With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dragging on, the escalation of the conflict into major cyberattacks is growing ever more likely, experts warned Friday in a webinar hosted by SANS — and the war could reach places cyber professionals never anticipated.
The attack by Russian forces against Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant served as the backdrop for the group’s discussion, as it was occurring at the same time as the webinar. Fighting began near the plant on Thursday, sparking warnings about radiation leaks that were only heightened when a building at the facility caught fire during the shooting. Russian troops have since brought the plant’s staff under their control and cut off internet access to the site. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Sunday that it was “extremely concerned” about the potential for “undue pressure” on operators at the facility.
Though the Zaporizhzhia situation involved a physical attack rather than one in cyberspace, Robert M. Lee, CEO of cybersecurity firm Dragos, used the fighting to illustrate the unpredictable nature of warfare. He pointed out that “targeting a nuclear power plant is a war crime [and] insane under any discussion”; nevertheless, Russia did so anyway. The lesson for cyber professionals is that attackers don’t necessarily share their victim’s assessment of what infrastructure — be it schools, hospitals or nuclear plants — should be beyond the pale when it comes to legitimate targets.
“One of the things that I’ve said in my classes over the years … is [that] we get to control pretty much everything on the defensive side. We get to … define the layout, define the scale, define the plan … we get everything,” Lee said. “Defense is doable, and defense has the upper hand in many ways, [but] one thing you don’t get to decide is if the adversary thinks you’re a good target or not.”
Not Just a Problem for Ukraine
Targets in a potential Russian cyberoffensive could include critical infrastructure not just in Ukraine, but in its allies’ territories. Panelists reminded listeners that such an offensive would not be out of character for Russia’s military intelligence service, which has been linked to attacks against Ukraine’s power grid in 2015 and 2016, in addition to the NotPetya malware that spread beyond its targets in Ukraine to companies around the world, including in the U.S. (See Six Russians Charged for Ukraine Cyberattacks.)
The fact that Russia has long been known to have this capability has left many experts confused as to why they haven’t been deployed in the current conflict. (See Experts Warn Cyberwar Still Possible.) Paul N. Stockton, former assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense, said U.S. officials had assumed that weakening an enemy’s infrastructure would be top priority for Russia in any conflict and saw Ukraine as a “laboratory” for testing its latest disruptive tools.
“We have a dog that did not bark in the night here. It’s very peculiar from my perspective that we haven’t seen large-scale, sophisticated cyberattacks in conjunction with the physical attacks that have been underway,” Stockton said. “A key component of new generation warfare, as it’s been described by Russian military documents, is to employ devastating cyberattacks early in a conflict to disrupt the adversary’s command-and-control and potentially critical infrastructure essential to the functioning of the victim nation.”
Experts have speculated that Russia has held back its most sophisticated cyber capabilities so far because the country’s leaders feel they can prevail against Ukraine without exposing their most potent weapons to foreign intelligence. Stockton and his fellow panelists agreed that this is the most likely explanation, but there is no guarantee this condition will continue — particularly if Russia’s conventional forces seem unable to get the job done and President Vladimir Putin seeks to avoid an embarrassing military defeat.
Prior Preparation Essential
In light of the unpredictable situation, Stockton said U.S. critical infrastructure operators should be prepared for a potential strike to weaken the U.S. and divert attention from Ukraine. First, he said, in the event of a large-scale attack, utilities should immediately “stop downloading software updates from the cloud,” a reference to Russia’s hacked version of the SolarWinds Orion cloud management software that was spread to thousands of organizations worldwide through a compromised update server.
Next he advised that any attacks against U.S. industrial control systems should be considered part of a sustained campaign, not “one and done.” In other words, while an initial attack might target gas pipelines or water utilities rather than the power grid, that does not mean that cyber professionals at electric utilities can relax; they might still be targeted in subsequent waves.
Finally, though it may be a bitter pill for hardworking security staff to swallow, utilities must assume that their systems are already compromised and that the adversaries are inside. If this assumption is not part of the planning process, it may be hard to fully eliminate any intruders.
“They’re going to be training inside our systems, exploiting persistent access,” Stockton said. “And that, I want to emphasize, not only applies to the initial attacks, but efforts to restore functionality. It’s going to be utterly unlike dealing with hurricanes or other natural incidents; they’re going to be inside our restoration efforts.”
AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Energy Summit continued its focus on the Texas Emissions Reduction Plan as it gathered in person for the first time since the February 2021 winter storm that nearly collapsed the ERCOT grid.
