Ohio environmental advocates are questioning the intent of a pending state law that would add nuclear power to the state’s legal definition of “green” energy.
House Bill 308’s sponsors say the legislation is meant to signal that Ohio is open for business when it comes to nuclear power research and development, but critics warn the language could have broader implications in the future.
“Legislators don’t just put something into the code unless it has meaning and purpose and value,” said Megan Hunter, an attorney with Earthjustice, one of several environmental groups challenging a similar 2022 state law that classified natural gas as a “green” energy source. “Why would you do this if it has no impact or meaning or effect?”
Critics fear the language could be used to greenwash power plants or divert public funding from renewable energy projects, though the bill’s sponsors deny that motive.
“It doesn’t promise any incentives or anything beyond simply placing nuclear under the category of green energy in the Ohio Revised Code,” said state Rep. Sean Brennan, a Democrat from Parma who co-sponsored the nuclear legislation with Republican state Rep. Dick Stein of Norwalk.
The General Assembly passed the nuclear legislation on Dec. 11. As of Thursday it was awaiting Gov. Mike DeWine’s signature.
Brennan said the question of why the language should be in a law instead of just a resolution didn’t come up in discussions with Stein, who initially asked him to cosponsor the bill.
Stein said the legislation is “about sending a signal to the market that Ohio wants to be a partner and won’t be an impediment,” in contrast to other states that don’t want nuclear energy. He said he hopes it will help attract jobs and federal funding, building on last year’s creation of a state nuclear development authority.
Stein would not speculate on follow-up steps lawmakers might take, saying his term in the House of Representatives ends this month.
What the law could do
Ohio does not currently have state incentives or policy preferences for “green” energy. The state’s renewable energy standard essentially ended in 2019 as a result of House Bill 6, the coal and nuclear bailout law at the heart of the state’s ongoing corruption scandal. Opponents testifying against the current legislation, though, said they worry the definition will be used to water down future clean energy policies.
“HB 308 will enable the manipulation of public funds into private, corporate hands,” said Pat Marida, a coordinator for the Ohio Nuclear-Free Network, in her December 13 testimony. Also, she said, “there is nothing ‘green’ about nuclear power,” referring to radioactive waste, which continues to be stored at power plant sites.
Future state programs might offer funding or other advantages for projects that meet the state’s definition of “green” energy, for example. And even if the definition doesn’t open doors to new government funding, it could provide cover to private companies that want to count gas and nuclear energy toward their climate or clean energy targets, another advocate warned.
“Insidiously, it does potentially become important,” said Nathan Alley, conservation manager for the Sierra Club of Ohio. Many companies have adopted clean energy goals, he noted. “This might telegraph to them that they could invest in nuclear energy and achieve the same climate and/or energy goals as if they invest in solar or wind.”
Ohio lawmakers aren’t the only ones who want to define natural gas and nuclear power as “green energy.” Model legislation finalized by the American Legislative Exchange Council this fall does the same thing. ALEC is a Koch-linked group that has long opposed renewable energy and actions to address climate change.
ALEC’s model bill would have its definition “apply to all programs in the state that fund any ‘green energy’ or ‘clean energy’ initiatives.” Another model ALEC bill would define nuclear energy as “clean energy” and put it on a par with renewable energy.
A coalition of environmental groups is currently challenging House Bill 507, Ohio’s 2022 law that labeled natural gas as “green energy,” arguing in court that the way in which it was passed violated the state constitution. The groups say last-minute amendments violated provisions that require bills to deal with a single subject – the initial two-page bill dealt with chickens – and call for at least three hearings in each house of the General Assembly where lawmakers can hear testimony from supporters and opponents.
That lawsuit has been briefed and is currently awaiting a decision from Judge Kimberly Cocroft at the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas. HB 308 should not affect that case, said Hunter and Alley.
As with HB 507, though, lawmakers added last-minute amendments to HB 308. One of those would extend lease terms for drilling under state park and wildlife areas from three years to five years. That was unacceptable to Brennan, who voted against the Senate amendments when it came back to the Ohio House.
Still, he supports what he views as the main purpose of the legislation: attracting more nuclear power to Ohio. In his view, solar and wind won’t be enough to meet growing energy demands while shifting away from fossil fuels in order to address climate change. “I believe nuclear is going to be hugely important for our energy independence, and hopefully Ohio will become an exporter of electricity in the future.”
Hunter wasn’t surprised that lawmakers made last-minute amendments to the bill. For her, it shows the importance of the ongoing litigation over HB 507.
“Those constitutional protections are there for a reason,” she said. “And seeing the General Assembly have blatant disregard for them again and again harms Ohioans. It deprives them of these constitutional rights.”
Two community-based geothermal pilot projects, each led by equity-focused nonprofits, have advanced to the second phase of funding through a U.S. Department of Energy program.
Blacks in Green, a community organization based in Chicago, and Home Energy Efficiency Team, a Boston-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting an equitable transition to clean energy, were included last week in a set of five projects across the country that have been awarded a total of more than $35 million from the DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office to implement geothermal installations.
The five project teams advancing to the next phase of the DOE project were among a cohort of 11 projects participating in the initial phase of the program, where coalitions selected project sites, assessed geothermal resource and permitting needs, conducted feasibility analysis and local engagement, and identified workforce and training needs. The selected projects’ range of sizes, technologies, and innovations will provide potential templates for other communities considering implementing geothermal systems.
Three of the five projects are located in urban or suburban areas; two are in rural communities. The other three recipients are the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan; the University of Oklahoma, for a project in the town of Shawnee; and GTI Energy, for a project in Hinesburg, Vermont.
Tapping into Chicago’s alleys
Blacks in Green, located in West Woodlawn, a predominantly Black community on Chicago’s South Side, serves as the lead for a coalition which was awarded $9.9 million for its Sustainable Chicago Geothermal pilot. Other coalition partners are the City of Chicago, University of Illinois, The Accelerate Group, Citizens Utility Board, Climate Jobs Illinois, dbHMS, GeoExchange, and Illinois AFL-CIO.
The pilot, also located in West Woodlawn, utilizes alleys to circumvent the need for vast open plots for subterranean loop fields that form the heart of a geothermal array. Locating the bulk of geothermal loop lines in alleyways also sidesteps the underground congestion of existing utility infrastructure typically located underneath city streets.
It’s among an assortment of elements in the Sustainable Square Mile approach that advances BIG’s vision for energy justice through clean energy and microgrid/VPP systems owned and managed by the community, said Naomi Davis, BIG’s founder and CEO.
“BIG launched in 2007 with a goal of increasing household income and community resilience against the harms of climate crisis at neighborhood scale using the new green economy — so we’re grateful for this chance to make it manifest,” Davis said in a news release.
Along with installation of the needed infrastructure within the multiblock footprint, year two of the West Woodlawn project will focus on community outreach and job programs. Once construction is complete, the geothermal system will provide heating and cooling, not to mention lower utility bills, for potentially more than 200 households.
“The Sustainable Chicago Geothermal project will be a transformational investment in the West Woodlawn community. The effort to eliminate harmful emissions from homes and businesses, while lowering energy burden, has proven to be a community-wide challenge, and requires a community-wide solution,” said Andrew Barbeau, president of The Accelerate Group and principal investigator of the Blacks in Green project, in a news release.
The need to reconstruct the alleyways after installation of the geothermal array also presents the opportunity to replace asphalt or concrete with permeable pavers. This would work to promote climate resiliency through mitigation of urban flooding, a persistent occurrence in many of Chicago’s South and West Side communities, said Nuri Madina, the director of Sustainable Square Mile, who serves as point person for the pilot.
“All of our programs are designed to create multiple benefits,” Madina told the Energy News Network in September.
A first-of-its kind project in suburban Boston
Home Energy Efficiency Team, commonly referred to by the acronym HEET, in partnership with Eversource Energy; the city of Framingham, Massachusetts; and engineering consultant Salas O’Brien; was awarded $7.8 million toward construction of a utility-based,community-scale geothermal system.
“We are honored to receive this funding from the DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office as part of the Community Geothermal Heating and Cooling initiative, and to show how geothermal energy networks can be interconnected to increase efficiency, build resilience, and decarbonize at the scale and speed we need to achieve our climate goals,” said Zeyneb Magavi, executive director for HEET, in a news release.
The proposed plans by HEET and its partners would connect to the first Framingham geothermal network, which was commissioned earlier this year. Once approved by the state Department of Public Utilities and upon completion, it would represent the first utility-owned community geothermal network to connect to an adjacent operational loop, establishing guidelines for the interconnection and growth of geothermal networks.
“This innovative project not only showcases Framingham’s commitment to sustainable energy solutions but also sets a precedent for other communities across the nation. By harnessing the natural heat from the earth, we are taking a significant step towards reducing our carbon footprint and promoting renewable energy sources. Our collaboration with HEET and Eversource exemplifies the power of partnerships in driving forward clean energy initiatives,” said Framingham Mayor Charlie Sisitsky in a news release.
“So instead of feeding natural gas into these buildings, we could feed geothermal water,” Magavi said. “And then we could meter that and sell that. It’s no different than when you pay your water bill.”
When a solar energy developer approached Halifax County, North Carolina, in the early 2010s about renting its former airfield in Roanoke Rapids, community leaders had a condition.
“If they were willing to lease this land for the very first solar project in the area, the county needed to get something back in return,” said Mozine Lowe from her office, which overlooks the 20 megawatt solar farm now atop the old airport. “What they got was this building.”
Of course, it’s more than a building. It’s the headquarters for the Center for Energy Education, the nonprofit Lowe has run since 2016 that works to maximize the benefits of large solar farms in rural America — one community, one school child, and one worker at a time.
Lowe, who grew up about five miles from where she now works, had graduated from Greensboro’s North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University but worked across the country, from California to Washington, D.C.
When she returned to this rural county of less than 50,000 near the Virginia border, formerly a hub of farming and textiles, she said she didn’t see a lot of change.
“The jobs were the same,” she said. “I didn’t see people making the connection between solar energy and what’s happening with the climate and the impact on rural communities, and I just wanted to try and help from that angle.”
The Center conducts educational programs for children of all ages, who come in by the busload from surrounding schools both public and private. It holds a Solar Fest every year to celebrate clean energy with community leaders, drawing hundreds.
Through collaborations with local educational institutions like community colleges, the center has also helped to train a new workforce in jobs that pay roughly twice what workers are earning at the fast-food chains off Interstate 95.
“We have trained more people than most other people around here to become solar installers,” Lowe said. “We want them to be first in line for our jobs.”
And there’s outreach to solar companies themselves in North Carolina as well as Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, where the Center also has offices. The goal is to help them become better community partners.
The Center for Energy Education staff. Credit: Elizabeth Ouzts
Only a few ‘good players’
Geenex, the Charlotte-based developer who built the solar farm at the airport and over a dozen others in the vicinity, is still involved in the Center, and the company’s chairman also chairs the nonprofit’s board.
But Lowe and other staff at the organization say not every solar developer is committed — at least at first — to working with community leaders in Eastern North Carolina.
“Geenex is a very good partner,” said Reginald Bynum, the Center’s community outreach manager. “They’re a good player. But there are only a few of them. Other companies will say, ‘This is your ordinance? Great. This is all I have to do.’”
Some county ordinances, like that in Halifax, need to be updated, Bynum said. Many still call for a 75-foot buffer between the rows of solar panels and neighboring properties. That figure is “so 2018,” said Bynum. It should be doubled, he said.
Most solar farms are also built on private land — often bits of farmland that can help cotton growers and other farmers guarantee income. But developers usually obtain the leases first, before airing the project in public.
“That’s the backwards process of solar,” Bynum said. “They’re talking to landowners and securing that land, and then they’re coming to commissioners.”
What’s more, simply following ordinances isn’t enough, Bynum says. What’s needed is for solar developers to work with local residents to develop community benefits agreements — documents that memorialize pluses to the area, from minimizing construction impacts to providing jobs.
“It’s a 30-year commitment to the community,” he said, “because your farm’s going to be here 30 years. They’re asking for that, and they deserve that.”
Critically, say Bynum and other advocates, solar developers need to work with community leaders to provide benefits beyond tax revenue — an undeniable good, but one that isn’t “seen” by anyone except county bookkeepers.
And though a recent study from the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association shows that solar farms today take up a fraction of a percent of the state’s farmland, the figure is a full 1% in Halifax County, and on pace to triple in the coming years, according to the Center’s research.
“From rural citizens’ standpoint, that’s a lot,” Bynum said. “You have to really understand what they’re seeing.”
A solar array amid trees and a cotton field in Halifax County, North Carolina. Credit: Elizabeth Ouzts
‘Projects have gotten bigger’
Part of what they’re seeing is the result of a simple fact: solar farms aren’t just growing more abundant in parts of rural America. They’re also much larger.
In North Carolina up until 2016, the average utility-scale solar development was 5.8 megawatts covering 35 acres of land, per the Sustainable Energy Association. After a 2017 state law made larger solar farms easier to build, the average system size increased to 13.6 megawatts and covered 115 acres of land.
“Projects have gotten bigger,” said Carson Harkrader, the CEO of Durham-based Carolina Solar Energy, who appeared on a recent clean energy panel with Bynum. “As they’ve gotten bigger, people freak out a little bit.”
And while many folks’ worries about the visual impact of solar panels can be mollified — with tree buffers, setbacks, and information about the safety of the structures — some are easy targets for opponents.
“The opposition has become much, much, more organized. There are national groups, funded by the oil and gas industry,” Harkrader said. “With this opposition that is more organized and has more resources, it’s much harder.”
In some cases, opponents may fill a vacuum left by solar companies who lined up projects before the pandemic and have only recently begun to start construction.
That’s what happens, said Bynum, “when you miss steps in keeping citizens updated with the project — particularly when you started talking about it five years before. Commissioners change, a lot of tribal knowledge evaporates.”
More success stories?
