You’re out of free articles.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Sign In or Create an Account.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Welcome to Heatmap
Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here .
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Subscribe to get unlimited Access
Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Create Your Account
Please Enter Your Password
Forgot your password?
Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:
The Rivian R1S’s sprawling touchscreen delivered the good news: After 40-plus minutes of charging at the halfway-point pit stop between San Francisco and L.A., we could easily make it the 220 miles home. Sure, fate might dictate an extra pit stop if the toddler collapsed into an inconsolable meltdown or one of the adults needed a bathroom break. But the math was clear: At a 95% charge, the big electric SUV’s battery could go an estimated 350 miles in Conserve Mode — more than enough to get home from Coalinga in one shot.
And then it happened. The baby held it together, thanks in part to the soothing power of pop song covers by a singing cat. We blew through the last leg of the journey over the mountains into greater Los Angeles.
For a fossil fuel vehicle, this would have been no big achievement; just about any old gas-burner could make a 400-mile highway trip with a single stop. In an EV, it’s a picture of what’s becoming possible as batteries get bigger and better, and more EVs have ranges that top 300 miles. Because believe me, if you want to road trip in an electric vehicle, you should buy all the range you can afford.
When my wife and I got a Tesla Model 3 six years ago, our simple single-motor edition came with a nominal 240 miles of Environmental Protection Agency-rated range. Pretty good, we thought. That’s nearly the distance to Las Vegas, and certainly enough to make the trip of 350 miles or so to San Francisco on one recharging stop.
How young I was. Range, remember, is a relative thing; an EPA miles rating doesn’t mean you’ll go that far. Compared to driving 50 miles per hour on some lonesome highway, range dips noticeably when you’re ignoring the 70 mile-per-hour speed limit on Interstate 5, just trying to get home. It is also impractical to use a battery’s entire capacity. Once you’ve passed 80% to 85% capacity, recharging slows dramatically, so much so that it’s annoying to sit there and accumulate a few extra miles unless you really need them. And when you’re driving, the miles below 10% aren’t usable unless you’re totally comfortable arriving at the next charger with just a percent or two left on the battery.
Because of these limitations, my little Tesla can’t really travel more than 140 to 150 real miles at freeway speed. As the battery has gotten older and its range has dwindled, the journey to San Francisco can be accomplished in two charging stops only if we begin with a full battery, carefully plan our stops, and don’t have to waste energy running the A/C on full blast because it’s obscenely hot. More commonly, the trip takes three full charging stops.
To be clear, this is not the worst thing in the world. It adds travel time, certainly, when compared to the Cannonball Run my wife used to make in college, stopping just once at the halfway point to get some gas. But with a baby in the back, we’re taking at least a couple breaks no matter what. The real problem driving long distances in an EV with low or fading range is that the trip becomes an exercise in logistics. You’re constantly aware of the car’s estimate for how much range will remain when you reach your destination — and alarmed if that number starts to decline. You also rarely stop just because you want to when there are so many stops you have to make.
To get a taste of the better life to come, I borrowed an R1S Tri Max Ascend for a long weekend trip to the Bay Area. A triple-motor, absurdly overpowered version of Rivian’s SUV, the Tri Max is a $105,000, nearly 7,000-pound behemoth that can outrace sports cars on a drag strip. Yet because of its enormous battery pack, the giant EV can still deliver more than 300 real-world miles on a charge, enough to fulfill my long-held fantasy of charging only once on the way to San Francisco.
The difference was apparent within the first two hours. As we crept through heavy traffic leaving Los Angeles on U.S. 101, the baby threw a fit. In my shorter-range EV, I would’ve powered through the ear-piercing misery for as long as it took to reach a Supercharger in Santa Barbara, then eaten whatever happened to be around. In the R1S, we knew we could make it comfortably all the way to Rivian’s fast charger in Pismo Beach, about halfway to S.F. So we pulled off in one of our favorite seaside towns, Carpinteria, for happy hour crab cakes to give the child a break from her seat.
It took a lengthy stop in Pismo to refill the Rivian’s gigantic battery, one we spent buying baby clothes at the outlet mall. But that got us to the Bay Area, where a quick pit stop at one of the Tesla Superchargers now open to non-Tesla cars provided plenty of electricity to bum around town all weekend. The only hitch in road-tripping in the Rivian is where you choose to stay — our hotel had one compatible slow-charging bay for overnight energy, but I never could snag it.
No, long range can’t duplicate the mad dash experience for the kind of drivers who want to stop only five minutes every four hours in order to “make good time.” And EV driving still requires more mental math than the old ways, where you would notice the fuel gauge is getting close to E and pull off at any of America’s multitude of gas stations. But extended range does give the EV driver more of the classic road trip experience, where stops are determined by life — bathroom breaks, coffee refills, backseat tantrums — and not solely by charging needs. And there’s nothing like having enough range to just get home when everybody in the family needs the trip to end.