The summit organizers from the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station’s Energy Systems Laboratory have long emphasized a focus on energy management. However, the lead panel addressed — what else, after last year’s storm? — increasing the ERCOT grid’s resilience.
Moderator Evan Smith, the Texas Tribune’s CEO, noted the grid didn’t collapse during last month’s winter storm, which was considerably less severe than the previous year’s storm. (See ERCOT Breezes Through Latest Winter Storm.)
“Problem solved. Panel over. Do we really have to increase resiliency?” he asked his panel. “Isn’t everything okay, based on what happened a couple of weeks ago?”
“We know we’re making progress,” said Caitlin Smith, senior regulatory director for Jupiter Power, an energy storage resource consultant. “Things are changing in Texas. Our generation and our demand is changing. You have to constantly be working on it. I don’t think there’s ever going to be a point where everything is fixed and we’re done.”
Virginia Palacios, executive director of Commission Shift, which seeks to reform natural gas regulator Texas Railroad Commission, noted the most recent storm was only the seventh coldest in the last 12 years.
“It got cold, and the grid held up. That’s not something that should be celebrated,” Evans responded.
Still, this winter’s weather activity resulted in reduced gas production in West Texas, Palacios said.
“There are gas facilities that are not winterized. If we had a severe storm, we could expect more outages,” she said. “So, there’s a chink in the armor.”
State Sen. Jose Menendez (D) agreed, referencing ERCOT interim CEO Brad Jones’ recent comment that natural gas production declines might point to the grid’s continuing vulnerability because of its reliance on gas generation.
“That was not [U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] saying the quiet part out loud,” Menendez said. “Gas is a weather-dependent resource. We still see signs of problems on the horizon.
“At the end of the day, there’s no free lunch. Do you pay to keep the lights on? How much do we pay?” he asked. “Building more gas plants … that would all be on the backs of the consumers. That’s why we should focus on energy efficiency and demand response. How can we do more on the demand side, so we don’t need as much generation as quickly as we think.”
“We know what the problem is. The problem is expectations on different resources,” Smith said. “We expected gas to be there, and then it wasn’t.”
Speakers Address Ukraine Conflict
While the conference was focused on clean energy and air, the specter of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hung over the proceedings.
“Air quality is really in the DNA of this summit. … Obviously, these are extraordinary times,” said Stoic Energy President Doug Lewin, who helped coordinate the event. “There can be discussions about how our oil and gas sector can support our allies abroad … but we ought to be thinking about our allies abroad and Ukrainians that are suffering so deeply right now.”
Smith opened the summit with an update on the state’s recent primaries and its political outlook, but the first question he fielded from the audience was about oil politics.
“Well, [Texas does] benefit from higher oil prices, right?” Smith said. “Prices over $100 a barrel tend to be good for the economy and good for the state’s bank account, but I don’t think anybody wants to profit off of Russian tyranny.”
“We’re seeing this really huge crisis that even I am having trouble sort of wrapping my brain around,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, research professor and managing director of the Climate Policy Lab at Tufts University’s Fletcher School in Massachusetts.
Jaffe, who recently published her latest book, Energy’s Digital Future, referred to the global energy markets’ “mega crisis,” with gas and oil prices both rising to levels not seen for years.
“We’re really in a very tenuous situation with a very fragile market,” she said. “Gas prices are at historic highs, and we know from history that these kinds of crises end — especially when its oil-related — with a global recession. That is how prices come down.”
But Jaffe also pointed to a bright side: “We know each time this happens, we get new technologies, new energy efficiency, new government policies that lower demand.”
Solutions Offered to Improve Air Quality
Participating in a panel discussion on replacing Texas’ highest polluting power plants with cleaner and more reliable resources, Daniel Cohan, an associate professor at Rice University, said any replacement resources will have to come from Texas, given much of the state’s isolation from the rest of the country’s grid.
“The replacements for the polluting power gird will have to come from Texas. … That’s not true anywhere else on the continent,” he said, noting that most of the state’s power capacity is more than 30 years old. “We keep them because they ‘keep the lights on.’ Maybe they’re killing us, but you can count on them. Except when they’re not actually there for us, such as during the February storm.”
“The gas plant existing isn’t the problem,” Cohan said. “The problem is how much it’s used.”
Several speakers offered up virtual power plants as being among the new, enabling technologies that could eventually replace conventional resources. Virtual power plants rely on aggregated rooftop solar customers or community distributed solar, often with battery storage.
