Surface air temperature anomaly for January 2025 relative to the January average for the period 1991-2020. Data source: ERA5. Credit: C3S/ECMWF.โฏ โโโโ
January 2025 โ Surface air temperature and sea surface temperature highlights
Global Temperatures
January 2025 was the warmest January globally, with an average ERA5 surface air temperature of 13.23ยฐC, 0.79ยฐC above the 1991-2020 average for January.
January 2025 was 1.75ยฐC above the pre-industrial level and was the 18th month in the last nineteen months for which the global-average surface air temperature was more than 1.5ยฐC above the pre-industrial level.
The last 12-monthsperiod (February 2024 โ January 2025) was 0.73ยฐC above the 1991-2020 average, and 1.61ยฐC above the estimated 1850-1900 average used to define the pre-industrial level.
*Datasets other than ERA5 may not confirm the 18 months above 1.5ยฐC highlighted here, due to the relatively small margins above 1.5ยฐC of ERA5 global temperatures observed for several months and differences among the various datasets.
Europe and other regions
The average temperature over European land for January 2025 was 1.80ยฐC, 2.51ยฐC above the 1991-2020 average for January, the second warmest after January 2020, which was 2.64ยฐC above average.
European temperatures were most above the 1991-2020 average over southern and eastern Europe, including western Russia. In contrast, they were below average over Iceland, the United Kingdom and Ireland, northern France, and northern Fennoscandia.
Outside Europe, temperatures were most above average over northeast and northwest Canada, Alaska, and Siberia. They were also above average over southern South America, Africa, and much of Australia and Antarctica.
Temperatures were most notably below average over the United States and the easternmost regions of Russia, Chukotka and Kamchatka. The Arabian Peninsula and mainland Southeast Asia also had below-average temperatures.
Sea surface temperature
The average sea surface temperature (SST) for January 2025 over 60ยฐSโ60ยฐN was 20.78ยฐC, the second-highest value on record for the month, 0.19ยฐC below the January 2024 record.
SSTs were below average over the central equatorial Pacific, but close to or above average over the eastern equatorial Pacific, suggesting a slowing or stalling of the move towards La Niรฑa conditions. SSTs remained unusually high in many other ocean basins and seas.
Monthly global surface air temperature anomalies (ยฐC) relative to 1850โ1900 from January 1940 to January 2025, plotted as time series for each year. 2025 is shown with a thick red line, 2024 with a thick orange line, 2023 with a thick yellow line, and all other years with thin grey lines. Data source: ERA5. Credit: Copernicus Climate Change Service /ECMWF.
According to Samantha Burgess, Strategic Lead for Climate at ECMWF:
“January 2025 is another surprising month, continuing the record temperatures observed throughout the last two years, despite the development of La Niรฑa conditions in the tropical Pacific and their temporary cooling effect on global temperatures. Copernicus will continue to closely monitor ocean temperatures and their influence on our evolving climate throughout 2025.โ
January 2025 โ Hydrological highlights
January 2025 saw predominantly wetter-than-average conditions over regions of western Europe, as well as parts of Italy, Scandinavia and the Baltic countries; heavy precipitation led to flooding in some regions.
Conversely, drier than average conditions established in northern UK and Ireland, eastern Spain, and north of the Black Sea.
Beyond Europe, it was wetter than average in Alaska, Canada, central and eastern Russia, eastern Australia, south-eastern Africa, southern Brazil, with regions experiencing floods and associated damage.
Drier than average conditions established in southwestern United States and northern Mexico, northern Africa, the Middle East, across Central Asia and in eastern China as well as in much of southern Africa, southern South America and Australia.
January 2025 โ Sea Ice highlights
Arctic sea ice reached its lowest monthly extent for January, at 6% below average, virtually tied with January 2018.
In the Arctic region, sea ice concentration anomalies were well below average in the eastern Canadian sector, including Hudson Bay and the Labrador Sea, and in the northern Barents Sea.
Antarctic sea ice extent was 5% below average and thus relatively close to average compared to other recent years. This contrasts with the record or near-record values observed in 2023โ2024.
In the Antarctic region, sea ice concentrations were above average in the Amundsen Sea and generally mixed in other ocean sectors.
More information about climate variables in January and climate updates of previous months as well as high-resolution graphics can be downloaded here.
Other useful links:
Answers to frequently asked questions regarding temperature monitoring can be found here.
Follow near-real-time data for the globe on Climate Pulse here.
More on trends and projections on Climate Atlas here.
Change is the only constant, all around us at all times. In our natural, human, and political systems, the pace of change feels particularly intense right now. How will we participate in this change, appropriate to its scope and scale, to shape or be shaped by it?
For the past several years, the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance has focused on three broad โavenuesโ (or approaches) for local solutions regarding rural climate action. In each of these, the new federal administration and shift in Congress could impede or derail progress already made and potentially into the future.
Avenues for climate action that the CO Farm & Food Alliance has focused on are (1) meeting landscape-level conservation goals to secure water supplies and boost ecological and climate resilience; (2) producing more locally generated and community-centered clean energy; and (3) helping small-acreage agricultural producers benefit from and support the shift to more regenerative practices that increase climate mitigation and adaptation, and boost farm health.
In 2025, we expect ongoing attempts to rollback current environmental and conservation policy โ based on stated intent from the new administration and Congress, along with early action and leadership changes in agencies and on committees โ with a hard shift away from natural resource protection, environmental justice, and climate action.
The CO Farm & Food Alliance is troubled by this change in federal direction. We will work with partners to defend the progress made and seek opportunities to continue that progress.
With our model of local action and community-rooted solutions, the CO Farm & Food Alliance will work to prevent harm and continue to advance on all of these fronts in partnership with national and local allies.
meeting landscape-level conservation goals to secure our water supplies, wildlife, and quality of place
The Colorado Farm & Food Alliance began with the premise that healthy lands and clean water protect Colorado farms, food, and drink. At the time of our founding, we sought to unify as a local voice for farm and food leaders who supported the protection of the public lands and water source areas surrounding the North Fork Valley.
As our focus broadened to include food security and climate change, among other issues, we also recognized that land use, specifically the conservation and restoration of natural places and systems is a powerful way to help address climate anomalies.
The Colorado Farm & Food Alliance remains committed to working with our partners to secure and maintain protection for critical public and watershed lands in western Colorado. Protecting cherished places such as the Thompson Divide and Clear Fork area, the North Fork Valley, and Dolores Canyons enjoys broad public appeal.
Conservation also helps address the biodiversity crisis and makes watersheds and Colorado farms more resilient to drought. These iconic landscapes are foundational to the character of this place and its residents. They protect our water supplies, essential wildlife habitats, and popular hunting and recreation areas. This means we will join with others to defend public lands and conservation policies from rollbacks and other emerging threats in Washington. However, there will also be opportunities to champion the importance of public lands to Colorado and highlight their values.
producing more locally produced and community-centered clean energy
Rural communities’ powering of farms, businesses, and homesโand the growth of renewable energy projects in rural areasโcan significantly improve peopleโs lives and livelihoods. However, rollbacks to clean energy, environmental justice, and other climate programs could set western Colorado back and be a โgut punchโ we do not need.
The Colorado Farm & Food Alliance supports deploying more community-based renewable energy for farms and rural communities. We will closely monitor how Washington’s changes might impact local communities’ ability to develop their own home-grown power solutions.
For transitioning coal and power-plant communities, like the North Fork and other places in Colorado, environmental justice means supporting local solutions for front-line communities. This is recognized in climate funding laws passed during the last Congress, which directly benefit places like Craig, Naturita, and Pueblo, as well as communities in Delta County. However, a recent January 2025 White House Executive Order seeks to defund many of these programs.
Despite this, we will continue working with partners to help advance innovative community-based clean energy projects – like the Thistle Whistle Community Solar project. We will advocate for the preservation of funding that allows coal-mining and power-plant communities โ whether rural or urban, red or blue โ to envision and implement their own home-grown energy solutions.
The North Fork River valley. Photo credit: Colorado Farm & Food Alliance
supporting small-acreage agricultural producers in benefiting from a shift to more regenerative practices
The Farm Bill, which is central to agriculture in the United States, was recently extended for a third time. This has made a normally five-year bill into an eight-and-counting ordeal. It is not certain that it will be settled this year, but it will have a far-reaching impact when it is.
Thatโs because the Farm Bill touches many things, from nutrition to farming to clean energy. Even with an uncertain passage, the debate over this bill will continue in committees in both the House and the Senate, now under narrow Republican control.
The Farm Bill is one place rural renewables get funded, through the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP). This is another place where cuts might come to clean energy under a new Congress and priority shifts in the administration.
Clean energy is just one small part of the Farm Bill. Several vital programs funded by this legislation could be at risk of cuts or elimination. These include nutrition programs such as SNAP (โfood stampsโ) and Doubleup Foodbucks. This program, which could be targeted, addresses hunger in our communities and supports local farmers by increasing SNAP benefits at local farmers’ markets.
Farm and ranch conservation funding is another area likely to see proposed Farm Bill cuts. This includes helping small-acreage farmers implement more regenerative and climate-adapted practices. Programs that support small-acreage farmers are essential for conservation. In the U.S., the number of farmers is decreasing, but the average size of farms is increasing. Many small farms will be converted to other uses and will not stay in agriculture if farming becomes nonviable.
The loss of a farm is personally devastating and sends ripples through the local economy. It also limits the type and scope of nature-based climate solutions that can be implemented. In important headwaters and agricultural areas, like the Gunnison River basin, ensuring the viability of agricultureโwhich smaller and mid-sized farms and ranches dominateโand protecting our farm economies are critical strategies to support rural, farm-based climate action.
Conservation funding and nutrition programs that allow farmers to provide food directly into local markets are key tools that improve farm outputs, provide income, boost resilience, and address food insecurity in western Colorado.
The Colorado Farm & Food Alliance is sharing and we will continue to develop new and additional resources to help farmers and others navigate policy and program changes at the USDA and other agencies. We will also highlight growers and ranchers practicing techniques that make their farms and pastures more resilient, productive, and sustainable. Showcasing our successes and our shared work will be important in the years ahead.
A North Fork Orchard. Photo credit: Colorado Farm & Food Alliance
The Future is here: We are it.
Despite all these changes and challenges coming our way, we can find security in our community and shared endeavors. We can create something new, sustainable, and fair that emerges right here.
But first, we must persist. This means securing and defending what we have and value most. It means standing up for the vulnerable and those people and places that are targets of attack.
Still, that cannot be all we do. We should neither feel defeated nor content to just wait for a different time. We should imagine new ways to connect with each other now, to celebrate what we cherish and to replicate and share out what we do well.
The future is up to us, but we are mighty together. Now we must become the change we seek.
74% of Gen Zers say climate change threatens the clean water supply in the U.S.
WASHINGTON, D.C. โ Jan. 28, 2025 โ The Walton Family Foundation and Gallup releaseda new report today examining Gen Zโs experiences with climate change and water issues, shedding light on their concerns about climate events and the potential impact on their generationโs future. The research finds water issues top the list of Gen Zโs climate worries, with individual perspectives shaped by diverse experiences and beliefs.
Of 12 climate-related issues measured in the study, majorities of Gen Zers express โsomeโ or โa great dealโ of worry about nine, including five related to water. This is true regardless of location, with water pollution and the health of fish and oceans ranking among the top three concerns in every U.S. Census region. While a majority of Gen Zers nationwide (61%) have reported experiencing a water-related climate issue in the past two years, water-related problems are more commonly reported by those in the Central and Western U.S.
When considering how these issues may affect their future, Gen Zers report concern about the availability of clean water and the potential need to relocate. Those who have experienced climate-related events at a higher rate are more likely to worry about these impacts . T here are notable differences across demographic groups. Hispanic (36%) and Black (34%) Gen Zers are more likely than their White (27%) peers to have experienced unsafe tap water . They are also more likely to believe there will not be enough clean water for their generation to live in the future (41% of Hispanic and 34% of Black Gen Zers, compared with 24% of W hite Gen Zers). Adult Gen Zers are significantly more likely to worry about needing to move due to climate change compared with their 12- to 17-year-old counterparts (40% vs. 27%, respectively).
Denver School Strike for Climate, September 20, 2019.
There is large-scale unity among young people on the importance of protecting water quality. Seventy-four percent of Gen Zers say it is โvery importantโ to protect oceans, lakes and rivers from pollution, with another 19% saying it is โsomewhat important.โ Gen Z acknowledges the adverse effects of climate change on water resources: 74% of Gen Zers say climate change impacts the amount of clean water available in the U.S. โsomewhatโ (47%) or โa great dealโ (27%). There is solid bipartisan agreement on the inadequacy of current water protection efforts: M ajorities of both Democratic (88%) and Republican (63%) Gen Z adults say the U.S. is โprobablyโ or โdefinitelyโ not doing enough to protect water.
โGen Z is united in their deep concern for water protection and availability, recognizing it as a critical issue that touches us all โ regardless of where we live or who we are,โ said Moira Mcdonald, Environment Program Director at the Walton Family Foundation. โAs we look to the future, there’s a growing sense of urgency. Young people fear inheriting a world where clean water is scarce and climate change continues to worsen. We need to work on solutions to ensure clean, safe water remains accessible for generations to come.โ
Looking ahead, Gen Zers are pessimistic about the trajectory of climate change โ 67% believe climate change will worsen in their lifetime. And rates of pessimism are about 10 percentage points higher among those who have recently experienced a climate-related issue such as flooding, drought or unsafe tap water. Among voting-age Gen Zers, majorities of both Democrats and Republicans believe it is very or somewhat unlikely that climate change will be stopped.
Methodology
Results are based on a Gallup Panelโข web survey conducted Aug. 6-14, 2024, with a sample of 2,832 12- to 27-year-olds from across the U.S. The Gallup Panel is a probability-based panel of U.S. adults. Data were weighted to match demographic targets of age, gender, education, race, Hispanic ethnicity and Census region for 12- to 27-year-olds, using the most recent five-year population estimates from the American Community Survey.
Twelve- to 17-year-old children, as well as some 18-year-olds, were reached through adult members of the Gallup Panel who indicated they had at least one child aged 18 or younger living in their household. The remaining 18- to 27-year-old respondents are members of the Gallup Panel.
For the total sample of 2,832 respondents, the margin of sampling error is +/-2.9 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Margins of error for subgroups are higher; selected subgroups are reported below. All margins of error reported are adjusted to account for the design effect.
Colorado Farm & Food Alliance leads effort to advance in Department of Energy Community Power Accelerator Prize
HOTCHKISS, CO (January 27, 2025) โ The U.S. The Department of Energy (DOE) announced this month that a North Fork Valley solar partnership is one of four teams to win a national $200,000 Community Power Accelerator Prize. The North Fork based team now advances to the third and final round, and a $150,000 prize, in this community solar competition sponsored by the DOE National Solar Energy Technologies Office.
The Colorado Farm and Food Alliance-led team seeks to advance several community-based solar projects that prioritize agriculture, community benefit and renewable energy generation. The Accelerator Prize award will be used for engineering and other studies at Thistle Whistle Community Solar project near Hotchkiss and to study the feasibility of a second installation at a former coal mine site near Paonia. Both locations are in Delta County, Colorado.
Partners in developing these projects include Colorado Farm & Food Alliance, Thistle Whistle Community Solar, Mirasol Agrivoltaics and Switchback Restoration, along with community leaders. The award will help to advance at least two community solar projects, starting with a small agrivoltaic array at Thistle Whistle Farm near Hotchkiss. This innovative project will pair agricultural production with solar energy and provide clean power to local farms and residents through the Delta Montrose Electric Association (DMEA) grid.
โI am eager to see this project completed, to benefit my farm and to help provide energy cost savings to other local farms and households,โ said Mark Waltermire, owner of Thistle Whistle Farm. โThe Community Power prize has been vital in helping to keep this project moving forward.โ Now completing pre-development, the Thistle Whistle Community Solar project will:
Generate clean, renewable energy for local communities
Preserve agricultural land through dual-use farming practices
Increase energy equity through community-solar, returning cost savings to system subscribers
Create new economic opportunities for local farmers
Support local food systems while advancing clean energy goals
Document best practices for agrivoltaic system design and lessons learned for community solar
Monitor wildlife corridors and habitat enhancement
Research water conservation benefits in dual-use systems
The second project is in early pre-development, but will help support mine-site remediation and climate harm reduction at a former coal mine as well as provide an additional community-solar benefit. “This recognition from the Department of Energy validates our vision for community-based rural renewables that support both our agricultural heritage and greater energy equity,” said Pete Kolbenschlag, with the Colorado Farm and Food Alliance and prize team captain. “These projects demonstrate how rural communities can lead the way in innovative clean energy solutions that preserve farmland, benefit residents and integrate with local livelihoods.” The North Fork Valley team is still participating in this national competition. In the third, and final, round teams must demonstrate that they have secured the funding necessary to develop their community solar projects. As part of the Phase 3 competition, the project team will be able to present their vision at the Community Power PitchFest event at the DOE Headquarters in Washington, D.C. on March 6,
The Community Power Accelerator Prize is part of the American Made Challenge program, with funding coming from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed by Congress in 2021. As part of its mission, the Colorado Farm and Food Alliance provides a platform for rural leadership to develop and implement local solutions that model climate action and strengthen farm and food system resilience. It is the named partner of the Community Power Accelerator Prize.
Mirasol Agrivoltaics is a recently established Colorado nonprofit with a mission to educate about and to help develop community solar projects in the North Fork Valley. With this award it will be able to fill a new and needed leadership role in supporting clean energy, cost savings, and community-based solutions through the Thistle Whistle Community Solar and future projects.
Learning and demonstration gardens at Arbol Farm, Paonia, CO. Photo credit: Colorado Farm and Food Alliance
John Kerry, then U.S. secretary of state, with China’s special representative on climate change, Xie Zhenhua, at the 2015 Paris climate conference. FRANCOIS MORI / AP PHOTO
Click the link to read the article on the Grist website (Joseph Wintersย &ย Naveena Sadasivam):
January 20, 2025
Within hours of being sworn into office on Monday, President Donald Trump announced a spate of executive orders and policies to boost oil and gas production, roll back environmental protections, withdraw from the Paris climate accord, and undo environmental justice initiatives enacted by former president Joe Biden.
Conventional wisdom โ and political donations โ would indicate that Republicans are friendlier than Democrats to the oil and gas industry. And, in fact, thatโs probably true: Democrats are more likely to pass regulations on drilling; Republicans are more likely to give oil corporations massive tax cuts. But in spite of all of that, Over the last fifty years, Republican presidents have been more likely to oversee crude oil production declines, while production has generally increased under Democrats, with the exception of the Clinton administration. In fact, the current surge in production began during Obamaโs first year, and has continued through Bidenโs entire term. This doesnโt mean that Democrats spur production. What it means is that more regulations donโt hamper production, and rescinding those regulations โ and corporate tax cuts โ donโt spur production. There are many forces in play, and the occupant of the White House is merely one of them, and a relatively insignificant one at that. Source: EIA, Land Desk.
Trump has called climate change a โhoax,โ and appointed oil industry executives and climate skeptics to his Cabinet. His first-day actions represent a complete remaking of the countryโs climate agenda, and set the tone for his administrationโs approach to energy and the environment over the next four years.
โDrill, baby, drillโ
Among the most significant actions Trump took Monday was declaring โan energy emergency,โ which he framed as part of his effort to rein in inflation and reduce the cost of living. He pledged to โuse all necessary resources to build critical infrastructure,โ an unprecedented move that could grant the White House greater authority to expand fossil fuel production. He also signed an executive order โto encourage energy exploration and production on federal lands and waters, including on the Outer Continental Shelf,โ and another expediting permitting and leasing in Alaska, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
โWe will have the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it,โ Trump said during his inaugural address. โWe are going to drill, baby, drill.โ
The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve can store 714 million barrels of crude oil, but currently holds about 395 million. Under his administration, he said, the cache will be filled โup again right to the top.โ He also said the country will export energy โall over the world.โ
โWe will be a rich nation again,โ he said, standing inside the Capitol Rotunda, โand it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help.โ
Richard Klein, a senior research fellow for the international nonprofit Stockholm Environment Institute, noted that fossil fuel companies extracted record-high amounts of oil and gas during the Biden administration. Even if it is technologically possible to boost production further, itโs unclear whether that will reduce prices.
Dan Kammen, a professor of energy at the University of California, Berkeley, said it is a โdirect falsehoodโ that increasing fossil fuel extraction would drive down inflation. He agreed that the U.S. should declare a national energy emergency โ but for reasons exactly the opposite of what Trump had in mind. โWe need to quickly move to clean energy, to invest in new companies across the U.S.,โ Kammen told Grist.
Denver Waterโs sustainability operations include generating energy from solar power panels installed on the roof of its Administration Building, parking garage and over its visitorโs parking lot at its Operations Complex near downtown. Photo credit: Denver Water.
Exiting the Paris Agreement (again)
Trump delivered on his promise to once again withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement, the United Nations pact agreed upon by 195 countries to limit global warming that the new president referred to on Monday as a โrip-off.โ In addition to signing an executive order saying the U.S. would leave the agreement โ titled Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements โ Trump also signed a letter to the United Nations to set the departure in motion. Due to the rules governing the accord, it will take one year to formally withdraw, meaning U.S. negotiators will participate in the next round of talks in Brazil at the end of the year. By this time next year, however, the U.S. could join Iran, Libya, and Yemen as the only nations that arenโt part of the accord.
โIt simply makes no sense for the United States to voluntarily give up political influence and pass up opportunities to shape the exploding green energy market,โ Ani Dasgupta, president and CEO of the nonprofit World Resources Institute, said in a statement. Only 2 in 10 Americans support quitting the Paris Agreement, according to a poll by the Associated Press.
Trumpโs announcement came just 10 days after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared 2024 Earthโs hottest year on record, one marked by life-threatening heat waves, wildfires, and flooding around the world. Experts say things will only get worse unless the U.S. and other countries do more to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
โMuch of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled,โ climate scientists wrote last October. They noted then, even before Trumpโs election, that global policies were expected to cause temperatures to climb 2.7 degrees Celsius (6.9 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100. One analysis by Carbon Brief estimated that a second Trump administration would result in an extra 4 billion metric tons of climate pollution, negating all of the emissions savings from the global deployment of clean energy technologies over the past five years โ twice over.
Coyote Gulch’s Leaf in Byers Canyon on the way to Steamboat Springs August 21, 2017.
โIn other words, youโll be able to buy the vehicle of your choice,โ he said during his inaugural address โ even though there isย no national mandateย requiring the sale of electric vehicles and consumers are free to purchase any vehicle of their liking. [ed. emphasis mine] The Biden administration did promote the technology by finalizing rules that limit the amount ofย tailpipe pollution over time so thatย electric vehicles make up the majority of automobiles sold by 2032. Under Biden, the U.S. also launched aย $7,500 tax creditย for consumer purchases of EVs manufactured domestically and planned to funnel roughlyย $7.5 billionย toward building charging infrastructure across the country.ย
โRolling back incentives to build electric vehicles in the United States is going to cost jobs as well as raise the price of travel,โ said Costa Samaras, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University who served as a senior policy leader in the Biden White House. โFueling up an electric vehicle costs between one-third and one-half as much as driving on gasoline, not to mention the benefits for reducing air pollution. Ultimately, to lower the price of energy for U.S. consumers, we need to diversify the sources of energy that weโre using and ensure that these are clean, affordable, and reliable.โ
Youth activists rally for climate justice in front of the US Capitol in Washington,DC (photo from earlier in the year). Image: Lorie Shaull,CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Rescinding environmental justice initiatives
Trump signed a single executive order undoing nearly 80 Biden administration initiatives, including rescinding a directive to federal agencies to incorporate environmental justice into their missions. The Biden-era policy protected communities overburdened by pollution and directed agencies to work more closely with them.
That move was part of a broader push that Trump described as an attempt to create a โcolor-blind societyโ by stopping the government from โtrying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.โ Klein said the objective was โembarrassing.โ Kammen said it was a โhuge mistakeโ to move away from environmental justice priorities.
Cheyenne Ridge, located between Burlington and Cheyenne Wells, near the Kansas border, is one of many wind projects on Coloradoโs eastern plains. Soon, new transmission will enable far more wind and solar projects. Photos/Allen Best Photo credit: Allen Best/The Mountain Town News
Blocking new wind energy
Trump officially barred new offshore wind leases and will review federal permitting of wind projects, making good on a promise to โend leasing to massive wind farms that degrade our natural landscapes and fail to serve American energy consumers.โ The move is likely to be met with resistance from members of his own party. The top four states for wind generation โ Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Kansas โ are solidly red, and unlikely to acquiesce. Even Trumpโs pick for Interior secretary, Doug Burgum, refused to disavow wind power during a hearing last week, saying he would pursue an โall of the aboveโ energy strategy.
Many state and local policymakers, including the members of America Is All In, a climate coalition made up of government leaders and businesses from all 50 states, pledged to take up the mantle of climate action in the absence of federal leadership.
โRegardless of the federal governmentโs actions, mayors are not backing down on our commitment to the Paris Agreement,โ said Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, in a statement. โOur constituents are looking to us to meet the moment and deliver meaningful solutions.โ
For the first time, researchers have used more detailed criteriaโlike water depth and temperatureโto get a more accurate idea of how many floating solar panels some U.S. reservoirs could hold. Even in their most conservative estimates, the country’s reservoirs offer huge potential for future development and could host projects with capacities of up to 77,000 megawatts. Floating solar array via the Colorado Times Recorder.
Click the link to read the release on the NREL website:
For the study, Evan Rosenlieb and Marie Rivers, geospatial scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), as well as Aaron Levine, a senior legal and regulatory analyst at NREL, quantified for the first time exactly how much energy could be generated from floating solar panel projects installed on federally owned or regulated reservoirs. (Developers can find specific details for each reservoir on the website AquaPV.)
And the potential is surprisingly large: Reservoirs could host enough floating solar panels to generate up to 1,476 terawatt hours, or enough energy to power approximately 100 million homes a year.
โThatโs a technical potential,โ Rosenlieb said, meaning the maximum amount of energy that could be generated if each reservoir held as many floating solar panels as possible. โWe know weโre not going to be able to develop all of this. But even if you could develop 10% of what we identified, that would go a long way.โ
Levine and Rosenlieb have yet to consider how human and wildlife activities might impact floating solar energy development on specific reservoirs. But they plan to address this limitation in future work.
This study provides far more accurate data on floating solar powerโs potential in the United States. And that accuracy could help developers more easily plan projects on U.S. reservoirs and help researchers better assess how these technologies fit into the countryโs broader energy goals.
Floating solar panels, also known as floating PV, come with many benefits: Not only do these buoyed power plants generate electricity, but they do so without competing for limited land. They also shade and cool bodies of water, which helps prevent evaporation and conserves valuable water supplies.
โBut we havenโt seen any large-scale installations, like at a large reservoir,โ Levine said. โIn the United States, we don’t have a single project over 10 megawatts.โ
Previous studies have tried to quantify how much energy the country could generate from floating solar panels. But Levine and Rosenlieb are the first to consider which water sources have the right conditions to support these kinds of power plants.
In some reservoirs, for example, shipping traffic causes wakes that could damage the mooring lines or impact the float infrastructure. Others get too cold, are too shallow, or have sloping bottoms that are too steep to secure solar panels in place.
And yet, some hydropower reservoirs could be ideal locations for floating solar power plants. A hybrid energy system that relies on both solar energy and hydropower could provide more reliable and resilient energy to the power grid. If, for example, a drought depletes a hydropower facilityโs reservoir, solar panels could generate energy while the facility pauses to allow the water to replenish.
And, to build new pumped storage hydropower projectsโwhich pump water from one reservoir to another at a higher elevation to store and generate energy as neededโsome developers create entirely new bodies of water. These new reservoirs are disconnected from naturally flowing rivers, and no human or animal depends on them for recreation, habitat, or food (at least not yet).
In the future, the researchers plan to review which locations are close to transmission lines or electricity demand, how much development might cost at specific sites, whether a site should be avoided to protect the local environment, and how developers can navigate state and federal regulations. The team would also like to evaluate even more potential locations, including other, smaller reservoirs, estuaries, and even ocean sites.
The research was funded by the Solar Energy Technologies Office and the Water Power Technologies Office in DOEโs Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).
Access the study to learn more about the immense potential for floating solar plants in the United States, or visit AquaPV to dig into the data on specific reservoirs.
NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy’s primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for DOE by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy LLC.
QTS Data Center Aurora June 2024. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
January 2, 2025
Gov. Polis and many utilities say that data centers can benefit just about everybody in Colorado. But others fear impacts to rates and potential setbacks in reduction of emissions.
Under the umbrella of the energy transition were dozens of interesting, important stories in Colorado duringย 2024, including:
Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association got the lifeline it so desperately needed toย make the transition from coal in the form of $679 million in assistance from the federal government.ย Sen. Michael Bennet โ a key partner in the Inflation Reduction Act sausage-makingย in D.C. in 2022 โย was there to commemorate it. And United Power, itself independent of Tri-State on May 1, is getting $261.6 million.
Pueblo talked a lot about nuclear โ and inexplicably began cleavingย itself from the renewable energy that had been very nearly the soleย bright spot of its economy in recent years.
Holy Cross Energy achieved 90% renewable generation for a month this fall.
United Power broke ground on a natural gas plant, and Platte River Power Authority and everybody else laid plans similar plans for natural gas.
Seeds were planted for geothermal to become a viable part of Coloradoโs energy story in Vail, Steamboat and easily a dozen other places across Colorado.
Important stories โ these and many others in this energy transition. But easily surpassing them was the story of data centers and their voracious hunger for energy. Could their looming demand derail Coloradoโs decarbonization plans? Defenders say no, but they are not convincing. And will interests of ratepayers be protected?
Figuring out the public policy to balance public interests and private gain will be a major issue in the 2025 legislative session.
Three years ago, few people outside of Virginiaโs data center alley were talking about data centers. In 2019, there was a half- or less-baked idea of a cryptocurrency mill in Pueblo. Later came a crypto outfit near Montrose.
The era of hyperscale data centers โ hyperscale is often defined as having โmassiveโ power needs โ arrived in early 2022 when Microsoft purchased a 260-acre parcel in Aurora, south of DIA, for $63.5 million.
In February 2023, Mile High CRE, an online news site about commercial development, described the purchase as the first in metropolitan Denver for a hyperscale data center.
โDenver has an edge over more established markets like Silicon Valley or Northern Virginia in that cost of power, cost of land, and cost of construction are lower, environmental risks are not as high, and the central location grants access to a plethora of networks,โ it said. What Colorado lacked, the article added, was a competitive incentive package.
In February 2024, State Sen. Kevin Priola introduced a bill that would have extended more tax breaks to data center developers. Big Pivots did write about that in a column that got broad play across Colorado. See: โWhy do data center need tax breaks in Colorado? Theyโre coming anyway.โ A few weeks later came news that the data center subsidy bill was postponed. It never got one committee hearing.
Colorado already has one hyperscale data center. Itโs in Aurora, and Mark Jaffee of the Colorado Sun broke the story about QTS in October 2023. (Big Pivots was too busy on a series about water and urban landscapes to chase it).
Two guest columnists in Big Pivots weighed in on the value of data centers. Morey Wolfson, a one-time staffer at the Colorado Energy Office and at the PUC, in September argued against subsidies. Jeff Ackermann, a former chair of the PUC as well as director of the state energy office, in October argued that data centers can have upsides. Meanwhile, the Economist, the New York Times and the Washington Post began writing frequently about data centers โ including this story from last week: โEnergy hungry AI firms bet on these moonshot technologies.โ
Xcel Energy in October delivered the statistics that made this a compelling Colorado story. The electrical utility, responsible for more than half of electrical sales in Colorado, said it needed a staggering 12,500 to 14,000 megawatts of new generation to meet rising demand. To put that into perspective, Rush Creek, Xcelโs wind farm between Limon and Colorado Springs, has a capacity of 600 megawatts.
After average annual growth of 0.7% during the preceding five years, said Xcel, it projected 4% growth compounded annually from 2023 to 2031.
Data centers lie at the center of this projected growth, 62% for energy growth overall and 72% for peak demand, according to Xcelโs Jack Ihle. In an Oct. 15 filing with Colorado regulators, he also said the same base-case forecast saw electric vehicles producing 19% and building electrification 12% of its new demand.
