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The story of natural gas taxes and bans this election cycle is far more nuanced than that.
Berkeley, California and Washington State put the transition to all-electric buildings on the ballot last week, and in both cases, it seemed to fail the test. Voters in Berkeley overwhelmingly rejected a proposed tax on natural gas that would raise money for electrification projects. In one fell swoop, voters in Washington State repealed several of their nation-leading policies that encourage electric over gas appliances and barred cities and towns from passing similar policies in the future.
On the face of things, the results appear to show voters retreating from ambitious climate action and rejecting electrification — a concerning signal at a time when federal support for decarbonization is about to evaporate and state and local leadership to cut emissions will become paramount. But the specific circumstances behind each vote suggest that’s not the whole story.
The Berkeley proposal was submitted by a small group of activists who knew it was more ideologically driven than politically feasible, and it proved to be controversial even among diehard climate advocates in the city. The Washington State initiative slid onto the ballot just three months before the election and ultimately passed on a razor thin margin. The two cases offer distinct lessons andtakeaways, but to climate advocates, a budding backlash to electrification is not one of them.
The Berkeley proposal, otherwise known as Measure GG, was largely written by one person. Daniel Tahara is a software engineer at Tesla by day, and a climate activist by night with 350 Bay Area, a local chapter of the national climate advocacy group 350.org. For the past few years, he’s been animated by a question that I, too, am frequently asking: How are most people going to afford the steep cost of retrofitting their homes to use electric appliances?
To Tahara, finding an answer became more pressing last year when the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, a regional authority that regulates pollution, approved rules to phase out the sale of gas appliances. Starting in 2027, Berkeley residents will no longer be able to purchase a new gas-fired water heater if their old one fails — they’ll have to go electric. The rule applies to gas-fired furnaces and boilers in 2029. “We've got a lot of old buildings,” Tahara told me. “They would need a lot of electrical work to support new appliances, and people just don't have the money for it.”
His solution was Measure GG, an ordinance that would have imposed a tax of $2.96 per therm of natural gas used by buildings larger than 15,000 square feet. The estimated $26.7 million per year raised by the tax would go into a fund to help everyone else in town pay for electrification retrofits.
Tahara rallied a number of local environmental and community groups around the idea, but he did not have the support of the bigger non-profits and advocacy orgs that work on electrification policy in California, including the Building Decarbonization Coalition, Rewiring America, RMI, the Sierra Club, or the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"Any large blanket tax hike without input from those it would impact, no plans for a managed transition to the new fees, and no analysis on who is most likely to benefit or be burdened is likely to face real challenges with voters,” Alejandra Mejia Cunningham, the senior manager of building decarbonization for the NRDC, told me via email. “It is very important for tax-based policy proposals to be robust and thoroughly socialized."
I also talked to several Berkeley-based electrification supporters who voted no on Measure GG. Tom Graly, who chairs a local electrification working group, told me part of the reason the policy proved so controversial is that it singled out some of the city’s most beloved institutions, such as the Berkeley Bowl supermarket, a local chain, and the Berkeley Repertory Theater. The theater estimated the tax would cost it up to $69,000 per year, while converting off of gas would cost millions. “This well-intentioned ballot measure with its immediate implementation would be very harmful to our struggling organization,” Tom Parrish, the theater’s managing director said in a statement for the “No on GG” campaign.
Tahara based the tax on estimates for what’s called the “social cost of carbon,” or the projected economic damage that every additional ton of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere will cause. But the number Tahara chose was on the high end — more than double the number the Biden administration uses when it weighs the costs and benefits of new regulations on carbon. If passed, the tax would more than double the cost of using natural gas in large buildings. He said some national groups gave him feedback on the proposal, like phasing in the tax over time and building in more exemptions, which he might consider for a future version. But he and his partners on the measure wanted to preserve their core thesis, which was that climate damages are already happening and are unaccounted for.
“I think part of our responsibility as local activists is to put out new ideas, to push the status quo,” he said. “I don’t think there’s been a lot of that that’s been happening in the last couple years.”