And sometimes, it only takes one or two community members to force the issue with local politicians. Both neighboring Northampton and Halifax counties have passed moratoriums on new solar farms recently. Halifax acted after just a few people appeared at their meeting, concerned about the loss of trees.
Having talked with county commissioners, staff at the Center are hopeful the moratorium will end quickly as planned, after the county has updated its ordinance. But the “pause” on solar farms is an example of the constant game of whack-a-mole solar developers and their advocates must play.
Lowe says that’s why the Center is so vital.
“What makes us unique is that our work is mainly community engagement,” she said. “Our stance is to be neutral, and to provide factual information. I think we need to tell more success stories.”
Massachusetts environmental advocates hope a provision in the state’s new climate law could be a final blow to a proposed expansion of private jet facilities at a suburban airport.
Opponents say adding 500,000 square feet of hangar space at Hanscom Field, a general aviation airport that serves private and corporate aircraft in a town 20 miles outside of Boston, will inevitably mean more flights — mostly private jet travel to luxury locations — which will increase climate pollution with minimal public benefit.
“This is an industry that is highly polluting and yet serves only a very narrow slice of the public,” said Alex Chatfield, a local social worker and an activist fighting the project.
The expansion plans have been in the works since 2021, but progress slowed in June after state regulators rejected the planners’ first environmental impact report. Since then, state lawmakers passed a new law requiring state agencies and boards, including the state port authority, to consider the impact of greenhouse gas emissions in their decisions.
The measure does not directly prohibit the Massachusetts Port Authority from proceeding with projects such as the Hanscom plan, but it does leave the agency vulnerable to legal action should it forge ahead without being able to show it weighed the likely greenhouse gas emissions against the benefits of the plan.
Much-needed hangars
The expansion plan started with Massport, which oversees operations at Hanscom as well as Boston’s Logan International Airport and Worcester Regional Airport. In 2021, the agency released a request for proposals to develop “much-needed hangars” at the airport, said Massport spokesperson Jennifer Mehigan. A plan submitted by North Airfield Ventures and Runway Realty Ventures won the bid.
The proposed facilities would be built on 47 acres of land, some of which is already owned by the developers and some of which would be leased to them by Massport. The project comprises 17 new hangars, the rehabilitation of a historic Navy hangar on the site, and fuel storage facilities.
Planners argue the development would be environmentally beneficial, because the structures would be designed for net-zero energy use and built to LEED Gold standards, and buildings and equipment would be electrified whenever possible. They also claim the additional capacity would help cut down on emissions from so-called “ferry flights,” in which a plane hangared elsewhere flies to Hanscom to pick up passengers and then returns to its home airport at the end of the trip.
Opponents, however, argue that more hangars will inevitably mean more flights. These flights, they say, are likely to be private jet travel to luxury locations, generating emissions for the benefit of just a privileged few. One report, by Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies, found that 31,600 private flights departed Hanscom during an 18-month period in 2022 and 2023, and that roughly half of those were bound for high-end vacation destinations like the Bahamas, Palm Beach, and Nantucket.
“It’s very well known that private jets are the most polluting form of transportation per passenger ever devised,” Chatfield said. “It is on a scale that is really hard to imagine.”
State environmental regulators are also skeptical. The state response to the developers’ first environmental impact report, referred to the “fanciful nature of the proponents’ ‘ferry flight theory,’” pointing to a study that found only 132 ferry flights actually occurred at Hanscom rather than the 3,500 developers claimed. Regulators also suggested new hangars at Hanscom were unlikely to attract planes to relocate, and therefore would not reduce what ferry flights do occur.
The developers can resubmit their environmental impact report, addressing the state’s concerns. One of the founders of North Airfield Ventures said the company declines to comment on its plans at this time.
Factoring in climate impacts
In the months since the state’s order was released, legislators created another obstacle for the project.
As Massachusetts attempts to reach its goal of net-zero carbon emissions, an ongoing mundane-yet-important challenge has been the fact that some crucial state agencies and boards have lacked the authority to factor climate impacts in their decisions. These bodies were founded well before the climate crisis became such a pressing public policy question, and thus their rules never required or authorized them to consider greenhouse gas emissions or other climate impacts in their decision-making.
In recent years, attempts have been made to integrate climate change mitigation into more statewide policies and processes. A climate law enacted in 2021 requires the administration to set greenhouse gas reduction goals to be realized by the state’s three-year energy efficiency plans, which were initially intended only to reduce the cost and quantity of electricity, gas, and oil used. The same bill instructed public utilities regulators to consider greenhouse gas impact as part of their decisions.
“The department up to that point had just focused on reliability and affordability,” said state Sen. Michael Barrett, chair of the legislature’s committee on telecommunications, utilities, and energy, and one of the main authors of both the 2021 and 2024 climate bills. “I have wanted to reorient state agencies that don’t seem to have gotten the memo about climate change being an existential crisis.”
The latest bill included more such provisions, authorizing the Board of Building Regulations and Standards to give preference to building materials that boost emissions reductions, and requiring Massport to consider the greenhouse gas impacts of its decisions.
“I hope that Massport appreciates that what is done today on climate is inadequate, and I hope it also appreciates that the policies have changed,” said Barrett. “I don’t pretend to be able to predict particular outcomes on particular projects, but I do know that Massport needs to take this seriously.”
The following commentary was written by Jesse Velazquez, Climate Justice Manager at the Ohio Environmental Council. See our commentary guidelines for more information.
In his victory speech, President-elect Donald Trump promised to further boost “liquid gold,” also known as oil and gas. Today, oil and gas production is at record highs and continues to grow. As the industry expands, so do concerns about methane pollution.
The primary component of natural gas is methane, a potent greenhouse gas that warms the planet more than 80 times as much as carbon dioxide over 20 years. It’s also a significant contributor to smog and public health issues like asthma and respiratory disease, disproportionately affecting vulnerable communities. Yet, efforts to reduce methane emissions present a rare win-win opportunity: they not only curb pollution but also create jobs and foster innovation.
Take Pennsylvania, one of the largest natural gas producers, for example. By adopting innovative methane mitigation strategies, the state is reducing harmful emissions from oil and gas operations while creating jobs and fostering a cleaner, more sustainable energy future. This balanced approach showcases how economic growth and environmental responsibility can go hand in hand, offering a model that Ohio should replicate.
According to the 2024 State of the Methane Mitigation Industry Report, developing and implementing technologies to cut methane pollution would create jobs ranging from manufacturing leak-detection equipment to technicians skilled in repairing faulty infrastructure. Pennsylvania saw a 22.2% growth in methane mitigation companies over the last three years. Since 2014, the industry has expanded by 65% with the state now hosting 33 methane mitigation companies. In fact, Pennsylvania is now home to 8.5% of the total employee locations in this sector nationwide.
These good-paying, family-sustaining jobs bolster local economies while addressing critical environmental challenges. And the opportunity for Ohio is immense.
The benefits extend far beyond jobs. Reducing methane emissions means less wasted energy. Nationally, oil and gas companies emit enough methane waste annually that could be utilized to meet the energy needs of millions of homes. Capturing the lost gases would translate directly into increased efficiency and cost savings. For a state like Ohio, with its large-scale oil and gas operations, this represents a tangible economic benefit.
This isn’t just about economic gains. Methane mitigation is also a crucial climate strategy. The U.S. EPA’s Section 111 Methane Rule, finalized a year ago, set robust federal standards to limit methane emissions from oil and gas operations. While essential, this rule relies heavily on state-level implementation to achieve its full potential. States like Ohio have a chance to lead by adopting and building on these standards, aligning economic growth with environmental stewardship.
And we know clean air and economic growth are priorities that transcend party lines, as evidenced by the broad coalition of businesses, environmental advocates, and community leaders rallying behind these initiatives.
Ohio is at a crossroads. We can continue business as usual, or we can follow Pennsylvania’s lead, investing in proven technologies and practices that cut emissions, prevent waste, protect public health, and drive economic growth.
By prioritizing methane mitigation, the state can chart a path that aligns with both the nation’s energy ambitions and the pressing need for climate action. This is not just a moral imperative but an economic one that promises cleaner air, healthier communities, and a thriving workforce for generations to come.
Three Ohio companies are investing in hydrogen fuel cell passenger vehicles even as the U.S. market for electric vehicles continues to grow. Each has an innovative approach to the chicken-and-egg problem of having fuel available when and where drivers need it.
The Ohio companies’ focus on fuel cell passenger vehicles is unique nationwide, especially for a state that doesn’t yet have any public hydrogen fueling stations. California, where almost all of the country’s hydrogen fuel cell cars are registered, still has fewer than 60 public stations.
“When we see hydrogen transportation deployment projects, it’s really more on the medium- and heavy-duty side,” said Mark Henning, a researcher at Cleveland State University’s Energy Policy Center at the Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs.
A hydrogen car is essentially an electric vehicle with an onboard fuel cell providing electricity alongside a battery. General Motors first displayed a prototype for a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle back in the 1960s, but hydrogen cars weren’t available to U.S. consumers until leases for the 2015 Hyundai Tucson Fuel Cell began, with sales of the Toyota Mirai starting that fall.
Hydrogen car sales have been essentially limited to California, where state policy and public funding supported the development of some public fueling stations. Since then, only about 18,000 fuel cell cars have been sold in the U.S.
Yet Ohio companies have been working on hydrogen energy for more than two decades. The state trade association, the Ohio Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Coalition, traces its history back to 2003.
If successful, the current efforts could eventually provide another option for switching away from gasoline-powered cars. While electric vehicles are comparable in price, hydrogen cars can be refueled quickly — assuming the infrastructure is available — and offer more consistent range in cold weather. But much could hinge on how quickly hydrogen infrastructure develops, as well as how quickly and effectively plug-in electric vehicle makers deal with their own range and charging challenges.
One example of the desire for hydrogen vehicle alternatives comes from DLZ, an engineering, architectural and project management company headquartered in Columbus with offices across the United States as well as in India and Costa Rica. The company has a fleet of about 250 vehicles across the Midwest, including electric vehicles. In 2022, it added six Hyundai hydrogen fuel cell cars for use by professionals from its Columbus office.
“The hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have a lot more consistent performance in range and durability,” especially in cold weather, said Ram Rajadhyaksha, DLZ’s executive vice president. The range for the cars is sufficient for round trips the office’s professionals make to site locations around the state, he explained at the Ohio Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Coalition symposium in North Canton last month.
Hydrogen fuel cell cars aren’t sold in Ohio yet, so DLZ had its six Hyundai vehicles shipped from California to Columbus. Except for the fuel cells, dealers in Ohio can provide any necessary service the vehicles may need, Rajakhyasksha said.
The cars also need a regular source of hydrogen, so DLZ added its own. Its station in Columbus can generate about 20 kilograms of hydrogen per day, using electricity from a solar array atop a large building on company property. A net metering agreement lets DLZ sell any excess electricity from the array to the grid.
Nonetheless, there were hurdles, including permitting, building codes, supply chain issues during the tail end of the pandemic, and even signage codes.
Made in Ohio
While California has been the country’s epicenter for fuel cell vehicles, Honda Motors is now producing the first American-made hybrid hydrogen vehicle at its Marysville plant in Ohio. Its 2025 CR-V e:FCEV model can go roughly 270 miles on a tank of hydrogen. There’s also a small electric battery which provides a driving range of about 30 miles. A 110-volt power outlet on the vehicle can run small home appliances or other equipment.
That range is about the same as Honda’s all-electric Prologue SUV, which also has a comparable list price. But the company believes there is room for both.
“It’s not one or the other,” said Dave Perzynski, assistant manager for hydrogen solutions business development at Honda, who also spoke at the Ohio Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Coalition symposium. “It’s using the right equipment at the right place at the right time.” The CR-V’s electric charging range is about right for his daily round-trip commute, he said, while the fuel cell offers flexibility for longer trips.
Honda’s goal is to achieve 100% decarbonization, Perzynski said. However, limits on local electric grids can make that difficult in some places. “If you can electrify it, if it works, then do that,” he said. “And once that stops working, then thank goodness we’ve been investing in hydrogen for the last 20 years, because there are places and times when you run out of power.”
As a practical matter, the Ohio-made cars’ initial market will be California. For other states, Honda is counting on others to build out the fueling infrastructure.
“The only way we can do that is through a coalition,” Perzynski said. “We can’t build infrastructure alone.”
Building a network
Millennium Reign Energy in Dayton has a membership model to develop hydrogen infrastructure along with the demand for it. Its Emerald H2 network will help customers buy used fuel cell vehicles, while also providing access to hydrogen fueling stations designed and built by the company.
As the number of customers in an area grows, Millennium Reign Energy would swap out the fueling station for one with larger capacity. The smaller station would then go to another location. Access to the stations would be for members only, although members traveling outside their local area could use stations elsewhere.
“Our mission is to build the first transcontinental hydrogen highway,” said CEO Chris McWhinney as he explained the model at the fuel cell program last month. The company’s fueling stations are already operating at places outside the United States, as well as three private facilities in Ohio. The company plans to add its first Emerald H2 network stations in the Dayton area early next year.
The stations use electricity and water to make hydrogen, so using one with a nearby source of solar, wind, hydropower or geothermal energy can provide green energy, versus just moving emissions from tailpipes up to power plants, McWhinney said. That can also bring the cost for the hydrogen fuel down below that of gasoline, he suggested, as renewable electricity continues to get cheaper.
Hurdles ahead
Whether hydrogen-powered passenger vehicles are the best use for renewable energy remains questionable. A study published in Joule last August found battery-electric vehicles were roughly three times more efficient in using renewable electricity than fuel-cell vehicles.
“The battery-electric case is much more efficient than the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle,” said Greg Keoleian, co-director of the University of Michigan’s MI Hydrogen initiative, and one of the co-authors of the Joule study. Ideally, renewable energy will be used efficiently, given the limited amount on the grid now and the urgent need to decarbonize because of climate change, he said.