Even without this new demand, Xcel has had trouble getting renewable energy across the finish line. These are projects approved through the electric resource plan from 2021. Supply chain issues have something to do with that.
How will Xcel be able to meet burgeoning demand? And does this imperil Coloradoโs drive to meet its 2030 goal of 50% economy wide reduction in emissions? The stateโs existing modeling already showed the state falling short, and that was without the data centers becoming a major part of the equation. Now comes speculation โ and, at this point it is merely that, speculation โ that Xcel may find it necessary to keep Comanche 3, its newest and largest coal-fired unit, operating beyond 2030.
That speculation is not completely out of the blue. That is indeed what has happened in Virginia.
Here, I have described Xcel Energy. But data centers could be part of the stories of Tri-State and its members as well as Platte River Power Authority, Black Hills Energy and perhaps others. Even Fort Morgan โ a town of 12,000 northeast of Denver, which is supplied by electricity by the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska. A Wyoming company, Prometheus Energy, says it intends to create a data center there as well as in Pueblo in 2026, according to one report.
Chris Hansen, one of Coloradoโs most important state legislators in the energy transition, told Big Pivots in November that one of his larger disappointments in leaving the Legislature to manage La Plata Electric was that he wouldnโt be able to advance legislation to address the data center issue and help Colorado avoid the problems of Virginia. Hansen has handed the work off to State Rep. Kyle Brown, a Democrat from Louisville. Brown has a background in health care, and he will never have the adroit voice of a Chris Hansen or a Steve Fenberg, but he has demonstrated in his two years that he is a capable, solid legislator.
Yesterday, Gov. Jared Polis was in my neighborhood, and I got in a few minutes to talk with him about passenger rail and data centers. I asked him explicitly whether the growth in demand from data centers would imperil Coloradoโs goal of achieving 50% economy wide decarbonization.
No, he said. Done right, growth in data centers can be a win-win for consumers and the utilities.
โData centers are a broad category of electricity users, but I would say in the right time, in the right place, data centers can play a very important role in improving the reliability and sustainability of the grid, just like if theyโre in the wrong place at the wrong time, they can add transmission costs,โ he replied. โItโs really about what, when and where, and how that factors into grid resiliency as we move towards clean energy.โ
I persisted with a question about the need for legislation. He did not answer directly:
โIf thereโs a way to bring in more data centers working with some of the larger providers in areas that make sense, that help us reduce costs for Colorado consumers and improve grid resiliency, then we should explore those.โ
I suspect Xcel would be happy with his phrasing. However, we are already seeing upward price pressures in renewables because of supply chain and other issues. If that upward migration coupled with rapid growth in demand produces sharply higher consumer costs, there could be strong pushback. That could delay Coloradoโs progress toward its decarbonization goals. The debate in the PUC proceedings about Xcelโs just transition electric-resource plan in coming months should be lively. That applies, too, to the debates in the Colorado Legislature.
Thereโs lots of good journalism to be had here for Big Pivots going into 2025. Itโs one of many good stories across Colorado deserving deeper dives.
Xcel was reluctant to go forward with its first major wind farm, completed in 2004, but now has much wind โ and will add far more in the next few yeas. Photo near Cheyenne Wells, Allen Best
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
January 2, 2024
Jimmy Carter had an underappreciated role in Coloradoโs story. It started in May 1978 when he announced that the Solar Energy Research Institute in Golden would get $100 million in federal funding.
โNobody can embargo sunlight,โ Carter said. โNo cartel controls the sun. Its energy will not run out. It will not pollute the air; it will not poison our waters. Itโs free from stench and smog. The sunโs power needs only to be collected, stored and used.โ
It was a rare umbrella day in Golden. Carterโs timing for his proclaimed โSun Dayโ was off. But he was on the mark about solar energy in ways that we have yet to fully appreciate.
Carter had advanced schooling in nuclear energy, but by 1975 he was thinking about renewables. He invited Ron Larson, an electrical engineering professor from Georgia Tech, to share lunch and talk about renewable energy.
โAt that time there wasnโt much to photovoltaics,โ says Larson. โIt was over $100 a watt. Now itโs less than $1 a watt.โ
Larson moved to Colorado in 1977 to work as SERIโs first principal scientist and stayed in multiple roles in helping pivot our energy use. Since then, thousands have followed.
One component of SERIโs mission to advance use of solar energy was outreach to 300 builders and architects in Colorado to help them learn how to construct houses with lessened need for fossil fuels.
John Avenson, an engineer with AT&T/Bell Labs, was among the beneficiaries. The house in Westminster that he built in 1981 faces south and has large windows coupled with effective shades.
On Facebook the day after Carterโs death, Avenson rued the widespread failure to acknowledge Carterโs early thinking. โEvery house built since then should have been this good or better but the program was cancelled by (President Ronald) Reagan,โ he wrote.
Avensonโs house near Standley Lake Reservoir was built with a natural gas furnace. He rarely used it, his gas bills never surpassing $180 for a full year. After tweaking and new technology, he was finally satisfied the house would do fine at 20 below without the furnace. In 2016 he had Xcel Energy stub the gas line.
When I visited him on New Yearโs Eve, he was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. โIโm an Arizona kind of person,โ he said. He keeps the house at 72 to 78 degrees. It will be featured on a Jan. 25 broadcast on PBS.
I asked Avenson about Carterโs death. โOh, so sad,โ he replied. โHe influenced my life and didnโt know it.โ
Steve Andrews was also influenced by Carter. A veteran of the Vietnam War, he had used the GI Bill of Rights to take college classes in basic engineering. That led to an internship and then a job at SERI. He wrote the guidebook for the 1981 Denver Homebuilders annual Parade of Homes featuring a dozen passive-solar homes across the Denver metro area.
Then, Andrews got laid off. As president, Reagan had no real use for renewable energy. He famously removed the 32 solar panels that Carter had placed atop the White House. He also halved SERIโs budget. Andrews, a recent hire, was among the first to go. The mission of SERI was also narrowed, pushing outreach to the back burner. The director, Denis Hayes, was fired after accusing his bosses at the U.S. Department of Energy of being โdull gray men in dull gray suits thinking dull gray thoughts.โ
Later, under a former oilman, President George H.W. Bush, SERI was resurrected as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. NREL has now expanded to a staff of 3,675 employees and broadened its influence.
Can it be mere coincidence that Colorado, in 2004, had the nationโs first voter-initiated renewable energy portfolio standard? Or that Colorado in recent years has adopted a dozen or more first-in-nation policies and regulations designed to curb greenhouse emissions? We might be guilty of parochial pride, but there can be no doubt that Colorado belongs in any national conversation about the pivot to a new energy economy, to use the title of former Gov. Bill Ritterโs center that is affiliated with Colorado State University.
Ironically, passive-house building has gotten little traction. The economics are unassailable, and the technology just isnโt that difficult. It does take basic site-planning. Andrews, in his post-SERI career, once calculated that 85% of houses in metro Denver face east or west. That results in unwanted summer heat, but little in winter, when it is wanted. Housing should face north and south.
Colorado has decades of work ahead in decarbonizing its buildings. We need to remember what Jimmy Carter understood nearly 50 years ago.
Welcome to theย Landline, a monthly newsletter fromย High Country Newsย about land, water, wildlife, climate and conservation in the Western United States.ย Sign upย to get it in your inbox. Screenshot from the High Country News website.
In mid-November, 10 days after 77 million of our fellow Americans chose Donald J. Trump to be their next president, I found myself at the old Navajo Bridge, which spans Marble Canyon and the Colorado River downstream from Lees Ferry in northern Arizona. I got out of my car, stretched and ambled toward the pedestrian bridge, which mirrors the newer one for automobiles.
As I reached the bridge, I noticed some onlookers looking intently downstream with binoculars. I followed their gaze to see a trio of giant, bald-headed, feathered creatures perched on the steel beams of the automobile bridge, looking a bit like the flying monkeys in the old Wizard of Oz film. They were California condors, maybe 10 in all, apparently waiting for an afternoon carrion snack to float by on the slow-moving emerald waters far below.
I wandered back and forth on the bridge for the next hour or so, stopping frequently to snap another photo, meditate vertiginously on the river and limestone cliffs or to gaze again in awe at the magnificent, uncanny creatures. Politics and the election results became irrelevant, at least for a moment, and it was with a newfound sense of serenity that I finally got back into the car and headed north.
Condors 6Y and 2A (Iโm sure they have their own, more interesting names, but โฆ) at the Navajo Bridge. According to condorspotter.com, 6Y is a male born in March 2019 at the Oregon Zoo. And 2A is a female hatched at the World Center for Birds of Prey in May 2021. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
My mental calm was quickly shattered, however, as news trickled out about Trumpโs Cabinet picks and plans. It is becoming increasingly clear that we are entering a perilous political era in which the federal governmentโs role is fundamentally altered. This includes a multi-pronged assault on our public lands and the rules, regulations, laws and agencies designed to protect them. Those condors on the Colorado River could be among the many victims.
Judging from the record of Trumpโs first term, his campaign platform, his Cabinet picks so far and Project 2025, the right wingโs โpresidential playbook,โ itโs clear that he will once again attempt to dismantle the administrative state โ and heโll likely be better at it this time. The destruction will include gutting federal agencies, replacing experienced staffers with Trump loyalists and eviscerating protections for human health and the environment. The goal is to shrink the government, slash spending on safety nets and social programs to fund more tax cuts for the wealthy, and (of course) remove regulatory barriers standing in the way of ever-growing corporate profits. With the likes of Elon Musk buying his way into the administration, it promises to be a government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, and for the billionaires.
Trump actually summed up this ethos better than I ever could in a social media post, when he vowed to give anyone who invested at least $1 billion โin the United States of America โฆ fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!โ He seemed to be responding to global mining corporation Rio Tinto, which is behind the proposed Resolution Copper Mine at Oak Flat in Arizona, urging the new administration to weaken environmental laws and expedite permitting for big mines.
During his first term, Trump made his hostility toward public lands clear as he reduced national monuments and rolled back regulations on fossil fuel extraction. This time, he promises a repeat performance, backed by a GOP-dominated Congress, a conservative-leaning Supreme Court and an army of professional ideologues who have been eagerly preparing for this moment for the last four years.
We can expect him to try to shrink or entirely rescind national monuments โ particularly Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante and the Baaj Nwaavjo Iโtah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon โ potentially reopening hundreds of thousands of acres of uranium-rich lands to new mining claims during a time when the domestic uranium industry is experiencing a revival.
He will likely reward petroleum companies for donating generously to his campaign by implementing his โdrill baby drillโ policies. Heโll open up more public land to oil and gas leasing, including in the Alaskan Arctic, and rescind drilling bans on Thompson Divide in western Colorado and around Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico. Heโll roll back new EPA rules aimed at reducing greenhouse gas and mercury pollution from coal power plants.
If Trumpโs hunger for โenergy dominanceโ and corporate freedom donโt come for your public lands, the โCult of Efficiencyโ probably will. Musk donated $277 million to Trumpโs campaign. In return, he has been chosen to co-chair the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, where he has vowed to slash some $2 trillion in allegedly โwastefulโ spending.
What this will actually mean remains unclear. But Trumpโs suggestion that he may try to privatize the U.S. Postal Service because itโs not โprofitableโ and must be โsubsidizedโ gives a good indication of what Muskโs quasi-department will be targeting. The USPS is designed to provide a public good, not a profit, and its priorities are fulfilling that mission, not maximizing efficiency. After all, how could delivering a letter to some remote rural backwater for some 50 cents ever be efficient?
And if the USPS is a problem, then what about public lands and the agencies that manage them? Sure, they provide ecological benefits, stewardship of and free access to millions of acres of stunning landscapes, wildlife habitat and so much more. And yet, they are โsubsidizedโ to the tune of tens of billions of dollars each year, making them ripe for Muskโs chopping block. Utah, with the support of other conservative states, has offered to make Muskโs job easier with a lawsuit seeking to seize control of the โunappropriatedโ federal land in its midst. Because those states canโt afford to manage those lands at a loss, they would almost certainly sell them off to private interests.
And what about those condors? For years, industry and conservative politicians have tried to weaken the Endangered Species Act because it stood in the way of development and profits. Project 2025 calls for an escalation of these efforts, which now have more support in Congress โ and from the efficiency cult.
The federal government has spent at least $35 million so far on the California condor program. Itโs an effort that has so far paid off by helping to bring the species back from the brink of extinction; the wild population is up to almost 600 from an 1980s low of just 22 birds. Public goods such as species restoration simply donโt fit into narrow Muskโs profit-focused vision. And the condor remains fragile, threatened by lead poisoning, power lines, wind turbines and avian influenza, and it is not yet self-sustaining.
In the weeks since the election, Iโve seen a number of pundits, politicians and even advocates calling on land, water and air defenders to take a more conciliatory approach, to forge alliances with oil and gas companies, to abandon calls to โkeep it in the ground,โ to work with Republicans to speed up permitting reform in order to expedite renewable energy development, even if it does mean more fossil fuel development as well. Yet if ever there was a timeย notย to give in, this is it. Americaโs public lands are under unprecedented attack from nearly every front. Now we need to be even more vigilant and fierce in our defense of it. [ed. emphasis mine]
Out on that bridge, something compelled me to hang my body a little too far over the rail so I could gaze straight through the empty space toward the river. My vertigo was overcome by the thrill of seeing, just below me on a steel girder, a juvenile condor, its pink beak jutting from a thatch of dark brown feathers. That, I thought, is certainly worth fighting for.
Condors perched on steel girders some 450 feet above the Colorado River. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Colorado Springs. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
December 19, 2024
Transmission line in southeast Colorado a cause for guarded optimism among utility leaders
Interstate highways have transformed Colorado and America altogether. People growing up in the 1950s rarely had fresh fruit or vegetables in winter. Now, broccoli beheaded yesterday in a field near Yuma, Ariz., can be on a store shelf in metro Denver within a day or two. Much of that journey will be on an interstate highway.
High-voltage transmission lines are our four-lane highways of electricity. They worked well enough when giant coal plants provided most of our electricity. Now, as Colorado and other states strive to replace fossil fuels with renewables, new connections must be built, to knit us together across broader areas.
A federal agency this week delivered cause for cautious optimism. The Department of Energy has picked three transmission corridors among 10 national candidates for advanced work. One of them, the Southwestern Grid Connector Corridor, would begin in southeast Colorado near Lamar, and work south into New Mexico and then somewhat west.
The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law authorized the secretary of energy to designate any geographic area as a national interest electric transmission corridor. The energy department has found that absence of transmission harms consumers. With more transmission, we can share low-cost renewable generation across broader areas. We need an electric grid larger than one weather system and covering more than one time zone.
The existing transmission network is akin to our highways of 50 to 60 years ago. We have transmission, but itโs as if Interstate 70 stopped at the state line. In fact, transmission lines do. Colorado is in the Western electrical grid of 10 states and some adjoining areas. This grid, however, is better understood as a collection of 34 different islands connected by narrow causeways.
โA cautious hurrah,โ said Mark Gabriel, the CEO of United Power when I asked his reaction. The Brighton-based electrical cooperative supplies 113,000 members from the foothills to Weld Countyโs oil and gas fields, including many new industrial centers along I-76.
โAnything that promotes additional transmission is a good thing,โ said Gabriel. โHowever, the challenge remains in actually getting something constructed in a reasonable period of time to make a difference.โ
Gabriel pointed out that more than $40 billion in transmission projects have been announced. โOnly a fraction are actually being built.โ
Permitting has been the bane of many transmission projects. For example, it took 18 years before the TransWest Express Transmission project that will ferry wind-generated electricity from southern Wyoming to Utah and West Coast markets finally broke ground in 2023. It nicks the corner of northwest Colorado.
A bill being negotiated in Congress would ease federal permitting requirements to allow more rapid creation of transmission lines. Other provisions of the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 would also benefit oil and gas extraction.
Tri-State Generation and Transmission, the wholesale provider for 17 of Coloradoโs 22 electrical cooperatives, pointed to the need for streamlined permitting in its reaction to the transmission line in southeastern Colorado.
Transmission doesnโt come cheap. And just as interstate highways have their unsavory aspects โ my companion and I can routinely hear I-70 roaring a mile away โ transmission lines have their downsides. Who wants one in their backyard?
Baca County has Coloradoโs best wind resource and it gets plenty of sunshine. Lacking has been transmission. Top photo transmission in Colroado Springs. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Some want to believe nuclear energy will solve all of our problems. The Pueblo City Council, while saying nice things about nuclear, intends to scrap a goal of 100% renewables by 2035. Maybe nuclear will be an answer, but recent projects have had eye-bulging costs. Natural gas has problems, too, as was evident in Winter Storm Uri of February 2021 when costs soared.
Chris Hansen, as a state legislator from Denver, sponsored key legislation to push transmission planning in Colorado. Now in Durango as CEO of La Plata Electric, he has started working on guiding his electrical cooperative to 97% emission-free electricity in the next decade. Transmission, he says, will be crucial.
Capacity of existing transmission lines can be expanded by reconductoring and other technology. But we altogether need to be better connected east and west, north and south.
One crucial question, says Hansen, is whether Denver-based Chris Wright, the choice of Donald Trump to be secretary of energy, will support continued transmission planning. His Colorado-based career has been in oil and gas. Wright sees renewables as a distant solution.
Southeastern Colorado brims with renewable energy potential. Baca County has Coloradoโs best wind, according to a 2017 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. It also has strong solar. Thatโs why corn grows so well there โ assuming it has water. The water of the Ogallala Aquifer wonโt last, but the solar and wind almost certainly will. What it lacks now is a farm-to-market transmission highway.
The Interior Department on Friday finalized its updated Western Solar Plan, potentially opening 31.7 million acres of federal public lands in the West to industrial solar energy development, including some 3.8 million acres in Wyoming.
The decision comes just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, and just hours before a potential federal government shutdown.
The Wyoming acreage considered suitable for solar energy represents about 20% of land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management in the state, according to the BLM. Suitable areas in Wyoming exclude sage grouse core areas and avoid ungulate migration corridors and unindustrialized areas, according to federal officials.
The plan updates an effort initiated in 2012, when the federal government under then-President Barack Obama envisioned industrial-scale solar would be concentrated in very high solar potential areas of the southwest. The updated version, however โ part of President Joe Bidenโs goals to expand renewable energy development to address climate change โ expanded the study area to include several more western states, including Wyoming.
This planning map depicts Bureau of Land Management managed areas in Wyoming that may be suitable and unsuitable for industrial-scale solar energy development. (U.S. Bureau of Land Management)
Both the Interior and BLM have insisted that although the plan identifies 31.7 million acres as suitable for development, only about 700,000 acres across the West are โanticipatedโ to be developed.
โThe larger available area allows for greater flexibility in considering solar proposals,โ according to the Interior, which stressed that each solar project will be analyzed individually and include opportunities for public input.
โWith an updated Western Solar Plan, created with extensive input from the public, the Department will ensure the responsible development of solar energy across the West for decades to come,โ outgoing Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a prepared statement.
Initial reactions
Conservation groups expressed tentative support for the finalized plan hours after the decision was published Friday in the Federal Register.
โThe Western Solar Plan will play a crucial role in securing our countryโs energy independence and security over the coming decade,โ Natural Resources Defense Council Senior Policy Advocate Josh Axelrod said in a prepared statement. โThis is a rare piece of policy that can drive job growth, boost rural economies and ensure conservation of fragile environmental resources.โ
The updated Western Solar Plan โrepresents a compromise that will allow Wyoming to continue to innovate and grow its energy economy while protecting our important conservation resources on BLM-managed public lands,โ The Nature Conservancy said in a prepared statement.
he conservancy published a study of the Western Solar Plan revision effort in 2023. โThereโs an abundance of low-impact spots for the development of solar energy in Wyoming โ more than enough to meet market demand,โ TNCโs Wyoming Energy Program Director Justin Loyka told WyoFile at the time.
But whether federal officials fully embraced input from conservation groups and others wasnโt clear during first-blush readings of the final plan on Friday.
โThe plan is just really haphazard,โ San Josรฉ State University Professor of Environmental Studies Dustin Mulvaney told WyoFile. โTo me, itโs a recipe for more litigation and more lawsuits and more people getting upset just because of the free-for-all-nature of it.โ
This map, provided by The Nature Conservancy, depicts areas where the group, during the Bureau of Land Managementโs planning process, noted potential impacts to big game migration corridors and crucial winter habitat. The agency largely addressed those concerns in its final plan, according to The Nature Conservancy. (The Nature Conservancy)
It was unclear, Mulvaney said, whether federal officials fully integrated many innovative strategies tested to avoid negative impacts in sensitive landscapes.
Although Interior officials attempted to correct course โ learning from mistakes in past sitings of solar energy development in the southwest โ the agency strayed into new, dangerous territory when it expanded its solar energy scope to other western states, according to Mulvaney.
For example, one criteria it used to essentially disqualify public lands from being off limits to solar development was the presence of invasive plant species such as cheatgrass. Not only does that overlook other landscape values like wildlife habitat connectivity, such invasive plant species typically spread by following other forms of development like wind farms.
โBecause of the presence of cheatgrass, it opens up a lot of those landscapes to solar development,โ Mulvaney said. โItโs not thinking about questions about, like, โWhere might we be interrupting migration corridors and [genetic connections]?โ All these things are connected.โ
Although the relationship between conservatism and solar energy has historically been contentious, some conservatives, like Weld County Commissioner Lori Saine (R-Dacono), see solar power as a key part of a โfree-marketโ energy economy โ as well as a step on the path to energy independence.
In early December, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization of state legislators that espouses free market principles and federalism, unanimously passed โThe Resolution in Support of Farming and Energy Productionโ at its States & Nation Policy Summit in Washington, D.C. Introduced by Saine, the resolution advocates for the permitting of community solar and agrivoltaics projects on farmland. Proponents of the measure hope it will spur consumer choice and energy options to help family farmers and increase domestic energy production.
Agrivoltiacs, or agrisolar, is the practice of using the same land you use for traditional agricultural practices for the production of solar energy.
โAmerican farmers and ranchers deserve to have choices about how they produce energy on their farmlands,โ Saine said in support of the resolution. โSmall-scale community solar and agrivoltaics can play an important part in our national energy future, providing opportunities for farmers and keeping farmland in production. We have seen firsthand in Colorado the positive impact these types of projects have in preserving our agricultural communities and I urge conservatives around the nation to embrace it.โ
China connected the world’s largest floating solar power plant in central Anhui province to its power grid in early June 2017. The solar farm will generate electricity for 15,000 homes. Photo via Science.HowStuffWorks.com
Weld County has already seen a push for improved solar capabilities. A project funded through the federal Department of Energy moved forward earlier in the year with plans in Fort Lupton to replace a diesel-powered generator that powers a water purification plant with a solar-powered one.
Saine admits that she is somewhat of an unlikely ally for the burgeoning solar industry, especially considering she received several zero scores from environmentalist groups when she was in the state Legislature. Saine said in an interview that she thinks some of the conservative opposition to solar and other forms of renewable energy was coming from partisanship.
โMy own journey on this began in 2021 when I had farmers approach me as a commissioner to tell me they needed more fairness when it comes to this type of energy production on farmland,โ Saine said. โI did face pushback from some of my constituents; the two main things I was hearing in opposition were, โOh, this is just going to be giving money to Joe Biden,โ and that some people just thought that solar panels were ugly.โ
Saine, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2022, worked to find a way to bridge that gap between the solar advocates and skeptics in her rural community. She sees solar as a way to meet the needs of Weld County.
โThis is really exciting as a burgeoning industry, just five years ago solar panels were effective at about 15%, now theyโre about 25%. We have really seen massive leaps in technology over the past few years, and weโre excited that Weld County can be a national leader on this front,โ said Saine.
The measure provides what advocates call an โactionable path forwardโ for counties and localities considering the adoption of community solar and agrivoltaics. According to the resolution, โSolar facilities on unproductive or nonproductive farm ground can provide passive income for farmers to weather adverse events or uncertainty,โ and โSolar production and agrivoltaics can also help young farmers afford to buy land for farming production.โ
Larry Ward, the president and CEO of Conservatives for a Clean Energy Future, was optimistic about the prospects of community solar being embraced by the conservative movement.
โConservative policymakers across the country are embracing community solar as an opportunity to prioritize economic development and increase consumer choice,โ Ward said. โWe are hopeful that this ALEC resolution will encourage more conservative lawmakers to explore how community solar can promote energy freedom and prosperity in their counties.โ
As it currently stands, 19 states and D.C. have policies in place that allow for third-party community solar development. Multiple state legislatures are advancing bills to enable these new programs, including Republican-sponsored legislation in states like Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, Missouri, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
Research from the Conservative Energy Network has found that 60% of Republicans and 65% of Independents support community solar. For conservatives, the growing support for community solar has to do with more competition and freedom in the energy market than for anything related to climate. Support typically comes for economic reasons. Conservative states are currently the largest producers of wind energy and often lie in what is called by those in the energy industry as the โwind beltโ in the Midwest. Conservatives in these states have seen a sizable return on investment in wind power, for both the state and local landowners, and have provided rural communities and agricultural centers with a reliable source of energy.
โConservatives should hold on to free market values. Nothing in this resolution prescribes who should operate the companies or how one gets financial incentives. Just energy choice,โ Saine concludes. โConservatives should hold on to free market values even when it isnโt popular, because principles donโt change.โ
Solar installation in the San Luis Valley. Photo credit: Western Resource Advocates
The White House and North Lawn during the Lincoln administration in the 1860s. Public Domain, Wikipedia
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
October 31, 2024
Colorado aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2030 and achieve net-zero by 2050. Would a second Donald Trump presidency frustrate those ambitions?
Not entirely. The energy transition train has already left the station. Colorado has become a national leader in transforming our energy systems, beginning with how we produce electricity. No president can stop that. The economics of renewable energy are too compelling. Coal has become the high-priced fuel, and even natural gas is being crowded out to the margins.
Beyond 2028 coal will almost entirely be gone. Electricity in Colorado will be upwards of 70% emissions-free. Some utilities will aim higher. Holy Cross Energy already surpasses 80% and hopes to surpass 90% sometime next year.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 has pledged more than $3 billion to Colorado electrical cooperatives to make the transition for their members in the stateโs four corners More money is likely , and more is likely coming. The stateโs 22 cooperatives together serve 20% of the stateโs residents but about 70% of its geographic area.
In July, Coloradoโs two senators were at the EPA headquarters near Denverโs Union Station to announce a $200 million grant for work in the nine-county Denver-Boulder metro area to begin retrofitting houses to use less natural gas. The state government got $129 million at the same time for various efforts to reduce methane and carbon dioxide emissions.
Might Trump try to kill this landmark law, the most important climate legislation yet enacted if he ends up in the White House? Heโs โgoing to claw back every penny he can claw back from the Inflation Reduction Act,โ U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper told me when I asked his view. โHe thinks climate change is a hoax.โ
Trump made that statement about a hoax when he was running for president in 2016. At times, he has softened his stance, but even recently he called climate change โone of the greatest scams of all times.โ More clearly, he has promised to dismantle the EPA and roll back regulations. He has solicited $1 billion in financial contributions from the oil and gas industry.
Whether Trump could succeed in curbing the renewable energy outlays is another matter. Remember, he vowed to bring back coal. He declared he would kill Obamacare. He almost succeeded with the latter but he makes no mention of it now. Itโs too popular in too many places, including red states. The Inflation Reduction Act might have the same trajectory. As in Colorado, much of the money awarded for the energy transition has been earmarked for red states.
Too, Trump would need Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate. Thatโs possible but unlikely.
Clearly, Colorado can go far on its own. It has among the nationโs best wind, solar, and hydroelectric resources. It has strong leadership and political cohesion. It has an educated workforce. It has innovators and entrepreneurs.
But Colorado can move even more rapidly and cost-effectively in this energy transition with aid and in concert with the federal government, says Tanuj Deora, a director of the state energy office in the Hickenlooper administration. That includes crafting trade policies that aid, not slow, the energy transition.
A major concern for the Colorado Solar and Storage Association is the cost of solar panels. The industry in Colorado is poised for a gigantic boom through the end of this decade as Xcel Energy, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, and other utilities prepare to close their coal plants.
Mike Kruger, the executive director, warns that tariffs that Trump has promised to impose on all Chinese imports will hammer the solar sector, which has 9,000 employees in Colorado. The United States does not have the domestic production capacity to meet domestic demand. The result will be huge price increases.
โYou would see massive hemorrhaging of solar jobs and solar companies going bankrupt. A tariff that produces a 70% rate hike on imported panels will result in total costs on solar installations going up 25% or more. I donโt know of any product that goes up 25% in price or more without massive impacts.โ
This has been the hottest year for the globe in recorded history. Colorado is far behind Phoenix, with its 113 consecutive days of 100-plus temperatures, but itโs warming rapidly. Grand Junction, for example, had an average temperature of more than 80 degrees this summer, an all-time high.
The full and necessary energy transition will happen. In question is whether it can occur as rapidly as climate scientists say it must. Colorado can provide a national example. It already has. But can move faster with teamwork.
Denver Waterโs sustainability operations include generating energy from solar power panels installed on the roof of its Administration Building, parking garage and over its visitorโs parking lot at its Operations Complex near downtown. Photo credit: Denver Water.
The Gila River Indian Community, alongside partners from the White House, Congress and the Bureau of Reclamation, celebrated the activation of the first power generated by the Western Hemisphereโs first-ever solar-over-canal project on Oct. 3, 2024. (Photos Courtesy of the Gila River Indian Community)
The Gila River Indian Community celebrated a historic milestone in its work to provide solutions for water conservation and renewable energy by activating the first-ever solar-over-canal project in the country.
โThe Gila River Indian Community is proud to be at the forefront of this groundbreaking solar-over-canal project, which not only generates renewable energy but also conserves our most precious resource โ water,โ Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis said in a written statement.
The project spans over 2,700 linear feet of the Casa Blanca Canal, which is located along Interstate 10 near Sacaton.
The tribe said the project represents a groundbreaking solution to the intertwined crises of energy, water and climate change, specifically addressing the unique needs of the Gila River Indian Community, the State of Arizona, the southwest region and the Colorado River Basin.
โThis project builds on the work of our ancestors, who found innovative ways to harness our water and natural resources throughout the generations,โ Lewis said.
The Gila River Indian Community held an event on Oct. 3 to commemorate activating the power of the solar project near Sacaton and hosted federal leadership: White House Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President Tom Perez, Bureau of Reclamation Deputy Commissioner David Palumbo and U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton.
The project is the first solar-over-canal initiative of its kind in the Western Hemisphere, according to the tribe, and it is setting a new standard for sustainable water and energy management.
โThe Gila River Indian Community, known for its long-standing leadership in water conservation and irrigation innovation, continues to pave the way for cutting-edge solutions to the challenges of the 21st century,โ the tribe stated.
The Casa-Blanca Canal Solar project is developed by the Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project a department of the Gila River Indian Community and funding support from the Bureau of Reclamation.
The $5.6 million for the project came from President Joe Bidenโs Investing in America Agenda. The tribe said the project was developed as part of the administrationโs broader strategy to promote innovative renewable energy solutions and water conservation technologies.
โThe Gila River Indian Community is a national leader in creating practical solutions to some of the most pressing environmental challenges we face today,โ Perez said in a statement.
โThis project serves as a model for communities across the country as the Administration continues to invest in America and work to build a sustainable, resilient future,โ he added.
The tribe highlighted how the solar-over-canal project offers numerous environmental and operational benefits, including generating clean and renewable energy, reducing water evaporation from the canal, reducing maintenance requirements for the canal infrastructure, and contributing to the tribeโs goal of a carbon-neutral energy footprint.
The Gila River Indian Community announced that two additional phases of the project are planned, with funding and design work already in progress. The next phase involves work covering a larger portion of the irrigation system.
โWater savings here on Gila River Indian Community Land means savings for the entire Colorado River System โ and in this drought, every acre-foot counts,โ U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton said in a statement. โThese projects show whatโs possible with strong partnerships between the federal government, states and Tribal leaders.โ
From warbler research to transmission line placement, Audubon staff worked on planning with birds and people in mind.
