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October 30, 2024

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Decarbonizing Heavy Industry: Audacious, Ambitious, Achievable

PITTSBURGH ― In debates over climate change and the urgent need to decarbonize the world’s energy systems, heavy industries ― such as steel, cement and chemicals ― are typically held up as potentially insurmountable obstacles: industries that produce things we can’t live without while generating carbon emissions we can’t live with.

Taking up that challenge was a key theme at last week’s Global Clean Energy Action Forum, where over three days, government and business leaders from 34 countries issued a range of announcements focused on slashing those hardest-to-slash emissions.

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm opened the conference Wednesday evening with the rollout of the Department of Energy’s new Industrial Heat Shot, the sixth in its series of “Earthshots” aimed at pushing forward innovation across a spectrum of clean energy technologies. With heavy industry accounting for 30% of direct carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S., the initiative is targeting CO2 from the high-heat processes used to transform materials ― like iron into steel – with the goal of an 85% reduction by 2035.

The strategies to be pursued include electrification of heat processes, transitioning to lower-carbon fuels such as hydrogen, geothermal and nuclear, and developing new chemistries and biofuels, according to a DOE press release.

Setting the tone for the conference, Granholm described the Industrial Heat and other DOE Earthshots as audacious and ambitious but achievable, and invited other nations to join the effort, which, she said, “will be the story of the 21st century.”

Granholm followed up the Industrial Heat Shot with Thursday’s release of the funding announcement for the development of regional green hydrogen hubs, which will draw on $7 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). Industrial applications, including industrial heat and steel and cement manufacturing, are among the primary targets for the demonstration hubs. (See DOE Opens Solicitation for $7B in Hydrogen Hubs Funding.)

At the GCEAF closing ceremony on Friday, Granholm also announced that pledges from 15 countries and the European Commission will provide $94 billion to be used to fund a rapid acceleration of clean energy demonstration projects globally through 2026. The U.S. kicked off the drive to raise the money with a $21.9 billion contribution in June, after a report from the International Energy Agency estimated $90 billion in clean energy demonstration projects would be needed by 2026 to ensure that essential new technologies can be commercialized and scaled by 2030.

In addition to the U.S., Australia, Canada, the European Commission, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom contributed to the fund.

Another DOE announcement, also released on Friday, highlighted $4.9 billion from the IIJA that will be used to accelerate the commercialization and scaling of carbon capture, transport and storage systems. The money will be spread over three initiatives with the goal of siting, permitting and building carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects capable of storing at least 50 million metric tons of CO2. Funding will also go to CCS demonstration projects that can be easily replicated and deployed at heavy industry facilities and power plants, according to the announcement.

A Carbon Removal Launchpad

Although not an official United Nations event, the GCEAF served as a launching pad for new national and international commitments and actions that will be brought forward at the 27th UN Climate Conference of the Parties (COP27) set for Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, in November.

Thus, the industrial decarbonization announcements at the conference — and the intensive focus on carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and green hydrogen — seemed to signal a new level of commitment to these technologies, which still raise skepticism among some environmental and clean energy advocates.

Initiatives advancing both technologies led announcements from Mission Innovation (MI), the international consortium founded in 2015 to accelerate the research and innovation needed to drive widespread deployment of clean energy.

Speaking at a Friday session, Drew Leyburne, Canada’s assistant deputy minister for energy efficiency and technology, reported that MI is “initiating a global push for testing and demonstrating CDR technologies in the lead-up to COP27.”

The six nations in this “Carbon Removal Launchpad” — the U.S., Canada, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Japan and the United Kingdom — will work together “to build and fund pilot-scale and demonstration projects in the CDR space, and to support monitoring and verification efforts to ensure that CO2 is durably stored,” said Leyburne, who also chairs MI’s steering committee.

“It is imperative that we demonstrate the viability of CDR technologies and invest in them in a way that gives the industry the confidence to invest in critical CDR infrastructure, that gives the public confidence in CDR as an essential tool to address climate change, and then ensures that communities receive economic, social and environmental benefits from CDR projects,” he said.

MI also launched a green hydrogen action plan at the conference, but the major announcements — and investments — came from leaders in the steel and iron industries such as Luxembourg’s ArcelorMittal (NYSE:MT) and Australia’s Fortescue Metals Group (ASX:FMG).

Irina Gorbounova reported on ArcelorMittal’s efforts to decarbonize its steelmaking processes with a mix of green hydrogen, renewable energy and “potentially disruptive technologies that can help us accelerate this [work].” The company’s XCarb Innovation Fund, which Gorbounova heads, recently invested $5 million in H2Pro, an Israeli startup pioneering a new approach to green hydrogen electrolysis that could be both cheaper and more efficient than traditional electrolysis.

It has also invested $30 million in LanzaTech, a carbon recycling company, with which it is developing carbon-capture technology at its steel plant in Ghent, Belgium.

Gorbounova sees the role of ArcelorMittal and other heavy industry players as offering entrepreneurs “unique industrial settings … to test their solutions and to establish the technological viability and also industrial scalability.”

‘Stop Hanging Back’

Andrew Forrest 2022-09-26 (RTO Insider LLC) FI.jpgAndrew Forrest, Fortescue Metals | © RTO Insider LLC

Fortescue Metals and its chair Andrew Forrest made headlines last week with its rollout of a $6.2 billion plan to decarbonize its iron ore operations by 2030, followed by a second announcement at GCEAF of a new partnership with the DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

The goal for the company’s 10-year, $80 million investment, Forrester said at a small press conference on Thursday, is to help scale and commercialize the innovative technologies developed at the lab, which will then allow more companies to decarbonize.

“With NREL, Fortescue aims to create the world’s leading science and share it with the world so investors like us stop hanging back, stop being concerned that if they commit to a technology and build out a manufacturing system, the [next new] technology will come along and supersede their own new plant,” Forrest said.

