States took on the mantle of combating climate change during the first Trump administration. Now they need to redouble the work during the second. 

That’s the message that Caroline Spears, executive director of Climate Cabinet, has for state lawmakers following Trump’s victory on Tuesday. 

As an advocacy organization that helps state and local leaders ​“run, win, and legislate on climate change,” Climate Cabinet supported more than 170 candidates in Tuesday’s election. As of midday Wednesday, when Spears spoke to Canary Media, she was feeling cautiously optimistic about the races her group had focused on: ​“About a third of them we won, about a third of them we lost, and about a third of them are still too close to call.” 

Getting climate-committed candidates into state offices can make the difference between a state enacting or preserving climate policies and it blocking or rolling back such policies, she said. For example, the 2022 midterms saw Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Minnesota secure Democratic ​“trifectas” — control of the governor’s office and both houses of the state legislature — leading to significant climate legislation being passed and signed into law in those states. 

States have ​“always been key to climate policy,” Spears said, and now, with a Trump administration expected to attempt to unravel the Biden administration’s climate policies and unleash fossil fuels, it’s ​“up to state leaders to hold the line.”

How states can keep the energy transition moving

State lawmakers and regulators have the ability to order local utilities to shut down or reduce emissions from fossil-fueled power plants and expand the share of electricity they generate from zero-carbon resources like wind, solar, geothermal, and nuclear power. 

States can also require large polluters — like fossil-gas utilities — to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas they spew into the air and set emissions and energy-efficiency requirements for buildings. At present, states have the authority to adopt vehicle emissions standards that are more strict than those set by the federal government — although Trump sought to rescind that authority during his first term and may attempt to do so again. 

States also play a key role in distributing funds from the federal Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — at least while the full laws remain on the books. 

During the first Trump administration, ​“we saw states really taking charge,” said Jeff Deyette, deputy director of clean energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group. ​“I think that momentum has been maintained over the past eight years. This could be another boost to continue to push those state leaders … to protect what they have.” 

There’s a lot to protect. The roster of states with aggressive decarbonization targets has expanded under the Biden administration: Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington state all adopted strong emissions goals in 2021 or 2022. 

All told, 25 states and Washington, D.C., have now instituted some form of target for achieving either economywide net-zero carbon emissions, 100 percent renewable or carbon-free electricity, or both. This chart, compiled in mid-2024, includes all of these states except Vermont, which in June 2024 passed a law mandating 100 percent renewable energy by 2035 for all utilities and by 2030 for its largest utility, Green Mountain Power. 

How the 2024 election changed the state policy landscape

Clean energy and climate policies aren’t necessarily partisan issues, said Heather O’Neill, CEO of trade group Advanced Energy United. ​“We see the potential for broad agreement in states of all political stripes and persuasions,” as utilities grapple with rising electricity demand from data centers, factories, electric vehicles, and broader economic growth. ​“Advanced energy technologies are a low-cost solution to all of these challenges,” she said.

She cited the example of Texas, a red state that’s deployed more wind and utility-scale solar power than any other state and is set to pass California for having the most grid-connected batteries by year’s end. Those resources are ​“working to keep the grid reliable,” O’Neill said, as shown by the role that solar and batteries played in averting grid emergencies this summer. 

But to date, Democratic control has been a prerequisite for passing aggressive climate or clean-energy legislation in almost every state that has done so. The exception is North Carolina, where the GOP-controlled legislature passed a law in 2021 mandating that Duke Energy, the state’s biggest utility, cut carbon emissions 70 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2050. 

Heading into the election, 17 states had Democratic trifectas and 23 states had Republican trifectas. No state appears to be on a path to form a new Democratic trifecta as a result of the election; rather, Democrats have lost full control in Michigan and might do the same in Minnesota. 

“We were in defense mode in Minnesota and Michigan,” Spears said. 

In Michigan, Republicans gained a majority in the state House of Representatives, while Democrats retained a majority in the state Senate and Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer still has two more years in her term. That means the state is likely to protect a slate of climate bills passed in 2023, including a mandate for the state’s two big utilities to reach 80 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035 and 100 percent by 2040. 

The situation in Minnesota is still up in the air. As of Thursday evening, the state House was evenly split between parties, with two remaining races set for automatic recounts due to razor-thin vote differences. But Democrats retained their majority in the state Senate, and Democratic Gov. Tim Walz remains in office. Even if Republicans end up narrowly controlling the House, they likely won’t be able to overturn the state’s 2023 law requiring power utilities to use 100 percent clean electricity by 2040 or a slate of bills creating incentives for electric vehicles and converting homes and buildings to more efficient electric heating. 

In Pennsylvania, a state where Democrats were thought to have a chance at forming a new trifecta, Republicans appear set to retain their majority in the state Senate. Democrats could maintain their thin majority in the state House, but the outcome depends on three races that have yet to be called. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro has proposed a carbon cap-and-invest program that would collect funds from power plants and use them to lower electric bills and support clean energy projects, but it’s unlikely to pass without Democratic majorities in both houses of the state legislature. 

The clearest victories for candidates backed by Climate Cabinet in this election cycle have been in North Carolina and Wisconsin, Spears said — though their wins did not give Democrats legislative majorities.

In Wisconsin, gains by Democrats eliminated a Republican supermajority in the Senate, giving Democratic Gov. Tony Evers the ability to veto legislation out of line with his climate agenda, she said. 

In North Carolina, Democrat Josh Stein, the state attorney general who won his race to succeed Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, will, ​“unlike his predecessor, have a veto pen that works, because we broke the supermajority” in the state House, she said. Republicans used that supermajority to override Cooper’s veto of a bill that weakened the efficiency requirements in building codes for new homes in the state. 

Voters also chalked up some climate wins with state ballot measures in Tuesday’s election. Californians passed a $10 billion climate bond that included $850 million for clean energy infrastructure — the largest of a number of local and state climate and environmental bonds passed across the country, which together will invest $18 billion. And Washington state voters rejected a ballot initiative that would have rolled back its landmark 2021 climate law. 

Turning pledges into action 

For the states that have already managed to get climate goals on the books, living up to those commitments is now even more urgent. 

State climate mandates must be followed up with continuous action from regulators, utilities, and private-sector actors to translate into actual emissions reductions. Right now, it’s far from clear that the states with decarbonization goals are on track to achieve their targets. 

A 2023 report from the Environmental Defense Fund found that the 24 states with ambitious targets were on track to cut emissions only 27 to 39 percent by 2030, well below the 50 percent reductions they’re aiming for. Since then, more states have found themselves falling behind on their climate targets, including the two most populous — the Democratic strongholds of California and New York.

California is lagging on its goal of reducing carbon emissions 48 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, according to a June report. Meanwhile, New York state has yet to finalize a cap-and-invest strategy to hit its target of 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2040 and is off track to hit its utility-scale solar and wind targets, although it has achieved its goals for distributed and community solar projects. 

For the energy transition to continue despite the headwinds of a second Trump administration, these two leading states — and the others that have enshrined decarbonization goals in law — need to do all they can to deliver on their climate commitments. 

Should Trump gut the Inflation Reduction Act, the task at hand for these states will become more difficult. Some analysts doubt this will happen because the law has funneled billions into red states and thereby earned some Republican defenders.

