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On the emergency in California, clean energy tax credits, and Exxon Mobil
Current conditions: It is 27 degrees Fahrenheit in Dallas, Texas, and snow is expected • The whole of England is under a cold weather health warning until Sunday • A water boil advisory is in effect for Richmond, Virginia, after a winter storm cut power to the city’s water treatment plant.
At least three wildfires are raging in Los Angeles, fanned by strong Santa Ana winds, warm weather, and exceptionally dry conditions. The largest blaze, the Palisades fire, has consumed some 3,000 acres in the Pacific Palisades area since it ignited yesterday and remains uncontained. More than 30,000 people have been told to evacuate. Two other blazes – the Eaton fire in Altadena and the Hurst fire near San Fernando – have also forced people to flee. Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency yesterday. Wind gusts in some areas are near 100 mph. The National Weather Service warned the windstorm is likely to be the most destructive in over a decade.
NWS/NOAA
Eric Thayer/Getty Images
Southern California usually gets some rain over the colder months, but just 0.29 inches of rain has fallen in L.A. since May of last year. On top of that, the area saw record-breaking heat over the summer, so conditions are exceptionally dry. “Locally record hot summer followed by a near-record dry fall followed by the strongest wind event in 14 years,” said Anthony Edwards, a meteorologist at the San Francisco Chronicle. “Energized power lines strung across a landscape that is home to tens of millions of people. Disaster recipe.” Some firefighters reported hydrants were not supplying water. The NWS issued a warning for extremely critical fire weather for Wednesday. Some 200,000 people are without power. “Hell of a way to start a new year,” Gov. Newsom said.
President-elect Donald Trump held a lengthy press conference at Mar-a-Lago yesterday, repeating some familiar climate and energy falsehoods and trotting out a few new ones. Trump threatened again to reverse President Biden’s newly-announced offshore drilling ban and the non-existent EV “mandate,” and also hinted at trying to ban the construction of new wind turbines. He took the opportunity to lament electric heaters because he said they make you “scratch and itch,” as well as low-flow shower heads because “no water comes out.” There is no time like the present to peruse Heatmap’s extensive fact-check of Trump’s climate and energy claims.
The Biden administration rolled out the pièce de résistance of its Inflation Reduction Act tax credits yesterday, publishing the final rules for its overhaul of the clean energy subsidies at the heart of both the bill and United States alternative energy policy going back decades. The final rules define what sources of energy are eligible for production and investment tax credits (known as 45Y and 48E) by lumping together all zero-emissions energy sources into one big group of winners and then letting developers choose which credit they want to use.
The tax credits cover “wind, solar, hydropower, marine and hydrokinetic, geothermal, nuclear,” according to a Treasury Department release, as well as “certain waste energy recovery property” (heat from buildings), and sets out a process for determining how combustion-dependent sources such as biogas, biomass, and natural gas derived from sources like cow manure could qualify. And unlike the tax credits they replaced, which had fixed time periods they were in effect, the tech neutral credits either begin phasing out in 2032 or when electricity sector greenhouse gas emissions are a quarter of their 2022 level, whichever comes second. “With Trump set to take office again in less than two weeks, these rules will be cast into doubt almost as soon as they’re rolled out,” wrote Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin. “So the administration is trying to cast the tax credits as a money-saving proposition for energy consumers — especially households — and a spur for investment across the country.”
Fossil fuel giant Exxon Mobil is suing California Attorney General Rob Bonta and some environmental groups, alleging they participated in a conspiracy to defame the firm and hurt its business. In recent lawsuits against Exxon, Bonta and the groups – including the Sierra Club – have accused the oil company of lying to the public about the recyclability of plastic (which, if you didn’t know, is mostly made from fossil fuels). Exxon now says those accusations were false and defamatory. “This is another attempt from Exxon Mobil to deflect attention from its own unlawful deception,” a spokesperson for the California Department of Justice toldGrist. “The attorney general is proud to advance his lawsuit against Exxon Mobil and looks forward to vigorously litigating this case in court.” The Sierra Club called the lawsuit a “shameless attempt at intimidation.”
