships show that “rush-to-green-energy policies” fail citizens. She said the U.S.’ clean energy future should include the reliable output that nuclear energy and clean hydrogen can supply, and that Congress should focus on “responsible, clean, all-of-the-above” energy policies.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), a previous CRES Clean Energy Champion, spoke of improving and retaining the power-generation technology now in use, including nuclear, hydro and natural gas. She spoke of cleaner energy but did not mention climate change, a primary factor driving the push for clean energy.
“This week, Republicans on [the House Energy and Commerce Committee] are celebrating how America has led the world in reducing carbon emissions and promoting innovation by utilizing America’s abundant, clean, affordable and reliable energy,” she said. “Our framework, the Securing Cleaner American Energy Agenda, builds on this legacy to lower energy costs and make our infrastructure and electricity grid more resilient. It includes solutions to unleash innovation for cleaner natural gas, emissions-free hydropower and nuclear power, and carbon-capture technology.”
By contrast, McMorris Rodgers said, the “rush to green” pressed by Democrats will force the energy transition on families and industry, spiking costs, undermining national security and stifling innovation as a result.
“Republicans support a level playing field and a balanced mix of energy resources. As we add more weather-dependent renewables like wind and solar, we must maintain our most reliable baseload power sources,” she said.
Utility executives echoed a need for hydrogen and nuclear output.
Lauren Sher, NextEra Energy’s director of sustainability and environmental policy, said to achieve a steady, 24/7 decarbonized energy supply, utilities will need to rely on zero-emissions fuels like green hydrogen to operate existing generating facilities.
American Public Power Association CEO Joy Ditto said to accomplish big decarbonization goals, her public power producers are enthusiastic about small modular reactors.
“I know you all in California might not want to talk about nuclear, but elsewhere in the country, we really are extremely bullish on smaller modular reactors [and] more affordable nuclear as we move forward, particularly for smaller communities,” Ditto said.
Streamlining Permitting
Panelists agreed that the country’s permitting processes are unwieldy, unnecessarily long and in need of streamlining to keep pace with a necessary transition.
Xan Fishman, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s director of energy policy and carbon management, said on its face, clean energy funding through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) should be enough to jumpstart an energy transition in earnest.
“We’ve got money for innovation; we’ve got money for deployment. It would seem like our clean energy future is right at our fingertips,” Fishman said.
However, Fishman quoted the Aspen Institute’s 2021 “Building Cleaner, Faster” report, which focused on the problem that “achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 is ecologically essential, technologically feasible, economically achievable, but procedurally impossible” given the current permitting environment.
Johnson Controls’ Katie McGinty | National Clean Energy Week
“I wish it were only a bumper sticker. It has the unfortunate characteristic, I think, of being absolutely true,” Johnson Controls’ Katie McGinty said of the problem statement. “The status quo is not solving climate. We have to deliver more environmental protection. Mother Nature is shaking her fist. … Some red tape needs to get cut.”
McGinty invoked the 2,000-plus renewable generation projects in PJM’s interconnection queue that have little chance of coming online quickly because she said the grid remains unprepared.
U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), whom CRES announced as one of its 2022 Clean Energy Champions just a day earlier, said the environmental regulations created a half-century ago have morphed into something untenable.
“When the National Environmental Policy Act came out in the late ’60s, it was a really good bill,” Sullivan said. “What’s happened unfortunately is that NEPA has been fully 100% abused, and it’s grown into a law that courts and far-left radical environmental groups use to block essentially everything.”
Sullivan spoke of a gold mine in Alaska that needed 20 years to obtain a permit and said the highway leading to the mine took 30 years to permit.
“This is an issue — permitting reform; the abuse of NEPA — that literally hurts every single American; whether you want to build a wind turbine, or a solar panel, or a highway project, or an airport runway, or a gold mine, or an oil and gas development, it blocks everything,” he said. “We as a country, I believe, are finally starting to wake up to this issue that has bedeviled my state for decades, and we’re starting to take action.”
Despite this, Jeremy Woodrum, senior director of congressional affairs for the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), predicted U.S. solar panel manufacturing will soon pick up with “at least” 20 to 25 GW worth of domestic solar panel manufacturing capability. He said SEIA’s goal is to have 50 GW of annual solar energy manufacturing capacity by 2030, two and a half times the total solar capacity installed last year in the U.S.
“We’re looking to go big, and folks who go first are going to reap the rewards,” Woodrum said.