“NREL simply gives us the confidence and … will give the world the confidence to really invest and invest aggressively and heavily,” he said.

By 2030, Kurt-Christoph von Knobelsdorff, CEO of German hydrogen and fuel cell company NOW GmbH, also wants to upend heavy industry worldwide with 70 green steel plants, 40 net-zero aluminum factories and 60 zero-carbon ammonia facilities.

But reaching those targets will mean answering some tough questions, von Knobelsdorff told the audience at the MI session on Friday. “How do we change the fuels in those industries?” he said. “How do we get the circularity [of supply chains] working better in these industries? How do we [approach] the efficiency of these industries in a different way? And how do we change fundamental industry processes?”

Echoing Forrester, Leonore Gewessler, Austria’s minister for climate action, environment and energy, stressed the urgency of developing the technologies to cut industrial emissions now. Evoking the climate crisis, she said on Friday, “We cannot wait sector by sector; [there] needs to be combination of industries. … There are 25-year investment cycles in industry, so we need to be there now for every single one of those decisions.”

Calling for radical decarbonization, Gewessler announced that Austria is contributing €250 million to MI’s industrial decarbonization efforts.

“This decade is crucial,” she said. “We need to be smarter and faster,”

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Dragos Chief: Pipedream ‘Ominous,’ But Not Overwhelming

A new strain of malware discovered earlier this year with the capacity to disrupt operational technology (OT) systems deserves to be taken seriously by critical infrastructure operators, Robert Lee, CEO of cybersecurity firm Dragos, said Tuesday.

However, conscientious security professionals should already have the tools to defend their organizations from the new threat, he said.

“When we look at that capability [and] what that means for us, it sounds pretty ominous. But the good news is, if you’ve been paying attention over the last decade, you are well prepared,” Lee said at ReliabilityFirst’s Fall Workshop.

He observed that the new malware, which Dragos has dubbed Pipedream, combines the characteristics of a number of previous high-profile cyberattacks, including the Stuxnet intrusion in Iran, the CrashOverride malware in Ukraine, and last year’s hack of a water treatment facility in Oldsmar, Florida.

Robert Lee (ReliabilityFirst) Content.jpgDragos CEO Robert Lee addressed the workshop remotely. | ReliabilityFirst

“If you were focusing on, not only indicators, not on patches, not on the exploits, but if you were focusing on the tactics, techniques and procedures of adversaries across those operations, and you were developing robust defenses … Pipedream does not really pose anything that different, because all it really did was perfect each one of those things and combined them together,” Lee said.

Dragos first disclosed the Pipedream malware suite in April. The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency quickly confirmed the discovery separately in a joint statement with the FBI and National Security Agency. (See E-ISAC Warns of Escalating Russian Cyber Threats.) Lee said Tuesday that the security community was “so very fortunate” to have apparently discovered the tool before it was used in any attacks, though he acknowledged that researchers cannot be sure the technology has never been deployed in the wild.

Dragos warned at the time that Pipedream — whose developer they named Chernovite, in keeping with the firm’s policy of not attributing hacks to specific groups — potentially represented a major step forward in sophistication for threat groups. The tool’s modular structure allows for easy modification to attack a wide range of industrial control systems and is “professionally made and easy to use,” far from the “sloppy and defective” tools that attackers have used in the past. (See Dragos Warns Malware Developers Building Skills Fast.)

Looking over the broader cybersecurity landscape, Lee said it has been gratifying to see awareness of cyber concerns spreading among corporate leadership in many critical infrastructure sectors, particularly the electric industry. He pointed out that the Biden administration’s first 100-day “sprint” to enhance cybersecurity across infrastructure was launched specifically among electrical utilities, which Lee said indicated a perception of the power grid as ahead of other sectors on cybersecurity, thanks in part to the robust oversight of FERC, NERC and the regional entities.

“The White House and administration reached out to the electric sector to start with, saying, ‘We perceive you to be the maturest of our industrial sectors. And if we want to challenge … this OT security problem, it’s you who we should partner with first based on all the interactions and good work you’ve done over the years,” Lee said. “‘We’re not going to get inside of your head … we’re going to give you the why and the what, but not the how.’ Which to me is a perfect example of a policy done well.”

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NYISO OC Discusses NOPR Comments, High Temps, EDS Results

NYISO on Thursday presented the Operating Committee with its proposed comments to a FERC rulemaking on interconnection queues, the impacts that above-average summer temperatures had on the grid and the results for four solar units that were part of the 2022-01 Expedited Deliverability Study (EDS).

Comments on NOPR

Thinh Nguyen shared NYISO’s proposed comments to FERC’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (RM22-14), which seeks to address interconnection queue backlogs as more renewables enter service.

NYISO broadly concurred with FERC on what it said would be the “most significant and comprehensive set of proposed revisions” to interconnection procedures since FERC Order 2003, recognizing that changes are critical.

But the ISO is concerned that certain provisions — such as allowing interconnection customers to request an informational study before submitting a request — would lengthen the time to complete an interconnection study, limit its abilities to operate efficiently and hamper FERC’s intentions. Other proposed studies would “run counter” to FERC’s goal of speeding up queue processes because they would require an additional “workload” that could be better allocated toward unclogging the queue itself, Nguyen said.

NYISO also believes that FERC’s proposal to fine transmission owners $500/day for study delays is unlikely to incent faster interconnection processes and, instead, would result in costs being passed down to customers.

Nguyen said that other provisions in the NOPR, such as increased financial commitments, would disincentivize speculative projects while encouraging transmission developers to “work in a faster more efficient manner,” such as by providing them with information around queue decision-making processes or creating rules that enable them to co-locate their projects.

NYISO also plans to support the proposed “first-ready, first-served” construct and allowing projects to be studied at the same time in clusters.

