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It took a lot of scrutiny and a lot of patience, but the city council is finally making progress against natural gas infrastructure.
Susan Albright, a city councilor in Newton, Massachusetts, was reviewing the latest batch of requests from the local gas utility in early July when one submission caught her off guard. The company, National Grid, regularly asks the city for permission to tear up stretches of road in order to replace aging gas mains and service lines. But this time, the utility wanted to install a new 46-foot pipeline leading to Newton Crossing, a mixed-use housing development that’s currently under construction.
“I thought, Oh my god,” Albright told me. “Here we are trying to get rid of pipe, and here’s some new pipe that they’re asking for.”
Such “grant of location” requests used to be a rubber stamp exercise for the Public Facilities Committee, of which Albright is the chair. But more recently, they’ve become contentious. Activists have started showing up to public meetings to question the necessity of pipeline work. Could the pipes be repaired instead of replaced? Or even better, retired? Could the houses served by them be electrified?
To get ahead of public outcry about a brand new pipe, Albright sprung into action. She pulled up plans the housing developer had filed with the city and learned that the apartments were intended to be all-electric. The developer had requested a gas connection solely to serve commercial businesses on the ground level. Albright found a contact for the project and picked up the phone.
“Is there any possibility that you could go electric for your commercial?” she recalled asking, explaining the connection between natural gas and climate change, and the city’s goal of weaning off gas. “At first he was very reluctant,” she told me. “But then he called me back and said that he’s willing to try it.” His ability to do so will depend on whether the electric utility can supply enough power. Nonetheless, Albright had successfully pushed a vote on the request to a later date. “We will review that grant of location at our meeting on July 28, and hopefully he will withdraw it, but we don’t know,” she said.
The city committed to transitioning away from natural gas by 2050 as part of its Climate Action Plan, enacted in 2019. Although residents have started to electrify their homes, the city hasn’t been able to slow down investment into the gas system. The story of Newton Crossing illustrates a strategy that has finally begun to move the needle. Councilors and activists have begun doggedly scrutinizing each of National Grid’s requests in hopes of finding alternatives that avoid investing more ratepayer money into a gas system that is — or should be — on a path toward obsolescence.
Progress has not been linear, and almost all of these attempts have so far failed. But the city does seem to have gotten the company’s attention. Earlier, in June, National Grid came to Newton with a different kind of request — an invitation to embark on a collaboration together with the local electric utility, Eversource, to proactively plan the city’s transition away from gas, and in doing so, begin to create a model for the company, the state, and possibly the country.
“I’m so excited to be here today because this is the first of its kind,” Bill Foley, National Grid’s director of strategy and transformation told the Public Facilities Committee while presenting the proposal. “We’ve never sat down with Eversource, National Grid, and another community to talk about how we’re going to broadly electrify a community.”
The subterranean network of natural gas pipes that runs under Massachusetts is old and leaky, with some sections dating back to the late 19th century. Utilities in the Commonwealth have always been required to address dangerous leaks, but in 2014, the state passed a law incentivizing more proactive measures to replace or repair leak-prone pipes. It was a matter of public safety as well as environmental protection — the methane that seeps out can kill tree roots in addition to being a powerful greenhouse gas.
The law created the Gas System Enhancement Program, or GSEP. Each fall, companies would file annual plans to the Department of Public Utilities outlining all the pipeline repair and replacement projects they aimed to complete in the coming year. In return, they’d get quicker approvals from regulators and be able to recover the costs more quickly from ratepayers.
In the years since, utilities have spent billions of dollars replacing thousands of miles of pipelines. Simultaneously, the state has fleshed out its plans to tackle climate change, making it clear that electrifying buildings would be a key component. As a result, the tide of public opinion about the pipeline program shifted. Replacing aging pipes may actually be worse for the climate, many activists now believe, since it means putting major investments in new fossil fuel infrastructure, thereby increasing inertia in the energy system and possibly delaying the transition to carbon-free solutions.
Former mechanical engineer Peter Barrer is one of those activists. Barrer lives in Newton, and has become an expert on the local gas network and the state’s pipeline policies. Using public data filed with state regulators, he calculated that out of the $18 million National Grid spent to address aging pipes under the GSEP program in Newton in 2023, only about $200,000 went to repairs, with the rest going to replacements. (National Grid later disputed the number, reporting that it spent $3 million on repairs that year.)