Critical Minerals
Experts agreed that the U.S. must quickly scale up a critical minerals industry and reinforce a supply chain to source a clean energy future.
ClearPath Senior Director Alex Fitzsimmons said critical minerals like nickel, cobalt, lithium and graphite are the “lynchpin” of decarbonized energy production.
Nano One CEO Dan Blondal | National Clean Energy Week
“I think to truly build a domestic supply chain for critical minerals, we need to marshal all the resources we have now in law and policy to three primary goals,” he said, explaining that the U.S. must invest in upstream mining and processing capabilities, invest in recycling facilities and invest in mineral substitutes.
“We have a wall of demand coming for raw material supplies, mining [and] refining, and everything has to happen long before you assemble a battery,” Nano One Materials CEO Dan Blondal agreed.
Blondal predicted central Canada will become a “center of gravity” for battery materials in the North American market. The IRA “put EV tax credits on the line” by mandating that batteries be assembled with environmentally friendly and responsibly sourced materials. He said automakers scrambled to find replacements for Chinese-made batteries to handle near-term demand without jeopardizing tax credit eligibility.
MISOreported on Tuesday that it received a record 171 GW of proposed generation projects from 956 interconnection requests, more than what is currently in the interconnection queue.
The submittals are in addition to the current queue, which numbers 118 GW and 769 projects. Approximately 97% of the new project hopefuls are for renewable or storage resources.
Were MISO to approve all the 2022 requests, there could be nearly 300 GW of projects waiting on studies and interconnection agreements.
MISO said this is the third straight year that queue applications have reached unprecedented levels, with each annual cycle larger than the previous year’s. The RTO received 487 applications for 77 GW last year.
The grid operator said that “the volume of requests reflects an acceleration of the resource transition.”
“At this point, we are experiencing exponential growth in the queue,” Andy Witmeier, director of resource utilization, said in a press release. “The current applications continue to be heavily weighted with renewables and standalone storage requests again tripling the amount submitted the previous year.”
The new queue entrants comprise 84 GW in solar projects, 14 GW in wind generation, 32 GW of standalone energy storage and 34 GW of hybrid projects, or renewable energy and storage facility pairings.
Historically, only about 20% of the proposed generation in MISO’s interconnection queue makes it to grid. If that trend holds, the grid operator could add nearly 60 GW of capacity over the next few years.
However, the RTO’s recently approved long-range transmission portfolio (LRTP) was planned in part to bring more generation online quicker. Staff has estimated that the $10 billion, 18-project portfolio of 345-kV lines can facilitate about 53 GW worth of new interconnections. (See MISO Board Approves $10B in Long-range Tx Projects.)
MISO has plans to recommend three more LRTP portfolios over the next few years, bringing even more clean energy online.
“These numbers continue to represent the seismic shift occurring on the electric grid highlighting a rapid resource transition to renewable energy,” Witmeier said, adding that the first LRTP portfolio and the recent Inflation Reduction Act may have propelled additional interest in new generation projects.
“We are working with our stakeholders on the additional regional transmission needed to accommodate this resource shift,” he said.
The grid operator closed the 2022 application window in mid-September.
MISO said it will share more details on the 2022 queue cycle during the Interconnection Process Working Group’s virtual meeting on Oct. 10.
PITTSBURGH ― In debates over climate change and the urgent need to decarbonize the world’s energy systems, heavy industries ― such as steel, cement and chemicals ― are typically held up as potentially insurmountable obstacles: industries that produce things we can’t live without while generating carbon emissions we can’t live with.
Taking up that challenge was a key theme at last week’s Global Clean Energy Action Forum, where over three days, government and business leaders from 34 countries issued a range of announcements focused on slashing those hardest-to-slash emissions.
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm opened the conference Wednesday evening with the rollout of the Department of Energy’s new Industrial Heat Shot, the sixth in its series of “Earthshots” aimed at pushing forward innovation across a spectrum of clean energy technologies. With heavy industry accounting for 30% of direct carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S., the initiative is targeting CO2 from the high-heat processes used to transform materials ― like iron into steel – with the goal of an 85% reduction by 2035.
The strategies to be pursued include electrification of heat processes, transitioning to lower-carbon fuels such as hydrogen, geothermal and nuclear, and developing new chemistries and biofuels, according to a DOE press release.
Setting the tone for the conference, Granholm described the Industrial Heat and other DOE Earthshots as audacious and ambitious but achievable, and invited other nations to join the effort, which, she said, “will be the story of the 21st century.”
