SPP said Friday that a planned expansion into the West has attracted another potential member in the Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP).
SPP continues to attract interest in its Western RTO, one of several markets it offers. | SPP
The grid operator, which has launched two other services in the Western Interconnection since 2019, said it received a letter from CRSP expressing interest in evaluating membership in the RTO. A member of the Western Area Power Administration, the utility joins five other entities that have already asked SPP to provide information about RTO membership services in the West.
CSRP already participates in both of SPP’s contract-based Western services: Western Reliability Coordination and the Western Energy Imbalance Service (WEIS) market. It joins Basin Electric Power Cooperative, Deseret Power Electric Cooperative, the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska (MEAN), Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, and WAPA’s Upper Great Plains-West and Loveland Area Projects, which reached out to SPP in November. (See Western Utilities Eye RTO Membership in SPP.)
The companies are currently working with SPP staff to evaluate the terms, costs and benefits of putting their Western facilities under the RTO’s tariff. As members, they would benefit from day-ahead wholesale electricity market administration, transmission planning, reliability coordination, resource adequacy and other services, the grid operator said.
Basin Electric, MEAN, Tri-State and WAPA’s UGP-East are already SPP members, having joined in 2015 when they placed their Eastern Interconnection facilities under the RTO’s tariff.
WAPA interim Administrator and CEO Tracey LeBeau said joining SPP’s exploratory effort is a “logical next step” for CRSP as it evaluates how to maintain relevance with its customers and communities.
SPP’s RTO West would expand the grid operator’s 14-state footprint. | SPP
“Any decision to move forward with final negotiations for SPP RTO membership for CRSP or any WAPA region will be consistent with our statutory requirements and involve the appropriate public processes,” she said.
“SPP already has a strong partnership and history of successful collaboration with WAPA. … This expression of interest from their CRSP is a welcome affirmation of our belief that the Western Interconnection stands to gain tremendous value through services like those we can provide them,” SPP CEO Barbara Sugg said.
The RTO said it expects its wholesale market, resource adequacy program and other regionalized services will help Western members reach their renewable energy goals and reinforce system reliability. Those joining SPP would receive $25 million in annual adjusted production cost savings and revenues from off-system sales, according to a Brattle Group study. Current members would realize $24 million in savings resulting from the expansion of SPP’s market, transmission network and generation fleet, according to the study. (See SPP Stakeholders Dig into WEIS Market Study.)
SPP gained a foothold in the West in 2019 with the rollout of its RC service. It successfully launched the WEIS in February.
A renewable energy watchdog is alleging that Entergy enjoys a particularly close relationship with the Mississippi Public Service Commission.
The Energy and Policy Institute (EPI) last week claimed that a batch of 2019 emails between the PSC and Entergy Mississippi are evidence that the commission worked with the utility to stall sizable transmission expansion that would enable more renewable generation to come online. EPI obtained the commission’s emails through the Mississippi Public Records Act.
The email records show that Entergy coordinated closely with commission staff and consultants over 2019 on MISO transmission-planning matters.
Entergy shared its opinions with the commission on the development of MISO’s 20-year planning futures, project cost allocation and the RTO’s now-paused plan to align the generator interconnection queue’s and annual transmission-planning cycle’s timelines.
Company staff and Mississippi regulators and consultants in late 2019 emailed each other to share concerns about the amount of renewable generation MISO projected under its three planning futures. They prepared talking points in preparation for a MISO public meeting on futures development, often attaching documents or setting up informal meetings that appeared to show information sharing.
In a Nov. 1, 2019, email to Entergy employees, PSC legal counsel David Carr said, “We want to hear what Entergy thinks about the proposed futures and the assumptions contained therein.” He said MISO’s estimated 70% increase in energy demand from electrification “seemingly comes out of thin air.” He told Entergy that the electrification scenario was a “nonstarter.”
Carr asked for Entergy’s stance on MISO’s estimates of renewable expansion and electrification growth, which would require new transmission. Carr said the commission doubted MISO’s projections and asked Entergy staff to “discuss how you folks plan on responding.”
| Entergy
Entergy staffer Vishwas Sankaran responded that the company had “similar concerns … especially around the amount of renewable penetration they are targeting with these futures.”
Carr last year requested that MISO pause futures development, questioning its electrification predictions in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Other MISO members at the time said that the renewable predictions were too conservative. (See COVID-19, Electrification Stir MISO Futures Debate.)
Also in late 2019, PSC Senior Attorney Sam Mabry circulated Entergy discussion points ahead of a meeting between the company and MISO on possible cost allocation.
The entities also traded emails with attachments containing talking points on the Organization of MISO States’ long-range transmission planning principles, which pushed the RTO to embark on a new long-range transmission plan. The Mississippi PSC, the Louisiana Public Service Commission and the New Orleans City Council ultimately opposed the principles, saying MISO didn’t need to change its long-term planning approach last used in 2011.
Emails also appear to show that the Mississippi PSC was coordinating with Arkansas regulators to oppose the Missouri Public Service Commission’s call for interregional transmission planning between MISO and SPP.
Entergy said the close collaboration is above board and said it shouldn’t keep an arms-length distance from the regulators that approve transmission and generation projects.
“As do many, if not all, regulated public utilities in MISO, we work together with our retail regulators, as part of the public MISO stakeholder process, to advocate for MISO policies and MISO decisions regarding transmission planning that benefit our customers and ensure that they realize the benefits of MISO participation,” Entergy Mississippi said in a statement to RTO Insider. “Ultimately, it is MISO that independently determines the transmission projects needed to cost effectively deliver electricity and comply with existing regulatory and reliability standards.”