Barrer is concerned that the GSEP gives the company cover to spend excessively on pipeline replacements, which earn them larger profits than repairs. Other analysts have reached similar conclusions. Last year, the energy research consultancy the Brattle Group submitted testimony to state regulators on behalf of the Massachusetts attorney general’s office arguing that utilities are increasingly using GSEP to make everyday capital improvements. The level of spending “goes far beyond remediating immediate risks to safety caused by gas leaks,” the consultants wrote.
Barrer’s research on GSEP led him to a potential point of leverage with National Grid. When the utility wants to dig up a street, it has to submit a Grant of Location request to Newton’s Public Facilities Committee, which is then subject to a public hearing.
Newton is a progressive city that has long been at the forefront of climate action in the state. It’s one of 10 communities granted permission by the state to ban gas hookups in new buildings. (The Newton Crossing development got its permits before the policy went into effect.) The city council has also passed an ordinance requiring the largest existing buildings to reduce their emissions to net-zero by 2050.
While the Public Facilities Committee doesn’t have the power to deny National Grid’s Grant of Location requests, Albright, the city councilor, told me, the meetings do present an opportunity to engage with the utility. Members and the public can ask questions and delay approvals. Barrer and other activists began using the requests as an opportunity to highlight the paradox of the city approving new gas infrastructure.
One particularly contentious fight began last October over a replacement on Garland Road, a street known for hosting a “Sustainable Street Tour,” during which residents spoke about their experiences greening their homes with solar, insulation, EVs, and heat pumps. “Bells kind of rang in my mind,” Barrer told me. “Here’s a great place to fight National Grid.”
The gas company argued that the Garland Road pipeline, 600 feet of cast iron from the 1920s, was simply too high-risk. “National Grid cannot agree to delay replacement long enough to determine if the Garland Rd customers that still use their gas service for one or more uses are willing to have their gas service disconnected,” Amy Smith, the director of the company’s New England Gas Business Unit, wrote in an email to Albright in January. “In addition, even if all customers on Garland Rd agree to have their gas service cut off, we do not currently have a mechanism to fund the costs of full electrification of each home.” The Committee signed off on the project.
But activists continued to challenge it. A resident of Garland Road, Jon Slote, surveyed his neighbors and found that all were either neutral or supportive of electrification. He also put together a cost comparison and found that the capital cost of electrifying the homes was 18% to 41% lower than that of replacing the pipeline.
National Grid didn’t budge. One of the reasons the block couldn’t be electrified, Smith explained to Barrer in emails that I reviewed, was that this segment of pipe “plays a critical role in providing pressure support for approximately 120 homes in the area. Maintaining minimum pressure is vital for both safety and reliability.”
Barrer told me he’s skeptical that replacing the pipe is the only solution, but acknowledged that the issue is real.
Perhaps Barrer’s biggest grievance, though, is that National Grid frequently makes requests that are not in its regulator-approved plans. Nearly 60% of the money the company spent in 2023 and was able to recover through the expedited GSEP process went to such projects, he found. A related issue: GSEP plans often don’t disclose the full extent of each project. “This is important for municipal planning,” Barrer told me. If the public can’t see in advance which areas the company is planning to work on, he said, “there’s no opportunity for the city to investigate. Maybe there’s streets on there that we can get support for electrification.”
He described the fight over gas pipelines in Newton as “a David and Goliath situation.” Activists want the opportunity to get ahead of these projects and figure out alternatives, he said, but aren’t given enough notice or details. “They have all the cards. They have a monopoly on gas, and they also have a monopoly on information.” He wants the state legislature to help them put up a fairer fight by passing two new bills that would require the utilities to disclose more information, sooner.
Albright, meanwhile, told me she thinks National Grid has acted in good faith. “The people that I’ve been working with, I trust that they’re trying to do the best for the company and for us as customers. I mean, they don’t want these pipes to explode.”
For about a year, Albright said, she has been having conversations with Smith of National Grid about what the city could do to start getting off gas. At the end of 2024, Smith came back with an offer — National Grid would work with Newton on an electrification pilot project. The company has since provided the city with a list of streets to consider for the pilot — mostly dead ends on the outskirts of the gas system, areas where taking out a stretch of pipe won’t affect other customers downstream.
Meanwhile, a lot has changed at the state level. Late last year and continuing into this spring, lawmakers and regulators enacted new policies to reform GSEP and better align it with the Commonwealth’s clean energy plans. That meant focusing on the highest risk pipes, prioritizing repairs instead of replacements, lowering the cap on spending for companies, and enabling them to spend some of the money on alternatives to pipelines, including electrification projects.