Nguyen said that FERC’s intentions are solid, but the ISO’s comments will continue to emphasize that the commission must allow it operational flexibility in certain instances. Grid operators should be able to have the “flexibility to tailor whatever the proposal is according to their region,” as each has “different market rules,” he said.

Expedited Deliverability Study Results

NYISO released results from the 2022-01 EDS, which examined the feasibility of four solar projects and found that all of them passed the relevant tests.

Four Solar EDS (NYISO) Content.jpgFour solar EDS 2022-01 projects successfully passed all relevant tests. | NYISO

 

The projects in the study included:

  • Highbanks Solar (Zone B)
  • Clear View Solar (Zone C)
  • Somers Solar (Zone F)
  • Stone Mill Solar (Zone F)

The units were studied to determine whether they are deliverable as currently proposed without the need for system delivery updates.

EDS comprises several deliverability tests, such as the Highway Interface Transfer Capability “No Harm” Test, which collectively identify potential need for transmission or interconnection upgrades. Projects seeking to join an EDS must meet several eligibility requirements, such as providing notice to NYISO by the study’s start date, satisfying data submission requirements and, in certain cases, completing a Class Year study.

The 2022-01 EDS is expected to be completed Oct. 13, and the next study will start on the first business day 30 calendar days from the completion of the current one.

Summer Highs Test System

Heat waves, shifting load peaks because of behind-the-meter solar and increased use of utility demand response programs characterized New York’s 2022 summer, according to NYISO Vice President Aaron Markham.

Summer heat waves during July 17-24 and Aug. 3-9 led to peak loads surpassing 30 GW, prompting regulators and political leaders to issue warnings that urged customers to conserve electricity to avoid blackouts.

These warnings lowered peak loads, while regional coordination calls ensured that energy supplies were readily available in case of resource inadequacy, resulting in no emergency actions being taken throughout the summer, Markham said.

Meanwhile, increasing installation of BTM solar is resulting in daily peak loads shifting to later in the afternoon, which has meant that on certain days, peak load has remained constant over several hours. This changing dynamic is something the ISO will “keep an eye on” as BTM solar is “integrated more and more” and starts to encompass a larger proportion of the energy mix, according to Markham.

Despite higher-than-average temperatures and system peak loads, the total load over the summer was lower than projections because of deficits in June and July.

NYISO Releases the Outlook

NYISO also announced on Thursday the release of its completed System & Resource Outlook. A draft of the report had been presented last month to the Business Issues Committee. (See NYISO 20-Year Forecast Highlights Generation, Tx Hurdles to Climate Goals.)

The inaugural report, which forecasts system needs for a 20-year period, predicts an unprecedented need for more than 95 GW of new zero-emission resources by 2040 and 20 GW within the next seven years to meet the goals of the New York Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.

Additionally, the installation rate of these added resources must increase significantly, while dispatchable emission-free resources must be developed and added to the system to reliably serve demand when intermittent generation is unavailable.

The outlook, which will be updated every two years, will get increasingly more detailed after each iteration, according to NYISO.

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Manchin: ‘Awful Lot of Heavy Lifting’ Needed to Pass Permitting Bill

PITTSBURGH — Sen. Joe Manchin’s appearance at the Global Clean Energy Action Forum on Friday was disrupted by a small group of protesters dressed in bright red T-shirts and grotesque Halloween masks, who stood up and started yelling shortly after he walked on stage.

As the loud and wildly gesturing group protested the Mountain Valley Pipeline and Manchin’s ties to the fossil fuel industry, the West Virginia Democrat thanked them, with an undertone of sarcasm, for being “so kind and so civil.” But once they were herded out of the hall at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, he used his “fireside chat” with Carnegie Mellon University President Farnam Jahanian to promote his views on the U.S. clean energy transition, the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act and his proposed permitting bill now before Congress.

The Obama administration’s support of the solar and wind industries resulted in “a lot of people [being] left behind when, basically, energy [policy] and regulations put a lot of [the] fossil industry out of business,” Manchin said. “That really divided us in this country, and I think you see the results now in the political discourse we have.”

The energy “transition is going to happen. We need it to happen, but it has to happen in an orderly way,” he said. “You cannot get rid of the horsepower that runs our country. You cannot remain a superpower of the world if you don’t have energy independence and energy security.”

Fossil fuel workers must also know that new jobs will take the place of jobs that will be eliminated, Manchin said, pointing to the IRA’s requirement that 40% of its $10 billion in tax credits for new clean energy manufacturing goes to “energy communities” where coal mining or coal-fired generation has closed since 1999.

“A good-paying job, with great working conditions, benefits, solves all problems,” he said.

But a permitting overhaul is crucial to ensuring that the tax credits and incentives in the IRA can “come to fruition,” Manchin said. All those investments are based on “a 10-year window,” he said. “If it takes seven to eight years or longer to permit something, we’re going to miss the window … and you’re going to have money stranded out there.”

“That’s just unacceptable,” he said. “We know what needs to be done. Why can’t we do it?”

The nearly complete Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline ― covering 303 miles from northwest West Virginia to southern Virginia ― has become a critical bargaining chip and flashpoint in the permitting bill Manchin hopes to push through Congress this week as part of a continuing resolution to keep the government funded beyond Sept. 30.

Unveiled Wednesday, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2022 would speed and simplify siting of regional and interregional transmission lines viewed as indispensable to the Biden administration’s electrification and decarbonization goals. For example, it would limit federal environmental reviews to two years, and require all other federal permits be issued within six months of a completed environmental review. (See Manchin Details Proposal to Streamline Approval of Energy Projects.)

But it would also mandate federal authorization for the completion of Mountain Valley. Due to opposition from environmental and community groups, the project has been built in segments and repeatedly delayed. According to the project website, it is now nearly 94% complete.

With opposition from Republicans and Democrats, Manchin acknowledged that getting the permitting bill through Congress “is going to take an awful lot of heavy lifting right here in the next two or three days.