Using a suburb north of Houston as an example, Jaffe said, “Imagine if everyone in The Woodlands had rooftop solar and also had something the size of the washing machine in their garage that stores that electricity. Say the developer of this [distributed energy resource] system gives everybody a battery 30% larger than their electrical use.
“Then, when it’s not sunny or there is a surge in demand for heat, we aggregate that 30% of everybody’s batteries. That’s why it’s called a virtual power plant,” Jaffe said. She said a similar system in Western Australia prone to massive brownouts proved to be a “very robust” solution.
Closer to home, Jaffe said California’s experience after the Aliso Canyon natural gas blowout in 2015 fed the states’ optimism to pursue a 100% renewable energy goal. Developers offered to replace the natural gas capacity with solar energy and batteries. They installed 104 MW of solar and battery storage in a matter of months.
“And it’s still operating and it’s still working today,” Jaffe said.
“The cleanest energy is the kilowatt-hour you don’t use,” pointed out Keri Macklin, vice president of strategic energy management and carbon consulting for CLEAResult. She said placing a price on carbon has proven to quickly transition power companies from coal usage.
“It’s making it economically unfeasible for those coal plants to continue to run. That’s the cleanest and fastest way to do it,” Macklin said. “Politically, it may be more difficult, but it’s a very quick way to make the renewable energy more profitable.”
DOE Focused on Clean Energy
The Department of Energy’s Kelly Speakes-Backman made a virtual appearance at the summit to explain how the Biden administration intends to put the nation on an “irreversible path to clean energy.”
As the DOE’s principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Speakes-Backman oversees the agency’s $2.8 billion portfolio of research, development, demonstration and deployment activities in energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainable transportation.
“Secretary [Jennifer] Granholm likes to say that DOE is America’s solutions agency because we never back away from a challenge and because of how the many technologies and areas of society that our work actually impacts,” she said. “For decades, we’ve already been investing in these innovative renewable energy and efficiency and transportation technologies. But now it’s time to recognize and realize those returns on our investment by getting those solutions into the marketplace at scale as quickly as possible.”
Speakes-Backman said no single technology or solution will help the federal government reach its goal of a net-zero economy by 2050. Instead, it will take a coordinated effort in a wide variety of areas, with a strong emphasis on deploying technologies that are close to commercialization.
DOE has established five programmatic priorities: 1) decarbonizing the grid; 2) decarbonizing transportation; 3) decarbonizing the industrial sector; 4) reducing buildings’ carbon footprint; and 5) decarbonizing the agricultural sector.
The agency is relying on collaboration with the National Labs, federal agencies, the public sector and “our state local partners,” Speakes-Backman said, “because we know that we can only build a clean energy future if we’re going to be bringing these communities and workers along with us.”
DOE’s success will rely on investments in a diverse, STEM workforce “to provide a pathway forward for communities of workers who risked their lives to produce fossil fuels,” she said.
“We know that we have to build a clean energy economy in a way that’s going to benefit all Americans,” Speakes-Backman said. “We have to address the environmental injustice that disproportionately affected communities of color, low-income communities, indigenous communities and rural communities. We’re deeply committed to making sure that it’s embedded in all of our work.”
State Rep Pushes Tx Legislation
Before the 2021 February winter storm waylaid his best-laid plans, State Rep. Drew Darby (R) was pushing a bill that would have shortened the deliberation process for ERCOT economic projects and mandated a biennial ISO report identifying “critical designation” transmission infrastructure projects.
Darby’s bill (HB1607) never made it out of the House, lost in the wave of legislation addressing fixes to ERCOT’s governance and its system following the storm. However, he promises the bill will be back for the 88th Texas legislature in January.
“As a policy matter, I believe we’re still going to need to have this discussion as we move forward in the next session,” Darby, who was first elected in 2006, said. “It takes anywhere from eight to 10 months to actually put in a wind farm, but the evaluation process takes eight to 10 years.”
Darby, a native West Texan, knows the importance of transmission infrastructure. He saw the 2005 Competitive Renewable Energy Zone (CREZ) initiative invest $6.9 billion in 3,600 miles of new, high-voltage transmission lines and pave the way for Texas’ renewable energy boom.
“There was no power generation at the end of [CREZ lines],” Darby said. “I questioned spending that many resources to provide access to power generation when there was no proposed power generation or a single plan. The master plan was … if you build it, they will come. By gosh, we did build it, and they have come.”
With the wind farms, and now the solar facilities, congestion has increased on the ERCOT system. Carrie Bivens, the grid operator’s Independent Market Monitor, said real-time congestion rent — the impact of one additional MW on a constraint — was $2.1 billion last year, up from $1.4 billion the year before. The system incurred $300 million during just one day of the February winter storm.