Battery electric cars also have a much bigger charging network, with nearly 70,000 stations nationwide, Keoleian noted. Cost is also an issue, he added, noting that hydrogen fuel in California currently costs about five times as much as gasoline would to go the same distance.
Henning did note that one of Ohio’s public transit systems, SARTA, the Stark Area Regional Transit Authority, has had hydrogen buses as part of its fleet since 2016. Transit fleets also often need a handful of passenger vehicles, which might be able to use tbuses’ hydrogen fueling station while also qualifying for bulk discounts that may start with the acquisition of five or six vehicles, he said.
The Department of Energy’s recent push for hydrogen hubs might also play an indirect role, suggested Sergey Paltsev, deputy director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy. None of the hub projects so far focus on light-duty vehicles, but infrastructure developed for other purposes could make it easier to develop fueling stations. In that case, the Ohio companies could be angling for a competitive advantage.
Yet much remains unknown about whether the incoming Trump administration will continue incentives begun in the Biden administration, Henning said. The law’s tax credit can apply to fuel cell vehicles with final assembly in North America, which might apply to Honda’s hybrid car — if the Inflation Reduction Act continues.
“I do think there is an appetite and there is a customer base for fuel cell electric vehicles, and I can imagine different use cases where that makes more sense” than an all-electric car, said Grant Goodrich, executive director of the Great Lakes Energy Institute at Case Western Reserve University. Multiple people in Northeast Ohio have expressed reluctance to buy an electric vehicle now, especially given the challenges of harsh winter weather.
Yet the infrastructure for electric vehicles is much farther ahead, and electric vehicle makers continue to work to improve performance. “Will the technology of battery and electric vehicles improve enough to stay ahead of FCEV adoption so that is able to keep that challenge at bay?” Goodrich asked.
Early last month, he would have put money on the EV makers to stay ahead. After hearing the presentations from Honda, Millenium Reign Energy and DLZ, he’s not so sure.
“It’s not a done deal,” Goodrich said, noting that the hydrogen fueling experience also seems to be a more natural replacement for the habits customers have adopted as drivers of vehicles with internal combustion engines. “If it was to roll out faster, I think you could see some competition there.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated to clarify Greg Keoleian’s role.
Emissions from buildings make up about two-thirds of the greenhouse gas footprint of Indianapolis. So when the city committed to slash emissions, in its 2019 climate action plan and then as part of the Bloomberg American Cities Climate Challenge in 2020, leaders knew where they had to start.
A 2021 ordinance requires all buildings over 50,000 square feet and publicly-owned buildings over 25,000 square feet to do energy benchmarking and report results to the city, to be made publicly available by 2026.
The deadline to comply was July 1, 2024. But at year’s end, only about 20% of the 1,500 buildings covered had complied — even though the process can be done in a matter of hours using EPA’s ENERGYSTAR Portfolio manager software. The city also hosted workshops to help walk building managers through the process.
Now the city’s challenge is to boost benchmarking compliance. The penalties for failing to comply are low: fines of $100 the first year and $250 yearly after that. Chicago’s 2013 benchmarking ordinance, by comparison, includes fines of $100 for the first day of a violation and up to $25 each day thereafter, with a maximum fine of $9,200 per year — and the city has a much higher compliance rate.
Lindsay Trameri, community engagement manager for the Indianapolis Office of Sustainability, said the office is continuing outreach, including sending postcards to all relevant building managers and owners.
“We’re not assessing fines yet, but we’re making sure they’re aware this isn’t a city program that’s going away, it is indeed local law,” Trameri said. “And there are benefits to be gleaned from participating. It might cost hundreds of dollars not to participate, but you could save thousands if you participate and take it seriously.”
Trameri said 27 publicly-owned buildings in the consolidated city and county government must be benchmarked, and the city is planning to use about $800,000 worth of federal Department of Energy funding to hire an energy manager “who will be solely focused on looking at city-owned buildings and how to make them more energy efficient.”
In Indiana, reducing buildings’ electricity use is particularly urgent since the state got about 45% of its power from coal in 2023. The benchmarking mandate doesn’t require buildings to take any action based on their energy results, but benchmarking often motivates building owners and municipalities to invest in savings, experts say.
Cities participating in the Bloomberg program saw 3% to 8% energy reductions and millions in savings, with nearly 400 million square feet now covered by benchmarking policies and over 37,000 energy audits completed, according to Kelly Shultz, who leads Bloomberg Philanthropies” sustainable cities initiative.
Success stories
Though overall compliance is low, some major public and private entities have completed benchmarking in Indianapolis, including the airport, convention center, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Target and JC Penney.
Phil Day, facilities director for the museum, noted that it’s crucial for museums to keep consistent levels of humidity and temperature. That means high energy use, and also vulnerability to blackouts or energy price spikes. Benchmarking has helped him develop plans for reducing natural gas and electricity use with smaller boilers and heat pumps distributed throughout the facilities, a possible geothermal chilling system, and better insulation. These innovations should save money and make the museum more resilient to energy disruptions.
“Museums aren’t typically known as an energy efficient facility, but it is always high on my priority list in everything we program or replace,” Day said.
The firm Cenergistic has done benchmarking since 2017 for Indianapolis Public Schools, and identified more than $1 million in wasteful energy costs that could be cut across 71 schools. Under Cenergistic’s contract, it is paid half of the energy savings it secures. Seventeen school buildings have obtained EPA Energy Star status based on their energy efficiency improvements, Cenergistic CEO Dennis Harris said.
“Benchmarking provided a clear starting point by identifying high-energy-consuming facilities and systems,” Harris said. “Cenergistic energy specialists track energy consumption at all campuses with the company’s software platform, identifying waste and driving conservation. By consistently reviewing this data, Cenergistic continues to work with IPS to make data-driven decisions, set measurable goals, and continually refine its strategy for maximum impact.”
Trameri said the schools’ success is “a great message to point to. If they can do it, we can do it. Of course, we want those millions to go back into classrooms and teachers and students versus out the door for utility costs.”
Learning by example
Trameri said in developing its benchmarking program and ordinance, Indianapolis has relied on guidance and lessons from other cities including Columbus, Ohio and Chicago, both fellow participants in the Bloomberg challenge.
In Chicago, about 85% of the 3,700 buildings covered by the ordinance are in compliance, said Amy Jewel, vice president of programs at Elevate, the organization that oversees Chicago’s program. She said nine out of 10 buildings complied even right after the ordinance took effect, thanks to years of organizing by city leaders and NGOs like the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“A large number of building owners recognized this was coming. They engaged in the process, and saw their fingerprints within the ordinance,” said Lindy Wordlaw, director of climate and environmental justice initiatives for the city of Chicago.
Chicago passed an additional ordinance creating an energy rating program, where buildings receive a score of 0 to 4 based on their energy benchmarking results. An 11-by-17-inch placard with the score and explanation must be publicly posted, “similar to a food safety rating for a restaurant,” Wordlaw said.
In 2021, Chicago reported that median energy use per square foot had dropped by 7% over the past three years, and greenhouse gas emissions had dropped 37% since 2016 in buildings subject to the ordinance. City public housing and buildings owned by the Archdiocese were among those to do early benchmarking and investments.
Along with Philadelphia, New York and Washington D.C., Chicago was among the nation’s first major cities to institute benchmarking. Jewel said they hope to keep sharing lessons learned.
For example, “it’s actually pretty hard to come up with the covered buildings list,” Jewel noted, since there is no central list of all buildings in a city but rather various records “all used for slightly different purposes — the property tax database, different sources tracking violations. It took a bit of time to get that list together, and it takes time to maintain it as buildings are constructed or demolished.”
In Indianapolis, Trameri said they are hopeful more buildings will get with the program as awareness grows about the requirement.
“There has always been evidence that you can’t manage what you don’t measure,” said Trameri. “It’s a market-based strategy. Truly once a facilities owner or manager is able to look at their energy usage over a month, 12 months, or multiple years and make evidence-based decisions based on that data, it will affect your bottom line, and those savings you can reinvest into whatever your organization’s mission is.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misattributed performance information about Bloomberg Philanthropies’ sustainable cities initiative.
Amid a surge in utility shutoffs, and in the face of a groundbreaking study finding racial disparities in those outcomes, Minnesota’s largest utility is taking a closer look at the issue.
In a November agreement with consumer groups and the state’s Public Utilities Commission, Xcel Energy has outlined a series of steps to provide more information to customers and make it easier for them to restore service.
Xcel also agreed to hire an outside consultant to conduct a one-year study of disparity issues related to disconnections and outages and, separately, do its own analysis of outages. The move came in response to a University of Minnesota study released earlier this year that found that people of color were more likely than White households to have their service disconnected for falling behind on bills, even when controlling for income and home ownership status.
The agreement falls short of a demand from the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office for Xcel to institute a temporary moratorium on shutoffs until racial disparities are addressed, based on a recommendation from Fresh Energy and a coalition formed by Cooperative Energy Futures, Environmental Law & Policy Center, Sierra Club, and Vote Solar.
Erica McConnell, staff attorney for the Environmental Law & Policy Center, represented the clean energy organizations advocating for grid equity. She supported the agreement but believes it will do little to help reduce disparities in shutoffs.
“These are very important improvements that don’t really address — and the commission didn’t discuss — the disparate impacts and the racial disparity (of disconnections) and how to address that specifically,” she said.
A temporary moratorium on disconnections would have allowed for time to study disparities and find ways to address them.
“The commission didn’t talk about that,” McConnell said. “They didn’t address it at all, so that was disappointing. I understand it’s uncomfortable and it’s a tough issue, but it’s disappointing they shied away taking it head on.”
Shutoffs soaring
Beyond the challenge of disparities, Xcel’s number of service disconnections has skyrocketed. More than 45,000 Xcel customers saw their power shut off this year, a number that has grown significantly over the last two decades.
Xcel agreed to many proposals from the Citizens Utility Board of Minnesota, the Energy CENTS Coalition, clean energy organizations and the Public Utilities Commission to create more consumer protection against shutoffs.
Xcel Energy’s involuntary disconnection notices began rising significantly in 2023 before skyrocketing in 2024, when shutoffs doubled the prior year’s total for May through July. Despite Minnesota’s cold weather protection rules that limit disconnections during the winter through April 30, shutoffs even grew during the winter months.
This chart, based on Xcel Energy data and submitted by consumer and clean energy groups to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, shows a sharp increase in utility shutoffs in 2023 and 2024, which the groups attribute to the utility’s new ability to use smart meters to disconnect customers remotely. Credit: Minnesota PUC Docket E002/M-24-27
Clean energy and consumer organizations point to Xcel’s ability to remotely disconnect customers who have smart meters as a major reason for the shutoffs, along with inflation, escalating rate increases and challenging repayment requirements. Xcel had demanded customers pay 50% of what they owe to reconnect, which may have violated Minnesota law, according to the Citizens Utility Board.
Xcel’s pact with the Citizens Utility Board and Energy CENTS “is going to make payment agreements more affordable and hopefully help households that are behind on their bills avoid getting shut off and get caught back up,” said Annie Levenson-Falk, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board of Minnesota.
The utility board and Energy CENTS Coalition forged the agreement with Xcel under the purview of the Public Utilities Commission, which will issue a final order later. The agreement requires the following:
Customers will pay 10% of what they owe to have the power turned back on, instead of 50%.
The amount due will have to be at least $180 before Xcel can send a disconnect notice.
Xcel cannot shut off power until a customer reaches a $300 past due balance. Xcel’s data from this year showed disconnected customers were $441 in arrears on average in October and much higher in other months.
The utility must wait at least 10 days after a shutoff notice has been sent to disconnect, up from five days.
Xcel must post clear disconnection and payment policies on its website, along with information about customers’ right to develop an affordable repayment plan. Any changes Xcel makes to shutoff policies and repayments have to be reported to the commission, and it must collect data on repayments and customer agreements.
A variance allowing remote disconnections without field visits from Xcel remains, but the utility must contact customers via voicemail and use at least one other form of electronic communication.
Xcel spokesperson Kevin Coss said the utility believes “this agreement is a great step toward reducing disconnections for some of our customers who continue to struggle economically.”
Options for customers
George Shardlow, Energy CENTS executive director, said he thought a clearer explanation of the disconnection process on Xcel’s website brings a transparency that had been lacking.
“I don’t think the average person even knows that they have a right to negotiate when they’re struggling to pay their bills,” he said. “It’s all sort of opaque. We’re excited to see better documentation of people’s rights on Xcel’s website.”
Minnesota law says utility customers are “entitled” to a payment plan they can afford, Shardlow said. Customers who cannot afford the 10% down payment can still negotiate for a settlement that fits their budget, he added.
Shutoffs have been growing. This year Xcel sent disconnection notices to 51,000 customers in January and 71,000 in July. But not all notices result in shutoffs. The highest month for disconnections, May, saw more than 10,000 shutoffs. By August, slightly more than 8,400 customers had been disconnected.
Coss said Xcel works with customers to avoid disconnection by starting a nine-week process of contacting them through multiple channels to “point them to available options for energy assistance — both through the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and our own affordability programs — and offer flexible payment plans tailored to their circumstances.”
Minnesota also has cold weather protections that greatly reduce utilities’ ability to disconnect customers in winter months. But people who fail to pay their bills in winter see their balances grow, leading to higher disconnections in summer when they fail to catch up.
Xcel agreed to monitor progress and collect more data on racial disparities involving customers involuntarily shut off. The utility has already hired a third party evaluator, as the agreement requires, to study its shutoff policies and hold stakeholder engagement meetings during the year-long process.
Coss said disparities result in inequities throughout society and Xcel has been doing its part to address them. The utility has worked with the study’s authors and advocacy groups to identify actions to reduce disparities, he said.
Earlier this year, the commission also approved a proposal by Xcel for a pilot program that will provide bill credits to select census tracts with high levels of disconnections. Coss said Xcel will provide $500 bill credits to customers in low-income census areas who have a greater than $2,000 past-due balance, using money available from a quality of service program.