This year wind and solar generation in the U.S. surpassed coal for the first time, and solar is expected to supply most of the growth in electricity generation through 2025. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) continues to be a major catalyst for this momentum by providing substantial incentives that include tax credits for renewable energy and transmission projects. At the state and local level, clean energy goals and mandates, new jobs, and economic and community benefits are driving the growth of renewables.
Transitioning to clean energy is crucial for protecting hundreds of North American bird species from climate change, but infrastructure must be sited and operated with birds and people in mind. Audubon staff and chapters across the U.S. are working with planners, developers, and federal and state agencies to achieve this goal. Over the last 12 months, Audubon has been involved in the planning, permitting, siting, or operation of over 36 gigawatts of onshore and offshore wind and solar projects, as well as almost 45 gigawatts of transmission capacity. This conservation work includes providing recommendations on siting, permitting, monitoring, and research, grounded in Audubon’s extensive science and policy advocacy for birds and their habitats.
Here are some of this yearโs efforts across the network:
Transmission Lines in Minnesota
In May, Minnesota made a significant move by passing legislation to allowย transmission lines alongside highways, thanks to the efforts ofย Audubon Upper Mississippi Riverย and their work with the NextGen Highways coalition. Audubonโsย Birds and Transmissionย reportย shows that placing transmission lines on existing rights-of-way minimizes the overall transmission footprint, leaving more habitat intact and reducing the chance of collisions. This approach advances the clean energy transition while ensuring that Minnesotaโs birds and communities benefit from responsibly sited transmission.ย
Getting Build Ready for Clean Energy in Washington
Audubon Washington is working with local chapters Lower Columbia Basin Audubon Society, Vancouver Audubon Society, and others to accelerate the state’s transition to clean energy on several fronts. The Audubon Washington team is championing a new Build Ready Clean Energy Program and advocating for the creation of a Clean Energy Development Authority to help meet the stateโs clean electricity mandates. By joining forces with the NextGen Transmission coalition and actively participating in the Western Clean Energy Advocates (WCEA), Audubon is making its voice heard on key energy and transmission issues. Theyโve also weighed in on the stateโs environmental impact assessments for major transmission projects, utility-scale solar, and onshore wind. Audubon has also conducted in-depth spatial analyses, pinpointing areas in Eastern Washington as candidate sites for low-conflict solar development.
Monument Planning in California
Whileย Audubon Californiaย co-leads the effort to designate theย Chuckwalla National Monumentย in Californiaโs desert, Audubon has joined solar industry leaders and conservationists to secure monument status for this unique landscape while ensuring the designation would not impede solar development in designated areas outside the monument and existing and planned transmission development through the monument. By balancing conservation with clean energy needs, this collaborative effort aims to protect the Chuckwallaโs important habitat and natural beauty while paving the way for responsible development.
A Prothonotary Warbler is fitted with a tracker. Photo: Erik Johnson/Audubon Delta
Warbler Research in Louisiana, Kansas, Arkansas, and Ohio
In May and June, Audubon Delta and partners fitted over 50 Prothonotary Warblers with tiny trackers across Louisiana, Kansas, Arkansas, and Ohio. The multi-sensor geolocators will collect data on the flight behavior of these songbirds as they migrate across the Gulf of Mexico. The information gathered from returning birds will offer new insights into their use of airspace and their responses to inclement weather. This research will aid in assessing collision risks for offshore wind projects in the region and support improved planning and siting efforts.
Reasonably foreseeable development scenario solar area relative to total area of lands available for application. Credit: Bureau of Land Management
Solar Development in Western States
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) finalized in a plan for how utility-scale PV solar will be sited and permitted on 30 million acres of public lands across 11 states. In April, Audubon filed detailed comments on the Draft EIS that recommended improvements to BLMโs Solar PEIS, with a focus on avoiding and minimizing impacts to birds by prioritizing project development on degraded lands and close to transmission lines. Audubon also filed similar joint comments in a letter to BLM leadership in collaboration with four conservation organizations and five solar development companies. More than 2,900 Audubon supporters sent comments to the BLM in support of this approach. The Final EIS, released in August, improves on the initial draft, but further improvements are needed in plan implementation to streamline permitting for rapid deployment of solar energy on low conflict lands.
In February, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) made their incidental take permitting program under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Actย more efficientย in ways that support the buildout of wind energy while benefitting Bald and Golden Eagle conservation. As part of the permit program, clean energy developers will commit to conservation measures and monitoring at their wind project and transmission sites, and the FWS will set the maximum number of eagles and eagle nests that might be harmed by wind energy and transmission without prosecution under the federal law. Audubonย advocated for these improvementsย alongside conservation and industry partners to help advance wind energy development while protecting eagles.ย
The Offshore Wind panel during Climate Week NYC 2024. Photo: Darien Fiorino/Audubon
Offshore Wind Development
During Climate Week NYC, Audubon hosted a panel on the future of offshore wind in the United States. As of September, the U.S. has approved ten lease areas for offshore wind projects, representing more than 15 gigawatts of energy. Thatโs enough to power 5.25 million homes, and equivalent to half of the capacity needed to achieve the national goal of permitting 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. Audubon has been engaged on each project every step of the way, filing science-based comments that point to key areas that should be avoided for birds and sharing recommendations for research and operation. This is a collaborative effort with conservation partners as well as Audubonโs coasts and seabird experts and state coastal offices in the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and Pacific. In the Atlantic, Audubon has a seat on the Regional Wildlife Science Collaborative for Offshore Wind (RWSC), which released a new research plan in January and announced funding commitments from federal agencies and developers to implement the plan.
The Crossing Trails Wind Farm between Kit Carson and Seibert, about 150 miles east of Denver, has an installed capacity of 104 megawatts, which goes to Tri-State Generation and Transmission. Photo/Allen Best
President Joe Biden signs H.R. 5376, the โInflation Reduction Act of 2022โ, Tuesday, August 16, 2022, in the State Dining Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Cameron Smith)
President Joe Bidenโs signature climate change law passed Congress by the narrowest of margins, without a single Republican in favor. GOP leaders have attacked the bill and promised to repeal it.
Yet despite the lawโs hyper-partisan creation story, the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, could prove difficult to roll back, whatever the outcome of next monthโs election.
The IRA was the nationโs largest single investment in reducing climate-warming pollution, with an array of programs that are beginning to shower the economy with grants, loans and tax incentives. The total sum is expected to reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars over a decade, funding that will leverage much more in private investment. And by design, the money is flowing throughout the country, with most of it being spent in conservative-leaning states.
One report by E2, a pro-environment business group, identified at least 334 โclean energy and clean vehicleโ projects announced since the lawโs enactment, with the potential to create 110,000 jobs. Those projects were spread across 40 states, with nearly 60 percent in congressional districts represented by Republicans.
Another assessment, by the Rhodium Group, examined total โclean technologies and infrastructureโ investment by businesses and consumers in the two years after the billโs enactment, and found it had climbed to nearly $500 billion, a 71 percent increase from the two preceding years.
โThis is a huge investment. We are really seeing its impacts,โ said Jackie Wong, a senior advisor to the NRDC Action Fund, an environmental political advocacy group that has endorsed Kamala Harris. โThis isnโt just about climate. This is also about public health and about jobs and about revitalizing American manufacturing.โ
Trump and his advisers and spokespeople have said he would seek to roll back the lawโs spending, a step Wong said โwould be devastating for climate and economic health.โ
And yet all the spending that has begun going out helps explain why there might not be much appetite in Congress for a wholesale repeal. In August, 18 House Republicans sent a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson urging caution in any efforts to reform or repeal the law, noting that its tax credits for clean energy โhave spurred innovation, incentivized investment, and created good jobs in many parts of the countryโincluding many districts represented by members of our conference.โ
The lawโs designโwhich created, expanded or extended a wide array of tax credits for everything from wind and solar power generation to battery manufacturing, electric vehicles, clean hydrogen production and sustainable aviation fuelโhas made it broadly popular among businesses big and small. Now that those credits are in place, industry leaders expect them to last, said Frank Maisano, a senior principal at Bracewell LLP, a law and lobbying firm that represents clients across the energy industry.
โThey think this is not going away because of the good things it can do,โ Maisano said. He added that the bill included policies that have generally drawn bipartisan support, and that while it may get tweaked, โI donโt think Congress is going to go back on these things that are happening in their districts.โ
But if a full repeal is unlikely, many of the lawโs supporters worry that a second Trump administration or a Republican-controlled Congress could use executive authority, hearings or oversight to constrain or reshape spending in ways that would undermine the lawโs goals.
The tax credits, for example, require guidance issued by the Treasury Department to help define which projects are eligible. In the case of a clean hydrogen tax credit, a Trump administration could issue guidance that would skew the credit toward more polluting fossil fuel projects. For electric vehicles or wind and solar generation, new guidance could restrict how many vehicles or projects qualify for the credits or could simply cast uncertainty over the programsโ future, discouraging private investment.
Derek Sylvan, strategy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University, said the tax credits have the potential to drive tremendous emissions cuts with hundreds of billions of dollars in benefits. But many, like the hydrogen credit, have the potential to be skewed in favor of fossil fuels or other polluting technologies.
โThat could be really huge,โ Sylvan said. โYou could imagine that for any particular tax credit, if that changes and suddenly a lot of funds are going to activities that have pretty limited or even negative climate benefits, that could certainly undermine the climate impacts of the IRA.โ
A study published last year in Science estimated that the IRA is expected to slash the nationโs climate pollution 43 percent to 48 percent below 2005 levels by 2035, compared to an expected reduction of 27 percent to 35 percent without the legislation.
This graph shows the globally averaged monthly mean carbon dioxide abundance measured at the Global Monitoring Laboratoryโs global network of air sampling sites since 1980. Data are still preliminary, pending recalibrations of reference gases and other quality control checks. Credit: NOAA GML
Many of the IRAโs programs came in the form of grants, loans or direct spending that has already been committed. One of the largest is the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a $27 billion โgreen bankโ program. Most of that money was awarded in August to nonprofits, which will now be able to lend the funds directly to emissions-cutting projects or distribute them to a network of green banks around the country. Some of its programs are intended to benefit communities that have limited access to financing for things like rooftop solar or energy-efficiency retrofits.
Reed Hundt, chief executive of the Coalition for Green Capital, one of the recipients, said the fund differs from tax credits because his group can choose projects that will have outsized climate impacts. It is also looking to fund projects in rural and often conservative states that might be less likely to get commercial loans for renewable energy projects, Hundt said.
The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund money has been obligated, meaning it would take violating a contract to pull it back. But a hostile administration or Congress could use hearings, oversight or staff cuts to make it harder for the banks to spend the money, said Kyle Kammien, policy director of the Green For All program at Dream.org, an advocacy group focused on green jobs and criminal justice.
โIn some ways itโs safe, but you could see how political levers could make it less effective or slow it down,โ Kammien said.
For other programs, simply cutting staffing at agencies could make it harder to spend money thatโs already been obligated.
Still, the architects of the IRA designed it with elections in mind, said Kate Gordon, a former senior adviser to U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and now chief executive of California Forward, an economic development nonprofit. The billโs timelines, its broad distribution of funding across the economy and the country, were all meant to make it more popular and durable.
โIt brings a lot more people and places into the conversation versus your typical government policy that says, โWe are going to build a big thing,โโ Gordon said. She told the story of a visit she made to a summit in Wyoming organized by the stateโs governor and senators, neither of whom had voted for the IRA.
โThey didnโt vote for it for political reasons, Iโm sure, but they were 100 percent in in taking advantage of it,โ Gordon said. She compared the IRA to President Barack Obamaโs health care legislation, which was attacked for years but has remained in place.
โMy gut is that there will be a lot of talk about repealing things,โ she said, โand not a lot of action.โ
NREL has developed a tool that enables developers to evaluate the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions associated with new, domestic closed-loop pumped storage hydropower facilities.
In a 2023 study, NREL researchers compared the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of closed-loop PSH with other energy storage technologies, finding PSH to have the lowest life cycle emissions among the technologies studied. The black bars represent a range of scenarios explored in the study. Graphic by Tara Smith, NREL
Pumped storage hydropower (PSH) is an established technology that can provide grid-scale energy storage and support an electrical grid powered in part by variable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. Despite recent interest in PSH, questions remain regarding the overall sustainability of PSH projects, and information about the life cycle of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with PSH technologies has been limitedโuntil now.
In 2023, NREL researchers published a wide-ranging study that included a full life cycle assessment of new closed-loop PSH projects in development in the United States. The majority of GHG emissions from PSH are attributed to the grid mix of energy used to pump water from a facilityโs lower reservoir to its upper one, as this mix is not usually made of 100% carbon-free energy sources. As such, GHG emission levels decrease in locations with a higher level of renewable energy sources in the grid mix. Additional emissions stem from a plantโs construction (e.g., from diesel-powered equipment, concrete, or steel) and ongoing plant operations.
In the study, researchers compared their results to published data on the GHG emissions of other energy storage technologies, including compressed air energy storage and different battery types. The results showed that GHG emissions associated with PSH were lowest among the group studied.
JOAN CARSTENSEN
Interactive Data
The success of the study inspired the creation of an interactive tool on OpenEI that uses the study data to enable developers to calculate the GHG emissions of potential PSH sites in the United Statesโwith the goal of promoting PSH development with configurations and locations with the lowest global warming potential.
Users can input specifications for PSH facilities at varying levels of detail, such as reservoir volume, dam material and dimensions, number and capacity of turbines, and the length of the transmission line that connects the PSH system to the grid. They can then compare different PSH scenarios side by side and view the emissions by component, material, and life cycle phase.
Using the Tool
To use the tool, users first select between a Basic and an Advanced scenario, in which they can specify a site configuration and explore GHG outcomes. Basic mode offers a smaller set of options for a simpler user experience, whereas Advanced mode allows the user to submit detailed specifications for PSH system components (e.g., number of reservoirs being built, dam material, and distance to grid connection).
Multiple scenarios with different inputs can then be viewed side by side and subsequently edited with different inputs to produce the desired outcome.
Tool Methodology
The tool was built using the data and methods from the 2023 study, where researchers conducted a life cycle assessment of closed-loop PSH under a variety of assumptions. This data includes all GHG emissions from facility construction, operation, and maintenance and exclude any emissions that might occur during decommissioning or any reservoir-based emissions. We do not consider nonpower uses of the PSH site, which in practice could bear some responsibility for life cycle GHG emissions.
Although Vice President Kamala Harris touts clean energy and Donald Trump makes misleading assertionsand false claims about it, neither candidate has set forth a comprehensive energy plan. Even if they do, a gridlocked Congress would be unlikely to pass it.
Instead, the next presidentโs greatest influence on clean energy will come through their handling of legislation and regulations put in place since 2021 under the Biden-Harris administration. As an environmental engineer who studies energy and climate change, I expect that Harris, who has strongly supported these policies, would follow through on them, while Trumpโs record as president suggests that he would try to roll them back. Trade policies toward China, the leading producer of clean energy technologies, will also be key. https://www.youtube.com/embed/hoycdE1G0C0?wmode=transparent&start=0 Donald Trump and Kamala Harris discuss clean energy policy during their presidential campaign debate on Sept. 10, 2024.
Legislation and regulations
Three bills passed by Congress under Biden and Harris โ the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act โ have transformed U.S. energy policy. The three bills allocated hundreds of billions of dollars for building infrastructure, providing incentives for clean energy manufacturing and purchases, and funding clean energy research.
None of these measures is likely to be completely overturned, since each funds numerous projects in red states. But implementation by the next administration will determine how effectively they stimulate clean energy growth.
Denver Waterโs sustainability operations include generating energy from solar power panels installed on the roof of its Administration Building, parking garage and over its visitorโs parking lot at its Operations Complex near downtown. Photo credit: Denver Water.
Denver Waterโs mission is water, but efforts to cut energy use and carbon emissions have become more front and center over the last decade.
After all, climate change threatens water supplies, so water utilities need to do their part to reduce the fossil-fuel ingredients that are warming the atmosphere and jeopardizing snowfall and river flows.ย [ed. emphasis mine]
Already, Denver Water powers its main Administration Building with solar panels, harnesses the power of water to generate enough hydroelectricity to juice 6,000 homes and employs a system that uses water, not air, to heat and cool its headquarters, making it easier and cheaper to keep temperatures comfortable.
But itโs not stopping there.
Always on the lookout for new sustainability features, Denver Water last year set a goal to cut its energy use by one gigawatt-hour. Thatโs 1 million kilowatt-hours โ a ton of electricity (or, in some cases, the equivalent amount of fuel, like gasoline) โ enough to power 750,000 homes for one hour, or roughly 100 homes for a year.
And, in the last 12 months, the utility accomplished its goal.
Employees scoured the organization for low-hanging fruit, the relatively easy fixes that could be done at little or no cost or would provide a rapid payback by quickly cutting energy expenses.
It takes all kinds of passionate people to ensure a clean, safe water supply for 1.5 million people. Join the team at denverwater.org/Careers.
And it unleashed its in-house expertise, including personnel specializing in electrical, HVAC, plumbing, information technology, vehicle fleet, dams, reservoirs and the network of pipes that moves water through the city.
Teams pinpointed energy savings that could be snared by closing unused facilities that were still drawing power, replacing outdated boilers in the utilityโs Winter Park facilities, updating old lighting, reducing the idling of fleet trucks (which wastes gas and diesel) and adding its first batch of electric vehicles โ among other steps.
โThis was an energy treasure hunt,โ said Adam Hutchinson, an energy management specialist and part of Denver Waterโs Sustainability Team. โWeโve focused on energy efficiency for many years now, but we wanted to take another hard look across the organization for relatively quick and easy energy-saving opportunities.โ
Hunt they did, and Denver Water employees put their expertise to work to find savings large and small.
A new, more efficient boiler saves some 300,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. Photo credit: Denver Water.
Some of the finds were big, like taking out a problem boiler used to heat a key Denver Water facility in Winter Park, home to workers and a fleet of heavy equipment that helps keep things running in the high country.
The new equipment installed in Winter Park was more energy efficient, with an efficiency rating of 96% (compared to the old boilerโs 80% efficiency), and the switchover saved some 300,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year.
โWe installed a more efficient boiler that uses flue gas that would otherwise be expelled. The new equipment keeps it in the boiler to provide more heat,โ said Jeffrey Gulley, who leads the trade shop for Denver Water. โWe wanted to have efficiency and reliability with the frigid temperatures up there.โ
The utilityโs transmission and distribution employees determined that a few small, scattered facilities in the metro area could be closed and their functions consolidated. That amounted to cutting another 100,000 kilowatt-hours via reductions in heating, cooling and lighting.
Smaller changes also added up.
At Marston Treatment Plant in southwest Denver, an air bubbler keeps the water intake from freezing in winter months. Typically, the bubbler stays on constantly from November through May. But the simple addition of a temperature sensor means the bubbler can shut down when winter weather hits a warm stretch.
And boom! That simple sensor produced another 9,000 kilowatt-hours of savings โ enough to pay for itself in 18 months.
Installing a temperature sensor on a water intake at Marston Treatment Plant in southwest Denver produced additional energy savings. Photo credit: Denver Water.
All told, the gigawatt project fit cleanly into the second phase of Denver Waterโs Sustainability Plan, which includes a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2025 from a 2015 baseline.
And it chips away at a broader strategy: To drive down energy usage as low as possible, then get what power you still need through renewable energy.
โAll of this aligns with Denver Waterโs overall push to aggressively do our part to address climate change,โ said Kate Taft, the utilityโs sustainability manager. โOn the water planning side, we must adapt to the ongoing changes, but we can work on our operations side to reduce our own footprint. That is why we continue to move forward with change.โ
And continue it does. After reaching the 1-gigawatt (that is, 1 million kilowatt-hours) goal, ongoing work has found more savings.
Denver Water is now at 1.2 million kilowatt-hours in energy savings since setting the goal a bit over a year ago.
And all of this isnโt good news only for the environment. By cutting energy costs, Denver Water can also keep expenses down.
โWeโre driven on our sustainability goals,โ Hutchinson said. โAlong with that, weโre keeping in mind our customers and our rates.โ
In the two years since the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was passed, domestic capacity for producing solar modules has nearly quadrupled, according to the U.S. Solar Market Insight report released today by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie. Generous incentives in the Biden administrationโs landmark climate law have driven solar module manufacturing capacity to more thanย 31ย gigawatts. Thatโs aย stark change from Augustย 2021, one year before theย IRAย became law, when the country could produce justย 8.3ย gigawatts. The U.S.ย installedย 32.4ย gigawatts of solar inย 2023, aย figure expected to climb even higher this year, meaning the countryโs solar manufacturing capacity is now close to matching its pace of solar deployment. The massive expansion of home-grown solar manufacturing ensures that the U.S. is no longer dependent on the marketโs hyperdominant supplier, China, for its solar modules.ย โโModuleโ is the industry term for whatโs more commonly known as aย solar panel…
Most solar modules are constructed with photovoltaic cells based on polysilicon wafers. While the U.S. has roughly enough polysilicon capacity to meet its needs, it still has no operational facilities that can turn that raw material into the solar wafers and cells that do the physics magic act of transforming light intoย power. That could change early next year, when Hanwha Qcells starts manufacturing wafers and cells at its end-to-end factory in Cartersville, Georgia. In the meantime, China still makes most of the U.S.โs solar wafers…
Nevertheless, U.S. module capacity continues to expand faster than the rest of the domestic supply chain. Last quarter, production started up at aย newย Qcellsย factory in Georgia, aย Siriusย PV, facility in Georgia, and aย Meyer Burgerย pant in Arizona. Since theย IRAย was signed, the big names in Chinese module manufacturing, along with more thanย 30ย other companies, have announced plans to launch U.S. factories or grow their current capacity. The recent rush to produce solar panels in the U.S., spurred by theย IRAโs cleantech manufacturing incentives, stands as proof that the carrots approach of the climate law is far more effective than the dead-end sticks approach of imposingย tariffsย on Chinese goods taken by the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.
THE NEWS: Last week the Bureau of Land Management released the final environmental review of its Western Solar Plan, which guides utility-scale solar development on public lands. The proposed โroadmapโ is similar to the draft proposals and puts millions of acres off-limits to any future solar development, while making 31 million acres available for potential development โ subject to BLM approval on a project-by-project basis. The proposal has drawn mixed reactions from industry, conservation groups, and politicians.
THE CONTEXT: When the feds approve a big oil and gas drilling project or propose ending coal leasing, the response from various quarters is usually predictable. Not so with big solar and wind. So when a big plan like this comes out, I tend to check out the responses to it, often even before delving into the plan, itself.
Hereโs a sampling from across the spectrum:
The Solar Energy Industries Association, in a preparedย statement, tentatively celebrated the proposal, writing: โโฆ weโre pleased to see that BLM listened to much of the solar industryโs feedback and added 11 million acres to its original proposal. While this is a step in the right direction, fossil fuels have access to over 80 million acres of public land โฆโ Now, the group added, it would work to push the feds to streamline the permitting process for individual projects.ย
The Wilderness Society, a national environmental group, alsoย likes the plan, saying it focuses โsolar projects toward lands near transmission with fewer resource conflicts and away from protected landscapes, habitats, and other places where development is not appropriate.โ That, it said, will help in the fight to mitigate climate change.ย
The Center for Biological Diversity, which had pushed the agency to limit large-scale solar projects to previously disturbed lands near existing transmission lines, was decidedly less enthused. In aย statement, the group wrote: โThereโs room on public lands for thoughtfully sited solar energy projects. We donโt need to destroy tens of millions of acres of wildlife habitat to achieve our clean energy goals. This plan allows for death by a thousand cuts, where inappropriately sited industrial projects can proliferate across sensitive public lands throughout the West.โ
And desert-preservationist Chris Clarkeโs subhead on hisย Letters to the Desertย takeย says is it all: โI ordered a solar eclipse, not a solar apocalypse.โ He points out that Nevada will take the brunt of the plan, with โthe equivalent of 130 Las Vegases being offered upโ to solar developers. All of that land wonโt be developed โ it doesnโt need to be to generate all the power the nation needs. Which makes the plan, as Clarke puts it, โa recipe for solar sprawl, with 3,000-acre plots and 7,000-acre plots spread across the landscape.โ
And then thereโs U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican, who came out with aย scathing statementย in which, predictably, she rails about Democrats destroying the so-called western way of life: โThe Biden-Harris administration is hellbent on destroying the western way of life by closing off access to public lands for oil and gas drilling, grazing, recreation and industries our states rely on to stay afloat, all in the name of climate extremism.โย
Okay, I probably shouldnโt have included Lummisโ statement, simply because it is rather misinformed and might give readers the wrong idea. But itโs important to include because it brings up a common misperception about this plan. It is not opening up anย additionalย 31 million acres to development (nor is it closing any land to other uses). A lot of BLM land was already open to solar leasing and right of way applications under the 2012 plan; this proposal simply extends the plan to more states and tweaks the focus for the existing states. Under the โno actionโ alternative, i.e. the status quo, 59.5 million acres would be open to solar applications, nearly twice as much as under the proposed alternative.
Lummis can rest assured that few if any oil rigs will be blocked under this plan. The BLM was careful to exclude most oil and gas leasing areas from solar development and where it doesnโt, the agency will prioritize existing oil and gas leases over new solar development (though an existing solar right-of-way would block new oil and gas leases). Most of the San Juan Basin, big swaths of southwestern Wyoming, and virtually all of southeastern Utah, for example, are off-limits to solar, less because of cultural or environmental impacts than because those are major oil and gas producing areas.ย
I included this one because damn look at all that public land in grazing allotments! Also, the โno actionโ alternative would create far more solar-grazing overlap than the proposed plan that Lummis bashes. Source: BLM.
Itโs worth noting that about 80 million acres of federal land are available for oil and gas development, of which 23 million acres are currently under active lease. About 12 million of those acres are producing oil and gas. (In 2008, 47 million acres were under lease to oil and gas companies, with 14 million acres producing.)
By contrast, the solar industry under this plan will be allowed to apply for rights-of-way on some 31 million acres. Under the BLMโs reasonable foreseeable development scenario, about 700,000 of those acres would actually see solar panels before 2045. Thatโs an enormous amount of land, and itโs probably all thatโs needed to meet the regionโs demand for solar power โ but itโs only a small fraction of the available acreage.
The question then is this: If you only need less than 1 million acres, why open up all 31 million? It seems the answer is simply because thatโs what the solar industry wanted, probably because it gives them more flexibility. The problem with that, as Clarke pointed out, is that youโre likely to get a sprawling hodgepodge of massive solar installations scattered across the desert rather than all concentrated in a few places.
The mission of the solar plan was to reduce conflicts by guiding development to the most appropriate areas. Iโm sorry to say it hasnโt succeeded. By offering up so much land, the agency almost guarantees more conflict as conservation groups protest and sue over proposals in less-than-appropriate places.
The BLM would have been wiser to go with its Alternative 5, which would have limited development to previously disturbed areas within 10 miles of existing transmission lines (while still excluding development in critical habitat or other protected lands). Even that would have made 8.8 million acres available, giving developers plenty of flexibility for siting, while also giving them more clarity and reducing the chances their proposals will be tied up in litigation. Perhaps the agency could have offered this more restrictive approach to environmental groups in exchange for getting them on board to streamline permitting for these areas, thus further reducing conflict and uncertainty for industry.
Under the plan, proposed developments would continue to be subject to environmental reviews.
Thereโs still time to alter the plan. The BLMโs protest period is open until Sept. 29. You can weigh in here.
๐ Random Real Estate Room ๐ค
An odd one popped up on my solar energy news feed the other day, with the headline: โDoomsday-ready property north of Lake Tahoe to hit the market for $8 million.โ Not cheap, I thought, but a bargain if it will help me get through doomsday. It was featured on the Mansion Global website, the very existence of which makes me vomit a little each time I see it.
Itโs a massive home on 10 acres of forest, with a caretakerโs cottage that is nearly twice the size of my house. As for the Doomsday part, it has an artesian well, 72 solar panels, and four 1,000 gallon propane tanks (be careful with the matches yโall; that would be a doomsday fireball, indeed) โ though, apparently no bunker or arsenal (though maybe they wouldnโt let on about it until you actually purchase the place).
Itโs funny because right around the same time another story, this one in the New Yorker, popped up on my feed, entitled: โReal estate shopping for the apocalypse.โ Itโs a good read, both amusing and a little bit disturbing. But it led me to seek out some doomsday real estate of my own, perhaps in the less-than-$8-million price range. And where does a prepper go? SurvivalRealty.com, of course! Thereโs actually some cool properties on there, and even a few that arenโt ridiculously expensive. I was surprised, however, to find only one property in Utah: An old scheelite mine in Beaver County where โa couple thousand souls could hold out in a disaster scenario.โ Price? $995,000 โ or just $500 each for the couple thousand doomsday survivors!
Coal fired plant near Hayden with the Yampa River 2015. Photo credit: Ken Nuebecker
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
August 17, 2024
Will there be a water bonus as we close coal plants? In the short term, yes. Itโs harder to say in the long term. Hereโs why.
Use it or lose it. Thatโs a basic premise of Colorado water law. Those with water rights must put the water to beneficial use or risk losing the rights to somebody who can. Itโs fundamentally anti-speculative. But Colorado legislators this year created a major exception for two electric utilities that draw water from the Yampa River for coal-burning power plants. They did so through Senate Bill 24-197, which Gov. Jared Polis signed into law in Steamboat Springs in late May.
The two utilities, Xcel Energy and Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, plan to retire the five coal-burning units โ two at Hayden and three at Craig โ they operate in the Yampa River Basin by late 2028. These units represent Coloradoโs largest concentration of coal plants, 1,874 megawatts of generating capacity altogether. Thatโs 40% of Coloradoโs total coal-fired electrical generation. Together, they use some 19,000 acre-feet of water each year.
What will become of those water rights when the turbines cease to spin? And what will replace that power? The short answer is that the utilities donโt know. Thatโs the point of the legislation. It gives the utilities until 2050 to figure out their future.
While the legislation is unique to the Yampa Valley, questions of future water use echo across Colorado as its coal plants โ two units at Pueblo, one near Colorado Springs, one north of Fort Collins, and one at Brush โ all will close or be converted to natural gas by the end of 2030.
This story was originally published in the July 2024 issue of Headwaters Magazine. Photo above of the Hayden Generating Station and the Yampa River was taken by Ken Neubecker in spring 2015. All other photos by Allen Best unless otherwise noted.
Both Xcel and Tri-State expect that at least 70% of the electricity they deliver in 2030 will come from wind and solar. The final stretch to 100%? Thatโs the hard question facing utilities across Colorado โ and the nation and world.
Natural gas is expected to play a continued role as backup to the intermittency of renewables. Moving completely beyond fossil fuels? No one technology or even a suite of technologies has yet emerged as cost-effective. At least some of the technologies that Xcel and Tri-State are looking at involve water.
Fossil fuel plants use less than 1% of all of Coloradoโs water. Yet in a state with virtually no raw water resources left to develop, even relatively small uses have gained attention. Coloradoโs power future will have implications for its communities and their water, but how exactly that will look remains unknown.
Emissions Goals
The year 2019 was pivotal in Coloradoโs energy transition. State lawmakers adopted legislation that specified a 50% economy-wide reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and 100% by 2050. A decade before, that bill would have been laughed out of the Colorado Capitol. Even in 2019, some thought it unrealistic. But proponents had the votes, and a governor who had run on a platform of renewable energy.
Something approaching consensus had been achieved regarding the risks posed by climate change. Costs of renewables had plummeted during the prior decade, 70% for wind and 89% for solar, according to the 2019 report by Lazard, a financial analyst. Utilities had learned how to integrate high levels of renewables into their power supplies without imperiling reliability. Lithium-ion batteries that can store up to four hours of energy were also dropping in price.
Colorado lawmakers have adopted dozens of laws since 2019 intended to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Tied at the legislative hip to the targets adopted in 2019 were mandates to Coloradoโs two investor-owned electric utilities, Xcel Energy and Black Hills Energy. By 2030 they must reduce emissions by at least 80% compared to 2005 levels. Both aim to do even better.
