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On ExxonMobil’s behind the meter plans, a lawsuit in Washington, and Ontario’s warning to Trump.
Current conditions:The wind chill could reach -20 degrees Fahrenheit in Chicago today • Red flag warnings have finally expired in Malibu • Governor Kathy Hochul has declared a state of emergency for Western and Central New York due to “near whiteout conditions” from a lake effect snowstorm.
ExxonMobil announced Wednesday that it plans to “generate low-carbon electricity for data centers in the United States” by building natural gas-fueled power plants outfitted with carbon capture and storage technology to supply “behind-the-meter” electricity, unconnected from the grid. Staying off the grid will help the company avoid making costly transmission upgrades, meaning the generation capacity “can be installed at a pace that other alternatives, including U.S. nuclear power, cannot match,” Exxon said. Matthew Zeitlin explains in Heatmap that the move comes as the power industry “has reached an inflection point thanks to new demand from data centers to power artificial intelligence, electrification of transportation and heating, and new manufacturing investment,” with ExxonMobil joining Chevron in exploring behind-the-meter options for natural gas.
President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he wants Jacob Helberg to serve as his under-secretary of State for economic growth, energy, and the environment — the highest-ranking State Department economic policy position available. A former supporter of Democrat Pete Buttigieg, Helberg reportedly “fell in love” with Trump (and became a major donor, to the tune of $1 million) partly because of the Biden administration’s move to regulate artificial intelligence, which he considered burdensome.
At 34, Helberg is notably inexperienced — he “has never built a successful tech company or led a major fund,” Forbes writes, and he currently serves as an adviser to the CEO of the defense contractor Palantir. But Helberg has earned his reputation as a China hawk, having thrown his weight behind Congress’ TikTok ban, calling the app a “weapon of war.” Helberg has broadly called for the United States to “reindustrialize” to “secure its supply chains and information networks against Chinese attacks.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford threatened to cut off the province’s electricity exports to the United States if President-elect Trump follows through on his proposal to impose a 25% tariff on Canadian imports next year. “Depending how far this goes, we will go to the extent of cutting off their energy, going down to Michigan, going down to New York State, and over to Wisconsin,” Ford said. “I don’t want this to happen, but my number one job is to protect Ontario, Ontarians, and Canadians as a whole.” Roughly 85% of U.S. electricity imports come from Canada, with Ontario responsible for about 13.9 million megawatt-hours of electricity, powering about 1.5 million American homes. Most electricity generated in Ontario is from renewable sources, primarily nuclear and hydropower, with the province’s exports helping New York, Maryland, and Illinois to meet their clean energy commitments.
A Washington State ballot measure that would hamper efforts to transition buildings away from natural gas is “unconstitutional,” according to a group of activists, who filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to overturn it. The ballot measure, Initiative 2066, passed with 51.7% of the vote in November after being pitched by its sponsor, the Building Industry Association of Washington, as protecting consumer choice by preventing a hypothetical “gas ban.”
“But the text of the measure goes much further,” according to the activists, since it affects “several state laws and codes designed to reduce carbon emissions and regulate air pollution,” Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo reported Wednesday. As such, the plaintiffs argue that Washingtonians were not fully informed about I-2066 when they voted on it — in violation of the state’s constitution, which requires ballot measures to be limited to a single, accurately represented subject.
Executives at Amazon and the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer described Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as potentially amenable to tackling climate-related health risks if the Senate confirms him as Trump’s Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services next year. “Some of the comments [Kennedy has] made I’m really optimistic about,” Amazon Pharmacy Chief Medical Officer Vin Gupta said while speaking at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York on Wednesday, adding that “the ways in which air and … dirty water” impact health are concerns that transcend party lines. Caroline Roan, the chief sustainability officer at Pfizer, who appeared on the same panel as Gupta, agreed. “We’re going to roll up our sleeves and we’re going to find common ground,” she said.
Separately this week, more than 75 Nobel laureates signed a letter saying that Kennedy would “put the public’s health in jeopardy” if he were confirmed to lead HHS.
200% — That’s the increase in dengue fever deaths in the Caribbean and the Americas this year compared to last. The jump in the mosquito-borne disease is “linked directly to climatic events” like warmer temperatures and flooding, according to Jarbas Barbosa, the director of the Pan American Health Organization.