Entergy did not include a position statement on MISO’s transmission planning process. The Mississippi PSC did not respond to a request for comment on the collaboration.
MISO executives have said billions of dollars in transmission construction is imperative to maintain the footprint’s reliability and accommodate the shifting resource mix. (See MISO Execs Defend Need for Long-range Tx.)
In stakeholder meetings, Mississippi PSC consultant Bill Booth has asked that the grid operator pause its long-range transmission planning effort until it develops a strategic plan with clearer goals.
Booth has also expressed concern that the RTO intends to make all MISO Midwest wind generation deliverable to its South region and, conversely, all the latter’s solar generation deliverable to the Midwest through expensive transmission projects.
However, the February winter storm and subsequent rolling blackouts in MISO South are renewing calls among the stakeholder community for long-term transmission planning. (See “Stakeholders Invoke Southern Blackouts,” MISO Reveals Contentious Long-range Tx Project Map.)
In a position reversal, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell expressed support for MISO’s long-term transmission plan in a March 25 letter to the grid operator. Cantrell also asked that it consider the effects of climate change in transmission planning.
“Given the lengthy process of transmission planning and development, and the looming threats of additional extreme weather, I am asking that you move as swiftly as possible to incorporate the climate and resilience goals of New Orleans in MISO’s transmission planning processes,” she wrote. “We are relying on MISO to plan the grid infrastructure that the city of New Orleans can rely on now and for the century to come. We stand ready to partner with you to ensure that this occurs.”
FERC on Friday approved requests by MISO, SPP and PJM to delay their Order 2222 compliance filings by up to nine months.
The September 2020 order required RTO markets to permit participation by distributed energy resource aggregators, with compliance filings due July 19.
In granting the RTOs’ requests for delays until next year (Feb. 1 for PJM, April 18 for MISO and April 28 for SPP), the commission noted that no intervenors had opposed the requests (RM18-9).
But the commission agreed with intervenors’ requests that the RTOs file stakeholder process schedules and status reports during the additional time. Schedules will be due in 30 days, with status reports every 90 days afterward until the compliance filing. The commission rejected requests to require implementation schedules.
MISO said the delay will improve coordination with its reliability imperative initiative and allow it to integrate the energy, capacity and ancillary services market revisions mandated by Order 2222 into its Market System Enhancement project. (See MISO to Seek Extension on Order 2222 Plan.)
SPP cited the coronavirus pandemic as a reason for additional time and said it could not implement the order before the first quarter of 2024. PJM said it will be unable to begin software development on the initiative until fiscal year 2022.
ISO-NE told RTO Insider it will also file a request for a delay. NYISO and CAISO told RTO Insider they do not plan to seek an extension.
| Advanced Energy Economy
“FERC Order 2222 has identified the ISO’s distributed energy resource provider approach as a model for aggregation and was largely based on the DER aggregation model the ISO implemented in 2016,” CAISO spokesperson Vonette Fontaine said. “We don’t believe there are significant changes needed for compliance; therefore it is not necessary to extend our compliance filing from this summer.”
Order 2222 requires RTOs to allow DER aggregators to register as market participants under models that accommodate their physical and operational characteristics. FERC defines DERs as any resource located on the distribution system, a distribution subsystem or behind a customer meter, including energy and thermal storage, intermittent and distributed generation, energy efficiency, and electric vehicles. (See FERC Opens RTO Markets to DER Aggregation.)
When Hurricane Florence made landfall on the North Carolina coast in 2018, it dumped a record 30 inches of rain across the state in a matter of days. Massive flooding overwhelmed roads and buildings. Wind gusts of over 100 mph toppled trees and power lines. Roughly a million customers lost power, in some cases, for weeks. Damages from the storm totaled close to $17 billion.
With another active Atlantic hurricane season on the horizon, three Democratic state senators have introduced a new bill aimed at pouring $4 million into community microgrids and other local resilience projects over the next two years.
By “increasing the technical capacity of our local governments in giving them some initial dollars, hopefully this can make way for more microgrid projects and clean energy projects that are directly looking to address resiliency,” said Sen. Deandrea Salvador, one of the bill’s sponsors.
Sponsored by Salvador and Sens. Natalie Murdock and Mike Woodard, the Energy Resilient Communities Act would provide grants to local governments to deploy clean energy projects. The money could be used to develop climate mitigation infrastructure, conduct stakeholder engagement or build clean energy microgrids that power critical services, among other projects. Ensuring equity is a focus throughout the bill, both in terms of which communities receive and benefit from the grants.
Newly elected to the Senate, Salvador previously led a clean energy nonprofit, the Renewable Energy Transition Initiative, where she saw firsthand the critical needs of families paying a high proportion of their incomes on energy.
The bill targets low-income communities where extreme weather means residents spend a higher portion of their incomes on energy. | North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality
“A power shutoff can turn a precarious situation and make it truly much, much worse. It’s a safety concern on a number of different levels,” she said.
Additional equity concerns arise for communities recovering from an extreme weather event. “Some of the communities that are the first to lose electric service, maybe because of geography, can be the last to receive it back,” Salvador said.
Murdock concurred, saying in an email that climate change creates additional “pressure on our ability to keep our communities going with heat, water and power.”
The bill is currently in the Rules and Operations Committee of the Senate, where it will be assigned to a relevant subcommittee for review. It would need to make it through the subcommittees and pass a debate on the Senate floor before the crossover filing deadline on May 13 for it to move forward.