The law’s litany of clean energy tax credits make solar, wind, and storage projects into no-brainers; they were already cost-competitive with fossil fuels before the subsidies. The EV incentives help bring the cost of electric models in line with gas cars. Its bevy of grant programs — from money for bolstering the grid to funding for home electrification and low-income solar — are helping states transition away from fossil fuels. 

All of this makes it far cheaper and easier for states to achieve their clean energy targets and emissions-reduction goals. 

It’s unclear which of the Biden administration’s climate accomplishments will remain intact — but what is clear is the ever more urgent need for states to push forward on their climate goals, however difficult that may become.

After Trump win, it’s up to states to lead on climate action is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The Biden administration has enacted the most consequential federal clean energy and climate policy in U.S. history, giving the nation a fighting chance at reducing greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to deal with the climate crisis. Former President Donald Trump, who has won the 2024 presidential election, has pledged to undo that work.

Though Trump’s executive powers will allow him to slow the energy transition in a number of ways, the extent to which he rolls back Biden’s clean energy accomplishments will be dictated in part by whether Republicans retain control of the House of Representatives. The GOP flipped the U.S. Senate, but votes are still being counted in key House races as of Wednesday morning.

Here’s what clean energy and climate experts say is most likely to be lost under a second Trump administration — and what might survive.

What Trump has said about energy

Trump’s rhetoric presages a worst-case future. He has called climate change a hoax and the Biden administration’s climate policies a ​“green new scam.” He has said he wants to repeal the landmark Inflation Reduction Act and halt the law’s hundreds of billions of dollars of tax credits, grants, and other federal incentives for clean energy, electric vehicles, and other low-carbon technologies.

Trump has also made ​“drill, baby, drill” a call-and-response line at his rallies, pledging to undo any restraints on production and use of the fossil fuels driving climate change. U.S. oil and gas production is already at a record high under the Biden administration.

“He has pledged to do the bidding for Big Oil on day one,” Andrew Reagan, executive director of Clean Energy for America, said during a recent webinar.

“Oil and gas lobbyists are drafting executive orders for him to sign on day one,” Reagan added, citing news reports of plans from oil industry groups to roll back key Biden administration regulations and executive orders.

A Trump administration would be all but certain to reverse key Environmental Protection Agency regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, light-duty and heavy-duty vehicles, and the oil and gas industry, all of which analysts say are necessary to meet the country’s climate commitments. It’s also almost sure to lift the Biden administration’s pause on federal permitting of fossil-gas export facilities.

Trump has also promised to withdraw the U.S. from international climate agreements (again), including the Paris agreement aimed at limiting global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

“We know that Trump would take us out of the Paris agreement, and that would be the last time his administration uttered the word ​‘climate,’” Catherine Wolfram, an economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management and former deputy assistant secretary for climate and energy economics in the Biden administration’s Treasury Department, told Canary Media. ​“Losing that global leadership would be one of the greatest losses of a Trump presidency.”

What will happen to the Inflation Reduction Act? 

Trump won’t have the power to enact all of his promises on his own. Some of the decisions must be made by Congress, including any effort to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act or to claw back unspent funds from that law or the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law.

Complete repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act would be highly disruptive to a clean energy sector that has seen planned investment grow to roughly $500 billion since the law was passed in mid-2022.

It would also undermine clean energy job growth, which has increased at roughly twice the pace of U.S. employment overall. A recent survey of clean energy companies found that a repeal of the law would be expected to lead to half of them losing business or revenue, roughly one-quarter losing projects or contracts, about one-fifth laying off workers, and about one in 10 going out of business. 

“We found that especially rural areas and smaller rural communities would experience the largest negative impacts of repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act,” Shara Mohtadi, co-founder of S2 Strategies, said in an October webinar presenting the survey data. ​“These are the regions of the country that have seen the biggest uptake in the economic benefits and the manufacturing jobs coming from other countries into the United States.”

Indeed, most of the investment and job growth the IRA has spurred has taken place in states and congressional districts represented by Republicans.

These on-the-ground realities have driven expectations that large swaths of the law’s tax credits would be likely to survive even with Republican control of the White House and both houses of Congress. Trump would face pushback within his own party to undoing the law entirely.

In an August letter to current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), 18 House Republicans warned against repealing the clean energy and manufacturing tax credits created by the Inflation Reduction Act, which have ​“spurred innovation, incentivized investment, and created good jobs in many parts of the country — including many districts represented by members of our conference.”

“Prematurely repealing energy tax credits, particularly those which were used to justify investments that already broke ground, would undermine private investments and stop development that is already ongoing,” the 18 House Republicans wrote. ​“A full repeal would create a worst-case scenario where we would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars and received next to nothing in return.”

Republicans would need a roughly 20-seat majority to overcome opposition from these party members opposed to a full repeal, said Harry Godfrey, head of the federal investment and manufacturing working group of trade group Advanced Energy United.

“I don’t envision Republicans holding the House with 20-plus seats,” he said.

Godfrey also doubted that a Trump administration would be eager to undermine the domestic manufacturing boom that the law’s tax credits have spurred. He noted that at the October 1 vice-presidential debate, J.D. Vance, the Republican Ohio senator and Trump’s running mate, emphasized the need for the U.S. to ​“consolidate American dominance” in key energy sectors and industries now dominated by China.

While Vance went on to falsely accuse the Biden administration of failing to bolster U.S. industries against China, the goal of emphasizing domestic competitiveness could lead Republicans to avoid undermining progress in that direction, he suggested.

How Trump’s second term could derail the clean energy transition is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Vice President Kamala Harris joined a bevy of popular music stars in Madison Wednesday night at the Alliant Center to encourage University of Wisconsin students to vote. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

Vice President Kamala Harris joined a bevy of popular music stars in Madison Wednesday night at the Alliant Center to encourage University of Wisconsin students and other young people to vote for her over former President Donald Trump.

Wisconsin is a key battleground state and both presidential campaigns are spending a lot of  time here with less than a week to go before Election Day. The last two presidential elections were decided by fewer than 20,000 votes in Wisconsin and the vote is expected to be close again this year. The same day Harris appeared  in Madison, one of the largest Democratic hubs in the state, Trump held a rally in Green Bay. Both candidates will return to Wisconsin Friday to hold dueling rallies in Milwaukee.

College students, including those from out of state, are eligible to vote in Wisconsin and could play an important role in deciding the results of the presidential election. Harris spoke directly to them.

“You all are rightly impatient for change. You who have only known the climate crisis are leading the charge to protect our planet and our future. You, who grew up with active shooter drills, are fighting to keep our schools safe. You who now know fewer rights than your mother or grandmothers, are standing up for freedom,” Harris declared from the Alliant Energy Center stage, speaking in front of a massive “Badgers for Harris-Walz” sign. “This is not political for you,” Harris added. “This is your lived experience.” 

Harris encouraged people to use the last six days before Election Day to vote, knock on doors, make calls and reach out to family and friends. Early in-person voting in Madison goes through Sunday and Election Day is Tuesday.

Some of the students at the rally had already voted early for Harris. Maya Wille, a UW-Madison senior who had Harris’ face temporary-tattooed on her bicep, said she’s excited by the prospect of  electing the first woman president of the United States and said Harris is “for the young people.”