Granholm followed up the Industrial Heat Shot with Thursday’s release of the funding announcement for the development of regional green hydrogen hubs, which will draw on $7 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). Industrial applications, including industrial heat and steel and cement manufacturing, are among the primary targets for the demonstration hubs. (See DOE Opens Solicitation for $7B in Hydrogen Hubs Funding.)
At the GCEAF closing ceremony on Friday, Granholm also announced that pledges from 15 countries and the European Commission will provide $94 billion to be used to fund a rapid acceleration of clean energy demonstration projects globally through 2026. The U.S. kicked off the drive to raise the money with a $21.9 billion contribution in June, after a report from the International Energy Agency estimated $90 billion in clean energy demonstration projects would be needed by 2026 to ensure that essential new technologies can be commercialized and scaled by 2030.
In addition to the U.S., Australia, Canada, the European Commission, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom contributed to the fund.
Another DOE announcement, also released on Friday, highlighted $4.9 billion from the IIJA that will be used to accelerate the commercialization and scaling of carbon capture, transport and storage systems. The money will be spread over three initiatives with the goal of siting, permitting and building carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects capable of storing at least 50 million metric tons of CO2. Funding will also go to CCS demonstration projects that can be easily replicated and deployed at heavy industry facilities and power plants, according to the announcement.
A Carbon Removal Launchpad
Although not an official United Nations event, the GCEAF served as a launching pad for new national and international commitments and actions that will be brought forward at the 27th UN Climate Conference of the Parties (COP27) set for Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, in November.
Thus, the industrial decarbonization announcements at the conference — and the intensive focus on carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and green hydrogen — seemed to signal a new level of commitment to these technologies, which still raise skepticism among some environmental and clean energy advocates.
Initiatives advancing both technologies led announcements from Mission Innovation (MI), the international consortium founded in 2015 to accelerate the research and innovation needed to drive widespread deployment of clean energy.
Speaking at a Friday session, Drew Leyburne, Canada’s assistant deputy minister for energy efficiency and technology, reported that MI is “initiating a global push for testing and demonstrating CDR technologies in the lead-up to COP27.”
The six nations in this “Carbon Removal Launchpad” — the U.S., Canada, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Japan and the United Kingdom — will work together “to build and fund pilot-scale and demonstration projects in the CDR space, and to support monitoring and verification efforts to ensure that CO2 is durably stored,” said Leyburne, who also chairs MI’s steering committee.
“It is imperative that we demonstrate the viability of CDR technologies and invest in them in a way that gives the industry the confidence to invest in critical CDR infrastructure, that gives the public confidence in CDR as an essential tool to address climate change, and then ensures that communities receive economic, social and environmental benefits from CDR projects,” he said.
MI also launched a green hydrogen action plan at the conference, but the major announcements — and investments — came from leaders in the steel and iron industries such as Luxembourg’s ArcelorMittal (NYSE:MT) and Australia’s Fortescue Metals Group (ASX:FMG).
Irina Gorbounova reported on ArcelorMittal’s efforts to decarbonize its steelmaking processes with a mix of green hydrogen, renewable energy and “potentially disruptive technologies that can help us accelerate this [work].” The company’s XCarb Innovation Fund, which Gorbounova heads, recently invested $5 million in H2Pro, an Israeli startup pioneering a new approach to green hydrogen electrolysis that could be both cheaper and more efficient than traditional electrolysis.
It has also invested $30 million in LanzaTech, a carbon recycling company, with which it is developing carbon-capture technology at its steel plant in Ghent, Belgium.
Gorbounova sees the role of ArcelorMittal and other heavy industry players as offering entrepreneurs “unique industrial settings … to test their solutions and to establish the technological viability and also industrial scalability.”
Fortescue Metals and its chair Andrew Forrest made headlines last week with its rollout of a $6.2 billion plan to decarbonize its iron ore operations by 2030, followed by a second announcement at GCEAF of a new partnership with the DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
The goal for the company’s 10-year, $80 million investment, Forrester said at a small press conference on Thursday, is to help scale and commercialize the innovative technologies developed at the lab, which will then allow more companies to decarbonize.
“With NREL, Fortescue aims to create the world’s leading science and share it with the world so investors like us stop hanging back, stop being concerned that if they commit to a technology and build out a manufacturing system, the [next new] technology will come along and supersede their own new plant,” Forrest said.
“NREL simply gives us the confidence and … will give the world the confidence to really invest and invest aggressively and heavily,” he said.
