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Policy Watch

Tariffs Hit Solar Cells

And more of the week’s biggest news in clean energy policy.

Solar Panels
Unsplash/Heatmap

1. Seasons change, tariffs stay the same – The Biden administration is putting a duty on solar cells from four South Asian countries believed to be pass-throughs for Chinese imports: Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

  • The tariffs range wildly from less than 1% to almost 300%. Impacted companies include Jintek, Hanwha Q Cells (a.k.a. Qcells), JinkoSolar, and Trina Solar.
  • What this’ll mean: developers wrestling with pricier imported cells from some of the most popular sources.
  • These tariffs resulted from an anti-dumping case filed by an alliance of U.S. solar manufacturers including First Solar, Convalt Energy, REC Silicon, and, ironically, also Qcells.

2. New money for new nuclear – The Energy Department yesterday finalized over $2.8 billion in loans and grants to restart the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan.

  • The plant – to be operated by Holtec – shut down in 2022 which means, as reports indicate, it shouldn’t take long to recommission and could be re-operational by next year.
  • Nuclear Energy Institute CEO Maria Korsnick told me earlier this year over pasta that she was vying for more direct investments to individual projects, partially to make it harder to repeal Inflation Reduction Act programs.

3. California is so silly sometimes – A judge has temporarily halted a California rule that would’ve stopped some solar developers in the state from building battery storage.

  • California’s contractor licensing board had set forth regulation effective Oct. 1 stopping solar equipment workers from installing or maintaining batteries beyond 80 kWH (which… is obviously not a lot of power).
  • The regulation will now be suspended until a legal challenge from solar and battery storage companies can be resolved.

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Q&A

How the Wind Industry Can Fight Back

A conversation with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications

The Q&A subject.
Heatmap Illustration

Today’s conversation is with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications, a D.C.-based communications firm that focuses on defending zero- and low-carbon energy and federal investments in climate action. Moyer, a veteran communications adviser who previously worked on Capitol Hill, has some hot takes as of late about how he believes industry and political leaders have in his view failed to properly rebut attacks on solar and wind energy, in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act. On Tuesday he sent an email blast out to his listserv – which I am on – that boldly declared: “The Wind Industry’s Strategy is Failing.”

Of course after getting that email, it shouldn’t surprise readers of The Fight to hear I had to understand what he meant by that, and share it with all of you. So here goes. The following conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.

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Hotspots

A New York Town Bans Both Renewable Energy And Data Centers

And more on this week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.

  • Chautauqua, a vacation town in southern New York, has now reportedly issued a one-year moratorium on wind projects – though it’s not entirely obvious whether a wind project is in active development within its boundaries, and town officials have confessed none are being planned as of now.
  • Apparently, per local press, this temporary ban is tied to a broader effort to update the town’s overall land use plan to “manage renewable energy and other emerging high-impact uses” – and will lead to an ordinance that restricts data centers as well as solar and wind projects.
  • I anticipate this strategy where towns update land use plans to target data centers and renewables at the same time will be a lasting trend.

2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project will learn its fate under the Trump administration by this fall, after a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department must come to a decision on how it’ll handle a court challenge against its permits by September.

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Spotlight

The Wind Projects Breaking the Wyoming GOP

It’s governor versus secretary of state, with the fate of the local clean energy industry hanging in the balance.

Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

I’m seeing signs that the fight over a hydrogen project in Wyoming is fracturing the state’s Republican political leadership over wind energy, threatening to trigger a war over the future of the sector in a historically friendly state for development.

At issue is the Pronghorn Clean Energy hydrogen project, proposed in the small town of Glenrock in rural Converse County, which would receive power from one wind farm nearby and another in neighboring Niobrara County. If completed, Pronghorn is expected to produce “green” hydrogen that would be transported to airports for commercial use in jet fuel. It is backed by a consortium of U.S. and international companies including Acconia and Nordex.

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