Xcel, the largest electrical utility in Colorado, was already pivoting. In 2017, it received bids from wind and solar developers in response to an all-sources solicitation that caused jaws across the nation to drop. In December 2018 shortly after the election of Gov. Polis, Xcel officials gathered in Denver to boldly declare plans to reduce emissions by 80% by 2030. Platte River Power Authority, the provider for Fort Collins and three other cities in the northern Front Range, later that month adopted a highly conditioned 100% goal. In January 2020, Tri-State announced its plans to close coal plants and accelerate its shift to renewables โ it plans to reduce emissions by 89% by 2030. In December 2021, Holy Cross Energy, the electrical cooperative serving the Vail and Aspen areas, adopted a 100% goal for 2030. It expects to get to 91% by 2025.
Colorado Springs Utilities burned the last coal at the Martin Drake power plant along Fountain Creek in August 2022. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Coloradoโs emissions-reduction goals are economy wide, not just for power production. In practice, this means replacing technologies in transportation, buildings and other sectors that produce greenhouse gas emissions with low- or no-emissions energy sources. As coal plants have closed, transportation has become the highest-emitting sector. Colorado had 126,000 registered electric vehicles and hybrids as of June but hopes to have 940,000 registered by 2030. Buildings pose a greater challenge because most of us donโt replace houses the way we do cars or cell phones. Solutions vary, but many involve increased use of electricity instead of natural gas.
A final twist that has some bearing on water is Coloradoโs goal of a โjust transition.โ House Bill 19-1314 declared that coal-sector workers and communities were not to be cast aside. Efforts would be made to keep them economically and culturally whole.
Possible Water Dividends
The Cherokee Generating Station north of downtown Denver is now a natural gas-fired power plant.
Where does this leave water? Thatโs unclear and, as the 2024 legislation regarding the Yampa Valley spelled out, it is likely to remain unclear for some time. The law prohibits the Division 6 water judge โ for the Yampa, White and North Platte river basins โ from considering the decrease in use or nonuse of a water right owned by an electric utility in the Yampa Valley.
In other words, they can sit on these water rights through 2050 while they try to figure what technologies will emerge as cost competitive. Xcel Energy and Tri-State will not lose their water rights simply because theyโre not using them during this time as would, at least theoretically, be the case with other water users in Colorado.
Conversion of the Cherokee power plant north of downtown Denver from coal to natural gas provides one case study of how energy shifts can affect water resources. Xcel converted the plant to natural gas between 2010 and 2015. Its capacity is now 928 megawatts.
Richard Belt, a water resources consultant for Xcel, says that when Cherokee still burned coal, it used 7,000 to 8,000 acre-feet of water per year; since 2017, when natural gas replaced coal, it uses 3,000 to 3,500 acre-feet per year.
Does that saved water now flow downstream to farmers in northeastern Colorado?
โIf the wind is really blowing, there could be some water heading downstream on certain days,โ Belt answered. In other words, thereโs so much renewable energy in the grid that production from the gas plant at times is not needed. A more concrete way to look at this conversion, Belt says, is to step back and look at Xcelโs water use more broadly across its system. It also has the Rocky Mountain Energy Center, a 685-megawatt combined-cycle natural gas plant along Interstate 76 near Keenesburg that it bought in 2009 and began operating in 2012. With the plant came a water contract from Aurora Water.
Xcel has been renegotiating that contract, which it projects will be effective in early 2025. The new contract will allow Xcel to take water saved at Cherokee and instead use it at the Rocky Mountain Energy Center. That will allow it to use 2,000 acre-feet less of the water it has been leasing from Aurora each year. Belt says it will save Xcel customers around $1 million a year in water costs.
โAnother way to look at this dividend is that weโre going to hand [Aurora] two-thirds of this contract volume, around 2,000 acre-feet a year, and they can use that water within their system,โ Belt explains.
Other coal-burning power plants have also closed in recent years, with water dividends of their own. One small coal plant in southwestern Colorado at Nucla, operated by Tri-State, was closed in 2019. In 2022, Xcel shut down one of its three coal units at the Comanche Generating Station in Pueblo.
Colorado Springs Utilities stopped burning coal at its Martin Drake coal-fired plant in 2021, which is located near the cityโs center, and replaced it with natural gas. It used some 2,000 acre-feet of water per year in the early 2000s, and was down to only 14 acre-feet per year in 2023. Colorado Springs Utilities โ a provider of both electricity and water โ delivers 70,000 to 75,000 acre-feet of water annually to its customers. Whatever water savings were achieved in that transition will be folded into the broader operations. The cityโs remaining coal plant, Ray Nixon, burns both coal and natural gas. The city delivers about 2,000 acre-feet per year to Nixon to augment groundwater use there.
The 280-megawatt Rawhide coal-fired power plant north of Fort Collins is to be shut down by 2030. Platte River Power Authority, which owns and operates the plant, had not yet chosen a replacement power source as of June 2024. Platte River delivers electricity to Estes Park, Fort Collins, Longmont and Loveland.
The Cherokee plant along the South Platte River north of downtown Denver uses significantly less water since tis conversion from coal to natural gas. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
That leaves just the 505-megawatt Pawnee among Coloradoโs existing coal plants. The plant near Brush is to be retrofitted to burn natural gas by 2026. The water dividend? Xcel is trying to keep its options open.
The one commonality among all the possible power-generating technologies that Xcel may use to achieve its goal of emissions-free energy by 2050 is that, with the exception of some battery technologies, they all require water, says Belt. And that, he says, means it would be unwise to relinquish water without first making decisions about the future.
Thatโs why this yearโs bill was needed. Coloradoโs two biggest electrical providers, Xcel and Tri-State, both with coal plants retiring in the Yampa Valley, have questions unanswered.
The Future of Energy
Strontia Springs Dam and Reservoir, located on the South Platte River within Waterton Canyon. It is ranked #32 out of 45 hydroelectric power plants in Colorado in terms of total annual net electricity generation. Photo by Milehightraveler/iStock
What comes next? Obviously, lots more wind and solar. Lots. The graph of projected solar power in Colorado through this decade looks like the Great Plains rising up to Longs Peak. Construction of Xcelโs Colorado Power Pathway, a 450-mile transmission line looping around the Eastern Plains, will expedite renewables coming online. Tri-State is also constructing new transmission lines in eastern Colorado. The plains landscape, San Luis Valley, and other locations could look very different by the end of the decade.
Very little water is needed for renewables, at least once the towers and panels are put into place.
You may well point out that the sun goes down, and the wind doesnโt always blow. Storage is one holy grail in this energy transition. Lithium-ion batteries can store energy for four hours. That works very effectively until it doesnโt. Needed are new cost-effective technologies or far more application of known technologies.
One possible storage method, called iron-rust, will likely be tested at Pueblo in 2025 by a collaboration between Xcel and Form Energy, a company that proclaims it will transform the grid. It could provide 100 hours of storage. Tri-Stateโs electric resource plan identifies the same technology.
Granby Dam was retrofitted at a cost of $5.1 million to produce hydroelectricity effective May 2016. It produces enough electricity for about 570 homes. Photo/Northern Water
Other potential storage technologies involve water. Pumped-storage hydropower is an old and proven technology. It requires vertical differences in elevation, and Colorado has that. In practice, finding the right spots for the two reservoirs, higher and lower, is difficult.
Xcel Energyโs Cabin Creek project between Georgetown and Guanella Pass began electrical production in 1967. In this closed-loop system, water from the higher reservoir is released through a three-quarter-mile tunnel to the second reservoir 1,192 feet lower in elevation. This generates a maximum 324 megawatts to help meet peak demands or to provide power when itโs dark or the wind stops blowing. When electricity is more freely available, the water can be pumped back to the higher reservoir. Very little water is lost.
Near Leadville, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has a pumped-storage hydropower project at Twin Lakes, the Mt. Elbert Power Plant, with a more modest elevation difference. The plant can generate up to 200 megawatts of electricity.
Graphic credit: Joan Carstensen
A private developer with something similar in mind has reported reaching agreements with private landowners along the Yampa River between Hayden and Craig. With private landowners, the approval process would be far easier than if this were located on federal lands. Cost is estimated at $1.5 billion.
Belt points out that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has streamlined the permitting process for pumped-storage hydro but that technology remains expensive and projects will take probably 10 to 12 years to develop if everything goes well.
โDuring that 10 to 12 years, does something new come along? And if youโre committed to pumped storage, then you canโt pivot to this new thing without a financial impact,โ he says, explaining a hesitancy around pumped storage.
Green hydrogen is another leading candidate in the Yampa Valley and elsewhere. It uses electrolysis to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water. Renewable energy can be used to fuel the electrolysis. Thatโs why it is called green hydrogen as distinct from blue hydrogen, which uses natural gas as a catalyst. A news story in 2023 called it a โdistant proposition.โ Costs remain high but are falling. Tax incentives seek to spur that innovation.
Gov. Polisโ administration remains optimistic about hydrogen. It participated in a proposal for federal funding that would have created underground hydrogen storage near Brush. That proposal was rejected, but Will Toor, the chief executive of the Colorado Energy Office, has made it clear that green hydrogen and other emerging technologies remain on the table. Xcel says the same thing. โItโs not something we are going to give up on quite yet,โ says Belt. The water savings from the conversion of coal to natural gas could possibly play into those plans.
Gov. Jared Polis stopped by the Good Vibes River Gear in Craig in March 2020 prior to attending a just transition workshop. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Polis is bullish on geothermal, both kinds. The easier geothermal uses the relatively constant 55 degree temperatures found 8 to 10 feet below ground to heat and cool buildings. The Colorado Capitol has geothermal heating, but the most famous example is Colorado Mesa University, where geothermal heats and cools about 80% of the campus. This technology may come on strong in Colorado, especially in new construction.
Can heat found at greater depths, say 10,000 feet or from particularly hot spots near the surface, be mined to produce electricity? California generates 10.1% from enhanced geothermal, Nevada 5.1%, and Utah 1.5%. Colorado generates zero. At a June conference, Polis said he thought geothermal could produce 4% to even 8% of the stateโs electricity by 2040. Geothermal for electric production would require modest water resources.
Nuclear? Those plants, like coal, require water. Many smart people believe it may be the only way that civilization can reduce emissions as rapidly as climate scientists say is necessary to avoid catastrophic repercussions. Others see it as a way to accomplish just transition as coal plants retire.
Costs of traditional nuclear remain daunting. Critics point to projects in other states. In Georgia, for example, a pair of reactors called Vogtle have been completed but seven years late and at a cost of $35 billion, more than double the projectโs initially estimated $14 billion price tag. The two reactors have a combined generating capacity of 2,430 megawatts.
New reactor designs may lower costs. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2023 certified design of a small-modular reactor by NuScale. It was heralded as a breakthrough, but NuScale cancelled a contract later that year for a plant in Idaho, citing escalating costs.
With a sodium fast reactor, integrated energy storage and flexible power production, the Natrium technology offers carbon-free energy at a competitive cost and is ready to integrate seamlessly into electric grids with high levels of renewables. Graphic credit: http://NatriumPower.com
Greater optimism has buoyed plans in Wyoming by the Bill Gates-backed TerraPower for a 345-megawatt nuclear plant near the site of a coal plant at Kemmerer. It has several innovations, including molten salt for energy storage and a design that allows more flexible generation, creating a better fit with renewables. Ground was broken in June for one building. An application for the design is pending with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Gates has invested $1 billion and expects to invest many billions more in what he estimates will be a $10 billion final cost. He also hopes to see about 100 similar plants and reduced costs. Other companies with still other designs and ideas say they can also reduce costs. All these lower-cost nuclear solutions exist in models, not on the ground. Uranium supply remains problematic, at least for now, but more difficult yet is the question of radioactive waste disposal.
Into The Future
The potential for nuclear is balled up in the issue of just transition. Legislators in 2019 said that coal communities would not be left on their own to figure out their futures. What this means in practice remains fuzzy.
Consider Pueblo. Xcel Energy on August 1 is scheduled to submit to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission what is being called the Pueblo Just Transition Electric Resource Plan. Through that plan, Xcel must determine to what extent it can, through new generating sources, leave Pueblo economically whole after it closes the coal plants. Existing jobs will be lost, although others in post-closure remediation of the site will be gained. What, then, constitutes a just transition for Pueblo?
What will Xcel propose in October for Pueblo as it makes plans for the retired of the last of the Comanche coal-burning units in 2030? Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
A task force assembled by Xcel Energy in January delivered its conclusions after nearly a year of study: โOf all of the technologies that we studied, only advanced nuclear generation will make Pueblo whole and also provide a path to prosperity,โ concluded the task force. They advised that a natural gas plant with carbon capture would be a distinctly secondary choice.
What will happen with the water in Pueblo? Xcel Energy has a take-or-pay water contract with Pueblo Water for 12,783 acre-feet per year for the Comanche Generating Station. It must pay for the water even if it does not take it. Pueblo Water has a similar take-or-pay contract for 1,000 acre-feet annually for the 440-megawatt natural gas plant operated by Black Hills Energy near the Pueblo airport.
The draw of these water leases from the Arkansas River isnโt that notable, says Chris Woodka, president of the Pueblo Water board, even in what he describes as a โsmall year,โ with low flows in the river. These water leases constitute some 5% or less of the riverโs water, Woodka says. Xcel could tap that same lease for whatever it plans at Pueblo. And if it has no use? โWe havenโt had many conversations around what we would do if that lease goes away, because it is so far out in the future.โ
Xcel and Tri-State both own considerable water rights in the lower Arkansas Valley, near Las Animas and Lamar. Neither utility has shared plans for using the water, as the ideas of coal or nuclear power plants that initially inspired the water purchases never moved forward. Water in both cases has been leased since its acquisition to Arkansas Basin agricultural producers in order to maintain an ongoing beneficial use.
Yampa River. Photo credit: Yampa River Integrated Water Management Plan website
Why donโt Tri-State and Xcel lease their water in the Yampa River as they do in the Arkansas? Jackie Brown, the senior water and natural resources advisor for Tri-State, explains that there is no demand for additional agricultural water in the Yampa Basin. About 99% of all lands capable of supporting irrigated agriculture already get water. This is almost exclusively for animal forage. This is a valley of hay.
However, the Yampa River itself needs more water. The lower portion in recent years has routinely suffered from low flows during the rising heat of summer. Some summers, flows at Deerlodge, near the entrance to Dinosaur National Monument, have drooped to 20 cubic feet per second. Even in Steamboat, upstream from the power plants, fishing and other forms of recreation, such as tubing, have at times been restricted.
One question asked in drafting the legislation this year was whether to seek protection with a temporary instream flow right for some of the 45 cfs that Tri-State and Xcel together use at the plants at Craig and Hayden. The intent would have been to protect the delivery of some portion of that water to Dinosaur National Monument through 2050. That idea met resistance from stakeholders.
Instead, a do-nothing approach was adopted. Those framing the bill expect that most of the time, most of the water will flow downstream to Dinosaur anyway. In most years, no demands are placed on the river from November through the end of June. The challenge comes from July through October. The amount of water, used formerly by coal plants, that reaches Dinosaur will depend upon conditions at any particular time. Have the soils been drying out? Has the summer monsoon arrived?
The Yampa River at Deerlodge Park July 24, 2021 downstream from the confluence with the Little Snake River. There was a ditch running in Maybell above this location. Irrigated hay looked good. Dryland hay not so much.
โEven if youโre adding even half of that [45 cfs], it is a big deal,โ says Brown. โIf you can double the flow of a river when itโs in dire circumstances itโs a big deal.โ
A study conducted by the Colorado River Water Conservation District several years ago examined how much water released from Elkhead Reservoir, located near Hayden, would reach Dinosaur. The result: 88% to 90% did.
Brown says river managers will be closely studying whether the extra water can assist with recovery of endangered fish species and other issues. โThereโs a lot of learning to be done. My key takeaway is that thatโs really going to contribute to the volume of knowledge that we have and the future management decisions that are made.โ
A larger takeaway about this new law is that it gives Coloradoโs two biggest electrical providers time. Xcel and Tri-State donโt know all the answers as we stretch to eradicate emissions from our energy by mid-century. Many balls are in the air, some interconnected, each representing a technology that may be useful or necessary to complement the enormous potential of wind and solar generation now being created. All of these new technologies will require water. Some water in the conversion from coal is being saved now, but itโs possible it will be needed in the future.
No wonder Xcelโs Belt says its โimprudent in a very water-constrained region to let go of a water asset that you may not get back, until you know how some of these balls are going to land.โ
More than 350 prominent climate advocates on Tuesday endorsed Vice President Harris for president, a sign that environmental leaders believe hercampaign will energize like-mindedvoters in a way thatย President Bidenย could not. In aย letterย shared first with The Washington Post, big names in the environmental movement โ including former U.S. climate envoyย John F. Kerry, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D)โ wrote that Harrisย has long prioritized climate actionย and would continue to do so as president.
โWe know that protecting our planet for ourselves and future generations requires the kind of bold leadership that Kamala Harris has demonstrated her whole life,โ they wrote. โWe are proud to support her and be in the fight against climate change with her.โ
Inslee, whose ambitious climate proposals duringย his 2020 presidential campaignย influencedย Bidenโs climate policies, said Harris could help mobilize young voters, a crucial Democratic constituency.ย Polls showย that climate change is a top concern for young people, who are more likely than older generations to faceย raging wildfires,ย rising seasย and stronger storms in their lifetimes.
โHer candidacy instantly lit an electric spark under young people across the country,โ Inslee said. โThatโs going to bode well for our fortunes.โ
Kerry, who left the Biden administration in March, said in an interview that Harris was a โterrific allyโ on climate policy. He noted that she was an early advocate of the United States reaching net-zero emissions by mid-century, and she delivered a forceful speech at theย U.N. Climate Change Conference in Dubaiย last fall.
Comanche Generating Station. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
June 26, 2024
In one sense, Adam Frisch was an anomaly on the agenda of an energy conference held in Pueblo last Friday. Heโs a Democrat, making a second run for Congress after narrowly losing in 2022 to Lauren Boebert in Coloradoโs Republican-leaning 3rd Congressional District. The districtโs largest city, Pueblo, once was reliably Democratic but has become a political toss-up.
Republican legislators, both current and former, were present at the conference, but I didnโt notice any Democratic legislators, even from Pueblo. Why that is, itโs hard to say.
Credit Frisch with knowing how to play to his crowd. He tipped his hat to natural gas several times even as he talked about how geothermal would use much the same skills sets and machinery.
He talked extensively about domestic energy mining and energy production. โThereโs no green energy without mining, just none,โ he said. He suggested that even now, burning wood may produce more energy than solar โ although he did acknowledge Colorado has far more solar capacity than the national average. He took swipes at the โColorado Capitol,โ a reference to the Democrats who have run the show since the 2018 election and who have passed dozens of bills with the intent of pushing and pulling Colorado into a giant pivot that will dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
For the conference on the Pueblo campus of Colorado State University, Frisch dressed in a style that suggested allegiance to his party: blue jeans, blue shirt and blue sports jacket. But he has some tip-toeing to do in this Congressional district. Heโs an Aspen resident, a member of the city council when that cityโs municipal utility, Aspen Electric, succeeded in achieving 100% renewables. And Frisch by no means disavows climate change.
โWhether Iโm in Durango or Boulder or up in Rangely, Colorado, I would say the same thing, that there is a climate crisis,โ he said at the outset of his remarks in the conferenceโs opening session. โItโs hotter and drier. Everybody knows this. People are planting at different times, theyโre harvesting at different times, theyโre hunting at different times. But we need to figure out if we truly want to try to solve this problem.โ
When running as an โoutsider,โ itโs useful to point to perceived hypocrisies among the elites. In Colorado, the prime candidate is Boulder.
โI need to poke fun a little bit at my former zip code, because in 2019 Boulder County, of the 3,147 counties in the country, (had) on a per-capita basis the most greenhouse gas emissions per person in the country.โ
Congressional candidate Adam Frisch explains why generation will be important. Photo/Allen Best
True? Well, not really. It wasnโt Boulder County but one zip code within the county that spawned many stories in 2020. And it wasnโt total greenhouse gas emissions per capita, but only those provoked by buildings. For that matter, the University of Michigan researchers reported that were able to include only two-thirds of the nationโs counties in the study.
With those caveats in mind, they did find that the buildings in zip code 80510 produced 23,811 pounds of carbon dioxide per person. That zip code is in and around Allenspark, along the road between Boulder and Estes Park. Itโs a place of knotty-pined cabins that burn a lot of propane gas as well as newer and some very large homes that likely use electricity.
The methodology of the researchers also examined the sources of electricity, and by that measure the heavy coal in the electrical mix bumped the figures higher. That area is served by a member cooperative of Tri-State Generation and Transmission or Xcel Energy, and in 2019 both were still very heavily invested in coal โ including coal burned at Pueblo.
One other detail: that same study found that a zip code in San Francisco, the bastion of woke politics, actually had the nationโs lowest per-capita greenhouse gas emissions for buildings.
Details, details, details
That was par for the day. Just as important as who was at this energy summit and the information they shared was who was not there and what was not said.
The event was sponsored by Action Colorado, formerly known as Colorado 22, a reference to the counties of southwestern Colorado and the San Luis Valley that are included. Think of it as patterned after the much older Club 20.
The morning agenda had various speakers, but most notable was a defense of natural gas in buildings. The afternoon was almost entirely about the promise of nuclear energy.
Interspersed through the day were speakers from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, or IBEW. They told about their lives and about their work. They spoke very well, very effectively. I spent eight years in Toastmasters trying to smooth my tongue of rusted iron into moments of silver. These guys were like professionals as they talked about growing up on ranches, about the dangers of working with electricity, about building better lives for themselves and their families.
The background question for the dayโs conversation was what will happen when the last of Puebloโs three coal-burning units becomes quiet. One of the three coal-burning units at Comanche Generating Station has closed, another will in 2025, and the third is to become silent no later than Jan. 1, 2031, as per the decision by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.
(In my message to Big Pivots subscribers of June 13, I vaguely and imprecisely referred to 2030. To add some confusion, Gov. Jared Polis last week said 2029.)
What will replace the tax base and jobs in Pueblo and Pueblo County?
President Joe Biden visited the CW Wind factory in Pueblo, the worldโs largest manufacture of towers for wind turbines, in November 2023. Photo/Allen Best
Pueblo is a river town, bisected by the Arkansas River. Itโs a transportation hub for both highways and rail. It is above all a place that makes things. I am sure it has Ph.D.s among its 111,000 residents, but it has blue-collar DNA. Work gloves could be the cityโs logo.
The steel mill was first and maybe even now remains foremost, hulks of rust rising above I-25 even as a new mill is now taking shape. The mill began producing rail in 1882, and thatโs still the primary product, if the lengths have been extended to quarter-mile sections. It was called CF&I when I was young, and although I have no personal memories, Pueblo was still a rich ethnic stew in the mid-20th century, a cauldron of immigrants who labored under a film of coal smoke. You donโt have to go far to find people whose fathers and grandfathers and perhaps great-grandfathers had walked to the mill, lunch buckets in hand, from their houses in the Bessemer and other close-by neighborhoods.
That includes the former mayor, Nick Gradisar, and the fellow I had lunch with at the conference, Joseph Griego. Gradisar, a former board chair for Action Colorado, the organization sponsoring this conference, had a vison of pivoting Pueblo to a green-energy economy. He was handily defeated in the election last year.
Some of that pivot, however, had already started before he even became mayor.
On Saturday morning, after the conference, I awoke in our motel room on Puebloโs north side soon after daybreak and set out to get photographs. I drove south on I-25, pausing during shift change at the gates of the steel mill, which is now owned by EVRAZ North America. Based in London, majority ownership was held by Russian oligarchs, cronies of Putin, most notably Roman Abramovich, who alone owned between a quarter and a third of the company. Evraz said in 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine that it would sell its North American assets, but nothing has come of that. As best I can tell, Putin cronies still have a stake in Pueblo.
Continuing south out of the city, I turned off from I-25 at the Stem Beach turnoff, then headed northeast on Lime Creek Road, putting Greenhorn Mountain in the rearview mirror.
Greenhorn was originally Cuerno Verde, the name given by Spanish colonizers to two leaders, the father and son, of a band of Comanches. They were known for their distinctive headdress.
The younger Cuerno Verde was killed there in 1779 by the Spanish troops led by Juan Batiste de Anza and their Apache, Ute and Pueblo allies. And with the Comanche weakened, the Great Plains in Colorado with their plentiful bison became more available to some other immigrants, the Cheyenne and Arapahoe.
The alignments of what became Colorado were, in the 18th century, as convoluted as they are in the 21st century, but the conflicts for the time being now draw only figurative blood. By that measure, these disagreements about the energy transition are mild indeed even if one former legislator at the Pueblo conference described the politics he left behind at the Colorado Capitol as โtoxic.โ
The Lime Creek Road constitutes Puebloโs industrial alley. First in this sequence is the former wind turbine factory formerly owned by the Danish company Vesta but purchased in 2021 by CS Wind, a South Korean company. The factory produces towers that are 90 meters tall and weigh 240 tons. President Joe Biden was there last November to give a pep talk about the clean energy agenda.
A little farther along is a turnoff to another set of gray industrial buildings rising up from the plains, the GCC cement plant and limestone quarry, one of two remaining cement plants in Colorado with the recent closure of a plant at Lyons.
The day before, a speaker at the conference โ in the morning, non-nuclear session โ representing a company called Carbon America, had spoken about the hopes to sequester carbon dioxide under cap rock in a geologic formation northeast of Pueblo. Two potential partners exist in the Pueblo area, this one and another near Florence. They manufacture cement from lime.
Carbon America sees carbon dioxide created in this process โnone of it through combustion โ as being one market for carbon sequestration along with the almost pure stream of carbon dioxide being emitted by corn ethanol plants. The companyโs office is about a mile from my own in suburban Denver.
As I continued north, the three giant smokestacks of Comanche 3 rose higher. Before I got there, though, I first saw the low-rising rows of solar panels, a virtual sea of them amid the cacti.
The first solar farm, located directly east of the coal plant, was developed by Eric Blank, who has now become the chair of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. Then, in 2021, completion of a far larger array of solar panels was completed. This project, Bighorn, was on land owned by Evraz around Comanche Station. It can generate 300 megawatts of direct current or 240 megawatts of alternating current. Through the artifice of credits, the solar production allows the steel mill to proclaim it has solar-made steel. (It also matters that the plant works with recycled steel, which requires less heat).
Still heading toward Comanche, I drove under transmission lines. whether generated by solar or for by coal units. However electricity is generated, it must be transmitted to metro Denver and wherever else. Will a nuclear plant transmit electricity at Comanche sometime in the 2030s?
The Pueblo area has Coloradoโs two remaining limestone quarries and cement kilns, including this one along Lime Creek Road. Photo/Allen Best
The tone for the conference was set by the panel that followed Adam Frisch.
The panel consisted of representatives of three of Coloradoโs four privately-owned utilities that sell methane, the primary constituent in natural gas, to consumers for building heat and water cooling.
Curbing methane emissions from Coloradoโs buildings may be Coloradoโs most difficult nut to crack. We donโt swap out buildings the way we do cars or cell phones.
Ken Fogle is a marketing vice president for Atmos Energy, one of Coloradoโs two regulated gas-only utilities, meaning that they donโt also sell electricity. Black Hills Energy does sell both electricity and gas, but not necessarily in the same place. It was represented by Tom Henley, the senior public affairs director. And there was Michael Sapp, the state public affairs director for Xcel Energy, with sells both gas and electricity, and in largely the same areas.
The Monday prior to the conference, the Colorado PUC commissioners had issued their formal 141-page decision about Xcelโs proposed clean heat plan. The PUC commissioners rejected a lot of Xcelโs ideas.
The plan was in response to legislation adopted in 2021 that said that the gas utilities needed to figure out how to start reducing emissions from the natural gas they delivered to their customers for heating of space and water. Itโs one of maybe a half-dozen bills taking aim at methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that the Environmental Defense Fund says is responsible for about 30% of todayโs global warming driven by human action.
โFor those of you donโt know, natural gas has been kind of under the microscope, shall we say, for a number of years now down at the state capitol,โ said Black Hillsโ Henley.
The panelists in Pueblo said they thought the clean-heat legislation adopted in 2021 required too much, too soon. A major grievance is that the legislation required a 4% reduction in emissions by 2025 compared to a 2015 baseline โ but ignoring the role of population growth. In effect, said several panelists, this means a 20% reduction.
Nobody argued whether climate change is real or the role of greenhouse gas emissions in causing climate change. That debate has, at least formally, passed. The argument is whether the reduction goals are realistic.
Itโs a legitimate question. But this was not a panel created to further the dialogue. Instead, aided by softball questions, the remarks drifted toward preserving the status quo. These are companies who donโt want to change their business models in light of the evidence of climate change.
โHow do we support legislators who favor an all-of-the-above energy mix,โ they were asked.
โWeโve got to talk to people that are electing their officials to make sure they know what their officials are doing in Denver,โ said Fogle, the Atmos representative. โI donโt think a lot of folks would agree with whatโs happening in Denver when you go to these places like the Western Slope or Southeastern Colorado. I donโt think theyโd agree with whatโs happening in Denver. So you got to get the people involved and activate the base.โ
Then another question. โDems control the House, Senate and governorโs office, how do you navigate policies that are aimed at mandated, forced beneficial electrification, and what strategies do you try to deploy to work with that agenda?โ
The key strategy that emerged in the remarks of panelists is to emphasize cost of adopting other technologies that will end the need for natural gas in buildings. Going electric is expensive, and natural gas is affordable. And thereโs truth to that. Staying the course is the cheapest alternative. Cost can matter.
Ironically, along the way in this discussion about natural gas, there was a plug for nuclear. But when the agenda moved to nuclear that afternoon that cost almost entirely disappeared from the conversation.
That seems to be a pattern.
Former PUC commissioner Frances Koncilja explains the task force perspective as to what Pueblo needs after all the units in the Comanche Generating Station close. Photo/Allen Best
While some reading this might conclude otherwise, I am actually neutral about nuclear as a long-term solution. As Iโve written before, one of the leading climate change scientists, James Hansen, has embraced the need for nuclear. I know people in Boulder County โ yes, in that place that many want to see as a hotbed of cross-breeding of privilege and wokeism โ who believe it is necessary.
It would certainly solve a lot of problems. Even now, 20% of U.S. power comes from nuclear power plants.
Then thereโs the matter of Coloradoโs declared intention of not leaving behind coal communities in this transition. Frances Koncilja, a former PUC commissioner, in 2023 co-chaired a task force created by Xcel Energy that produced a report in January. The Pueblo Innovative Energy Solutions Advisory Committee Report heartily recommended a nuclear power plant to replace Comanche.
Pueblo County has done its part to reduce emissions, she said. Pueblo County will be responsible for a 36% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by Xcel Energy and 20% statewide from the electric sector.
She emphasized the obligation of Colorado. โJust transition means that coal communities should not only be no worse off with the closure of coal facilities but also replace the coal generation with high-paying and highly-skilled jobs and lost tax base so that coal communities have an opportunity to prosper, grow and reimagine their local economies.โ
Koncilja did not specifically cite the 2019 law, which in my read is a little more fuzzy than how she summarized it. Colorado does not owe Pueblo a one-for-one replacement.
The law says the โeffects of coal plant closures on works and communities have the potential to be significant if not managed correctly.โ It also mentions the stateโs intention to โassist workers and communities impacted by changes in Coloradoโs coal economy.โ It also mentions a โmoral commitment.โ
The Pueblo Innovative Energy Solutions Advisory Committee she co-chaired recommended nuclear because of the 300 jobs with a salary range of $60,000 to $200,000 and annual tax payments of $95 million. In 2021, Xcel and its two co-owners of Comanche 3, one of the coal-burning units, collectively paid $31 million.
She also pointed to strong comparisons in wealth to other counties in Colorado, specifically Aspen/Pitkin County, Vail/Eagle County, Boulder County and Denver.
Exploitation of fossil fuels has left Pueblo far, far behind these other locations.
One unit of Comanche Generating Station has ceased operation and the other two will before 2031 gets underway. Photo/Allen Best
The afternoon was rich with speakers with a wealth of information about different types of nuclear technology that are in some stage of development. There were many details, but almost entirely absent were those most useful for relevancy in Pueblo and Colorado altogether. That begins with cost.
One speaker said his companyโs technology will be able to deliver electricity for 3 cents a kilowatt-hour โ making it competitive with renewables. But, of course, it has not been deployed yet.
When the representative from nuclear powerhouse Westinghouse concluded, she took several questions. The first was: What is the cause of the most significant pushback you get?โ Cost, she replied.
