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November 14, 2024

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Vermont Explores Upstream, Lifecycle Emissions as Supplement to GHG Accounting

The Vermont Climate Council stopped short this week of adopting recommendations for the greenhouse gas accounting to be used for measuring emissions from the mitigation strategies in the state’s pending Climate Action Plan.

Council members want clarity on what the recommendations that stemmed from a review of the state’s existing GHG accounting would mean for how emissions from potential strategies will be analyzed. They did, however, agree to identify a way for Vermont to begin measuring either upstream or lifecycle emissions of in-state energy use and related emissions out of state.

The Vermont 2020 Global Warming Solutions Act determined that measuring lifecycle emissions is important, including emissions that occur outside the boundaries of the state.

Vermont does not currently measure lifecycle or upstream emissions, according to Jared Duval, council member and executive director of the Energy Action Network. And there are no “off-the-shelf” solutions for doing that, he said during the council’s meeting on Tuesday. The council decided to develop a request for information (RFI) on how to conduct those analyses so it can support the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) in implementing them.

GHG Inventory Review

The council’s Science and Data Subcommittee worked with consulting firm Energy Futures Group (EFG) over the summer to review Vermont’s current GHG inventory and accounting methods and identify potential ways to enhance or modify them.

In its Aug. 10 report, EFG determined that the current inventory, which is based on gross in-state emissions for seven sectors, is suitable for developing an actionable climate plan. They also made several initial recommendations that the subcommittee asked the council to adopt.

While the report said the current inventory and methods should be maintained, it also identified opportunities to update them, including how the state tracks and reports on net emissions. It also recommended including supplemental information and sensitivity analyses in the existing inventory.

That information should include, for example, biogenic GHG emissions and the global warming potential of GHGs, according to Duval.

Council members did not object to any specific recommendations of the report but hesitated to adopt them without details on accounting for agriculture sector emissions in development by the Agriculture and Ecosystems Subcommittee.

Vermont’s current inventory, according to the report, estimates agriculture emissions based on livestock census data. EFG, however, said it’s better to use a land-based accounting system that addresses land management practices that reduce emissions and assesses opportunities for sequestration from agriculture and forests.

The Ag Subcommittee is working with the University of Vermont to understand the benefits of using that land-based system for the agriculture sector. The council held off adopting the full recommendations of the consultants’ report until the subcommittee can finalize its plan regarding the land-based system.

Upstream, Lifecycle Emissions

The report recommended that Vermont apply upstream emissions estimates as supplemental sensitivities to the current inventory method. An upstream emissions analysis, the report said, looks at all direct emissions of energy use without any geographic considerations. It would, therefore, account for the end use of natural gas and emissions from its production.

Lifecycle emissions, on the other hand, look at a broad set of emissions associated with energy, such as the energy used to manufacture a wind turbine and for transportation during project construction. Complete lifecycle inventories are “complex” the report said, and if Vermont chooses to adopt them, they could divert resources from other practical analyses.

The Science Subcommittee chose to recommend that the council move forward with the RFI to learn more about both accounting methods. For the methods to be useful, Duval said, they need to be updatable, flexible and accessible by the ANR.

The methods “will have to be stewarded and updated over time, not just into the future, but we also want to be able to compare in previous years and have baseline years to see how things have changed,” he said.

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Pollinator Friendly Solar Farms May Increase Crop Yields

Saving the bees may not be the focus of many utility-scale solar developers. But a group of Minnesota ecologists say developers should embrace “pollinator-friendly” projects to address the concerns of farmers who may regard solar panels as an invasive technology rather than a value-added crop.

Planting regional wildflowers and native grasses rather than turf grass under solar panels adds carbon to the soil, they say, and can feed bees established on the perimeter of a solar farm. In addition to producing a honey crop, the bees also pollinate nearby crop fields, increasing production, according to early research results. 

The grasses can also serve as forage for periodic sheep grazing that eliminates the need for mowing, significantly reducing the risk of grass fires and eliminating the chance of damage to solar arrays by mowing equipment, advocates say. And the sheep’s hooves prepare the land for new growth, unlike mowing.

Researchers say the practice also reduces erosion and improves groundwater recharge. Small power generation increases have been seen as well, at least in some climates.

The novel approach to solar began in 2010 as an experiment at a National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado. Today, agrivoltaics — or “low impact solar” because it usually does not involve stripping off the topsoil during construction — is part of a strategy to make solar more amenable to farmers considering leasing their land.

The Minnesota Agricultural Utilization Research Institute (AURI), a nonprofit created by the state legislature, took a look at the practice in a recent webinar focusing both on the impact of sheep grazing and the creation of what could be a new agricultural business: solar honey. AURI’s mission is “to foster long-term economic benefit for Minnesota through value-added agricultural products.”   

Solar ‘Another Specialty Crop’

Rob Davis, Connexus Energy | Rob Davis Rob Davis, founder of the Center for Pollinators in Energy at Fresh Energy, an independent nonprofit organization based in St. Paul, introduced the panelists and provided context for Minnesota’s foray into pollinator politics. 