“It’s growing year over year. … There is a lot of congestion throughout Texas,” Bivens said.
ERCOT has had 16 generic transmission constraints at one time. Seven of those were in South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, which are being addressed in a PUC-directed project and a $1.28 billion 345-kV line approved by the grid operator’s board. (See Texas PUC Directs Tx Construction in Valley, “Board Approves $1.28B Tx Project,” ERCOT Board of Directors Briefs: Dec. 10, 2021.)
“We have a lot of land [in West Texas], a lot of solar and certainly wind farms. That has created an extraordinary opportunity for my region and Texas, but it comes with challenges that are impeding additional growth for power generation,” Darby said. “Let’s look at these projects in an expedient manner and move them quickly.”
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week cited Ohio’s Davis-Besse nuclear power plant for improper maintenance of its very large emergency diesel generators (EDGs), which are used only when the reactor fails and the plant is cut off from outside grid power.
The EDGs must start immediately and be able to produce full power in as quickly as 10 seconds in order to enable emergency pumps and other equipment to continuously cool the reactor’s nuclear core to prevent it from overheating.
NRC determined that plant engineers installed improper replacement parts that prevented the plants’ two EDGs to immediately start during routine testing. Along with a lack of maintenance of other components essential to the production of power, it was enough to be a safety violation, rather than a minor infraction.
The citation — on top of an earlier NRC finding that Davis-Besse violated cybersecurity protocols — puts the plant under increased inspections in the coming months. The commission does not specify the severity of cybersecurity violations or the level of the citation it issues in such cases.
Davis-Besse, operated by a FirstEnergy subsidiary until it emerged from federal bankruptcy protection in early 2020, is today owned by Energy Harbor, a closely held company that does not respond to media inquiries. The plant is currently shut down for refueling, according to NRC.
Last week’s report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) hit home across the U.S. as dozens of news outlets published stories on how their regions are being affected.
The 3,675-page report said that climate threats have increased significantly since the U.N. reported in 2014 that climate change was having a “relatively small” effect on human health. (See IPCC Climate Report: ‘Half Measures No Longer an Option’.) The coverage of the new report makes clear that the impacts of climate change are being felt in every region of the U.S.
Here’s a roundup:
Florida & Gulf Coast
The Miami Heraldnoted that although the report had a global focus, “Florida was repeatedly used as an example of a place where the impacts of climate change were already being felt, both economically and environmentally.” It cited “tidal flooding from higher sea levels, even on perfectly sunny days; … hotter days and nights; more harmful algal blooms and mosquito-borne illnesses; stronger and wetter hurricanes; and less productive crops, livestock and fisheries.”
Erosion from storms in 2017-18 forced a $16 million reconstruction of the Lakewalk along Lake Superior in Duluth, Minn. | WCCO
The IPCC noted that tidal flooding resulted in the loss of $465 million in real estate value in the Miami-Dade market between 2005 and 2016 and contributed to “climate gentrification,” the displacement of poor residents in higher elevations.
An Associated Press story on the report focused on the Gulf Coast, citing the devastation of Hurricane Laura in 2020 and Hurricane Ida in 2021 and the more than 50 inches of rain that hit the Texas coast in Hurricane Harvey in 2017 — a storm cited as a case study in the IPCC report.
Republican legislators in Gulf Coast states have been more willing to support adaption to climate change, such as higher roads and sea walls, than efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it said. On March 1, the Republican-controlled Florida House of Representatives rejected the inclusion of clean-energy measures in a bill to address sea level rise and flooding.
The Tampa Bay area is considered one of the most vulnerable places in the U.S. for storm surges. The city of Miami Beach has spent more than $500 million on a system to pump water off the island, and Miami could spend potentially billions on its own effort to address sea level rise and limit saltwater intrusion into freshwater supplies.
Climate scientist Daniel Babin lamented last week that warmer winters in Louisiana mean fewer days qualify as “gumbo weather” — temperatures below 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
A more serious threat: “Coastal Louisiana residents are already on the frontlines of more intense hurricanes, rising seas, flood-inducing rain showers and extreme heatwaves due to climate change,” the U.S. Geological Survey said. By the end of the century, temperatures in Louisiana could be an average of 12 degrees higher, a recipe for even worse storms.
West & Southwest
The San Francisco Examiner noted that “record droughts, scorching wildfires, rising seas and blistering heat waves have become benchmarks of this new normal” in the Bay Area.
