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On DeSantis’s latest legislation, solar tariffs, and brain disease
Current conditions: Areas surrounding Milan, Italy, are flooded after intense rainfall • Chile is preparing for its most severe cold snap in 70 years • East Texas could see “nightmare” flash flooding today and tomorrow.
The Biden administration is expanding existing solar panel tariffs to include the popular two-sided (or bifacial) modules used in many utility-scale solar installations. The solar manufacturing industry and elected representatives in states that have seen large solar manufacturing investments have been pushing to end the tariffs exclusion. With this move, the Biden administration is decisively intervening in the solar industry’s raging feud on the side of the adolescent-but-quickly-maturing domestic solar manufacturing industry, wrote Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin. Bifacial modules are estimated to account for over 90% of U.S. module imports. That amounted to some $4.3 billion of incoming orders in the first six months of last year. Developers who have contracts to buy bifacial panels that will be shipped within 90 days will still be able to import them without duties, and the tariffs also allow a quota of solar cells, which are later assembled into modules, to be imported without charges.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis yesterday signed legislation that will result in most references to climate change being removed from state law. While the scrubbing of climate change is leading most headlines, the law does a few other important things, too:
Florida is extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change, from deadly heat waves to stronger and more frequent storms and sea level rise. And most Floridians support state action to tackle the issue. The law will come into effect on July 1.
The North American electric grid has “adequate anticipated resources for normal summer peak load and conditions,” the North American Electric Reliability Corporation said yesterday. The nonprofit reliability organizaton’s chief executive officer Jim Robb said there are “fewer areas at risk than last year, but significant concerns remain at the system’s ability to perform under extreme conditions.” The report lays out summer reliability risks by region, including nuclear plant outages in Ontario, Canada, less-than-expected wind power generation in the middle of the U.S., and a heat wave affecting western states and Mexico.
Meanwhile, Texas’s main grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), warned that the state could face an electricity emergency this weekend, with power demand expected to creep up toward max supply levels starting Friday night and stretching into Saturday night.
The International Energy Agency has lowered its forecast for oil demand growth for 2024. In its May report, the agency projects oil demand will grow by 1.1 million barrels per day (BPD), down 140,000 BPD from April’s report. “Poor industrial activity and another mild winter have sapped gasoil consumption this year,” the agency said. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) released its own monthly report on Tuesday, projecting that oil demand will rise by 2.25 million BPD in 2024. “The gap between the IEA and OPEC is now even wider than it was earlier this year,” Reuterssaid.
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A new study found that extreme heat from climate change is making certain conditions involving the brain and the nervous system worse, including Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, and even migraines and strokes. “Many of the components of the brain are, in fact, working close to the top of their temperature ranges, meaning that small increases in temperature or humidity may mean they stop working so well together,” the authors, from University College London, explained. “When those environmental conditions move rapidly into unaccustomed ranges, as is happening with extreme temperatures and humidity related to climate change, our brain struggles to regulate our temperature and begins to malfunction.” The authors note that 20% of the excess deaths that resulted from the 2003 European heat wave were among people with neurological conditions.
Massachusetts is launching a $10 million Climate Careers Fund that will provide no-interest loans to help people pay for training in climate-related jobs from heating and cooling to electric vehicle mechanics.
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Did a battery plant disaster in California spark a PR crisis on the East Coast?
Battery fire fears are fomenting a storage backlash in New York City – and it risks turning into fresh PR hell for the industry.
Aggrieved neighbors, anti-BESS activists, and Republican politicians are galvanizing more opposition to battery storage in pockets of the five boroughs where development is actually happening, capturing rapt attention from other residents as well as members of the media. In Staten Island, a petition against a NineDot Energy battery project has received more than 1,300 signatures in a little over two months. Two weeks ago, advocates – backed by representatives of local politicians including Rep. Nicole Mallitokis – swarmed a public meeting on the project, getting a local community board to vote unanimously against the project.