By 2030, Kurt-Christoph von Knobelsdorff, CEO of German hydrogen and fuel cell company NOW GmbH, also wants to upend heavy industry worldwide with 70 green steel plants, 40 net-zero aluminum factories and 60 zero-carbon ammonia facilities.
But reaching those targets will mean answering some tough questions, von Knobelsdorff told the audience at the MI session on Friday. “How do we change the fuels in those industries?” he said. “How do we get the circularity [of supply chains] working better in these industries? How do we [approach] the efficiency of these industries in a different way? And how do we change fundamental industry processes?”
Echoing Forrester, Leonore Gewessler, Austria’s minister for climate action, environment and energy, stressed the urgency of developing the technologies to cut industrial emissions now. Evoking the climate crisis, she said on Friday, “We cannot wait sector by sector; [there] needs to be combination of industries. … There are 25-year investment cycles in industry, so we need to be there now for every single one of those decisions.”
Calling for radical decarbonization, Gewessler announced that Austria is contributing €250 million to MI’s industrial decarbonization efforts.
“This decade is crucial,” she said. “We need to be smarter and faster,”
A new strain of malware discovered earlier this year with the capacity to disrupt operational technology (OT) systems deserves to be taken seriously by critical infrastructure operators, Robert Lee, CEO of cybersecurity firm Dragos, said Tuesday.
However, conscientious security professionals should already have the tools to defend their organizations from the new threat, he said.
“When we look at that capability [and] what that means for us, it sounds pretty ominous. But the good news is, if you’ve been paying attention over the last decade, you are well prepared,” Lee said at ReliabilityFirst’s Fall Workshop.
He observed that the new malware, which Dragos has dubbed Pipedream, combines the characteristics of a number of previous high-profile cyberattacks, including the Stuxnet intrusion in Iran, the CrashOverride malware in Ukraine, and last year’s hack of a water treatment facility in Oldsmar, Florida.
Dragos CEO Robert Lee addressed the workshop remotely. | ReliabilityFirst
“If you were focusing on, not only indicators, not on patches, not on the exploits, but if you were focusing on the tactics, techniques and procedures of adversaries across those operations, and you were developing robust defenses … Pipedream does not really pose anything that different, because all it really did was perfect each one of those things and combined them together,” Lee said.
Dragos first disclosed the Pipedream malware suite in April. The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency quickly confirmed the discovery separately in a joint statement with the FBI and National Security Agency. (See E-ISAC Warns of Escalating Russian Cyber Threats.) Lee said Tuesday that the security community was “so very fortunate” to have apparently discovered the tool before it was used in any attacks, though he acknowledged that researchers cannot be sure the technology has never been deployed in the wild.
Dragos warned at the time that Pipedream — whose developer they named Chernovite, in keeping with the firm’s policy of not attributing hacks to specific groups — potentially represented a major step forward in sophistication for threat groups. The tool’s modular structure allows for easy modification to attack a wide range of industrial control systems and is “professionally made and easy to use,” far from the “sloppy and defective” tools that attackers have used in the past. (See Dragos Warns Malware Developers Building Skills Fast.)
Looking over the broader cybersecurity landscape, Lee said it has been gratifying to see awareness of cyber concerns spreading among corporate leadership in many critical infrastructure sectors, particularly the electric industry. He pointed out that the Biden administration’s first 100-day “sprint” to enhance cybersecurity across infrastructure was launched specifically among electrical utilities, which Lee said indicated a perception of the power grid as ahead of other sectors on cybersecurity, thanks in part to the robust oversight of FERC, NERC and the regional entities.
“The White House and administration reached out to the electric sector to start with, saying, ‘We perceive you to be the maturest of our industrial sectors. And if we want to challenge … this OT security problem, it’s you who we should partner with first based on all the interactions and good work you’ve done over the years,” Lee said. “‘We’re not going to get inside of your head … we’re going to give you the why and the what, but not the how.’ Which to me is a perfect example of a policy done well.”
NYISO on Thursday presented the Operating Committee with its proposed comments to a FERC rulemaking on interconnection queues, the impacts that above-average summer temperatures had on the grid and the results for four solar units that were part of the 2022-01 Expedited Deliverability Study (EDS).
Comments on NOPR
Thinh Nguyen shared NYISO’s proposed comments to FERC’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (RM22-14), which seeks to address interconnection queue backlogs as more renewables enter service.