Although San Francisco announced a plan last year to reach net-zero emissions by 2040, the Examiner said the city’s “ability to persuade nearly a million residents to wean off fossil fuels swiftly has yet to be seen. Despite bans on natural gas in new buildings and the city’s investment in programs like CleanPowerSF [a community choice aggregation program to increase use of renewable energy], many San Franciscans still depend heavily on fossil fuels to power their homes, cars and offices.”
On the positive side, the Examiner cited the Crissy Field wetlands restoration project, which converted a former military base back to a tidal marsh.
In the Southwest, the last two decades have been the driest in the last 1,200 years, and spring rainfall could drop by another 20% by the end of the century, with river flows falling 50% by 2100. Reductions in water runoff has increased the salinity of Pyramid Lake in Nevada, reducing fish biodiversity.
Further north, a lack of snow is threatening northern Washington’s cross country ski trails.
Midwest
In Iowa, scientists say warming winters have allowed the Asian Tiger mosquito — which can transmit diseases like dengue fever — to set up residence in three counties after emigrating to the U.S. from Southeast Asia over 30 years ago. Elsewhere in the Midwest, there is concern that climate change will result in more invasive plants, pests and pathogens.
And researchers in Wisconsin last week reported that the state’s average nighttime low temperature rose between 4 and 7 F between 1950 and 2020.
Although the Great Lakes region is not currently prone to wildfires, rising seas or drought, it is facing worsening rainstorms. In southeast Michigan, the Great Lakes Water Authority has estimated it will cost as much as $20 billion to build stormwater infrastructure capable of avoiding the kind of floods that damaged tens of thousands of homes last summer.
In Duluth, Minn., erosion from storms in 2017 and 2018 forced a $16 million reconstruction of the Lakewalk along Lake Superior. Meanwhile, some Minnesota towns have begun the use of pervious pavement to reduce stormwater runoff.
New England
Hanover, N.H., has decided to end its annual Occom Pond Party — where thousands of participants celebrated on the frozen pond with ice castles and snow sculptures — because of unpredictable weather that had resulted in cancellations or postponements for seven consecutive years.
Climate change is bringing insects such as the Asian Tiger mosquito and browntail moth caterpillars to northern climes. | U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Maine Center for Disease Control & Prevention
New Hampshire is also seeing increasing flooding and, for the first time, the southern pine beetle — previously known in Central America and the southern U.S. — which can kill pine trees.
In Maine, 2021 saw the worst infestation yet of browntail moths, which can kill hardwood trees and shrubs and whose hairs can cause breathing problems and poison ivy-like skin rashes.
A recent Vermont Public Radio-PBS poll found 58% of residents surveyed expect climate change to have a “major” impact on the state over the next 30 years. Already some ski slopes are at risk from a lack of snow.
Mid-Atlantic & Carolinas
In North Carolina, increasing temperatures mean alligators could expand their footprint further inland, away from the swampy coastal areas they now call home. On the barrier islands of the Outer Banks, there is concern over homes falling into the ocean because of beach erosion.
Alligators, like this 12-foot 700-plus-pound specimen, could expand their footprint further inland due to climate change. | North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission
In Charleston, S.C., officials are considering an 8-mile-long seawall to protect the historic city from hurricane surges and higher tides. The South Carolina Office of Resilience, formed following severe floods between 2015 and 2018, is developing a hazards report for the state. Planning for a rail yard addition at the state Ports Authority’s Leatherman Terminal in North Charleston is taking into account a future of sea level rise.
New Jersey officials have recorded more than 90 forest fires in 2021 — this before its normal fire season begins in mid-March.
Meanwhile the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported last week that nearly one-third of the hazardous chemical facilities in the country are at risk from climate-driven floods, storms and wildfires.
And a new study in the journal Nature found that climate threats “can compound existing stresses on the revenues and expenditures of local governments, revealing potential risks to fiscal stability.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom continued changing up the state’s energy leadership last week by appointing Energy Commission (CEC) member Karen Douglas as his senior advisor on energy and naming Douglas advisor Kourtney Vaccaro, a former CEC chief counsel, to fill the vacant commission seat.
Gov. Gavin Newsom named CEC Commissioner Karen Douglas as his senior advisor on energy. | CEC
The changes followed a similar switchover at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) late last year, when then-CPUC President Marybel Batjer decided to leave two years into her seven-year term and the governor named Alice Reynolds, then his senior energy advisor, to take Batjer’s place.
The changes continue a trend in which Newsom has appointed senior staff, instead of outsiders, to fill seats on the CEC and CPUC daises.