“But everyone wins from this,” he said. “It’s not about one person, it should not be about one person. It should be about, ‘Is this good for our country? Does it basically show us as a leader of the world that we can basically invest in technologies and mature them quicker?’”

Shah and Straubel

While not an official UN event, the three-day GCEAF was widely seen as a launching pad for new national and international commitments and actions that will be brought forward at the 27th UN Climate Conference of the Parties (COP 27) set for Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, in November.

Governments’ role in accelerating the commercialization and scaling of new clean technologies was a major theme at event, which was hosted by the Department of Energy.

Jigar Shah 2022-09-23 (RTO Insider LLC) FI.jpgJigar Shah, DOE Loan Program Office | © RTO Insider LLC

With billions in funding from the IRA and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, DOE has become a major player in promoting public-private partnerships ― a topic explored in a second fireside chat on Friday, between Jigar Shah, director of DOE’s Loan Program Office (LPO), and JB Straubel, CEO of lithium battery recycler Redwood Materials.

“This partnership between high-growth companies, startup companies, and the government can work best when the government is leaning forward a little bit further, taking a little bit more of a risk-reward viewpoint similar to an investor in some ways,” said Straubel, who also co-founded Tesla and served as its chief technology officer. Such public-private partnerships can “help catalyze a lot more private investment in those companies and … perhaps a bit of disruption in the bigger industries in which the startups or growth companies operate.”

But companies that accept federal funds — like Tesla, which received and paid back a $465 million low-interest loan from the LPO — may also face a stigma, Shah said, even though the company “had to raise a lot of private money before it got to profitability.”

Straubel agreed, noting that Redwood has been “careful as we find other ways to partner with different entities in the government, that we also kind of tiptoe through that [stigma] and don’t have an industry that becomes too dependent on incentives, real or perceived.

“I think that’s something that a lot of high-growth companies and startups have to be mindful of because if it goes too far, it can actually shun private capital. I think the goal here is to incentivize private capital. People don’t want to invest in an industry that is not really stable on its own merits. The government should really be there to catalyze, to kind of instigate a change but not be there to prop up something in an ongoing fashion.”

Hitting the right balance means executives at clean tech startups need to talk more with agencies like the LPO, Shah said. “This money is going to go a direction that you don’t want it to go unless you engage directly and give the government feedback,” he said. “They’re not going to get it right unless you tell them what you need to be able to catalyze your business.”

A key challenge for companies like Redwood, now in the process of building a domestic clean energy supply chain, is developing a new industry from the ground up, Straubel said.

“You have to train the workforce; you have to train the construction workers. We have to import the equipment often,” he said “It’s a pretty heavy lift to do this the first time around. But the benefit is substantial, in terms of cost, in terms of emissions [reductions],” he said.

Podesta

With the passage of the IRA — which was hailed by international leaders at the GCEAF — President Biden was able to lure John Podesta back to the White House as senior adviser for green innovation and to implement the new law and its $369 billion in clean energy funding. A veteran of both the Clinton and Obama administrations, Podesta said he “couldn’t resist” the opportunity to help roll out the IRA.

John Podesta 2022-09-23 (RTO Insider LLC) FI.jpgJohn Podesta, senior adviser to the president | © RTO Insider LLC

“It’s a huge deal,” Podesta said in GCEAF’s final fireside chat, with Vanessa Chan, director of DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions. The law “gives the president the tools to really help shape an economy that, at the end of the day, is going to be built by the private sector,” he said. “The bulk of the bill is aimed at providing tax-level support for those new clean technologies.”

Echoing Manchin, Podesta stressed the importance of the law’s provisions for ensuring clean energy benefits and jobs get to low-income, disadvantaged and fossil fuel communities. A key challenge there, he said, is that “the communities that have the fewest resources to access federal programs are the ones that are being undermined by legacy pollution.”

Similarly, formula funding programs — where a certain amount of federal funding is allocated to a state — “never get down to the people who need the help the most,” he said. IRA funding for technical support should improve access for these communities, he said.

Podesta also sees the IRA having global impacts, especially in making clean energy technologies available and affordable for emerging economies in Asia and Africa, another major theme at the conference.

“If we develop a green hydrogen economy in the United States, that’s not going to just stay in the United States,” he said. “The United States government also has, I think, an obligation to help support the development of clean energy around the world. … We have to be attentive to smart policies to let developing countries access those technologies and use those technologies.”

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Trib Fest Panel: Let ERCOT Market Work

Pat Wood 2022-09-24 (RTO Insider LLC) FI.jpgPat Wood, Hunt Energy | © RTO Insider LLC

AUSTIN, Texas — Pat Wood, former chair of both FERC and Texas’ Public Utility Commission, put his street cred to the test Saturday during one of The Texas Tribune Festival’s more non-political panel discussions.

Jumping at the chance to advise Texas lawmakers on what they should do with the state’s proposed market changes, Wood referenced requests by legislators during recent testimony by ERCOT and PUC representatives that they be given a chance to weigh in on the market design before the grid operator begins to implement it. (See Texas Lawmakers to Vet ERCOT Market Redesign.)

“That disturbed me the most,” Wood said. “If anybody out here walks away with any message, it’s that we’ve got to get that investment signal out now. If we’ve got to wait a year … we’ve kicked that can a year or two down the road. It was my hope that the PUC would lock and load here by Christmas.”

Wood said that when Texas deregulated the ERCOT market in 1999, “people were already putting steel in the ground” when the legislation became law, resulting in some 30 GW of natural gas-fired facilities being built.

“It was clear from that from [then-Gov. George W. Bush’s] signature [on the bill] that this is the law of the land, and we’ve got this open market and the old utility inefficient power plants are going to be shut down … and everybody came in. So that investment signal is just absolutely important.”

