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On NOAA’s annual outlook, LNG lawsuits, and peaker pollution.
Current conditions: Thousands of people in the Midwest are still without power in the aftermath of this week’s severe thunderstorms • A heat wave along the Gulf Coast could break temperature records over Memorial Day weekend • The UN says droughts, floods threaten a “humanitarian catastrophe” in southern Africa.
This morning, officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will announce their predictions for the coming storm season in the Atlantic Ocean. Based on what we know already, it’s shaping up to be a doozy.
What all this means is not quite anybody’s guess, but it is far from certain. As Heatmap’s Jeva Lange has written, “describing hurricane seasons as ‘quiet’ or ‘active’ is really a matter of perspective, even if it makes for good headlines.” It all depends on where they land. If that’s along the Gulf Coast, Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin wrote, it could spoil what looks to be a mild summer for gasoline prices in addition to whatever physical and emotional devastation it might cause.
So far this year the Northern Hemisphere has yet to see a named storm, the latest we’ve gone without one since 1983, according to CSU’s Phil Klotzbach. When we do get one in the Atlantic, it’ll be called Alberto.
Nissan is delaying an expansion of its electric vehicle lineup in response to slow sales growth. The automaker had announced plans last year to build five new EV models, including two electric sedans, at its factory in Canton, Mississippi, as part of a push to offer 19 EV models worldwide by 2030. Nissan is now shifting its focus to the crossover SUVs in its EV lineup while it continues work on the sedans.
“We are adjusting the timeline for the introduction of these five new models to ensure we bring the vehicles to the market at the right time, prioritizing in line with customer demand and maximizing the opportunity for our brands and supplier partners,” a Nissan spokesperson said in a statement to CNN.
During the deadly storm that devastated the town of Greenfield, Iowa on Tuesday, a tornado also caused significant damage to a nearby wind farm. Footage from the storm shows multiple 250-foot turbines collapsing, one by one, as the tornado passes over them. MidAmerican Energy Company has reported the “unprecedented” destruction of five turbines at its Orient wind farm in Iowa. The company said some of its turbines recorded wind speeds above 100 miles per hour.
Wind turbines are designed to withstand extreme weather, and losses like this are rare, even in Tornado Alley. (Iowa ranks second after Texas in total wind power generation.) But weather patterns’ increasing unpredictability and severity due to climate change are making such events more likely. Most wind turbines are not equipped to handle direct hits from powerful tornadoes, according to researchers.
The tornado’s aftermath in Greenfield, Iowa.Scott Olson/Getty Images
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Eight Alaskans between the ages of 11 and 22 are suing the state over a major liquified natural gas export project they say violates their constitutional rights. Alaska Gasline Development Corporation’s nearly $40 billion Alaska LNG project — which would include a treatment plant, a liquefaction facility, and an 800-mile gas pipeline stretching across the state — is projected to start exporting around 2030. Its shipments would go to Asia, where demand for LNG is expected to rise. The youth bringing the lawsuit argue that the project infringes on the freedoms afforded them by the Alaska constitution, including access to natural resources and protection from government overreach.
“The acceleration of climate change that this project will bring will affect what the land provides and brings to my culture,” Summer Sagoonick, the 22-year-old lead plaintiff and a member the Iñupiaq tribe, told The Guardian. “I am counting on the courts to protect my rights.”
Gas “peaker” plants — those used by electric utilities mostly to satisfy peak demand — emit above-average amounts of pollution and are often located near historically disadvantaged communities, a new report from the Government Accountability Office found. The 999 peaker plants operating in the U.S. in 2021 provided just 3.1% of the country’s net electricity generation that year. But these peaker plants emitted sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides at much higher rates than non-peaker plants, in part because they often lack emissions control technologies, the report found. It pointed to battery storage systems as an alternative that can help meet fluctuating power demand but acknowledged that utilities are concerned about the impacts such a shift would have on grid reliability.
NASA and IBM are releasing a new artificial intelligence model they hope will refine weather forecasting and climate simulations.
Editor’s note: This post has been updated to clarify the region that has seen no named storms so far this year.
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How the Migratory Bird Treaty Act could become the administration’s ultimate weapon against wind farms.