Minnesota Public Utilities Commissioner Joe Sullivan said he believed the agreement negotiated among the nonprofits and utility would reduce the financial strain on households facing disconnections and assist Xcel in recovering debt.
“I thought that in that docket people came together and were constructive,” he said. “I feel like I’m hopeful that the order will make some progress.”
PUC Chair Katie Sieben said the commission is “always looking at affordability, and especially as it pertains to low-income customers, I think we have a great track record on working with stakeholders and with utilities to provide robust low-income assistance to customers.”
She mentioned the commission’s role in approving an Xcel pilot to decrease payments for low-income, low-usage customers and a September decision that used a penalty for the utility’s service quality underperformance to provide bill credits to around 1,000 customers with the oldest outstanding balances in low-income census tracts.
‘Still more work to do’
The agreement does not solve the problem of low-income customers struggling to pay utility bills. Shardlow said Energy CENTS and the Citizens Utility Board lobbied the state legislature to allow households to apply for energy assistance funding the entire year instead of the current policy of having a deadline of May 31. Only 20% of eligible Minnesota households participate in the program, he said.
Levenson-Falk wants Xcel to consider eliminating the 1.5% late fee it charges customers on their balance, or consider donating the money to affordability programs.
The Citizens Utility Board also wants Xcel to develop a plan to reconnect customers quickly on days of high heat or poor air quality. Coss said Xcel will evaluate reconnecting customers disconnected during days of air quality alerts.
Levenson-Falk said the agreement at least makes progress. “I think we resolved everything that we had discussed with Xcel but that’s not to say that we think this is going to solve the problem, because, of course, there are still going to be continuing shutoffs, and those are still very concerning,” she said. “There’s still more work to do.”
This story was updated to include a statement from Minnesota Public Utilities Commission Chair Katie Sieben.
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This story was originally published by Canary Media.
California has long led the way on electric vehicles, but another Western state is challenging the Golden State’s top spot.
Between July and September, nearly 25 percent of the vehicles registered in Colorado were electric or plug-in hybrids. In California, that figure was just over 24 percent. It’s not enough to crown Colorado the new undisputed leader in EVs, but it’s a notable milestone — no other state has ever surpassed California in terms of EV registrations, according to James Di Filippo, principal policy analyst at Atlas Public Policy.
It’s the culmination of a “pretty dramatic” trend line for Colorado’s EV adoption since the start of 2023, Di Filippo said. Coloradans bought just over 41,000 EVs last year, up from roughly 23,000 in 2022.
Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, announced the accomplishment last week, touting it as a sign of the state’s commitment to reaching its climate goals and improving air quality. “This new data shows that demand for EVs continues to increase and especially with competitive state and federal rebates, drastically cutting the cost of an EV and saving people money,” Polis said in a press release.
Colorado has some of the most generous incentives for EV sales in the country, Di Filippo said. Its policies and incentives have helped make the cars more affordable, while the state’s investments in charging infrastructure have made owning an electric car more practical.
All Coloradans can receive a $5,000 state tax credit for purchasing or leasing a new EV or plug-in hybrid priced up to $80,000. That credit is available through the end of this year, then will decrease to $3,500 starting in 2025. EVs valued under $35,000 are eligible for an additional tax credit of $2,500 — for a total potential state credit of $7,500.
Through the Vehicle Exchange Colorado program, income-qualified residents can trade in old or highly polluting gas cars in exchange for a $6,000 rebate to put toward a new EV or plug-in hybrid purchase or lease, or $4,000 for a used one.
The state tax credits and the vehicle-exchange rebates can be combined with federal tax credits, which currently offer up to $7,500 for a new EV lease or purchase or $4,000 for a used EV.
The state has also worked over the past few years to install more public chargers. There are currently over 5,500 public charging ports across Colorado. This year, the state plans to install another 576 ports using $5 million in funding from the Colorado Energy Office.
In 2020, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that 580,000 zero-emission vehicles would be sold in the U.S. in 2023. But actual sales last year were almost two and a half times greater at 1.43 million. This year, Cox Automotive expects sales to climb even higher, despite gloomy forecasts issued by some analysts earlier in 2024.
According to estimates from Kelley Blue Book, EV sales made up 8.9 percent of all vehicle sales in the country in the third quarter of this year — the highest share ever recorded, and an increase from 7.8 percent in the same time period last year.
The Biden administration set a goal for EVs to make up half of all new vehicle sales by 2030. As of this February, sales were on track to meet that goal, though the picture is more uncertain heading into the second Trump administration. The president-elect reportedly plans to eliminate federal EV tax credits and roll back Environmental Protection Agency tailpipe emissions rules — against the wishes of the nation’s largest automakers, including Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis.
Transportation is the single largest category of carbon emissions in the country, at 28 percent, driven mainly by trucks, SUVs, and other road vehicles.
Colorado has an even more aggressive EV goal than the federal government, aiming for 82 percent of all car sales to be electric by 2032. Looking ahead, EV registrations and sales in the state likely won’t continue to outpace California, Di Filippo said, since “the trend line for California is still steeper overall.”
“This isn’t necessarily a story of Colorado just beating California out right,” he said. “This is really a story of EV success.”
The following commentary was written by Carrie Zalewski, former Chair of the Illinois Commerce Commission and currently vice president of markets and transmission at the American Clean Power Association; and Brent Bailey, former Mississippi Public Service Commissioner and current vice president of operations at Efficient Power & Light LLC. See our commentary guidelines for more information.
Building the power grid of the future requires deploying every available tool in the present.
When it comes to electricity generation, energy wonks often reference an “all-the-above” strategy, which includes all available power sources — fossil fuels, renewable energy, and storage technologies. But generation is just one part of the reliability and affordability equation.
The Midwestern transmission grid must also evolve and adopt an “all-the-above” mentality to withstand increasingly frequent extreme weather events and support rapidly growing power demand while ensuring reliable and low-cost electricity for consumers. This is no small task. As such, policymakers and grid operators must carefully consider all near-term and long-term solutions.
New high-voltage transmission lines are essential to ensure the grid of the future is prepared for surging load growth. But new transmission line development and construction can take many years. To address immediate needs, there are other solutions that can improve capacity in the near term. Enter: advanced grid technologies.
Significant technological advancements are available now that can come online in one to three years compared to the decade or so it takes to build new transmission lines. Such advancements include: grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) — hardware and/or software that can increase the capacity and efficiency of existing transmission lines most hours of the year — as well as high-performance conductors (HPCs) — which offer greater capacity and efficiency benefits compared to traditional conductors.
While these advanced grid technologies cannot provide enough capacity to meet long-term system needs, they are relatively inexpensive and drive enormous cost savings until we can bring regional backbone lines into service. Deploying GETs and HPCs in the near term to help meet projected demand growth while simultaneously planning and constructing new regional and interregional transmission lines is key to ensuring the delivery of reliable, low-cost power across the Midwest.
MISO, the central U.S. grid operator, is considering a second portfolio of transmission projects aimed at creating a regional backbone of long-distance lines that will enable power to flow across the Upper and Central Midwest. These transmission lines will build upon investments made in the first tranche of projects, approved by the grid operator in 2022, which began to lay the groundwork for an evolution of the system.
The second batch of potential projects aims to “reliably and efficiently enable MISO member goals and load growth,” delivering benefits that significantly outweigh costs. Across much of the current system, MISO found that at least 10% of facilities are overloaded and annual curtailments exceed 15%, meaning available generators are forced offline because there is not enough grid capacity to carry their power.
MISO will also soon consider transmission projects for the Southern region of MISO as well as measures to increase the flow of electricity between the MISO regions. A regional problem requires regional solutions, including well-vetted, long-distance transmission lines.
Additionally, there is a significant need for greater interregional transmission capacity between MISO and its neighbors. The U.S. Department of Energy identified especially high congestion between the Midwest and Plains states. This means there are bottlenecks in the system that hinder the ability to deliver electricity between these areas. As a result, more interregional transmission ties from MISO to the Plains would offer considerable consumer benefits in the form of increased reliability and decreased costs when affordable clean energy can be accessed and transmitted back to MISO members.
Building the grid of the future will require every technology at our disposal. It’s critical that grid operators and state regulators consider and implement all transmission technology tools when planning and building a system that will enhance national security, facilitate regional economic development, and withstand new and growing reliability threats for generations to come.
Living in a net-zero home is often a luxury for those who can afford solar panels, state-of-the-art HVAC and other innovations and renovations.
But lower-income people are those who could benefit most from energy cost savings, and those who suffer most from extreme climate. Milwaukee is trying to address this disconnect by building net-zero homes for low-income buyers in partnership with Habitat for Humanity, a marquee project of the city’s 2023 Climate and Equity Plan.
In September, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $3.4 million grant that will go toward Milwaukee’s construction of 35 homes on vacant lots in disadvantaged neighborhoods and the opening of a factory to make wall panels for net-zero manufactured homes.
City leaders have found the undertaking more challenging than expected, especially on the factory front. But they hope overcoming roadblocks will help create a new local and regional market for energy-efficient, affordable prefabricated homes, while also training a new generation of architects in the sector through partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning.
“It remains an ambitious project,” said Milwaukee environmental sustainability director Erick Shambarger. “We’re trying to support equity, climate, new technology, manufacturing. It takes some time, but we’re excited about it and looking forward to making it a success.”
Panelized, prefabricated homes can be built relatively cheaply, but making them highly energy efficient is a different story. A handful of small companies nationwide make the wall panels used in such construction to highly energy-efficient standards, but transporting the panels is expensive and creates greenhouse gas emissions.
The city sought a local manufacturer, but an initial request for proposals yielded no viable candidates. Now the city and UWM professors are working with the Rocky Mountain Institute to convince a qualified company to open a site in Milwaukee to make energy-efficient panelized home components at commercial scale, for both the city and private customers.
“It’s such a great fit for Milwaukee,” said Lucas Toffoli, a principal in RMI’s carbon-free buildings program. “It’s a city that has a very strong blue-collar tradition, so the idea of bringing back some manufacturing, and leveling up the home-building capacity of the city feels very congruent with the spirit of Milwaukee.”
And panelized homes could be a cornerstone of affordable, energy-efficient housing nationwide if the sector was better organized and incentivized, RMI argues — a goal that Milwaukee could help further.
“Local action always drives a message in a way that federal action doesn’t,” Toffoli said. “It will be even more important under the incoming presidential administration and Congress. Having this project getting started at the local level in an important Midwestern city is a way to help ensure that progress continues at some level, even if it’s less of a priority at the federal level.”
Panel problems
Habitat for Humanity builds its own panels in its Milwaukee warehouse, and is working on an energy-efficient panelized design that it hope will yield the first net-zero affordable homes in 2025. Milwaukee has yet to select a developer for the DOE-funded program, but Milwaukee Habitat was a partner in the DOE grant and CEO Brian Sonderman said the organization is hopeful it will be chosen during an RFP process.
Single-family homes are typically “stick built” from the ground up, with 2×4 or similar boards forming a skeleton and then, one by one, walls. Panelized homes involve walls transported intact to the site.
Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity often uses a hybrid method wherein walls are “stick built” laying on their side in the Habitat warehouse, and then brought to the site where volunteers help assemble the new house.
There are various other methods of making panels that don’t involve lumber, UWM Associate Professor Alexander Timmer explained, and making these models highly energy efficient is still an emerging and decentralized field.
“It’s the chicken-or-the-egg problem in some sense,” Timmer said, since component manufacturers don’t know if there’s a market for energy-efficient panelized homes, and developers don’t build the homes because few component suppliers exist.
Wall panels can involve two sheets of plywood with insulation in between, or a steel interior surrounded by rigid insulation, among other models.
“With 2x4s, any small crew can build a home,” said Timmer. “With panelized, you need a factory, specialized tools, specialized knowledge. The hope is we are graduating architects into the market who know these technologies and techniques, and can design them to high energy efficiency standards. The city needs architects and builders who want to do these things and feel comfortable doing them.”
Toffoli touted the benefits of net-zero homes beyond the carbon emissions and utility bill savings.
“There’s less draftiness, greater comfort throughout the whole home,” said Toffoli. “In addition to making the heater run less to warm the air, there’s a big comfort benefit and acoustic benefit,” with little noise or pollutants filtering into the well-sealed home.
“In the middle of a severe Wisconsin winter storm, [if] power goes out for everyone, you have a home that can basically ride through harsh conditions passively much better,” Toffoli added.
Toffoli said examples in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts show panelized, highly energy-efficient homes can be built at costs not much greater than standard market panelized homes. A different design, including thinner studs and more insulation, means less heat or cold is transported from the outside in. Insulation and highly efficient windows cost more than market rate, but smaller appliances can be used because of the efficiency, helping to mitigate the cost increase.
He said mass production of net-zero panelized homes is much more efficient and cost-effective than stick-built energy-efficient homes.
“You don’t need to, every time, find a contractor who understands the proper sequence of control layers for a very high-performance wall,” Toffoli said. “It’s been done in part in a factory where they’re plugging and chugging on a design that’s been validated and repeated.”
The DOE grant includes $1 million for Milwaukee to incentivize construction of the panel factory, $40,000 each toward 25 homes, plus funds for administration and other costs. Shambarger said $40,000 per home will cover the construction cost difference between an affordable home that merely complies with building codes, and one that is net-zero – meeting federal standards with a highly efficient envelope, an electric heat pump and solar panels.
Shambarger noted that the city funding and business will not be enough to motivate a company to build a new factory in Milwaukee.
“Any company is going to have to have a customer base” beyond the city orders, Shambarger said. “We’ll have to make sure other housing developers like the product that companies have, that it’s cost effective. One of the things we learned the first time around is most of the developers really didn’t understand how to do net-zero energy. We want to make sure the product we select fits within Milwaukee neighborhoods, will work in our climate, has buy-in from the community.”