Caitlin Smith 2022-09-24 (RTO Insider LLC) FI.jpgCaitlin Smith, Jupiter | © RTO Insider LLC

“I think they need to focus on the incentives that bring things to the market,” said Caitlin Smith of energy storage-provider Jupiter Power, who was previously an attorney with ERCOT’s Independent Market Monitor.

“It’s a competitive market, right? It’s a marketplace,” Smith said. “We’ll have wind, solar, bitcoin mining, all of that. I think it’s much better to let the market incentivize that than to legislate that kind of like anything else. I think you really want the input of the people investing in ERCOT because we rely on those investment signals to provide reliability. So you don’t want to put something too prescriptive. You need to encourage the correct incentives for the energy-only market.”

ERCOT’s energy-only market was designed by the industry to send pricing signals to attract new generation; the theory being that $9,000/MWh LMPs during times of scarcity — since reduced to $5,000/MWh by the PUC — would prompt new builds. It has, but the resources have mostly been renewables that are much cheaper to build than thermal generators.

“We believe that we need changes to [the market], but not because the market is didn’t deliver,” said Vistra CEO Jim Burke, the panel’s third member. “It’s because the world is changing, the asset base is changing, and the incentives in the markets are changing, and we’re still using a design that really is from over 20 years ago.”

“We had the ability to be settlers. The saying goes the pioneers got shot, the settlers got the land,” Wood said. He explained the market’s designers used the best practices from other deregulated markets around the world, including Chile, South Australia, England and Pennsylvania.

“So we got to kind of pick and choose with the resources we’ve been blessed with from the good Lord, with sun and wind. With innovation, we kind of unlocked the market structure we embraced here 25 years ago,” Wood said. “The future of the world grid will be decided right here because of the increase of renewables, their integration, the large customer base. Everything you’ve got is a microcosm of the global power system. I think our unique status as an independent grid gave us the ability to move faster and to move in a more creative way.”

Wood acknowledged the February 2021 winter storm was a “major setback” for ERCOT. He used another of his endless supply of analogies by saying boxers can get knocked out “but those good boxers get back in the ring and show people how to win again.”

Referencing the 88th Texas Legislature that will take over Austin in January, Wood said lawmakers “need to remember what I just said, which is Texas will be the innovator if we stay out of the way and let [the competitive market] make the changes.”

“It’s a work in progress. I don’t believe we’ve decided how we’re going to fix it or if it’s needed to be fixed,” Smith said, noting that price spikes have been addressed, but not the details around how costs are allocated. The recent surge in gas prices, which fuels most of the ERCOT generating fleet, has made it more difficult to reduce costs on the supply side.

All the while, demand continues to grow within Texas as transplants and businesses continue to settle in the state. However, reducing customer demand is not high on the list of market solutions.

Thus, the panel’s title: “Power Struggle. No, seriously: Is the grid fixed?”

“The cost of electricity, in theory, is based on the value to the customer, so you can get that sort of demand-side response,” Smith said. “There are certain things you can do just on the electricity side. I think we’re trying to get to a market solution that would get us a combination of that customer response and the supply response.”

Told by moderator Russell Gold that her comments were scaring him about ERCOT’s ability to handle another winter storm, Smith replied that it was not her intention to frighten anyone.

“We’re in sort of the interim right now,” she said. “We have taken a lot of operational steps with weatherization, gas supply, coordination [with the gas industry], but can we sustain those without a market change or going back to kind of a more energy-only market to make sure that those generators can pay for those operational steps?”

Jones Nears End of ERCOT Tenure

Brad Jones 2022-09-24 (RTO Insider LLC) FI.jpgBrad Jones, ERCOT | © RTO Insider LLC

Appearing solo on a separate panel Friday, ERCOT interim CEO Brad Jones reflected on his tenure with the grid operator, which began shortly after the 2021 winter storm and is now in its last week. A 90-day temporary assignment that was extended a year ends this week, when Pablo Vegas takes over as permanent CEO on Saturday.

Vegas replaces Bill Magness, who was fired by the Board of Directors after the grid nearly collapsed during the 2021 storm. (See ERCOT Board Chooses Jones as Interim CEO.)

“So why did you want this job?” Jones was asked as the room erupted in laughter.

“I didn’t expect much laughter out of that,” responded Jones, who previously served as ERCOT’s COO before becoming NYISO’s CEO. “To be quite honest, I love Texas and I really do love ERCOT and what [its] mission is. There was an opportunity to step in and carry them through to when it was a more stable environment … to get them to winter.”

He said he was glad he was asked to stay through the summer as well “because it was such a rough summer.” Record heat and demand led to several scares during the summer, but the grid held up thanks to voluntary conservation measures and a conservative operations posture that left 5 GW of capacity in reserve.

As Jones approaches the moment when he will shed his “interim CEO” title, he said the word “interim” has become very important to him.

“My team calls it my superpower because it really has been good to say, ‘No,’” he said. “There’s some things we just simply will not do. …

“Now’s a great time to hand off to the next person,” Jones said. “My goal was three-fold. First, to fix the things that needed to be fixed that I knew needed to be fixed. And part of the reason why I knew it is because I was sitting on my couch when it happened, and I was getting calls from everybody that I’d known for the last 30 years, telling me everything that needs to be done, and I started writing it down. Everybody had a five- or six-point list and by the end of it, I had 60 points.”

Jones’ second goal was to prepare ERCOT for the future. That entails adding dispatchable generation for “when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.” He said ERCOT’s massive number of renewable resources have been highly effective in bringing down energy costs, but “we have to solve both problems for both benefits to work for us.”

Rebuilding trust in ERCOT is Jones’ third and final goal.

“Trust is not that hard to build at the beginning, but if you’ve lost trust, it is extremely hard to rebuild,” he said, noting no amount of listening tours he has conducted or public appearances will regain the public’s confidence overnight in ERCOT.