The Trump administration has quietly opened the door to strictly enforcing a migratory bird protection law in a way that could cast a legal cloud over wind farms across the country.
As I’ve chronicled for Heatmap, the Interior Department over the past month expanded its ongoing investigation of the wind industry’s wildlife impacts to go after turbines for killing imperiled bald and golden eagles, sending voluminous records requests to developers. We’ve discussed here how avian conservation activists and even some former government wildlife staff are reporting spikes in golden eagle mortality in areas with operating wind projects. Whether these eagle deaths were allowable under the law – the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act – is going to wind up being a question for regulators and courts if Interior progresses further against specific facilities. Irrespective of what one thinks about the merits of wind energy, it’s extremely likely that a federal government already hostile to wind power will use the law to apply even more pressure on developers.
What’s received less attention than the eagles is that Trump’s team signaled it could go even further by using the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a separate statute intended to support bird species flying south through the U.S. from Canada during typical seasonal migration periods. At the bottom of an Interior press release published in late July, the department admitted it was beginning a “careful review of avian mortality rates associated with the development of wind energy projects located in migratory flight paths,” and would determine whether migratory birds dying because of wind farms qualified as “‘incidental’ takings” – harm or death – under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
While not stated explicitly, what this means is that the department appears to be considering whether to redefine these deaths as intentional under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, according to Ben Cowan, a lawyer with the law firm Troutman Pepper Locke.
I reached out to Cowan after the eagle investigation began because his law firm posted a bulletin warning that developers “holding active eagle permits” might want to prepare for “subpoenas that may be forthcoming.” During our chat earlier this month, he told me that the eagle probe is likely going to strain financing for projects even on private lands that wouldn’t require any other forms of federal sign-off: “Folks don’t want to operate if they feel there’s a significant risk they might take an eagle without authorization.”
Cowan then voiced increasing concern about the migratory bird effort, however, because the law on this matter could be a quite powerful – if legally questionable – weapon against wind development.
Unlike the Endangered Species Act or the eagle protection law, there is currently no program on the books for a wind project developer to even obtain a permit for incidental impacts to a migratory bird. Part of the reason for the absence of such a program is the usual federal bureaucratic struggle that comes with implementing a complex statute, with the added effect of the ping-pong of federal control; the Biden administration started a process for permitting “incidental” impacts, but it was scrapped in April by the Trump team. Most protection of migratory birds under the law today comes from voluntary measures conducted by private companies and nonprofits in consultation with the federal government.
Hypothetically, hurting a migratory bird should be legally permissible to the federal government. That’s because the administration loosened implementation of the law earlier this year with an Interior Department legal opinion that stated the agency would only go after harm that was “intentional” – a term of art under the statute.
This is precisely why Cowan is fretting about migratory birds, however. Asked why the wind industry hasn’t publicly voiced more anxiety about this potential move, he said industry insiders genuinely hope this is “bluster” because such a selective use of this law “would be so beyond the pale.”
“It’s basically saying the purpose of a wind farm is to kill migratory birds, which is very clearly not the case – it’s to generate renewable electricity,” Cowan told me, adding that any effort by the Interior Department would inevitably result in lawsuits. “I mean, look at what this interpretation would mean: To classify it as intentional take would say the purpose of operating a wind farm would be to kill a bird. It’s obviously not. But this seems to be a way this administration is contemplating using the MBTA to block the operation of wind farms.”
It’s worth acknowledging just how bonkers this notion is on first blush. Is the federal government actually going to decide that any operating wind farm could be illegal? That would put entire states’ power supplies – including GOP-heavy states like Iowa – in total jeopardy. Not to mention it would be harmful overall to take operating capacity offline in any fashion at a moment when energy demand is spiking because of data centers and artificial intelligence. Even I, someone who has broken quite a few eye-popping stories about Trump’s war on renewables, struggle to process the idea of the government truly going there on the MBTA.
And yet, a door to this activity is now open, like a cleaver hanging over the industry’s head.
I asked the Interior Department to clarify its timeline for the MBTA review. It declined to comment on the matter. I would note that in mid-August, the Trump administration began maintenance on a federal dashboard for tracking regulations such as these and hasn’t updated it since. So we’ll have to wait for nothing less than their word to know what direction this is going in.