Microgrids as Community Energy Lifelines
Following the widespread power outages in Texas after severe winter storms, resilience was at the forefront of the three sponsors’ minds. The state’s 2020 Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan projects a range of ongoing impacts North Carolina will likely face as climate change escalates over the century, including stronger storms, hotter temperatures and increased rainfall. The plan lists microgrids as one of its recommended resilience strategies, especially where needed to support critical community services.
Microgrids seemed “a natural place to start,” in this bill, Salvador said, pointing to the successful installation and operation of the microgrids managed by the North Carolina Electric Cooperatives (NCEC), whose work has been outpacing the microgrid efforts of the state’s investor-owned utilities. One of the cooperative’s projects is on Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks, which at 9 square miles and 5 feet above sea level, is extremely vulnerable to hurricanes.
That microgrid has been used to provide emergency power to the island, and it can also help restore electricity faster than if residents were only connected to the main grid. NCEC has also developed advanced microgrid technology that can link microgrids together on a network that supports grid stability by moving power to where it’s needed most. (See NC Microgrids Improving Grid Reliability and Resilience).
In Salvador’s view, microgrids “can have a real, meaningful impact from day one but also helpfully support the governor’s clean energy goals as well.”
In his clean energy plan issued in 2019, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper set a target for North Carolina’s utility sector to reduce carbon emissions 70% by 2030 and to reach net zero by 2050.
The Resilient Communities bill was modeled on House Resolution 448, which was re-introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on Jan. 25, after failing to be passed in 2020. Murdock brought Salvador the bill, and they worked to adapt it for the North Carolina context, Salvador said.
The North Carolina Energy Resilient Communities Act would provide funding for small microgrids like this to boost local resilience. | Shutterstock
While Republicans hold majorities in both the state Senate and House of Representatives, thus far, Salvador said she has heard no opposition to the bill — the legislature has a history of bipartisan consensus-building on energy issues.
The bill also has support from energy groups, such as the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association (NCSEA).
“Identifying high risk and critical infrastructure and making plans to protect and harden is one step to mitigate risks to the system and residents,” NCSEA Executive Director Ward Lenz said.
“This legislation provides the opportunity to identify potential ways to incorporate clean and distributed energy resources into organizations’ energy management plans that meet energy resilience, sustainability, affordability and efficiency goals,” Murdock said. “This is also a jobs bill. These efforts will generate sustainable jobs and resources for all.”
During his first month as president of the University of Connecticut in 2019, Thomas Katsouleas had several hundred students visit his office, but they were not a welcome wagon. They were there to read him a list of demands as part of a student-led climate strike organized by the university’s Fridays for Future chapter. Katsouleas said one thing that stood out to him was the students’ command of climate issues.
“What impressed me the most was the nuanced understanding of the challenge ahead that those students showed and the commitment to meeting that challenge,” Katsouleas said during a webinar co-hosted by the sustainability offices at UConn and Southern Connecticut State University.
Katsouleas said he had made the university’s role in addressing the climate crisis “a focus of my presidency,” including campus carbon neutrality by 2040 and strategic planning that focuses on the existential threat of climate change and environmental justice through the lens of education, research and outreach.
The webinar was presented as part of the virtual, three-day Solve Climate by 2030 educational dialogue created through Bard College’s graduate programs in sustainability. Students joined sessions that were held in 50 countries and every U.S. state to learn about actions that can support a just energy transition.
The University of Rhode Island joined institutions around the world in hosting educational webinars on climate and energy as part of a three-day Solve Climate by 2030 dialogue. | Shutterstock
Speaking during the webinar, SCSU President Joe Bertolino said he signed a climate emergency declaration by college and university presidents in July 2019 after 200 students implored him.
He said that colleges and universities like SCSU and UConn “are essentially small towns and cities.”
“We are a significant sector of buildings, acreage, jobs, transportation fleets and productivity,” Bertolino said. “Higher education institutions are testing grounds and learning labs for how sustainable communities can be built.”
At the state level, Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Katie Dykes said her agency is “laser focused” on passing a bill to support the Transportation and Climate Initiative Program (TCI-P), which aims to cut vehicles emissions by 26% from 2022 to 2032.
“It’s kind of a simple program … it requires the polluters to pay for their pollution,” Dykes said. “In this case, the polluters are those companies that sell gasoline and diesel fuel at wholesale.”
Bryan Garcia, president of the Connecticut Green Bank, said that his “one, bold solution” to address climate change would be a federal Green Liberty Bond, like one launched last year at the state level. Garcia said the bonds could finance the national fight against climate change in the same way that bonds raised money during World War II. Garcia said nearly $17 million in Green Liberty Bonds were sold during the inaugural offering in 2020.
Shanté Hanks, deputy commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Housing, said she considers herself a translator when explaining climate change’s impact on communities of color.
“We talk to members of the local communities and explain to them how these concepts affect people’s day-to-day lives or explain that what they do today will impact their grandchildren’s lives in the future,” Hanks said. “It’s so important that we connect with their values.”
Social Components of Policy
Lawmakers need to incorporate societal benefits in climate and energy policy, such as public health, job creation and environmental justice, to be successful in reaching net-zero goals, according to Jennie Stephens, director of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University.
“We’ve placed too much emphasis on tech and not enough on social innovation,” Stephens said during a Solve Climate webinar hosted by Brandeis University.
Policies should connect the dots between renewable energy, economic development and clean air and water, and focus on “communities that have been under-invested in for far too long,” Stephens said.