“It’s not a year, it’s not five years, maybe it’s 10 years — but doing the right thing over and over and standing up for reliability. Doing those functions that will make sure that we keep the lights on for all Texans,” he said.

Jones agreed he started from scratch, but he has made inroads. “Trust me,” he joked, “everyone knows who ERCOT is today.”

“We still have a lot of work to do there,” he said.

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Electric Commuter Plane Takes Flight in Wash.

A Washington aviation company’s all-electric prototype commuter plane flew for the first time Tuesday.

At 7:10 a.m. PST, the prototype “Alice” aircraft lifted off at an airfield at Moses Lake, Wash., on a “proof of concept” flight. It circled for eight minutes at 3,500 feet moving at 149 knots and landed according to plan.

“The mood at Eviation is electric,” said company CEO Gregory Davis at a virtual press conference.

Eviation plans to build three models of the two-pilot Alice — one for nine commuter passengers, one for six executive-level passengers, and one capable of carrying 2,600 pounds of cargo. The plane has a maximum speed of 250 knots and a range of 250 nautical miles. Davis declined to say what the sales price would be for an individual aircraft. Commercial use is projected for 2027.

Massachusetts-based Cape Air has signed a letter of intent to buy 75 commuter planes, and Miami-based Global Crossings Airline has signed a similar letter for 50 commuter planes. Germany-based DHL Express is interested in buying 12 cargo planes. Manufacturing will take place in Arlington, Washington, where Eviation is based. (See Electric Aircraft Company Lines Up Major Deal.)

In a press release, Cape Air founder and board Chairman Dan Wolf said: “We currently fly more than 400 regional flights per day, connecting more than 30 cities across the United States and Caribbean. Alice can easily cover 80% of our flight operations, bringing sustainable, emission-free travel to the communities we serve.”

In the same press release, Geoff Kehr, senior vice president for global air fleet management at DHL Express, said: “Alice is the true game-changer by enabling long distance air transport for the first time with zero emissions.”

At the press conference, Davis said deliveries to the airlines will likely occur in 2027.

Over the next few weeks, Eviation will analyze data collected in the first flight. A special focus will be on data from the batteries powering the flight and the propulsion system. The company plans to build three additional test planes to conduct more tests. 

Davis expects the certification process by the Federal Aviation Administration to begin in 2025 and last two years. Using batteries to power a plane will likely be a major concern by the FAA, he said. “The biggest tech challenge is the development of the batteries … Developing an all-electric passenger plane is hard,” he said.

An unresolved question is setting up charging infrastructure at airports serving the Alices. A full charge would take 35 minutes. Davis said Eviation and the airlines cannot pay for all the infrastructure costs, saying the airports and federal government need to become involved.

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Collaboration Crucial to Create Trucking Fleets of the Future

PITTSBURGH — Truck makers, fleet owners, utilities and governments working together here and in Europe are developing what they believe will be the least disruptive way to gradually replace conventional diesel trucking fleets with electric fleets in the coming decades.

All of them, along with experts on every conceivable clean energy issue, were represented last week at the Global Clean Energy Action Forum (GCEAF), a three-day conference hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy and Carnegie Mellon University that drew more than 6,000 participants to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in the city’s downtown.

Electrification of transportation was only one of the issues examined in dozens of seminars in between major announcements by Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm aimed at explaining the Biden administration’s comprehensive efforts to decarbonize transportation, industry and power generation.

In the U.S., the transportation sector accounts for 27% of carbon emissions, according to EPA, and about a quarter of European emissions, according to the EU. Strategies to reduce transportation emissions through electrification are emerging on both continents.

The Global Logistics Emissions Council, a coalition of more than 150 organizations including trucking fleets, developed the first electrification guidelines in Europe as early as 2016. That led, in part, to the creation in 2021 of the Sustainable Freight Buyers Alliance (SFBA) and organization of multinational freight shippers interested in sorting out the emerging and sometimes conflicting national policies.

In the U.S., CALSTART — California’s 25-year clean transportation effort — and the California Air Resources Board have worked to create standards and implementation guidelines. CALSTART is active in other states as well.

Representatives of the three organizations joined spokesmen for a global freight company, another representing a U.S. electric vehicle charging company and a third representing a global truck and bus manufacturer in a panel discussion during the GCEAF
marathon of seminars.

Jennie Cato, representing Scania, a Swedish maker of trucks and buses with a presence in 100 countries, said the problem is “not a chicken-or-egg situation anymore.”

“The vehicles are not the bottleneck,” she said.

As if to prove her point, several North American truck makers parked 13 battery electric trucks — from local delivery vehicles, to over-the-road Class 8 semi-trailers — on the roadways under the convention center.

Scania is planning to offer a new electric truck annually for the rest of the decade, she said. “The goal is to have 50% of our sales volumes coming from battery electric vehicles in 2030.

“We can’t do this alone. And we need to have enabling conditions. We need to work in partnerships, both with policymakers and decision-makers; also with peers in our industry, sometimes with competitors,” she said.

Electric trucks are not the only way to build clean fleets, said Roger Libby of the DHL Group, a global delivery company. The company has had to deal with three challenges, he said: availability and timing; cost; and the density of infrastructure, whether it is for charging or refueling.

DHL began electrifying its fleet in 2006, starting with light-duty delivery trucks, which it special ordered because there were no truck makers producing electric delivery vehicles.

“We have 20,000 vehicles in our network. Our goal is to have 80% of our last-mile fleet electrified by 2030, across the world and all 220 countries and territories where we operate,” said Libby.

DHL has tried hydrogen fuel cell vehicles at its Cincinnati hub but ultimately chose battery electric. It has also tried compressed (CNG) and renewable natural gas (RNG) to replace traditional distillate fuels.

