Big Bang Theory

Good morning and happy Friday,

In this week’s headlines, the Clean Energy Investing in America report announced investments of $40 billion in domestic clean energy since August, producing 20 new clean energy manufacturing facilities and close to 7,000 associated new American jobs.?

While ACP is delivering this exciting news, the IEA is also claiming renewables are slated to overtake coal as the world’s biggest energy source by 2024.?

Meanwhile, 9 states along the Eastern Seaboard are working on a regional fund to pay fishermen for lost catches as developers build offshore wind farms near the Atlantic coast.

Read on for more.

Big Bang Theory

It’s been a long time coming, but scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California? have “crossed a long-awaited milestone” that could – someday – revolutionize the energy sector and completely change the trajectory of our warming planet. What is this dark magic, you ask? None other than nuclear fusion. Don’t worry, we aren’t going down a physics rabbit hole – here’s what you need to know about this development:

• If it’s been a few years since your last science class, here’s a quick refresher: nuclear fission splits atoms, and facilities around the world harness this to produce emissions-free power – but in countries like the U.S. that don’t recycle their nuclear waste, this creates a pesky problem that remains radioactive for 10,000 years or so.
• Nuclear fusion involves combining atoms and has been the holy grail of researchers for decades. “If fusion can be deployed on a large scale, it would offer an energy source devoid of the pollution and greenhouse gases caused by burning of fossil fuels.”?
• This week, researchers made a big step forward when they managed to cause a fusion reaction that generated more energy than it consumed – that’s Q>1 for the cognoscenti. As Lowercarbon Capital notes, “The stuff we read about in science fiction books as kids is finally happening. Still holding out for the flying cars, teleportation, and anti-gravity Back To The Future hoverboards we were promised, but I guess we’ll settle for ubiquitous, carbon-free, planet-wide energy.”

?? The Takeaway

Don’t Quit Your Day Job. While this is a major scientific breakthrough, “it will take quite a while before fusion becomes available on a widespread, practical scale.” Also, prior to today, you may never have heard of tritium, but you can fast forward to worrying about the fact that it’s exceedingly rare – and it’s one half of the elemental cocktail needed to make fusion work (the other being deuterium). So we need to stay the course and continue developing wind, solar and energy storage resources for the foreseeable future.

Promises Made...

Passed in September 2021, the Illinois Climate and Equitable Jobs Act was supposed to be “the most equitable climate change-fighting law in the country,” one that would create “thousands of new jobs in clean energy – with an emphasis on hiring people of color” and equip workers training relevant to the clean energy sector. How’s that all going? Um, it’s not:

• Some 15 months later, the training and job placement initiatives the legislation was supposed to establish “...still don’t exist. And not a single new ‘equity’ job has been created,” despite the fact that the state’s “Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity...was given the authority to spend as much as $180 million a year” to advance these efforts.
• The head of the Commerce Department says the state is “creating a training curriculum that will include a wide range of clean-technology work programs,” which she hopes “will be running early in 2023.” That’s not a minute too soon for “Minority contractors and workers [who] are eagerly looking for these opportunities in a new field.”
• Meanwhile, the bill apparently is delivering on another key provision – giving Exelon “almost $700 million over five years to subsidize three Northern Illinois nuclear power plants.”

?? The Takeaway

Broken promises. The Act “aims to move Illinois to 100 percent clean energy by 2050” and made Illinois “the first Midwest state to set goals for phasing out fossil fuels in favor of clean energy sources.” While laudable, these aspirations are meaningless if they don’t come to fruition. Strong demand for wind and solar means “Illinois could meet the clean energy goals almost immediately – if projects that developers already have planned could actually get built,” if issues like queue congestion and local opposition could be overcome. Let’s add “equity jobs” to the list of priorities.

• Grounded: A 100MW solar farm in Texas will mount panels directly on the ground
• Bigger in Texas: Texas clean energy megaprojects get underway
• Gaslighting: Texas grid proposals tee up a new natural gas fight
• Garden State Jobs: Clean energy program to train and employ New Jersey residents
• New Life: Michigan’s Consumers Energy examining clean energy at former coal plants

• NextEra and Ineos ink 310MW Bosque Texas solar PPA
• Vesper Energy receives SUP for 200MW solar project in Henry County, Virginia
• NextEra’s Cereal City Solar project in Michigan begins operation this month
• Columbia County, Wisconsin shoots down anti-solar resolution citing legal concerns

The Developer Dispatch is going to rest and recharge.?You can expect us back in your inbox in 2023!