“Solar is really just another specialty crop, [and] even by the most ambitious planning and forecasting, [the U.S. will have] something like 9 million acres of solar by 2050. We have 90 million acres of corn in the United States today. Solar is never going to supplant all the corn; never going to supplant all the soybeans. But it will always have an opportunity to be a kind of a nice crop for value-added producers,” said Davis, now spokesman for cooperative Connexus Energy. “The experts we have assembled today each have a different perspective on what is feasible and practical and what benefits their business [and] how they’re embracing these new landscapes.”

Jake Janski, senior ecologist at MNL, a private ecological services company about 30 miles northwest of Minneapolis, said the company incorporated grazing services into its ecosystem management services about five years ago.

“The most successful application that we have found for our grazing program is the use of sheep on these pollinator friendly solar sites,” he said. “We’re working with eight different solar companies on their individual portfolios to implement our grazing program.

Jake Janski, MNL  | MNL“We’re also supporting … local sheep producers around the state that we work with as collaborators to provide access to the forage on our grazing sites while applying our vegetation management standards to enhance the pollinator habitat,” Janski explained during the webinar.

Dustin Vanasse, founder and CEO of Minneapolis-based Bare Honey, has grown the business thanks to pollinator-friendly solar.  

“Coming into 2022, we will have almost 100% of our hives on solar. It’s taken us kind of baby steps to work our way in. We also work with another network of beekeepers and subcontract for their placement of hives on solar farms. This is how we’re developing our expansion,” he said.  In addition to offering honey to consumers, the company sells it to food manufacturers in “40-lb. buckets or 55-gallon drums.” 

Minn. Legislative Action

After a 2014 experiment with wildflowers by Minnesota researchers, the state legislature approved a bill in 2016 encouraging the planting of “flowering meadows” in and around solar developments to combat the alarming decline of honeybee populations, explained Davis.   

The legislation, based on initial efforts of Fresh Energy, Audubon Minnesota, and the Minnesota Corn Growers, led to the development of a standard for vegetation that the PUC can now require on solar sites.

Dustin Vanasse, Bare Honey | Bare HoneyThe Minnesota Public Utilities Commission permits solar projects larger than 50 MW, and if the land in question is agricultural, the commission, with a recommendation from the state Department of Natural Resources, can require solar developers to build a pollinator friendly system, Davis said in an interview. “It’s not a mandate; it’s a case-by-case requirement,” he said, based on an evaluation of the land in question. 

Regulators working with advocates developed a “pollinator habitat assessment” to determine just how pollinator friendly a proposed solar development will be.

The new standards and underlying research have led to a kind of symbiotic relationship between solar technology and agriculture. The payoff is that crops as well as wildflowers and native grasses are more vigorous, the soil less damaged and solar systems less expensive to maintain, advocates say.

Other States

Minnesota’s model has since been adopted by Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, New York, South Carolina and Vermont, according to the Clean Energy State Alliance. Projects in some states have found that building the solar arrays taller, which adds cost to the project, creates a cooler environment and increased production of vegetable crops that do not need full sunlight and benefit from the cooler temperatures and soil that is not dried out by the direct sun.  

The movement has also caught the attention of the Department of Energy, which has created a program, Innovative Site Preparation and Impact Reductions on the Environment (InSPIRE), to help the solar industry, universities and state organizations conduct research. InSPIRE is involved in more than a dozen states, including Minnesota. 

Davis said NREL is doing a study in Minnesota comparing the power output at the inverter level on solar arrays located on vegetated sites versus bare sites. 

The Yale Center for Business issued a preliminary report in 2019 noting that the addition of perennial grasses and flowers to solar fields appeared to create a cooler micro climate, resulting in increased electrical generation from the solar array. The study also noted that the grasses reduced soil erosion and helped with groundwater recharge. 

The University of Arizona has also been researching the impact of food crops under and around solar arrays and has calculated the increase in power generation as well as an increase in soil moisture and plant production.  

“Across the core growing season, PV panels in an agrivoltaic system were about 8.9 degrees C cooler (16 degrees F) in daylight hours,” researcher Greg Barron-Gafford, a professor at the university’s School of Geography, in Tucson, said in an email. “This reduction in temperature can lead to an increase in system performance. Using the system advisor model (SAM) for a traditional and a co-location PV system in Tucson, we calculated that temperature reductions documented here in the growing months of May–July from the colocation system led to a 3% increase in generation over those months, and a 1% increase in generation annually.”

Davis urged farmers who have been approached by solar developers to ask for “regenerative practices” such as pollinator friendly flowers or grazing grasses when solar developers approach them. “Put it in the contract,” he said.

“This idea of pollinator friendly solar is not a restoration of some pre-colonial condition. It’s accepting that solar is happening and is looking for ways to provide meaningful benefits to the soil, to the pollinators and to the ecosystems within that managed context.”

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Illinois Senate Passes Landmark Energy Transition Act

By a razor-thin margin the Illinois Senate approved landmark legislation Monday putting the state on a 30-year path to 100% carbon-free electric generation and bailing out two troubled nuclear power plants.