And more on the week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy projects.
1. Santa Fe County, New Mexico – County commissioners approved the controversial AES Rancho Viejo solar project after months of local debate, which was rendered more intense by battery fire concerns.
2. Nantucket, Massachusetts – The latest episode of the Vineyard Wind debacle has dropped, and it appears the offshore wind project’s team is now playing ball with the vacation town.
3. Klickitat County, Washington – Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson is pausing permitting on Cypress Creek Renewables’ Carriger solar project despite a recommendation from his own permitting council, citing concerns from tribes that have dogged other renewables projects in the state.
4. Tippecanoe County, Indiana – The county rejected what is believed to have been its first utility-scale solar project, flying in the face of its zoning staff.
5. Morrow County, Oregon – This county is opting into a new state program that purports to allow counties more input in how they review utility-scale solar projects.
6. Ocean County, New Jersey – The Jersey shoreline might not get a wind farm any time soon, but now that angst is spreading to battery storage.
7. Fairfield County, Ohio – Hey, at least another solar farm is getting permitted in Ohio.
Talking NEPA implementation and permitting reform with Pamela Goodwin, an environmental lawyer at Saul Ewing LLP.
This week’s conversation is with Pamela Goodwin, an environmental lawyer with Saul Ewing LLP. I reached out to her to chat about permitting because, well, when is that not on all of our minds these days. I was curious, though, whether Trump’s reforms to National Environmental Policy Act regulations and recent court rulings on the law’s implementation would help renewables in any way, given how much attention has been paid to “permitting reform” over the years. To my surprise, there are some silver linings here – though you’ll have to squint to see them.
The following chat was lightly edited for clarity.
So walk me through how you see the Trump administration handling renewable energy projects right now under NEPA.
In general, the federal government has been much more reluctant to the timely issue of permits in contrast to what we might be seeing on the more traditional side of things.
But that’s separate from NEPA — it relates to public notice and comments and the opportunity for third parties to get involved, ensuring any decision-making on the government side is done in a way that’s evocative of a fair system. On the NEPA side, I don’t know if they’re going to treat renewables any differently than they’re going to treat other sorts of projects. That’s different, from a policy perspective, [from] how they’re handling the permits.
If, from a policy perspective, the federal government is less inclined to make a determination about a particular project — or if it decides that it doesn’t like wind, for example, and isn’t going to issue a permit — that’s different than the procedural elements associated with a NEPA review.
The Supreme Court recently ruled in the Seven County case that agencies can be granted a lot of deference in their reviews under NEPA, seeing it more as a procedural statute than a substantive roadblock. What will this lead to?
I think that what we’re seeing – and every agency’s different – but what the court said is that lower courts should defer to the agency to establish their own protocols under NEPA. They’ve begun to streamline the process by which they issue permits, issue notices of those permits, and give people the opportunity to comment on them.
What we’re anticipating will happen if the court gets its wishes – and candidly, I think this is a good thing for developers, on both the renewables and non-renewables side – is that we’ll see more expeditious permitting from the federal government.
You may not like the determinations. There’s a possibility that certain permits are denied if the nature of the permit is in conflict with the federal government’s policy and intention. But you’ll get a quicker decision than you used to get. And if there’s a will to issue a permit, you’ll get it faster.
We’ve heard the concept of permitting reform or NEPA reform as a leveling of the playing field, but in this environment, it is not entirely clear that’ll be the case. Where does the battleground turn then for those who get, as you put it, rejections faster?
That’s a great question. Regrettably, the immediate battleground is the courts. There is certainly a right and an opportunity for anybody who feels a determination was incorrect to challenge that, and to challenge the particular agency’s implementation of NEPA.
Okay, but what’s the remedy here if renewables companies are just getting rejections faster from the Trump team?
Without a real-world example, it’s hard to give you legal theories, but they will always exist. It’ll be circumstantial, and good lawyers always come up with good arguments. I don’t think this issue is fully resolved, either. The Supreme Court has done a favor to everybody by at least defining the issue, but now we’ll have to see what happens as agencies make these kinds of determinations.