Tilting at Windmills

Good morning and happy Friday,

In this week’s headlines, Biden bets big to take on coal while West Virginia regulators simultaneously approve a plan that aims to save one of the state’s largest coal plants. Also, while GOP donors continue to back misinformation campaigns about offshore, a new U.S. report finds offshore wind on an upward trajectory.

Read on for more.

Tilting at Windmills

In Cervantes’ classic 1605 novel Don Quixote, the eponymous (anti)hero is beset by madness and sees imaginary enemies everywhere he looks. Fast forward to 2023, and many Republicans in the Texas Senate appear to have been afflicted by a similar malady whereunder they also perceive wind turbines (and solar panels) as the enemy. Here are some key points related to their latest attack, Committee Substitute of Senate Bill 624 (CSSB 624):

• CSSB 624 passed in the Texas Senate earlier this week, with the adoption of three-floor amendments. Twenty-one Senators voted in favor, and nine voted against the bill which only targets renewable energy. The legislation exclusively targets wind and solar development – no other form of energy generation is affected.
• The bill increases the permitting requirements for wind and solar projects to an untenable level, which would all but ensure no further clean energy development in the state. It also establishes 3,000-foot minimum setback requirements for wind turbines from all adjacent property lines, requiring neighboring property owners to waive setback requirements in writing.
• Power Up Texas outlined many reasons the legislation is “bad for Texas,” including that it will raise power prices, threaten grid reliability, and “violates Texas’ coveted private property rights.” The Advanced Power Alliance makes similar points, noting in a letter sent earlier this month that the bill “places bureaucrats in a position to subjectively eliminate private property rights that are sacrosanct to Texans.”

?? The Takeaway

Fortunes are guided by destiny. Mistaking a cluster of windmills for “wild giants,” Don Quixote proclaims that “Destiny guides our fortunes more favorably than we could have expected,” and prepares to do battle. Clean energy and climate advocates are hoping destiny is on their side now that SSB 624’s companion bill HB 3707 has been referred to the Committee on State Affairs, chaired by Representative Todd Hunter of Texas House District 32, who has been supportive of renewables in the past.

Giving the Mitten to Solar?

Meanwhile in the Mitten State, next year Michiganders may find themselves faced with a ballot proposal that would give the mitten to solar by prohibiting “utility-scale solar farms from being built or operated on any land designated at a state or local level as agricultural farmland.” Here’s what you need to know about this not-so-great idea from the Great Lakes State:

• Local artist and mushroom farmer Erin Hamilton is concerned that solar projects will leach chemicals into the ground and that the inverters will create excessive noise, “sending off the wildlife” and creating “a lot of disruption in the ecosystem."??
• As the founder of a group that calls itself Michigan Citizens for the Protection of Farmland, she has spearheaded a ballot initiative to try to get the Michigan Agricultural Land Preservation Act on the statewide ballot in 2024.
• Aside from the specious claims made in the proposal, the actual impact of large-scale solar development on Michigan’s estimated 10 million acres of agricultural land would be negligible. Consumers Energy spokesperson Joshua Paciorek notes that “We anticipate only needing less than 2% of farmland in Michigan to build out all of these solar energy goals over the next 17 years.”

?? The Takeaway

Derailing decarbonization. The State Board of Canvassers will discuss the proposal at their April 28 meeting. Neither Consumers Energy nor DTE have commented on the ballot proposal yet; both companies have ambitious renewable energy targets that would be stymied if it were to pass. Consumers plans to shutter all of its coal plants by 2025 and build 8 GW of solar by 2040, and DTE plans to add approximately 15 GW of new renewable energy by 2042, enough to power more than 4 million homes.

• Strange Bedfellows: US renewables industry joins Big Oil to fight delays to project permits
• Climate Goldrush: A scramble for $1 trillion in fed tax incentives & loans for green energy?
• Follow the Money: Fossil-fuel executives are following green hydrogen
• Double Or Nothing: World’s biggest renewable energy developer doubles its solar goal?
• Game Changer: AWS unveils wind farm permitting solution

• Nextera’s Appaloosa Run Wind’s 135 MW Energy Center (A VPPA) is now up and running in Texas
• Oregon’s largest solar farm at 205 MW comes online

Buh-Bye

With all the bad news about global warming and the environment these days, we’d like to take a moment to reflect on a positive development this week in the fight against climate change: the abrupt dismissal of Tucker Carlson from Fox News.

Tuck seems like a swell guy (ok, not really), but it seems safe to say that he has had an outsize impact on skewing public dialogue related to the greatest existential threat of our era. From his lofty perch as cable TV’s highest-rated personality, he shared all manner of wacky notions and outright lies on an eclectic range of topics, from testicle tanning to the idea that no one believes in global warming (while simultaneously asserting that it’s the new state religion, and also that it’s tantamount to systemic racism in the sky).

Veteran E&E News reporter Robin Bravender compiled a list of eight articles her parent organization published on the Tuckster’s antics, including blaming offshore wind for whale deaths and immigrants for pollution in the Potomac. As details of the reasons behind his firing begin to emerge, we’re learning that he had a penchant for not only offending people’s intelligence, but also being downright vulgar and offensive.????

Bye-bye, Tucky-poo. We thought your 2006 appearance on Dancing With the Stars was the nadir of your career, but we were wrong. It won’t be the same without you. It will be marginally, or possibly much, better.