Nearly three years in the making, the controversial Energy Transition Act now goes to Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who said last week that he would sign the nearly 1,000-page bill if lawmakers could get it to his desk.

The Illinois House of Representatives amended and passed an earlier version of the bill on Sept. 9 in an 83-33 vote following angry opposition from Republican members, some of whom noted that the Democrats had ignored their concerns voiced during committee hearings. (See Illinois House Passes Energy Transition Act.)

The Senate approved the legislation 37-17, just one vote more than the two-thirds majority required. The vote came after a string of bitter comments from Republican members, many of them from downstate, who saw the legislation as orientated toward Greater Chicago, likely to seriously damage their communities’ economies and leading to increased electric bills statewide.

During the debate before the vote, GOP members demanded to know exactly how large the increases in monthly electric bills would be, a question that was not easily answered because state legislative analysts had not yet completed calculations. Estimates ranged from a few dollars to $18 for residential bills. Rates for commercial and industrial customers are expected to be much higher, prompting the Illinois Manufacturers Association last week to testify against the bill.

The passage might have been further delayed had Chicago-based Exelon (NASDAQ:EXC) not announced that it would shut and decommission one of its two reactors on Monday at the Byron nuclear plant without subsidies authorized in the legislation.

Exelon had shut Unit 1 of Byron overnight for scheduled refueling, but the company announced weeks ago that it would decommission rather than refuel the reactor if the state had not made a decision on a nuclear subsidy included in the bill — nearly $700 million over the next six years. Exelon announced in August that it would close both Byron and Dresden plants without a state or federal subsidy. Each plant has two reactors. (See Exelon CEO: Looming Nuclear Plant Closures will be ‘Irreversible’.)

The bill sets shutdown targets for all coal and gas power plants in the state over the coming decades, making the nuclear plants key players in a carbon-free future. Exelon operates six nuclear plants in Illinois, five of which include two reactors.

The legislation requires all investor-owned baseload coal-fired power plants and remaining oil peaker turbines to shut down by 2030. The municipally owned Prairie State coal plant, with customers in six states, must reduce its emissions by 45% by 2035 through carbon capture and sequestration and must shut down by 2045, unless it can curtail all of its carbon dioxide emissions. City Water, Light and Power, the Springfield municipal power operation, which heats and lights the State House, will face the same shutdown rule.

Gas turbine plants, even those now under construction, must also close by 2045 under the terms of the bill, although the state would have an option to allow continued operation if they are critically needed: in other words, if the anticipated growth in renewable energy — from 7% currently to 100% by 2045 — cannot be achieved.

The bill also allocates hundred of millions of dollars to expand solar installations, both on a community solar level and homeowner rooftop solar. Electric vehicle purchase rebates of $4,000 are also in the legislation, but only in certain counties where local governments will collect to finance the rebates.

Pritzker, labor supporting the continued operation of the nuclear plants, environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council, and a number of renewable energy trade groups coalesced over the past year to push for the bill.

In a statement issued Monday afternoon, Pritzker said the passage is “historic.”

“Today, with the Senate passage of SB 2408, the state of Illinois is making history by setting aggressive standards for a 100% clean energy future. After years of debate and discussion, science has prevailed, and we are charting a new future that works to mitigate the impacts of climate change here in Illinois.”

A statement from the Path to 100 Coalition of renewable energy advocates said the passage of the bill “puts Illinois at the forefront of the fight against climate change all while creating tens of thousands of jobs, expanding diversity in the renewable energy industry and providing more than $1 billion in electricity bill savings for consumers.”

“Opening the Illinois market is critical to the growth of energy sources that will clean the air, create jobs and jumpstart the state’s economy,” asserted Abigail Ross Hopper, CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association. “Illinois is now a national leader in crafting renewable energy solutions.”

Advanced Energy Economy called the bill “the most significant climate and clean energy legislation” in the history of the state.

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Trump-era FERC Chair Reflects on Tenure

Neil Chatterjee’s four years at FERC, most of them at the helm, transformed him from playing the partisan game of thrones to advocating for a price on carbon as a way to solve the problem of climate change.

A Republican who worked as an adviser to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) prior to being appointed to FERC by President Donald Trump, Chatterjee maintains he has always thought climate change is a serious problem. But in recent interviews about his time at the commission — including one with RTO Insider last week, he has repeatedly expressed regret about his first stint as chair.

Chatterjee’s term ended June 30, and he resigned Aug. 30 to join law firm Hogan Lovells. President Biden last week announced he intends to nominate D.C. Public Service Commission Chair Willie Phillips to be his successor. (See Biden to Nominate Phillips to FERC.) Chatterjee spoke to RTO Insider on Sept. 7, prior to Biden’s announcement.

“It took me a while to grow into the job,” Chatterjee said. “In my initial days with the commission, I really struggled to make the transition from partisan legislative aide to independent regulator.” That was most publicly visible, he said, when he “admittedly mishandled” a proposal from Energy Secretary Rick Perry in late 2017 to order RTOs and ISOs to compensate generators for their on-site fuel costs. At the time, Chatterjee praised Perry’s “bold leadership” and was supportive of the proposal, as it would have aided struggling coal communities in his native Kentucky.