“I want to be able to buy a house. I want to be able to raise a family and I think that she has policies that are going to make that a lot easier. I want gun control. I want better funding for public schools,” Wille said. 

The potential impact of voting in a swing state is what encouraged Hannah Tuckett, a UW junior from New York, and Lucy Murdock, a junior from Colorado, to vote in Wisconsin this year.

“I’m from Colorado, a historically blue state. My parents are always like, it’s so much more important for you to vote here than there,” Murdock said. “Both of us voted here, rather than in our home state, because we understand that, like, this is where we’re gonna make a way bigger splash.”

Murdock said human rights issues, including protecting women’s and transgender people’s right to health care, people’s right to marry whoever they want and addressing climate change, are the “guiding forces” behind her politics. 

“I think in this election human rights are more prevalent than they have been in several years,” Murdock said. 

Tuckett said voting in Wisconsin is “empowering” and she has been “inspired” by Harris and her campaign. She said the rally was also an opportunity to be in community with like-minded people and served as a “breath of fresh air” away from campus. She said certain events and political messaging on campus, including a visit from conservative radio host Charlie Kirk, have created a polarized environment.

The campaign brought a line-up of popular musical artists, including folk band Mumford and Sons, singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams, Aaron Dessner and Matt Berninger of The National and singer-songwriter Remi Wolf, to perform ahead of Harris at the rally, in front of more than  13,000 attendees. The campaign is betting the artists can serve as a trusted voice, delivering the message to fans to vote for Harris and to increase enthusiasm.

Tuckett said Mumford and Sons is her dad’s favorite artist. 

“I’m here, listening to them for him. He said he would have flown from New York to be here for this. I’m super excited,” Tuckett said. She said the endorsements from “not just artists, but actors, athletes, any person with some sort of platform coming out and endorsing Harris for president just shows that this election really does mean so much.”

Abrams, who has grown a loyal fanbase and who has opened for artists including Taylor Swift, spoke directly to young people while making the case for Harris. She called Harris “the right leader at a very tricky time.” 

“For many of us, here on this stage and in the crowd tonight, this is only the first or second time that we’ve had the privilege of voting in a presidential election, and as we know, we’ve inherited a world that is struggling and it’s easy to be disconnected and disillusioned. Between the advent of social media in our childhood and COVID and relentlessly targeted disinformation, we’ve been through some things and it’s easy to be discouraged, but we know better,” Abrams said. 

“We know unless we vote and keep our democracy intact there will be nothing we can do to fix it when it is our turn,” Abrams continued. “We have values and ideas that deserve a platform. We know that a better, greener, more fair, equitable and just future is possible. We understand that community matters, that character matters, that basic decency matters. That dignity matters. That democracy matters.” 

Even before the rally began, attendees tapped into the current pop culture moment. A station was set up inside the venue to make friendship bracelets (a trend popularized by Swift fans) and attendees wore ‘Kamala is brat’ t-shirts — a reference to a post by musician Charli xcx. Many in the audience also wore Harris-Walz camo hats.

Emma Heisch, a freshman at UW-Madison and Wisconsin native, was making a bracelet before the start of the rally when she told the Examiner about a conversation she had with her roommates last week about the importance of celebrities joining Harris on the campaign. 

“A lot of people have been saying that they think it’s unprofessional and it’s a silly tactic but I don’t think that at all,” Heisch said. “Their support reaches out to a lot of Gen Z and it can make a lot of young people, who may not have originally been interested in politics, start to show interest. And even people who may not have been very interested in coming to the rally specifically for politics in the first place might come just for a celebrity and then show interest in what Kamala has to say.”

Heisch voted for the first time this year. She said reproductive rights is one of her top issues. The issue was another big point of the night with Harris receiving thunderous applause and cheers during the rally as she committed to signing a bill to restore protections for reproductive health care access if one is sent to her by Congress.

“I’m a woman and I want control over my body and I don’t think anyone should have that control except for me,” Heisch said.

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The presidential election may well decide the future of the United States’ ambitious new clean energy agenda, but a handful of smaller, less-discussed races will have a more immediate and direct impact on the energy transition in several different states.

Public utility commissions regulate the monopoly utilities that operate in each state, voting on such matters as what power plants utilities can build and how much money they can charge their captive customers. Each state’s PUC contains three to five commissioners, making the officials some of the most powerful people in the U.S. energy transition. In most states, governors appoint these leaders — but in 10 states, voters elect them.

This November, eight of those states have active races for at least one PUC commissioner: Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. Georgia canceled its 2024 PUC elections because the state’s bizarre hybrid structure for PUC elections has resulted in a lawsuit claiming voter discrimination: PUC commissioners each represent one of five districts, but they are elected statewide, so the members of each district don’t get to decide who represents them.

Utilities recognize the importance of supporting candidates who share their interests, and spend money accordingly. But most regular people often feel little personal connection to the races or the arcane bureaucracy that unfolds at the commissions, and it can be hard to focus on these details against the raucous political backdrop of a general election.

“These PUC commissioners have the power to determine people’s utility bills, the quality of their utility service, and how their utilities are making investments in different forms of energy,” PUC advocate Charles Hua told Canary Media. ​“Yet, few people can name their state’s PUC commissioners or explain what they do.”

After stints at the Department of Energy and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Hua launched a nonprofit called PowerLines this fall to promote greater public awareness of the pivotal roles PUCs play in the clean energy transition. As a nonpartisan entity, PowerLines can’t endorse candidates, but Hua sees plenty of value in simply increasing participation in PUC elections.

That information gap around PUCs leads to ​“down-ballot dropoff,” in which voters select candidates in the better-known races but leave the PUC section blank, Hua said. That means voters miss out on ​“a democratic vehicle to engage with the public officials that are meant to serve the public interest through effective utility regulation.”

The implications for good utility regulation are especially high this year for anyone interested in the transition to cleaner energy, not to mention equity and affordability.

Commissioners control how much electric and gas utilities can charge customers, at a time of soaring energy bills. They’re also uniquely positioned to help get the U.S. grid on track to meet climate goals, at least on a state-by-state level, by approving more cheap, clean energy instead of letting utilities continue to expand fossil-fueled infrastructure. And PUCs can direct utilities to rebuild their grids in a more resilient way following destructive extreme weather like hurricanes Helene and Milton.

PUC commissioners wade through the technocratic morass of utility regulation and make choices that affect Americans’ pocketbooks. That’s why Hua says it’s so important for those who have the opportunity to vote in PUC races to do so, and to keep an eye on what their commission does the rest of the time.

With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at Arizona and Louisiana, two states where the stakes for the clean energy transition are particularly high this year.

Arizona could return to ambitious clean energy policy

Three of five seats are up for the Grand Canyon State’s PUC, which is called the Arizona Corporation Commission. Anna Tovar, the lone Democrat on the commission, is not running for reelection, nor is Republican James O’Connor. Republican Lea Márquez Peterson is running for another four-year term.

Arizonans get to vote statewide for the slate of PUC commissioners, and the top three vote-getters each win a seat. There are three Democrats and three Republicans running, and Arizona’s closely contested recent election cycles mean anything could happen — the commission could swing in a more pro–clean energy direction, or toward more fossil-friendly regulation.