NYISO broadly concurred with FERC on what it said would be the “most significant and comprehensive set of proposed revisions” to interconnection procedures since FERC Order 2003, recognizing that changes are critical.
But the ISO is concerned that certain provisions — such as allowing interconnection customers to request an informational study before submitting a request — would lengthen the time to complete an interconnection study, limit its abilities to operate efficiently and hamper FERC’s intentions. Other proposed studies would “run counter” to FERC’s goal of speeding up queue processes because they would require an additional “workload” that could be better allocated toward unclogging the queue itself, Nguyen said.
NYISO also believes that FERC’s proposal to fine transmission owners $500/day for study delays is unlikely to incent faster interconnection processes and, instead, would result in costs being passed down to customers.
Nguyen said that other provisions in the NOPR, such as increased financial commitments, would disincentivize speculative projects while encouraging transmission developers to “work in a faster more efficient manner,” such as by providing them with information around queue decision-making processes or creating rules that enable them to co-locate their projects.
NYISO also plans to support the proposed “first-ready, first-served” construct and allowing projects to be studied at the same time in clusters.
Nguyen said that FERC’s intentions are solid, but the ISO’s comments will continue to emphasize that the commission must allow it operational flexibility in certain instances. Grid operators should be able to have the “flexibility to tailor whatever the proposal is according to their region,” as each has “different market rules,” he said.
Expedited Deliverability Study Results
NYISO released results from the 2022-01 EDS, which examined the feasibility of four solar projects and found that all of them passed the relevant tests.
Four solar EDS 2022-01 projects successfully passed all relevant tests. | NYISO
The projects in the study included:
Highbanks Solar (Zone B)
Clear View Solar (Zone C)
Somers Solar (Zone F)
Stone Mill Solar (Zone F)
The units were studied to determine whether they are deliverable as currently proposed without the need for system delivery updates.
EDS comprises several deliverability tests, such as the Highway Interface Transfer Capability “No Harm” Test, which collectively identify potential need for transmission or interconnection upgrades. Projects seeking to join an EDS must meet several eligibility requirements, such as providing notice to NYISO by the study’s start date, satisfying data submission requirements and, in certain cases, completing a Class Year study.
The 2022-01 EDS is expected to be completed Oct. 13, and the next study will start on the first business day 30 calendar days from the completion of the current one.
Summer Highs Test System
Heat waves, shifting load peaks because of behind-the-meter solar and increased use of utility demand response programs characterized New York’s 2022 summer, according to NYISO Vice President Aaron Markham.
Summer heat waves during July 17-24 and Aug. 3-9 led to peak loads surpassing 30 GW, prompting regulators and political leaders to issue warnings that urged customers to conserve electricity to avoid blackouts.
These warnings lowered peak loads, while regional coordination calls ensured that energy supplies were readily available in case of resource inadequacy, resulting in no emergency actions being taken throughout the summer, Markham said.
Meanwhile, increasing installation of BTM solar is resulting in daily peak loads shifting to later in the afternoon, which has meant that on certain days, peak load has remained constant over several hours. This changing dynamic is something the ISO will “keep an eye on” as BTM solar is “integrated more and more” and starts to encompass a larger proportion of the energy mix, according to Markham.
Despite higher-than-average temperatures and system peak loads, the total load over the summer was lower than projections because of deficits in June and July.
The inaugural report, which forecasts system needs for a 20-year period, predicts an unprecedented need for more than 95 GW of new zero-emission resources by 2040 and 20 GW within the next seven years to meet the goals of the New York Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.
Additionally, the installation rate of these added resources must increase significantly, while dispatchable emission-free resources must be developed and added to the system to reliably serve demand when intermittent generation is unavailable.
The outlook, which will be updated every two years, will get increasingly more detailed after each iteration, according to NYISO.
PITTSBURGH — Sen. Joe Manchin’s appearance at the Global Clean Energy Action Forum on Friday was disrupted by a small group of protesters dressed in bright red T-shirts and grotesque Halloween masks, who stood up and started yelling shortly after he walked on stage.
As the loud and wildly gesturing group protested the Mountain Valley Pipeline and Manchin’s ties to the fossil fuel industry, the West Virginia Democrat thanked them, with an undertone of sarcasm, for being “so kind and so civil.” But once they were herded out of the hall at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, he used his “fireside chat” with Carnegie Mellon University President Farnam Jahanian to promote his views on the U.S. clean energy transition, the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act and his proposed permitting bill now before Congress.