“That was a serious issue that I injected a political element into; that was a mistake,” he said last week. “I think I got thrown into the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim. [So] I actually think I grew from that experience.”

After former FERC Chair Kevin McIntyre relinquished his leadership role for health reasons in 2018, Chatterjee said it was McIntyre who was instrumental in that growth. With McIntyre as chair and a full complement of five commissioners, Perry’s proposal was unanimously rejected. Reappointed chair after McIntyre resigned, Chatterjee told reporters that McIntyre “could not be more strenuous in saying that politics could not be allowed to interfere with the work of the commission.” (See Returning Chair Pledges to Protect FERC’s Independence.)

After the experience of the Perry proposal and having learned from McIntyre’s leadership, Chatterjee said he became “a more focused regulator [with] a team around me that would really give me the soundest advice.” He began to increasingly speak out about market-based solutions to climate change, culminating in a policy statement in late 2020 inviting states to introduce carbon pricing in RTOs. (See FERC: Send Us Your Carbon Pricing Plans.)

That move ultimately cost him the chair. Shortly after the Washington Examiner published an article titled “Trump appointee becomes leading climate problem solver,” Trump fired Chatterjee and promoted Commissioner James Danly, who served in the top job until Biden took office and appointed Commissioner Richard Glick. According to Chatterjee, his post-chair tenure “was some of the most fun that I had at the commission. … I no longer had the burdens of the chairmanship to contend with, but I was invested in making sure there was a successful transition to Chairman Glick.”

Carbon Price Advocate

Along with Hogan Lovells, where he will advise clients on energy markets, Chatterjee also joined The Climate Leadership Council and its lobbying unit, Americans for Carbon Dividends. According to the organization, “Chatterjee will draw on his deep experience to help the council refine the details of its comprehensive policy initiative to price carbon emissions and return the revenues to all Americans.”

“I’ve seen firsthand the difficulty of trying to navigate a patchwork of state policies while maintaining market efficiencies,” he said. “I’ve really come to the conclusion that a price on carbon is the most effective way to drive down emissions and bridge this gap between” state policies and markets.

It’s safe to say many economists would agree with him, but the idea has not gained traction in Congress. Chatterjee said he hopes to change that.

“Part of it is looking at what are the alternative options are,” he said. “When compared to alternative solutions that are more onerous and may lead to greater threats to reliability and may not be efficient from a market standpoint, I think you may see some more interest” in a carbon price.

He’s also “cautiously optimistic that we’re pretty close to seeing an RTO or an ISO come to FERC” with a carbon pricing proposal. If approved, “I am of the belief that such an approach would lead to market efficiencies and a reduction in carbon [emissions]. So it’s possible that having that kind of a lab experiment in an RTO or ISO, if it proves to be successful … that could be the type of thing that helps build public support; we could point to an example. … Some have deemed that a ‘baby step.’ … Let’s take the baby step and see what happens.”

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NYISO Updates BSM Revision Proposal

NYISO on Thursday presented stakeholders an updated proposal to revise its buyer-side mitigation (BSM) rules, providing new emphasis on addressing capacity accreditation quickly and getting an objective assessment of the proposal’s market investment risk.

The ISO has asked its Market Monitor, Potomac Economics, to think through the various market issues and investment risks related to the plan, Michael DeSocio, NYISO director of market design, told the Installed Capacity (ICAP) Market Issues Working Group.

DeSocio highlighted Analysis Group’s study to support the BSM reforms proposal, saying “the results of that analysis will be important to inform whether or not the capacity market remains sufficient and effective and can be considered just and reasonable.”

NYISO last month introduced the study, which will model 10-year capacity supply and demand curves and identify the resulting market outcomes to support BSM rule revisions. Results will likely be presented later this month, DeSocio said. (See NYISO Unveils Draft BSM Study.)

Policy Resource Exclusion

New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) requires the state to procure large amounts of renewable energy to get to zero-emission electricity by 2040; the introduction of so much new generation will challenge transmission and capacity market planners.

In July, the ISO presented a proposal to exempt most new renewable installed capacity (ICAP) resources from BSM evaluation. (See NYISO Proposes Sweeping BSM Exemptions.)

New resources that are required to satisfy the goals specified in the CLCPA will not be subject to review by the ISO under the BSM rules, or otherwise subject to an offer floor. Exempted resources include, but are not limited to wind, solar, storage, hydroelectric technologies (including tidal, ocean and wave generation), geothermal, fuel cells that do not use fossil fuels, and demand response (participating as a special case resource or distributed energy resource).

The proposal represents a two-pronged approach that aims to eliminate BSM risk for CLCPA resources and simplify the currently complex and administratively burdensome BSM process, DeSocio said.

The renewable exemption in its current form would be eliminated, while other existing exemptions, such as competitive entry and self-supply, would remain available to qualifying resources. The current process involving the Part A and Part B offer floor exemption tests would still be performed for resources subject to BSM.