That’s significant, because the ACC’s recent past illustrates the power of elected PUCs more clearly than perhaps in any other state. In 2018, the all-Republican commission boldly rebuked the planning proposal from the state’s largest utility, Arizona Public Service. Then the commissioners went further, imposing a moratorium on new gas plant construction, based on conservative principles: With the energy sector changing so quickly, they wouldn’t let utilities charge their customers for a bunch of expensive gas plants when other quickly maturing options could prove more cost-effective.

Those commissioners later developed their own clean energy standard, and nearly approved it, which would have been a rare instance of a proactive clean energy target coming from a PUC instead of a legislature. But the commission’s debate dragged on as state politics became increasingly contentious, and the proposal was ultimately voted down 3-2 in January 2022. Early this year, the commission voted to end the meager renewable energy standard that had been on the books for 15 years.

In AZ Central’s survey of PUC candidate views, Democrats Ylenia Aguilar, Jonathon Hill, and Joshua Polacheck each affirmed that they want Arizona to tap into more of its renewable power potential. If elected, they could push to revive the clean electricity standard, although that would be a long shot. They could also push to strengthen policies for energy efficiency and distributed energy.

That’s not to say the Republicans oppose clean energy — they just equate binding clean energy targets with adding costs for customers, which they oppose.

For instance, Márquez Peterson says she ​“supports the voluntary commitments made by our utilities for 100 percent clean and affordable energy by 2050 for Arizona.” She also wants to ​“avoid costly mandates and corporate subsidies.” Republican Rachel Walden told AZ Central that ​“forced energy investments and climate goals put the ratepayer last and thwart free market principles.”

This line of argument leaves it to utilities to pursue their own corporate targets. As it happens, solar power in dry, sunny Arizona is ridiculously cheap, and the utilities have jumped on the trend. But the lack of a long-term roadmap for the state leaves room for more gas construction in the meantime, and complicates the kind of long-term planning needed to achieve a carbon-free grid in the coming decades.

Whoever wins, the commission is sure to face capacious gas-plant proposals from utilities to meet soaring demand for data centers and new chip factories (plus some lithium-ion battery manufacturing) in the Phoenix area.

Louisiana to replace swing vote on energy issues

Louisiana’s PUC just did something the state government never accomplished: pass a modern energy-efficiency program to save households money. Now one of the architects of that program is retiring, and voters can pick his replacement.

Advocates had pushed for such a program for years, but it finally passed thanks to two commissioners with seemingly dissimilar perspectives: progressive Democrat Davante Lewis, who campaigned on climate justice; and Republican Craig Greene, a former LSU football player and orthopedic surgeon who supports market-based reforms. They both found common ground in the desire to push the state’s monopoly utility to invest in measures to reduce wasteful energy consumption and thereby save customers money. The commissioners recently selected a third-party administrator to run this program.

“Commissioner Greene has been an important champion for things like energy efficiency, and has even taken steps to move renewable energy forward in the state,” said Logan Burke, executive director of the Louisiana consumer advocacy nonprofit Alliance for Affordable Energy. ​“The seat he is in has historically been considered a ​‘swing’ vote between the two red and two blue districts.”

But Greene decided not to seek reelection as a commissioner, which in Louisiana is a part-time role. That means his seat in District 2 is up for grabs: If Greene’s successor doesn’t share his support for the efficiency measures, it could jeopardize the fledgling, long-awaited program. And this swing vote could prove decisive in decisions on new power-plant construction to meet an expected surge in electricity demand.

Democrat Nick Laborde is competing with Republicans Jean-Paul Coussan and Julie Quinn for the seat. Some 70 percent of voters in this district picked Donald Trump for president in 2020, according to the local outlet Louisiana Illuminator.

Laborde has business experience running a consulting firm and serving as product manager at NOLA Crawfish Bread, an unusually delicious experience for a prospective utility regulator. He has said he supports more renewables and wants to ​“make utilities pay more instead of raising your bill.”

Coussan’s campaign website doesn’t say much about his views on the energy system, but he does promise to regulate as ​“a true conservative watchdog, and someone who understands the importance of the role that affordable and reliable energy plays in bringing jobs to our state.” That assertion could mean Coussan would stand up to utility attempts to raise rates on customers; then again, utilities in Louisiana and elsewhere have used an emphasis on ​“reliability” to push for expensive gas-plant construction in circumstances of dubious value.

Quinn promises to ​“rein in unnecessary utility company spending that results in rising utility rates,” and to ​“oppose liberal-thinking Green New Deal initiatives that are unrealistic and costly.” But one target of Biden administration clean energy funding has piqued her interest: Quinn would like to ​“explore micro-nuclear facilities to lower utility rates.” No commercial microreactor has been built on the U.S. grid, much less lowered anyone’s rates, despite years of trying.

The Alliance for Affordable Energy does not endorse candidates, per the rules governing 501(c)(3) nonprofits. Instead, the group focuses on get-out-the-vote efforts and education about the commission, Burke told Canary Media. She’s also keeping an eye on what candidates say about transmission planning and expansion, which could open up vast new supplies of clean energy for the state.

“If we don’t get the transmission planning we need, we’ll just get 40 more years of new gas plants,” Burke said. ​“That won’t help anyone but Entergy,” the state’s largest monopoly utility.

Clean energy is on the ballot in these utility regulator races is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

A year ago, the U.S. announced ambitious plans to build large-scale clean hydrogen hubs. Now, 12 months later, those plans have advanced little and are still shrouded in uncertainty.

Last October, the U.S. Department of Energy picked seven consortiums across the country to receive up to $7 billion in federal grants. The goal of this startup money? To help the hubs attract tens of billions more in private-sector investment to pay for construction costs. These projects, located around the country, aim to bring together a wide array of organizations to scale up the production, storage, and transport of low- and zero-carbon hydrogen, which some experts view as a way to replace fossil fuels in industries such as steelmaking and aviation.

There’s still little publicly available information to indicate whether these ​“clean hydrogen hubs” are likely to attract the needed private sector investment, however. Just as opaque are their potential community and climate impacts.

Environmental groups, community advocates, and energy experts have grown concerned that the projects are off track — and increasingly dismayed that the DOE and the hub projects are not giving them the transparency needed to confirm or deny these worries.

This puts the DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, the agency responsible for the H2Hubs program, in a tricky position.

The $7 billion in H2Hub awards is being doled out in phases, over the course of many years. It’s OCED’s job to make sure the hubs are hitting the technical, financial, and community-benefit milestones needed to earn these disbursements.

The hydrogen hubs are a cornerstone of not only the Biden administration’s clean hydrogen strategy, but its overall approach to clean energy. Without the hubs, the U.S. may not be able to supply the tens of millions of tons per year of clean hydrogen needed to decarbonize key industries in the decades to come.

“We know that jump-starting a new clean energy economy in the U.S. is going to take time and public and private sector investment,” Kelly Cummins, OCED’s acting director, told Canary Media in an October interview. ​“To do that right and make sure it’s sustainable, we need to engage communities in a new way.”

However, community and environmental groups hounding the hydrogen hubs and DOE for information over the past year say that engagement isn’t happening. The Natural Resources Defense Council reported in May that ​“environmental justice advocates and frontline communities have largely been kept in the dark on key details and basic information about many of these projects.”