According to Heatmap Pro’s proprietary modeling of local opinion around battery storage, there are likely twice as many strong opponents than strong supporters in the area:
Heatmap Pro
Yesterday, leaders in the Queens community of Hempstead enacted a year-long ban on BESS for at least a year after GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, other local politicians, and a slew of aggrieved residents testified in favor of a moratorium. The day before, officials in the Long Island town of Southampton said at a public meeting they were ready to extend their battery storage ban until they enshrined a more restrictive development code – even as many energy companies testified against doing so, including NineDot and solar plus storage developer Key Capture Energy. Yonkers also recently extended its own battery moratorium.
This flurry of activity follows the Moss Landing battery plant fire in California, a rather exceptional event caused by tech that was extremely old and a battery chemistry that is no longer popular in the sector. But opponents of battery storage don’t care – they’re telling their friends to stop the community from becoming the next Moss Landing. The longer this goes on without a fulsome, strident response from the industry, the more communities may rally against them. Making matters even worse, as I explained in The Fight earlier this year, we’re seeing battery fire concerns impact solar projects too.
“This is a huge problem for solar. If [fires] start regularly happening, communities are going to say hey, you can’t put that there,” Derek Chase, CEO of battery fire smoke detection tech company OnSight Technologies, told me at Intersolar this week. “It’s going to be really detrimental.”
I’ve long worried New York City in particular may be a powder keg for the battery storage sector given its omnipresence as a popular media environment. If it happens in New York, the rest of the world learns about it.
I feel like the power of the New York media environment is not lost on Staten Island borough president Vito Fossella, a de facto leader of the anti-BESS movement in the boroughs. Last fall I interviewed Fossella, whose rhetorical strategy often leans on painting Staten Island as an overburdened community. (At least 13 battery storage projects have been in the works in Staten Island according to recent reporting. Fossella claims that is far more than any amount proposed elsewhere in the city.) He often points to battery blazes that happen elsewhere in the country, as well as fears about lithium-ion scooters that have caught fire. His goal is to enact very large setback distance requirements for battery storage, at a minimum.
“You can still put them throughout the city but you can’t put them next to people’s homes – what happens if one of these goes on fire next to a gas station,” he told me at the time, chalking the wider city government’s reluctance to capitulate on batteries to a “political problem.”
Well, I’m going to hold my breath for the real political problem in waiting – the inevitable backlash that happens when Mallitokis, D’Esposito, and others take this fight to Congress and the national stage. I bet that’s probably why American Clean Power just sent me a notice for a press briefing on battery safety next week …
And more of the week’s top conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Queen Anne’s County, Maryland – They really don’t want you to sign a solar lease out in the rural parts of this otherwise very pro-renewables state.
2. Logan County, Ohio – Staff for the Ohio Power Siting Board have recommended it reject Open Road Renewables’ Grange Solar agrivoltaics project.
3. Bandera County, Texas – On a slightly brighter note for solar, it appears that Pine Gate Renewables’ Rio Lago solar project might just be safe from county restrictions.
Here’s what else we’re watching…
In Illinois, Armoracia Solar is struggling to get necessary permits from Madison County.
In Kentucky, the mayor of Lexington is getting into a public spat with East Kentucky Power Cooperative over solar.
In Michigan, Livingston County is now backing the legal challenge to Michigan’s state permitting primacy law.
On the week’s top news around renewable energy policy.
1. IRA funding freeze update – Money is starting to get out the door, finally: the EPA unfroze most of its climate grant funding it had paused after Trump entered office.
2. Scalpel vs. sledgehammer – House Speaker Mike Johnson signaled Republicans in Congress may take a broader approach to repealing the Inflation Reduction Act than previously expected in tax talks.
3. Endangerment in danger – The EPA is reportedly urging the White House to back reversing its 2009 “endangerment” finding on air pollutants and climate change, a linchpin in the agency’s overall CO2 and climate regulatory scheme.