Cost infamously rose to $35 billion, more than double original projections, on the two Vogtle units that have come on line recently in Georgia.
But what about the advanced nuclear designs? True enough, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in early 2023 approved the design of small modular reactors. But NuScale, the company that had sought the approval for deployment at Idaho Falls, just a few months later cancelled the order. The problem? Escalating costs.
Can Bill Gates disprove us naysayers? He was in Wyoming on Monday to help break ceremonial ground for a nuclear plant near the site of a coal plant at Kemmerer. The company has a pending application with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the plant design. Gates and company hope for completion in 2030, a brisk pace.
Gates has put in $1 billion into TerraPower and the U.S. Department of Energy has $2 billion promised for the project. Gates, in an interview on Face the Nation on Sunday morning (see transcript), said he expects to invest several billion more. He estimated completion price at $10 billion. He also said he hopes to 100 projects using the same nuclear technology โto really make an impact.โ
A sea of solar panels exists around Comanche Generation Station along with many transmission lines that export the power to Xcel Energyโs customers. Photo/Allen Best
In a seminar several weeks before, Duane Highley, chief executive of Tri-State Generation and Transmission, said he thought the price will not be bent down until about 2035 or beyond to a point where it can be justified for his members in places like the San Luis Valley and the corn-and-millet and wheat-and-ranch country of eastern Colorado.
To be fair, Highley said the cost of geothermal for electrical production is no better at this point. The comparison may not be the most useful. The technologies compete in two different cost arenas. Simply put, nuclear is a bigger gamble, the entry bid at a higher level.
But the larger point is that we have a whole host of technologies competing to be the final answer to 100% emissions-free energy โ and nuclear is just one.
So why the bandwagon for nuclear? Will Colorado really throw cost considerations out the window and became the test lab for advanced nuclear technologies?
Highley, in his interview,(which you can read elsewhere in this issue), said he wished the federal government would bankroll the next-generation nuclear technology, such as for use on military bases. That would get us over this gigantic hump of price.
It would still leave us with puddles of radioactive waste hither and thither with that huge issue unresolved. Our past recklessness in places such as Rocky Flats, between Arvada and Boulder, leaves many uncomfortable.
And finally, there is this question: Why do nuclear advocates in Colorado think they can continue to make their case without addressing these hard questions.
The best I can figure is that nuclear has become a stand-in for coal and a political statement that borders on religion. Because Aspen, Boulder and Denver likes renewables, we need to be for nuclear. Thatโs why I found the talking points of the congressional candidate from Aspen so interesting. (And, to be honest, speaking to a Pueblo crowd and leading with the fact that youโre from Boulder likely would not be the wisest way to introduce yourself).
But what was Xcel Energy up to in creating this task force? What did it truly hope to accomplish? A mere distraction, a way to gain leverage against the Democratic majority at the Colorado Capitol?
Iโm still scratching my head. I probably will be still until Xcel submits its proposal to the PUC in five weeks.
For a second straight year the Colorado Department of Agriculture is looking to distribute grants up to $500,000 for projects that demonstrate and research the use of solar generation on agriculture land. The grants are part of the stateโs Agrivoltaics Research and Demonstration program which came into existence through legislation sponsored by state Sen. Cleave Simpson of Alamosa.
The grant program is particularly relevant to the San Luis Valley, where the reduction in groundwater irrigation has led to thousands of farming acres retired. Generating more renewable solar is part of the Valleyโs strategy to find alternative uses for a growing number of retired fields that now dot the landscape.
โThe first year of these grants was a tremendous success. Awardees have explored groundbreaking methods to effectively develop energy on the same land that is used to grow food and fiber,โ said Cindy Lair, Deputy Director of the Conservation Services Division. โWe canโt wait to see the new, innovative proposals that will be submitted for this next round of funding.โ
Up to $500,000 is available for projects that study the potential, benefits, and tradeoffs of agrivoltaics in Colorado.
Applicants can find the Grant Guidelines as well as instructions for submitting an application on the ADCRO website, at ag.colorado.gov/adcro. The maximum grant award is $249,000 for a single project application. Eligible project types include construction or expansion of agrivoltaics systems and demonstration projects, outreach and communication efforts focused on agrivoltaics benefits or obstacles, and research projects that focus on understanding the benefits, incremental costs, and tradeoffs of agrivoltaics systems.
Applications should be submitted via email to Rosalie.Skovron@state.co.us by July 21, 2024.
ADCRO staff will host a webinar on the application process on June 18. Anyone interested in applying for the grant can participate. A recording will be available on the CDA YouTube channel.
In the Fiscal Year 2023-24, seven different projects received grant funding to showcase diverse ways of generating electricity from solar arrays on Colorado farms and ranches. One of the projects, completed by Longboard Power, included installing solar wind breaks on a farm and monitoring soil benefits and energy output. Another, through the Colorado Cattlemenโs Agricultural Land Trust, is creating template conservation easement language that would allow for solar power generation while maintaining ag production and applying conservation values.
The other five projects were by Namaste Solar, Colorado State University, American Farmland Trust, Sandbox Solar, and Summit Cellars.
Webinar Information
Date and Time: Tuesday, June 18, 2024 from 1:00 p.m. โ 2:00 p.m. MDT
Description: This grant encourages innovative projects, including demonstrations of agrivoltaics, research projects, and outreach campaigns to further agrivoltaics and Coloradoโs agricultural economy. CDA staff will explain the application process for the grant and answer questions.
Colorado acepta solicitudes para la subvenciรณn de Investigaciรณn y Demostraciรณn de Agrivoltaicos
Por segundo aรฑo consecutivo, el Departamento de Agricultura de Colorado busca distribuir subvenciones de hasta $500,000 para proyectos que demuestren e investiguen el uso de generaciรณn solar en tierras agrรญcolas. Las subvenciones son parte del programa estatal de Investigaciรณn y Demostraciรณn de Agrivoltaicos, que se creรณ a travรฉs de una legislaciรณn patrocinada por el senador estatal Cleave Simpson de Alamosa.
El programa de subvenciones es particularmente relevante para el Valle de San Luis, donde la reducciรณn del riego con agua subterrรกnea ha llevado a retirar miles de acres de tierras de cultivo. Generar mรกs energรญa solar renovable es parte de la estrategia del Valle para encontrar usos alternativos para un nรบmero creciente de campos retirados que ahora salpican el paisaje.
โEl primer aรฑo de estas subvenciones fue un รฉxito tremendo. Los beneficiarios exploraron mรฉtodos innovadores para desarrollar eficazmente la energรญa en la misma tierra que se utiliza para cultivar alimentos y fibras,โ declarรณ Cindy Lair, Subdirectora de la Divisiรณn de Servicios de Conservaciรณn. โTenemos muchas esperanzas de ver propuestas nuevas e innovadoras que se puedan presentar en esta prรณxima ronda de financiamiento.โ
Se dispone de hasta $500,000 para proyectos que estudien el potencial, los beneficios y las soluciones intermedias y compensatorias de la agrovoltaica en Colorado.
Los solicitantes pueden encontrar las directrices para la concesiรณn de subvenciones, y las instrucciones para postularse, en la pรกgina de internet de ADCRO ag.colorado.gov/adcro. El mรกximo de subvenciรณn para una solicitud es $249,000 para un solo proyecto. Los proyectos elegibles incluyen la construcciรณn o ampliaciรณn de sistemas agrovoltaicos; proyectos de demostraciรณn; esfuerzos de divulgaciรณn y comunicaciรณn centrados en los beneficios u obstรกculos de la agrovoltaica, y proyectos de investigaciรณn centrados en comprender los beneficios, costos incrementales y las soluciones intermedias y compensatorias de los sistemas agrovoltaicos.
Las solicitudes deben enviarse al correo electrรณnico Rosalie.Skovron@state.co.us antes del 21 de julio de 2024.
ADCRO organizarรก una junta virtual para ver el proceso y los detalles de solicitud el 18 de junio. Cualquier persona interesada en postularse para la subvenciรณn puede participar. La grabaciรณn quedarรก disponible en el canal de YouTube de CDA.
En el ejercicio fiscal 2023-24, siete proyectos diferentes recibieron subvenciones para mostrar diversas formas de generar electricidad a partir de paneles solares en granjas y ranchos de Colorado. Uno de los proyectos, realizado por Longboard Power, incluรญa instalar un cortavientos solar en una granja y monitorear los beneficios para el suelo y la producciรณn de energรญa. Otro, a travรฉs del Fondo de Tierras Agrรญcolas de los Ganaderos de Colorado, estรก creando un modelo de servidumbre de conservaciรณn que permitirรญa generar energรญa solar mientras siga la producciรณn agrรญcola y aplicando los valores de conservaciรณn.
Los otros cinco proyectos son de Namaste Solar, Colorado State University, American Farmland Trust, Sandbox Solar y Summit Cellars.
Informaciรณn sobre el webinario
Fecha y hora: martes, 18 de junio de 2024 de 1:00 a 2:00 p. m. (zona horaria MDT)
Enlace de inscripciรณn: regรญstrese para la reuniรณn del 18 de junio o visite ag.colorado.gov/ADCRODescripciรณn: esta subvenciรณn fomenta proyectos innovadores como demostraciones de agrovoltaica, proyectos de investigaciรณn y campaรฑas de divulgaciรณn para impulsar la agrovoltaica y la economรญa agrรญcola de Colorado. CDA explicarรก el proceso de solicitud de la subvenciรณn y responderรก preguntas en esta junta virtual.
A sign in Norwood opposing a proposed solar installation nearby. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
June 12, 2024
Does it make sense to kill 3,500 Joshua trees to clear the way to power 180,000 homes with carbon-free energy from the sun? Thatโs a question Iโve been pondering as I peruse the public comments on the Biden administrationโs Western Solar Plan and in the wake of a debate thatโs erupted over the social-media-waves regarding this very question.
The kerfuffle was sparked late last month after the Los Angeles Timesโ Melody Petersen reported that renewable energy developer Avantus had begun clearing thousands of the iconic desert trees to make way for the 530-megawatt Aratina solar-plus-storage project on a swath of the Mojave Desert in southern California. Even worse: They were apparently shredding the trees onsite or using other measures to hide the apparent act of agave-cide (Joshua trees arenโt trees at all, but members of the agave family). This stirred up a lot of anger and concern, naturally.
But the real brouhaha broke out after another LA Times journalist, Sammy Roth, wrote a column about hard clean energy choices developers and regulators must make to tackle the climate crisis, concluding: โHence the need to accept killing some Joshua trees in the name of saving more Joshua trees.โ
Joshua tree in the Mojave Desert. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Now, I think Roth is one of the best Western energy journalists out there, and I admire his ability to embrace the complexity of the energy transition. He rightly points out that human-caused climate warming poses an existential threat to Joshua trees and other species, and to fight climate change weโll need to displace fossil fuel generation with cleaner energy sources, such as solar and wind. Roth is right on when he argues this will require utility-scale energy development, and when he dismisses the simplistic solution of merely putting solar panels on residential rooftops. And critics accusing him of being a pawn of corporate energy developers (or a member of the โclimate cult religionโ) are way off.
But bulldozing pristine public land and killing thousands of Joshua trees (or desert tortoises or sage grouse or pronghorn) to make way for a solar development that will purportedly save Joshua trees from going extinct? Okay, sure, if the choice were really that stark โ if it was a desert-flora version of the trolley problem: where a bystander must decide whether to direct a runaway streetcar onto a track where it would kill several people, or onto another where it would kill just one person โ then maybe that argument would fly. Thatโs not quite the situation here, however. In the trolley problem, there are only two choices, both horrible; in the Joshua tree-solar problem there are myriad options, some better than others.
I first caught wind of the proposed Arantina project many months ago, when I stumbled across a news piece about opposition from nearby residents, who were worried about dust kicked up during construction and potential impacts to views and property values. I frequently encounter these sorts of stories with another one of my gigs compiling an energy newsletter for the Energy News Network. Nearly every utility-scale solar proposal out there runs into opposition from someone, especially those planned for relatively undisturbed public lands.
But this one stuck out because of where itโs located. First off, itโs not being built on public land, but rather 2,300 acres of private land in eastern Kern County amid a county landfill, a major highway, and a rail line. The residents worried about dust and views live in the communities of Boron and Desert Lake (a more accurate monicker would be Desert Dry Lake, but hey). To its credit, Avantus responded to the concerns by setting the project further back from the towns, where they would be less visible. Of course, this also put them a bit deeper into the desert, possibly endangering more Joshua Trees in the process and bringing up additional concerns among locals, most notably that stirring up the desert may also disperse the fungus that causes valley fever.
The towns, recently featured in the LA Times for their cheap real estate, would be within a half-mile of the solar facility, so their concerns are understandable. And yet, less than a mile in the other direction looms Rio Tintoโs massive, open-pit Borax Mine, which spans more than 13 square miles, where house-sized machinery extracts some one million tonnes of refined borates and consumes more than 300 million gallons of water annually โ in a frigginโ desert! Not only that, but right next to the mine is the Southwestโs largest liquefied-natural-gas processing plant, a potentially explosive situation, if you know what I mean.
And theyโre worried about a photovoltaic installationโs dust and harm to views and property values?
Iโm not saying the presence of the mine or the apparent lack of concern about it invalidates townspeopleโs concerns about the solar installation, nor does it justify the solar projectโs harm to Joshua trees. I just find this apparent contradiction โ one that Iโm seeing more and more often in relation to renewable energy โ curious.
Another interesting note in all of this is that in 2022 Avantus, the solar installationโs developer, purchased grazing rights on 215,000 acres of public land elsewhere in Kern County and retired them as part of the Onyx Conservation Project. The project is sort of a prelude to the BLMโs public lands rule, which opens the door to conservation leases on public lands that can be used by energy developers to mitigate, or make up for, impacts they wreak elsewhere. In theory, at least, the Onyx project will protect thousands of Joshua trees โ along with a variety of other wildlife โ which would then โoffsetโ the killing of all those other Joshua trees near Boron.
Itโs great that Avantus retired grazing in โ and eliminated a lot of impacts on โ a huge piece of the Mojave Desert. And it certainly earns the company some social capital. But Iโm not sure it mitigates the harm done to the Joshua grove near Boron. Can you really โoffsetโ a shredded plant by simply not cutting down another one that may have continued living unharmed for another century or more? Wouldnโt it be easier to put the solar installation in a place where there arenโt so many Joshua Trees?ย
A utility-scale solar installation when it was under construction near Red Mesa on the Navajo Nation. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
A few years ago, if a story showed up in the media about opposition to a utility-scale solar project, the pushback likely was inspired by the harm these projects โ and scraping the desert bare of flora, fauna, and topsoil โ do to relatively undisturbed public lands, wildlife, and ecosystems. In the past year or so, however, opposition to โcleanโ energy like wind and solar has not only grown, but also changed in nature and motivation.
Now it seems like almost every utility-scale solar and wind installation proposal garners pushback from somewhere, whether itโs on private or public land, previously disturbed or not. In Arizona, Idaho, and Colorado, livestock operators and state lawmakers are rising up against solar because it may impede upon public land grazing allotments. Others donโt like public land solar because it wrecks their view or gets in the way of OHV-riding or other recreational pursuits.
Last year, a company called OneEnergy proposed building a 100-megawatt utility-scale solar array on about 640 acres of private and state-owned land southwest of Norwood, Colorado, in green-leaning San Miguel County. The developers said it would create some 300 construction-phase jobs and generate millions in tax and lease revenue and clean power for thousands of homes. They also planned to make it an agrivoltaic project, meaning livestock grazing would continue underneath the solar panels. Local opposition was vociferous, however. Most critics said they supported renewable energy, just not there โ or anywhere else in their immediate vicinity. The county responded by imposing a moratorium on large-scale utility development in unincorporated areas to allow it time to develop regulations for such projects. The six-month moratorium has been extended twice, so far, and is set to end in November.
This sentiment is becoming more widespread, making for a tough row for utility-scale clean energy developers to hoe. Residents of La Plata County pushed back on a proposed commercial photovoltaic installation on private land last year. That project is also in limbo. In 2022, Delta County rejected a proposed solar array on private land because it would take the parcel out of agricultural use. It later approved the plan after the developers rejiggered the project to allow for sheep grazing among the panels. Soon thereafter, though, the county enacted its own moratorium on large-scale solar. Similar moratoria are popping up in rural, conservative counties from Washington to Idaho to Arizona โ where Mohave County banned solar installations while clearing the way for a natural gas plant expansion next to a retirement community.
Sometimes there are legitimate environmental concerns driving the opposition, even when the projects lie entirely on private land. But other times the reasoning isnโt so solid. Many lament the potential โloss of agricultural land,โ even if the parcels in question havenโt been farmed due to economics or water scarcity or just poor soil health, and their ownersโ only way of remaining in agriculture is to earn some money by leasing land to solar developers. Others bring up the age-old โproperty valueโ argument โ which sounds absurd coming from just about any corner of the West, where property values could use a bit of de-inflation. Besides, if proximity to radioactive waste and Superfund sites hasnโt devalued properties (e.g. Moab or Silverton), how can a bunch of solar panels do so?
An official of another Colorado town told me plans were scrapped to install solar panels on a piece of town land after the local pickleball mob protested, saying they needed the land for their courts. And up in Ophir โ where avalanches and extreme weather can not only shut off access, but also take out the only utility lines serving the place โ residents voted to nix a solar-powered microgrid with battery backup that would have enabled them to weather extended outages. This is the same town that voted in 2018 to work toward transitioning to 100% greenhouse gas-free electricity. And now theyโve turned down a project with state and federal funding that would have helped them meet that goal, while also giving them independence from a tenuous power grid, because it would have meant putting up some solar panels in their open space.
This is when I understand Rothโs frustration: No matter how hard the solar and wind developers try to site their projects responsibly, someone comes up with some reason โ legitimate or otherwise โ to try to kill it, thereby delaying the very necessary clean energy transition. Sometimes this means the facility just doesnโt get built; other times it can actually push the development from a reasonably suitable location to one that may be farther away from people, but where thereโs more potential for environmental harm.
Itโs not just the opposition thatโs frustrating. The industry plays a part in it, too. Quite often developers donโt try to compromise or site their projects responsibly. In fact, theyโre more likely to behave a bit like the oil and gas industry: As if theyโre entitled to put their installations wherever suits them because they are producing something we all need, consequences be damned. Thatโs because solar and wind companies, like most businesses, are generally in it to make money โ we live in a capitalist system, after all. And itโs often cheaper, and therefore more profitable, to site these things on public lands in the desert than to try to piece together a puzzle of private land parcels or brownfields.
The best way to prod a developer to site responsibly is through strong, clear regulations that guide development toward previously disturbed areas with lower conflict potential and away from culturally or ecologically significant lands at the outset. The Obama administration tried that in 2012 with its Western solar plan; now Bidenโs Bureau of Land Management is working to update and improve the plan. The agencyโs preferred alternative would leave 22 million acres of BLM lands open to development, while putting more than 200 million acres off-limits. Dustin Mulvaney, an environmental studies professor at San Jose State University, isnโt so impressed, summing it up like this in a Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists piece:
“The Bureau of Land Managementโs Western Solar Plan update inverts the original intent of the planning process from one that sought to avoid wildlife and cultural resource conflict to one that prioritizes transmission developer and utility interests on these publicly owned landscapes.“
Nevertheless, industry is pushing to make it even less restrictive, urging the agency to remove slope restrictions (which prohibit development on slopes over a certain steepness), to allow clean energy development in areas of critical environmental concern (I think not!), and to further streamline permitting. They invariably say the 2012 plan, which is currently in place, is too prohibitive, even though dozens of massive solar installations have been permitted and built on public lands in the 12 years since it was implemented.
No matter how the plan turns out, however, it wonโt have much bearing on projects like Aratina, since itโs on private land (which is where public lands advocates generally would like to see these installations โ Joshua trees notwithstanding.)
***
Even in Boron, the developer could have gone in a different, less-destructive direction while still bringing clean energy to the grid. The Borax mine is surrounded by waste piles, old reclaimed mining zones, and other disturbed areas that offer up plenty of solar-appropriate land. It might have been slightly more complicated to work out deals with the mining company and to level some of the piles, but building there would have sparked far less conflict and killed little if any vegetation. They could have shared dust-control duty with the mine. And I think the viewshed would be just fine.
In northwestern New Mexico, developers are building the San Juan solar project on private land near the shuttered San Juan Generating Station coal-fired plant. Itโs massive, and has impacts of its own, but is far better for everyone than the pollution-spewing power plant was.
On another project altogether, the developers of the SunZia transmission line that will carry wind power from New Mexico to the Phoenix area could have routed the line along I-10 rather than up the ecologically and culturally significant San Pedro River Valley. Yes, it may have cost a bit more, and may have spurred its own opposition (from motorists worried about their freeway viewshed?), but the bigger-picture costs would have been far less. The BLM, however, failed in its mission to site such projects where they do the least harm, and now SunZia is getting battered with legal challenges (albeit so far unsuccessful ones).
Avantus, the same company behind Aratina, is proposing the 2,000-megawatt solar plus 2,000-megawatt battery storage Buttonbush installation on private farmland in the Central Valley. Thatโs a massive amount of energy โ one of the largest such installations in the world if and when itโs completed. Somebody will probably protest it, since it will represent a loss of farmland in a major agricultural zone. Yet itโs also a place wracked by drought and climate change, where groundwater pumping has depleted aquifers and water shortages are the norm. While a solar facility still uses water for dust-control and cleaning, it generally uses far less than most crops. And besides, the landowners wouldnโt sell or lease their fields to solar folks if they felt they were most viable as farmland.
This is where the value choice is made: Is it better to lose some farmland that would be fallowed anyway? Or 3,500 to 4,200 Joshua trees?
Blanketing every home rooftop in Los Angeles with solar panels is an admirable goal, but also logistically near-impossible. Either youโd have to convince millions of homeowners to fork out the cash for their own panels โ which is now less financially rewarding since state regulators slashed net metering incentives โ or a developer or utility would have to lease rooftop space from millions of individuals. It ainโt gonna happen.
But covering every warehouse and big box store rooftop and parking lot with solar panels? Thatโs an entirely different story. Parking lots and commercial structures span some serious acreage, and just as Avantus is piecing together 132 private parcels in the Central Valley for its Buttonpush project, so could a developer work with hundreds of industrial or commercial urban landowners to cover rooftops and parking lots with installations. Yes, Iโm suggesting utility-scale, front-of-the-meter developments spread across the built landscape. Of course, behind-the-meter developments, where each landowner installs their own array, works, too, but it doesnโt play as well into the vertically integrated utility, centralized power model that currently dominates.
The federal, state, and local governments need to fashion strong regulations and incentives to help guide developers to make the right choices. And the environmental groups that push back on utility-scale development on public lands must also present โ and fight for โ more suitable, and realistic, siting options. This means urging regulators to compensate rooftop and community solar at retail rates or higher, but it also means rejecting knee-jerk opposition to utility-scale solar based on frivolous or ideological concerns.
I like to think Iโm an optimist in these matters, and it is heartening to see places like Silverton and Rico continue to work on establishing solar-powered microgrids (Silverton may put their solar panels on a mill tailings disposal pile), to see community solar taking off in New Mexico, and to see solar installations directly replacing coal facilities, as is also happening in New Mexico. But then I read about Wyoming and Utah lawmakers interfering in markets to keep coal plants running, and about the huge strain data centersโ and AIโs electricity demands are going to put on the grid, and I get discouraged. We can build all the solar and wind we want, but until we can slow capitalismโs never-ending hunger, its incessant need to continue to grow and to consume, we wonโt solve the crises we face.
Iโll leave you on a slightly brighter note with some numbers I gathered a while back for a dataviz piece in High Country News. And after that, Iโd love to hear your thoughts in the comment section about all of these issues!
44,800 megawatts: Potential generating capacity if solar canopies covered Los Angeles Countyโs 18.6 million parking spaces.
15,400 megawatts:Potential generating capacity if solar panels covered all 3,495 miles of Californiaโs aqueducts and canals.
21,363: Number of big-box stores in the Western U.S.
31,035,098 megawatt-hours: Estimated total annual energy output if solar arrays were installed to cover all those storesโ rooftops, enough to power 3 million homes.
1,155 megawatts: Estimated generating capacity if solar panels covered all 370 miles of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, as LA officials propose.
37,500 Gigawatthours per year: Energyoutput of solar canopies if all of Phoenix, Arizonaโs 12.2 million parking spots were covered.
139: Number of desert tortoises relocated to make way for the Yellow Pine Solar Project in southern Nevada in 2021. Within a few weeks, 30 of them were killed, possibly by badgers.
4,200: Estimated number of Joshua trees that will be destroyed or moved when solar industry giant Avantus develops its Aratina project near Boron, California.
215,000 acres: Grazing leases bought and retired in the Mojave Desert in California by Avantus to protect wildlife habitat and Joshua trees. The Onyx Conservation project is a partnership with federal and state land management agencies to โoffsetโ the impacts of the companyโs developments elsewhere in the region.
1.3 million: Estimated number of Joshua trees destroyed by the 2020 Dome Fire, thought to be exacerbated by climate change, in the Mojave National Preserve in California.
14,905,215 megawatt-hours: Estimated total annual energy output if solar arrays were installed on all of Californiaโs 10,260 big-box store rooftops.
16,477,306 megwatt-hours: Total energy output of Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in 2020.
2,602 megawatts: Potential generating capacity if solar panels covered every rooftop on Arizonaโs 2,288 big-box stores.
The worldโs biggestย solarย plant has come online in China, capable of powering a small country with its annual capacity of more than 6 billion kilowatt hours. The facility in a desert region of the north-west province of Xinjiang covers 200,000 acres โ roughly the same area as New York City. The 5GW complex, which was connected toย Chinaโs grid on Monday, is powerful enough to meet the electricity demands of a country the size of Luxembourg or Papua New Guinea.
China has led the world inย solar powerย adoption, boosting its capacity in 2023 by more than 50 per cent. The new solar farm overtakes the Ningxia Teneggeli and Golmud Wutumeiren solar projects, which are both also in China, to become the largest in the world. A recentย reportย by the International Energy Agency (IEA) described Chinaโs drive towards renewables as โextraordinaryโ, with the country commissioning as much solar capacity last year as the entire world did in 2022.
Transmission lines and red rock. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
April 30, 2024
Audubon is hiring. The conservation organization wants to bring the science for which it is noted among conservation organizations to the selection of electrical transmission in Colorado and other intermountain states of the West.
โWe donโt want to be an organization that stops something, because climate change is literally the existential threat to birds. And the renewable energy and storage that is needed require more transmission lines. So how do we work together to make this happen?โ says Alice Madden, a former state legislator from Louisville who joined the National Audubon Society in March as senior director of climate strategy.Loui
Audubon already has a person working with developers on five proposed transmission lines in the Midwest. There an organized market called a regional transmission organization, or RTO, exists.
Western states remain fragmented in integration of electricity into an organized market. Colorado is akin to an island. The person that Madden hires will be responsible for working with developers to put new lines along highways, railroads, and other areas of disrupted habitat. If that is impossible, then the goal will be to route the transmission in the ways that cause least impact to birds.
โRouting is important, and Audubon has incredible mapping tools โฆ so we can provide a wealth of information,โ she says.
The organization already has had success in the West, though. Madden cites the organizationโs work with developers of SunZia, a 550-mile high-voltage direct-current transmission line between central New Mexico and south-central Arizona.
Like most transmission lines, this one had a long history. It was proposed in 2006 and had a 17-year journey to final permitting. Audubon creditsย Pattern Energy, which joined the project in 2018 and partnered with Audubon to initiate early and active engagement with project developers.
โWe literally guided them to best practices for routing, best practices for tower design, ways to avoid interruption of flight patterns,โ says Madden.
Plus, the company committed to using an ultraviolet light-based system that was developed at Audubonโs Rowe Sanctuary. At the sanctuary, located along the Platte River in Nebraska, the technology has dramatically reduced mortality among sandhill cranes because of collisions. The technology makes the transmission lines that birds collide with most frequently more visible to them.
A 2023 Audubon report, โBirds and Transmission: Building the Grid Birds Need,โ cites the work in New Mexico and Arizona as an approach that is โessential to optimize mitigation for birds, ensure the best data and science are used, and make projects into long-term successes worth of Audubonโs support.โ
In the reportโs preface, Marshall Johnson, the chief conservation officer for Audubon, speaks to the urgency of replacing fossil fuel generation with renewables. โThe window to slow the rate of global temperature rise is narrowing, but the window still exists. If we are to make the most of this waning opportunity, we need to act quickly.โ
Johnson goes on to lay out the need to develop renewable generation and then transmit it to population centers. Experts say the United States needs to add effectively double or triple transmission capacity. โHow and where new transmission is constructed will have a tremendous impact on birds and our communities,โ he wrote.
Audubon also issued the 2019 report,ย โSurvival by Degrees: 389 Species on the Brink,โย which warned that two-thirds of bird species in North America were vulnerable to extinction unless emissions are lowered.
That same report examined Colorado with greater granularity: 125 out of 241 species are climate vulnerable in summer if temperatures rise 3 degrees C (5.4 degrees F). If temperature rise can be kept to 1.5 degrees C โ which appears unlikely โ the number of vulnerable species declines to 84.
Colorado in recent years has adopted two laws. One requires the stateโs electrical utilities to join a regional transmission organization so that they can better share low-cost renewables over a broad hunk of real estate and in more than one time zone. Another law created the Colorado Electric Transmission Authority, or CETA, which heard the latest report from Audubon representatives in January. The organization has broad powers to build transmission that will help Colorado deeply decarbonize its electricity sources even as electricity expands into sectors now dominated by combustion of fossil fuels.
State Sen. Chris Hansen, a Democrat from Denver, the author of these and many other key pieces of energy transition legislation, says he believes Colorado and other states need to accelerate development of transmission.
Some have argued that the National Environmental Policy Act needs to be tweaked. Hal Harvey and Justin Gillis, in their 2022 book, โThe Big Fix,โ make the case for revisions.
โIn the book, we call for carefully thought-out reform, not just in NEPA,โ said Gillis, a former reporter for the New York Times, in an interview with Big Pivots. โThereโs a whole suite of land-use policies where, if we just leave them as is, it will take us 30 to 40 years to do that which really needs to be done over the next 10 years.โ
Former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, in a meeting with Pitkin County commissioners on April 9, mentioned the difficulty of transmission when crossing federal lands and the perceived need for streamlining regulation. Idaho is about 66% federal lands, Nevada is 85% federal lands, Colorado is 35%. NEPA, he said, is part of a broader conversation about whether regulatory review can be streamlined without losing the environmental scrutiny that is needed.
That conversation, Ritter added, is not just a Colorado one, but a national one.
โI just had a conversation with U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, and I think thereโs ambition inside the United States Senate to try and streamline the reform and try and not lose anything in the process. Itโs a federal statute that would have to be passed in order to modify NEPA and theyโre trying to understand how to do that with bipartisan support as we speak.โ
Madden is wary about reform of NEPA. Those things that motivated the creation of NEPA in 1969 remain. โBut there are many, many ways it can be done faster,โ she said. โThis administration in particular has been trying to do that by employing more people to review these projects.โ
โThere are a lot of red-herrings about why this takes so long. I think the worst problem is not the permitting. It is the interconnection queue.โ
She says 12,000 renewable energy projects across the United States are waiting to be connected to the grid. She identifies utilities as being the challenge.
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory recently reported nearly 2,600 gigawatts of generation and storage capacity are actively seeking grid interconnections. That is an eight-fold increase since 2014.
The U.S. Department of Energy recently released the Transmission Interconnection Roadmap that offers possible solutions to speeding up the interconnection of clean energy.
In her new position at Audubon, Madden has responsibility for implementing the organizationโs climate strategy at the state and local levels. She previously was policy and political director for Greenpeace USA. She had also directed the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy & the Environmental at the University of Colorado School of Law.
Along the way she had also worked at the Department of Energy, was a climate change advisor to Ritter during the last two years of his term, and before that had been a member of the Colorado House of Representatives.
Look for solar panels to blossom atop low-income homes in Indian Country over the next five years. Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency announced $500 million for tribes as part of $7 billion in grants for residential solar energy. Some $5.5 billion will go to states, and $1 billion to multi-state awards.