Since then, relatively little additional information has emerged. ​“We’re still struggling at this point to understand what’s really going on with the hubs,” said Morgan Rote, director of U.S. climate at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), another nonprofit group that’s been tracking the disconnect between hydrogen hubs and communities.

“I don’t think DOE is sitting on a whole wealth of information they’re not sharing,” Rote said. ​“But that makes it even more challenging — and it’s no wonder communities feel like they don’t have information, if the DOE doesn’t have information.”

Cummins acknowledged these frustrations.“The tension here is that we’re still in early days,” she said. ​“We’ve been working to engage communities and special interest groups. But we’re just at the start of this learning process.”

The initial planning grants are just the first step in what OCED expects to be an eight- to 12-year pathway to full-scale ramp-up and operations. Each stage will involve its own series of ​“go/no-go” decisions, with a ​“long list of deliverables and criteria,” Cummins said.

To date, only three hubs have been awarded first-phase planning grants of about $30 million each: the ARCHES hub in California; the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Association(PNWH2), which includes Oregon, Washington, and Montana; and the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2), which includes Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The remainder are still in the process of negotiating final approval for their first-phase funding.

“We’ll go through a review of all that — the financing, the technology, the community benefits — and then make a decision if they’re ready to move from Phase One to Phase Two,” she said. ​“And there are some instances where we might decide they are not moving to Phase Two.”

Measuring progress on first-of-a-kind hydrogen hubs

Less than 1 percent of global hydrogen production today is low-carbon. Of the roughly 90 million tons per year produced globally and 10 million tons per year in the U.S., almost all is derived from fossil gas.

Right now, the two main methods for making low- or zero-carbon hydrogen are far more expensive than dirty hydrogen — and also untested at scale. Those include so-called ​“blue hydrogen,” which is made from fossil gas combined with carbon capture, and ​“green hydrogen,” which is made by splitting water in electrolyzers powered by zero-carbon electricity.

The hydrogen hubs need about $40 billion in private-sector investment to match DOE’s $7 billion. That’s a tough sell for investors, given the uncertain economics involved both for would-be clean hydrogen producers and for the industries that must invest in retrofitting facilities, building new infrastructure, and reconfiguring how they do business in order to use it.

What’s more, the rules for a subsidy that could make clean hydrogen cost-competitive with dirty hydrogen — the 45V production tax credits created by the Inflation Reduction Act — have yet to be finalized.

Last December, the U.S. Treasury Department proposed rules that would require green-hydrogen producers to source newly built and consistently deliverable clean electricity — restrictions that energy analysts say are vital to ensure hydrogen production doesn’t end up increasing carbon emissions.

But those proposed rules are being challenged by a number of industry groups and politicians who say they’ll stifle the nascent industry — including the seven hydrogen hubs themselves. The Treasury Department aims to finalize the rules by January.

The regulations for blue hydrogen remain another point of contention. Only the California and Pacific Northwest hubs have pledged to not make hydrogen from fossil gas. Some hubs, such as the Appalachian hub, have made blue hydrogen a focus. But blue hydrogen has yet to be proven to be cost-effective at scale, and in some cases could lead to more carbon emissions than simply using fossil gas.

The unresolved nature of these regulations — and the projects themselves — makes it impossible to tell at this point whether the hubs will actually help fight climate change.

In a May letter to DOE, U.S. Representatives Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) and Donald S. Beyer Jr. (D-Virginia) complained that the agency has touted the potential for hydrogen made by the hubs to reduce carbon emissions by 25 million metric tons per year, but has ​“yet to publish the projected lifecycle emissions linked to the production of hydrogen.”

That information is ​“overdue and critical for us to fully understand the precise climate and public health impacts of the H2Hubs program,” the lawmakers wrote. ​“Scientists have warned that high levels of lifecycle emissions from hydrogen production could entirely cancel out any climate benefits from replacing fossil fuels with hydrogen.”

Cummins noted that DOE has responded to this request for information. ​“But the response was focused on the fact that we are evaluating every aspect of the production and use of hydrogen so that we can understand the impact on the environment,” she said — and much of that work remains to be done.

Are the hydrogen hubs living up to their community commitments? 

Though it may be early days for the hubs, advocates say the projects could be operating in a much more transparent way.

OCED released summaries of each hub’s commitment to community benefits immediately after the hubs were selected last October. Since then, OCED has held more than 70 meetings with more than 900 individuals and groups participating, Cummins said. The office has also briefed about 4,000 individuals and groups, including community members, environmental justice organizations, labor and workforce organizations, first responders, local businesses, energy professionals, elected tribal leaders, and local, state, and federal government officials.

The feedback from those meetings has led OCED to add new requirements for the hubs. The projects now must create public data reporting portals to share information as it’s finalized. They must develop community advisory structures that allow groups to provide feedback on plans as they’re developed. And they must ​“jointly evaluate or pursue negotiated agreements” on labor, workforce, health and safety, and community benefits plans.

“We’re really focused on three-way communication” between OCED, hub participants, and affected communities and other groups ​“to make sure anything we’re hearing back from the community is adequately addressed,” Cummins said. ​“That will determine whether we move forward to the next phase of the process.”

Environmental and community groups worry these requirements may still not prevent hub participants from running roughshod over communities, however.

In particular, many fear that participants — including oil and gas giants such as bp America, Chevron, Enbridge, EQT, ExxonMobil, Sempra Energy, and TC Energy — will subject communities already burdened with fossil fuel pollution to further harms from hydrogen production.

Communities have ​“questions around the transparency for the selection and planning process, how to monitor and evaluate community benefits plans, and to ensure there are sustained community benefits after the duration of the grants,” said Cihang Yuan, a senior program officer at the environmental nonprofit World Wildlife Fund. Other concerns include ​“more local impacts, such as hydrogen leakage or chemical disasters,” she said. ​“It’s definitely important for these hubs to have a solid plan for safety of operations.”

The secretive approach that hubs have taken to sharing information with potentially affected communities has added to these concerns. In California, the ARCHES hub requires meeting participants to sign non-disclosure agreements barring them from sharing information about the hub’s activities under threat of legal penalties.

“That’s something we can’t do,” said Theo Caretto, associate attorney at California-based environmental justice group Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), since it would bar community groups from sharing information with their constituents.

Those non-disclosure rules have remained in place at ARCHES and other hubs despite continual protests, forcing groups like CBE to wait for public information to dribble out. But one year in, ​“we’re having difficulty getting specifics on which projects are being funded,” Caretto said. ​“They’ve given out fact sheets and publications,” such as the map and chart below in a May report from ARCHES to DOE. ​“But those are still quite general and don’t give specifics about what each project is.”

The Ohio River Valley Institute has raised similar concerns about the ARCH2 project in Appalachia. In a May letter to DOE signed by 54 nonprofit and community groups, Tom Torres, the institute’s hydrogen campaign coordinator, said communities have had ​“no substantive opportunity to shape this proposal while negotiations continue behind closed doors.”

The saving grace, he wrote, is that ​“nothing so grievous has been done that cannot be undone. Money has yet to flow to these projects and ground has not been broken.” 