Car manufacturers in Europe are looking to “pool” their emissions and buy credits from major electric vehicle companies as a workaround to comply with the EU’s new emissions rules, Reutersreported. Companies including Ford, Toyota, Stellantis, and Subaru are looking to pool their emissions, and then buy surplus carbon credits from Tesla; Mercedes is eyeing a similar initiative with Polestar. The EU’s new rules, which came into effect on January 1, mean carmakers have to reduce emissions by 15% compared to 2021, or face steep fines. Many manufacturers called for the rules to be eased or delayed due to sluggish EV demand.
A recent report from the Department of Energy found that about 90% of wind turbine parts and “wind systems” can be recycled.
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A conversation with VDE Americas CEO Brian Grenko.
This week’s Q&A is about hail. Last week, we explained how and why hail storm damage in Texas may have helped galvanize opposition to renewable energy there. So I decided to reach out to Brian Grenko, CEO of renewables engineering advisory firm VDE Americas, to talk about how developers can make sure their projects are not only resistant to hail but also prevent that sort of pushback.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Hiya Brian. So why’d you get into the hail issue?
Obviously solar panels are made with glass that can allow the sunlight to come through. People have to remember that when you install a project, you’re financing it for 35 to 40 years. While the odds of you getting significant hail in California or Arizona are low, it happens a lot throughout the country. And if you think about some of these large projects, they may be in the middle of nowhere, but they are taking hundreds if not thousands of acres of land in some cases. So the chances of them encountering large hail over that lifespan is pretty significant.
We partnered with one of the country’s foremost experts on hail and developed a really interesting technology that can digest radar data and tell folks if they’re developing a project what the [likelihood] will be if there’s significant hail.
Solar panels can withstand one-inch hail – a golfball size – but once you get over two inches, that’s when hail starts breaking solar panels. So it’s important to understand, first and foremost, if you’re developing a project, you need to know the frequency of those events. Once you know that, you need to start thinking about how to design a system to mitigate that risk.
The government agencies that look over land use, how do they handle this particular issue? Are there regulations in place to deal with hail risk?
The regulatory aspects still to consider are about land use. There are authorities with jurisdiction at the federal, state, and local level. Usually, it starts with the local level and with a use permit – a conditional use permit. The developer goes in front of the township or the city or the county, whoever has jurisdiction of wherever the property is going to go. That’s where it gets political.
To answer your question about hail, I don’t know if any of the [authority having jurisdictions] really care about hail. There are folks out there that don’t like solar because it’s an eyesore. I respect that – I don’t agree with that, per se, but I understand and appreciate it. There’s folks with an agenda that just don’t want solar.
So okay, how can developers approach hail risk in a way that makes communities more comfortable?
The bad news is that solar panels use a lot of glass. They take up a lot of land. If you have hail dropping from the sky, that’s a risk.
The good news is that you can design a system to be resilient to that. Even in places like Texas, where you get large hail, preparing can mean the difference between a project that is destroyed and a project that isn’t. We did a case study about a project in the East Texas area called Fighting Jays that had catastrophic damage. We’re very familiar with the area, we work with a lot of clients, and we found three other projects within a five-mile radius that all had minimal damage. That simple decision [to be ready for when storms hit] can make the complete difference.
And more of the week’s big fights around renewable energy.
1. Long Island, New York – We saw the face of the resistance to the war on renewable energy in the Big Apple this week, as protestors rallied in support of offshore wind for a change.
2. Elsewhere on Long Island – The city of Glen Cove is on the verge of being the next New York City-area community with a battery storage ban, discussing this week whether to ban BESS for at least one year amid fire fears.
3. Garrett County, Maryland – Fight readers tell me they’d like to hear a piece of good news for once, so here’s this: A 300-megawatt solar project proposed by REV Solar in rural Maryland appears to be moving forward without a hitch.