The $7 billion will benefit 900,000 households in low-income and disadvantaged communities, said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan in a prepared statement. โThe selectees will advance solar energy initiatives across the country, creating hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs, saving $8 billion in energy costs for families, delivering cleaner air, and combating climate change.โ
โSolar is the cheapest form of electricityโand one of the best ways to lower energy costs for American families,โ stated John Podesta, Senior Advisor to the President for International Climate Policy. โTodayโs announcement of EPAโs Solar for All awards will mean that low-income communities, and not just well-off communities, will feel the cost-saving benefits of solar thanks to this investment.โ
โResidential solar electricity leads to reduced monthly utility bills, reduced levels of air pollution in neighborhoods, and ultimately healthier communities, but too often low-income and disadvantaged communities have been left out,โ U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Acting Secretary Adrianne Todman said in the statement.
โSunlight is powering millions of homes across the nation, and weโre working hard to ensure Americans everywhere can benefit from this affordable clean energy resource,โ stated U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm.
EPA awarded $62 million to a nonprofit Native-led organization that brings solar energy to underserved communities, the National Tribal Program of GRID Alternatives.
GRID, in a prepared statement, said โthe National Tribal Program, in coalition with The Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy, Native CDFI Network, and Native Renewables, is poised to revolutionize solar energy access within Native American communities nationwide.โ
Co-Executive Director of the National Tribal Program Talia Martin, a citizen of the Shoshone-Bannock tribes, said in a statement, โThis funding will enable us to make significant strides in bridging the clean energy gap in Native American communities, supporting their capacity to harness the abundant potential of solar power while fostering tribal economic development and self-sufficiency.โ
โThis initiative serves as a vital step towards alleviating poverty, combating climate change, and fostering the creation of sustainable, well-paying green jobs for thousands of tribal members,โ said Cheri Smith, Miโkmaq tribal descendant, president & CEO, Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy, in a statement. The money for tribes will support their self-determined efforts to deploy clean energy on tribal lands she said.
โWe believe that everyone deserves access to affordable, and reliable energy solutions,โ said Suzanne Singer, Co-Founder and executive director of Native Renewables and a citizen of the Navajo Nation, in a statement. โThrough collaborative efforts like the National Tribal Program, we can support Indigenous communities in their transition to a renewable energy future.โ
In addition to GRID, the EPA announced three other tribal recipients:
Midwest Tribal Energy Resources Association Inc., Tribal Consortium $62,330,000
โThe Midwest Tribal Energy Resources Association, Inc. and coalition partners GRID Alternatives, the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy, and the Native Community Development Financial Institute (CDFI) Network will deploy Tribally-owned residential solar, along with storage and necessary upgrades, for the benefit of the 35 Tribes located in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The coalition, headquartered in Wisconsin, will leverage the deep expertise and experience of its members to build a program that empowers Tribes and Tribal energy champions, provides project-deployment technical assistance necessary to plan and build residentially benefiting solar projects on Tribal Lands in the Midwest, and includes workforce development to enhance tribal self-determination and self-sufficiency,โ reads the statement.
โThe Tribal nonprofit Oweesta Corporation will address adoption barriers to Native residential and community solar deployment by acting as the intermediary between professional services partners, developers, Tribal governments and Tribal organizations. Oweestaโs program will support an equitable spread of solar deployment across all Tribal census tracts nationwide. It will employ a systems-building approach to centralize regulatory compliance information, technical deployment, commercial solar standards, and Tribal housing expertise all within the framework of experienced Tribal Community Development Financial Institutions. Based in Colorado, Oweesta Corporationโs program will operate in Tribal lands across the nation.โ
โAlaska Tribal Solar For All is a partnership between three organizations to provide comprehensive access to the benefits of Tribal residents of Alaska. Tanana Chiefs Conference, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, and Alaska Housing Finance Corporation each have developed programs that will provide Tribal residents throughout Alaska the opportunity to benefit from solar. Alaska maintains over 40% of the nationโs federally recognized Tribes and is the state with the highest proportion of Alaska Native and American Indian residents (19.6%) in the nation. Whether a Tribal member owns a house with sufficient capacity to manage distributed generation, or a Tribal member lives in a community that operates a tiny isolated microgrid where rooftop solar isnโt feasibleโall Tribal residents of Alaska will have the opportunity to benefit from this project,โ reads the statement.
Now this is what Iโm talking about: Last week, the Biden administration forked out $7 billion to states, tribal nations, and non-profits to carry out its Solar for All program aimed at expanding rooftop and residential solar and energy storage access to low-income folks and other underserved communities. About $1.7 billion of that cash will go to the West (see breakdown below). This is what I call a win-win-win-win situation:
Win 1 = It will add more solar power to the nationโs energy mix, hopefully displacing some fossil fuel generation, which will result in cleaner air and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
Win 2 = This added solar will be on rooftops or vacant lots in or near towns or cities, reducing the need to blanket the desert with photovoltaics, which can be hugely destructive to ecosystems and wildlife habitat.
Win 3 = Rooftop and community-level solar installations will increase residentsโ self-sufficiency and reduce dependency on the grid, which is becoming less and less reliable as more frequent and severe extreme weather events damage infrastructure and utilities are forced to shut off power to reduce wildfire hazard. Plus, many homes that lack access to electricity, especially on tribal lands, will now have power.
Win 4 = This program has the potential to radically transform the residential solar landscape, redistributing this exclusive amenity now reserved to homeowners who can afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars upfront on a solar system, to, well, all of us, including renters.
Recipients include:
Colorado Energy Office: $156 million for single-family and multifamily rooftop solar statewide.
New Mexico Energy, Minerals, & Natural Resources Department: $156 million to โhelp overcome existing barriers to widespread adoption of distributed solar generationโ by expanding access to shared solar beyond the new community solar program.
Utah Office of Energy Development: $62 million to launch a new program to โstrengthen the market for deploying residential-serving solar โฆ for disadvantaged and low-income homesโ
Montana and Wyoming and Idaho, Bonneville Environmental Foundation: $131 million to โexpand economic and environmental benefits of solar to low-income, tribal, and disadvantaged communities.โ
Colorado-based Oweesta Corporation: $156 million to โaddress adoption barriers to Native residential and community solar deploymentโ in tribal lands across the nation.
Executive Office of the State of Arizona: $156 million to โbring the benefits of the stateโs abundant solar resources to the stateโs low-income and disadvantaged communities.โ
California Infrastructure Economic Development Bank: $250 million to reach โthe homes and businesses statewide that are most in need of affordable, reliable clean energy.โ
Nevada Clean Energy Fund: $156 million
Hopi Utilities Corporation: $25 million to deploy residential solar and storage systems on the Hopi Reservation, where 35% of households do not have electricity and those that do experience frequent and extended outages.
GRID Alternatives (Western Indigenous Network Solar for All) $62 million. Provides grants and incentives and technical assistance to deploy tribal residential solar, prioritizing communities in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.
Alaska Energy Authority, $62 million, to partner with Alaska Housing Finance Corporation to deploy solar photovoltaic infrastructure statewide.
Oregon Department of Energy, $87 million
Washington State Department of Commerce, $156 million
Alaska, Tanana Chiefs Conference $62 million to provide tribal residents with residential and community solar.
***
And the good news keeps a coming: Wind, solar, hydropower, and geothermal generation supplied more than 100% of Californiaโs energy demand on 39 of 47 days this spring. It wasnโt all day, by any means, but anywhere from about 15 minutes on some days to just over nine hours on April 20.
That is to say that a state of 39 million people, with one of the worldโs largest economies, ran on non-fossil-fuel energy sources for more than nine hours. Thatโs a big deal.
Sure, it was on a Saturday in spring, when power demand tends to be lower, and on 4/20, when I guess a lot of people might have been outside smoking dope, which may or may not have affected electricity use. And a small percentage of that power came from large hydropower dams, which have their own problems and which California does not apply toward its renewable portfolio standards. Still, itโs a milestone that wasnโt imaginable a couple of decades ago, when coal generation dominated the power grid and utility-scale solar and wind power barely registered.
Most of the power came from utility-scale solar installations (California grid operators donโt track rooftop solar output, but it contributed by reducing overall demand). In fact, the stateโs collective solar systems not only met demand, but exceeded it enough to charge grid-scale batteries and still have enough left over to export to other states. On some days there was so much solar they had to curtail generation โ or basically throw it away.
Hereโs what it looked like:
Graphic credit: Jonathan P. Thompson/The Land Desk
The green line represents electricity demand for the day. Part of the reason it dips during the middle of the afternoon is because thatโs when rooftop solar output is at its peak, and rooftop solar reduces grid demand since folks are using power from their own panels rather than taking it from the grid. Source: CAISO.
And then thereโs the dreaded solar duck curve to deal with. This refers to the shape of the electricity net-demand graph on sunny days (net-demand is determined by subtracting solar and wind supply from demand since they arenโt โdispatchableโ power sources). On a number of days this spring, solar output was so high that it pushed the net-demand curve down into negative territory in the middle of the day. The real problemโs start when the sun sets and solar output suddenly diminishes. The net-demand curve shoots back up, forcing grid operators to fire up natural gas generation to โfollow the load,โ or meet demand.
But even that dynamic is changing as an ever-increasing amount of that late afternoon load spike is being met with power from grid-scale batteries that had been charging all day. On the evening of April 16, for example, another milestone was reached when battery storage discharge became the largest energy source on Californiaโs grid, contributing nearly as much power as natural gas and nuclear generation combined for about an hour. Just this week, California announced it had surpassed 10,000 megawatts of battery storage capacity โ a 1,250% increase from just five years ago.
Batteries alone, however, wonโt get California or the West to 100% clean energy. The region will also need more of whatโs known as โgeographic smoothing,โ or moving power around the region to fill gaps left when wind and solar generation drop off. This might include sending Wyoming wind power to California when the sun stops shining, or shipping California solar to Colorado during the middle of the day. Achieving this will require better regional integration of the grid and power markets. Just yesterday the Biden administration announced a plan to spend $331 million to help build out transmission lines, an important step in realizing this goal.
A pronghorn hangs out among Wyoming wind turbines. Better integration of the Western grid would allow California and Arizona to draw on Wyoming wind to back up solar when the sun goes down. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
NEWS: Another proposed pumped hydropower storage project on the Navajo Nation bites the dust.
CONTEXT: One way to store energy is in batteries. Another way is with pumped hydropower facilities, usually consisting of two reservoirs, one above the other. Surplus power from the grid, usually generated by solar or wind during the day, is used to pump water from the lower to the upper reservoir. When the power is needed, such as when the sun sets and solar drops off, water is released from the upper reservoir and gravity propels it through a turbine that feeds electricity into the grid before emptying into the lower reservoir to begin the cycle anew.
Itโs smart technology, capable of providing massive amounts of energy just when itโs needed. The problem is, these things require water, dams, reservoirs, pumping plants, and pipelines, all of which can have an impact. That means properly siting these facilities โ and working with stakeholders before finalizing plans or applying for permits โ is important. And, well, so far, a lot of developers havenโt done a great job with that, and now itโs biting them in the butt.
Confluence of the Little Colorado River and Colorado River; Credit: EcoFlight
A few months ago the Land Desk reported on federal regulatorsโ rejection of seven proposed pumped hydropower storage projects on the Navajo Nation, while also establishing a policy of denying any project on tribal land if the tribe opposes it. The regulators deferred a decision on one additional proposal โ the massive, three-reservoir Big Canyon project that would be on Navajo Nation land along a tributary of the Little Colorado River. The Navajo Nation initially had expressed concerns about the proposal without explicitly opposing it. After the new policy was put in place, the tribe clarified its opposition. This week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission followed its new policy and rejected the permit.
Itโs a bummer to see so many clean energy proposals go down in flames. Had they been built, the projects would have contributed mightily to the Western energy transition. Their failure, however, is not on the tribal nation or advocates who opposed the projects. The developers are to blame for faulty siting decisions and for failing to adequately consult with stakeholders at the very beginning of the process. That would save everyone a lot of headaches, and it might even result in some good projects getting built in the right places.
For more on the proposals and their problems, check out this excellent piece โ complete with great maps โ by the Grand Canyon Trustโs Daryn Akei Melvyn.
๐ธ Parting Shot ๐๏ธ
Ute Mountain in the spring. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Corn in Baca County. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
Unanimous votes in the Colorado Legislature are rare, but they do happen. Consider HB24-1435, the funding for the Colorado Water Conservation Board projects.
The big duffle bag of funding for various projects was approved 13-0 by the Senate Water and Agriculture Resources Committee. It had bipartisan sponsors, including Rep. Marc Catlin, a former water district official from Montrose.
โColorado has been a leader in water for a long, long time, and this is bill is an opportunity for us to stay in that leadership position,โ said Catlin, a Republican and a co-sponsor.
โThis is one of my favorite bills,โ said Rep. Karen McCormick, a Democrat from Longmont and former veterinarian. She is also a co-sponsor.
This historical photo shows the penstocks of the Shoshone power plant above the Colorado River. A coalition led by the Colorado River District is seeking to purchase the water rights associated with the plant. Credit: Library of Congress photo
The bill has some very big-ticket items, including $20 million for the Shoshone power plant agreement between Western Slope interests and Public Service Co. of Colorado, better known by its parent company, Xcel Energy. Andy Mueller, the general manager of the Glenwood Springs-based Colorado River District, called the effort to keep the water in the river โincredibly importantโ to those who make a living in the Colorado River Basin.
This map shows the 15-mile reach of the Colorado River near Grand Junction, home to four species of endangered fish. Map credit: CWCB
Mueller also pointed out that keeping water in the river will benefit of four endangered species of fish that inhabit what is called the 15-mile stretch of the Colorado River near Grand Junction.
Another $2 million was appropriated for the turf-replacement program in cities, a program first funded in 2022. Another mid-range item is telemetry for Snotel sites, to keep track of snow depths, the better to predict runoff. It is to get $1.8 million.
Among the smallest items in the budget is a big one for Baca County, in Coloradoโs southeast corner. The bill, if adopted, would provide the Colorado Water Conservation Board with $250,000 to be used to evaluate the remaining water in aquifers underlying southeastern Colorado. There, near the communities of Springfield and Walsh, some wells long ago exhausted the Ogallala aquifer and have gone deeper into lower aquifers, in a few cases exhausting those, too. Farmers in other areas continue to pump with only modest declines.
What exactly is the status of the underground water there? How many more decades can the agricultural economy dependent upon water from the aquifers continue? The area is well aside from the Arkansas River or other sources of snowmelt.
A study by the McLaughlin Group in 2002 delivered numbers that are sobering. Wes McKinley, a former state legislator from Walsh, at a meeting in February covered by the Plainsman Herald of Springfield, said the McLaughlin study numbers show that 84% of the water has been extracted. That study suggested 50-some years of water remaining. If correct, that leaves 34 years of water today.
Tim Hume, the areaโs representation on the Colorado Groundwater Commission, has emphasized that he believes this new study will be needed to accurately determine how water should be managed.
How soon will this study proceed? asked Rep. Ty Winter, a Republican from Trinidad who represents southeastern Colorado. Tracy Kosloff, the deputy director of the Colorado Division of Water Resources, answered that the technical analysis should begin sometime after July. โI would think it is reasonable to finish it up by the end of 2025, but that is just an educated guess.โ
She said the state would work with the Baca County community to come up with a common goal and direction โabout how they want to manage their resources.โ
Unlike the Republican River area of northeastern Colorado, where farmers also have been plunging wells into the Ogallala and other aquifers, this area of southeastern Colorado has no native river. In the Republican Basin, Colorado is trying to remove 25,000 acres from irrigation by the end of 2029 in order to leave more water to move into the Republican River.ย See story. A similar proposition is underway in the San Luis Valley, where farmers have also extensively tapped the underground aquifers that are tributary to the Rio Grande.ย See story.
San Luis Valley Groundwater
The closest to critical questioning of the bill came from Rep. Richard Holtorf, a Republican who represents many of the farming counties of northeastern Colorado. He questioned the $2 million allocated to the Office of the Attorney General.
He was told that $1 million of that constantly replenishing fund is allocated to the Colorado River, $110,000 for the Republican River, $459,000 for the Rio Grande, $35,000 for the Arkansas and $200,000 for the South Platte.
Then thereโs the litigation with Nebraska about the proposed ditch that would begin in Colorado near Julesburg but deliver water to Nebraskaโs Perkins County. Colorado hotly disputes that plan.
Lauren Ris, the director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, said Colorado is โvery confident in our legal strategy.โ
Holtorf also noted that the severance tax provides 25% of the funding for the water operations. The severance tax comes from fossil fuel development. As Colorado moves to renewable energy, โwhat happens to this Colorado water if we kill the goose that lays the golden egg?โ
Ris replied said future declines in the severance tax is a conversation underway among many agencies in Colorado state government.
The South Platte Hotel building that sits at the Two Forks site, where the North and South forks of the South Platte River come together. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
Yet as Iโveย traversed the American Westย over the last two years with my L.A. Times colleagues, exploring how the transition from fossil fuels to cleaner energy is reshaping sensitive ecosystems and rural communities, one lesson has risen above the rest: If we donโt embrace change now, while we still have a choice, far worse changes will eviscerate us later. That lesson crystallized for me over the last few months, as I wrote about a Montana coal town struggling to accept that its West Coast customer base no longer wants coal power โ you canย read my full story hereย โ and as I struggled personally to figure out what kinds of stories I want to tell going forward, after a decade of reporting on challenges facing the energy transition…
Folks in Colstrip [Montana] and similar towns are justifiably worried that if big cities replace fossil fuels with renewable energy, their lives will change for the worse. Theyโre not totally opposed to wind and solar, but theyโre skeptical those technologies will ever fully replace fossil fuels, in terms of the bountiful jobs, tax revenues and other economic benefits that coal, oil and gas have provided.
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
April 4, 2023
Mike Kruger of the Colorado Solar and Storage Association explains why the big jump now and how storage has become an important component of the trade organizationโs agenda.
First, a question for you: What is your first reaction to seeing the chart below. Is it wow! Or had you already realized that this was coming, this break-out year for solar in Colorado?
When I talked with Mike Kruger, who directs Colorado Solar and Storage Association, he assured me that most readers of Big Pivots will not be surprised. Most saw it coming โ and, in fact, had it not been for Covid and the supply disruptions, Colorado might have had its big leap during 2021.
The chart comes from the Solar Energy Industries Association report of March 2024. The report โ which brims with interesting data โ says nearly 40% of Coloradoโs 4,112 megawatts of installed solar capacity was installed in 2023. And that Colorado is projected to gain another 2,835 megawatts of capacity in the next five years.
Credit: Solar Energy Industries Association report of March 2024
A full admission: I said wow, and I had been tracking this story since roughly 2016 โ which is one place where this story starts. Xcel Energy that year began its electric resource planning cycle. It got bids late in 2017 and announced them just after Christmas. I remember seeing the e-mail distributed by Leslie Glustrom, an Xcel shareholder and watchdog. Wind, especially, but solar, too, had delivered jaw-dropping offers. In that instant it became apparent to me that coal would soon to be in our rear-view mirror.
The Colorado Public Utilities Commission approved Xcelโs plans for a deep investment in renewables in September 2018.
That November Jared Polis was elected Colorado governor after having campaigned on a platform of 100% renewables.
In early December, Xcel Energy announced it planned to achieve an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 as compared to 2005 levels. Platte River Power Authority announced an even more ambitious goal in December but one festooned with conditions. And by the next May, Colorado had a law that required Xcel and Black Hills Energy to attain 80% decarbonization by 2030.
Kruger had arrived in the midst of this sudden pivot to take the reins of what was then called the Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association. At the time, the staff consisted of Kruger and one other individual. The organization now has six staff members, suggestive of the growth of the solar industry in Colorado.
On a recent Friday, between an emergency discussion about legislative affairs and his next appointment, Kruger talked with Big Pivots for about 25 minutes about the context for this graph and the story that lies beyond.
Big Pivots: What explains this big jump in solar during 2023 in Colorado?
Mike Kruger: Weโre finally seeing the fruits of some of our labors here to decarbonize stuff. The big jump is explained largely by Thunder Wolf and Neptune, Xcelโs two big solar projects in Pueblo County. Nearly 500 MWs of new solar and 125 megawatts of battery as well. All are for Xcel Energy. And then we have the projects of the electrical cooperatives, including the 80-megawatt project out by Bennett (east of Denver). Hunter. That power goes to CORE Electric Cooperative and โฆ
Holy Cross Energy.
Yeah. The Hunter project came on in 2023. Multiple other smaller projects entered service in 2023, too.
Weโre just seeing the fruits of the labor by COSSA and other advocacy groups to decarbonize. Neptune and Thunder Wolf were a result of the solicitation in 2017 that came online in 2023. So it takes time to build these things. Obviously, we have a pandemic between them, which pushed the timeline even further.
Now that theyโve been set up, these dominoes are going to start falling. Weโre going to really see hundreds, if not thousands, of megawatts of solar added to the grid every year through the rest of the decade.
In 2019, when we passed our first decarbonization bill, we had a 15-gigawatt system in Colorado. That was our peak demand. 80% of that is around 12 gigawatts of demand. Through 2019, we had installed about 2 gigawatts of renewables, mostly wind.
So, to meet those decarbonization goals, you have to build a lot of solar farms. You have to put up a lot of wind turbines. For the first time weโre seeing that legislative and policy work finally coming together.
We can only expect it to get bigger. The future now is 25 gigawatts by 2034, according to modeling by the Colorado Energy Office. To hit that we now have to add a gigawatt (of generation) every year for all the 2020s and then need to add two gigawatts a year for the first five years of the 2030s.
Itโs a good time to be a solar installer, to be a solar developer. Thereโs a โgignormousโ market in Colorado. Itโs heavily competitive, but itโs a big market.
Mike Kruger, right, and Will Toor, director of the Colorado Energy Office, after a panel discussion about net-metering at the Colorado Solar and Storage Association annual conference in February. Credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
How deeply is this understood within your industry. And how well do you think the general public understands this?
I suspect the worldโs energy geeks recognize where solar is and where itโs going to be. I donโt think they would be surprised. In fact, I think most would be frustrated that the jump didnโt happen in 2021 rather than in 2023.
And I donโt think any Big Pivots readers would be surprised. They might be surprised by the size of the jump, but we are starting from a pretty small base.
As for people writ large, they have no idea that renewables were responsible last year for 30% of Coloradoโs electric grid. I think most people would be shocked. If you were an Xcel customer, it was even higher, I think close to 50%.
And you didnโt experience outages, or at least any more outrages than you have experienced previously. You lost power for four hours in 2023, like you did in 2022, like you did in 2021, right? That speaks to how well the utilities are quickly figuring this stuff out. Kudos to them. They have one job, keep the lights on, and theyโre doing it with now a much higher carbon-free mix and more intermittent generation.
OK, what we see here was basically an outcome of decisions made in 2017. If memory serves me, for much of that decade prices for solar had come down 10% a year. Although I think the costs have now leveled off.
Some of the best prices we had were in that Xcel RFP from 2017. The prices are up now. Theyโve elevated, but theyโre still tons cheaper than the alternatives. Go back to Xcel Energyโs most recent 120-day report. Even solar-plus-storage came in cheaper than gas. Nobody bid coal, but solar would come in cheaper than coal, even from the existing coal plants.
Is it as cheap as it ever was? No. But itโs still really cheap. And I think that whether youโre a homeowner or a utility โ and increasingly weโre seeing corporate buyers, such as Amazon and Google โ itโs a very viable option.
Thatโs combined with really strong (state) policy support. Our neighbors to the west gutted their efforts on solar support and generally climate friendly policies. And now they donโt have anywhere near the decarbonized electricity system that we do.
The neighbors to the west being Utah?
Yes, specifically Utah. They have one big city, like we do. No offense to our good folks in Colorado Springs and Pueblo. And they have similar geography: lots of mountains and high desert.
Hunter Solar, located east of Denver and south of Bennett, came online in late 2023. CORE Electrical Cooperative has 45 megawatts of the generating capacity and Holy Cross Energy has 30. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
So your members are not surprised by this. They knew it was coming. They mightโve wished that it had happened earlier, if not for Covid. Is that surge then reflected in your organization? By that, I mean the number of members you have. And Iโve been noticing that you have added staff.
Itโs a โvirtuous cycle.โ When I started, it was me and one other individual, and we had, I think it was, 83 to 85 members. We didnโt exactly know how many we had. This week we crossed 300 members. Now, weโre at almost four times the size. And Iโve gone from me and a single individual to now me and five others. We have six on our staff.
My membership has invested in me and the organization, and we have won a bunch of policy victories, which then opens the market even further. And then that allows those folks to invest further in the policy and advocacy work that we do.
We are getting pretty close to the top. An annual survey of companies doing work in each market shows about 350 in Colorado, and I have 300 of them. Using the kind-of-standard 80-20 rule. I think weโre probably pretty close to the top as far as membership numbers go.
That doesnโt mean those members wonโt continue to grow. Part of the point of our work is to ensure that members who are currently doing two rooftop systems a week can, if their customer demand is there, expand to five a week.
Or consider Sandbox Solar in Fort Collins, which started in 2015. They were exclusively a rooftop company. All they did was residential rooftop. Now theyโve expanded into the commercial-industrial market and can be successful with multiple footprints. Theyโre a different company now than when they started.
If memory serves me, you came on in 2018, right?
Correct. I think my first day was Oct. 1. Then we (his family) moved here right around Halloween.
Then in the spring of 2019, my board said, weโre rebranding. Weโre adding storage, so rename us, rebrand us, build a new website.
How important is that storage as a component of what you do? Do you have companies that are storage exclusive?
We have some companies that are exclusively developers of storage on a large scale.
Increasingly, we have solar folks expanding (into storage) Photon Brothers is a really good example. The company has been doing rooftop systems for maybe 10 years, and they are now the leading installer of (Tesla) Powerwalls in the state because theyโve really leaned into that. They have a group of customers for which they know so this makes good sense.
For solar of 20 megawatts or more to be bid into a utility RFP without the option to have batteries is almost unheard of.
In places that have price signals, like time-of-use rates, we see batteries being used there and also in places that are prone to outages. So weโre definitely seeing that as an expanded business opportunity, but almost always by a solar company thatโs moving into that space. The exception, like I said, we have a few large-scale companies that do only battery storage.
Mike Kruger, right, chats with Kevin Smith, then chief executive of Lightsource bp, upon the near completion of the Bighorn solar project in October 2021. The 300 megawatt solar project was built for Evraz, the owner of the steel mill in Pueblo. Since then Target, Walmart and Amazon have all installed solar projects associated with their operations in Colorado. Amazon has a 6-megawatt solar project in Aurora. Credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Looking back to before you arrived in Colorado, your predecessors spent a fair amount of time at the PUC and in meetings, trying to work toward policies. But itโs my sense that you now have two attorneys that can be engaged in the PUC process. Are there signal accomplishments that you think youโve been able to achieve in the policy realm?
Some of the stuff Iโm proudest of is still working its way through.
First, I want to be clear that I stand on the shoulders of the folks that came before me. I didnโt come into an organization that I created from scratch. Weโre actually celebrating our 35th anniversary this year.
One item Iโm very proud of is that we just got a tariff from Xcel and Black Hills about multi-unit net-metering so that for apartment dwellers you can put a large solar array on-site somewhere in the apartment or on the roof and the individual apartment occupants and renters can get solar credits. Thatโs a huge market that has not been tapped. That was a single issue that we pushed. There really wasnโt a lot of other folks pushing it. Once we got it to the Legislature and brought it to peopleโs attention, we picked up some allies. Thatโs one Iโm proud of.
The most recent Xcel electric resource plan had a lot of small details, but those details add up. Weโre getting 5,300 megawatts of new renewables being procured.
One of our big wins was in Xcelโs initial filing, they only wanted 400 megawatts of batteries. We forced them back to the drawing board. They are ending up buying 1,848 megawatts of batteries. So, more than four times what was originally planned.
Once you get all those batteries on the grid, we will better be able to integrate renewables. Weโll decarbonize faster. Weโll have less need for gas-peakers. And weโll have an increasingly stable grid, right?
Batteries solve a lot of the intermittency issues that had had many utilities concerned. They donโt solve everything. I get that lithium-ion batteries have four-hour windows or six-hour windows. But four hours is better than nothing. And energy geeks like the Big Pivots readers will know that we really are only worried about four hours or thereabouts most days. Except forโ
When youโre worried about a hundred hours when the wind isnโt blowing, right?
Yeah, exactly. There will be some point in the future when we have 10 days of no sun, no wind, and it will be dastardly cold or whatever. And weโll need something bigger than that.
Thatโs why COSSA is involved in some of the conversations about regional markets and expanded transmissions, because it may be brutally cold here with no wind and no solar, but it wonโt be in New Mexico or it wonโt be in Idaho.
Hopefully weโre smart enough to grab a big geographic footprint to offset those few occasions.
Allen, thereโs plenty more to do. The state is far from decarbonized. We have some policies in place, but not enough. And then weโre adding a boatload of new load (demand), right? New electrification of vehicle and fleets and industrialization and buildings. Weโve havenโt solved any of that. Itโs a huge opportunity for my membership. Itโs millions and millions of dollars of new private investment in mitigating climate change that we havenโt even tapped into yet.
Any workforce issues? As we talk about decarbonizing buildings, itโs brought up again and again that we donโt have the workforce familiar with heat pumps, for example.
Yes and no. Right now, solar is kind of in a steady state where weโre not hiring but weโre not firing. If youโve been a student of this for a long time, weโve had the โsolar coasterโ where weโve ramped up and hired a bunch of folks and then the bottom dropped out and we let a bunch of folks go. Right now I think things are pretty steady state.
However, like other trades, we struggle to attract new individuals. You can make a lot of money being a crew lead or being a sales lead or a chief designer, but maybe itโs on us to do a better of communicating that. Itโs not as sexy as say, going to Harvard or getting your masterโs degree from CU or whatever.
All the trades have this problem. That includes plumbers and electricians. I applaud a bipartisan effort to draw attention to that through education. Honestly, though, if you wanted to become an electrician today, if you know where to look, you can do it for free. The grants are available, the training is available, and you can end up with a $150,000 job and have no debt.
Percentage of Stateโs Electricity from Solar: 9.03%.
Solar Companies in State: 394 (38 Manufacturers, 182 Installers/Developers, 174 Others).
Total Solar Investment in State: $7.7 billion.
Prices have fallen 47% over the last 10 years.
Growth Projection: 2,836 MW over the next 5 years (ranks 19th).
OK, and you have to go in a minute, but letโs talk land use.
I am not totally convinced that we have a problem to solve yet. I think there is potential for conflict, whether thatโs on the local community with NIMBys or the environmentalists who are worried about specific species or ecosystems. However, we donโt have them yet.
For us to be solving a problem at the Legislature that we donโt have yet feels a little premature. I know there are folks on the other side who say, well, we should solve them before they become a problem. I get a little worried about solving a problem that doesnโt exist because we might solve it in the incorrect way and create all kinds of unintended consequences. Coming up on seven weeks left in the session, we donโt have a bill yet. To my knowledge, thereโs still not an agreement about what a bill should contain.
But things could move quickly โ as always.
And then Kruger was off to his next meeting. The land use in question was a non-bill that has been getting a lot of attention โ including from Big Pivots. See: โShould Colorado tell counties how to review renewable projects?โ It would set a statewide standard for evaluating renewable energy projects by towns, cities and county governments. In late February, Sen. Chris Hansen told Big Pivots he planned to introduce it during March. As of early April, it has not.
What will have to wait are my questions about hail and solar panels. My in-house editor wants to know whether Coloradoโs proclivity for hail made it somewhat less attractive to solar developers.
And then thereโs the question about all those acres and acres of warehouse roofs that are proliferating along I-70 and I-76 on the eastern and northeaster edges of metropolitan Denver. What role might they place in the future? Will they be covered with solar panels some day?