Giving communities authority over how major energy infrastructure is planned and built would be a departure from how large industrial projects have historically been pursued.

“There is this dichotomy, this tension, between the project development deadlines and long-term robust engagement processes that will be needed to meet these community benefits plans obligations and gain community trust,” said Mona Dajani, global co-chair of energy, infrastructure and hydrogen at law firm Baker Botts and lead counsel for the HyVelocity hub in Texas.

DOE’s commitment to ensuring that hubs will meet the Biden administration’s Justice40 Initiative — its pledge to direct at least 40 percent of climate-related federal spending to communities ​“historically impacted by energy development and burdened with policies of exclusion and disinvestment,” as Dajani put it — heightens the importance of community involvement.

This will ​“add a lot of complexity to development processes. But they’re doing their best. 

It’s definitely going to be challenging to be transparent when it’s not all finished,” Dajani said.

Will private-sector players commit to spending the money? 

Amidst questions around community benefits and lifecycle carbon emissions, much of the hype that fueled oversized clean-hydrogen projections in the past few years has started to deflate. Major project announcements have been delayed or put in limbo, leading analysts to question whether ambitious government clean-hydrogen production targets can be reached in the coming decade.

This retrenchment is also a threat to U.S. hydrogen hubs, which must convince companies and their financial backers to commit to the tens of billions of dollars of investment needed to scale up clean hydrogen to compete against the fossil fuels it is meant to displace.

That challenge is already rearing its head at the Appalachian ARCH2 hub, a pet project of a lawmaker key to getting the hydrogen hub program passed as part of the 2022 Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill — retiring Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

Manchin praised the ARCH2 hub’s potential to revitalize the economy of his home state and the greater Appalachian region at an August event marking DOE’s approval of its first-phase grant. ​“I’m happy to know that I was able to play a part in this to be able to have a future for my children and grandchildren,” he said. 

But, as is true for all of the hub projects at this point, it’s far from clear that ARCH2 will deliver on its promise of becoming a clean energy economic engine for the region.

In a report released this week, the Ohio River Valley Institute noted that several projects initially identified as part of the ARCH2 plan have since dropped out. Those include Canadian gas producer and pipeline owner TC Energy and industrial chemicals giant Chemours, which canceled plans to develop two green hydrogen production sites in West Virginia.

“The various hydrogen hubs and their individual projects are much more tenuous than many people imagine,” Sean O’Leary, senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute and the author of the report, told Canary Media. ​“These projects are still heavily dependent on private markets to come up with the funds.”

In an attempt to fill the gap left by those departures, ARCH2 recently issued a call for companies to propose projects, which could receive up to $110 million if selected. ​“Originally you could argue that we had projects that were seeking federal funds,” O’Leary said. ​“Now, we have federal funds seeking projects.”

Cummins said that OCED has anticipated that hub participants may drop out or be added throughout the early stages. ​“That’s OK. We don’t want a company that for any reason doesn’t want to participate to be stuck in something they don’t see as economically viable.”

At the same time, OCED will vet new entrants on the same criteria applied to those that initially applied: ​“Are they technically feasible? Do we see a path to financial viability? What does their workforce plan look like? And finally, what do their community benefits look like?”

In an email to Canary Media, T.R. Massey, spokesperson for Battelle, the research organization managing the ARCH2 hub, echoed a key refrain about the projects: ​“The important context to remember is these new hydrogen hubs, including ARCH2, have just entered the first phase.” 

One year in, U.S. clean hydrogen hubs face questions — and have few answers is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Navistar is rebranding to International Motors, citing a shift in strategy to transform the business into a solutions provider, effective Oct. 1.

The new strategy was announced on Wednesday, 118 years after the formation of International Harvester that eventually led to the Navistar name in 1990. The company, which continues to operate the IC Bus brand, also shared a new logo.

“International embodies determination, partnership and collaboration in meeting every challenge with a solution” said Tobias Glitterstram, the company’s chief strategy and transformation officer.

President and CEO Mathias Carlbaum added, “The return to International is an acknowledgment of our rich heritage as much as it is an investment in our promising future.”

The company stated this evolution is part of its broader transformation, which has been ongoing since 2021 with owner Traton Group, formerly known as Volkswagen Truck and Bus. In the coming months, current tools like OnCommand, Connection and International 360 will come together under a new digital customer interface called My International.

The aim of My International is to enhance and customize the customer’s experience by aligning all their solutions and data including service contracts, financing and fleet management in one place, the company stated.

Additionally, the company announced the launch of the International S13 Integrated Powertrain, a new suit of comprehensive ownership solutions for battery-electric vehicles and the revival of captive financial services, which will now go to market as International Financial.

The press release notes the new logo takes inspiration from the choreography that occurs daily on streets, highways and roads.

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The post Navistar to ’Return to its Roots’ with Name Change to International appeared first on School Transportation News.

As low-income households face the dual burden of weather extremes and high energy costs, energy efficiency is an increasingly important strategy for both climate mitigation and lower utility bills.

Passive House standards — which create a building envelope so tight that central heating and cooling systems may not be needed at all — promise to dramatically slash energy costs, and are starting to appear in “stretch codes” for buildings, including in Massachusetts, Illinois, Washington and New York.

And while some builders are balking at the initial up-front cost, other developers are embracing passive house metrics as a solution for affordable multifamily housing.

“We’re trying to make zero energy, high performing buildings that are healthy and low energy mainstream everywhere,” said Katrin Klingenberg, co-founder and executive director of Passive House Institute-U.S., or Phius. 

Klingenberg says the additional work needed to meet an aggressive efficiency standard, is, in the long run, not that expensive. Constructing a building to passive standards is initially only about 3%-5% more expensive than building a conventional single family home, or 0%-3% more for multifamily construction, according to Phius.

“This is not rocket science… We’re just beefing up the envelope. We’re doing all the good building science, we’re doing all the healthy stuff. We’re downsizing the [heating and cooling] system, and now we need someone to optimize that process,” Klingenberg said. 

Phius in practice and action

A Phius-certified building does not employ a conventional central heating and cooling system. Instead, it depends on an air-tight building envelope, highly efficient ventilation and strategically positioned, high-performance windows to exploit solar gain during both winter and summer and maximize indoor comfort. 

The tight envelope for Phius buildings regulates indoor air temperature, which can be a literal lifesaver when power outages occur during extreme heat waves or cold snaps, said Doug Farr, founder and principal of architecture firm Farr Associates.

Farr pointed to the example of the Academy for Global Citizenship in Chicago, which was built to Phius standards. 

“There was a really cold snap in January. Somehow the power went out [and the building] was without electricity for two or three days. And the internal temperature in the building dropped two degrees over three days.”

Farr said that example shows a clear benefit to high efficiency that justifies the cost.

“You talk about the ultimate resilience where you’re not going to die in a power outage either in the summer or the winter. You know, that’s pretty valuable.” 

There is also a business case to be made for implementing Phius and other sustainability metrics into residential construction, such as lowered bills that can appeal to market-rate buyers and renters, and reduced long-term maintenance costs for building owners. 

AJ Patton, founder and CEO of 548 Enterprise in Chicago, says in response to questions about how to convince developers to consider factors beyond the bottom line, simply, “they shouldn’t.”