Local jobs would be created by the factory, which is slated to be in Century City, the neighborhood with the most vacant manufacturing space.
“Overall with the climate and equity plan, we are trying to create good-paying jobs that people want,” Shambarger said. “That often means the trades. One of the things attractive about building housing components in a factory is it offers steady year-round employment, rather than having to go on unemployment for the winter,” as many building tradespeople do.
Creating Habitat
Sonderman said that in the past, Milwaukee Habitat has put solar on some homes, but little else specifically to lower energy costs.
“Clearly if there was a really substantial market for developers who were interested and willing to do this work, the reality is Habitat wouldn’t be the first call,” he said. “It’s something new. One of the things we’re looking forward to is sharing with our Habitat network in the state and other developers and builders, so we build some confidence this can be done efficiently and cost-effectively.”
Net-zero homes are not only a way to fight climate change, but an environmental and economic justice issue in predominantly Black neighborhoods scarred by redlining and disinvestment, where the majority of residents are renters, Sonderman added.
“Even for the individuals who don’t live in that home but live in the neighborhood, it breathes hope, it says that our neighborhood is being invested in,” Sonderman said. “That matters deeply for the residents of Lindsay Heights, Harambee, Midtown and elsewhere. To take a project like this and see it come to fruition has tremendous ripple effect in a positive way.”
Several other Habitat chapters nationwide are building net-zero homes, including in Colorado, Illinois and Oregon.
Milwaukee Habitat is planning to build 34 homes in 2025 and up to 60 homes annually by 2028. Sonderman said they will make as many as possible net-zero.
“We’re not in a capacity to be the full-scale factory [Shambarger] was envisioning,” he said. “But we believe we’ll be able to supply the walls we need to build dozens and dozens of net-zero homes in the future.”
Massive data centers used for cloud computing and artificial intelligence are consuming enormous amounts of energy, and developers are eyeing South Dakota as a potential location, regulators say.
These “hyperscale data centers,” or “hyperscalers,” are designed to handle immense computing demands and are often operated by tech giants. The centers are characterized by their large size — often tens of thousands of square feet — and thousands of computer servers that require significant energy to operate.
Nick Phillips with Applied Digital in Texas, a developer of the centers, highlighted South Dakota’s appeal: a cold climate that cuts down on cooling a room full of hot servers, and abundant wind energy that’s considered one of the most cost-effective renewable energy sources, which can help keep operating costs down.
State regulators are not aware of any hyperscale data centers currently operating in South Dakota.
“There isn’t a requirement to report hyperscale data centers to the commission, so we don’t have a formal method to track that information,” said Leah Mohr with the Public Utilities Commission.
Commissioner Kristie Fiegen noted that the state’s largest proposed data center is a 50-megawatt facility in Leola.
“We don’t know what’s coming,” she said. “But the utilities are getting calls every week from people trying to see if they have the megawatts available.”
The commission recently hosted a meeting in Pierre with representatives from regional utilities, regional power grid associations and data centers. The goal was to understand the emerging demands and facilitate an information exchange.
Bob Sahr, a former public utilities commissioner and current CEO of East River Electric Cooperative in Madison, emphasized the scale of energy needed.
“We’re talking loads that eclipse some of the largest cities in South Dakota,” he said.
A single data center campus can require anywhere from 300 to 500 megawatts of electricity to operate. One megawatt can power hundreds of homes. By one estimate, there are over 1,000 hyperscalers worldwide, with the U.S. hosting just over half of them.
Ryan Long, president of Xcel Energy, headquartered in Minneapolis, illustrated the extreme nature of the demand.
“We now have, I would say, north of seven gigawatts of requests across the Xcel Energy footprint for data centers to locate in one of our eight states,” he said. “And I’ll be very frank that there’s no way that we’re going to be able to serve all of that in a reasonable amount of time.”
Protecting existing customers from potential costs or energy shortages is another shared concern. Utility representatives emphasized the need for coal and natural gas to maintain a reliable “base load” when renewable sources like wind and solar are unavailable. Arick Sears of Iowa-based MidAmerican Energy underscored the point, noting that costs for each data center should depend on how much energy it consumes.
“We need to ensure that large-scale energy users are paying their fair share,” he said.
Utilities also flagged the risk of “stranded costs,” referring to a data center ceasing operations, leaving a utility with added infrastructure to meet a demand that no longer exists. They said financial safeguards will need to be written into power agreements with hyperscalers.
Speed of deployment is another pressing issue. Representatives from Montana-Dakota Utilities, headquartered in North Dakota, and NorthWestern Energy, headquartered in Sioux Falls, noted that some facilities expect to be operational within months of making a deal, straining infrastructure, planning and resources.
Grid managers Brian Tulloh of Indiana-based Midcontinent Independent System Operator and Lanny Nickell of Arkansas-based Southwest Power Pool echoed those concerns. They warned that data center growth is outpacing the grid’s ability to meet demand and cautioned against decommissioning coal power plants too quickly. Setting aside how much it would cost to produce the required energy, Tulloh estimated that MISO needs $30 billion in electric transmission infrastructure to support the demand from hyperscalers.
“The grid wasn’t designed for that,” Public Utilities Commissioner Chris Nelson told South Dakota Searchlight after the meeting.
Nelson was glad to hear the data centers will include backup generators, similar to hospitals, for power outages or when homes need prioritization. He said some even aim to have huge batteries to power the plant until the generators get going. They would consume massive amounts of diesel and natural gas until the outage is over.
Nelson said all of this makes modern nuclear energy facilities more attractive. He said few alternative “base load” options remain, and the public has little appetite for ramping up coal power.
NorthWestern Energy is exploring the possibility of constructing a small nuclear power plant in South Dakota, with an estimated cost of $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion for a 320-megawatt facility. The plant would be the first in the state since a test facility near Sioux Falls in the 1960s.
The company is conducting a study, partially funded by the Department of Energy. Details about the study and potential plant sites remain confidential.
Additionally, South Dakota’s Legislature has shown interest in nuclear energy, passing a resolution for further study on the topic that led to the publication of an issue memorandum by the Legislative Research Council.
A new contract between Kalamazoo, Michigan, and utility Consumers Energy signals a change in direction for the city’s clean energy strategy as it seeks to become carbon neutral by 2040.
Solar was seen as a pillar of the city’s plans when it declared a climate emergency in 2019 and set a goal of zeroing out carbon emissions by 2040. After spending years exploring its options, though, the Michigan city is tempering a vision for rooftop solar in favor of large, more distant solar projects built and owned by the utility. It’s not alone either, with Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Muskegon and other cities taking a similar approach.
“Folks want to see solar panels on parking lots and buildings, but there’s no way as a city we can accomplish our net-zero buildings just putting solar panels on a roof,” said Justin Gish, Kalamazoo’s sustainability planner. “Working with the utility seemed to make the most sense.”
Initially there was skepticism, Gish said — “environmentalists tend to not trust utilities and large corporate entities” — but the math just didn’t work out for going it alone with rooftop solar.
The city’s largest power user, the wastewater treatment station, has a pumping house with a roof of only 225 square feet. Kalamazoo’s largest city-owned roof, at the public service station, is 26,000 square feet. Spending an estimated $750,000 to cover that with solar would only provide 14% of the power that building uses annually — a financial “non-starter,” he said.
So the city decided to partner with Consumers Energy, joining a solar subscription program wherein Kalamazoo will tell Consumers how much solar energy it wants, starting in 2028, and the utility will use funds from its subscription fee to construct new solar farms, like a 250 MW project Consumers is building in Muskegon.
Under the 20-year contract, Kalamazoo will pay a set rate of 15.8 cents per kWh — 6.4 cents more than what it currently pays — for 43 million kWh of solar power per year. If electricity market rates rise, the city will save money, and Kalamazoo receives Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) to help meet its energy goals.
The subscription is expected to eliminate about 80% of Kalamazoo’s emissions from electricity, Gish said. The electricity used to power streetlights and traffic signals couldn’t be covered since it is not metered. As the city acquires more electric vehicles — it currently has two — electricity demand may increase, but city leaders hope to offset any increases by improving energy efficiency of city buildings.
Consumers Energy spokesperson Matt Johnson said the company relies “in part” on funds from customers specifically to build solar, and considers it a better deal for cities than building it themselves, “which would be more costly for them, and they have to do their own maintenance.”
“We can do it in a more cost-effective way, we maintain it, they’re helping us fund it and do it in the right way, and those benefits get passed on to arguably everybody,” Johnson said.
Grand Rapids, Michigan, joined the subscription program at the same time as Kalamazoo. Corporate customers including 7-Eleven, Walmart and General Motors are part of the same Consumers Energy solar subscription program, as is the state of Michigan.
Costs and benefits
“There’s a growing movement of cities trying to figure out solar — ‘Yes we want to do this, it could save us money over time, but the cost is prohibitive,’” said John Farrell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
Until the Inflation Reduction Act, cities couldn’t directly access federal tax credits. The direct-pay incentives under the IRA have simplified financing, Farrell said, but cities still face other financial and logistical barriers, such as whether they have sufficient rooftop space.
Advocates acknowledge deals with utilities may be the most practical way for budget-strapped cities to move the needle on clean energy, but they emphasize that cities should also strive to develop their own solar, and question whether utilities should charge more for clean power that is increasingly a cheaper option than fossil fuels.
“Our position is rooftop and distributed generation is best — it’s best for the customers, in this case the cities; it’s best for the grid, because you’re putting those resources directly on the grid where it’s needed most; and it’s best for the planet because it can deploy a lot faster,” said John Delurey, Midwest deputy director of the advocacy group Vote Solar. “I believe customers in general and perhaps cities in particular should exhaust all resources and opportunities for distributed generation before they start to explore utility-scale resources. It’s the lowest hanging fruit and very likely to provide the most bang for their buck.”
Utility-scale solar is more cost-effective per kilowatt, but Delurey notes that when a public building is large enough for solar, “you are putting that generation directly on load, you’re consuming onsite. Anything that is concurrent consumption or paired with a battery, you are getting the full retail value of that energy. That is a feature you can’t really beat no matter how good the contract is with some utility-scale projects that are farther away.”
Delurey also noted that Michigan law mandates all energy be from clean sources by 2040; and 50% by 2030. That means Consumers needs to be building or buying renewable power, whether or not customers pay extra for it.
“So there are diminishing returns [to a subscription deal] at that point,” Delurey said. “You better be getting a price benefit, because the power on their grid would be clean anyways.”
“Some folks are asking ‘Why do anything now? Just wait until Consumers cleans up the grid,’” Gish acknowledged. “But our purchase shows we have skin in the game.”
A complement to rooftop
In 2009, Milwaukee adopted a goal of powering 25% of city operations — excluding waterworks — with solar by 2025. The city’s Climate and Equity Plan adopted in 2023 also enshrined that goal.
For a decade, Milwaukee has been battling We Energies over the city’s plan to install rooftop solar on City Hall and other buildings through a third-party owner, Eagle Point Solar. The city sought the arrangement — common in many states — to tap federal tax incentives that a nonprofit public entity couldn’t reap. But We Energies argued that third party ownership would mean Eagle Point would be acting as a utility and infringing on We Energies’ territory. A lawsuit over Milwaukee’s plans with Eagle Point is still pending.
In 2018, We Energies launched a pilot solar program in Milwaukee known by critics as “rent a roof,” in which the utility leased rooftop space for its own solar arrays. Advocates and Milwaukee officials opposed the program, arguing that it encouraged the utility to suppress the private market or publicly-owned solar. In 2023, the state Public Service Commission denied the utility’s request to expand the program.
Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board opposed the rent-a-roof arrangement since it passed costs they viewed as unfair on to ratepayers. But Wisconsin CUB executive director Tom Content said the city’s current partnership with We Energies is different, since it is just the city, not ratepayers, footing the cost for solar that helps the city meet its goals.
Solar panels atop Milwaukee’s Central Library. Credit: City of Milwaukee
Milwaukee is paying about $84,000 extra per year for We Energies to build solar farms on a city landfill near the airport and outside the city limits in the town of Caledonia. The deal includes a requirement that We Energies hire underemployed or unemployed Milwaukee residents.
The Caledonia project is nearly complete, and will provide over 11 million kWh of energy annually, “enough to make 57 municipal police stations, fire stations, and health clinics 100% renewable electricity,” said Milwaukee Environmental Collaboration Office director Erick Shambarger.
The landfill project is slated to break ground in 2025. The two arrays will total 11 MW and provide enough power for 83 city buildings, including City Hall – where Milwaukee had hoped to do the rooftop array with Eagle Point.
Meanwhile Milwaukee is building its own rooftop solar on the Martin Luther King Jr. library and later other public buildings, and Shambarger said they will apply for direct pay tax credits made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act — basically eliminating the need for a third-party agreement.
“Utility-scale is the complement to rooftop,” said Shambarger. “They own it and maintain it, we get the RECs. It worked out pretty well. If you think about it from a big picture standpoint, to now have the utility offer a big customer like the city an option to source their power from renewable energy — that didn’t exist five years ago. If you were a big customer in Wisconsin five years ago, you really had no option except for buying RECs from who knows where. We worked hard with them to make sure we could see our renewable energy being built.”
We Energies already owns a smaller 2.25 MW solar farm on the same landfill, under a similar arrangement. Building solar on the landfill is less efficient than other types of land, since special mounting is needed to avoid puncturing the landfill’s clay cap, and the panels can’t turn to follow the sun. But Shambarger said the sacrifice is worth it to have solar within the city limits, on land useful for little else.
“We do think it’s important to have some of this where people can see it and understand it,” he said. “We also have the workforce requirements, it’s nice to have it close to home for our local workers.”
Madison is also pursuing a mix of city-owned distributed solar and utility-scale partnerships.
