The Fight

Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Q&A

Will Blue States Open Up Their Wallets for Renewables?

A conversation with Heather O’Neill of Advanced Energy United.

The Fight Q&A subject.
Heatmap Illustration

This week’s conversation is with Heather O’Neill, CEO of renewables advocacy group Advanced Energy United. I wanted to chat with O’Neill in light of the recent effective repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean electricity tax credits and the action at the Interior Department clamping down on development. I’m quite glad she was game to talk hot topics, including the future of wind energy and whether we’ll see blue states step into the vacuum left by the federal government.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

During Trump 1.0 we saw blue states really step into the climate role in light of the federal government. Do you see anything similar taking place now?

I think this moment we’re in – it is a different moment.

How are we handling load growth? How are we making sure consumers are not paying for expensive stranded assets? Thinking about energy affordability? All of those challenges absolutely present a different moment and will result in a different response from state leaders.

But that’s where some of the changes our industry has gone through mean we’re able to meet that moment and provide solutions to those challenges. I think we need aggressive action from state leaders and I think we’ll see that from them, because of the challenges in front of them.

What does that look like?

Every state is different. Take Virginia for example. Five years after we passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act – a big, bold promise of action – we’re not on track. So what are the things we need to do to keep the foot on the accelerator there? This last legislative session we passed the virtual power plant legislation that’ll help tremendously in terms of grid flexibility. We made a big push around siting and permitting reform, and we didn’t quite get it over the finish line but that’s the kind of thing where we made a good foundation.

Or Texas. There’s so much advanced energy powering Texas right now. You had catastrophic grid failure in Hurricane Uri and look at what they’ve been able to build out in response to that: wind, solar, and in the last few years, battery storage, and they just passed the energy waste reduction [bill].

We need to build things and make it easier to build – siting and permitting reform – but it’s also states depending on their environment looking at and engaging with their regional transmission organization.

You saw that last week, a robust set of governors across the PJM region called on them to improve their interconnection queue. It’s about pushing and finding reforms at the market level, to get these assets online and get on the grid deployed.

I think the point about forward momentum, I definitely see what you’re saying there about the need for action. Do you see state primacy laws or pre-emption laws? Like what Michigan, New York, and California have done…

I’m not a siting expert, but the reform packages that work the best include engagement from communities in meaningful ways. But they also make sure you’re not having a vocal minority drowning out the benefits and dragging out the process forever. There are timelines and certainty attached to it while still having meaningful local engagement.

Our industry absolutely has to continue to lean into more local engagement and community engagement around the benefits of a project and what they can deliver for a community. I also think there’s a fair amount of making sure the state is creating that pathway, providing that certainty, so we can actually move forward to build out these projects.

From the federal government’s perspective, they’re cracking down on wind and solar projects while changing the tax credits. Do you see states presenting their own incentives for renewables in lieu of federal incentives? I’ve wondered if that’ll happen given inflation and affordability concerns.

No, I think we have to be really creative as an industry, and state leaders have to be creative too. If I’m a governor, affordability concerns were already front and center for me, and now given what just happened, they’re grappling with incredibly tight state budgets that are about to get tighter, including health care. They’re going to see state budgets hit really hard. And there’s energy impacts – we’re cutting off supply, so we’re going to see prices go up.

This is where governors and state leaders can act but I think in this context of tight state budgets I don’t think we can expect to see states replacing incentive packages.

It’ll be: how do we take advantage of all the flexible tools that we have to help shape and reduce demand in meaningful ways that’ll save consumers money, as well as push on building out projects and getting existing juice out of the transmission system we have today.

Is there a future for wind in the United States?

It is an incredibly challenging environment – no question – for all of our technologies, wind included. I don’t want to sugar-coat that at all.

But I look at the whole picture, and I include wind in this: the technologies have improved dramatically in the past couple of decades and the costs have come down. When you look around at what resources are around to deploy, it’s advanced energy. We’re seeing it continue to grow. There’ll be headwinds, and it’ll be more expensive for all of us. But I look at what our industry and our technologies are able to offer and deliver, and I am confident we’ll continue to see growth.

Yellow

This article is exclusively
for Heatmap Plus subscribers.

Go deeper inside the politics, projects, and personalities
shaping the energy transition.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Q&A

How Developers Should Think of the New IRA Credit Rules

A conversation with Scott Cockerham of Latham and Watkins.

How Developers Should Think of the New IRA Credit Rules
Heatmap Illustration

This week’s conversation is with Scott Cockerham, a partner with the law firm Latham and Watkins whose expertise I sought to help me best understand the Treasury Department’s recent guidance on the federal solar and wind tax credits. We focused on something you’ve probably been thinking about a lot: how to qualify for the “start construction” part of the new tax regime, which is the primary hurdle for anyone still in the thicket of a fight with local opposition.

The following is our chat lightly edited for clarity. Enjoy.

Keep reading...Show less
Hotspots

An Influential Anti-ESG Activist Targets A Wind Farm

And more of the week’s most important news around renewable energy conflicts.

Map of renewable energy fights.
Heatmap Illustration

1. Carroll County, Arkansas – The head of an influential national right-wing advocacy group is now targeting a wind project in Arkansas, seeking federal intervention to block something that looked like it would be built.

  • Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, recently called on the Trump administration to intervene against the development of Scout Clean Energy’s Nimbus wind project in Arkansas. Consumers’ Research is known as one of the leading anti-ESG advocacy organizations, playing a key role in the “anti-woke” opposition against the climate- and socially-conscious behavior of everyone from utilities to Anheuser-Busch.
  • In a lengthy rant posted to X earlier this month, Hild pointed to Carroll County’s local moratorium on wind projects and claimed Nimbus being built would be “a massive win for ESG radicals – and a slap in the face for local democracy.”
  • As I told you in April, the Nimbus project prompted Carroll County to enact the moratorium but it was grandfathered in because of contracts signed prior to the ban’s enactment.
  • However, even though Nimbus is not sited on federal land, there is a significant weak point for the project: its potential impacts on endangered birds and bats.
  • Scout Clean Energy has been working with the Fish and Wildlife Service since at least 2018 under Trump 1.0. However, the project’s habitat conservation plan was not completed before the start of the current Trump term and Scout did not submit an application for Nimbus to receive an incidental take permit from the Service until May of this year.
  • Enter the Trump administration’s bird-centric wind power crackdown and the impact of Hild’s commentary comes into fuller focus. What will happen to all the years of work that Scout and the Service did? It’s unclear how the project reckons with this heightened scrutiny and risk of undue federal attention.

2. Suffolk County, New York – EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin this week endorsed efforts by activists on Long Island to oppose energy storage in their neighborhoods.

Keep reading...Show less
Spotlight

Trump’s Permit Freeze Prompts Some Solar to Eye Exits

Is there going to be a flight out of Nevada?

Solar in Nevada.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Donald Trump’s renewables permitting freeze is prompting solar companies to find an escape hatch from Nevada.

As I previously reported, the Interior Department has all but halted new approvals for solar and wind projects on federal lands. It was entirely unclear how that would affect transmission out west, including in the solar-friendly Nevada desert where major lines were in progress to help power both communities and a growing number of data centers. Shortly after the pause, I took notice of the fact that regulators quietly delayed the timetable by at least two weeks for a key line – the northern portion of NV Energy’s Greenlink project – that had been expected to connect to a litany of solar facilities. Interior told me it still planned to complete the project in September, but it also confirmed that projects specifically necessary for connecting solar onto the grid would face “enhanced” reviews.

Keep reading...Show less