Hurricane Beryl flooded Kingston, Jamaica this year. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
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Today’s conversation is with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications, a D.C.-based communications firm that focuses on defending zero- and low-carbon energy and federal investments in climate action. Moyer, a veteran communications adviser who previously worked on Capitol Hill, has some hot takes as of late about how he believes industry and political leaders have in his view failed to properly rebut attacks on solar and wind energy, in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act. On Tuesday he sent an email blast out to his listserv – which I am on – that boldly declared: “The Wind Industry’s Strategy is Failing.”
Of course after getting that email, it shouldn’t surprise readers of The Fight to hear I had to understand what he meant by that, and share it with all of you. So here goes. The following conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.
What are you referencing when you say, ‘the wind industry’s strategy is failing’?
Anyone in the climate space, in the clean energy space, the worst thing you can do is go silent and pretend that this is just going to go away. Even if it’s the president and the administration delivering the attacks, I think there’s an important strategy that’s been lacking in the wind and other sectors that I don’t think has been effective. There was a recent E&E News story that noted a couple of wind developers when asked for comment just say, “No comment.” This to me misses a really big opportunity to not get in a fight with people but talk about the benefits of wind.
Not taking advantage of milestones like ground breaking or construction starting is a missed opportunity to drive public opinion. If you lose support in public opinion, you’re going to lose support from public officials, because they largely follow public opinion.
And there’s no way that’s going to change if you don’t take the opportunities to talk about the benefits that wind can provide, in terms of good-paying local jobs or supplying more electrons to the grid. By almost any measure the strategy employed so far has not really worked.
Okay, but what is the wind industry strategy that isn’t working? What are they doing to rebut attacks on the technology, on property values, on the environment?
We’re not hearing them. We’re not hearing those arguments.
You can’t let criticisms go unanswered.It would better serve the industry and these companies to push back against criticisms. It’s not like you can’t anticipate what they are. And what do you have to lose? You’re in the worst position of any energy sector in this political moment. It would be nice to see some fight and sharp campaign skills and strategic effort in terms of communication. And there’s no strategic value from what I can tell in [being silent].
I understand not wanting to pick a fight with folks who hold your fate in their hands, but there’s a way to thread a needle that isn’t antagonizing anybody but also making sure the facts have been heard. And that’s been missing.
You’d specifically said the industry should stop ‘being paralyzed in fear and start going on offense.’ What does that look like to you?
Taking every opportunity to get your message out there. The lowest hanging fruit is when a reporter comes and asks you, What do you think about this criticism? You should definitely reply. It’s lifting up third-party voices that are benefiting from a specific project, talking about the economic impacts more broadly, talking about the benefits to the grid.
There’s a whole number of tools in the toolbox to put to use but the toolboxes remain shut thus far. Targeted paid media, elevating the different voices and communities that are going to resonate with different legislators, and certainly the facts are helpful. Also having materials prepared, like validators and frequently asked questions and answers.
You’re trying to win. You’re trying to get your project to be successful and deliver jobs and tax revenue. And I think it would be wise for companies to look at the playbooks of electoral campaigns, because there’s lots of tools that campaigns use.
How do renewable energy developers get around the problem of partisanship? How do you get outta that through a campaign approach?
These projects are decided locally. It’s deciding who the decision-makers are and not just letting opponents who are getting talking points through right-wing media show up and reiterate these talking points. Oftentimes, there’s no one on the pro side even showing up at all, and it makes it really easy for city councils to oppose projects. They’re losing by forfeit. We can’t keep doing that.
And more on this week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.
2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project will learn its fate under the Trump administration by this fall, after a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department must come to a decision on how it’ll handle a court challenge against its permits by September.
3. Bedford County, Pennsylvania – Arena Renewables is trying to thread a needle through development in one of the riskiest Pennsylvania counties for development, with an agriculture-fueled opposition risk score of 89.
4. Knox County, Ohio – The Ohio Power Siting Board has given the green light to Open Road Renewables’ much-watched Frasier Solar project.
5. Clay County, Missouri – We’ll find out next week if rural Missouri can still take it easy on a large solar project.
6. Clark County, Nevada – President Trump’s Bureau of Land Management has pushed back the permitting process for EDF Renewables’ Bonanza solar project by at least two months and possibly longer .
7. Klickitat County, Washington – Washington State has now formally overridden local opposition to Cypress Creek’s Carriger solar project after teeing up the decision in May.
It’s governor versus secretary of state, with the fate of the local clean energy industry hanging in the balance.