On Earth Day 2024, Madison announced it has installed 2 MW of solar on 38 city rooftops. But a utility-scale solar partnership with utility MGE is also crucial to the goal of 100% clean energy for city operations by 2030. Through MGE’s Renewable Energy Rider program, Madison helped pay for the 8 MW Hermsdorf Solar Fields on a city landfill, with 5 MW devoted to city operations and 3 MW devoted to the school district. The 53-acre project went online in 2022.
Farrell said such “all of the above” approaches are ideal.
“The lesson we’ve seen generally is the more any entity can directly own the solar project, the more financial benefit you’ll get,” he said. “Ownership comes with privileges, and with risks.
“Energy is in addition to a lot of other challenging issues that cities have to work on. The gold standard is solar on a couple public buildings with battery storage, so these are resiliency places if the grid goes down.”
Correction: Covering Kalamazoo’s public service station roof with solar panels would provide an estimated 14% of power used by that building. An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the number.
Community and environmental justice advocates say the Biden administration is failing to deliver promised transparency and public engagement around its $7 billion clean hydrogen hub initiative.
“Engagement isn’t merely leading people into a process that’s going to happen with or without them,” said Tom Torres, hydrogen program director for the Ohio River Valley Institute, a nonprofit serving one of the regions where federally funded partnerships are trying to lay the groundwork for new local hydrogen economies. “It means meaningfully involving people in the decisions about the project.”
The U.S. Department of Energy announced funding in October 2023 for seven regional clean hydrogen hubs — clusters of interconnected projects meant to kickstart production of the fuel with little or no greenhouse gas emissions. Since then, the department has held online briefings and virtual listening sessions for each hub, but advocates say they are not getting the kind of information necessary to assess who will be impacted by the projects and how.
Torres and others say they want more than just dots on a map. They want to know how hydrogen will be produced, how it will be used, and how it will get to end users. For projects that depend on carbon capture, they want to know how and where the carbon will be captured, transported and stored. And once the specifics are known, they want a chance to have meaningful input on the final projects.
Spokespeople for the Department of Energy and regional hubs said the answers to those questions are still being worked out and that more engagement is on the horizon. Advocates are increasingly frustrated and fear that community input will come too late to affect how the hubs are developed.
“It doesn’t make sense … on one hand to say there’s not enough on paper to tell the public about, but on the other hand there is enough to allocate almost $1 billion for these companies,” Torres said.
Are events just ‘checking a box’?
When burned as a fuel source, hydrogen does not emit carbon dioxide, but its production today almost always comes from fossil fuels. Some see a potential for hydrogen to replace natural gas in certain hard-to-electrify sectors such as industry or heavy duty transportation, but the benefits for addressing climate change hinge on whether it can be produced cleanly and at scale.
The Biden administration’s hydrogen hub program, part of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, aims to ramp up production of hydrogen made with low-carbon energy, including renewables, nuclear power, and fossil fuels paired with carbon capture.
“It is literally like building the natural gas infrastructure that we have all over the place again for hydrogen,” said Shawn Bennett, energy and resilience manager for Battelle, the project manager for the Appalachian Regional Hydrogen Hub, ARCH2, which includes projects for Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. A majority of its projects will use steam methane reforming to make hydrogen from natural gas, along with carbon capture and storage. Other projects in the hub plan to make hydrogen from waste gases or from electrolysis, which uses energy to split water molecules.
In May, dozens of groups urged the Department of Energy to suspend funding discussions for the ARCH2 project until the public receives detailed information beyond general maps and short project descriptions. On July 31 the Department of Energy formally committed the first $30 million of federal funding to ARCH2, with a total of up to $925 million to be spent over the next decade or so.
Last month, the Department of Energy committed up to $1 billion for the Midwest Alliance for Clean Hydrogen, MachH2, which spans Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Iowa and plans to produce hydrogen from a mix of nuclear power, wind energy and natural gas. The department will hold a December 9 briefing on MachH2.
In response to the Energy News Network’s questions about community groups’ complaints about a lack of outreach, a Department of Energy spokesperson provided a statement saying it “has been actively engaged with these communities in support of the economic playbook” of the Biden-Harris administration.
The ARCH2 project held a community outreach session in West Virginia in November, and additional meetings will be held in Ohio and Pennsylvania early next year, Bennett said. Some community group members protested outside at the West Virginia session but then came inside for a good discussion, he added.
Torres said there was no general presentation at the West Virginia meeting, and company representatives were present for only a handful of the hub’s projects. Even then, project information was still sparse.
“It wasn’t an opportunity for people’s voices to be heard,” he said. “What is the value of these events other than checking a box for these companies?”
Advocacy groups focusing on the MachH2 project said months went by without getting updates or details. Then last month, they got less than 24 hours’ notice for a briefing with general descriptions about the MachH2 hub projects.
During that session, representatives for the Department of Energy said a decision on the hub’s funding commitment would come soon, “probably next week sometime,” said Susan Thomas, the legislative and policy director and communications manager for Just Transition Northwest Indiana. Minutes after the November 20 session ended, the Department of Energy announced the MachH2 funding commitment.
“Our jaws were on the table,” Thomas said.
Details remain to be worked out
Groups have been trying to get answers from the Department of Energy for more than a year, said Chris Chyung, executive director of Indiana Conservation Voters. In his view, the agency’s approach “is just flouting the law.” According to the Department of Energy’s website, engagement with communities and labor is a key principle required in hubs’ community benefits plans, which are part of hubs’ contractual obligations for funding.
Community groups learned in the November 20 briefing that the MachH2 community engagement would not address concerns related to any pipelines associated with the hub. Instead, those would be handled by a separate office within the Department of Energy.
But a pipeline for northwestern Indiana “is absolutely part and parcel of [a] dirty hydrogen project that is part of MachH2,” and the community should get a say on it, said Lauren Piette, an attorney with Earthjustice, which does not consider hydrogen made with natural gas to be climate-friendly, even with carbon capture.
The Department of Energy spokesperson did not respond to the Energy News Network’s question about how community benefits for hub projects can fully be assessed if they don’t include consideration of issues and input related to necessary pipelines.
Representatives of the MachH2 and ARCH2 hubs who spoke at an Ohio Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Consortium program last month said they couldn’t practically engage in community outreach until funding commitments had been negotiated with the Department of Energy. Until then, it wasn’t certain whether each hub would move forward.
Also, as a practical matter, “there was no budget for these things,” Bennett said. Details for each hub’s projects are still being worked out, and ARCH2 is still trying to add additional project partners.
Even then, details for projects won’t be finalized until review under the National Environmental Policy Act, according to Neil Banwart, who is the chief integration officer for the MachH2 hub and also the managing director for hydrogen at Energy Systems Network.
“It’s not a certainty that all of the projects will get built in the locations that we shared on a map,” he said.
Chyung said he felt the comments about funding were “a complete dodge on behalf of these extremely wealthy national corporations that have said since 2023 they were eager to get started on community outreach.”
The following commentary was written by Daksh Arora, a project engineer at GameChange Solar, content director for the MIT Energy Conference 2025, and a fellow at the Clean Energy Leadership Institute. See our commentary guidelines for more information.
States like Massachusetts must take the lead in advancing the United States’ climate goals, especially under the incoming Trump administration. While the Biden Administration’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 made significant strides, the U.S. is still on track to achieve only 66% of its greenhouse gas reduction targets by 2030.
With the potential for further setbacks, such as a possible second withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, states like Massachusetts must step up to drive the deployment of clean energy and climate solutions.
The “Direct Pay” provision in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is a game-changer for municipalities, state and local governments, and other tax-exempt entities to access federal clean energy tax credits. This provision allows entities such as nonprofits, schools, tribal governments, and municipal utilities to receive tax credits directly from the IRS, rather than relying on tax liability to claim them.
Before the IRA, only private entities could benefit from these credits, putting public entities at a disadvantage in developing clean energy projects. The Direct Pay provision has no cap on government spending through 2032, offering new opportunities for public sector investment in clean energy. Furthermore, IRA also increases the maximum available tax credit for certain clean energy projects, from 30% to 50%, with the potential for up to 70% or more for projects in energy or low-income communities, or those using American-made materials, helping overcome financial barriers that previously slowed public clean energy development.
To claim direct pay, eligible entities must complete their energy projects before receiving payment from the federal government, which will occur the following year. While the tax credits will lower overall project costs, upfront capital is still needed to finance projects before the refund arrives.
To help address this, the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), a $27 billion program established by another IRA provision, provides increased green bank financing, supporting an equitable green financing ecosystem across the U.S. The IRS just finalized the direct pay rules and it would be really difficult for the next administration to repeal it.
City governments like in Somerville and Cambridge can use direct pay to supplement the costs of deploying renewable energy infrastructure such as solar panels and storage technologies on public lands and buildings; electrifying vehicle fleets; and building out electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
Direct Pay is also a significant shift that allows public power entities, like the New York Power Authority (NYPA), to directly own renewable energy projects instead of relying on complex public-private partnerships. This makes it easier for NYPA to scale up clean energy projects by bypassing the need for third-party ownership structures that were previously required.
Regardless of this question, investing in public capacity is a net win for the environment as direct pay not only levels the playing field between for-profit and tax-exempt entities but also shifts energy generation ownership from private to public and nonprofit sectors, enabling more consumer-focused management of energy assets. States like Massachusetts should ensure that benefits from the IRA reach low-income and marginalized communities.
Massachusetts just streamlined the process for building solar and wind farms, transmission lines, and other energy infrastructure to help meet its climate goals by 2050. The state can do more by working to help communities understand the types of investments eligible for direct pay and how to secure financing for clean energy projects, making access to this funding easier and more efficient. The state can also lead by setting an example by deploying climate solutions at scale and ensuring utilities maximize the federal clean energy tax credits by regulatory oversight.
This article was originally published by Floodlight.
A small town in North Carolina has taken a bold step, filing the first climate “deception” lawsuit against an electric utility in the United States.
In a civil lawsuit, the Town Council of Carrboro accuses Duke Energy, one of the largest power companies in the United States, of orchestrating a decades-long campaign of denialism and cover up over the dangers of fossil fuel emissions. The lawsuit claims Duke’s actions stalled the transition to clean energy and exacerbated the climate crisis.
Over the past decade, similar suits have been filed by states and communities against large oil companies and — in at least one instance — a gas utility. But Carrboro, N.C., is the first municipality to ever file such a suit against an electric utility.
“We’re a very bold group,” Carrboro Mayor Barbara Foushee told Floodlight. “And we know how urgent this climate crisis is.”
Duke Energy said in a statement, “We are in the process of reviewing the complaint. Duke Energy is committed to its customers and communities and will continue working with policymakers and regulators to deliver reliable and increasingly clean energy while keeping rates as low as possible.”
The suit, filed in Orange County, North Carolina, accuses Duke Energy of intentionally spreading false information about the negative effects of fossil fuels for decades, despite knowing since the late 1960s about planet-warming properties of carbon dioxide emissions. It claims the power company funded trade organizations and climate skeptic scientists who created doubts about the greenhouse effect and obstructed policy and public action on climate change.
“Duke misled the public concerning the causes and consequences of climate change and thereby materially slowed the transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy. Duke’s deception campaign served to protect its fossil fuel-based business model.” the lawsuit reads.
Between 2005 and 2023, the company reported reducing its CO2 emissions from electricity generation by 44%. But in 2023, at least 45% of the electricity Duke produced was still generated by burning coal or methane gas.
“(Duke) was one of the ringleaders behind deceiving the public and municipalities and governments about the causes and consequences of manmade climate change,” said Raleigh attorney Matthew Quinn, who is representing the town.
Carrboro is a town of about 20,000 with an annual budget of $81 million, Foushee said. Quinn, the attorney, estimates the town will incur some $60 million in costs in adapting to climate change impacts, including repairs to roads, upgrades to stormwater systems and increased heating and cooling costs.
At a press conference Wednesday, Quinn explained that expert analysts had arrived at that number based on the amount and cost of climate adaptation that Carrboro would have undertaken had it not been for Duke’s alleged deception.
“There’s a major gulf between where we should be at and where we are right now,” Quinn said at the press conference.
“Really, what this case is about is that Carrboro has been a victim of the climate deception campaign by Duke Energy, (and) as a result of Duke’s conduct, Carrboro has suffered a lot of damages and injustice,” Quinn said in an interview.
Added Danny Nowell, Carrboro Mayor pro tem: “We have paid for it. We have paid for excess road repairs. We have faced the effects of stormwater, and we will continue to pay for other expenses as we uncover them. It’s time for Carrboro to be repaid.”
Quinn’s fees are being paid by NC Warn, a climate nonprofit, Foushee said.
“People that run local governments and others and people that run corporations, they all better get heavily serious about the climate crisis,” said Jim Warren, executive director of NC Warn. “It’s already harming so many across this state.”
Bob Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University, called such lawsuits “cute.”
“And I use that term very, you know, intentionally. These lawsuits are cute in the sense that they’re trying to shame companies … into doing better,” said Jarvis, adding that they are rarely successful. “Companies have duties to their shareholders to maximize profits. And so what these lawsuits are really saying is that companies should be punished for maximizing profit.”
“It’s interesting with this as a case directly against a utility,” said Korey Silverman-Roati, a senior fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. “It’s a shift in perspective from companies just producing fossil fuels to those burning it.”
Although this is the first climate deception lawsuit ever filed against an electric utility, it is not the first time that electric utilities have found themselves in legal trouble for the climate warming pollution their power plants spew as they burn fossil fuels to generate electricity.
In 2004, electric companies faced federal litigation brought by eight U.S. states, New York City and several land trusts seeking to cap the companies’ CO2 emissions. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled against the plaintiffs.
Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.
Charlotte, North Carolina, may soon get access to a new tool to deploy in its push toward 100% clean power: data.
The Tar Heel state’s largest city aims to power all government operations with carbon-free electricity by the end of the decade, including the city-owned Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, one of the busiest in the world.