The Obama administration’s support of the solar and wind industries resulted in “a lot of people [being] left behind when, basically, energy [policy] and regulations put a lot of [the] fossil industry out of business,” Manchin said. “That really divided us in this country, and I think you see the results now in the political discourse we have.”
The energy “transition is going to happen. We need it to happen, but it has to happen in an orderly way,” he said. “You cannot get rid of the horsepower that runs our country. You cannot remain a superpower of the world if you don’t have energy independence and energy security.”
Fossil fuel workers must also know that new jobs will take the place of jobs that will be eliminated, Manchin said, pointing to the IRA’s requirement that 40% of its $10 billion in tax credits for new clean energy manufacturing goes to “energy communities” where coal mining or coal-fired generation has closed since 1999.
“A good-paying job, with great working conditions, benefits, solves all problems,” he said.
But a permitting overhaul is crucial to ensuring that the tax credits and incentives in the IRA can “come to fruition,” Manchin said. All those investments are based on “a 10-year window,” he said. “If it takes seven to eight years or longer to permit something, we’re going to miss the window … and you’re going to have money stranded out there.”
“That’s just unacceptable,” he said. “We know what needs to be done. Why can’t we do it?”
The nearly complete Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline ― covering 303 miles from northwest West Virginia to southern Virginia ― has become a critical bargaining chip and flashpoint in the permitting bill Manchin hopes to push through Congress this week as part of a continuing resolution to keep the government funded beyond Sept. 30.
Unveiled Wednesday, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2022 would speed and simplify siting of regional and interregional transmission lines viewed as indispensable to the Biden administration’s electrification and decarbonization goals. For example, it would limit federal environmental reviews to two years, and require all other federal permits be issued within six months of a completed environmental review. (See Manchin Details Proposal to Streamline Approval of Energy Projects.)
But it would also mandate federal authorization for the completion of Mountain Valley. Due to opposition from environmental and community groups, the project has been built in segments and repeatedly delayed. According to the project website, it is now nearly 94% complete.
With opposition from Republicans and Democrats, Manchin acknowledged that getting the permitting bill through Congress “is going to take an awful lot of heavy lifting right here in the next two or three days.
“But everyone wins from this,” he said. “It’s not about one person, it should not be about one person. It should be about, ‘Is this good for our country? Does it basically show us as a leader of the world that we can basically invest in technologies and mature them quicker?’”
Shah and Straubel
While not an official UN event, the three-day GCEAF was widely seen as a launching pad for new national and international commitments and actions that will be brought forward at the 27th UN Climate Conference of the Parties (COP 27) set for Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, in November.
Governments’ role in accelerating the commercialization and scaling of new clean technologies was a major theme at event, which was hosted by the Department of Energy.
With billions in funding from the IRA and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, DOE has become a major player in promoting public-private partnerships ― a topic explored in a second fireside chat on Friday, between Jigar Shah, director of DOE’s Loan Program Office (LPO), and JB Straubel, CEO of lithium battery recycler Redwood Materials.
“This partnership between high-growth companies, startup companies, and the government can work best when the government is leaning forward a little bit further, taking a little bit more of a risk-reward viewpoint similar to an investor in some ways,” said Straubel, who also co-founded Tesla and served as its chief technology officer. Such public-private partnerships can “help catalyze a lot more private investment in those companies and … perhaps a bit of disruption in the bigger industries in which the startups or growth companies operate.”
But companies that accept federal funds — like Tesla, which received and paid back a $465 million low-interest loan from the LPO — may also face a stigma, Shah said, even though the company “had to raise a lot of private money before it got to profitability.”
Straubel agreed, noting that Redwood has been “careful as we find other ways to partner with different entities in the government, that we also kind of tiptoe through that [stigma] and don’t have an industry that becomes too dependent on incentives, real or perceived.
“I think that’s something that a lot of high-growth companies and startups have to be mindful of because if it goes too far, it can actually shun private capital. I think the goal here is to incentivize private capital. People don’t want to invest in an industry that is not really stable on its own merits. The government should really be there to catalyze, to kind of instigate a change but not be there to prop up something in an ongoing fashion.”
Hitting the right balance means executives at clean tech startups need to talk more with agencies like the LPO, Shah said. “This money is going to go a direction that you don’t want it to go unless you engage directly and give the government feedback,” he said. “They’re not going to get it right unless you tell them what you need to be able to catalyze your business.”
A key challenge for companies like Redwood, now in the process of building a domestic clean energy supply chain, is developing a new industry from the ground up, Straubel said.
