Big Bayou Breezes

Good morning and happy Friday,

This week’s “Oopsie!” award goes to New York State, which has spent $1 billion on what was billed as “the largest solar-panel factory in the Western Hemisphere.” The WSJ reports that things haven’t quite panned out for “one of the largest-ever public cash outlays of its kind.”

The runner-up award goes to PJM, which ACORE exhorts to fix problems contributing to its massive interconnection queue backlog (including 1,200 MW of solar as of April 2022) in a recent report, Power Up PJM.

In more positive news, the southeastern U.S. is making meaningful progress in terms of clean energy.

Read on for more.

Born on the Bayou

The southeastern U.S. has wind in its clean energy sails with the announcement of some new projects and a visit to Louisiana this week from Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm who announced $90 million in? federal funding to support energy efficiency across the country. Here are a few directions the breezes are blowing:

• Mississippi will soon host its first utility-scale wind farm, thanks to Amazon Web Services (AWS), which has contracted with AES Corp. to purchase the output of the 184.5 MW Delta wind farm. AWS already has five solar farms in its MS portfolio, and 30 projects across seven southeastern states.
• Not to be outdone, neighboring Louisiana is on its way to “becoming a national leader in near-shore wind development,” according to nola.com. Vestas has begun negotiations regarding potential wind farms within the state’s waters, which extend three miles offshore.
• While waters further offshore generally offer a better wind resource, the Pelican State has sparked interest among developers by offering “a potentially speedier approval process, strong support from Gov. John Bel Edwards and little opposition from residents or other industries.”

?? The Takeaway

Southern hospitality. Louisiana’s sanguine attitude toward offshore wind likely has a lot to do with the fact that its “working coast” is already home to oil platforms, and some 157,000 Louisianians are employed in the energy sector. The IRA is poised to bring an estimated $5 billion in clean power investments to the state by 2030 – good news for residents of the state with the highest electricity use per capita.

Clean and Green(e)

Two fun (and related) facts for your Friday: 1) An estimated 80% of the world’s carpet is manufactured in the U.S. state of Georgia; 2) Qcells, a solar panel manufacturer that’s a shining example of how the IRA will drive investment and create jobs, is smack dab in the middle of Marjorie Taylor-Greene’s district. What’s the connection? Read on.

• If you’ve never heard of Dalton, GA, know this: it’s the carpet capital of the world. In days gone by, local elementary schools even had carpeted basketball courts! And since 2019, it’s also been home to a Qcells manufacturing facility.?
• Although the company landed in Georgia for other reasons, it’s growing because of IRA incentives. In January this year, Qcells announced it would invest $2.5 billion to expand the Dalton facility and build a new plant outside of Atlanta.
• Qcells will hire 2,000 workers for the new facility, about 45 miles outside Atlanta, and currently employs 1,285 people at its Dalton plant with plans to hire 510 more after the expansion – a nice turnaround for a city that ranked number one in the U.S. for job losses after the housing crash wiped out demand for carpet.

?? The Takeaway

Kindred spirits? While congresswoman Greene may not be a fan of the Biden-Harris administration or the IRA, she and many of her constituents are red hot for clean energy investment and jobs – and President Biden hopes similar sentiments will prevail in conservative communities across the country. In an April visit to Dalton, Vice President Harris told Qcells workers “We see a future with more jobs, more factories and more opportunity. And we are fighting with you to make that vision real.”

• Turbine Troubles: Siemens Energy's turbine troubles rattle wind sector
• Texas Waste: Congested transmission lines cause renewable power to go to waste
• Job Loss: Fossil Fuel Workers Could Be Left Behind.

• The Mahaska County Iowa Board of Supervisors is moving forward with an ordinance that would regulate the construction of wind turbines?
• Mecklenburg County VA imposes hard cap on solar projects

Way to Grow

Reuters has released a new whitepaper, “Breaking Ground: 10 Innovative Energy Transition Projects in North America,” which showcases examples of solar + storage, wind + storage, and low-carbon hydrogen projects in the U.S. and Canada. Noting that in the U.S., the IRA has “galvanized developers and investors,” it also points to significant potential as our neighbor to the north works to advance low-carbon hydrogen and carbon capture and storage.

The whitepaper cites research from GlobalData that estimates solar capacity in North America will “grow fivefold over the course of the 2020s,” while onshore wind will nearly double, and offshore wind will go from “virtually nothing today to 25 gigawatts (GW) by 2030.” That said, transmission and land use constraints will continue to be a major hindrance, ones that can be alleviated to some extent by pairing intermittent renewables with energy storage.

The report concludes that “The growing complexity of the energy transition is creating a requirement for increasingly complex projects,” namely, hybrid technology projects that can deliver optimized results in a challenging world. Challenge accepted!