In Tahara’s view, the measure failed because the opposition campaign had a lot more money, and because even though Berkeley is often called the birthplace of the electrify everything movement, there’s still a lot of people in town who are completely unaware of the harm natural gas causes to the climate and to public health. On that, Graly agreed. “There's a huge education gap,” he said. “People just don't think about hot water. They turn on the faucet and the water is hot, and they're happy.”
Initiative 2066 in Washington State was a wide-ranging proposal to both roll back existing policies and preempt future ones. It was so wide-ranging, in fact, that its opponents believe it’s illegal under the state’s “single subject” rule for ballot measures, and they plan to fight it in court.
If the measure stands, it will invalidate the state’s nation-leading residential and commercial energy codes that strongly incentivize builders to forego gas hookups. It will remove a provision in state statute that requires Washington’s energy codes to gradually tighten toward zero-emissions new construction by 2031. It will repeal key parts of a law the state legislature passed earlier this year that require Washington’s biggest utility, Puget Sound Energy, to consider alternatives to replacing aging gas infrastructure or building new gas pipelines. And it will ban cities and towns from passing any local ordinances that “prohibit, penalize, or discourage” the use of gas in buildings.
The initiative was one of four put on the ballot by Let’s Go Washington, a group bankrolled by hedge fund manager and multimillionaire Brian Heywood, and had the Building Industry Association of Washington as its primary sponsor, alongside a number of other pro-gas, pro-business, and realty groups.
There’s no doubt 2066 is a significant setback in the state’s progress toward cutting carbon emissions. But when I asked climate advocates in Washington how they were interpreting the outcome, they pointed to a handful of reasons why they weren’t too concerned about public sentiment around decarbonization.
First, the vote was incredibly close, with just over 51% of voters checking “yes.” Second, another initiative Let’s Go Washington put on the ballot — 2117, which would have repealed the state’s big umbrella climate law that puts a declining cap on emissions — unambiguously failed, with 62% voting “no.” Third, they argue the split reflects confusion about what 2066 would do.
The “yes on 2066” campaign sold it as a measure to “protect energy choice” and “stop the gas ban,” warning that otherwise utility rates would increase and the state would force homeowners to pay tens of thousands of dollars to retrofit their homes. There are kernels of truth to the messaging — the state’s building codes seriously limit developers’ ability to put gas hookups in new construction without outright banning them. The new law affecting Puget Sound Energy is primarily a planning policy that requires the utility to consider alternatives to gas infrastructure, but it doesn’t force anyone to get off gas, and regulators are likely to approve only those alternatives that save ratepayers money.
“I think voters were responding to a lot of misinformation and fear-mongering,” said Leah Missik, the Washington deputy policy director for Climate Solutions, a regional nonprofit that helped spearhead the “no on 2066” campaign. She emphasized that it was put on the ballot in July, giving groups like hers only a few months to drum up their response to it, whereas they knew about 2117 for over a year, and thus had a lot more time to educate voters on what that initiative would do.
The confusion probably also wasn’t helped by the fact that the policies 2066 repealed were incredibly wonky, dealing with building codes and utility planning.
“I think that given all of those headwinds, the fact that about half of Washingtonians still voted against initiative 2066 is a testament to how popular climate action is in the state,” Emily Moore, the director of the climate and energy program at the Sightline Institute, a Seattle-based think tank, told me.
Sightline didn’t campaign for or against the measure, but Moore had some takeaways from the vote. She said environmental groups spent a lot of their energy countering the narrative that there was a gas ban, which may have inadvertently reinforced the idea. One lesson for the future might be to put more emphasis on the benefits of electrification, like the fact that heat pumps provide both heating and cooling and half of the state doesn’t currently have air conditioning. The other anti-climate measure, 2117, may have failed so decisively because Washington’s emission cap policy has raised more then $2 billion in funding for projects that people are already seeing the benefits of, like free transit passes.
“Likely a no vote on that one felt like getting to keep good things,” she told me. “I think we have more to do to show that getting off of gas means getting good things too.”
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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.”