“You have to train the workforce; you have to train the construction workers. We have to import the equipment often,” he said “It’s a pretty heavy lift to do this the first time around. But the benefit is substantial, in terms of cost, in terms of emissions [reductions],” he said.
Podesta
With the passage of the IRA — which was hailed by international leaders at the GCEAF — President Biden was able to lure John Podesta back to the White House as senior adviser for green innovation and to implement the new law and its $369 billion in clean energy funding. A veteran of both the Clinton and Obama administrations, Podesta said he “couldn’t resist” the opportunity to help roll out the IRA.
“It’s a huge deal,” Podesta said in GCEAF’s final fireside chat, with Vanessa Chan, director of DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions. The law “gives the president the tools to really help shape an economy that, at the end of the day, is going to be built by the private sector,” he said. “The bulk of the bill is aimed at providing tax-level support for those new clean technologies.”
Echoing Manchin, Podesta stressed the importance of the law’s provisions for ensuring clean energy benefits and jobs get to low-income, disadvantaged and fossil fuel communities. A key challenge there, he said, is that “the communities that have the fewest resources to access federal programs are the ones that are being undermined by legacy pollution.”
Similarly, formula funding programs — where a certain amount of federal funding is allocated to a state — “never get down to the people who need the help the most,” he said. IRA funding for technical support should improve access for these communities, he said.
Podesta also sees the IRA having global impacts, especially in making clean energy technologies available and affordable for emerging economies in Asia and Africa, another major theme at the conference.
“If we develop a green hydrogen economy in the United States, that’s not going to just stay in the United States,” he said. “The United States government also has, I think, an obligation to help support the development of clean energy around the world. … We have to be attentive to smart policies to let developing countries access those technologies and use those technologies.”
AUSTIN, Texas — Pat Wood, former chair of both FERC and Texas’ Public Utility Commission, put his street cred to the test Saturday during one of The Texas Tribune Festival’s more non-political panel discussions.
Jumping at the chance to advise Texas lawmakers on what they should do with the state’s proposed market changes, Wood referenced requests by legislators during recent testimony by ERCOT and PUC representatives that they be given a chance to weigh in on the market design before the grid operator begins to implement it. (See Texas Lawmakers to Vet ERCOT Market Redesign.)
“That disturbed me the most,” Wood said. “If anybody out here walks away with any message, it’s that we’ve got to get that investment signal out now. If we’ve got to wait a year … we’ve kicked that can a year or two down the road. It was my hope that the PUC would lock and load here by Christmas.”
Wood said that when Texas deregulated the ERCOT market in 1999, “people were already putting steel in the ground” when the legislation became law, resulting in some 30 GW of natural gas-fired facilities being built.
“It was clear from that from [then-Gov. George W. Bush’s] signature [on the bill] that this is the law of the land, and we’ve got this open market and the old utility inefficient power plants are going to be shut down … and everybody came in. So that investment signal is just absolutely important.”
“I think they need to focus on the incentives that bring things to the market,” said Caitlin Smith of energy storage-provider Jupiter Power, who was previously an attorney with ERCOT’s Independent Market Monitor.
“It’s a competitive market, right? It’s a marketplace,” Smith said. “We’ll have wind, solar, bitcoin mining, all of that. I think it’s much better to let the market incentivize that than to legislate that kind of like anything else. I think you really want the input of the people investing in ERCOT because we rely on those investment signals to provide reliability. So you don’t want to put something too prescriptive. You need to encourage the correct incentives for the energy-only market.”
ERCOT’s energy-only market was designed by the industry to send pricing signals to attract new generation; the theory being that $9,000/MWh LMPs during times of scarcity — since reduced to $5,000/MWh by the PUC — would prompt new builds. It has, but the resources have mostly been renewables that are much cheaper to build than thermal generators.
“We believe that we need changes to [the market], but not because the market is didn’t deliver,” said Vistra CEO Jim Burke, the panel’s third member. “It’s because the world is changing, the asset base is changing, and the incentives in the markets are changing, and we’re still using a design that really is from over 20 years ago.”
“We had the ability to be settlers. The saying goes the pioneers got shot, the settlers got the land,” Wood said. He explained the market’s designers used the best practices from other deregulated markets around the world, including Chile, South Australia, England and Pennsylvania.