The good news is that range is getting better across the board. A half-decade ago, a lot of pure EVs came with ranges that were barely above 200. Now, many more come with at least 240 to 250 miles in their entry-level versions, with battery upgrades available that take the figure north of 300.
The bad news is that range costs. No, you don’t have to splurge for a six-figure vehicle like the R1S Tri Max to get a big battery. Even with more affordable EVs, though, it costs thousands of dollars extra to get the larger battery, and with it, road trip peace of mind. An ideal solution to this problem is leasing, which gets people into better EVs for a lower monthly payment (and doesn’t leave them worrying about a battery’s long-term health as they would if they bought the car). But a lot of great lease deals are going to get a bit worse if the current government succeeds in undoing electric vehicle incentives.
For plenty of drivers, the extra cost won’t be practical or worthwhile — they could spend much less to stick with a hybrid vehicle, or settle for making a few extra road trip stops in a less expensive EV. But if I’m being honest, long range is a life-changer for anybody who loves the open road. EVs are already better than combustion cars in the city. Once driving range reaches well above 300 miles, they’re just about as good on the interstate, too.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Packed hearings. Facebook organizing. Complaints about prime farmland and a disappearing way of life. Sound familiar?
Solar and wind companies cite the rise of artificial intelligence to make their business cases after the United States government slashed massive tax incentives for their projects.
But the data centers supposed to power the AI boom are now facing the sort of swift wave of rejections from local governments across the country eerily similar to what renewables developers have been dealing with on the ground over the last decade. The only difference is, this land use techlash feels even more sudden, intense, and culturally diffuse.
What’s happening is simple: Data centers are now routinely being denied by local governments in zoning and permitting decisions after local residents turn against them. These aggrieved denizens organize grassroots campaigns, many with associated Facebook groups, and then flood city council and county commission hearings.
Just take this past week. Last Thursday, Prince George’s County, Maryland, paused all data center permitting after a campaign against converting an abandoned mall into a data center gained traction online, with a petition garnering more than 20,000 signatures. On Monday, faced with a ferocious public outcry, Google rescinded a proposal to build what would’ve been its second data center in Indiana in Franklin Township, a community in southeastern Indianapolis – a withdrawal requested mere minutes before the township council was reportedly going to reject it.
That same day, the rural Illinois town of DeKalb denied a solar company’s request to build a “boutique data center” on the same site as a previously-permitted solar farm. And on Tuesday, the small city of Howell – located smack between Lansing and Detroit, Michigan – denied a data center proposed by an anonymous Fortune 100 company. Apparently, so many people showed up to voice their opposition to the project that the hearing was held in a high school gymnasium.
Opponents cite many things in their arguments against development, some unique to the sector like energy and water use, and others familiar to the solar and wind industry, like preserving prime farmland or maintaining a way of life.
These arguments are incredibly salient, as polling conducted by Heatmap News has revealed: less than half of Americans would ever support a data center coming near them, and this technology infrastructure is less popular than any form of renewable energy. Digging into the cross-tabs of that poll, data centers are unpopular with essentially all age demographics, and arguments against the facilities – like “they use too much water” or “they consume too much electricity” – get relatively similar agreement from registered Democrats and Republicans alike.
Ben Inskeep, a clean energy advocate in Indianapolis, told me he started fighting data centers last year after he became aware of the total power needed to fuel the rising number of projects in the state. His advocacy organization, Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, previously weighed in on rate hikes and electricity generation decisions. Now, they’re tracking more than 40 data center projects they say are proposed in the state and getting involved in the fight on the ground against them.
Inskeep told me that, from his point of view, the primary support for data centers comes from local governments and municipally-funded works like schools and health facilities that are facing slashed budgets. In some cases the projects are being rejected despite representing millions – even billions – in capital investments and potential tax revenues so large that municipal governments are put between a rock and a hard place as they’re pressured by a weakening economy and state funding cuts.
That’s what happened in Indianapolis. Earlier this month the school district that would’ve been funded by the now-rejected Google data center came out in support of the project, declaring it would welcome new tax revenue, and said it would also lead to new educational partnerships with the tech giant. But none of that mattered. Some local officials even lambasted their colleagues' support as unwarranted, a lashing out that reminds me of what happens to pro-solar officials in Ohio.
Heatmap News has been tracking contested data center projects since the spring of this year and has found almost 100 projects under development across the country that are being actively fought by local organizers, citizens advocacy groups, and environmental organizations. The data is preliminary and likely an undercount.
Still, there’s lots to glean from it. Crucially, as we’ve seen with renewable energy development, data center opposition crops up most often in tandem with the number of projects proposed and constructed. This is only logical: the more of something that is built in a place, the more likely people are to say, “We’ve built enough of that.” This is why Virginia is the top state when it comes to data centers being opposed – it’s a hub that’s seen development spike for far longer than elsewhere in the United States.
I believe that as data center project proposals continue to rise across the country, we’ll see in parallel rising hostility to their development – potentially much larger than anything renewable energy has ever faced. It will undoubtedly also be a problem for anyone in solar or wind who is riding on an AI boom to add demand for their projects.
