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On plummeting plant approvals, DNC Day 3, and blood shortages
Current conditions: Extreme storm warnings are in place across Europe • Large hail could terrorize the High Plains today and tomorrow • It will feel like 113 degrees Fahrenheit in Houston, Texas.
It’s Day 3 of the Democratic National Convention. The Obamas took center stage last night. Now the focus shifts to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who will accept the vice-presidential nomination this evening. There are a few climate-specific events on the schedule today, including a meeting hosted by major environmental groups (some of which are behind a new $55 million climate ad push for Kamala Harris) to “present the latest on climate,” and a meeting of the Council on the Environment & Climate Crisis. Today’s events will also feature speeches from climate advocates Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.).
The American Red Cross says that extreme weather events are pushing down attendance at its blood drives. In July alone, the organization experienced a shortfall of 19,000 donations and its blood inventory dropped by a quarter, in part because of heat waves. And so far in August, 60 blood drives have been canceled because of extreme weather. “That limits our ability to meet hospital requests for blood,” Rodney Wilson, the senior biomedical communications specialist for the American Red Cross, toldThe Guardian. “So as hospitals request blood to treat patients, we’ve had to limit our distributions of some of those key types that they need the most, because there isn’t enough for everybody.” The American Red Cross supplies 40% of the country’s donated blood.
Liquefied natural gas company NextDecade yesterday canceled its plans to build a carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility on its $18.4 billion Rio Grande LNG export project in Texas, officially withdrawing its application from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The company had big plans for the Rio Grande facility, which will be one of the largest LNG facilities in the country once completed. It was touted as the first U.S. LNG project expected to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 90% through CCS. FERC approved the export project, but a few weeks ago the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out that approval citing serious “procedural defects.” The court said FERC hadn’t sufficiently examined the project’s environmental impact. According to Gas Outlook, the Rio Grande facility will emit more than 8 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent every year and be “the largest polluter in the Rio Grande Valley.”
Rivian this week got approval to expand its plant in the city of Normal, Illinois, to build its upcoming R2 crossover SUV, Electrekreported. The R2 is expected to enter production in 2026, but the company needs to continue to expand its Normal operations first. The town council approved a whole new “R2” building and more square footage overall. In other Rivian news, the company’s vice president of manufacturing, Tim Fallon, is leaving to join Stellantis. Fallon is the latest in a wave of recent high-level departures for the company. “The exits highlight the volatility at the EV startup as it navigates production hurdles and a broader slowdown in demand for plug-in vehicles also afflicting its rivals,” explainedBloomberg.
New analysis from Greenpeace East Asia finds that China cut approvals for new coal power operations by 80% in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period last year, “marking a potential turning point in China’s energy transition, as wind and solar power capacity continues to expand.” However, while many fewer projects have been given the green light, those that have are quite large. China is the world’s top emitter of coal carbon emissions.
Greenpeace
Virtually the entire population of the United States has received at least one extreme weather alert since the beginning of May.
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Almost half of developers believe it is “somewhat or significantly harder to do” projects on farmland, despite the clear advantages that kind of property has for harnessing solar power.
The solar energy industry has a big farm problem cropping up. And if it isn’t careful, it’ll be dealing with it for years to come.
Researchers at SI2, an independent research arm of the Solar Energy Industries Association, released a study of farm workers and solar developers this morning that said almost half of all developers believe it is “somewhat or significantly harder to do” projects on farmland, despite the clear advantages that kind of property has for harnessing solar power.
Unveiled in conjunction with RE+, the largest renewable energy conference in the U.S., the federally-funded research includes a warning sign that permitting is far and away the single largest impediment for solar developers trying to build projects on farmland. If this trend continues or metastasizes into a national movement, it could indefinitely lock developers out from some of the nation’s best land for generating carbon-free electricity.
“If a significant minority opposes and perhaps leads to additional moratoria, [developers] will lose a foot in the door for any future projects,” Shawn Rumery, SI2’s senior program director and the survey lead, told me. “They may not have access to that community any more because that moratoria is in place.”
SI2’s research comes on the heels of similar findings from Heatmap Pro. A poll conducted for the platform last month found 70% of respondents who had more than 50 acres of property — i.e. the kinds of large landowners sought after by energy developers — are concerned that renewable energy “takes up farmland,” by far the greatest objection among that cohort.