“The set of resources is not fully known that will be meeting those [CLCPA] goals, or at least that seems to be the approach being taken by the state,” DeSocio said. “To the extent that the law is clear about these particular technologies, we’ve tried to accommodate that here.”

In response to a stakeholder question about whether hybrid resources would be exempt from BSM review, DeSocio said NYISO would consider them on a case-by-case basis because a hybrid is a mixture of resource technologies. For example, a co-located storage resource comprised of storage plus either solar or wind would be excluded from BSM review because all three technologies are included in the list.

“We don’t call it out here for two reasons: first, because we don’t have those rules yet, and second, because we’ve understood the ask from stakeholders for the new hybrid model is to also allow accommodation of fossil resources with storage and other resources. So we don’t think we can just make a blanket statement that all hybrid resources would be excluded,” DeSocio said.

Prong Two

The plan’s second prong would include additional resource types that satisfy CLCPA, such as technologies New York has identified as supporting state goals or resources that have contracted with NYSERDA to advance those goals.

The topic touches on the various tiers of renewable energy credits and whether a resource is eligible to receive a contract, DeSocio said.

“In other words, it would qualify to receive a contract through maybe one of the tiers or some other program supporting CLCPA that might be run by New York state, whether NYSERDA or some other agency, but it’s been mainly NYSERDA executing those contracts,” DeSocio said.

Because there could be potential timing issues, the ISO will be looking for the resource to self-certify and provide the ISO evidence that it qualifies under one of the categories. For example, unforced capacity deliverability rights that can demonstrate eligibility for Tier IV RECs would be included under this provision, he said.

One stakeholder said he was curious why the ISO chose to go down the path of painstakingly listing technologies as opposed to a fundamental look at whether the resource is a buyer who can exercise market power. He also wondered whether there are any legal or other downsides to the ISO’s approach.

“We chose this path to provide as much clarity to stakeholders as possible about what it means,” DeSocio said. “The approach that we laid out here we think gives us the greatest chance of surviving challenge either at FERC or in the courts.”

The ISO plans to use the remaining September stakeholder working groups to discuss feedback from Thursdays’ meeting, review examples of the probability distribution Delta Method by consultancy E3, hear the report on capacity market investment risk by Potomac Economics, and discuss possible tariff revisions connected with capacity accreditation, he said.

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Think Tank Stresses Reliability in Energy Policy Principles

A new report from think tank OurEnergyPolicy (OEP) identifies reliability as a key priority for legislators, regulators and other stakeholders working to decarbonize the North American bulk power system and prepare for a future of stresses to the grid brought on by climate change.

The Guiding Principles for Sound Energy Policy report, released on Tuesday, is the product of multiple stakeholder meetings hosted by OEP earlier this year; the organization decided to publish the paper to “highlight points of consensus and various points of view by participants of these discussions.”

OEP’s release includes seven guiding principles aimed at policymakers working on the transition to a carbon-free BPS, written to be broad rather than “an exhaustive list of principles [that] would be dilutive and inconsistent with the core objective of this initiative.” Those chosen for inclusion are considered “fundamental [values] … of elemental importance … that should be prioritized in all energy policies.”

Reliability ‘Cannot Be Compromised’

OEP’s list of principles starts with reliability, which the organization says, “cannot be compromised.” Citing the winter storms that racked Texas in February, leaving thousands without power for days and bringing the Texas grid close to collapse, the paper recommends that grid planners make the BPS “reliable and resilient enough” to withstand severe weather and cyberattacks, while also maintaining the ability to recover when disaster does occur.

“The public expects electricity with a flip of a light switch. The energy system must have enough generation capacity, transmission capability and operational flexibility to keep up with the pace of consumer demand and to prepare us for every manner of deliberate and natural threats,” OEP says.

Also included in the list — which OEP emphasized was not ranked in any particular order — were principles such as affordability, equity and inclusion, decarbonization, respect for science, integrated policy and a technology-neutral approach.

By affordability, the report means that all Americans must be able to access the energy they need to participate in society, regardless of their income or economic status. Noting that American consumers “want to know they have the financial means to afford” necessities including electricity, OEP suggests policymakers explore options for keeping energy affordable, such as “market-based approaches to lower technology costs [and] government approaches that can assist lower-income Americans.”

Equity and inclusion refers to identifying communities likely to suffer more negative impacts from climate change and the clean energy transition, and granting those communities a voice in the debate over how to address those impacts. Making the process more inclusive can also help policymakers with the integrated policy principle, which refers to “understanding that our energy systems are interconnected and achieving one goal may affect our ability to achieve others.”

For example, a mandate to convert a vehicle fleet from fossil fuels to electric engines must take into account the carbon impact of the resource used to generate the vehicles’ electricity. Inviting a wide range of voices can help policymakers spot the full implications of their proposals.

