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A conversation with Kajsa Hendrickson, Carbon180’s director of policy
This week I spoke with Kajsa Hendrickson, director of policy at Carbon180, about why they’re eager to talk about the social concerns involved in direct air capture (DAC) and how conflicts over carbon pipelines are hurting DAC projects too. We talk a lot about renewables here on The Fight but DAC is a crucial part of decarbonization and it has a host of conflicts that’ll be familiar to our readers.
The following is an abridged version of our conversation. Let’s get started…
How do the conflicts over DAC compare to fights against solar and wind farms?
“There are a lot of overlaps in the conflicts that can exist between DAC and more traditional energy systems. That is the reality. The difference is, so much of DAC is being funded by the federal government so we want to see those higher standards come into play about where communities should be engaged, what engagement should entail.”
“Plus, DAC is fundamentally a public good. The goal of it is to do something that is benefiting all of us writ large and that’s why it can’t follow traditional extractive models coming out of even some of the solar industry.”
What do you mean by solar being extractive?
“The approach to communities tends to be, cool, his project is coming in, there’s going to be some jobs, here’s how it’s going. And there might be a community benefits process there.
“What we’d like to see with DAC, whether it’s funded by DOE or not, is ideally communities get a choice as to whether or not a project comes to them. Communities get some form of prior engagement in determining whether or not they’d like to host a DAC site.”
How does the conflict over the Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 pipeline impact local support for other forms of carbon management, especially DAC?
“Infrastructure around CO2 is going to be a pain point. We at Carbon180 don’t really advocate for or support CCS. That being said, how the pipelines are being deployed, how developers engage with communities on CCS, is going to very much influence DAC. We fundamentally see DAC as serving a public good and CCS not necessary, but that doesn’t change the fact they’re likely going to have shared infrastructure and that the two of them are often going to be paired together.”
“I can’t speak to any of the particular specific details on the Summit pipeline other than that we have been hearing concerns about that, and concerns about what that means for the CO2 landscape as a whole. Just like any other burgeoning industry, negative handling of any particular project is going to look bad for the rest of them. I’d love to see developers proactively engage communities effectively, focusing on their rights, to allow CO2 storage.”
So there’s a blast radius from Summit’s controversy?
“Very much so. DAC and CCS often get conflated. Well informed organizations still refer to them interchangeably. Regardless of whether we like it or not, pipelines are going to be an extremely big expense for DAC, something that doesn’t have as much of an immediate [thing] it’s selling – it’s already facing an uphill financial battle.”
Some in the environmental justice activism space are against DAC. What would you say to an activist who is a no on DAC?
“It’s funny because I actually have several friends who work in environmental justice and I have this conversation with them.”
“What I would say is that we’re a boat in the middle of the ocean. We have holes in the middle of the boat that are the carbon coming into the air. And first thing, foremost, we’ve got to plug the holes. You don’t prioritize bailing out the water before closing the holes. That’s why decarbonization and DAC have to go hand in hand, it can’t be one or the other.”
“I understand where the criticisms come from. Is DAC a false climate solution? Is this something that’s going to allow us to continue to perpetuate fossil fuels?”
“As we are decarbonizing, by the time we get decarbonized, we won’t be able to just scale up DAC at that point. We have to scale up now so by the time we get decarbonized we’re able to get those legacy emissions.”
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Plus, what a Texas energy veteran thinks is behind the surprising turn against solar and wind.
I couldn’t have a single conversation with a developer this week without talking about Texas.
In case you’re unaware, the Texas Senate two days ago passed legislation — SB 819 — that would require all solar and wind projects over 10 megawatts to receive a certification from the state Public Utilities Commission — a process fossil fuel generation doesn’t have to go through. The bill, which one renewables group CEO testified would “kill” the industry in Texas, was approved by the legislature’s GOP majority despite a large number of landowners and ranchers testifying against the bill, an ongoing solar and wind boom in the state, and a need to quickly provide energy to Texas’ growing number of data centers and battery manufacturing facilities.
But that’s not all: On the same day, the Texas Senate Business and Commerce Committee approved a bill — SB 715 — that would target solar and wind by requiring generation facilities to be able to produce power whenever called upon by grid operators or otherwise pay a fine. Critics of the bill, which as written does not differentiate between new and existing facilities, say it could constrain the growth of Texas’ energy grid, not to mention impose penalties on solar and wind facilities that lack sufficient energy storage on site.
Renewable energy trades are in freak-out mode, mobilizing to try and scuttlebutt bills that could stifle what otherwise would be a perfect state for the sector. As we’ve previously explained, a big reason why Texas is so good for development is because, despite its ruby red nature, there is scant regulation letting towns or counties get in the way of energy development generally.
Seeking to best understand why anti-renewables bills are sailing through the Lone Star State, I phoned Doug Lewin, a Texas energy sector veteran, on the morning of the votes in the Texas Senate. Lewin said he believes that unlike other circumstances we’ve written about, like Oklahoma and Arizona, there really isn’t a groundswell of Texans against renewable energy development. This aligns with our data in Heatmap Pro, which shows 76% of counties being more welcoming than average to a utility-scale wind or solar farm. This is seen even in the author of the 24/7 power bill – state Senator Kevin Sparks – who represents the city of Midland, which is in a county that Heatmap Pro modeling indicates has a low risk of opposition. The Midland area is home to several wind and solar projects; German renewables giant RWE last month announced it would expand into the county to power oil and gas extraction with renewables.