And more of the week’s most important news around renewable energy conflicts.
1. Pulaski County, Arkansas – The attorney general of Arkansas is reassuring residents that yes, they can still ban wind farms if they want to.
2. Des Moines County, Iowa – This county facing intense pressure to lock out renewables is trying to find a sweet spot that doesn’t involve capitulation. Whether that’s possible remains to be seen.
3. Fayette County, Tennessee – This county just extended its solar energy moratorium for at least the next 18 months after pressure from residents.
4. McCracken County, Kentucky – It’s not all bad news this week, as a large solar project in Kentucky appears to be moving forward without fomenting difficulties on the ground.
A conversation with Wil Gehl at the Solar Energy Industries Association
This week I chatted with Wil Gehl, the InterMountain West senior manager at the Solar Energy Industries Association. I reached out in the hopes we could chat candidly about the impacts of the current national policy regime on solar development in the American West, where a pause on federal permits risks jeopardizing immense development in Nevada. To my delight, Wil was (pun intended) willing to get into the hot seat with me and get into the mix.
The following conversation was lightly edited for clarity.
So for starters, walk me through how solar development out west has changed since the start of this year.
Certainly been a lot of changes. I think there’s sort of a confluence of lots of uncertainty and change in the industry. The impending tax credit deadlines and safe harbor and commence construction deadlines, all of that combined with the sort of things that have been ongoing in the West for a while — public lands, siting issues — I think those have made a relatively difficult development environment for folks.
But that said, we’re also seeing unprecedented load growth across the West, and Nevada’s a really good example of that. So the demand for solar and storage remains super high. But I think now we’re navigating even more difficulty in getting projects both sited and also over the finish line.
How has the pause on federal permitting impacted projects in this area of the country?
Nevada is 80% public land, give or take, so those changes at the federal level, particularly, the Department of Interior … it’s pretty difficult if you’re looking at utility-scale solar in the state to avoid a sort of federal lands nexus. Those policy changes are really being felt on the ground in Nevada.
We don’t do a ton of engagement at the county level but I’ve been tracking those developments across the state, in Nevada, and others around the West. Whether they’re moratoriums or consideration on moratoriums, or new siting restrictions… in most states in the West, the land use decisions rest at the local level, either the county or the municipal jurisdiction. The patchwork of changing ordinances, that [has a] pace that has intensified a little bit this year as well.
How is SEIA trying to get those projects unstuck? I think about Esmeralda 7 for example, which hasn’t seen its permitting timeline updated online in half a year. What’s the process for trying to get these projects to move forward at this juncture?
I guess I don’t have project by project specific information but in general, I think the example with Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo’s letter is how we’ve been approaching this issue. Trying to make the case for states like Nevada with really high load growth that projects like this are critical to meeting energy demand and serving customers reliably. Trying to tie the really near-term challenge of serving load together with these issues of federal land so that people on the ground at the state level are aware of it and can use the influence they have with federal officials and other folks to make this situation known, that this has real practical effects with states and their economic development.
When it comes to transmission for these solar projects, what’s the status? Is the scope of the pause just limited to the scope of solar generation or also transmission lines connected to them?
I think the kind of more recent challenges have been more focused on the generation side. The pace of the transmission and associated queue bottlenecks, I feel like that situation has not improved by any means but I don’t get the sense there’s any near-term changes that have impacted that. I’d be curious if other folks who work more closely on the transmission side have a different perspective, but that’s kind of what I’m seeing.
Is there from your vantage point a clip or an end here? If these projects are unable to be unstuck, do you expect developers to try and wait out this limbo with public lands? Or do you expect developers to rethink how they site their projects?
I think in general for projects already under the development process, folks have already invested a lot of time, energy, and capital to get those projects to this point. Particularly those in the West really necessary to serve as growing load, I would expect folks to really be pursuing every angle they can to get those projects over the finish line.
That said, I’m sure there is some point. I just don’t have a good sense of when this becomes totally unpalatable or you’re not able to move forward.
NV Energy recently had a filing at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that allowed projects previously in their queue an escape route out if they were not able to maintain their queue position. I do think that’s a sign of the siting difficulties, the people re-evaluating their project portfolio. I’m not a developer but if you’re looking on private land or federal land, signs are pointing to a smoother path forward on private land but in states like Nevada where 80% plus is public land, even for a project fully sited on private land, it’s really difficult to avoid interconnection or transmission. There are pretty much always going to be federal impacts. That’s just going to be a challenge that industry’s facing at this point.
What’s your message to developers who are anxious in this moment?
That’s a good question. I share the anxiety.
I also think there’s a lot of effort being undertaken by developers to explain the situation on the ground to their elected officials and I really think that’s the kind of message that needs to get out there. These real tangible impacts of projects that were already invested in, in some cases already under construction, that are being hindered by these policy decisions that I don’t think are serving the public interests and are going to limit economic development if they don’t come online in time. Ultimately energy is needed to meet the growing demand. There’s not a great alternative to these projects not getting done.