Good farmland is theoretically perfect for building solar farms. What could be better for powering homes than the same strong sunlight that helps grow fields of yummy corn, beans and vegetables? And there’s a clear financial incentive for farmers to get in on the solar industry, not just because of the potential cash in letting developers use their acres but also the longer-term risks climate change and extreme weather can pose to agriculture writ large.
But not all farmers are warming up to solar power, leading towns and counties across the country to enact moratoria restricting or banning solar and wind development on and near “prime farmland.” Meanwhile at the federal level, Republicans and Democrats alike are voicing concern about taking farmland for crop production to generate renewable energy.
Seeking to best understand this phenomena, SI2 put out a call out for ag industry representatives and solar developers to tell them how they feel about these two industries co-mingling. They received 355 responses of varying detail over roughly three months earlier this year, including 163 responses from agriculture workers, 170 from solar developers as well as almost two dozen individuals in the utility sector.
A key hurdle to development, per the survey, is local opposition in farm communities. SI2’s publicity announcement for the research focuses on a hopeful statistic: up to 70% of farmers surveyed said they were “open to large-scale solar.” But for many, that was only under certain conditions that allow for dual usage of the land or agrivoltaics. In other words, they’d want to be able to keep raising livestock, a practice known as solar grazing, or planting crops unimpeded by the solar panels.
The remaining percentage of farmers surveyed “consistently opposed large-scale solar under any condition,” the survey found.
“Some of the messages we got were over my dead body,” Rumery said.
Meanwhile a “non-trivial” number of solar developers reported being unwilling or disinterested in adopting the solar-ag overlap that farmers want due to the increased cost, Rumery said. While some companies expect large portions of their business to be on farmland in the future, and many who responded to the survey expect to use agrivoltaic designs, Rumery voiced concern at the percentage of companies unwilling to integrate simultaneous agrarian activities into their planning.
In fact, Rumery said some developers’ reticence is part of what drove him and his colleagues to release the survey while at RE+.
As we discussed last week, failing to address the concerns of local communities can lead to unintended consequences with industry-wide ramifications. Rumery said developers trying to build on farmland should consider adopting dual-use strategies and focus on community engagement and education to avoid triggering future moratoria.
“One of the open-ended responses that best encapsulated the problem was a developer who said until the cost of permitting is so high that it forces us to do this, we’re going to continue to develop projects as they are,” he said. “That’s a cold way to look at it.”
Meanwhile, who is driving opposition to solar and other projects on farmland? Are many small farm owners in rural communities really against renewables? Is the fossil fuel lobby colluding with Big Ag? Could building these projects on fertile soil really impede future prospects at crop yields?
These are big questions we’ll be tackling in far more depth in next week’s edition of The Fight. Trust me, the answers will surprise you.
Here are the most notable renewable energy conflicts over the past week.
1. Worcester County, Maryland –Ocean City is preparing to go to court “if necessary” to undo the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s approval last week of U.S. Wind’s Maryland Offshore Wind Project, town mayor Rick Meehan told me in a statement this week.
2. Magic Valley, Idaho – The Lava Ridge Wind Project would be Idaho’s biggest wind farm. But it’s facing public outcry over the impacts it could have on a historic site for remembering the impact of World War II on Japanese residents in the United States.
3. Kossuth County, Iowa – Iowa’s largest county – Kossuth – is in the process of approving a nine-month moratorium on large-scale solar development.
Here’s a few more hotspots I’m watching…
The most important renewable energy policies and decisions from the last few days.
Greenlink’s good day – The Interior Department has approved NV Energy’s Greenlink West power line in Nevada, a massive step forward for the Biden administration’s pursuit of more transmission.
States’ offshore muddle – We saw a lot of state-level offshore wind movement this past week… and it wasn’t entirely positive. All of this bodes poorly for odds of a kumbaya political moment to the industry’s benefit any time soon.
Chumash loophole – Offshore wind did notch one win in northern California by securing an industry exception in a large marine sanctuary, providing for farms to be built in a corridor of the coastline.
Here’s what else I’m watching …