Otherwise, renewable energy policies contribute to racial and economic disparities through incentives and subsidies that give the wealthy access to clean energy and leave low-income communities paying higher utility rates. As more high- and medium-income communities harness clean energy resources, it will increasingly fall on people who cannot afford to make the transition to renewable energy to provide the same revenue stream to utility giants, she said.
“One social movement that I think is really helpful here is the idea of energy democracy, which is about redistributing power literally and figuratively,” Stephens said.
Renewable energy policies can create a future with a handful of multinational solar and wind companies that dominate the industry, much like fossil fuel companies today, she said. Or policy can focus on intentionally distributing the right to have a heterogenous mix of different-size companies and different ownership models.
At the national level, President Biden’s infrastructure bill proposes economic recovery investments that are “integrated rather than separate,” Stephens said. The Biden administration also created a new role in the U.S. Department of Energy for implementing energy policies that align with energy justice goals.
Shalanda Baker, a professor of law and policy from Northeastern University, stepped into the position earlier this year. According to Baker, energy justice is the goal of achieving racial equity in participation with the energy system.
“It’s an opportunity to rethink our climate commitments in a more integrated and holistic way, and I think that’s essential for it to be effective,” Stephens said. Decarbonization policies should “acknowledge all the harm that has been done and how to make up for that.”
Building a Regenerative Economy
Solve Climate sessions in Rhode Island and New York characterized the ways people are reframing their thinking on climate and energy.
The Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources is working internally to raise awareness about how racism in the state has contributed to systems of oppression within the energy sector, according to Yasmin Yacoby, the agency’s program manager for energy justice.
There is a direct link, she said, between communities where lending was limited historically, often based solely on racial demographics, and communities today that have the highest energy burden in the state.
“We need to ensure that we have a solid understanding of these historic legacies so that we can actively undo them,” she said during a Solve Climate webinar hosted by the University of Rhode Island.
Achieving that goal, according Yacoby, requires state leaders to use a targeted approach to solving universal climate goals.
“If we only focus on climate solutions and not on the racial disparities that exist within that sphere, we’re going to continue to exacerbate the issues,” she said.
OER’s work focuses on increasing community engagement and building a just energy transition.
“We don’t have a lot of the knowledge that community members have, so we have to make sure that their voices are at the table and that the communities that have been historically oppressed have a way to shape their energy future,” Yacoby said.
Building up those oppressed communities will mean Rhode Islanders must transition away from an extractive economy and embrace a regenerative economy.
That process, Yacoby said, displaces the fossil fuel economy with a “new economy that provides democratic governance, ecological resilience and personal resilience.”
Current clean technologies like solar are starting to make a regenerative economy possible, said Simeon Banister, vice president of community programs at The Community Foundation.
If solar panel efficiency improves and costs come down further, solar can be a “game changer” for marginalized communities, Banister said during a Solve Climate webinar hosted by six New York institutions of higher education.
“If we start with those that have been historically excluded, it means that we can finally have the conversation about how we do things differently, and that’s what systems change is all about,” he said.
Regenerative thinking must consider how decisions are made, according to Jodi Smits Anderson, director of sustainability for the Dormitory Authority of New York. Historically, energy decisions have been short-term and do not consider co-benefits or co-burdens, she said during the New York webinar.
“We haven’t asked, ‘How does this decision affect the systems that are impacting this particular building or this particular policy?’ And we haven’t taken it to the next step to ask, ‘How does this decision affect nature’s systems?’” she said. “That is a regenerative practice mentality.”
Climate and energy decision-making must be centered around people, Banister said.
“It’s not a question of just how we can reduce emissions … it’s how do we do it for the folks that have suffered the most,” he said. “If we center them, if that’s our point of departure, then that gives us the chance to really make something that is sustainable in nature.”
President Biden’s opening bid on the 2022 budget makes good on his promise to use a “whole of government” approach to address climate change, calling for an additional $14 billion in “climate change investments.”
Biden’s $1.5 trillion discretionary budget request released Friday is an attempt to reverse a decade of underinvestment from “overly restrictive” budget caps, an administration official, speaking on background, told reporters.
“Despite the growing threat of climate change, we’ve cut funding for climate science and technology at EPA by 27% since FY 2010, adjusted for inflation,” the official said. The discretionary budget supplements the infrastructure initiatives the administration outlined in its American Jobs Plan on March 31. (See Biden Infrastructure Plan Would Boost Clean Energy.)
“The discretionary request is a complementary but separate proposal that lays out the president’s funding recommendations for the annual appropriations process,” the official said. “We want to use every lever at our disposal to address the challenges we face.”
It would increase non-defense discretionary spending by 16% and defense by 1.6%.
The request would boost climate change spending “across nearly every agency to invest in resilience and clean energy, enhance U.S. competitiveness and put America on a path to achieve net-zero emissions no later than 2050,” the Office of Management and Budget said.
The proposal includes $850 million for electric vehicles and charging infrastructure:
$250 million to the Department of Transportation for grants for transit agencies to purchase low- and no-emission buses, more than double 2021 funding.
$300 million for the General Services Administration to electrify its leased fleet of more than 200,000 vehicles, and $300 million for the U.S. Postal Service and more than a dozen other federal agencies for what the request calls “a down payment to support a multiyear transformation of the federal fleet.”
Environmental Justice
OMB said 40% of climate spending is “targeted toward addressing the disproportionately high cumulative impacts on disadvantaged communities.”