“So we got to kind of pick and choose with the resources we’ve been blessed with from the good Lord, with sun and wind. With innovation, we kind of unlocked the market structure we embraced here 25 years ago,” Wood said. “The future of the world grid will be decided right here because of the increase of renewables, their integration, the large customer base. Everything you’ve got is a microcosm of the global power system. I think our unique status as an independent grid gave us the ability to move faster and to move in a more creative way.”
Wood acknowledged the February 2021 winter storm was a “major setback” for ERCOT. He used another of his endless supply of analogies by saying boxers can get knocked out “but those good boxers get back in the ring and show people how to win again.”
Referencing the 88th Texas Legislature that will take over Austin in January, Wood said lawmakers “need to remember what I just said, which is Texas will be the innovator if we stay out of the way and let [the competitive market] make the changes.”
“It’s a work in progress. I don’t believe we’ve decided how we’re going to fix it or if it’s needed to be fixed,” Smith said, noting that price spikes have been addressed, but not the details around how costs are allocated. The recent surge in gas prices, which fuels most of the ERCOT generating fleet, has made it more difficult to reduce costs on the supply side.
All the while, demand continues to grow within Texas as transplants and businesses continue to settle in the state. However, reducing customer demand is not high on the list of market solutions.
Thus, the panel’s title: “Power Struggle. No, seriously: Is the grid fixed?”
“The cost of electricity, in theory, is based on the value to the customer, so you can get that sort of demand-side response,” Smith said. “There are certain things you can do just on the electricity side. I think we’re trying to get to a market solution that would get us a combination of that customer response and the supply response.”
Told by moderator Russell Gold that her comments were scaring him about ERCOT’s ability to handle another winter storm, Smith replied that it was not her intention to frighten anyone.
“We’re in sort of the interim right now,” she said. “We have taken a lot of operational steps with weatherization, gas supply, coordination [with the gas industry], but can we sustain those without a market change or going back to kind of a more energy-only market to make sure that those generators can pay for those operational steps?”
Appearing solo on a separate panel Friday, ERCOT interim CEO Brad Jones reflected on his tenure with the grid operator, which began shortly after the 2021 winter storm and is now in its last week. A 90-day temporary assignment that was extended a year ends this week, when Pablo Vegas takes over as permanent CEO on Saturday.
Vegas replaces Bill Magness, who was fired by the Board of Directors after the grid nearly collapsed during the 2021 storm. (See ERCOT Board Chooses Jones as Interim CEO.)
“So why did you want this job?” Jones was asked as the room erupted in laughter.
“I didn’t expect much laughter out of that,” responded Jones, who previously served as ERCOT’s COO before becoming NYISO’s CEO. “To be quite honest, I love Texas and I really do love ERCOT and what [its] mission is. There was an opportunity to step in and carry them through to when it was a more stable environment … to get them to winter.”
He said he was glad he was asked to stay through the summer as well “because it was such a rough summer.” Record heat and demand led to several scares during the summer, but the grid held up thanks to voluntary conservation measures and a conservative operations posture that left 5 GW of capacity in reserve.
As Jones approaches the moment when he will shed his “interim CEO” title, he said the word “interim” has become very important to him.
“My team calls it my superpower because it really has been good to say, ‘No,’” he said. “There’s some things we just simply will not do. …
“Now’s a great time to hand off to the next person,” Jones said. “My goal was three-fold. First, to fix the things that needed to be fixed that I knew needed to be fixed. And part of the reason why I knew it is because I was sitting on my couch when it happened, and I was getting calls from everybody that I’d known for the last 30 years, telling me everything that needs to be done, and I started writing it down. Everybody had a five- or six-point list and by the end of it, I had 60 points.”
Jones’ second goal was to prepare ERCOT for the future. That entails adding dispatchable generation for “when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.” He said ERCOT’s massive number of renewable resources have been highly effective in bringing down energy costs, but “we have to solve both problems for both benefits to work for us.”
Rebuilding trust in ERCOT is Jones’ third and final goal.
“Trust is not that hard to build at the beginning, but if you’ve lost trust, it is extremely hard to rebuild,” he said, noting no amount of listening tours he has conducted or public appearances will regain the public’s confidence overnight in ERCOT.
“It’s not a year, it’s not five years, maybe it’s 10 years — but doing the right thing over and over and standing up for reliability. Doing those functions that will make sure that we keep the lights on for all Texans,” he said.
Jones agreed he started from scratch, but he has made inroads. “Trust me,” he joked, “everyone knows who ERCOT is today.”
“We still have a lot of work to do there,” he said.
