The Ultimate Power Move

Good morning and happy Friday,

In this week’s headlines, congressional staffers occupied Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's office, demanding Democrats continue negotiations on climate legislation.?

Three days later, Sen. Manchin agreed to $369 billion in energy security and climate spending. If Manchin and other Dems remain united, this Bill will be a very big deal for climate progress.

The news comes at a salient time, as the clean power industry saw a 55 percent decline in project installations and the world saw its first named heatwave (hola, Zoe).??

Read on for more.?

Call Me Big Portfolio?

The MISO Board has approved the first tranche of its long-range transmission planning (LRTP) projects, setting the stage for $10.3 billion to be invested over the next 8 years. The LRTP process has been underway since 2020 as part of MISO’s Reliability Imperative.

• Tranche 1 includes 18 transmission projects across the MISO Midwest subregion, selected in anticipation of significant changes to MISO’s generation portfolio over the next 20 years – including the retirement of 37 GW of coal and the addition of 10 GW of wind, as well as a whopping 36 GW of solar.
• Overall, the Tranche 1 portfolio – which represents about 2,000 miles of new transmission lines – is expected to support 53 GW of wind, solar, hybrid and stand-alone battery projects.
• According to this fact sheet from? the Clean Grid Alliance, that’s enough to power an estimated 12 million homes and create 333,000 jobs.

?? The Takeaway

While not unexpected, this is good news for anyone who’s a fan of reliable electricity, clean energy jobs, and the planet. MISO notes that the total economic benefits of the Tranche 1 portfolio – estimated at between $23.2-$52.2 billion – significantly exceed the $10.3 billion cost.

Caught in the Act

Floodlight is “a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.”?

• An article released this week and written in partnership with the Orlando Sentinel reports that “hundreds of pages of internal documents” reveal how FPL and other companies fought to protect their monopoly power, to the detriment of ratepayers and clean energy.
• Matrix, LLC, “a powerful but little-known political consulting firm that has operated behind the scenes in at least eight states” engaged in “secret work to help power companies like FPL protect their profits and fight the transition to cleaner forms of energy.”?
• Matrix’s founders are now locked in a nasty feud, and as result “the firm’s decades of extensive influence-peddling on behalf of utility clients,” which “extends to several states” are now being exposed.

?? The Takeaway

Nothin’ like a little investigative reporting sunshine for the Sunshine State! In the immortal words of Joseph Heller (Catch-22), “Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.”

• Shape Shifters: Utilities plan the shift to clean energy — just not too quickly
• Fais-do-do: Wind energy could be coming to the coast of Southwest Louisiana
• Shop Local: NextEra plans to shift away from Chinese solar panels
• Stand Tall: Research Says Vertical Solar Panels Have Improved Performance
• Coexist: Partnerships Explore Coexistence of Bats and Wind Energy

• Cypress Creek acquires four Texan storage projects
• NextEra solar + storage at shuttered nuclear plant approved by Iowa regulators
• Spearmint Energy acquires 150MW Texan storage project from Con Edison

Green hydrogen – hydrogen created by using renewable energy to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, thereby creating an environmentally benign, zero-carbon, super versatile fuel – is a hot topic, with some estimating the global market could, um...explode, growing from roughly $1.5 billion in 2021 to $90 billion by 2030. Many renewable energy companies have incorporated plans for green hydrogen production into their growth strategy.

This week, Invenergy announced that its Sauk Valley Hydrogen project will be operational by the end of 2022. The 5-acre project will use power from a co-located Invenergy solar facility to power a low-carbon Ohmium International electrolyzer.