Instead, he touts lower operating costs for energy-efficiency metrics rather than climate mitigation when he pitches his projects to his colleagues. 

“I can’t sell people on climate change anymore,” he said. “If you don’t believe by now, the good Lord will catch you when He catch you.

“But if I can sell you on lowering your operating expenses, if I can sell you on the marketability, on the fact that your tenants will have 30%, 40% lower individual expenses, that’s a marketing angle from a developer owner, that’s what I push on my contemporaries,” Patton said. “And then that’s when they say, ‘if you’re telling the truth, and if your construction costs are not more significant than mine, then I’m sold.’”

Phius principles can require specialized materials and building practices, Klingenberg said. But practitioners are working toward finding ways to manage costs by sourcing domestically available materials rather than relying on imports.

“The more experienced an architect [or developer] gets, they understand that they can replace these specialized components with more generic materials and you can get the same effect,” Klingenberg said.

Patton is presently incorporating Phius principles as the lead developer for 3831 W Chicago Avenue, a mixed use development located on Chicago’s West Side. The project, billed as the largest passive house design project in the city to date, will cover an entire city block, incorporating approximately 60 mixed-income residential units and 9,000 sq ft of commercial and community space.

Another project, Sendero Verde, located in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York City, is the largest certified passive-house building in the United States with 709 units. Completed in April, Sendero Verde is designed to provide cool conditions in the summer and warmth during the winter — a vast improvement for the low-income and formerly unhoused individuals and families who live there.

Barriers and potential solutions

Even without large upfront building cost premiums and with the increased impact of economies of scale, improved technology and materials, many developers still feel constrained to cut costs, Farr said.

“There’s entire segments of the development spectrum in housing, even in multifamily housing in Chicago, where if you’re a developer of rental housing time and again …  they feel like they have no choice but to keep things as the construction as cheap as possible because their competitors all do. And then, some architecture firms only work with those ‘powerless’ developers and they get code-compliant buildings.”

But subsidies, such as federal low income housing credits, IRS tax breaks and resources from the Department of Energy also provide a means for developers to square the circle, especially for projects aimed toward very low-income residents. 

Nonetheless, making the numbers work often requires taking a long-term view of development, according to Brian Nowak, principal at Sweetgrass Design Studio in Minnesota. Nowak was the designer for Hillcrest Village, an affordable housing development in Northfield that does not utilize Phius building metrics, but does incorporate net-zero energy usage standards.

“It’s an investment over time, to build resilient, energy-efficient housing,” he told the Energy News Network in June 2023.

“That should be everyone’s goal. And if we don’t, for example, it affects our school system. It affects the employers at Northfield having people that are readily available to come in and fill the jobs that are needed.

“That’s a significant long-term benefit of a project like this. And that is not just your monthly rents on the building; it’s the cost of the utilities as well. When those utilities include your electricity and your heating and cooling that’s a really big deal.”

Developers like Patton are determined to incorporate sustainability metrics into affordable housing and commercial developments both because it’s good business and because it’s the right thing to do.

“I’m not going to solve every issue. I’m going to focus on clean air, clean water, and lowering people’s utility bills. That’s my focus. I’m not going to design the greatest architectural building. I’m not even interested in hiring those type of architects. 

“I had a lived experience of having my heat cut off in the middle of winter. I don’t want that to ever happen to anybody I know ever again,” Patton said. “So if I can lower somebody’s cost of living, that’s my sole focus. And there’s been a boatload of buy-in from that, because those are historically [not] things [present] in the communities I invest in.”

No longer a niche, Passive House standards becoming a solution for highly efficient affordable housing is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Snaking under city streets, behind residential drywall and into furnaces, ovens and other appliances, natural gas pipelines are a ubiquitous presence in U.S. buildings. The question of what to do with them as the planet warms has become a serious debate — dozens of U.S. cities and states have crafted plans to reduce reliance on natural gas, and more than 20 other states have passed laws to preempt that type of regulation.

Now, utilities around the nation have begun testing a controversial idea aimed at reducing the carbon footprint of gas lines, while keeping them in place. Nearly 20 utilities have laid out plans to inject lines with a blend of gas and hydrogen, the latter of which emits no carbon dioxide (CO2) — a major greenhouse gas — when combusted. Testing such blends, these companies say, is an essential step towards understanding the practice, which they argue will help reduce emissions and fight climate change.

Deploying more hydrogen is also a federal priority — the Inflation Reduction Act created a tax credit for hydrogen production, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law set aside $9.5 billion to support hydrogen development.

But a federal hydrogen strategy released last year suggests blending hydrogen into gas infrastructure should focus on industrial applications. Many environmental and customer advocates agree; they argue that the use of hydrogen blends in buildings — rather than to power industries that are hard to electrify — makes little sense.

“Every dollar you’re reinvesting into the gas system could be a dollar you’re using to electrify the system,” said Nat Skinner, program manager of the safety branch of the California Public Advocates Office, an independent state office that advocates for consumers in utility regulation. “Finding the right uses for hydrogen is appropriate. But I think being really careful and thoughtful about how we’re doing that is equally important.”

Nearly 30 projects focused on blending hydrogen into gas lines that serve homes and businesses have been proposed or are in operation in more than a dozen states, Floodlight found, and many more utilities have hinted at future proposals. If all are approved, the projects as proposed would cost at least $280 million — and many utilities are asking that customers pay for them.

As regulators consider the proposals, advocates are calling for them to weigh the prudence of the investment. In California — where electric rates have climbed steeply in recent years — the Sierra Club has argued that the projects are “an inappropriate use of ratepayer funds” and “wasteful experiments.”

Blending brings, risks, rewards

Hydrogen blending can be undertaken in a section of pipeline isolated from the rest of the gas network or in a larger “open” system that serves homes. Utilities can inject it in large transmission lines, which ferry gas from processing and storage locations to compressor stations, or into distribution lines, the smaller pipes that bring gas to buildings.

Because hydrogen releases only water vapor and heat when it’s burned, it’s considered a clean fuel. And unlike traditional wind and solar energy, it can produce enough heat to run industrial furnaces. Utilities have framed the fuel as a clear way to slash the emissions associated with their operations.

“These demonstration projects are an important step for us to adopt hydrogen blending statewide, which has the potential to be an effective way to replace fossil fuels,” said Neil Navin, the chief clean fuels officer at Southern California Gas (SoCalGas), in a March statement on its application for hydrogen blending pilots.

Burning hydrogen, particularly in homes, also presents certain risks. Hydrogen burns hotter than natural gas, which can increase emissions of nitrous oxide (NOx), a harmful air pollutant that can react with other elements in the air to produce damaging pollutants including small particulates and ozone.

Hydrogen is a smaller molecule than methane, the main ingredient in natural gas, and can leak more readily out of pipelines. Hydrogen is also flammable. And when certain metals absorb hydrogen atoms, they can become brittle over time, creating risks of pipeline cracks, depending on the materials the pipelines are made of.

There are also outstanding questions about how much hydrogen blending actually reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

Of the utilities that have offered details about the hydrogen source they plan to use for their pilot, roughly half plan to use “green hydrogen,” which is produced using clean electricity generated by renewable sources such as wind and solar. Today, fossil fuels power more than 90% of global hydrogen production, producing “gray hydrogen.”