I’m seeing signs that the fight over a hydrogen project in Wyoming is fracturing the state’s Republican political leadership over wind energy, threatening to trigger a war over the future of the sector in a historically friendly state for development.
At issue is the Pronghorn Clean Energy hydrogen project, proposed in the small town of Glenrock in rural Converse County, which would receive power from one wind farm nearby and another in neighboring Niobrara County. If completed, Pronghorn is expected to produce “green” hydrogen that would be transported to airports for commercial use in jet fuel. It is backed by a consortium of U.S. and international companies including Acconia and Nordex.
One can guess why investors thought this rural Wyoming expanse would be an easier place to build: it’s an energy community situated in the middle of the Powder River Basin and the state’s Republican governor Mark Gordon has supported wind projects in the state publicly, not just with rhetoric but votes in favor of them on the State Board of Land Commissioners.
Wind is also often proposed on private land in Wyoming, which is supposed to make things easier. You may remember the Lucky Star and Twin Rivers wind farms, a pair of projects whose progress I’ve watched like a hawk because they’re tied to the future of wind permitting at the national level. As we first reported, the Trump administration is proceeding with potentially approving the transmission line for Lucky Star, a project that would be sited entirely on private land, and Twin Rivers received its final environmental review in the last days of the Biden administration, making it difficult for anti-wind advocates to curtail.
Unlike those projects, Pronghorn has created a fork in the road for wind in Wyoming. It’s because the people in its host community don’t seem to want it, the wind projects were on state land, and there’s politics at play.
Despite being considered an energy community, Converse and Niobrara are both areas with especially high opposition risk, according to Heatmap Pro, largely due to its low support for renewable energy, its demographics, and concerns about impacts to the local ranching economy. After Gordon and other members of the state land use board approved two wind facilities for the hydrogen project, a rancher living nearby sued the board with public support from the mayor of Glenrock and the area’s legislators in the statehouse. A member of the Converse County zoning board even published a “manifesto” against the project, detailing local concerns that are myriad and rooted in fears of overburden, ranging from water use and property value woes to a general resentment toward an overall rise in wind turbines across the county and state.
What’s probably most concerning to wind supporters is that this local fight is bubbling up into a statewide political fracture between Gordon and his secretary of state Chuck Gray, who is believed to be a future candidate for governor. Grey was the lone dissenting vote against the two wind projects for Pronghorn, saying he did not support the projects because they would be assisted by federal tax credits Trump is trying to gut. Gray then took to mocking the governor on social media for his stance on wind while posting photos of broken wind turbines. Gordon wound up responding to his secretary of state accusing him of being the “only member of the state land board to vote against individual property rights and Wyoming schools.”
“That is his prerogative to be sure, but it demonstrates his disregard for the duties of his office and a determination to impose his personal preferences on others, no matter the cost,” Gordon stated.
I’ve been reaching out to Pronghorn and its founder Paul Martin to try and chat about what’s happening in Wyoming. I haven’t heard back, and if I do I’ll gladly follow this story up, but there’s a sign here of an issue in Wyoming whether Pronghorn gets built or not – areas of Wyoming may be on the verge of a breaking point on wind energy.
I heard about the Pronghorn project in conversations this week with folks who work on wind permitting issues in Wyoming and learned that the Gordon-Gray feud is emblematic of how the wind industry’s growth in the state is making local officials more wary of greenlighting projects. Whether Gordon’s position on private property wins out over Gray taking up the mantle of the anti-wind conservative critic may be the touchstone for the future of local planning decisions, too.
At least, that’s the sense I got talking to Sue Jones, a commissioner in Carbon County, directly southwest of Converse County. Jones admits she personally doesn’t care for wind farms and that it’s “no secret with the county, or the developers.” But so far, she hasn’t voted that way as a commissioner.
“If they meet all our rules and regs, then I’ve voted to give them a permit,” she told me. “You can’t just say no to anything. It’s a good thing that we value private property rights.”
Jones said the problem in Carbon County and other areas of Wyoming is “saturation level.” Areas of the state where only a handful of landowners hold thousands of acres? That’s probably fine for wind projects because there’s a low likelihood of a neighbor or two having a genuine grievance. But as wind has grown into population-denser areas of the state the dissent is becoming more frequent.
My gut feeling is that, as we’ve seen in many other instances, this resentment will bubble up and manifest as sweeping reform – unless the wind industry is able to properly address these growing concerns head on.