4. Stark County, Ohio – The Ohio Public Siting Board rejected Samsung C&T’s Stark Solar project, citing “consistent opposition to the project from each of the local government entities and their impacted constituents.”
5. Ingham County, Michigan – GOP lawmakers in the Michigan State Capitol are advancing legislation to undo the state’s permitting primacy law, which allows developers to evade municipalities that deny projects on unreasonable grounds. It’s unlikely the legislation will become law.
6. Churchill County, Nevada – Commissioners have upheld the special use permit for the Redwood Materials battery storage project we told you about last week.
Long Islanders, meanwhile, are showing up in support of offshore wind, and more in this week’s edition of The Fight.
Local renewables restrictions are on the rise in the Hawkeye State – and it might have something to do with carbon pipelines.
Iowa’s known as a renewables growth area, producing more wind energy than any other state and offering ample acreage for utility-scale solar development. This has happened despite the fact that Iowa, like Ohio, is home to many large agricultural facilities – a trait that has often fomented conflict over specific projects. Iowa has defied this logic in part because the state was very early to renewables, enacting a state portfolio standard in 1983, signed into law by a Republican governor.
But something else is now on the rise: Counties are passing anti-renewables moratoria and ordinances restricting solar and wind energy development. We analyzed Heatmap Pro data on local laws and found a rise in local restrictions starting in 2021, leading to nearly 20 of the state’s 99 counties – about one fifth – having some form of restrictive ordinance on solar, wind or battery storage.
What is sparking this hostility? Some of it might be counties following the partisan trend, as renewable energy has struggled in hyper-conservative spots in the U.S. But it may also have to do with an outsized focus on land use rights and energy development that emerged from the conflict over carbon pipelines, which has intensified opposition to any usage of eminent domain for energy development.
The central node of this tension is the Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 pipeline. As we explained in a previous edition of The Fight, the carbon transportation network would cross five states, and has galvanized rural opposition against it. Last November, I predicted the Summit pipeline would have an easier time under Trump because of his circle’s support for oil and gas, as well as the placement of former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum as interior secretary, as Burgum was a major Summit supporter.
Admittedly, this prediction has turned out to be incorrect – but it had nothing to do with Trump. Instead, Summit is now stalled because grassroots opposition to the pipeline quickly mobilized to pressure regulators in states the pipeline is proposed to traverse. They’re aiming to deny the company permits and lobbying state legislatures to pass bills banning the use of eminent domain for carbon pipelines. One of those states is South Dakota, where the governor last month signed an eminent domain ban for CO2 pipelines. On Thursday, South Dakota regulators denied key permits for the pipeline for the third time in a row.
Another place where the Summit opposition is working furiously: Iowa, where opposition to the CO2 pipeline network is so intense that it became an issue in the 2020 presidential primary. Regulators in the state have been more willing to greenlight permits for the project, but grassroots activists have pressured many counties into some form of opposition.
The same counties with CO2 pipeline moratoria have enacted bans or land use restrictions on developing various forms of renewables, too. Like Kossuth County, which passed a resolution decrying the use of eminent domain to construct the Summit pipeline – and then three months later enacted a moratorium on utility-scale solar.
I asked Jessica Manzour, a conservation program associate with Sierra Club fighting the Summit pipeline, about this phenomenon earlier this week. She told me that some counties are opposing CO2 pipelines and then suddenly tacking on or pivoting to renewables next. In other cases, counties with a burgeoning opposition to renewables take up the pipeline cause, too. In either case, this general frustration with energy companies developing large plots of land is kicking up dust in places that previously may have had a much lower opposition risk.
“We painted a roadmap with this Summit fight,” said Jess Manzour, a campaigner with Sierra Club involved in organizing opposition to the pipeline at the grassroots level, who said zealous anti-renewables activists and officials are in some cases lumping these items together under a broad umbrella. ”I don’t know if it’s the people pushing for these ordinances, rather than people taking advantage of the situation.”