…Chinaโs overwhelming dominance has alarmed officials in the United States and in Europe, who say they are worried that a flood ofcheap Chinese productsย will undercut their efforts to grow their own renewable energy industries โ especially if the Chinese companies have what they consider an unfair advantage. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, who is expected to soon make her second visit to Beijing in less than a year,ย said in a speech Wednesdaythat she will press China to address โexcess capacityโ โ including in solar, electric cars and batteries โ that โdistorts global pricesโ and โhurts American firms and workers.โ Combined, this raises the specter of another trade war, one that activists say could pit protectionism against planet…
Chinaโs metamorphosis into clean tech giant was ordered from the very top. Leader Xi Jinping made supporting โessentially greenโ industries a priorityย last monthย as he tries to stop the worldโs second-largest economy from slowing…Clean energy is a brightย spot in an otherwise gloomy economic outlook: Chinaโs exports of electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries and solar products soared 30 percent to $146 billion last year. BYD overtook Tesla in 2023 to become the worldโs top-selling electric-car maker. This helped make the renewable energy industry the biggest contributor to the countryโs economy, ahead of every other sector,ย according toย the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a think tank. That shift has come about thanks in no small part to state support. For over a decade, Beijing has used measures including subsidies and tax breaks to create dozens of huge conglomerates that dominate sustainable energy industries. The Tongwei facility, toured by The Washington Post, is 15 percent owned by two of Chengdu cityโs state-run investment companies. In the first nine months of last year, the company reported being subsidized with $125 million by the state, a 240 percent rise from 2022.
Downtown Durango on a Sunday morning. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
March 26, 2024
Directors say they see less risk going solo than staying tethered to their long-time wholesale provider
In putting together their annual meetings for members, Tri-State Generation and Transmission tries to put on a happy face of good health, team spirit, and forward movement. Thatโs what associations do, of course.
A happy face will be harder to muster when Tri-State holds its annual meeting next week at the Westminster Westin hotel. On May 1 it will lose its single largest member, United Power, which alone is responsible for more than 20% of the electricity supplied by Tri-State.
And on Monday morning [March 22, 2024], directors of another cooperative, Durango-based La Plata Electric Association, voted to serve notice of the coopโs plans to exit in two years. La Plata is the fifth largest of Tri-Stateโs 42 members, responsible for 5.7% of the total demand over a three-year period.
โWe have kicked the tires,โ said one of the directors, Rachel Landis, moments before the 9-to-3 vote. โWe have been staying up late at night.โ
โItโs a big day, a monumental day,โ said Ted Compton, the chair of the board of directors, in a later interview with Big Pivots. โNobody thinks that this decision will make our lives in this coop easy at all, but we have self-determination to make the choice that we want and our members want.โ
La Plata has been studying its options for the last five years. At one point, in 2021, it chose a partial-requirements contract with Tri-State. The co-op even had an alternative supplier for 50% of the generation. But that approach went nowhere as the formula got balled up in the review by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC. Still, it left a sour taste still evident on the tongues of some directors.
Smaller tent needed
In 2026, when La Plata leaves, Tri-State will be left with 38 members. Also leaving in the interim will be Granby-based Mountain Parks Electric in Colorado and Nebraskaโs Northwest Rural Public Power District.
For many years Tri-State had 44 members. The exodus began in 2016 when Kit Carson Electric of Taos, N.M., left Tri-State to pursue a different vision. Some wondered about the disaster ahead. Kit Carson had to pay $37 million to break its all-requirements contract to 2040. It hooked up with a new company, Denver-based Guzman Energy, which had no power generation of its own โ although it now does.
Instead of a disaster, Kit Carson has triumphed. In June 2023 it made the final payment to Tri-State while also completing enough new solar to meet 100% of daytime needs in its service territory in northern New Mexico. It has also been building microgrids and pursuing hydrogen as a storage solution.
A retired Tri-State employee who lives in the Durango area urged the directors to stick with Tri-State. The utility can do renewables at scale, he said.
โPlease do not try to get out of this contract with Tri-State,โ said one woman, who said she was from rural La Plata County.
Another speculated that La Plata will have to pay $200 million or more to break its contract with Tri-State. Even if La Plata saves money, he added, โMy kids will have grown up by the time we recoup $200 million.โ
Compton, in his interview with Big Pivots, declined to give a figure. Tri-State, in a statement posted after the La Plata decision, said that the estimated value of La Plataโs contract termination payment to Tri-State is estimated at $209.7 million, with a final amount to be calculated prior to withdrawal.
Mark Pearson, a Durango resident, pointed to Kit Carsonโs success. โItโs not like weโre the first one out of the gate,โ he said. He cited a number of solar projects west and south of Durango. โThere are an abundance of local energy sources that would be cheaper than our current contract with Tri-State.โ
Directors supporting the exit emphasized their views that Tri-State has failed to be a viable partner. The contract to 2050 โ agreed to in 2006 โ does not meet La Plataโs needs now, they said.
โWe need the ability to make decisions, be nimble, have flexibility, to have local generation,โ said Tim Wheeler. โAnd the contract with Tri-State to 2050 does not present that at all. It represents something from 20 years ago.โ
Decision to seek FERC regulation
Wheeler also cited the decision by Tri-State to seek regulation under FERC, which is far more complex, expensive and time consuming than regulation under the state PUC. To do so, Tri-State had to create a new class of members in 2019 who are not electrical cooperatives. For example, it added a greenhouse near Fort Lupton and a hunting guide from near Craig.
Joe Lewandowski, a director from Durango, urged La Plata members to take the long view of 5, 10 to 20 years when viewing costs. He also suggested that there was more risk to staying with Tri-State.
Asked about risk, Compton offered a couple of analogies.
โA lot of people simplistically see this as a decision to stay on a stable ship and get what need or jump off and swim on your own. That is not the way that La Plata has evaluated this. We currently do not see Tri-State as a stable ship. There are a lot of chinks in their armor, and it makes us nervous to be attached to that.โ
La Plata, he added, feels more comfortable charting its own course. Tri-State, he said, got off course by seeking federal regulaton.
Tri-State went into the energy transition carrying heavy debt. It has pinned much hope on federal aid through the inflation Reduction Act to cover the cost of retiring stranded assets even as it builds lower cost renewables and natural gas.
But Wall Street analysts in the last couple of years have taken an increasingly dim view of Tri-Stateโs financials. For several years they have downgraded Tri-Stateโs credit-worthiness in a series of financial appraisals.
And Compton observed that Tri-State has encountered many problems at FERC.
In its statement, Tri-State made its case for why it should be seen as a viable wholesale provider going forward. In 2030, when 70% of its energy comes from renewables, Tri-State is forecast to achieve an 89% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in Colorado from a 2005 baseline.
Tri-State has not raised its wholesale rates since 2017 โ with an average 6.36% wholesale rate increase proposed to go into effect in 2024. That is being held up at FERC.
โTri-Stateโs members have created tremendous momentum toward an energy transition that will provide long-term reliability and rate competitiveness, while reducing emissions and increasing flexibility to provide industry-leading optionality for members,โ said Duane Highley, Tri-Stateโs CEO. La Plataโs โboard has chosen not to be part of this future and go it alone on a different path, even as the region faces increasing reliability challenges.โ
Why now for this decision?
Why a special meeting for the decision? And why just 10 days after Jessica Matlock, the general manager for the five previous years, left for a job at a larger organization in the Pacific Northwest?
Compton said the timing of the decision had nothing to do with Matlockโs departure.
But why not wait until April and the regularly scheduled board meeting? Because, he said, the board had decided the time was right to make the decision. It had all the information it needed.
He dismissed an observation made by the chief executive of another Colorado co-op that the timing allows La Plata to use its 2023 financials in its application to FERC. That will make La Plata exempt from any capital investments going forward such as new generation and transmission planned by Tri-State โ and hence might lower the amount that La Plata will have to pay Tri-State to exit.
Compton repeatedly characterized that observation as speculative. โIt was just one of one of many factors that we saw coming in the April 1 timeline,โ he said.
La Plata has been a member of Tri-State since 1992 when it and other electrical cooperatives from Western Colorado joined in the wake of the bankruptcy by their former wholesale supplier, Colorado Ute.
Colorado Ute had over-extended itself to build three coal-burning units at Craig for an oil-shale industry that never arrived. Tri-State took over Colorado Uteโs members and its coal plants at Craig. Now, Tri-State is struggling in part because of the cost burden of those coal plants that will be closed between 2025 and 2030.
Craig Station in northwest Colorado is a coal-fired power plant operated by Tri-State Generation & Transmission. Photo credit: Allen Best
After years of dealing with contaminated groundwater and an unreliable water supply, officials in Fort Lupton say a single solar project could solve both issues for the foreseeable future.
The city has an aging diesel-powered generator that has a habit of going offline at times of high demand and power outages. Officials have also been working to reduce algae blooms in their 300-acre-foot reservoir that the water treatment plant turns into drinking water.
To address both these issues, the city partnered with Brighton-based power provider United Power and contractor Schneider Electric to replace the old generator with an 850-kilowatt solar array and a 1,147-kilowatt battery storage system that floats in the cityโs water treatment plant.
The project could receive up to $6.1 million in federal funds from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of its $1 billion Energy Improvements in Rural or Remote Areas Program, which was created under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021. However, the funding is not yet guaranteed, according to U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo (D-CO), who represents Fort Lupton and is pushing the project.
Fort Lupton City Administrator Chris Cross said he expects the project to increase power redundancy for the city, meaning it will have more than one power source to draw from. Cross also expects Fort Lupton residents to see roughly 9% savings on their average power bill.
Residents of Fort Lupton pay an average of $0.12 per kilowatt hour for residential power, which is about 5% greater than the statewide average, according to data from Electricity Local.
โCoupled with the floating panel benefits to the water storage, we are excited to see how high our overall savings will be from the project,โ Cross said.
Fort Lupton, like many rural communities in Colorado, has faced challenges providing clean drinking water for decades. Data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment shows the city has recorded 268ย water quality incidentsย since 1995. That total is comparable to much larger cities that are fed by waters from Carter Lake like Superior, Louisville, and Broomfield even though Fort Lupton has the smallest population at just 8,500 residents.ย
One of the most memorable water quality incidents in Fort Lupton happened in March 2009 when residents reported that their tap water had become flammable. An investigation found that nearby natural gas wells were leaking into the cityโs groundwater supply, the Greeley Tribune reported.
In November 2023, a water main break at the intersection of 9th St. and Lancaster Ave. in Fort Lupton caused a high concentration of chlorine to enter the water supply for the nearby neighborhoods. Officials with CDPHEโs water quality division told Fort Lupton staff that โthere will be water quality complaintsโ resulting from the break and that residents should flush their ice makers and sinks, although โa mandatory advisory would not be necessary at this time,โ according to emails contained in a November 2023 CDPHE water quality incident report.
The cityโs most recent water quality report also shows that the cityโs water treatment plant reported one health-based violation in 2023 for having an inadequate backflow prevention and cross-connection control program. This program, โUncontrolled cross connections can lead to inadvertent contamination of the drinking water,โ the report says. Fort Lupton has hired a contracting firm called Aqua Backflow to help improve its backflow issues, according to the cityโs website.
Schneider Electric North America Microgrid President Jana Gerber said these are just a few of the issues that the project team wanted to address when they pitched the microgrid idea to Fort Lupton officials. Gerber added that the project could serve as a model for other microgrid partnerships in rural communities.ย
As part of the agreement, Schneider Electric is responsible for designing and building the microgrid. United Power would then become the owner and operator of the grid while Fort Lupton pays for maintenance. United Power also plans to partner with Aims Community College and the BUENO Center for Multicultural Education to provide contracting outreach, according to United Power CEO Mark Gabriel.
John Tracy, director of the Colorado Water Center at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, said the issues with Fort Luptonโs drinking water system are indicative of the cityโs age. Fort Lupton was incorporated in 1889, and Tracy said the cityโs existing water system likely dates back to the 1970s when the Clean Water Act provided billions in federal subsidies for water improvement projects.
But maintaining that infrastructure is a delicate dance that is difficult for rural communities to perform, Tracy added. Many rural towns like Fort Lupton collect enough water fees to operate their system, not improve it, Tracy said. Fort Luptonโs 2024 budget projects a 10.7% decrease in water sales tax collections and a more than 5% increase in expenditures from its water sales tax fund. The city also plans to spend more than $18 million on capital improvements for its water system over the next six years.
With all of the planned expenditures, Fort Lupton needs to find a place to cut its operating costs. Thatโs where the floating solar array comes in. Tracy said Other cities like San Antonio, Texas have come to the same conclusion that green technology can reduce their operating costs by reducing their dependence on fossil fuels, which are more expensive to acquire than electricity.
โFossil fuel energy prices have been too variable and itโs difficult to blend that into a municipal budget and project what those costs are going to be two years from now,โ Tracy said. โIf youโre doing something like either wind or solar, you have much more predictability in the cost.โ
Oak Flat, Arizona features groves of Emory oak trees, canyons, and springs. This is sacred land for the San Carlos Apache tribe. Resolution Copper (Rio Tinto subsidiary) lobbied politicians to deliver this National Forest land to the company with the intent to build a destructive copper mine. By SinaguaWiki – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98967960
โThis is our land,โ said [Verlon] Jose, whose tribe [Tohono Oโodham Nation] includesย roughly 38,000 members across southern Arizona and northern Mexico. โIt should all be protected.โ
[…]
Jose is one of several tribal leaders nationwide who are growing frustrated with the Biden administration and its ambitious plans for clean-energy projects that could affect their ancestral lands. While the White House has worked to repair the federal governmentโs relationships with Indigenous peoples, that effort is conflicting with another Biden priority: expediting projects essential for the energy transition…The SunZia transmission line is one of those projects. Once complete, the power line would carry clean electricity from massive wind farms in New Mexico to more-populated areas as far away as California. The Biden administration has championed SunZia as a key pillar of its plans for fighting climate change and boosting green energy, and has defended its engagement with area tribes…
โWe do not disagree with renewable energy,โ Jose said. โWe are for renewable energy. You know what the fix to this issue is? They could have rerouted it. But they didnโt listen.โ
[…]
About 70 miles east of Phoenix, one of the tribes fighting SunZia โ the San Carlos Apache โ is also working to stop a proposed copper mine on land that it considers sacred. In Nevada, some tribal activists are opposing one of the worldโs largest mines for lithium, a mineral crucial to the development of batteries for electric vehicles.ย And in Oklahoma, a federal judge recently took the rare step ofย ordering the removalย of a wind farm on Osage Nation land.
The Crossing Trails Wind Farm between Kit Carson and Seibert, about 150 miles east of Denver, has an installed capacity of 104 megawatts, which goes to Tri-State Generation and Transmission. Photo/Allen Best
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
February 23, 2024
A bill being readied for introduction in March would create a state standard for review of renewable energy projects by Colorado jurisdictions. Is this really needed?
A bill creating statewide standards for local governments in Colorado evaluating renewable energy projects is likely to be introduced in coming days or weeks. Is this a solution in search of a problem?
Very few local governments in Colorado have adopted regulations seen as onerous by energy developers. Pueblo County several years ago rejected a solar farm based on neighborhood opposition. They feared loss of views. Mesa County in January adopted a six-month moratorium on new utility-scale solar projects with the active support of at least one local solar company. Delta County commissioners at first rejected a solar farm on Garnett Mesa but the proponents made changes more acceptable to neighbors.
Coloradoโs counties have not been hard-nosed about renewable energy. That point was made by State Sen. Byron Pelton, a former Logan County commissioner who represents much of northeastern Colorado and has a small cow-calf operation near Sterling.
In an op-ed published in the print edition of The Denver Post on Feb. 4 (not available online), he took a swing at the โDemocrat majority and radical environmentalistsโ who would usurp local control in regulating renewable energy siting.
โMost proposed renewable energy projects are approved, and when proposals are denied, itโs for good reason,โ wrote Pelton. โThose reasons range from environmental impact concerns and impact on agriculture and wildlife to inadequate benefits for the host community.โ
Boulder County, he pointed out, led the way in using moratoriums to address local concerns.
โThey imposed a five-year moratorium on oil and gas, giving them time to contemplate the best path forward for their community. None of the moratoriums imposed on renewable energy development have come anywhere close to approaching five years.โ
โAt least 15% of counties in the US have effectively halted new utility-scale wind, solar or both,โ the newspaper reported. The limits come in the form of outright bans, moratoriums, construction impediments and other conditions that make green energy difficult to build.โ
The newspaper reported that 375 counties blocked new wind developments in the past decade compared to 183 counties who got them. Many were in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Kentucky, but also in Vermont. Maps published with the story show a couple of counties with wind restrictions on Coloradoโs eastern plains, and several on the Western Slope, which have far less wind value. The chart also shows solar restrictions in several Colorado counties but provides no detail.
One common requirement in zoning rules intended to block new wind farms specifies the height of a turbine relative to adjacent property lines. Most new wind turbines in the U.S. are 500 feet or taller. Some counties require setbacks of 1,320 feet, 1,500 feet, a mile or, in some cases, 3 miles.
Colorado Public Radio in a Feb. 8 story reported that State Sen. Chris Hansen, D-Denver, said he intended to introduce a bill that would create a standardized process for local governments considering renewable energy projects. CPRโs Sam Brasch reported that an early draft of the bill also identified rules to restrict development of wind and solar farms and also transmission lines.
Hansen yesterday confirmed that he intends to introduce the bill in March.
A flashpoint for this lies in Washington County, which is in Peltonโs district. While county commissioners in Akron have welcomed the Colorado Power Pathway that crosses the countyโs southern section, the county in 2021 also approved some of the stateโs toughest regulations on renewable energy projects. CPR says those regulations require one-mile spacing between structures and new wind turbines.
The CPR story also cites a study from the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law that found local governments across 34 states have approved at least 228 restrictions on renewable energy development.
New York, California, and Illinois adopted legislation similar to that being drafted by Hansen to limit local control over renewable energy projects.
A first of its kind U.N. study by conservation scientists finds nearly half of internationally protected migratory species are on their way to extinction.
Humans are driving migratory animalsโsea turtles, chimpanzees, lions and penguins, among dozens of other speciesโtowards extinction, according to the most comprehensive assessment of migratory species ever carried out.
The State of the Worldโs Migratory Species, a first of its kind report compiled by conservation scientists under the auspices of the U.N. Environment Programmeโs World Conservation Monitoring Centre, found population decline, a precursor to extinction, in nearly half of the roughly 1,200 species listed under the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), a 1979 treaty aimed at conserving species that move across international borders.
The reportโs findings dovetail with those of another authoritative U.N. assessment, the 2019ย Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, that found around 1 million of Earthโs 8 million species are at risk of extinction due to human activity. Since the 1970s, global biodiversity, the variation of life on Earth, has declined by a whopping 70 percent.
Scientists and economists use complicated models to try to predict how fast the world can transition away from fossil fuels. The Washington Post analyzed 1,200 modeled pathways for the world to shift to clean energy and found that only four of them showed the world hitting the 1.5C target without substantially overshooting or using speculative technology (like large-scale carbon capture) that doesnโt yet exist. At this point, many experts believe that the economy is too stuck on fossil fuels to transition fast enough for 1.5 degrees.
Does that mean weโll pass catastrophic tipping points?
Arctic Ocean. Photo credit: The European Commission
Thatโs a more difficult question. Scientists donโt know exactly when certain tipping points โ like theย collapse of the Greenland ice sheetย or the release of greenhouse gases from thawing permafrost โ will occur. Itโs very hard to predict and model these types of catastrophic changes.
And 1.5C isnโt a magic threshold; itโs not as though as soon as we pass that number, Antarctic ice sheets will collapse and ocean circulations will grind to a halt. But one thing is certain: For every tenth of a degree of warming, tipping points are more likely. Two degrees is worse than 1.9 degrees, which is worse than 1.8 degrees, and so on.
And at each tenth of a degree, the infrastructure and systems that the world has built โ electric grids, homes, livelihoods โ will become more strained. Our modern world simply was not designed for temperatures this high. At some level, the final temperature of the planet isnโt what matters most. Itโs where countries can actually get carbon emissions to zero โ and stop contributing to future warming altogether.
Click the link to read the article on The Washington Post website (Shannon Osaka). Here’s an excerpt:
Itโs official: For the past 12 months, the Earth wasย 1.5 degrees Celsius higherย than in preindustrial times, scientists said Thursday [February 8, 2024], crossing a critical barrier into temperatures never experienced by human civilizations. According to the European Unionโs Copernicus Climate Change Service, the past 12 months clocked in at a scorching 1.52 degrees Celsius (2.74 degrees Fahrenheit) higher on average compared with between 1850 and 1900. At some level, thatโs not surprising โ the past 12 months have been scorching, as a warmย El Niรฑo cycleย combined with the signal ofย human-caused warmingย generated heat waves and extreme weather events around the globe.
โThis El Nino maximum is riding on top of a base climate that is continuously warming due to climate change,โ Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, said in an email. โThe combination of them is whatโs giving us such hot global temperatures.โ
But does this mean that the worldโs most famous climate goal is out of reach? Not … exactly. Hereโs what you need to know:
In the 2016 Paris climate agreement, almost 200 nations agreed to keep the global average temperature from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels โ and to โpursue effortsโ to keep it below 1.5 degrees Celsius. The latter addition largely came from pressure from small-island states, who are at risk of disappearing under rising seas if temperatures get much higher. Scientists have shown that holding the temperature riseย to 1.5C could mean the survival of coral reefs, the preservation of Arctic sea ice and less deadly heat waves…
Does this mean we have missed the 1.5C climate goal? No. Thereโs actually someย disagreementย about what exactly counts as breaching that threshold โ but scientists and policymakers agree that it has to be a multiyear average, not a single 12-month period. Scientists estimate that without dramatic emissions reductions, that will happen sometime in theย 2030s. But there could be other single years or 12-month periods that cross the line before then.
Can we still avoid passing 1.5C? Most scientists say passing 1.5C is inevitable. โThe 1.5-degree limit is deader than a doornail,โ Columbia University climate scientist James Hansen said in a call with reporters late last year.
Agrivoltaics are the pairing of solar energyโalso known as photovoltaicsโand agriculture. Some experts think it offers solutions that can help renewables better integrate with rural livelihoods and might also provide some enhancements for farming as we head into a hotter, drier, less predictable weather future.
As an example, Jackโs Solar Garden, on Coloradoโs Front Range, has been a real leader modeling how agrivoltaics, farming and community can support each other. And now, such systems are beginning to sprout on the Western Slope as well.
As the need for fast deployment of renewables impacts rural communities, issues such as siting and who benefits become central concerns.
Smart co-location, including agrivoltaics where it makes sense, is one way to smooth the way for more clean energy to power farms and rural places. Community-solar is another way to ensure that communities are centered in the expansion of renewable energy.
Community-Solar can help put rural people at the center of the clean energy build-out.
Community-solarโthink โsolar gardenโโis a shared solar system that provides a direct benefit from the power production at that facility to a group of community-based members or subscribers. Community-solar can increase energy equity by sharing the benefits of clean energy production and savings among a number of users, and can support the expansion of renewables by putting more members from impacted communities in the driver’s seat. It often is used to assist households that otherwise would be unable to afford or obtain individual solar systems in benefiting from the growth of clean energy.
In Delta County, the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance is part of a team of local leaders bringing agrivoltaics together with community-solar in a project at Thistle Whistle Farm on Hanson Mesa, outside the town of Hotchkiss. The Thistle Whistle project got a kick-start last spring when the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance and the team were awarded a stage 1 Community Solar Power Accelerator Prize, sponsored by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That competition is still on-going even as the Thistle Whistle project proceeds.
Photo credit: Colorado Farm & Food Alliance
National Community Solar Prize spurs project along.
Project proponents hope the latest submission will unlock the stage 2 funding award this spring, keeping things on track to put a community-owned, farm-integrated energy system into operation before next year. In any case, the National Community Solar Partnership, which helps administer the competition through the Hero X platform, also provides in-depth training, technical assistance, and a supportive cohort that has already moved this project forward.
You can learn more about this project and the inspiration behind it on this episode of Crisis to Comeback, a podcast by Kori Stanton and Citizens for a Healthy Community. She interviews Mark Waltermire, owner of Thistle Whistle Farm and a western Colorado agricultural leader.
Ancestral map of the Osage Nation shows their migration over a period of more than 1,000 years, towards the modern day territory in Northeast Oklahoma. Credit: The Osage Nation
โIf youโre going to develop energy in the U.S. youโve got to do it with the support of tribal communities.”
In December, a federal judge found that Enel Green Power, an Italian energy corporation operating an 84-turbine wind farm on the Osage Reservation for nearly a decade, had trespassed on Native land. The ruling was a clear victory for the Osage Nation and the company estimated that complying with the order to tear down the turbines would cost nearly $260 million.ย
Attorneys familiar with Federal Indian law say itโs uncommon for U.S. courts to side so clearly with tribal nations and actually expel developers trespassing on their land. But observers also see the ruling as part of a broader trend: Gone are the days when developers could ignore Indigenous rights with impunity. Now, even if projects that threaten Native land and cultural resources ultimately proceed, they may come with years-long delays that tack on millions of dollars. As more companies look to build wind and solar farms or mine minerals for renewable energy, failing to recognize Indigenous sovereignty could make the clean energy transition a lot more expensive and much further away.
โI think tribes are starting to see that they have more leverage than they thought, and that theyโve previously exercised, over all this infrastructure thatโs on their land,โ said Pilar Thomas, an attorney, member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona and former deputy director of the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs at the U.S. Department of Energy. โThey want to make sure that theyโre getting their fair share.โ
Rick Tallman, a program manager at Colorado School of Minesโย Center for Native American Mining and Energy Sovereigntyย who has spent more than two decades working on financing and consulting for clean energy projects, calls the Osage Nation ruling a wake-up call.ย
โIf youโre going to develop energy in the U.S. youโve got to do it with the support of tribal communities,โ he said.
According to Tallman, investors donโt like uncertainty. He said a lot of infrastructure funders are very conservative and wonโt back a project unless they are confident it will succeed, which includes getting the buy-in of affected Indigenous Nations. Thereโs no upper limit to how much the project could cost if investors donโt get it right.ย
Marion Werkheiser, founding partner ofย Cultural Heritage Partners, said the costs are so high that some renewable energy projects never even get off the ground, citing the Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound that was opposed by members of the Wampanoag Tribe.
And itโs not just a U.S. trend; Indigenous peoples around the world are fighting to enforce their rights, especially the right to free, prior and informed consent to projects on their landโa concept enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. However, the U.S. hasnโt codified that into law, and compliance globally is spotty.
โRenewable energies are actually not that good in respecting Indigenous rights,โ said Genevieve Rose from the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs. โThey have this feeling that because they bring up something good, something green, that they are automatically a good thing.โ
But her colleague David Berger said thereโs more awareness and resistance from Indigenous peoples, and companies are being forced to factor in those costs. He pointed to Norway, where the state-owned company that developed an illegal wind farm has agreed to pay Indigenous Sรกmi people about $675,000 every yearfor the next 25 years for violating their rights. โWhatโs good is you have that legal structure so communities can push back,โ Berger said.
Wesley Furlong, an Anchorage-based senior staff attorney at theย Native American Rights Fund, said more tribes are filing lawsuits in the U.S., partly because the legal landscape is changing. For example, the National Historic Preservation Act, a federal law managing the preservation of historic resources, has been around since 1966, but it was only in 1999 that the federal government codified regulations related to communicating with tribes about projects that affect them, and the rules werenโt fully in effect until 2004. Some tribes are just now learning about their rights.ย
Another reason for the increase in lawsuits is because some tribal nations have more resources to fund litigation. โIndian gaming has been a game-changer for tribes to be able to raise revenue and hire attorneys,โ Furlong said.
That combination of more legal tools, more financial resources and more education about Native rights, Furlong said, has led to more tribes getting involved in energy developments on their traditional and ancestral territories, including lands with historic connections and are not owned by a tribe. And he only expects that to continue: Most of the U.S. reserves of lithium, copper, cobalt and nickel โ metals key to the clean energy transition โ are within 35 miles of Federal Indian Reservations, according to a study by the investment firm MSCI.
Thatโs something renewable energy developers need to be aware of, said Thomas. โI am a staunch believer that if you are within spitting distance of a tribe that you should be engaged in outreach to the tribe,โ she said.
Not every project is going to get buy-in, she adds, but she encourages companies to have patience and continue to reach out to tribes even if they donโt respond. Furlong from the Native American Rights Fund said project proponents may erroneously assume that tribes will always be opposed, forgetting that tribal governments want whatโs in the best interest of their citizens
Bottom line, itโs much less costly for companies to invest in tribal consultations and get them right from the get-go, says Daniel Cardenas, the head of the National Tribal Energy Association and a member of the Pit River Tribe who has consulted with tribes and companies regarding fossil fuel projects. โThe cost of engagement is almost nothing compared to the cost of what theyโre going to have to pay [if they donโt do it right],โ he said of developers.
Werkheiser has seen some progress, with some banks, insurance companies and energy developers adopting Indigenous peoples policies to guide their investments and some companies undergoing voluntary certifications to show their projects are ethical and respectful of Indigenous rights. โFinancial institutions are recognizing that this is a real business risk and theyโre building it into the cost of capital for these companies,โ she said.
But overall, change is slow, she said.
โFor the most part, the renewable energy developers are repeating the mistakes that fossil fuels developers have made over the years,โ she said. โTheyโre not engaging with tribes early as potential partners and information sources during their planning process, and they are basically deferring their own relationship with tribes to the federal government.โ
Thatโs a mistake, said David Kane, a consultant who leads WindHorse Strategic Initiatives. Energy companies often mistakenly perceive tribal chairs as though they are the equivalent of small-town mayors, rather than recognizing them as heads of state. [ed. emphasis mine]
Because of that, he says companies often disrespect tribes from the beginning by sending lower-level representatives to liaise with them, and many companies may never even step foot on a reservation or go before tribal councils. Developers often complain that it takes a long time to build relationships with tribal members but Kane says itโs better to do so before projects get underway.
โThereโs still a lot of mistrust of white men and with good reason,โ he said. And the energy industry, including renewables, he said, is still predominantly white and male.
Another challenge is that sometimes companies assume what will work with one tribe will work with another, said Cardenas from the National Tribal Energy Association.
โThereโs 574 tribes, and each one operates differently and independently,โ he said. โSo if you know one tribe, you just know one tribe.โ
He thinks tribal nations should be seen as partners, even sponsoring partners, with shared equity in the developments. Thereโs growing interest: Over the past two decades, tribal nations have pursued hundreds of clean energy projects, with the Inflation Reduction Act recently increasing funding for such projects.
But in the meantime, costly litigation continues. Last week in the U.S., four tribal nationsย sued a developerย to prevent a $10 billion wind energy transmission line from going into operation. And in Oklahoma, the Osage Nation is now seeking damages from Enel. A judge stillย needs to decideย how much that will cost the company.ย
In a world of often competing needs, sometimes it’s harder to find a common path forward than to simply plow oneโs own. And when a project to be hurried along is for some greater good, then to steam through the process may seem warranted. This sometimes seems the case for calls to streamline clean energy development or to limit community input into new infrastructure. But shortcuts can make for long delays – and many an ambitious project runs into obstacles by not adequately involving impacted members of the public, who nonetheless will be heard.
Still, we shouldnโt delay. The need is real. How we power our lives and communities is quickly shifting and western Colorado should lead the way. It isnโt either/or. Siting of energy facilities and how they are integrated with the environment, farms, businesses and neighborhoods should always be a top concern. We must not repeat mistakes from our fossil fuel past when ecosystems and some communities were treated as sacrifice zones in the name of necessity. But we absolutely must transform our energy system and how we power our lives and economy.
Last February, my organization – the Colorado Farm and Food Alliance – issued its report on climate change in the Gunnison River Basin. Then 2023 happened. Last year is being widely reported as the hottest ever recorded as concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere – notably CO2 – hit levels likely not seen for millions of years. Meanwhile extreme weather and other climate disruptions continued to reset expectations about scope, onset and frequency.
Sure, there are still hold-outs who believe climate science is fiction and others who want hard to believe that some yet-unproven technology will allow the burning of methane-gas, oil and coal long into the future. But the economic, political and fact-based reality is that to a growing number of nations, decision-makers and institutions a rapid shift to clean energy is both necessary and inevitable. The data are clear: we must act with urgency and at scale if we are to address climate change.
That doesnโt skip over the need to meet community needs and issues. Federal legislation has made new funding available to help speed the deployment of more renewables. And the Colorado legislature is considering legislation, and could do more, to help direct where and how this renewable build out occurs. Still, local governments, like county commissioners, should not wait.