But Lewin told me there’s another factor: He believes the legislation is largely motivated by legislators’ conservative voters suffering from a “misinformation” and “algorithm” problem. It’s their information diets, he believes, which are producing fears about the environmental impacts of developing renewable energy.
“He’s actively working against the interests of his district,” Lewin said of Sparks. “It’s algorithms. I don’t know what folks think is going on. People are just getting a lot of bad information.”
One prominent example came from a hailstorm during Hurricane Uri last year. Ice rocks described like golfballs rained down upon south-east Texas, striking, among other things, a utility-scale solar farm called Fighting Jays overseen by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. The incident went viral on Facebook and was seized upon by large conservative advocacy organizations including the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
What’s next? Honestly, the only thing standing between these bills and becoming law is a sliver of hope in the renewables world that the millions of dollars flowing into Texas House members’ districts via project investments and tax benefits outweigh the conservative cultural animus against their product. But if the past is prologue, things aren’t looking great.
And more of the week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Westchester County, N.Y. – Residents in Yonkers are pressuring city officials to renew a moratorium on battery storage before it expires in July.
2. Atlantic County, New Jersey – Sorry Atlantic Shores, but you’re not getting your EPA permit back.
3. St Clair County, Michigan – We may soon have what appears to be the first-ever county health regulations targeting renewable energy.
4. Freeborn County, Minnesota – Officials in this county have rejected a Midwater Energy Storage battery storage project citing concerns about fires.
5. Little River County, Arkansas – A petition circulating in this county would put the tax abatement for a NextEra solar project up for a vote county-wide.
6. Van Zandt County, Texas – Officials in this county have reportedly succeeded in getting a court to impose a restraining order against Taaleri Energy to halt the Amador battery storage project.
7. Gillespie County, Texas – Peregrine Energy’s battery storage proposal in the rural town of Harper is also facing a mounting local outcry.
8. Churchill County, Nevada – Battery storage might be good for Nevada mining, but we have what appears to be our first sign of revolt against the technology in the state.
A conversation with Mike Barnwell of the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters and Millwrights
Today’s conversation is with Mike Barnwell at the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters and Millwrights, a union organization more than 14,000 members strong. I reached out to Barnwell because I’d been trying to better understand the role labor unions could play in influencing renewables policy decisions, from the labor permitting office to the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act. So I called him up on my way home from the American Clean Power Association’s permitting conference in Seattle, where I gave a talk, and we chatted about how much I love Coney Island chili in Detroit. Oh, and renewable energy, of course.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
I guess to start, we covered Michigan’s new permitting and siting law. What role did your union play in that process?
Locally, with the siting laws, we were a big part of that from the local level all the way to the state. From speaking at the Capitol down to city council and building authority meetings about projects happening in areas and cleaning out some of the red tape to make these possible.
It’s created jobs for our members current and future.
So you see labor as being helpful in getting permitting done faster?
Being labor maybe I’m biased but I think it is. I say labor collectively, we’ve got a pretty good coalition here in Michigan.
Do you think unions like yours will be similarly influential in the future of the Inflation Reduction Act back in Washington, D.C.?
Let me put it this way: the requirements of registered apprenticeships being on site come back to creating jobs for our members. Otherwise it’s just hiring anybody off the street – unskilled and unsafe workplaces. We train our folks through our apprenticeships and that legislation is ensuring safety on the jobs for one, let alone letting them build careers and pensions.
We’re a carpenter-centric union but this all falls under the work of what we do. We’ve been implementing our four-year apprenticeship program — every kind of renewable energy training you can think of, we’ve implemented it into our programs. It’s hands on. We have mockups at our training centers where [projects] get built and torn down and built and torn down. When you talk about a utility-scale solar project, it’s an average of 160-170 individuals working on that project. Without proper skills training they can’t work in coordination with each other.
How are you feeling about the future of the tax credits?
Uneasy.
The current leadership, they obviously have different views than the past leadership did. Lookit – when you talk about the IRA that has done nothing but create jobs for the blue collar working man in not just our state but around the nation. Here in Michigan, it almost went from zero to sixty in 10 seconds. It was miraculous what they did for us. We went from scratching and clawing in trying to procure these projects to now the IRA requiring skill training and prevailing wage and benefits and health care, which what as a union we’re all about.
Just in the last year, we’ve brought on over 300 new members just for solar alone. That’s all because of the federal tax credit and the language in the IRA.
Last question – what role do you see labor playing in the process of getting individual projects permitted and built?
Our role in that, I’ve been to plenty of these community meetings myself but it’s the actual working guy, the guy who is using his tools every week, who goes and speaks up to their county or town leadership about the benefits of these projects.
That big BlueOval battery plant in Marshall, Michigan – I don’t know if that would’ve been permitted without the work of our members being at those meetings, letting their voices be heard. There was obviously an opposition voice as well, but ours were a bit louder in the room. People want to hear the voices that say yes we want it and here’s why. This is how I support my family from the work on these projects. Otherwise it would’ve never gotten off the ground.