More than $1.4 billion would be allocated for environmental justice, with $936 million for a new Accelerating Environmental and Economic Justice initiative at EPA to reduce pollution, $100 million of which would create a community air quality monitoring and notification program to provide real-time data in the places with the highest exposures to pollution. An additional $30 million would be used to enforce existing laws to protect communities from pollution. It also would increase funding for the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act grant program. The funding is in addition to funding provided in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, OMB said.
The Department of Justice’s Environmental and Natural Resources Division would receive $5 million to address environmental justice issues.
The proposal includes a $1.2 billion contribution to the Green Climate Fund to help developing countries reduce emissions and adapt to climate change; it would be the first U.S. contribution since 2017.
Jobs, ‘Just Transition’
OMB’s proposal makes repeated references to the jobs it says the spending will create. It includes $2 billion to support energy efficiency and clean electricity standards to reach a carbon-free electric industry by 2035, which the administration said would “put welders, electricians and other skilled labor to work building clean energy projects.”
More than $550 million — triple current funding — would be spent to remediate oil and gas wells and reclaim abandoned mines, which OMB said would create 250,000 jobs. It would also more than double funding for the Economic Development Administration’s Assistance to Coal Communities program.
“This focus could be a sign of stepped-up administration efforts to address the concerns of unions with nexus to fossil energy in the wake of the president’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline and suspension of federal mineral leasing on his first day in office,” Kevin Book, of ClearView Energy Partners, wrote in a report to clients.
Adaptation and Conservation
Much spending would be devoted to adaptation to climate change.
The Interior Department would receive a $550 million boost to “accelerate clean energy deployment and expand efforts around climate adaptation and ecosystem resilience” in its land management agencies. “These investments would directly benefit Americans by helping to limit climate-induced disruptions, including for coastal communities, the outdoor recreation economy, and people whose lives and livelihoods are intertwined with DOI-managed lands and resources,” it said.
The U.S. Geological Survey and other bureaus would receive an additional $200 million to provide information about the impacts of climate change and how to implement mitigation, adaptation and resilience efforts. “The funds would help ensure that coastal, fire-prone and other particularly vulnerable communities have accurate and accessible information and tools.”
Biden’s proposed Civilian Climate Corps would receive $200 million for “science-driven conservation” to support the goal of conserving 30% of land and water by 2030 through “voluntary actions and incentives that support the stewardship efforts of farmers, ranchers and other private landowners.”
The Department of Agriculture would receive $1.7 billion for high-priority hazardous fuels and forest resilience projects, an increase of $476 million. “This funding supports the administration’s science-based approach to improve the resilience of forest and rangeland ecosystems to water stress from multiyear drought conditions and to protect watersheds, wildlife habitat and the wildland-urban interface from the negative impacts of uncharacteristically severe wildfire,” OMB said.
Another $340 million would fund Interior’s projects to manage vegetation and reduce the intensity and severity of wildfires.
An additional $1.2 billion is proposed to increase the resilience to wildfires, flooding and drought, including $100 million for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Climate and Health program. The Department of Homeland Security would receive a $540 million increase to incorporate climate impacts into pre-disaster planning.
The Small Business Administration would spend $10 million to help small businesses obtain capital for investments to help them become more resilient to climate change and support the “clean energy economy.”
Department of Energy
The Department of Energy would see a $4.3 billion increase (10.2%) to $46.1 billion, including increases for the Office of Fossil Energy, which would be renamed the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. “This funding would advance carbon reduction and mitigation in sectors and applications that are difficult to decarbonize, including the industrial sector, with technologies and methods such as carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, and direct air capture,” OMB said.
The administration hopes to quadruple government-wide clean energy research over four years, including $8 billion to boost DOE’s funding by at least 27% in advanced nuclear energy, EVs, green hydrogen, and air conditioning and refrigeration.
The administration seeks $1 billion for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy and a new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Climate to find “solutions for carbon-pollution-free energy, adaptation and resilience against the climate crisis.”
DOE’s Office of Science would receive $7.4 billion (+$400 million) to support the National Laboratories and research on the changing climate, clean energy technologies and artificial intelligence and computing “to enhance prediction and decision-making across numerous environmental and scientific challenges.”
Environmental Protection Agency
EPA would receive $11.2 billion, up $2 billion (21%), including more than $110 million to restore the agency’s personnel, which lost more than 1,000 staffers during the Trump administration. It includes $48 million in additional funding for the Office of Air and Radiation “to build back staff expertise, analysis and capacity to implement climate change programs through the Clean Air Act.” The office oversees GHG emissions standards for vehicles, power plants, and oil and gas wells.
The agency would spend $1.8 billion to reduce emissions, ensure environmental justice and create jobs, including $100 million in grants for states and tribes to reduce GHG emissions and $30 million to more than double EPA’s climate change research budget. Additional investments are targeted to cut methane and hydrofluorocarbon emissions.
“Although we are generally reluctant to make too much of top-level spending numbers in the absence of agency- and program-level granularity, we regard Biden’s proposed EPA spending hike as particularly significant because the request intends for $110 million to go towards hiring new staff,” ClearView’s Book said. “Recent history suggests to us that Democrats’ single-party control of the House, Senate and White House could markedly improve prospects of bringing this proposal — or at least a substantial hike — to fruition.”
NASA’s earth science programs would receive $2.3 billion (+$250 million) to fund a new generation of satellites to answer climate science questions.