Perhaps these changes help explain what led National Grid to approach Newton earlier this summer with its proposal to collaborate. At the Public Facilities Committee’s June 18 meeting, representatives from National Grid and Eversource spent nearly three hours explaining their “integrated energy planning” effort, figuring out how to transition from gas to electricity while containing costs and ensuring reliable service. Now they wanted the chance to begin testing it out in a community.
“The technical stuff is easy,” Foley of National Grid told the Committee. “When it comes to knocking on a door and saying, Hey, how do we get you to electrify? That’s the challenging part. That’s what we’re going to learn.”
The Committee, the mayor, and city staff welcomed the idea. Even Barrer is optimistic. “I think it is unprecedented,” he told me, “and it could be very, very useful.” But he’s also skeptical. Will the company actually share the information advocates like him are looking for to analyze alternatives? And will it work quickly?
“From my perspective, every year that the plan doesn’t turn into action is another half a billion dollars of ratepayer money the National Grid gets to invest.” But, he added, “I’m hopeful. Let’s see what actually develops.”
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On Interior’s birdwatching, China’s lithium slowdown, and recycling aluminum
Current conditions: Hurricane Erin is gathering strength as it makes its way toward Puerto Rico later this week • Flash flooding and severe storms threaten the Great Plains and Midwest • In France, 12 administrative regions are on red alert for heat as temperatures surge past 95 degrees Fahrenheit.
Ford announced plans on Monday to deliver a $30,000 mid-size all-electric truck in 2027, in a potential shakeup of an EV market that’s been plagued by high costs. But the truck — which is rumored to revive the retro name Ford Ranchero — wasn’t really the main news. The pickup is part of Ford’s plan to “reimagine the entire way it builds EVs to cut costs, turn around its struggling EV division, and truly compete with the likes of Tesla,” Heatmap contributor Andrew Moseman wrote, which the company has dubbed its second “Model T moment.”
The strategy embraces a more minimalist, software-driven method of car design that EV-only companies such as Tesla and Rivian employ, allowing them to make mechanically simpler vehicles with fewer buttons and parts and more functions run by software through touchscreens. The push could “change everything” and “disrupt the U.S. auto industry,” wrote Inside EVs.
The Department of the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service is sending letters to wind developers across the U.S. asking for volumes of records about eagle deaths, indicating an imminent crackdown on wind farms under the auspices of bird protection laws, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman reported. The letters demand developers submit a laundry list of documents to the Service within 30 days, including “information collected on each dead or injured eagle discovered.”
The Trump administration has ramped up its assault on the wind industry in recent weeks, de-designating millions of acres of ocean for offshore wind development and yanking federal approvals for the Lava Ridge wind project in Idaho. Here’s Jael with more on the escalation.
An explosion at a U.S. Steel plant outside Pittsburgh killed at least two workers and injured nearly a dozen more. The first worker confirmed to have died was Timothy Quinn, 39, a father of three and caretaker to his mother, his sister, Trisha Quinn told CNN. She said officials did not alert her to her brother’s death until 4 p.m., hours after the explosion occurred. “My dad worked at the steel mill for 42 years,” she said. “He would be disgusted at the situation right now.” U.S. Steel executives said they do not yet know what caused the blast. The name of the second worker to have died was not yet confirmed.
The Clairton Coke Works facility, which has operated for more than 120 years, is a key node in the American steel supply chain, providing iron for the blast furnaces in Braddock, Pennsylvania, and Gary, Indiana. It was slated for potential investments under Nippon Steel’s $15 billion acquisition of the American giant. The extent of the damage is unclear, but the reconstruction of the plant could pose a test of whether Nippon will invest in newer, cleaner technologies or rebuild the existing coal-fired equipment.
Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology, or CATL, said Monday it would halt production at a major lithium mine, sparking a surge in lithium futures and miners’ share prices, Reuters reported. The move is seen as part of Beijing’s broader attempt to rein in China’s overcapacity in the battery market, which created a global glut. Stock in lithium companies outside China surged on the news, as did spot prices. The license on the mine, located in the southeast province of Jiangxi, expired on August 9. The site previously supplied up to 6% of the world’s lithium.
“I am bullish on the move. It is proof positive that Chinese producers can only operate at a loss for so long before shutting in production. When they do, the floor under prices starts to take shape,” Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes, the Department of Energy’s former deputy director for batteries and critical minerals, wrote on LinkedIn. “This move will not fix the sector’s structural challenges overnight, but it is a meaningful signal that the worst of the oversupply pressure may be behind us.”