“California has done a great job at putting in renewable natural gas and compressed natural gas refueling infrastructure, and so in some corridors, you might not have the charging infrastructure, but you have the RNG refueling infrastructure, and so we might look at trucks there to use that infrastructure,” said Libby.

Vehicle availability is another issue. “If you want to buy a diesel truck, it’s in the market today. If you want to buy an electric delivery, heavy-duty or medium-duty truck, it’s 25 weeks,” he said, adding that ordering a CNG vehicle might take as much as 56 weeks.

As for cost, Libby noted that an electric truck is one and a half to twice as expensive as a conventional diesel. But tax incentives could eventually “pencil out” the extra costs.

At this point, the company is committed to using EVs for its local delivery fleet and installing charging stations at its depots. But using electrics for long-haul trucking is not possible without a charging infrastructure open to competitors as well, he said.

One company designing, building and operating charging stations is ChargePoint, a California company that has built a network of “hundreds of thousands” of charging stations in North America and Europe.

Kevin Miller, a director of public policy, said all the company’s chargers are “smart,” enabling fleet owners whose businesses are located on smart networks to charge EVs at the best price of the day.

“We work with electricity providers [and] utilities every day to help them think about how their product — electricity — is a … part of the transportation system now, and how that can be best leveraged to send an effective price signal. What’s most exciting about fleet operators is that outside of a university economics textbook, a fleet operator is the closest thing in real life that you get to a rational economic actor.”

Alycia Gilde of CALSTART agreed that working with utilities has become another key effort in the switch to electric trucking.

“We’re encouraging our fleets to start with infrastructure, getting to know and working closely with their utility. Let’s make sure that the infrastructure is in the ground by the time that vehicles are deployed,” she said.

Another CALSTART goal is to make sure small fleet owners are not left out of the switch to cleaner fuels. “And we are working very closely with our fleets, working with our drayage community,” Gilde said in a reference to the trucks that move shipping containers from and around California’s ports. Many of those drayage trucks are operated by small companies.

“We’re going to be in the process of kicking off a very thoughtful planning process. We need to understand where … all these truck movements are happening. How are we coordinating with our [utilities] to understand what the power requirements are? Where do we need to be scaling the grid in order to make this transformation happened in Southern California, and how we can use this project as a template for replication?”

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After Lull, California Sees Uptick in New Hydrogen Fueling Stations

Growth in the number of retail hydrogen fueling stations accelerated in California over the last year, with 56 stations now open, although the state is projecting that it will meet a 100-station target in 2024 rather than 2023.

The state’s 56 retail hydrogen stations open at the end of June marked an increase of eight in the last year, according to a report from the California Air Resources Board (CARB).

In mid-2020, the number of open hydrogen fueling stations was 42, an increase of only one station compared to 12 months earlier. CARB blamed the COVID-19 pandemic for the slow pace of station development in that period.

Meanwhile, about 11,134 fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) were registered in the state as of April 1, up from 7,993 FCEVs in April 2021, the report said. The number of FCEVs on California roads is projected to reach 34,500 in 2025 and 65,600 in 2028.

Annual Evaluation

CARB prepares a report each year on deployment of FCEVs in California and development of hydrogen fueling stations. The report is required by Assembly Bill 8 of 2013.

AB 8 instructed the California Energy Commission (CEC) to fund the development of hydrogen fueling stations until there are at least 100 publicly available stations operating in the state. And a 2018 executive order from Gov. Jerry Brown set a statewide goal of 200 hydrogen stations by 2025.

The eight new hydrogen fueling stations identified in the 2022 report include two stations in the Los Angeles area, three in Orange County and three in the San Francisco Bay Area. Those are also regions where FCEV registrations are concentrated.

Station development isn’t going quite as fast as CARB predicted a year ago. At the time, the forecast was for 97 stations to be open by the end of 2022; now it appears that 79 stations will be open this year. The 100-station milestone has been pushed to 2024.

Station developers say they’re being slowed down by the permit review and approval process, the wait for electric utility connections, and delays in getting equipment.

Still, CARB said, 79 stations by year’s end would be “a significant increase.”

“If achieved, [it] will be the fastest pace of station openings in California history,” the agency said.

CARB noted that station development is becoming more difficult to track because not all projects are receiving state funding. CARB’s current analysis doesn’t include a plan that Iwatani and Chevron announced in March to build 30 hydrogen fueling sites in California by 2026. The stations would be in addition to those that Iwatani is developing under an agreement with CEC.

Renewable Content Calculated

The report also analyzes the renewable content of hydrogen transportation fuel. An estimated 59% of the fuel was renewable in 2021 and the figure was 65% in the first quarter of this year. Those numbers exceed state requirements, including a 40% renewable minimum in the hydrogen refueling infrastructure (HRI) program within CARB’s low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS).

HRI allows station operators to receive extra LCFS credits based on the difference between station capacity and fuel sales. Sixty-three stations are now approved to receive HRI credits.

While the recent figures exceed state requirements, they’re less than the 90% or more renewable percentage in the first half of 2021, CARB said.

The reduction may be due to station operators diversifying their hydrogen supply following past supply constraints, the agency said.

CARB’s 2022 report on hydrogen fueling stations, and reports dating back to 2014, are available here.

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NJ Seeks Stakeholder Input for 3rd OSW Solicitation

New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities (BPU) is seeking stakeholder input to help craft the state’s third offshore wind solicitation, for 1.2 GW, in the first quarter of 2023, as it reaches for its goal of 11 GW of wind power by 2040.

The agency is asking stakeholders for insight into more than 40 questions for which the answers will help the state shape the Solicitation Guidance Document on issues such as project design requirements, the economic impact of the winning project and different aspects of the environmental and fisheries mitigation plans.

The questions include: whether the BPU should seek only projects of 1.2 GW or offer flexibility to diverge from that; whether the board should accept storage proposals as part of the solicitation; what strategy might ensure that the economic benefits pledged in a proposal are met; and how to ensure the full project pitched is constructed.