The last two principles — respecting sound science and technology neutrality — are also complementary. The first means that policies should “be evidence-based and in harmony with the best scientific studies and data,” while the second stresses that policymakers “avoid picking technology ‘winners and losers’ in the energy sector” by allowing “ideas and technological innovation to compete in a free market.”

“Science and policy must work in tandem to allow for the best possible outcomes, and science-based policy must be rigorously evaluated and held to a high standard,” the report says.

Lawmakers Urge Federal Clean Energy Support

Among those who participated in this year’s meetings were Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Congressman Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), both of whom contributed their own list of guiding principles for members of Congress and stakeholders that were included in OEP’s report.

Murkowski recommended that policymakers:

      • focus on the future, but make sure goals are achievable;
      • keep the attributes of energy in mind;
      • focus on bipartisanship;
      • follow the regular order process; and
      • be ready to make reasonable compromises.

Tonko’s recommendations were more specific; among his nine enumerated principles were to “set scientific targets for greenhouse gas neutrality by mid-century” and to “deliver a just and equitable transition” by investing in communities that face the greatest risk of damage from pollution and climate change, while helping workers and communities that depend on traditional energy industries find new methods of support.

In addition, Tonko urged that federal policy be made to complement work already done by state and local governments, businesses and individuals, while not “penalizing entities that have taken early action.”

“Federal climate action must create steady, credible, and politically durable policies, send strong investment signals, and deliver long-term certainty to allow for proper planning and implementation while minimizing compliance costs,” Tonko said.

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Wash. Ferries Making Move to Hybrid Motors

Washington State Ferries expects to start a multi-year contract to convert from solely diesel fuel engines to hybrid fuel-battery propulsion in October 2022.

The timing of the move depends on how fast the American Bureau of Shipping and U.S Coast Guard approve the redesigned propulsion system for the state’s three largest ferries, and on how long the bidding process and contract negations take.

Washington’s state ferry system — the largest in the U.S. — has 10 vessels that crisscross Puget Sound.

While Washington State Ferries won’t be the first government ferry system to convert to a hybrid fuel-battery operation, it will be the largest in both the size and number of boats. The first three vessels to be converted are the state’s largest, capable of holding 202 vehicles each. They handle two 8.6-mile routes between Seattle on the east side of the sound and Bainbridge Island on the west side, and a third five-mile route between Edmonds on the east side and Kingston on the west.

Entering service in 2019, the nation’s first government-run all-electric ferry can handle 15 cars and crosses the Alabama River between Gee’s Bend and Camden, Alabama.

The first government-owned diesel-electric hybrid ferry is expected to enter service in 2022. It will be able to carry 70 vehicles 2.7 miles between Galveston Island and the Bolivar Peninsula in Texas.

Hybrid fuel-electric ferries have been operating in Norway and northern Europe for years. Washington plans to use the same Siemens technology that Norway does.

“This is not cutting edge, high-risk technology,” Matt von Ruden, Washington State Ferries’ director of vessel engineering and maintenance, told NetZero Insider.

Washington’s move is part of a 2018 executive order by Gov. Jay Inslee to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the state ferries, von Ruden said. The state’s 10 ferries consume 19 million gallons of fuel annually. The state believes that this move will dramatically trim that figure.

When a contract is signed, the contractor will remove two of four diesel engines from each of the three largest ferries and replace the missing engines with batteries capable of storing 5.7 MWh of power. The boats will primarily use battery power, saving the diesel for when extra power is needed for backup purposes or swift maneuvering, von Ruden said. A converted ferry will operate with the same power and speed running on batteries as it currently does with diesel engines.

When a boat is docked to load and unload vehicles, the batteries will be hooked up to a shoreline charging station, which will replenish battery power in 18 minutes.

However, the construction of all the dockside charging stations is not expected to be complete until 2025. “It’s a complex process, and we want to get it right,” von Ruden said. 

Removing two engines, doing extensive modifications to a room next to the engine room, and installing the batteries is expected to take five to six months at a cost of $35 million for a single boat, von Ruden said. So far, the state has lined up money to tackle only the three largest ferries. Funding must be found for the remaining seven 144-car ferries.

Washington will have to tackle one ferry at a time because it can only afford to take one vessel out of circulation at a time from its numerous Puget Sound ferry routes, he said. He hopes the first ferry will begin the conversion process in spring 2023 with the work done later that year.

After the first three ferries are converted, modifications on the remaining seven are expected to occur at a rate of one about every six months, if more money becomes available by then, von Ruden said.  

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Clements, LaFleur Talk Experience at FERC

During her time at FERC, Cheryl LaFleur said, one thing that surprised her was the feeling of independence.

“I guess, theoretically, President Obama was my boss, but he sure never called,” joked LaFleur, who served as both a commissioner and chair at various times from 2010 to 2019.

Commissioner Allison Clements has been at FERC since December 2020 and was sworn in amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “I started coming into the office despite the fact that the commission isn’t open yet because I felt like I am playing commissioner on Zoom, and I need to go in and see if this card to get me in the door works,” Clements said.

LaFleur and Clements spoke Tuesday at the annual joint event between the Connecticut Power & Energy Society and New England Women in Energy and the Environment, sharing their observations and perspectives during a wide-ranging discussion.

