Transition Talking Points

Good morning and happy Friday,

This week, ACP held its annual CLEANPOWER conference and exhibition in Minneapolis and released its Clean Power Quarterly Market Report for Q1 2024, noting “an impressive start” to the year with “the U.S. utility-scale solar, wind, and storage sectors adding a combined 5,585 megawatts of new capacity, marking an increase of 28% compared to installations in the same period a year ago.”

Meanwhile, at a meeting last month at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump asked oil CEOs to raise $1 billion for his campaign instead of spending huge sums lobbying the Biden administration, and said that if he returns to office, he would quickly reverse President Biden’s climate and energy policies .?

A new report finds that “renewables generated a record 30% of global electricity in 2023, driven by record construction of solar and wind” – good news, because the world also used about 2% more electricity last year. And another IEA report finds clean energy manufacturing investment surged 70% to $200 billion last year, driving 4% of global GDP growth – a spike “so significant that it is starting to register in broader macroeconomic data.”

Read on for more.

Transition Talking Points

Don’t be put off by the title – although a recent podcast from journalist and author Ezra Klein delves into a wide range of topics related to climate change, his interview with Scottish data scientist Dr. Hannah Ritchie offers up several points we know we’ll be working into future conversations about the energy transition:

• On the issue of land use for renewables, Ritchie asks why other land uses aren’t subject to equivalent scrutiny – such as growing corn to produce ethanol. “If you were to put solar panels on all of the land in the U.S. that’s currently used to produce biofuels, you could power the [country] three times over...that land use is a choice, and you can make a different choice.”
• Another issue that often comes up is scarcity of key materials for the energy transition. Extensive analysis shows “we have enough.” This is because estimates of available materials continue to increase over time – we find more deposits, or we find new ways of extracting what we need. Also, the quantities of materials needed decreases as technologies improve.
• A related but important factor is that unlike fossil fuels, which are extracted and burned and give nothing back, materials used for the clean energy transition can largely be recycled and reused. So, the long-term impacts of clean energy are vastly different in scope.

?? The Takeaway

Burn less. One of Ritchie’s central premises is that “we need to stop burning stuff for energy,” noting that “even if you take climate change out of the picture...fossil fuels are off the charts” in terms of human mortality per unit of electricity produced because of the air pollution they create. Her latest book dives deeper, and her Substack features articles that use data and research to crunch the numbers on a wide range of topics.

Interesting Corridors

Last week we told you about changes to NEPA, particularly the creation of the Coordinated Interagency Transmission Authorization and Permits (CITAP) program, which positions DOE as the main point of contact between developers and federal agencies. This week, DOE unveiled the National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor (NIETC) program for the development of multistate, ultra-high-capacity electric transmission lines. Here are some fast facts:

• The DOE’s preliminary list of potential NIETCs “total more than 3,500 miles across targeted regions” and build on its 2023 National Transmission Needs Study , including 10 narrow geographic areas spanning nine of the regions identified therein.?
• An area may be designated as a NIETC “if it is determined??that consumers are harmed, now or in the future, by a lack of transmission in the area and that the development of new transmission would advance important national interests for that region.”?

• The EFI Foundation, a research group founded by former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, also released a report outlining the many reasons why “a lack of grid transmission capacity impacts the ability to finance and, in turn, deploy clean energy at the right pace and scale.”

?? The Takeaway

Alphabet soup. “Developers whose projects are chosen for a NIETC will have to secure private funding ,” but thanks to NEPA, CITAP is here to help, and “federal funds and special permitting options will be available” to ensure lines get built quickly. While we don’t recommend using these acronyms to start your daily Wordle any time soon, they do represent tasty progress in the clean energy transition. Comments on the NIETC process are due by June 24.

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Rock + Air + Water = LDES

Energy storage is key to widespread deployment of intermittent renewables, but not all storage is equal. While batteries are highly beneficial, cost-effective long-duration energy storage (LDES) is seen by many as critical to the shift away from fossil fuels.

That’s because LDES is well-equipped to stand in for baseload, on-demand sources of power like coal and natural gas – and indeed, the DOE has identified LDES as essential to fully decarbonizing the electricity system. Promising technologies include pumped hydro , flow batteries , and compressed air energy storage (CAES).

Enter Hydrostor , a Canadian company focused on the latter (and not pumped hydro, as its name suggests). Hydrostor expects its first large project, which will have the ability to discharge at 200 MW for up to eight hours, to go online in Australia by mid-2027. In the U.S. the company is working to advance its Willow Rock Energy Storage Center in Kern County, California, which will be able to produce 500 MW for up to eight hours.

These projects aren’t cheap – the California facility has a projected price tag of $1.5 billion – but they have operational lives of 50 years, and the cost aligns with other LDES options.

Building anything in the Golden State can be a daunting proposition, but “One of the factors to keep in mind is that California’s state government and the California Energy Commission have made clear that they want to build long-duration energy storage.” Here’s hoping that’s enough to keep Hydrostor’s project moving forward!