Little more than a year ago, Newsom named new members to the three bodies that govern state energy policy — CAISO, the CPUC and the CEC — and reappointed a sitting member of the ISO’s Board of Governors.
The governor picked CEC Deputy Director Siva Gunda, a high-ranking staff member, as a CEC commissioner after former Commissioner Janea Scott left to take a post at the U.S. Department of the Interior in the Biden Administration.
Newsom chose then-CEC General Counsel Darcie Houck, a former CPUC administrative law judge, to fill an open spot on the CPUC after he selected former CPUC Commissioner Liane Randolph to head the California Air Resources Board.
Newsom also named Jan Schori, a longtime NERC trustee and former CEO of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, to fill a seat on the CAISO board left vacant when former Chair David Olsen decided to retire at the end of November.
Kourtney Vaccaro is the state’s newest energy commissioner. | CEC
The latest appointments of Douglas and Vaccaro come as the CEC, the CPUC and CAISO are trying to head off energy shortfalls this summer as the state transitions from fossil fuels to renewables. The rolling blackouts of August 2020 led to calls for better synchronization among the three entities, which forecast energy demand, order utility procurement and run the state’s grid, respectively.
The CPUC has struggled to prevent utility equipment from sparking wildfires and is currently attempting to control rate increases for customers of the state’s three large investor-owned utilities. The CEC grants more than $130 million a year for research and development of projects to decarbonize the transportation and building sectors, and to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Douglas has served on the CEC since 2008. She was previously director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s California Climate Initiative. Douglas earned a law degree from Stanford University and a master’s degree in environmental policy from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her new role does not require state Senate confirmation.
Vaccaro has served as Douglas’ adviser at the CEC since 2019. Her prior positions at the commission from 2009 to 2019 included chief counsel and assistant executive director of compliance assistance and enforcement. Her appointment requires Senate confirmation.
Neither Douglas nor Vaccaro was available for comment Monday.
Washington Senate Democrats last week greenlit a bill that would expand the authority and stature of the body that makes siting decisions for energy facilities throughout the state.
The Senate passed House Bill 1812 on a mostly partisan 29-20 vote on Thursday. The tweaked bill now goes back to the House for approval. The House passed the original bill with a bipartisan 95-3 majority.
Introduced by Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon (D), chairman of the House Environment and Energy Committee, HB 1812 would take Washington’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) outside the umbrella of its parent, the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission, and make it an independent agency.
Currently comprising representatives from several state agencies, the EFSEC makes recommendations to the governor for final decisions on the placement of wind and solar farms and other energy resources.
Under existing rules, a wind or solar developer can opt to seek state approval instead of obtaining county permits by going directly through EFSEC. Or a developer can choose to have the appropriate county government handle the permitting, sidestepping the council.
Fitzgibbon’s bill would not alter that practice but instead extend the EFSEC’s jurisdiction to clean energy product manufacturing facilities, renewable natural gas facilities and hydrogen production plants. The bill also would require the Washington Department of Commerce to meet with rural stakeholders and to prepare reports on those meetings, including recommendations on how to more equitably distribute costs and benefits of energy projects to rural communities.
The bill would direct a joint Senate-House committee to review inequities during the siting of large alternative energy projects with a report due by Dec. 1, 2023.
“This is creation of a more efficient and streamlined process,” Sen. Reuven Carlyle (D), the Senate’s champion on climate issues, said last Thursday.
Senate Republicans blasted the bill as taking local governments and local people out of the picture when decisions are made on siting wind turbines and solar farms. A controversy over a proposed wind farm in southeastern Washington lurks in the background of the debate over the legislation.
Scout Clean Energy of Boulder, Colo., has proposed building up to 224 wind turbines — each about 500 feet tall — on 112 square miles of mostly private land in the Horse Heaven Hills just south of Kennewick in Benton County. (See Wind Project Sows Controversy in Horse Heaven.) County commissioners and many Kennewick residents oppose the project because they don’t want wind turbines cluttering their view of the hills. Scout has opted to seek approval from the EFSEC instead of the Benton County government.
“The reason [HB 1812] is controversial is that Benton County has its local control taken away,” Sen. Perry Dozier (R) said during Thursday’s vote.
A common refrain from the state’s critics of wind and solar farms is that rural Eastern Washington hosts most of the facilities while the electricity goes to heavily populated Western Washington.
Meanwhile, a Republican bill — HB 1871 — to install a moratorium on EFSEC decisions through 2023, died in the House committee chaired by Fitzgibbon.