The board’s solicitation on Sept. 16 preceded a flurry of announcements by the Murphy administration to mark Climate Week, including plans to spend $10 million on green job creation and $3.125 million on researching the impact of the wind projects on marine wildlife.

The request for information is the first of two, according to the BPU. The second will be released after the board makes its decision on its transmission solicitation made under the State Agreement Approach (SAA) with PJM. The board received about 80 suggestions for how enhance the state grid in preparation for the increase in offshore wind power and expects to make a decision in October on which ones, if any, to adopt. (See NJ Seeks Efficiency, Savings in OSW Transmission Process.)

With that completed, the board expects to issue a draft of the third solicitation incorporating stakeholder comments in November.

Extreme Events

The solicitation, following the BPU’s award of 3.758 GW of power in solicitations in 2019 and 2021, will be the next step toward the 11-GW goal set out in an executive order signed by Gov. Phil Murphy on Sept. 21. The new goal is nearly 50% higher than the previous goal of 7.5 GW by 2035, which Murphy rescinded in the order, and the state has not yet set its final goal. The order added that “the BPU shall undertake to study the feasibility and benefits of further increasing the goal.”

“Extreme weather events and severe flooding across the country leave no room for doubt: The effects of climate change are becoming more impactful and more aggressive, and we must do the same,” Murphy said in a release announcing the signing of the executive order. In a speech at Climate Week in New York City the same day, Murphy called it an “aggressive target, but an achievable one,” adding that the task will be assisted by “technological advancements that are making turbines more and more efficient, almost literally by the day.”

The shift elevates New Jersey’s goal above that of New York’s OSW target of 9 GW by 2035. Both states will also see additional OSW power created from the federal auction in which six bidders pledged to create projects totaling 5.6 GW in the New York Bight, the coastal zone that straddles the two states. (See Fierce Bidding Pushes NY Bight Auction to $4.37 Billion.)

Yet the state’s expanding offshore wind strategy comes amid concern among Republicans and business groups at the potential — and so far, unknown — cost of shifting the state away from fossil fuels and toward electricity.

Readiness Questioned

A spokesman for Affordable Energy for New Jersey, a coalition of business groups and building trade unions that has expressed concern about the cost of implementing New Jersey’s Energy Master Plan, questioned whether the state could handle an increased amount of the OSW production.

“The state has yet to plot exactly where in the ocean these turbines are going to go,” spokesman Michael Makarski told a regular quarterly meeting held by the BPU to seek public input Friday. He called the wind expansion plan “delusional.”

“We are not sitting on a stockpile of materials to construct these turbines, and the board doesn’t know exactly where these transmission lines are going to make landfall,” he said. “These are massive issues.”

“If we think that the siting process is going to be smooth sailing, then we should think again,” he said. “If we install one state-of-the-art 13-MW turbine every week, each week, for the next 18 years, we’ll hit that 11,000-MW goal. Now, that’s if we started today.”

The offshore wind projects — Ocean Wind 1 in the first phase; Ocean Wind 2 and Atlantic Shores in the second — have been warmly received by some environmentalists and public officials. But they have faced opposition from the fishing industry, which fears that the turbines will disrupt fishing areas and create a dangerous environment for boats pulling nets, and recreational fishermen. The tourism sector also has voiced concern that the sight of turbines could reduce the number of visitors coming to the state’s coast. Local residents and property owners are worried about the impact on properties resulting from construction to install cables and other equipment.

Some of those concerns are likely to emerge again Thursday when the BPU will hold a public hearing into a request by Danish developer Ørsted’s request for an easement across land owned by Cape May County on which to lay cables connecting the wind project with onshore load stations.

Tracking Marine Impact 

Along with the wind goal announcement, Murphy released a report, Green Jobs for a Sustainable Future, last week that outlined recommendations and pathways for growing a demographically representative and inclusive green workforce. He also highlighted $10 million in new investments to guide and support the state in generating well paying jobs in the growing green economy.

“Today’s announcements underscore our determination to not only double our efforts in the fight against climate change, but to ensure that every New Jerseyan can reap the benefits of transitioning to a clean energy economy,” said Jane Cohen, executive director of the governor’s Office of Climate Action and the Green Economy.

The BPU and New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) also announced Thursday that they would spend $3.125 million on four projects on research and monitoring of the impact of offshore wind projects on marine life. The funding, the second round of marine life research funding, will “study potential impacts to the recreational fishing industry, use acoustic telemetry to track fish movements, deploy passive acoustic technologies to monitor whale movements, and evaluate offshore wind infrastructure as potential platforms for long-term environmental and ecological monitoring,’” the agencies said.

The money will come from a fund of $26 million that is administered by the state with funds from the developers of the second-phase solicitation, Ørsted and a joint venture between EDF Renewables North America and Shell New Energies US.

“This round of projects will gather critical baseline scientific information that will help ensure the responsible development and operation of offshore wind facilities that protect our coastline and its natural resources that are precious to all of us,” DEP Commissioner Shawn LaTourette said.

The projects include:

  • $440,000 to assess the potential impacts of offshore wind energy on New Jersey’s recreational fishing industry, to be conducted by the Clean Energy and Sustainability Analytics Center at Montclair State University.
  • $1.9 million to track fish movements along New Jersey’s coastline and in offshore wind lease areas with acoustic telemetry. The work will be conducted by Monmouth University and the New England Aquarium.
  • $500,000 for deployment of passive acoustic monitoring systems on the seafloor to record the calls of baleen whale species, including the endangered North Atlantic right whale, to better understand the movements and behaviors of these animals. No contract yet awarded.
  • $285,000 for Rutgers University, Monmouth University, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind to explore the potential use of offshore wind farms turbines, foundations and substations as potential environmental and ecological monitoring platforms.