But the hub is a big question mark for the city’s climate target. Officials don’t actually know how much energy it uses — or how much renewable energy they need to offset it — because the utility bills for the five-terminal airport are paid by dozens of individual customers, from Cinnabon to Jamba Juice to airline club lounges.
Now, after a decade of urging by Charlotte and others, Duke Energy has a proposal to change that: an eight-page plan for improved data access that has sign-off from the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association; Public Staff, the state-sanctioned customer advocate; and Dominion Energy, which serves the northeast corner of the state.
Filed last month with regulators for approval, Duke’s proposed rules could have wide application, said Ethan Blumenthal, regulatory counsel for the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association.
“For municipalities applying for federal grants, large customers pursuing energy efficiency, and homeowners and solar companies that are trying to right-size solar installations,” Blumenthal said, “this access to data is essential.”
Avoiding a ‘laborious process’
The Charlotte airport is a prime example of one hurdle facing local communities with climate goals. Today, getting total energy usage data for government-owned buildings with multiple meters means reaching out to individual tenants to get permission to access their accounts.
“It would be a very laborious process to do that at the airport and anywhere else we have tenants,” said Aaron Tauber, Charlotte’s sustainability analyst.
The problem extends to private building owners who aim to reduce their carbon footprints or improve efficiency but don’t have insight into their renters’ energy consumption. Honeywell, for instance, is a partner in the city’s “Power Down the Crown” initiative, whereby building managers look to reduce energy use by optimizing efficiency.
“They don’t own all of the data,” Tauber said. “They have tenants in their properties. So, they don’t have visibility to the entire building’s energy use.”
The new rule will allow a large user, from Honeywell to Charlotte, to access aggregated data for a large building with multiple tenants by request to Duke, so long as at least 15 individual accounts are involved, and none consumes more than 15% of the building’s energy use.
“Being a larger city, we do have a lot of large buildings with multiple tenants,” said Tauber. “I’m just really excited for these building owners to really — for the first time — gain an understanding of how their buildings are using energy.”
That understanding, he said, is critical for commercial properties to access a new law that allows them to borrow public money for energy efficiency upgrades and pay it back on their property tax bills.
“Being able to unlock a financing mechanism based on this data will really go a long way for the city to be able to meet our strategic energy action goal of being a low-carbon community,” said Tauber.
Not just for big buildings
The data access rule also applies to a census block, zip code, or other area with at least 15 accounts, which will help local governments meet community-wide climate goals.
“You can use the aggregated data to make good decisions for program design, and where you might want to target,” said Ann Livingston, senior executive and director of programs with the Southeast Sustainability Directors Network. “You can assess: is this particular block or neighborhood really using a lot more energy per house per square foot than others?”
Durham County, for instance, together with neighboring Granville and Orange counties, has a $1.5 million federal grant to help low-income homeowners cut their energy use through weatherization and other upgrades.
“We want to focus in areas where there’s a higher energy use or higher energy burden,” said Tobin Freid, the county’s sustainability manager. “We’d like information at a more granular level than just the county.”
If the new Duke rule is approved, it will also help county officials better tailor the program to individual households and assess its impacts. The proposal would ease the approval process for allowing third-party access to data and ensure that at least two years of prior energy use is included.
“For every home that we work on, we would need historic data to see: what was your energy use before?” Freid said.
Both the aggregated data and third-party access provisions will also be critical for federal programs like Solar for All, aimed at deploying rooftop solar on low-income households.
“Often, those federal funding opportunities require you to assess and report on energy impact,” said Livingston. “Solar for All will be a very clear example of this, where you need to report energy savings for individual participants.”
Growing interest in local impact
Apart from the sustainability goals, government officials also have a commitment to manage public dollars efficiently, Livingston noted. That’s especially pertinent for large energy users like Durham County, who may pay a higher “demand charge” for a single 30-minute spike in energy use. Large customers with net-metered solar power also pay more during times of peak demand.
The proposed rules will help solve these challenges by allowing third parties access to machine-readable, easily analyzed data for customers of all sizes. The format would essentially meet national “Green Button” standards, one familiar to the many companies around the country dedicated to managing building energy performance.
The Green Button initiative, a project of the U.S. Department of Energy that originated in Canada, has been around for over a decade – about as long as the Sustainable Energy Association has been advocating for improved customer data access, along with counties like Durham.
But the issue seems to have gained new steam in recent months, as local governments look to take advantage of new federal grants and laws aimed at reducing climate pollution.
What’s more, Blumenthal said, Duke has pledged to implement the rules within 18 months of their approval and help expedite any data requests in the interim.
“There is a commitment to doing everything they can, essentially, to provide data for federal funding purposes up until [the proposal] is fully implemented,” Blumenthal said. “A commitment to try to bridge the gap.”
Asked what prompted the agreement with Blumenthal’s group and others after all this time, Duke spokesperson Logan Stewart said over email:
“A lot has changed in the last decade from a technology, cybersecurity, and customer engagement perspective that made this stipulation possible. Duke Energy is always looking for ways to collaborate with stakeholders to achieve outcomes that benefit customers.”
A trailblazing regional greenhouse gas partnership on the East Coast is considering possible changes or expansion that would allow it to keep building on its success — and the stakes grew higher last month with the reelection of Donald Trump.
The 11-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, established in 2005, is the country’s first regional cap-and-invest system for reducing carbon emissions from power generation. Since 2021, administrators have been conducting a program review, analyzing its performance since the last review in 2017 and weighing potential adjustments to make sure it continues to deliver benefits to member states.
The role of such programs is more crucial as Trump’s pledges to roll back federal climate action leaves it up to cities, states, and the private sector to maintain the country’s momentum on clean energy over the next four years. In RGGI, as the regional initiative is known, states have a potential model for scaling their impact through collaboration.
“RGGI has not only been an effective climate policy, it’s been an extraordinary example of how states can work together on common goals,” said Daniel Sosland, president of climate and energy nonprofit Acadia Center. “It is a major vehicle for climate policy now in the states, more than it might have seemed before the election.”
How RGGI works
RGGI sets a cap for total power plant carbon emissions among member states. Individual generators must then buy allowances from the state, up to the total cap, for each ton of carbon dioxide they produce in a year. The cap lowers over time, forcing power plants to either reduce emissions or pay more to buy allowances from a shrinking pool.
States then reinvest the proceeds from these auctions into programs that further reduce emissions and help energy customers, including energy efficiency initiatives, direct bill assistance, and renewable energy projects. Since 2008, RGGI has generated $8.3 billion for participating states, and carbon dioxide emissions from power generation in the nine states that have consistently participated fell by about half between 2008 and 2021, a considerably faster rate than the rest of the country.
“It has really thrived and been really effective across multiple administrations,” said Jackson Morris, state power sector director with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “RGGI is a winning model. It’s not theoretical — we’ve got numbers.”
Currently, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont are part of the program. Virginia joined RGGI in 2021, but in 2023 Gov. Glenn Youngkin repealed the state’s participation, a move immediately challenged in court; a judge ruled last month that the governor lacked the authority to withdraw the state from initiative, though a spokesman for the governor has declared the state’s intention to appeal.
There is widespread agreement that RGGI will endure despite likely federal hostility to climate measures. There was no attempt to take direct action against it during Trump’s first term, nor has there been any concerted industry opposition, said Conservation Law Foundation president Bradley Campbell, who was involved in the founding of RGGI when he was commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
Supporters also note that the program has historically had broad bipartisan support: Participating states have been led through the years by both Republican and Democratic governors and legislatures.
Politics has had some influence over the years, though only at the margins. New Jersey, a founding member of RGGI, left in 2011 when Chris Christie was governor, but returned in 2020 following an executive order from his successor. Pennsylvania joined in 2022 through an executive order from the governor, but its participation is now being challenged in court.
Still, RGGI’s foundations are solid and will remain so, experts said.
“The basic infrastructure has weathered the political winds over the decades,” Campbell said.
Looking forward
Nonetheless, RGGI will need to make some carefully thought-out program design decisions during its current review to make an impact in the face of falling federal support for decarbonization.
One question under consideration is whether to maintain the existing trajectory for the overall emissions cap for the program — a reduction of 30% between 2020 and 2030, then holding steady thereafter — or to continue lowering the limit after 2030.
The RGGI states are also contemplating a possible change to the compliance schedule that would require power generators to acquire allowances worth 100% of their carbon emissions each year, and certify compliance annually. The current system calls for certification every three years, and only mandates allowances equivalent to half of carbon emissions for the first two years of each period.
The program is looking for ways to appeal to potential new participant states that have less aggressive decarbonization goals than current member states without watering down the program’s overall impact on decarbonization, said Acadia Center policy analyst Paola Tamayo. Acadia suggested possible program mechanisms such as giving proportionately more allowances to states with more stringent emissions targets to incentivize tighter limits.
“At this point it is critical for states to maintain a high level of ambition when it comes to programs like RGGI,” Tamayo said. “There are different mechanisms that they can implement to accommodate other states.”
The program review is expected to yield a model rule some time over the winter, though updates may be made into the spring as the RGGI states receive and consider feedback on how to accommodate potential new participants.
States will also need to maintain and strengthen their own climate policies to magnify the impact of RGGI, Campbell said. He pointed to Massachusetts, where Gov. Maura Healey needs to show “bolder leadership,” he said, and Maine and Vermont, where the Conservation Law Foundation has filed lawsuits in an attempt to compel the states to meet their own carbon reduction deadlines.
“It’s especially important that the states that have strong emissions reduction mandates speed up the implementation of their climate laws,” he said. “State leadership on these issues is going to be more important than ever.”
A top executive with Minnesota’s largest utility says data center growth will not prevent it from meeting the state’s 100% clean electricity law, but it may extend the life of natural gas power plants into the next decade.
“As we take all of that coal off the system — even if you didn’t add data centers into the mix — I think we may have been looking to extend some gas (contracts) on our system to get us through a portion of the 2030s,” said Ryan Long, president of Xcel Energy’s division serving Minnesota and the Dakotas. “Adding data centers could increase the likelihood of that, to be perfectly honest.”
Long made the comments at a Minnesota Public Utilities Commission conference this fall exploring the potential impact of data centers on the state’s 2040 clean electricity mandate.
The expansion of power-hungry data centers, driven by artificial intelligence, has caused anxiety across the country among utility planners and regulators. The trend is moving the goalposts for states’ clean electricity targets and raising questions about whether clean energy capacity can keep up with demand as society also tries to electrify transportation and building heat.
Minnesota PUC commissioner Joe Sullivan organized last month’s conference in response to multiple new data centers projects, including a $700 million facility by Facebook’s parent company Meta that’s under construction in suburban Rosemount. Microsoft and Amazon have each acquired property near a retiring Xcel coal plant in central Minnesota.
“We need to ensure that our system is able to serve these companies if they come,” Sullivan said, “and that it can serve them with clean resources consistent with state law.”
Alongside concerns about whether clean energy can keep up with new electricity demand, there’s also an emerging view that data centers — if properly regulated — could become grid assets that help accelerate the transition to carbon-free power. Several stakeholders at the Oct. 31 event shared that view, including Xcel’s regional president.
A 100-megawatt data center could generate as much as $64 million in annual revenue for Xcel, enough to help temper rate increases or cover the cost of other projects on the system, Long said. He said the company wants to attract 1.3 gigawatts worth of data centers to its territory by 2032, and it thinks it can absorb all of that demand without harming progress toward its 2040 clean energy requirement.
Long said data center expansion will not change the company’s plans to close all of its remaining coal-fired power plants by 2040, but it may cause them to try to keep gas plans operating longer. Ultimately, meeting the needs of data centers will require more renewable generation, battery storage, and grid-enhancing technology, but rising costs and supply chain issues have slowed deployment of those solutions.
Other utilities echoed that optimism. Julie Pierce, Minnesota Power’s vice president for strategy and planning said the company has experience serving large customers such as mines in northeastern Minnesota and would be ready to serve data centers. Great River Energy’s resource planning director Zachary Ruzycki said the generation and transmission cooperative “has a lot of arrows in its quiver” to accommodate data centers.
Ruzycki noted, too, that much of the interest it has received from data center developers is because of the state’s commitment to clean energy. Many large data center operators have made corporate commitments to power them on 100% carbon-free electricity, whether from renewables or nuclear power.
Pete Wyckoff, deputy commissioner for energy at the Minnesota Department of Commerce, expressed doubts about the ability to meet unchecked demand from data centers. Even with the state’s recent permitting reforms, utilities are unlikely to be able to deliver “power of any sort — much less clean power — in the size and timeframes that data centers are likely to request.”
He sees hydrogen, long-duration batteries, carbon capture, and advanced nuclear among the solutions that will eventually be needed, but in the short-term the grid could serve more data centers with investments in transmission upgrades, virtual power plants, and other demand response programs.
“These solutions can be deployed faster and cheaper than building all new transmission and large clean energy facilities, though we’ll need those, too,” Wyckoff said.
Aaron Tinjum, director of energy policy and regulatory affairs for the Data Center Coalition, said data centers provide the computing power for things like smart meters, demand response, and other grid technologies. The national trade group represents the country’s largest technology and data center companies.
“We can’t simply view data centers as a significant consumer of energy if they’re all helping us become more efficient, and helping us save on our utility bills,” Tinjum said.
He also pointed to data centers’ role in driving clean energy development. A recent report from S&P Global Commodity Insights found that data centers account for half of all U.S. corporate clean energy procurement.
The true impact of data centers on emissions and the grid is complicated, though. Meta, which participated in the recent Minnesota conference, says it matches all of its annual electricity use with renewable energy, but environmental groups say there is evidence that its data centers are increasing fossil fuel use and emissions in the local markets where they are built.
Amelia Vohs, climate program director with the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, raised concerns at the conference about whether data center growth will make it harder to electrify transportation and heating. She pointed to neighboring Wisconsin, where utilities are proposing to build new gas plants to power data centers.