On Thursday, Republican senators portrayed Fitzgibbon’s EFSEC bill as taking away more power from county governments, leading to Olympia bureaucrats deciding the fate of Eastern Washington farmlands.
“These projects are not in industrial areas, but in alfalfa fields,” said Sen. Judy Warnick (R).
“It’s really a shortcut around local government,” said Sen. Keith Wagoner (R)
Sen. Ron Muzzall (R) said: “Are we willing to disenfranchise local governments and local people?”
“The only thing predictable about this is we’ll see more wind farms on our side of Washington,” Sen. Curtis King (R) said.
Washington’s Senate unanimously passed a bill Friday that requires the state to consult with local tribes when it allocates certain climate change funds to projects that might affect tribal resources.
Rep. Debra Lekanoff (D) of the Tlingit tribe, and the only Native American in the Washington legislature, introduced the bill to compensate for Inslee’s 2021 veto of a similar plank in a major cap-and-trade law in industrial emissions. Inslee faced political blowback after vetoing that provision and requested the plank be returned as a bill this session.
Because most of Washington’s tribes are federally recognized through treaties — with most signed in 1855 — they are considered sovereign governments and not as special interest groups or constituents in numerous dealings with the state and local governments. A tiny number of tribes did not sign treaties, which put them in a gray area in this distinction.
The state’s cap-and-trade law passed last year is expected to produce hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. (See Wash. Becomes 2nd State to Adopt Cap-and-trade.) Other than money allocated to transportation and health projects, the rest of the money goes to a “Capital Investment Account” to pay for most climate change measures.
When money from the Capital Investment Account is targeted, Lekanoff’s bill requires the appropriate state agencies to identify impacts on local tribes, such as water and fishing rights, religious sites and other cultural matters. A tribal government then has the right to halt a project until it and any other affected tribes can consult with the state. Such consultations could be expanded into a formal review, which could transition to mediation.
While those steps are going on, the state cannot perform any formal planning or release any funding. HB 1753 also applies to any local government seeking money from the state Capital Investment Account.
“If you don’t like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes,” goes a saying attributed to Mark Twain.
State officials and grid operators in New England are seeing more and more weather they don’t like, but they don’t have a few minutes to wait. In the wake of last year’s crisis in Texas, and with the growth of renewable energy technology reliant on fluctuating sunlight and wind, weather and forecasting have turned into something of an obsession in the region.
In Massachusetts, state officials started having weekly meetings this winter to pore over the latest data from ISO-NE, paying close attention to weather and load forecasts and oil reserves.
“I’m one of those people that never watches the weather,” said Patrick Woodcock, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources. “But I have never paid more attention to the weather than this winter.”
Before the winter started, ISO-NE turned a spotlight on the weather, warning that extended cold snaps could lead to blackouts in the region this year.
“Watching what played out in Texas, and realizing that most people in this region don’t understand how vulnerable we are when it gets cold, we thought that it’s time for us to start communicating more openly about these risks,” CEO Gordon van Welie told reporters in December. (See ISO-NE: New England Could Face Load Shed in Cold Snaps.)
So far, New England has dodged a bullet, with limited cold weather and only a few brief moments of strained conditions on the grid, but the worries haven’t gone away.
“We can’t control the weather, and we can’t always see it coming early enough to react to it,” ISO-NE spokesperson Matt Kakley said. “It’s outside of our control. So we are focused on it, and that’s why we want to make sure people understand the conditions under which we’re most at risk.”
Changing Weather, Growing Challenge
Part of the difficulty of adjusting to weather is that it’s changing significantly as the planet warms.
Much of the research into the effects of climate change on storms has focused on hurricanes, but blizzards in the Northeast are changing too, said Jason Shafer, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Northern Vermont University.
“Warmer and wetter climates mean that more snowstorms are going to be closer to freezing,” Shafer said at a recent renewable energy conference in Boston. “More wet snow causes more grid impacts.”
Those more intense storms are windier too, and wind is one of the biggest hazards for grid reliability, he said.
“Our climate is relatively resilient in the Northeast … but the risks are going to get stronger because of extreme weather becoming a little stronger,” Shafer said.
It’s a problem that ISO-NE has recognized in its rhetoric, and on which it’s starting to take action.
“It’s obvious that climate change is producing more volatile weather and extreme weather, and we need to factor that into our planning,” Kakley said.
The grid operator, again motivated by events in Texas and California, recently launched a study on the operational impact of extreme weather events, in partnership with the Electric Power Research Institute.