The National Science Foundation would be allocated $1.2 billion for climate and clean energy research (+$500 million), including research on atmospheric composition, water and carbon cycles, modeling climate systems, renewable energy technologies, materials sciences, and social, behavioral and economic research on human responses to climate change.
Reaction
The proposal was lauded by clean energy groups, with the American Council on Renewable Energy saying the R&D spending “has the potential to accelerate tomorrow’s clean energy innovations.”
The Edison Electric Institute praised the spending to reduce wildfire risks, saying “industry-government partnership is critical” to the effort. It also expressed support for funding to improve cybersecurity, including $500 million for the Technology Modernization Fund, $110 million for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and a $750 million reserve for federal agency information technology enhancements.
But Taxpayers for Common Sense decried what it called “a supersized increase for the bloated Department of Energy budget” and noted that every cabinet-level department would receive spending boosts over 2021.
If approved, Biden’s DOE budget would represent a $10 billion (30%) increase since FY 2020. “The programs where the administration is directing funding have already been the focus of enormous spending expansion in recent years. Over the five fiscal years from FY 2017 to FY 2021, spending on the DOE Office of Science grew by 30%, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy grew by 37%, and Office of Nuclear Energy grew by a whopping 48%. Adding billions more to the budgets of these offices is a tacit statement that everything they’re currently supporting is worth funding, and that is far from the case,” the group said.
The bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said Biden should find cuts to “fully offset” the discretionary spending increases. “Congress, for its part, should extend the expiring discretionary spending caps in order to restore budget discipline for that area of the budget. These caps can complement other efforts to raise revenue, lower health care costs, secure Social Security and reduce wasteful spending,” it said.
Biden received criticism from both progressives and conservatives for his proposed $715 billion budget for the Defense Department, a 1.5% increase. “The already inflated Pentagon budget did nothing to protect us from a global pandemic, an economic recession or the climate crisis,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said. “Increasing that budget now would be a grave mistake.”
“At a time when the U.S. already spends more on the military than the next 12 nations combined, it is time for us to take a serious look at the massive cost over-runs, the waste and fraud that exists at the Pentagon,” Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Republican leaders of the Armed Services, Intelligence, Budget and Appropriations committees said Biden was “sending a terrible signal not only to our adversaries in Beijing and Moscow, but also to our allies and partners” by prioritizing a “liberal wish list” over defense.
Biden will release his full budget later this spring. With Senate Democrats unlikely to secure the 10 GOP votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster — and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) saying he won’t support a weakening of the filibuster — it’s unclear how much of Biden’s spending plans will survive.
“This is the beginning of what we know is a long journey,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Friday.
Proposed rules for food donations and scraps recycling in New York have drawn some criticism.
Stakeholders want officials to improve definitions, impose documentation requirements and clarify certain rules in the proposed regulations for food scrap generators. The rules would require large food scrap generators to donate excess edible food and send scraps to an organics recycler if one is available within 25 miles.
Dereth Glance, OCRRA | NYS DEC
“We definitely appreciate that facilities are able to say ‘no’ if they’ve reached capacity, and [we] encourage the ability to site new and more facilities so we can divert more organic waste from the waste stream,” Dereth Glance, executive director of the nonprofit Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency, said Wednesday. Glance also is a member of the state Climate Action Council’s Waste Advisory Panel.
The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) in January proposed a rulemaking that would implement requirements outlined in the Food Donation and Food Scraps Recycling law with an effective date of Jan. 1, 2022. The DEC on Wednesday held two public hearings on the proposed rules, with final comments due April 27. (See NY Proposes Food Scrap Regs to Cut Waste, Emissions.)
Mind the Language
Meredith Danberg-Ficarelli, director of Common Ground Compost in New York City, said most of the proposed rules are reasonable and well-considered, but the section regarding the separation of food scraps for recycling (350-2.4(c)) encourages “a future littered with microplastics that favors industrial-scale processing over the interests of rural, urban and small- and mid-scale processors.”
The section says that generators are not required to separate food scraps if they send scraps for processing to “a solid waste composting facility, solid waste anaerobic digestion facility, or other organics recycler capable of managing the waste without source separation.”
Meredith Danberg-Ficarelli, Common Ground Compost | Common Ground Compost
“This language is insane,” Danberg-Ficarelli said. “Have you seen what comes out of an industrial depackaging machine processing mixed waste? It looks like wet, sloppy, food scrap meatballs filled with shreds of plastic packaging.”
Laura Feitner Calarco of L.K. McLean Associates, a Long Island engineering consultancy, wanted the DEC to ensure that any regulatory definitions have adequate references to enable them to apply under the proposed legislation.
“I can tell you from dealing with permitting of facilities, landfills and transfer stations and whatnot that as professionals we rely on these definitions quite a bit in dealing with your agency,” Calarco said.
George Davidson, representing the American Biogas Council, asked the DEC to clarify the approval process for combustion and beneficial reuse of biogas produced at organics recycling facilities.
“Our biogas system project developers need to know exactly what will be approved so that we can budget that and make the projects align,” Davidson said.
He also asked the agency to define the beneficial use of organic materials more concretely and to consider implementing a hierarchy for beneficial uses.
In addition, Davidson said the council’s wastewater treatment members are concerned about language (Section 350-2.3(b)4) allowing food scraps recyclers with an onsite grinder for volatile soft solids to put solids into the sewerage system.
“As a result, the wastewater treatment plant has to have a proportional amount of the biosolids recycled,” Davidson said. “That requirement is going to be difficult for treatment plants to fulfill, and we would like clarification on how the [DEC] expects them to determine that value.”