Most utility blending pilots are targeting blends of up to 20% hydrogen. At those levels, research has shown that hydrogen would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by less than 10%, even when using hydrogen produced with clean manufacturing processes.

Some utilities have estimated the emissions impacts of their pilots. A CenterPoint Energy pilot in Minneapolis using blends of up to 5% green hydrogen was estimated to reduce carbon emissions by 1,200 metric tons per year, which is the approximate energy use of 156 homes. A project in New Jersey testing blends of 1% green hydrogen was estimated to reduce emissions enough to offset the energy use of roughly 24 homes.

Blending gray hydrogen may show no carbon benefit at all, according to some research. That’s in part because hydrogen produces one-third less energy by volume than natural gas, meaning three times the amount of hydrogen is needed to make up for the same unit of natural gas.

And hydrogen requires more energy to manufacture than it will later produce when it’s burned. For these reasons, some environmental groups say hydrogen is an inefficient way to decarbonize homes and businesses; some analysts have called the process “a crime against thermodynamics.”

“There are much better, readily available, more affordable ways to decarbonize buildings in the form of electrification and energy efficiency,” said Jim Dennison, a staff attorney at the Sierra Club.

Advocates including Dennison also worry that investing more in the natural gas system will delay electrification and allow utilities to keep their core pipeline businesses running. “I can see why that’s attractive to those utilities,” he said. “That doesn’t mean it makes sense for customers or the climate.”

‘We’re not sure’ of right mix

While the climate benefits are debated, some research and active projects indicate that burning blended fuel at certain levels can be safe. For decades, Hawaii Gas has used synthetic natural gas that contains 10-12% hydrogen. Countries including Chile, Australia, Portugal and Canada have also run hydrogen blending pilots.

And although pipelines can weather when carrying hydrogen, that’s less likely for distribution lines that reach homes because those pipes are often plastic, said Bri-Mathias Hodge, an associate professor in energy engineering at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Hodge helped author a 2022 review of technical and regulatory limits on hydrogen and gas blending. With blends below 5%, Hodge said customers are unlikely to face risks or notice a difference in how their appliances or furnaces function.

More uncertainty exists around higher blends. “I think we’re not sure if below 20% or say, from 5 to 20% is safe,” said Ali Mosleh, an engineer at the University of California-Los Angeles who is spearheading hydrogen blend pilot testing with 44 partners, including utilities, to address knowledge gaps in the state.

Although Hodge at UC-Boulder thinks electrification is the more efficient choice for homes, he said the pilots can help utilities get comfortable with blending, which may eventually be applied elsewhere. “It’s not going to really move the needle in terms of decarbonization long term, but it’s a step in the right direction,” he said.

Steven Schueneman, the hydrogen development manager at utility Puget Sound Energy, which serves about 1.2 million electric and 900,000 gas customers in Washington, said incremental approaches like utility blending pilots will signal that hydrogen is a “real industry.” That could help the fuel gain a foothold in other areas, like industrial heat and aviation.

But Schueneman also acknowledges there remains uncertainty around whether hydrogen is the most cost-effective way to decarbonize buildings.

“It’s not clear that blending hydrogen is going to be a prudent decision at the end of the day,” he said.

Puget Sound Energy has conducted two small-scale blending pilots at a test facility. In the future, the utility plans to focus its hydrogen efforts on how blends may function in power plants, rather than in buildings. The nearly 30 blending pilots Floodlight tracked include only projects focused on use in buildings, but other utilities have proposed blending hydrogen at natural gas power plants, where the blend will be burned for electricity.

‘Cost is an essential consideration’

Blending pilots focused on buildings have been spearheaded by some of the largest utilities in the nation as well as smaller-scale gas providers, and are being considered from coast-to-coast.

Dominion Energy, which serves 4.5 million customers in 13 states, has laid out plans for three blending pilots, in Utah, South Carolina and Ohio. National Grid, which has 20 million customers, is pursuing a project in New York. And multiple large California utilities have proposed pilot programs.

Some utilities, such as Dominion and Minnesota-based Xcel Energy, did not reply to several requests for clarification on hydrogen blending plans, or replied to only some queries about their plans. But plans from certain utilities have been detailed in regulatory filings with state utility commissions.

The pilots for which cost data are available range in price from roughly $33,000 for Puget Sound Energy’s small-scale testing (which ratepayers did not fund) up to an estimated $63.5 million for a decade-long pilot proposed by California utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), which would focus on blending 5% at the start ranging up to 20% hydrogen in transmission gas lines.

If approved, customers would pay up to $94.2 million for PG&E’s pilot, because of the rate of return utilities are able to collect from customers. California utilities are aiming to recover more than $200 million in total from customers for their proposed pilots.

California regulators have rejected some previous blending proposals from utilities, saying companies should use “every reasonable attempt to use existing and other funds before requesting new funds.” Advocates including the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) have argued that the projects are not in the public interest, particularly amid the state’s spiking utility bills.

“Cost is an essential consideration,” said Erin Murphy, a senior attorney at EDF. “When you’re passing on costs to ratepayers, you have to demonstrate that that is a prudent investment.”

Pilots have gotten pushback in other states, including Colorado and Oregon, where projects were recently dropped or delayed, and opposition has been fierce in California, which has the most pilots proposed to date. The mayor of Truckee, California, which could host a project, submitted a comment to regulators explaining the town does not support it. And following protests at two California universities that planned to collaborate on projects, utilities downsized the plans.

After student opposition at University of California-Irvine, SoCalGas reduced the scope of the project and proposed an additional pilot in Orange Cove, a small agricultural community of about 9,500 people. Ninety-six percent of Orange Cove’s population identifies as Hispanic or Latino, and roughly 47% of residents live below the federal poverty line, according to the U.S. Census.

Some Orange Cove residents also are concerned about blending, which SoCalGas hopes to test at up to 5% hydrogen levels. Genoveva Islas, who grew up there and is the executive director of Cultiva la Salud, a public health nonprofit based in nearby Fresno, said the local approval process lacked transparency and public input.

The project is slated to sit steps away from the Orange Cove football field, near the town’s high school, middle school and community center. “In short, I would just say it is concerning,” Islas said.

In an email, the utility told Floodlight that the city “proactively asked SoCalGas to undertake this project in its community” and said it was “expected to bring socioeconomic benefits to Orange Cove.” The utility also said it hosted a community engagement meeting about the project in Spanish and English and has provided fact sheets to the community in both languages.

In Colorado, where Xcel Energy had planned to blend hydrogen in an isolated neighborhood, some residents learned of the pilot from a journalist reporting on the project.

That has made some feel like unwilling test subjects in an experiment that others, like the Sierra Club’s Dennison, say are unnecessary. “The community’s immediate reaction is that they don’t want to be guinea pigs,” Islas said. “They do not understand how this decision was made without their involvement or their consent.”

The great majority of the projects, including the one in Orange Cove, are still under review by regulators. Meanwhile, researchers are undertaking more studies to understand the technical limits of blending.

“There are a lot of unknowns,” said Mosleh from UCLA. “Some fundamental research needs to be done.”

Utilities are trying hydrogen-blended fuels. There are a lot of unknowns. is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.