LaFleur, currently on the ISO-NE Board of Directors, said there was “big excitement” last week when President Biden announced his intention to nominate D.C. Public Service Commission Chair Willie Phillips to FERC. Phillips, a Democrat, would fill the seat most recently held by Republican Neil Chatterjee and give the commission a Democratic majority. (See Biden to Nominate Phillips to FERC.)

Phillips is an experienced regulator “used to balancing different perspectives and reaching consensus,” according to LaFleur.

Clements said that with Chatterjee’s departure Aug. 30, “we were already starting to bite our nails a little bit, given the slate of technical conferences and the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on transmission planning, cost allocation and generator interconnection (RM21-17). (See FERC Goes Back to the Drawing Board on Tx Planning, Cost Allocation.)

Phillips restoring “a full complement of people who start collaborating with each other … that’s exciting,” Clements said.

The density of technical conferences on the calendar was particularly interesting to LaFleur because the commission is “building records” to tackle various issues. Clements said that before joining FERC, she would not have linked technical conferences to “record building.” However, she added that there have been a high number of them, so much so that her 6-year-old daughter has technical conferences as “part of her vernacular, which cracks me up every time.”

“There is a recognition that we’re going to be at five [commissioners], and there’s a lot of things that need to get done,” Clements said. “Every one of these technical conferences is on a topic that you can spend a lot of time thinking about and prioritizing.”

In terms of regulatory philosophy, LaFleur said that because she had never been a regulator before her appointment to the commission, there was a line to walk between trying to do too much and taking a more measured approach to gain acceptance from the regulated community. LaFleur asked Clements about the tradeoffs between bold action versus incremental steps in the present regulatory landscape.

Clements said there are two “driving facts” that underscore her thinking most of the time. One is the increasing intensity, duration and frequency of extreme weather events wreaking havoc on the power grid, “causing catastrophe for people who are left without power.”

The other fact is climate change is real.

“Now, I should maybe start with that fact since it’s a precursor to the increasing extreme weather events, but we shouldn’t be afraid to think about climate change as a scientific fact that implicates as an input into our decision-making process,” Clements said.

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NY Enviros Want Cleaner Farms, More Equitable State Policies

Environmentalists and climate justice advocates on Monday said they support New York’s agricultural and land use policy proposals, but they also offered suggestions for improvement.

The New York Climate Action Council’s (CAC) Climate Justice Working Group (CJWG) provided feedback on policy recommendations from the Agriculture and Forestry Advisory Panel and Land Use and Local Government Panel, two of several informing the 22-member council as it works to complete a scoping plan by year-end to help reach the environmental goals laid out in the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). It plans to hold public meetings throughout 2022 before releasing a final plan in 2023.The New York State Climate Action Council met via videoconference September13, 2021 | NYDPS

Among the Land Use panel’s recommendations is the appointment of a “state resilience officer” to oversee “agency hazard mitigation, adaptation, response, resilience and recovery programs.” It also recommended an “adaptation and resilience sub-cabinet to facilitate coordination, dialogue and information exchange.”

Sonal Jessel, WEACT for Environmental Justice | NYDPSCJWG member Sonal Jessel, of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, told the CAC that the resilience officer should “not only just be appointed by the governor but [also] very aware of just transition efforts. We would also like some clarity on where the adaptation and resilience sub-cabinet would reside in government.”

The CJWG also supports the recommendation to create a resilient infrastructure fund through bonding, but it should have a specific carve-out for frontline communities, Jessel said. Unfortunately, poor people and disadvantaged communities (DACs) often get caught by unintended consequences of state policies with good intentions, such as a surcharge on insurance premiums for property affected by climate hazards.

“It’s important around the idea of ‘smart growth’ to make sure that DACs are protected from unintended consequences and ask how we are doing that, such as investing in transit in suburban areas at the expense of high-density areas that still don’t have the adequate transit that they need,” Jessel said.

New York needs to move away from the mindset of “bigger is better,” said Jerrod Bley, energy program director of the Adirondack NYS Agriculture Commissioner Richard Ball | NYDPSNorth Country Association. Move the emphasis away from large-scale farms and end the use of fracked gas and nitrogen fertilizers, whether natural or synthetic, he said.

“Farmers around the country are adopting soil health practices, reducing emissions, sequestering carbon and achieving improved yields,” Bley said. “We are thus more than ready to bring the transition to more diversified, regional ecological production.”

“We’ve got some pretty good things underway here actually,” New York Agriculture and Markets Commissioner Richard Ball said. “When I visit the vegetable grower conference or the fruit conferences, the most packed attendance seminars are those surrounding soil health, and the commonality there that both sides of agriculture have understood and are coming to understand in a bigger way gives me an awful lot of encouragement.”

Reducing Agricultural GHGs

Abigail McHugh-Grifa, Climate Solutions Accelerator | NYDPSOnly 6% of New York dairy farms have milk cow herds of more than 500, but they account for about 56% of New York dairy cows and are responsible for the majority of agricultural methane emissions in the state, said Abigail McHugh-Grifa, executive director of the Climate Solutions Accelerator.