Taking effort to incentivize renewable projects that integrate with and benefit the communities where they are located is key. Not only for fairness but also to smooth development at the pace and scope required. The co-location of facilities, solar with agriculture for instance, or on rooftops and over parking lots, can help to mitigate some of the burden new development can place on others. Opportunities like workforce development programs, consumer cost savings, community-ownership are other outcomes that can and should be encouraged to make clean energy a win for the community as a whole, as well as for the climate.
One example is the agrivoltaics project the Colorado Farm and Food Alliance has been helping to steer in Delta County, that seeks to develop a community-rooted model for solar that pairs with and even benefits agriculture, putting more clean power on the grid while returning the cost-savings from production to its farm-based member-subscribers.
That is one place strong local leadership can help, in Mesa County and elsewhere, to guide where and how such projects are located. And state legislation can create stronger incentives to put more meaningful and community-centered benefits in renewable project design and power generation. For instance, by encouraging utilities, both investor-owned and rural cooperatives, to accept more community-solar on their systems, or making it easier to put solar production cost-savings directly on a consumerโs utility bill, as examples.
But we need to act now. With federal funding from recent laws, a growing recognition of the challenge at hand, and a willingness to lead we can develop a new energy economy that supports western Colorado communities and livelihoods. We need a thoughtful but strong and steady approach that meets and matches community needs and promptly puts more renewable energy to work powering Colorado.
A solar-pollinator habitat, dominated by purple prairie clover and black-eyed susan flowering plants. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory/Lee Walston.)
Two solar facilities built on rehabilitated agricultural land were restored with native plants. Argonne researchers observed pollinators thrive.
Bumblebees buzz from flower to flower, stopping for a moment under a clear blue Minnesota sky. Birds chirp, and tall grasses blow in the breeze. This isnโt a scene from a pristine nature preserve or national park. It is nestled between photovoltaic (PV) solar arrays on rehabilitated farmland.
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energyโs (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and National Renewable Energy Laboratory wanted to understand the ecological value of PV solar energy sites planted with native grasses and wildflowers. They examined how vegetation would establish and how insect communities would respond to the newly established habitat. The five-year field study looked at two solar sites in southern Minnesota operated by Enel Green Power North America. Both sites were built on retired agricultural land.
Smart land use choices provide multiple benefits
Global insect biodiversity has been in decline due to habitat loss, pesticides and climate change. Restoration of insect habitat paired with smart land use changes toward renewable energy developments could help reverse the course.
For instance, as a carbon-neutral source of electricity, expanded PV solar energy development is critical to mitigating climate change. According to the DOEโs Solar Futures Study, approximately 10 million acres of land in the U.S. will be needed for large-scale solar development by 2050 in order to meet grid decarbonization and climate change goals. But some lands are better suited for PV solar development than others. Disturbed lands such as former agricultural fields are ideal locations to hold rows of solar panels compared to lands that have been previously undisturbed.
An Argonne scientist surveys for pollinators at a utility-scale solar facility. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory/Lee Walston.)
Even more strategies can be added to this winning combination to support insect conservation. Agrivoltaics is the combination of solar energy production with agricultural and vegetation management practices. One type of agrivoltaics focuses on the establishment of habitat for insect pollinators and other wildlife that can provide important ecosystem services, such as pollination. Pairing solar energy facilities on previously disturbed lands with habitat enhancement sounds like a logical win-win strategy to address energy and biodiversity challenges. To date, however, there has been little field data available to document the feasibility and the ecological benefits of this novel land use approach.
If you build it, will they come?
The two studied solar sites were planted with native grasses and flowering plants in early 2018. From August 2018 through August 2022, the researchers conducted 358 observational surveys for flowering vegetation and insect communities. They evaluated changes in plant and insect abundance and diversity with each visit.
โThe effort to obtain these data was considerable, returning to each site four times per summer to record pollinator counts,โ said Heidi Hartmann, manager of the Land Resources and Energy Policy Program in Argonneโs Environmental Sciences division, and one of the studyโs co-authors. โโOver time we saw the numbers and types of flowering plants increase as the habitat matured. [ed. emphasis mine] Measuring the corresponding positive impact for pollinators was very gratifying.โ
By the end of the field campaign, the team observed increases for all habitat and biodiversity metrics. There was an increase in native plant species diversity and flower abundance. In addition, the team observed increases in the abundance and diversity of native insect pollinators and agriculturally beneficial insects, which included honeybees, native bees, wasps, hornets, hoverflies, other flies, moths, butterflies and beetles. Flowers and flowering plant species increased as well. Total insect abundance tripled, while native bees showed a 20-fold increase in numbers. The most numerous insect groups observed were beetles, flies and moths.
In an added benefit, the researchers found that pollinators from the solar sites also visited soybean flowers in adjacent crop fields, providing additional pollination services.
The benefits of solar-pollinator habitats
A monarch caterpillar on a common milkweed leaf. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory/Lee Walston.)
โThis research highlights the relatively rapid insect community responses to habitat restoration at solar energy sites,โ said Lee Walston, an Argonne landscape ecologist and environmental scientist who was lead author of the study. โโIt demonstrates that, if properly sited, habitat-friendly solar energy can be a feasible way to safeguard insect populations and can improve the pollination services in adjacent agricultural fields.โ Walston also serves as head of the Ecology, Natural Resources, and Managed Systems department in Argonneโs Environmental Science division.
The research findings suggest two important implications of habitat-friendly solar energy. One is that habitat-friendly solar sites can play an important role in conserving biodiversity. Large amounts of ground-mounted solar is expected to be developed in the future, but if properly sited, habitat-friendly solar can offset the losses of natural areas to provide biodiversity benefits. Second, habitat-friendly solar sites can help mitigate land-use conflicts associated with the conversion of farmland for solar energy production. As approximately 80% of future ground-mounted solar development could occur on agricultural lands, the proper siting of habitat-friendly solar energy on marginal farmland can not only preserve prime farmland, but it could make prime farmland more productive through the pollination services provided by habitat-friendly solar energy.
Overall, additional research is needed to understand the feasibility of habitat-friendly solar across different regions and to meet different ecological goals such as conserving a target insect or wildlife species.
Funding was provided by the InSPIRE project through the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energyโs Solar Energy Technologies Office.
A boom in Chinese solar power construction drove another record-breaking year of renewables growth in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Carbon Brief analysis of figures in the IEAโs Renewables 2023 report show that the world is now on track to build enough solar, wind and other renewables over the next five years to power the equivalent of the US and Canada.
Rapid growth has also pushed the IEA to once again significantly upgrade its renewables forecast, adding an extra 728 gigawatts (GW) of capacity to a five-year estimate it made just a year ago. This is more than the electricity capacity of Germany and India combined.
The agency attributes this growth to plummeting costs of solar power and favourable policy regimes, particularly in China. New solar and onshore wind now provide cheaper electricity than new fossil fuel power plants almost everywhere, it says, as well as being cheaper than most existing fossil fuel assets.
Despite such accelerated expansion, the world is not currently on track to achieve the COP28target of tripling renewables capacity by 2030, according to the IEA.
However, it proposes various measures to further increase deployment, including more finance for developing countries.
โStep changeโ
Last year was a โstep change for renewable power growthโ as the world built an extra 507GW of renewable capacity, primarily solar and wind power, according to the IEA.
This was a 49% increase on the previous yearโs construction. It marked the 22nd year in a row that renewable capacity addition reached record levels.
Over the six-year period 2023-2028, an additional 3,684GW of renewables is expected to come online under the IEAโs โmainโ forecast. This is double the current total of renewable capacity installed globally.
In 2023, solar power both at utility-scale and on rooftops amounted to three-quarters of capacity additions, primarily due to growth in China. Over the next five years, 73% of the 3,174GW of new capacity will be solar, again driven largely by China. (See: China leads.)
By Carbon Briefโs calculations, this 2024-2028 period is on track to see an extra 4,963 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity generation from renewable sources.
This amounts to one-sixth of the worldโs electricity output in 2022. As the chart below shows, this is equivalent to covering the entire electricity demand of the US and Canada with newly-built renewables.
Electricity generation in 2022 (dark blue) from key fuel sources and countries, terawatt-hours (TWh). Red bars indicate estimated electricity generation from the renewables built in 2019-2023 and set to be built in 2024-2028, according to the IEAโs โmain caseโ forecast. Source: Carbon Brief analysis by Simon Evans of figures from the IEA Renewables 2023 and Renewables 2022 reports, the IEA world energy outlook 2023 and the Ember data explorer.
By 2028, the IEA forecasts that renewables will account for 42% of global electricity generation, with wind and solar power making up 25%. Despite showing no growth across this period, hydropower is still expected to be the largest single source of renewable power.
Taken together, the agency says renewables will overtake coal power as the largest source of power in โearly 2025โ. (A year ago, the agency said renewables would become the worldโs largest electricity source within three years.)
One major driver of this growth is the plummeting cost of renewables, especially solar photovoltaics (PV). Spot prices for solar modules declined by almost 50% in 2023 compared to the previous year, according to the IEA.
Last year, 96% of newly installed utility-scale solar and onshore wind capacity generated cheaper electricity than new coal and gas plants, according to the IEA.
Moreover, three-quarters of new wind and solar power plants provided cheaper power than even existing fossil-fuel facilities.
The other key driver is the strong policy support that renewables enjoy in โmore than 130 countriesโ, the IEA says. It notes that โpolicies remain key for attracting investment and enabling deploymentโ, with roughly 87% of the utility-scale renewable growth between 2023 and 2028 โexpected to be stimulated by policy schemesโ.
At the same time, the report highlights the impact of the โnew macroeconomic environmentโ on the renewables sector, with inflation and high interest rates raising costs. Offshore wind has been hardest hit, with the IEAโs forecast for its growth outside China dropping by 15%.
The report also examines renewable heat consumption and the use of biofuels. Both are set to grow considerably in the coming years, but the IEA says neither are currently on track for the trajectories seen in its net-zero scenario, which aligns with the Paris Agreement.
Record revision
As a result of this growth, the IEA has again significantly raised its forecast for renewables capacity expansion, by a record amount.
It now sees an additional 728GW being built in the 2023-2027 period compared to its forecast from 2022 โ a 33% increase. This is notable considering that, last year, the agency described a five-year 424GW adjustment as its โlargest ever upward revisionโ.
The chart below shows the 120GW divergence between actual renewables growth in 2023ย โ some 507GWย โ and the forecast for that year of 387GW, made by the IEA in 2022.
Annual additions of renewable capacity (dark blue), with forecasts from 2022 (light blue) and 2023 (dark blue). The 2023 is based on the IEAโs โmain caseโ. Unlike in previous IEA reports, solar power data for all countries has been converted to direct current (DC), increasing capacity for countries reporting in alternating current (AC). The 2022 forecast data has been converted to allow comparison. Source: Carbon Brief analysis of figures from the IEA Renewables 2023 and Renewables 2022, and historical data from the IEA.
The IEA has a long history of making relatively conservative predictions for renewable growth that are subsequently outstripped by reality, due to a combination of more favourable policy conditions and faster-than-expected cost reductions.
Forecasts from previous IEA renewables reports issued in 2020 and 2021 showed annual renewable growth rates remaining fairly stable at around 200GW and 300GW per year for the following five years, respectively.
However, these forecasts have not been included in the chart above as, for the first time, the agency has converted all of its solar power values to direct current, resulting in slightly different GW values. This means previous forecasts are not directly comparable, although the 2022 forecast figures have been converted for this purpose.
China leads
A key conclusion from the IEAโs new report is the global dominance of China in deploying solar and other renewables, which is set to increase in the coming years.
In the period 2005-2010, China built 39% of the worldโs new renewable energy capacity. This increased to 47% in the 2017-2022 period and the IEA expects it to rise to 59% between 2023 and 2028. This can be seen in the chart below.
By 2028, the agency estimates that nearly half of Chinaโs electricity will be generated by renewables. According to Ember, as of 2022 only around 30% of Chinaโs electricity was from renewables.
During this period, the nation is set to deploy four times more renewables than the EU and five times more than the US.
Total renewable electricity capacity growth across six-year periods, including the forecasted growth under the IEAโs โmain caseโ for 2023-2028. Growth in China is red and growth in the rest of the world is dark blue. Source: IEA Renewables 2023.
This growth is being driven by the nationโs success in solar power manufacture and installation, according to the IEA. In โalmost all provincesโ, generation costs for new utility-scale solar and onshore wind are now lower than for coal, which is generally used as the benchmark for electricity prices, the agency says.
The IEA attributes this progress to policy measures, including power market reforms, green certificate systems and province-level financial support to support rooftop solar installation. It also points to a โsupply glutโ that has helped solar module costs โplummet drasticallyโ.
As China accounts for 90% of the upwards revision in the IEAโs forecast out to 2028, it notes that the nationโs solar achievements actually โhide slower progress in other countriesโ.
There have been a number of significant supportive policy changes in other countries and regions, however.
The US and the EU are expected to see renewable installation rates double across 2023-2028, compared to the previous six-year period โ in both cases due primarily to solar expansion. The IEA attributes this to the US Inflation Reduction Act and supportive national policies โ such as government renewable power auctions โ across European nations.
The report also highlights the success of supportive policies in India and Brazil. It notes that while renewables are set to expand rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa โ particularly South Africa โ the region โstill underperforms considering its resource potential and electrification needsโ.
Tripling renewables
At COP28, nearly every government in the world agreed to a target of tripling global renewables capacity by 2030. This would bring the total to 11,000GW, which is in line with the IEAโs own net-zero scenario.
As it stands, the new report concludes that under the IEAโs โmain caseโ forecast, shown in yellow in the chart below, renewable capacity would increase to 7,339GW in 2028.
Following that trajectory, capacity would reach around 9,000GW in 2030 โ roughly an increase to 2.5 times current levels.
This forecast is based on existing policies and takes into account โcountry-specific challenges that hamper faster renewable energy expansionโ, the IEA says.
By contrast, the IEAโs โaccelerated caseโ involves governments โovercom[ing] these challenges and implement[ing] existing policies more quicklyโ.
In this scenario, shown in red below, renewables growth is around 21% higher. Capacity increases to 8,130GW in 2028, putting the world on track for the tripling by 2030 target.
Global renewables capacity growth under the โmain caseโ (yellow) and โaccelerated caseโ (red) forecasts laid out by the IEA. The light blue bar shows the 2022 baseline on which the โtripling renewables by 2030โ target (dark blue) is based. Source: IEA Renewables 2023.
The IEA lists a handful of broad measures that governments could take to achieve an โacceleratedโ trajectory.
These include: improved policy responses to the โnew macroeconomic environmentโ such as higher inflation; more investment in grid infrastructure; and dealing with โcumbersome administrative barriers and permitting procedures and social acceptance issuesโ.
The IEA notes that โthe lack of affordable financing remains the most important challenge to renewable project development in most EMDEs [emerging markets and developing economies], especially in countries where renewable policy uncertainties also increase project risk premiumsโ.
It emphasises the need to boost financing for EMDEs to overcome this barrier. Last year, renewable growth was concentrated in just 10 nations and tripling renewables requires โa much faster deployment rateโฆin numerous other nationsโ, the IEA says.
A solar farm off CO 17 in Alamosa County. Photo credit: Owen Woods/Alamosa Citizen
The experts tell us an energy gap looms. Fossil fuels are phasing out, and solar and wind power canโt produce enough electricity to meet the demand in coming decades.
But thatโs not the thinking of Amory Lovins, the 76-year-old co-founder of RMI, formerly the Rocky Mountain Institute in western Colorado.
A Harvard and Oxford dropout whoโs been called the โEinstein of Energy Efficiency, Lovins said recently: โIf we do the right things, weโll look back and ask each other, โWhat was all the fuss about?โโ
Lovins became famous in the 1970s after his research told him that building more polluting coal-fired power plants was a destructive mistake. His solution then was greater efficiency and reliance on renewables, and they, he insists, are still the answer.
โThough itโs invisible, efficiency will cut 50% of energy use and up to 80% if we do the right things,โ he told me recently. โMost of the energy we use is wasted, which makes it much cheaper to save it, rather than buy it or burn it.โ
According to a recent Princeton paper, heโs right: 84% of all energy consumed goes to waste during delivery or by leakage.
To prove it decades ago, he built a passive solar, super-insulated house at 7,100 feet of elevation in Old Snowmass, Colorado. It never had a heating system though winters regularly recorded 40 degrees below-zero temperatures.
When I arrived there recently at 8 a.m. it was 12 degrees F. Yet the house featured banana and papaya trees growing in natural light around a koi pond.
We became acquainted when he read my January 2023 Writers on the Range column entitled; โThe energy gap nobody wants to tussle with.โ Iโd advocated building small modular nuclear reactors to bolster the grid when the wind doesnโt blow and the sun doesnโt shine.
The Crossing Trails Wind Farm between Kit Carson and Seibert, about 150 miles east of Denver, has an installed capacity of 104 megawatts, which goes to Tri-State Generation and Transmission. Photo/Allen Best
Lovins became famous in the 1970s after his research told him that building more polluting coal-fired power plants was a destructive mistake. His solution then was greater efficiency and reliance on renewables, and they, he insists, are still the answer.
โThough itโs invisible, efficiency will cut 50% of energy use and up to 80% if we do the right things,โ he told me recently. โMost of the energy we use is wasted, which makes it much cheaper to save it, rather than buy it or burn it.โ
According to a recent Princeton paper, heโs right: 84% of all energy consumed goes to waste during delivery or by leakage.
To prove it decades ago, he built a passive solar, super-insulated house at 7,100 feet of elevation in Old Snowmass, Colorado. It never had a heating system though winters regularly recorded 40 degrees below-zero temperatures.
When I arrived there recently at 8 a.m. it was 12 degrees F. Yet the house featured banana and papaya trees growing in natural light around a koi pond.
We became acquainted when he read my January 2023 Writers on the Range column entitled; โThe energy gap nobody wants to tussle with.โ Iโd advocated building small modular nuclear reactors to bolster the grid when the wind doesnโt blow and the sun doesnโt shine.
Lovins called to set me straight, and after a second conversation and more research, Iโm beginning to think heโs right.
Though Lovins has many solutions for the energy gap, he touts three major ways to find more energy in what we already do. Tops on the list is changing how we build and retrofit existing structures because buildings consume 75% of the electricity we buy.
Most energy jobs in the United States are already increasing efficiency, ranging from upgrading windows and other retrofits, far outpacing the shrinking fossil fuels industry. (energy.gov)
As one example, Lovins advocates โoutsulationโ for older structures, defined as adding exterior insulating panels to save heat. Courtesy of the European Union, my Irish in-laws recently had their house โwrappedโ and saw their heating bills plummet.
His second way is demand-response, which Lovins calls flexiwatts. An example is cycling air conditioners off for 15-30 minutes at a time, a barely noticeable adjustment that cuts demand for peaker-power plants, those big emitters of greenhouse gases.
His third way is using renewables more effectively. Diversifying renewables by location and type within a region evens gaps from windless and cloudy weather.
Coyote Gulch’s shiny new Leaf May 13, 2023
As for electric cars being a drain on the grid, they will prove to be sources of electricity, he said, as the next generation batteries will be cheaper and likely have double the storage. Daytime solar stored in vehicles will be bi-directional, spooling out power during peak evening demand.
Lovins also cites LED lights dramatically cutting the cost of energy. In just a decade, theyโve become 30 times more efficient, 20 times brighter and 10 times cheaper.
Lovins is quick to admit that an energy gap remains, but he predicts a single-digit gapโ6%โbetween what renewables produce and whatโs needed. That, he said, can be made up by stored, green hydrogen or ammonia, manufactured from water and air with solar energy, and burned in existing gas plants.
As for nuclear power plants, Lovins said even the best-case scenarios for the next generation of nuclear generators are at least a decade away, and at least eight times more costly than renewables today.
โItโs better to use fast, cheap and certain rather than slow, costly and speculative,โ he said.
Though cutting loose from fossil fuels is a massive undertaking, Lovins said America is on track. โWe are on or ahead of schedule on renewables, with 85% of net new additions to the grid from renewables, and $1 billion invested in solar in the United States daily.โ
For these reasons and more, Lovins sees our energy future as more of what weโre already doingโonly smarter and faster. [ed. emphasis mine]
Letโs hope that heโs right. Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range,ย writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit that exists to spur lively dialog about the West. He lives in Durango, Colorado.
Denver Waterโs administration building is powered by solar panels. Photo credit: Denver Water.
Perhaps youโve seen the latest viral Facebook meme about the ungodly amount of mined material needed to manufacture an electric vehicle. If not, youโve probably seen one like it, maybe bashing EVs, maybe solar panels or wind turbines or some other clean energy technology (often accompanied by a gory image of a purported lithium mine). The implication is always the same: That โgreenโ technology youโre so fired up about isnโt green at all โ in fact, itโs destroying the earth.ย
Normally I wouldnโt give these things a second thought. After all, they are memes, which by their very nature are simplistic and aimed at triggering the most primal emotional response, usually some flavor of fear.
But this particular one โ an inventory of the many tons of ore that must be mined to produce the materials in a Tesla model Y battery โ has been especially infectious, it seems, and has made its way onto many of my social media palsโ feeds. Some of my friends have used it to argue against purchasing an EV, others have rightly questioned its veracity, while still others have posted counter-memes debunking it.
Since the Land Desk covers lithium mining and other impacts of the clean energy transition, I figured Iโd use this meme โ circulated by someone named Jackie โ as an opportunity to add some context. Thatโs because, regardless of whether the meme is accurate or not, it does bring up an important question: Are electric vehicles merely an instance of problem shifting, or transferring the equivalent environmental impacts from one technology to another?
The post in question, letโs call it Jackieโs Meme, claims that 250 tons of earth must be moved to obtain the lithium, nickel, manganese, and cobalt in a typical EV battery, and a Caterpillar 994A used for this purpose would burn about 264 gallons of diesel in 12 hours, offsetting the carbon emissions reductions youโd get from driving the car.
These are certainly eye-opening numbers, even if they are a bit off (I came up with a figure of 69 tons of material moved, not 250, but more on that later). But they are also irrelevant in isolation, since the only thing we can conclude is that manufacturing an EV requires mining, just like mining was required to produce the laptop Iโm writing this on, the desk itโs sitting atop, and the data center responsible for delivering the information to you. In other words, building an EV has an impact on the environment, maybe even a big one.
Coyote Gulch’s shiny new Leaf May 13, 2023
But you donโt buy an EV because itโs good for the environment. You buy it because itโs less bad for the environment than a conventional vehicle (and for other reasons, such as performance, fuel savings, and so forth). Without including a comparison of how much material and mining is needed for a conventional vehicle vs. an electric one, the meme is useless, meant only to scare people away from doing anything.
And that may have been the intent. But another reason for the omission is that accurate apples to apples comparisons of the total amount of mined material needed for an average ICE vehicle vs. an average EV are hard to find. That said, we do know that EVs generally are heavier than their gas-powered counterparts due to the large, dense batteries (although they have far fewer moving parts). And we do know that EVs require far more of certain minerals, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper.
This IEA graphic is a good one for those particular minerals:
Source: International Energy Agency
Manufacturing an electric vehicle, then, requires about six times as much of the listed materials as a conventional car. I suspect this disparity might shrink somewhat if steel (iron), aluminum, and molybdenum were also included, but it wouldnโt change the basic fact: EVs are more mineral intensive than ICE cars.
And whether the mineral is steel or nickel, cobalt or platinum, extracting it requires moving, hauling, milling, and smelting huge amounts of rock to get a relatively minuscule amount of target mineral. Thatโs why the Bingham Copper Mine near Salt Lake City is 2.5 miles wide and nearly 4,000 feet deep. And the more rock and ore you mine, the larger the volume of waste, or tailings and waste rock and, generally speaking, the greater the environmental impact1. Hereโs a great graphic showing the ratio of total material moved to ore mined to commodity produced:
From the Energy Transitions Commission. Hat-tip to Hannah Ritchieโs excellent Sustainability by the Numbers newsletter for pointing me to this resource.
Jackie apparently used this sort of math to get to the 250-tons figure. I think sheโs off: using the IEA figures and the above graphic, I find that an EV would actually require moving about 69 tons of earth. But when youโre talking dozens of tons, it doesnโt really matter that much. Jackieโs point still stands: Youโve gotta mine a lot of stuff to make an EV.
So, go ahead, buy that gasoline guzzler and feel good about it. Youโre doing the planet a favor!
Just kidding.
Sure, maybe when they come out the factory door, a new EV has a larger environmental footprint than its gasoline-powered counterpart. But once you start driving the things, the gasoline carโs impact grows at a much faster rate than the EVโs because of, well, gasoline.
Letโs say you live in New Mexico, and drive your car about 14,400 miles per year (the average for the state per registered vehicle), and you have an average car that gets about 22 miles per gallon. Youโll burn through 654 gallons of gasoline and your tailpipe will spew out about 6.4 tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide each year, along with a nasty cocktail of health-harming and smog-forming pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, benzene, and particulates.
Thatโs on top of the impacts of drilling for the oil from which the gasoline is derived. Drilling and hydraulic fracturing a single well can use 10 million gallons or more of fresh water. The 1,300 gallons of crude oil needed to produce your carโs annual gasoline use will be accompanied by as much as 7,800 gallons of briney, contaminated wastewater that must be disposed of โ often in deep injection wells that can trigger earthquakes. Planet-warming methane, along with harmful volatile organic compounds, can spew from oil wells, pipelines, and refineries. Pipelines rupture regularly, spilling wastewater, oil, or diesel โ sometimes they even explode. And petroleum refineries are major pollution sources as well.
Electric vehicles donโt have tailpipes, so youโre not polluting the neighborhood by driving one around2. Yes, electric vehicles must be charged, and yes, some of that electricity is likely to be generated by burning fossil fuels, which requires extraction and creates pollution and other environmental impacts. But EVs generally are more efficient than gasoline powered cars, especially the gargantuan SUVs Americans are so enamored with, so even if you charge on a natural gas-generation-dominated grid youโre likely emitting less carbon per mile. Study after cradle-to-grave study has found that EVs have lower emissions over their lifecycle than their gasoline-powered counterparts, even when battery production3 and raw material mining is accounted for.
This is a Euro-centric graph from Carbon Brief, but it gets the point across. And believe me, an average โEuro carโ is likely far more efficient than an average U.S. conventional car. Source: Carbon Brief.
EVsโ environmental advantages will continue to build as the electricity grid is further decarbonized and fossil fuel generation is displaced by solar, wind, geothermal, small hydropower, and nuclear. Large-scale battery recycling efforts are ramping up, which will reduce the amount of mining needed to build the things, and battery technology is advancing: They are becoming more energy dense and new lithium-, cobalt-, and nickel-free batteries are being developed. Researchers and startups are working to extract lithium from geothermal brine, allowing them to generate electricity and produce battery materials in one shot. And some hardrock mining operations are electrifying their haul trucks and other equipment and building solar arrays to power operations.
The upshot: If you need to purchase a new vehicle, and youโre trying to choose between an electric one or a gasoline-powered one, the EV probably would be a better choice for the environment over the long haul โ regardless of the scare-memes.
Still, even that meme serves a purpose: It reminds us that we wonโt get out of this mess by producing and consuming more stuff, no matter how โgreenโ it may be. [ed. emphasis mine] Simply clogging up the roads with electric vehicles, blanketing the deserts with solar panels, building new dams, or filling our homes with โsustainableโ goods wonโt solve the problems created in the first place by overconsumption and waste. Economic and cultural systems must be overhauled or even overthrown. And the incessant hunger for more, more, more must be tempered at last.
As the West pushes toward its ambitious climate goals, the delicate balance between clean energy development and land conservation has become paramount. While WRA and environmental advocates have passed legislation and won commitments that put electric utilities on track to reduce emissions, advance clean cars and trucks, electrify buildings, and decarbonize gas utilities, this requires more clean energy than ever before. To be successful in meeting these goals, we must focus on the next step in this process โ where to place clean energy infrastructure through smart energy siting.
As WRAโs energy siting policy advisor, I work at the critical nexus of the climate and biodiversity crises in the Interior West. I bring a unique perspective and experience to this role, too. I joined WRA as a clean energy policy fellow, working with our Clean Energy team to identify federal funding opportunities to advance climate change solutions. Now, as a part of the Western Lands team, I pull from that experience to help craft balanced policy solutions that advance WRAโs clean energy goals while ensuring the build-out of new clean energy projects does not exacerbate habitat loss or place development on important natural and working lands.
Right now, the major focus of my work is on Colorado. Building the clean energy projects necessary to meet the state of Coloradoโs ambitious climate goals will require a significant amount of land for wind and solar energy production, the largest driver of new land use change in the coming decades. To meet this need in a manner that does not exacerbate habitat loss and accelerate further loss of biodiversity requires a new approach to development planning.
WRA advocates for a smart energy siting approach that not only looks at the climate benefits of new clean energy projects but also accounts for the carbon impacts of land use change, ensures that conservation values are incorporated in the location and design of a project, and directly benefits host communities.
When done thoughtfully, new clean energy projects can provide the energy we need for a prosperous economy while minimizing the impact of these large projects on wildlife and ecosystems and provide direct economic benefits, from increased tax revenue to good paying jobs, in host communities. A smart energy siting approach assesses all these factors to maximize the benefits of new development and minimize conflicts that can often slow or stall projects.
.GIF credit: Western Resource Advocates.
WRA, as part of the Colorado Energy Siting Coalition, has been working over the last year to develop, advocate for, and implement a siting policy framework that ensures new clean energy projects in the state follow a smart siting approach to meet the states climate and conservation goals. WRA is a founding member and has been helping to coordinate the Coalitionโs efforts to understand the perspectives of stakeholders across the state that are driving, or will be impacted by, the clean energy transition. We are also providing policy research and analysis to develop a policy framework that meets Coloradoโs diverse needs and considerations.
Given the stateโs abundant clean energy resources, ambitious climate goals, and natural heritage, WRA believes Colorado can be a national leader in smart energy siting policy that minimizes conflicts with wildlife and accelerates the clean energy transition to address climate change. And this transition to a clean energy economy will touch all parts of the state.
To better understand the various perspectives across the state, the Coalition held several rounds of stakeholder meetings to understand and address disparate needs. This outreach and engagement process culminated in October with a Clean Energy Siting Summit that brought together over 80 stakeholders from across the state to learn from one another and co-develop policy solutions to promote smart energy siting for Colorado.
Participants included local and state government officials (county commissioners, state legislators, state agency directors and their staff, and the Governorโs policy advisors), renewable energy developers, electric utilities and co-ops, clean energy trade alliances, and environmental justice, conservation, agricultural, and wildlife organizations. This broad group, working altogether and in small groups, assessed policy options focused on:ย
Balancing state and local authority;ย ย
Providing resources to local governments;ย ย
Integrating environmental protections;ย ย
Facilitating public engagement and establishing and defining community benefits;ย ย
Streamlining and expediting the permitting process.ย ย
Building on the momentum of the summit and the ideas and perspectives shared, the Coalition is working to synthesize this information and incorporate the various considerations of stakeholders into a policy framework proposal that WRA and the Coalition will advocate for during the 2024 legislative session.ย ย
Photo credit: Western Resource Advocates
Photo credit: Western Resource AdvocatesPhoto credit: Western Resource Advocates
The amount of wind and solar energy needed to meet Coloradoโs energy needs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with science-based targets will require a significant amount of land. According to recent modeling by the Colorado Energy Office, the state will need to build approximately 12.5 gigawatts of wind and 12.5 gigawatts of solar capacity over the next two decades to meet this goal. If not properly planned for, this will cause irreparable harm to Coloradoโs wildlife, natural habitats, and important agricultural lands. The good news is, according to the best available science, we can achieve both our clean energy goalsย andย protect important natural and working lands.
Accomplishing a just and equitable transition that occurs fast enough to address climate change is no small task. WRA and the Coalition recognize that to meet the moment โ and this challenge โ will require a thoughtful, smart approach to siting clean energy projects that incorporates conservation and community priorities. To do this we must ensure that all those driving or being impacted by the clean energy transition โ including communities that have been previously left out of the decision-making process โ are able to shape the transition and that the rights of nature and wildlife are protected.
Addressing the climate and biodiversity crises requires new, thoughtful approaches to meeting our energy needs, reducing emissions, and conserving and protecting the natural landscapes that make Colorado unique. During the upcoming legislative session, WRA will be challenging legislators to institute this critical balance into law.ย ย