President Donald Trump’s 50% tariffs on imported aluminum could spur a recycling boom, industry experts told The Wall Street Journal’s Ryan Dezember. Primary aluminum production dwindled over the last 25 years. Two of the first new smelters planned in the U.S. in decades are facing increased competition for electricity from data centers. Production is likely still a few years away. By contrast, aluminum-recycling plants can be built faster and cheaper — roughly two years and $150 million — and consume 5% of the energy needed for primary production since they rely on chemical reactions to break down wasted metal. “Recycling is the answer,” said Duncan Pitchford, the executive in charge of recycling giant Norsk Hydro’s upstream business in the U.S. “The metal is already here.”
Scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Princeton University re-engineered the metabolism of the yeast Issatchenkia orientalis to supercharge its fermentation of plant glucose into succinic acid, an important industrial chemical used in food additives and agricultural and pharmaceutical products. The natural fermentation process, relying on yeasts and renewable plant material, is far less carbon intensive than the conventional production using petrochemicals. “These advances bring us closer to greener manufacturing processes that benefit both the environment and the economy,” Vinh Tran, study’s primary author, said in a press release.
The assembly line is the company’s signature innovation. Now it’s trying to one-up itself with the Universal EV Production System.
In 2027, Ford says, it will deliver a $30,000 mid-size all-electric truck. That alone would be a breakthrough in a segment where EVs have struggled against high costs and lagging interest from buyers.
But the company’s big announcement on Monday isn’t (just) about the truck. The promised pickup is part of Ford’s big plan that it has pegged as a “Model T moment” for electric vehicles. The Detroit giant says it is about to reimagine the entire way it builds EVs to cut costs, turn around its struggling EV division, and truly compete with the likes of Tesla.
What lies beneath the new affordable truck — which will revive the retro name Ford Ranchero, if rumors are true — is a new setup called the Ford Universal EV Platform. When car companies talk about a platform, they mean the automotive guts that can be shared between various models, a strategy that cuts costs compared to building everything from scratch for each vehicle. Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y ride on the same platform, the latter being essentially a taller version of the former. Ford’s rival, General Motors, created the Ultium platform that has allowed it to build better and more affordable EVs like the Chevy Equinox and the upcoming revival of the Bolt. In Ford’s case, it says a truck, a van, a three-row SUV, and a small crossover can share the modular platform.
At the heart of the company’s plan, however, is a new manufacturing approach. The innovation of the original Model T was about the factory, after all — using the assembly line to cut production costs and lower the price of the car. For this “Model T moment,” the company has proposed a sea change in the way it builds EVs called the Ford Universal EV Production System. It will demonstrate the strategy with a $2 billion upgrade to the Ford factory in Louisville, Kentucky, that will build the new pickup.
In brief, Ford has embraced the more minimalist, software-driven version of car design embraced by EV-only companies like Tesla and Rivian. The vehicles themselves are mechanically simpler, with fewer buttons and parts, and more functions are controlled by software through touchscreen interfaces. Building cars this way cuts costs because you need far fewer bits, bobs, fasteners, and workstations in the factory. It also reduces the amount of wiring in the vehicle — by more than a kilometer of the stuff compared to the Mustang Mach-E, Ford’s current most popular EV, the company said.
Ford is in dire need of an electric turnaround. The company got into the EV race earlier than legacy car companies like Toyota and Subaru, which settled on more of a wait-and-see approach. Its Mustang Mach-E crossover has been one of the more successful non-Tesla EVs of the early 2020s; the F-150 Lightning proved that the full-size pickup truck that dominates American car sales could go electric, too.
But both vehicles were expensive to make, and the Lightning struggled to make a dent in the truck market, in part because the huge battery needed to power such a big vehicle gave it a bloated price. When Tesla started a price war in the EV market a few years ago, Ford began hemorrhaging billions from its electric division, struggling to adapt to the new world even as carmakers like GM and Hyundai/Kia found their footing.
The big Detroit brand has been looking for an answer ever since, and Monday’s announcement is the most promising proposal it has put forward. Part of the production scheme is for Ford to build its own line of next-gen lithium-ion phosphate, or LFP batteries in Michigan, using technology licensed from the Chinese giant CATL. Another step is to employ the “assembly tree,” which splits the traditional assembly line into three parallel operations, which Ford says reduces the number of required workstations and cuts assembly time by 15%.