McHugh-Grifa said the council should ensure that state funds are distributed equitably and do not disproportionately benefit the largest agricultural producers, and that the panels’ goal of a 30% reduction in GHG by 2030 is not ambitious enough.

Robert Howarth, Cornell University | NYDPSWatershed protection efforts spurred New York to develop a program of “agriculture environmental management, and that’s the basis for how we look at farms, the basis for how we market New York grown and certified products in the state,” Ball said. “I’d be happy to show you that the small farm participation in that program outweighs all the larger farms in the state by a wide margin, so I think there’s a lot to be optimistic about.”

Robert Howarth, professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University, said that his recent research on the Finger Lakes algal blooms and on groundwater contamination indicates “some cross-messaging and cross-purposes there we need to work out.”

“I agree totally that we could probably use less synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, and it is coming from fracked gas and that’s problematic, which we should look at,” Howarth said. “I also think we need to have a better way of handling manure statewide, and although I understand some of [CJWG’s] concerns about using anaerobic digesters at farm-scale … I think it might be certainly one of the best two options out there.”

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Spread of California Hydrogen Stations Should Fuel FCEV Growth

Development of hydrogen-fueling stations in California is accelerating, and car manufacturers should consider ramping up production of fuel-cell electric vehicles (FCEV), according to a new report.

As of late June, California had 48 hydrogen-fueling retail stations open to the public, compared to 42 stations at mid-year 2020, according to the report released Friday by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Another four stations are closed but expected to reopen, although an exact reopening date isn’t known.

The six-station increase detailed in the new report was an improvement from 2020, when the number of open stations increased by only one.

And CARB expects growth in the number of hydrogen-fueling stations to surge, as station developers take advantage of state grants and private investment increases.

The report notes that a new station that opened in Placentia in May was the first in California without any state grant funding. However, station operator FirstElement is taking advantage of CARB’s hydrogen refueling infrastructure (HRI) credit that is part of the agency’s low-carbon fuel standard.

The HRI provision allows station operators to receive extra LCFS credits based on the difference between station capacity and fuel sales. Sixty-one stations, including some still under development, are participating in the program.

According to CARB, station developers may be building more stations or larger stations, or even reducing fuel prices at the pump, as a result of the HRI program.

200-Station Target

Assembly Bill 8 from 2013 set a target of 100 hydrogen-fueling stations in the state. AB 8 directed the California Energy Commission to fund the development of retail hydrogen-fueling stations until the goal is met. The program is authorized through Jan. 1, 2024.

The California Air Resources Board projects that the state will have 176 hydrogen fueling stations within the next six years. | CARBAn even higher target of 200 hydrogen-fueling stations by 2025 was set in a January 2018 executive order issued by Gov. Jerry Brown. The order also calls for 5 million zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) in California by 2030.

In December, the CEC approved a $116 million plan for hydrogen-fueling infrastructure. (See Hydrogen for FCEVs Gets Big Boost in California.)

CEC grants are projected to add up to 94 new stations to California’s hydrogen fueling network, while private funding could add another 23 stations, according to CARB.

Based on all known investments, CARB expects the number of hydrogen-fueling stations to grow to 176 by 2026. The state is projected to meet the 100-station goal in 2023.

California had 7,993 fuel-cell electric vehicles on the road as of April 1, a number projected to grow to 61,100 in 2027. But the expected number of hydrogen-fueling stations in 2027 could accommodate 250,000 FCEVs, according to CARB.

“The current and planned station network provides auto makers an opportunity to deploy as many as four times the FCEVs currently indicated through industry surveys,” CARB said in its report.

FCEV Barriers

The report noted that availability of fuel isn’t the only barrier to FCEV adoption. Other factors include high FCEV prices, high fuel prices, limited model availability and lack of customer awareness.

Another issue is the unreliability of existing stations, CARB said. Stations might shut down temporarily due to supply-chain disruptions or equipment break-downs.

CARB said the situation should get better by early 2022 as hydrogen production and delivery improve.

“Still, station reliability is a concern that will require near-term and long-term solutions to minimize negative experiences for today’s drivers and ensure this does not become a barrier to further FCEV adoption,” CARB said in its report.

Expanding the Network

With the number of hydrogen-fueling stations expected to grow quickly, CARB said station developers should take a closer look at areas outside of the currently planned network. Hydrogen-fueling stations are concentrated in the Los Angeles area, Orange County, San Diego County, Sacramento region, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Areas worth a closer look for station development include Palm Springs, San Luis Obispo, Monterey, Santa Cruz, and San Joaquin Valley cities such as Bakersfield, Fresno and Stockton. CARB said Northern California cities such as Chico and Eureka, where there’s not yet any hydrogen-fueling infrastructure, might also be good sites for future stations.

“Some [areas] may present opportunities for development immediately after the stations currently under construction are completed,” CARB said. “Others may be more appropriate in later phases of development, but all should be considered seriously.”