Everything’s Bigger in Texas

Good morning and happy Friday,

In this week’s headlines, Republican lawmakers are navigating a tricky messaging balancing act, Joe Manchin might be the Senate’s most endangered Democrat, and energy lobbyists brace for a whirlwind 2023.?

Read on for more.

Everything’s Bigger in Texas

?With nearly 50 GW of operating wind, solar and energy storage capacity, Texas is a clean energy powerhouse. Yet despite – or perhaps because of – this, the plan state regulators have proposed to enhance reliability has a strong focus on natural gas, which has ruffled a few feathers. Here are some perspectives from different sides of the issue:

• Last week the Texas PUC unanimously approved a plan to reform the state’s energy markets and improve reliability. Developed by consulting firm E3, the plan relies on a performance credit mechanism (PCM) designed to incentivize power providers to invest in on-demand infrastructure – i.e., natural gas.
• At first glance, the PCM-based plan seems like a good idea – E3 predicts that renewables will “still grow to dominate the market in the near future,” accounting “for nearly 50 percent of ERCOT’s supply in 2026 – when the PCM plan could take effect. By contrast, natural gas under that plan would be roughly 30 percent of supply in 2026, down from its current estimated 40 percent share.”
• Further, at “$460 million annually, or about $2 per month on a $100 electricity bill,” the burden to ratepayers is minimal. However, critics are concerned that the proposal is “unnecessarily complex,” doesn’t guarantee generation will get built, and there’s “no real-world model for the PUC’s proposal.”

??? The Takeaway

Many Devilish Details Are Still TBD. What the PUC approved is merely “a memo that offer(s) a broad framework for how the PCM would work, kicking many of the details down the road.” Key questions that have yet to be addressed include whether the plan “will only favor supply-side resources or whether demand response tools” such as energy efficiency and distributed resources will also benefit under the plan. These and many other aspects of the proposal will be discussed as the Texas House and Senate contemplate its approval.

Anti-Green but Pro Clean Energy

In a recent opinion piece in The Economist, the author argues that “climate skeptic ranchers” offer “lessons for liberals.” Rather than focusing on “things like climate change and carbon taxes” which are “still viewed as big-government malarkey,” renewable energy advocates should focus on the economic and environmental benefits of *clean* – not *green* – energy. “When someone says we are embracing green energy, it’s like shoving an ice pick through our ears.” Here are a few points to ponder:

• Despite its image as a fossil-friendly place, in many ways Texas may represent the “anti-green future of clean energy.” Landowners may not believe wind energy will save the planet, but at an average return of $8 per acre from cattle, $15 per acre from deer hunters, or “hundreds of dollars” from wind, “economic sense” prevails.
• A just-released update to “The Economic Impact of Renewable Energy and Energy Storage in Texas” confirms that clean energy provides a significant economic boost to the Lone Star State, delivering billions annually in tax revenue to local communities and landowners – and if all the planned projects with signed interconnection agreements are built, these numbers become even more impressive.
• As noted above, Texas already leads the nation in wind and solar, and in Q2 2022 Texas had three times the amount of wind, solar and battery storage under construction as California. Further, the EIA predicts that in 2023, “the share of renewables in Texan power generation will for the first time exceed that of natural gas.”

??? The Takeaway

Know your audience. Noting that “there are ways to promote clean energy that do not rely on convincing climate skeptics that they are bonkers,” the author suggests that “(a) better sales pitch may be to play up the cost advantages of renewables rather than the climate benefits, emphasize their contribution to cutting air pollution rather than carbon emissions, and acknowledge that, owing to intermittency factors, natural gas may have a role to play in power generation for years to come.” Roger that!

• Glow Up: Microsoft and Qcells team up in major U.S. solar push
• Let ‘Em Work: The renewable energy transition is creating a green jobs boom
• Click Bait: Wind turbines taller than the statue of liberty are falling over
• Don’t Shoot the Messenger: Political strategists devise political climate plan

• Duke Energy begins operation of Idaho’s largest solar plant
• TED’s Gem City Solar in Kansas gets CUP
• Power Global’s 600 MW AZ solar project gets one step closer to approval
• Trousdale county, TN passes prohibitive 10-acres or under ordinance

High Noon for Long Duration Energy Storage?

Cost-effective, sustainable energy storage – and lots of it – is key to transitioning to a clean energy economy powered by wind and solar. Lithium ion batteries and other short-duration storage technologies have an important role to play, but the holy grail is cheap, simple, environmentally benign storage that can provide power for days, not just hours.

Noon Energy believes it has cracked this nut. Company co-founder Chris Graves says “The scientific risk is fully behind us,” and the next step is to build demonstration projects that will field test the technology. It certainly sounds promising: Noon’s batteries could potentially deliver power for 100 hours or more, with “two qualities that few competitors in the space claim: energy density and high round-trip efficiency.”

Perhaps best of all, the technology is straightforward, and uses a “cheap and abundant” ingredient: carbon dioxide. “Noon’s battery stores energy by using electricity to split the CO2 into solid carbon and oxygen gas; to discharge, it reverses the operation, oxidizing the powdery solid carbon. The active ingredients are so cheap that Noon pays more for the tanks to store them in, Graves said.” We’ll be rooting for this technology to succeed morning, noon, and night!