Feed the People
Steve Changaris, vice president for the Northeast Region at National Waste and Recycling Association, said the association endorses the law and the regulations, and it is pleased that the law focuses on food donation.
“There is hunger and poverty, so feeding people is the highest and best use of this food,” Changaris said.
The state’s program hinges on participation by the waste generators, the largest of which may have to change some of their operational practices, he said.
New York City has run several composting and recycling programs since 2012 aimed at eliminating waste by 2030. | New York City
“When we present ourselves to customers to do this work, they’re going to have a lot of questions, and having DEC-issued lists and informational flyers about this program will help us educate them,” Changaris said.
Caroline Parker, legal intern with New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI), said that while the regulations will not directly apply to food scraps generated in the city, they will affect the statewide infrastructure for transportation, processing and recycling.
New York City has run several composting and recycling programs since 2012 aimed at eliminating waste by 2030 through reuse, pay-as-you-throw trash collection and greater recycling of textiles and electronics.
“Food waste is a quintessential environmental justice issue,” Parker said. “And food makes up nearly one-fifth of New York’s solid waste stream, the majority of which is hauled by trucks to landfills or incinerators.”
NYLPI asked the DEC to encourage community-scale recycling and require documentation to make sure that food waste does not end up in landfills.
Wealthy countries must take actions at home to counter climate change while boosting the ability of developing countries to do the same, two of the world’s top economic officials said last week.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen | World Bank
“Obviously, climate change is a global problem, and we’re not going to really be able to deal with greenhouse gas emissions successfully unless countries like the United States act domestically and then foster the transfer of resources in the financing that’s necessary for developing countries to be able to do so successfully,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said April 6.
Yellen was speaking during the kick-off event for the spring meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. With World Bank President David Malpass moderating, Yellen and IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva discussed how countries — specifically those in the developed world — must foster a “green, resilient and inclusive” economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Climate risks represent “a growing threat to macroeconomic and financial stability,” Georgieva said, while actions to counter those risks provide “prospects for green growth and green jobs, critical for what we do at the IMF in supporting growth and employment.”
Calling the IMF a “latecomer in this conversation,” Georgieva said her agency now has four key focuses related to climate change: policy advice, climate-related financial stability risks, data and capacity development.
In the policy area, Georgieva said the IMF now examines “the criticality of mitigation and adaptation policies” related to climate when it engages member countries in “Article IV” consultations — annual discussions with political and central bank officials on internal economic developments.
“Naturally, we do more on mitigation in countries that are high emitters. We do more on adaptation in countries that are more vulnerable,” Georgieva said. “For example, [in] countries like China [and the] U.K. … we look primarily at carbon intensity [and] what can be done with good policies. When we go to the Caribbean, naturally, we focus on vulnerability and adaptation, or Sub-Saharan Africa for that matter.”
Kristalina Georgieva, IMF | World Bank
Georgieva said the IMF has a “big role to play” in climate-related financial stability risks, including standardizing reporting of risks, stress-testing and examining the role of supervisory authorities. She said the agency is integrating climate-related risks into financial sector assessments developed jointly with the World Bank.
“Data tells a story to finance ministers like nothing else,” Georgieva said in describing the IMF’s third focus area. The agency is working to integrate carbon intensity and other climate data into quarterly macroeconomic reports.
“So, we are going to have a dashboard that would help policymakers to see in one place their growth numbers, employment numbers [and] carbon-intensity numbers,” she said.
Regarding capacity development, Georgieva said countries must accelerate the integration of climate policies into macroeconomic policies. “And we’re here for them.”
Taking the Green Turn
President Biden is “very focused on the U.S. climate agenda” and will be proposing infrastructure and climate change investments that ensure the country makes its “own domestic contribution” to meeting the objectives in the Paris Agreement on climate change, Yellen said. (See related story, Biden Budget Seeks Major Spending Hikes on Climate.)
“And we look [forward to] working with you in order to make sure that the necessary resources for green development and finance are transferred to the developing countries that really need those resources,” she told Malpass.
World Bank President David Malpass | World Bank
As the World Bank develops a climate action plan, it is working with countries on their own “nationally determined” contributions to the Paris Agreement, Malpass said. One of the biggest challenges is how to “maximize the results” for any given country based on its available resources.
“That goes right back to the diagnostics area. What do have measurement on? How do we bring in adaptation for the poorest countries?” he said.
It’s important for the private sector to be “fully engaged” in climate efforts because “big-dollar investments” are needed in clean energy, Malpass said.
“The way we think about it at the fund is that there has to be a framework that credibly directs private sector over the medium [and] long term,” Georgieva said. “And the way that can be done is first to provide forward guidance on carbon price.”
She pointed out that the IMF has previously concluded that carbon must be priced at $75/ton to meet the Paris objectives, compared with the current global average of about $2/ton. “But we can’t go from here to there in one jump. Giving that predictable forward guidance helps the private sector to then integrate reduction of carbon intensity in their own investment decisions.”
Georgieva said the public sector can play a major role in making it easier “for the private sector to take the green turn” and that she was “thrilled” the U.S. is now pursuing that idea.
“We calculated that over 15 years, a green investment push in a modest amount can generate 0.7% boost to growth [and] create many green jobs,” she said.
Georgieva said the private sector should not be expected to solve the climate crisis “entirely on its own.”
“We are not going to win if there are losers unattended … and people in high carbon intensity sectors or regions do not get a helping hand,” she said. “So, it’s very exciting to see that a country with so much clout internationally [the U.S.] is taking on the leadership in that regard.”