Affordability has always been a bugaboo for the American EV industry, a worry exacerbated by the upcoming demise of the $7,500 tax credit. And while Ford’s manufacturing overhaul will go a long way toward building a light-duty pickup EV that sells for $30,000, so too will a fundamental change in thinking about batteries, weight, and range. The F-150 Lightning isn’t the only pickup with a big battery and an even bigger price. That truck’s power pack comes in at 98 kilowatt-hours; large EV pickups like the Rivian R1T and Chevy Silverado EV have 150 or even 200 kilowatt-hour batteries, necessary to store enough power to give these heavy beasts a decent driving range.
InsideEVs reports, however, that the affordable Ford truck may have a battery capacity of just over 50 kilowatt-hours, which would dramatically reduce its cost to make. The trade-off, then, is range. The Slate small pickup truck that made waves this year for its promised price in the $20,000s would have just 150 miles of range in its cheapest form. Ford hasn’t released any specs for its small EV truck, but even using state-of-the-art LFP chemistry, such a small battery surely won’t deliver many more miles per charge.
Whatever the final product looks like, the new Ford truck and the infrastructure behind it are another reminder that, no matter the headwinds caused by the Trump administration, EVs are the future. Ford had been humming along through its EV struggles because its gas-burning cars remained so popular in America, and so profitable. But those profits collapsed in the first half of 2025, according to The New York Times. Meanwhile, Ford and every other carmaker are struggling to catch up to the Chinese companies selling a plethora of cheap EVs all over the world. Their very future depends on innovating ways to build EVs for less.
Governors, legislators, and regulators are all mustering to help push clean energy past the starting line in time to meet Republicans’ new deadlines.
Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act put new expiration dates on clean energy tax credits for business and consumers, raising the cost of climate action. Now some states are rushing to accelerate renewable energy projects and get as many underway as possible before the new deadlines take effect.
The new law requires wind and solar developers to start construction by the end of this year in order to claim the full investment or production tax credits under the rules established by the Inflation Reduction Act. They’ll then have at least four years to get their project online.
Those that miss the end-of-year deadline will have another six months, until July 4, 2026, to start construction, but will have to meet complicated sourcing restrictions on materials from China. Any projects that get off the ground after that date will face a severely abbreviated schedule — they’ll have to be completed by the end of 2027 to qualify, an all-but-impossibly short construction timeline.
Adding even more urgency to the time crunch, President Trump has directed the Treasury Department to revise the rules that define what it means to “start construction.” Historically, a developer could start construction simply by purchasing key pieces of equipment. But Trump’s order called for “preventing the artificial acceleration or manipulation of eligibility and by restricting the use of broad safe harbors unless a substantial portion of a subject facility has been built,” an ominous sign for those racing to meet already accelerated deadlines.
While the changes won’t suppress adoption of these technologies entirely, they will slow deployment and make renewable energy more expensive than it otherwise would have been. Some states that have clean energy goals are trying to lock in as much subsidized generation as they can to lessen the blow.
There are two ways states can meet the moment, Justin Backal Balik, the state program director at the nonprofit Evergreen Action, told me. Right now, many are trying to address the immediate crisis by helping to usher shovel-ready projects through regulatory processes. But states should also be thinking about how to make projects more economical after the tax credits expire, Balik said. “States can play a role in tilting the scale slightly back in the direction of some of the projects being financially viable,” he said, “even understanding that they’re not going to be able to make up all of the lost ground the incentives provided.”
In the first category, Colorado Governor Jared Polis sent a letter last week to utilities and independent power producers in the state committing to use “all of the Colorado State Government to prioritize deployment of clean energy projects.”
“Getting this right is of critical importance to Colorado ratepayers,” Polis wrote. The nonprofit research group Energy Innovation estimates that household energy expenses in Colorado could be $170 higher in 2030 than they would have been because of OBBB, and $310 higher in 2035. “The goal is to integrate maximal clean energy by securing as much cost-effective electric generation under construction or placed in service as soon as possible, along with any necessary electricity balancing resources and supporting infrastructure,” Polis continued.
As for how he plans to do that, he said the state would work to “eliminate administrative barriers and bottlenecks” for renewable energy, promising faster state reviews for permits. It will also “facilitate the pre-purchase of project equipment,” since purchasing equipment is one of the key steps developers can take to meet the tax credit deadlines.
Other states are looking to quickly secure new contracts for renewable energy. In mid-July, two weeks after the reconciliation bill became law, utility regulators in Maine moved to rapidly procure nearly 1,600 gigawatt-hours of wind and solar — for context, that’s about 13% of the total energy the state currently generates. They gave developers just two weeks to submit proposals, and will prioritize projects sited on agricultural land that has been contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, the chemicals known as PFAS. (When asked how many applications had been submitted, the Maine Public Utilities Commission said it doesn't share that information prior to project selection.)
Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection is eyeing a similar move. During a public webinar in late July, the agency said it was considering an accelerated procurement of zero-carbon resources “before the tax increase takes effect.” The office put out a request for information to renewable energy developers the next day to see if there were any projects ready to go that would qualify for the tax credits. Officials also encouraged developers to contact the agency’s concierge permit assistance services if they are worried about getting their permits on time for tax credit eligibility. Katie Dykes, the agency’s commissioner, said during the presentation that the concierge will engage with permit staff to make sure there aren’t incomplete or missing documents and to “ensure smooth and efficient review of projects.”
New York’s energy office is planning to do another round of procurement in September, the outlet New York Focus has reported, although the solicitation is late — it had originally been scheduled for June. The state has more than two dozen projects in the pipeline that are permitted but haven’t yet started construction, according to Focus, and some of them are waiting to secure contracts with the state.
Others are simply held up by the web of approvals New York requires, but better coordination between New York agencies may be in the works. “I assembled my team immediately and we are trying to do everything we can to expedite those [renewable energy projects] that are already in the pipeline to get those the approvals they need to move ahead,” Governor Kathy Hochul said during a rally at the State University of New York’s Niagara campus last week. The state’s energy research and development agency has formed a team “to help commercial projects quickly troubleshoot and advance towards construction,” according to the nonprofit Evergreen Action. (The agency did not respond to a request for more information about the effort.)
States and local governments are also planning to ramp up marketing of the consumer-based credits that are set to expire. Colorado, for example, launched a new “Energy Savings Navigator” tool to help residents identify all of the rebate, tax credit, and energy bill assistance programs they may be eligible for.
Consumers have even less time to act than wind and solar developers. Discounts for new, used, and leased electric vehicles will end in less than two months, on September 30. Homeowners must install solar panels, batteries, heat pumps, and any other clean energy or efficiency upgrades before the end of this year to qualify for tax credits.
Many states offer additional incentives for these technologies, and some are re-tooling their programs to stretch the funding. Connecticut saw a rush of demand for its electric vehicle rebate program, CHEAPR, after the OBBB passed. Officials decided to slash the subsidy from $1,500 to $500 as of August 1, and will re-assess the program in the fall. “The budget that we have for the CHEAPR program is finite,” Dykes said during the July webinar. “We are trying to be good stewards of those dollars in light of the extraordinary demand for EVs, so that after October 1 we have the best chance to be able to provide an enhanced rebate, to lessen the significant drop in the total level of incentives that are available for electric vehicles.”
As far as trying to address the longer-term challenges for renewables, Balik highlighted Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s proposal to streamline energy siting decisions by passing them through a new state board. “One of the big things states can do is siting reform because local opposition and lawsuits that drag forever are a big drag on costs,” Balik told me.
A bill that would create a Reliable Energy Siting and Electric Transition Board, or RESET Board, is currently in the Pennsylvania legislature. (New York State took similar steps to establish a renewable siting office to speed up deployment in 2020, though so far it’s still taking an average of three years to permit projects, down from four to five years prior to the office’s establishment.) Connecticut officials also discussed looking at ways to reduce the “soft costs” of permitting and environmental reviews during the July webinar.
Balik added that state green banks can also play a role in helping projects secure more favorable financing. Their capacity to do so will be significantly higher if the courts force the federal government to administer the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
When it comes to speeding up renewable energy deployment, there’s at least one big obstacle that governors have little control over. Wind and solar projects need approval from regional transmission operators, the independent bodies that oversee the transmission and distribution of power, to connect to the grid — a notoriously slow process. The lag is especially long in the PJM Interconnection, which governs the grid for 13 mid-Atlantic States, and has generally favored natural gas over renewables. But governors are starting to turn up the pressure on PJM to do better. In mid July, Shapiro and nine other governors demanded PJM give states more of a say in the process by allowing them to propose candidates for two of PJM’s board seats.
“Can we use this moment of crisis to really impress the urgency of getting some of these other things done — like siting reforms, like interconnection queue fixes, that are all part of the economics of projects,” Balik asked. These steps may help, but lengthy federal permitting processes remain a hurdle. While permitting reform is a major bipartisan priority in Congress, as my colleague Matthew Zeitlin wrote recently, a deal that’s good for renewables might require an about-face from the president on wind and solar.