“This commission and the stakeholders here today have all done a ton of work and made great progress in decarbonizing the electric sector in our state,” Vohs said. “I worry about possibly rolling that back if we all of a sudden have a large load that needs to be served with fossil fuels, or [require] a fossil fuel backup.”
The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office argued that state regulators need to scrutinize data center deals to make sure developers are paying the total cost of their impact on the system, including additional regulatory, operational and maintenance work that might be required on the grid.
In an interview, Sullivan said he was impressed by tech companies’ interest in having data centers in Minnesota because of the 2040 net zero goal, not despite it. They want to buy electricity from Minnesota utilities rather than build their own power systems or locate in neighboring states, he added, and the October meeting left him confident that “we can deal with this.”
Blue-state attorneys general let none of this go without a fight — filing dozens of lawsuits and taking other actions on all manner of Trump administration moves, not just those connected to the environment, energy and climate. Connecticut was in the thick of it, especially on climate issues related to air quality and the emissions known to contribute to global warming and climate change.
But the second Trump administration could prove even more challenging for the attorneys general. It arrives with previous experience and a team potentially less prone to the mistakes that often caused failures in court in the first go-round. Trump will also have majorities in both chambers of Congress to bolster his agenda.
There are also the very specific policy and action recommendations in Project 2025, the conservative governing plan developed by the Heritage Foundation with assistance from many officials connected to Trump’s first term. After facing serious blowback to the plan during the campaign, Trump claimed he knew nothing about it, though his campaign website contained some of the same ideas.
There is also a super-majority conservative U.S. Supreme Court that has already flexed its muscles. It has issued a number of rulings that have effectively closed off avenues for challenges. The Chevron decision in June and the court’s use of the so-called major questions doctrine both generally now restrict what agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and Energy Department can do without specific direction from Congress.
“It’s hard to overstate how profound this change is,” Tong said. “It essentially overturns the whole apple cart of regulatory infrastructure in this country.”
“I think we’re expecting a fight on everything. And that regulatory process — in changes in rulemaking — is going to grind to a very slow crawl and in some cases, to a halt. And that was the point of the people that initiated this.”
The Supreme Court rulings were destined to cause difficulties for Connecticut and other states regardless of whether Trump or Harris won. Tong said he and his blue-state brethren had been planning for both contingencies, though he wouldn’t say what the strategies will be.
“We’ve been preparing for the prospect of the Trump presidency for a long time now, and we are very closely coordinated and aligned,” he said. “We are ready.”
Roger Reynolds, senior legal director with the advocacy group Save the Sound called the Supreme Court rulings hugely concerning. “We’re in a really critical place right now. They have a clear anti-regulatory agenda,” he said. “It’s about putting their hands on the scales on the side of the regulated industries.”
Connecticut’s Democratic senate leaders, President Martin Looney, D-New Haven, and Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, sent a letter last week to Gov. Ned Lamont urging him to prepare to combat Trump administration actions that could hurt the state and the region. The request follows California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to hold a special legislative session to ensure there is enough money to take legal action against the Trump administration when necessary. Meanwhile, the governors of Colorado and Illinois are forming a blue state governors’ coalition to oppose Trump administration efforts.
The Biden administration has methodically reinstated many of Trump’s first administration rollbacks and fortified them with both regulatory-enhanced programs and funding, such as in the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure act.
Trump’s own campaign statements and promises as presented in his platform, Agenda 47, as well as Project 2025, could initiate another round of climate change, energy and environmental whiplash.
According to published reports, two of the first administration’s more effective members, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, both former fossil fuel industry lobbyists, are back at work in the transition and could be in line for positions in the new administration.
Within a week of the election Trump named former Long Island Republican congressman Lee Zeldin to run the EPA. He has limited environmental expertise but is a Trump loyalist. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, a fossil fuel proponent, was nominated to head the Interior Department and to lead a new National Energy Council. And a fracking company executive, Chris Wright, was named to lead the Energy Department and sit on that council. Wright has said there is no climate crisis.
A close review of the nearly 900-page Project 2025 shows that it targets climate change, as well as energy and environmental programs and regulations. The project seeks to cripple the EPA, curtail if not eliminate funding and subsidies for clean and renewable energy programs — including for electric vehicles — as well as eliminate the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. And it would eliminate any focus on environmental justice.
It seeks to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which is popular enough among Republicans whose states and districts have benefitted that 18 members of the House Republican Caucus sent a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson asking that it not be repealed.
Project 2025 also derides the idea of addressing climate change as a policy goal and seeks to remove even the mention of it broadly throughout government.
It contains pointed political statements such as this: “Mischaracterizing the state of our environment generally and the actual harms reasonably attributable to climate change specifically is a favored tool that the Left uses to scare the American public into accepting their ineffective, liberty-crushing regulations, diminished private property rights, and exorbitant costs.”
And it makes a number of specific recommendations to remove climate change as a consideration, such as with the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy: “End the focus on climate change and green subsidies;” and for the Energy Department: “Eliminate political and climate-change interference in DOE approvals of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports.”
Project 2025would privatize the National Weather Service and dramatically reduce the percentage of funding provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for recovery from disasters like the historic flooding Connecticut, and other states, have experienced due to climate change.
The impacts of any of these would likely be felt down to state and local levels.
Connecticut’s biggest worries
If the Trump administration implements the environmental recommendations of Project 2025, Connecticut as well as other states face the possibility that unspent federal funds for climate and energy projects could be clawed back, costing jobs and the economic development around them.
Among 11 bullet points a conservative administration should pursue in energy policy: “Support repeal of massive spending bills like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which established new programs and are providing hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to renewable energy developers, their investors, and special interests, and support the rescinding of all funds not already spent by these programs.”
There is also the potential that the funding Connecticut and nearly all states have grown to rely on for large energy and electric grid projects could disappear. Project 2025 calls for eliminating and defunding the Grid Deployment Office.
Connecticut and the entire New England grid has been counting on offshore wind development to bolster its energy capabilities in the face of expanding power needs for economic development around data centers and other large businesses, as well as for electrification needs for motor vehicle charging and heat pump conversions.
Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Katie Dykes steered clear of any hand-wringing when asked what she expects from a second Trump administration. She did, however, note that roughly a quarter of DEEP’s budget for both programs and personnel comes from a variety of different federal grants across a number of different federal agencies, EPA being the big one.
“There are a lot of different scenarios that people are contemplating with the new Congress and with the new administration, but it’s early to say what may happen,” she said. “We’re assessing options under different scenarios, but it’s too early to tell what the impacts will be.”
She ticked off a laundry list of programs that recently received federal money and noted the need to get the funds distributed and implemented. “We’re staying in touch with our neighboring states and with project developers to help understand how we can be nimble in the face of any changes that may come.”
And she said DEEP will be collaborating with the state Attorney General’s office and will follow its lead on any steps that need to be taken to protect Connecticut’s mission and interests.
One likely impact for Connecticut is that Trump’s policies will further prolong the now 50-year battle for clean air.
The state continues to face pollution and ozone levels that have long kept it from meeting federal air quality standards. The entire state does not meet 2015 standards and the southern part doesn’t even meet more lenient ones from 2008. That’s even as still tighter standards were issued in February.
The heat of this summer has once again resulted in a large number of bad air days — 23. The result over time has been persistently high asthma rates in the state, especially among vulnerable populations.
A principal cause is pollution and greenhouse gases that blow in from Midwest power plants running on fossil fuels of oil, gas and coal. Connecticut has long contended the situation violates the Good Neighbor provision of the Clean Air Act designed to keep upwind states from polluting downwind ones.
After four years fighting the first Trump administration’s efforts to loosen regulations on both greenhouse gas and standard pollutant emissions, Tong’s office has remained active the last four years, battling red-state attorneys general attempting to thwart the Biden administration’s tighter Good Neighbor regulations. In June, the Supreme Court stayed those regulations and sent them back to the lower courts.
“It’s not great,” Tong said, when asked whether the case is now stuck. “That doesn’t mean I’m gonna fight any less hard than I have. It doesn’t mean that we are any less focused on it. No one’s giving up, and no one’s saying darn it, because we have Lee Zeldin and a six-three conservative court that we should just move on to other things. It’s clean air; it’s foundational and fundamental to public health, so we’re just gonna keep at it. It’s not optional.”
Reynolds at Save the Sound is equally gloomy, saying the current litigation scenario puts everything several years out — again. “It doesn’t mean that it’s not necessarily going to go forward, but it certainly means it’s not going to be implemented anytime in the near future,” he said. “It’s absolutely a fair assessment that we’re not going to see clean air in Connecticut anytime soon.”
And the axis on environmental and climate regulation is likely to flip again as the Trump administration is expected to replace the Biden rules with their own less restrictive ones. The rulemaking process takes time and is likely to set off a whole new wave of court challenges, delaying things even more.
This session, the Supreme Court is taking up a challenge to the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act that requires in-depth environmental reviews for federal projects. A recent federal appeals court ruling curtailed how those reviews can be structured.
There are also hints in Project 2025 that the second Trump administration might try to overturn the so-called Endangerment Finding, which allowed greenhouse gases to be regulated — specifically as part of motor vehicle, power plant and industrial emissions.
All of these could further limit the tools attorneys general and others have for challenging environmental laws and regulations the new administration may want to overturn from the Biden era and before, or may seek to put in place.
Reynolds points out that states still have a lot of power — to approve power plants and review pipelines, among other things. And he notes that the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts specifically allow citizen suits if the federal government isn’t complying with those laws. He said that’s been Save the Sound’s bread and butter in upholding environmental regulations.
“That’s why, since the ‘70s, through all the administrations we’ve had, many of which have put a bull’s eye on environmental regulations, we’ve continued to have progress,” he said. “Our strategy is going to continue to be to enforce these incredibly powerful acts, and fight rollbacks and do what we can to get funding for these initiatives, and to get states and municipalities to take the lead.”
Reynolds isn’t the only one talking about states and municipalities taking the lead.
Brad Campbell, president of the Conservation Law Foundation and a former EPA regional administrator, said simply opposing Trump as state and local officials did during the first administration will not be enough this time, based on what Project 2025 espouses and what Trump has already said, because both clearly cater to the fossil fuel industry.
“What we’ll be pushing for is for states to fill in any gaps that are created by Trump’s attacks on federal agencies and the rollback of some standards,” he said. “A major concern in New England is the climate investments that Biden was able to secure in Congress. Those are enormously important to accelerating New England’s energy transition.”
But if the Trump administration embraces Project 2025’s threat to cut funding to clean energy and other climate-targeted programs, tax incentives and entire programs and offices — across all government, not just environment and energy areas — will states have the money to take the lead?
“States may have to come up with additional funding for the energy transition if the federal government goes into full retreat,” Campbell said.
Focus on the states
“Not going to happen this year,” said Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex and co-chair of the Energy and Technology Committee. “The state budgets before Trump won are already out of balance.”
He noted that many state employees — including at DEEP — are paid in whole or part with federal funds. “If you lose 10% of state employees because their funding is cut directly by federal budget changes,” he said. “I don’t know how we make that up, right? I just think it’s going to be a stressful, difficult time.”
Needleman said he still plans to hold a series of meetings before the legislative session begins to formulate policies and initiatives.
“I do not believe that anyone can fight a battle with only a strong defense. I think we need a combination of a sensible offense and a thoughtful defense about the damage that they can do, because we are going to have a target on our back,” he said.
His co-chair, Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, said he and Needleman are already trying to figure out whether to resurrect some of the major energy, environmental and climate legislation that failed in the last two sessions. The presumption at that time was that the federal government would be at least neutral, if not supportive broadly of climate change initiatives.
“This may further chill our willingness to take on big things,” he said. “I would never throw up my hands and walk away. But coming into the session I was already feeling frustrated, constrained, finding it difficult to do the things that I think we really need to do, which are of bigger consequence, like a lot of this necessary investment in infrastructure.
“Now you layer in on top of it, either federal preemption of any regulatory framework we might choose, or certainly a cessation or diminishment of funding for the things that we’ve counted on the feds for in the past. It’s very hard to figure, what do we do first?”
Sen. Ryan Fazio, R-Greenwich and ranking member on the committee, said his goal is to make the best policy he can in alignment with his goals of low cost, reliable and environmentally responsible energy.
“Whether there’s a Democratic presidential administration or a Republican one, and there is going to be both in the next 20 years, and policy at the federal level — you make the best of it,” he said. “I haven’t seen, really in any substantial way, that federal policy has helped us meet those goals in Connecticut over the last decade or so.
“The goal is to make policy on a state level. You can’t count on federal policies. We need things to be sustainable on their own. Subsidies will not solve our woes.”
Steinberg offers some ideas for getting money if federal funding decreases or disappears. He suggests collaborations with the business community or investors.He said it might be worth considering something like taxing data center developers to cover the energy burden they bring. Such a tax could be reduced or eliminated if the company installs solar, geothermal, or some other energy reduction mechanism. “Anything to mitigate their energy burden by like a third or 50% before they can escape this tax,” he said.
The point, Steinberg said, is to figure out ways to get things done. It could be opting for low cost solutions in the near term or working with the Green Bank on private funding sources.
“I think that there are things that we must explore doing, even if it’s going to be harder,” he said.
Others said the transition to clean energy in New England is well underway which will help survive another round of Donald Trump.
“There is so much momentum behind clean energy technologies in particular,” said Julie McNamara, deputy policy director climate and energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s two things at once. There will continue to be progress and there will not be as much progress as there could or must have been.
“Certain things will slow or stop because we’re approaching the parts of the clean energy transition where it gets hard. A lot of the low-hanging fruit has been picked, and so we’re starting to need to take those next further steps, the kind of things where It takes real, intentional work to couple policy with economics and a vision for the future.”
But Steinberg warned against the impulse to just wait Trump out. “It is not only not an answer; it would be irresponsible, in my view.”
He said everyone will need to be creative. “But the one thing we cannot lose is our resolve,” he said. “We just need to keep doing it, because we don’t have a choice.”
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