The World Bank building in D.C. | Shiny Things, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Yellen agreed about the need for a mix of public and private investment to build infrastructure such as electric vehicle charging stations and a grid designed to manage an increasing volume of renewable resources.
“These core investments are critical in order to provide the infrastructure, the public infrastructure, to support private investments incentives. We’re also looking at tax incentives to stimulate private R&D. I think technological change will be important, and we want to incent in a green direction,” she said.
Yellen said financial institutions and investors around the world have “a huge and growing interest in sustainable investing” and are seeking information about companies’ exposure to climate risks. She wants to ensure that financial institutions grasp those corporate risks, rooted both in environmental changes and the potential for asset price changes or the stranding of assets.
“Those are some planks of the work we would like to see both domestically and globally,” she said.
A significant amount of energy storage capacity is underused by the grid in New England, said Alicia Barton, CEO of FirstLight Power.
Deregulated wholesale electricity markets “do a terrible job of valuing storage right now,” Barton said Wednesday during a webinar hosted by the Northeast Energy and Commerce Association.
Despite the large merchant assets FirstLight has as a renewable energy provider with storage capability, the company is delivering only a fraction of the energy that it could be to the grid, Barton said.
The company’s 1,200-MW Northfield Mountain pumped-storage hydropower facility is compensated for electricity production and ancillary services.
FirstLight Power’s Northfield Mountain pumped-storage facility, pictured above, is only delivering a fraction of the energy it could be providing to the grid, according to CEO Alicia Barton. | FirstLight Power
“It’s treated essentially as a merchant fossil generation asset,” Barton said. The storage facility also provides large-scale backup power. FirstLight can dispatch the entire facility in less than 10 minutes.
But the New England market does not distinguish between peak and off-peak hours, so the electricity FirstLight produces all generates the same renewable energy certificates. The current market structure in New England also does not differentiate the values of short- and long-term energy storage.
In addition to the absence of a valuation system for energy storage, the existing markets were “never really designed for flexibility and the use cases that we’re developing now,” said Julia Frayer, managing director of London Economics International.
There is a mismatch between what will benefit the market and society, such as the long-duration storage of clean energy, and what private investors are able to monetize.
“It is an urgent issue to fix,” Barton said. State climate mitigation laws, such as those in Massachusetts and Connecticut, rely significantly on energy storage to achieve net-zero emissions but lack specificity on the types of energy storage.
A regulatory or policy framework that provides consensus on how to value energy storage and benefit ratepayers in the market, not one particular company, is one solution, said Ramya Swaminathan, CEO of Malta Inc.
“Making a push on figuring out what that tool is and how it applies in the context of New England or a particular state jurisdiction would pay itself off in multiples,” Swaminathan said.
The industry also needs a storage investment tax credit, which is “far overdue,” Barton said.
President Biden’s push for infrastructure reform makes the coming months and years an “unprecedentedly open time for making the case for storage,” Swaminathan said.
In the wake of a catastrophic winter storm in Texas that wiped out power for millions in the state, New England has a choice to make on how to move forward with energy infrastructure.
Barton said there is a “healthy number” of fossil fuel resources that can be retired and repurposed to connect solar and storage hybrid plans.
“There’s a lot of innovation that can happen,” she said.
The SPP Marketing Monitoring Unit (MMU)’s quarterly State of the Market report for the winter 2021 period is dominated by the historic winter weather events of mid-February.
The storms left 73% of the continental U.S. covered in snow and broke 3,000 daily and 79 all-time low-temperature records, according to the National Weather Service. The event was “comparable to the historical cold snaps” of 1899 and 1905, the NWS said.
The MMU said in its report that the market’s average load was up 10%; generation outages increased from 30 GW to 43 GW over the previous winter; and high gas prices led to average day-ahead prices of $504.42/MWh and real-time prices of $186.82/MWh in February.
Snow, ice and record low temperatures settled over SPP’s 14-state footprint in February. | SPP MMU
The generation outages were driven by fuel-supply constraints, icing and other weather-related issues. Gas-fired plants competed with high demand for residential heating as wellheads, pipelines and pumping stations froze over. The MMU said natural gas plant outages peaked at more than 25 GW on Feb. 18, including both simple and combined cycle plants.
Wind resources were hampered by an icing event Feb. 7-8 and were slow to recover because of the low temperatures. More than 11 GW of wind generation were offline on Feb. 8, but about 3 GW were back online during the height of the storm.
SPP’s generation was boosted by imports from MISO and PJM, but those decreased because of transmission congestion and the RTOs’ own emergency needs.
The tight conditions resulted in energy offers above SPP’s $1,000/MWh safety-net offer cap beginning Feb. 11. SPP’s tariff allows such offers under FERC Order 831, but the Monitor must verify the offers before they can be used in the market-clearing process or eligible for make-whole payments. Uncapped real-time prices exceeded $10,000/MWh on Feb. 18, when supply was at 40.3 GW, and peaked at $6,302/MWh on Feb. 15, when supply was 45.9 GW.
The MMU commended SPP and market participants for delivering power despite unprecedented demand and supply conditions that stressed the market. It said it is continuing to evaluate market performance and behavior and will present lessons learned and recommendations as part of SPP’s comprehensive winter review process before the Board of Directors in July. (See SPP Launches Review of Storm Response.)
“We look forward to continuing to educate stakeholders on the market implications on this event and improving the market going forward,” the Monitor said.
The MMU will host a webinar to discuss the winter report at 2 p.m. on April 15.