The probabilistic energy security study will use climate data to model extreme weather and its impact on the grid, employing ISO-NE’s 21-day energy forecast tool.
“Extreme weather events in Texas and California have made it apparent that multiday or longer energy deficiencies have serious consequences to residents and the economy,” ISO-NE said in its description of the project.
The Solar Question
The other big factor that has the grid operator paying increasingly closer attention to the weather is the influx of renewable resources to the region, which see their output shift based on even small fluctuations in sunlight, the wind or precipitation.
“The power flows on the system are changing very rapidly, so you need, for instance, to know if it’s a cloudy day; are we going to have a thunderstorm that’s going to come in; when is it going to be sunny?” said Jennifer Schilling, vice president for grid modernization at Eversource Energy. “What it took to operate the system even five or 10 years ago is very different than what it takes today.”
The patterns of solar in particular have vexed grid managers in California and elsewhere, and New England isn’t immune to the now well known “duck curve” problem, which causes unique patterns of energy demand to navigate. (See New England’s Duck Curve Days Chart Solar Growth.)
Renewable generators are also inherently more vulnerable to certain weather impacts. In Vermont, for example, solar panels lose about 5 to 10% of their effectiveness from snow cover, Shafer said. “This is a hard problem. Just a little bit of snow on a solar panel … is a big deal.”
Kakley noted that as more and more solar comes onto the grid, the consequences of changes in weather grow.
“A 10% increase in clouds might be a 400-MW drop in production. We need to be prepared to make up for that in other resources,” Kakley said. “It’s trying to get more information; better information; more accurate information. When you talk to the forecasters and the control room, more information is always going to help them do their jobs better.”
There’s increasingly powerful technology that can help bring in that information, such as sky imagers that can help with hourly forecasts; better satellite data for hours-ahead predictions; and weather forecast models for day-ahead looks at the conditions.
“We can do this. There are tools out there,” Shafer said. “I think there’s a lot of opportunity, a lot of dots we need to connect.”
ISO-NE, which already contracts with four forecasting companies to get weather information and also employs its own meteorologist to track weather impacts on the grid, is looking to boost its capabilities.
In a recent budget report to federal regulators, the grid operator said that it is expanding its forecasting to 23 cities from the current eight and adding two new “weather concepts” to its forecasts to get more granular information. It’s also bringing on new vendors to add to its behind-the-meter solar PV forecasts.
“The science behind forecasting has improved, and we want to make sure we’re using the best software available,” Kakley said.
New Jersey could dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions from buildings – the state’s second largest source of emissions – by replacing fossil-fueled boilers with heat pumps and other electric appliances and beefing up incentives for the equipment, according to a recent report from the New Jersey Conservation Foundation.
Heat pumps can replace furnaces or boilers, and “handle the heating needs of well-insulated homes in the Northeast without backup systems,” according to the report by the Acadia Center, a nonprofit environmental and policy group. Combining heat pumps with other electric appliances and weatherization can result in energy bill saving of almost 50%, the report says.
Often described as air-conditioners in reverse, heat pumps extract heat from outside air, concentrate it and push it into a home. Due to recent improvements in the technology, heat pumps can operate effectively even in sub-zero temperatures, according to the report.
Yet New Jersey’s incentive programs lag behind those of neighboring states, the foundation and other environmental groups said at a press conference Tuesday. They called on state government to develop policies that would offer building owners incentives big enough to reduce the cost of a heat pump, or other electric appliance, to the same cost as a fossil-fuel heater or boiler.
“Just like we have with wind, solar and electric vehicles, New Jersey must be ambitious,” said Eric Miller, New Jersey energy policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The state “must design and implement comprehensive building electrification programs that make technologies such as cold climate heat pumps, accessible to the residents and businesses of the state through a coordinated whole of government approach,” Miller said.
“Cold climate heat pumps can work in New Jersey’s climate even on the coldest days,” he said. Heat pumps “can decrease average energy bills for New Jersey’s residents [and] can significantly decrease pollution from New Jersey’s buildings.”
Savings, at a Cost
According to the report, data on New Jersey’s housing stock, weather and utility rates show that the average new home could save about $50 a year if it installed “new efficient cold climate heat pumps” and heat pump water heaters.
If the homeowner also weatherized the house, it would save about $180 a year, and an older, less-efficient house could save $1,300 a year by weatherizing and switching from gas to electric heat and hot water, the report says.
With a typical heat pump costing $4,000 to $7,000, New Jersey previously offered a $2,000 incentive for the purchase of a 5-ton air source heat pump, the report says. But since 2021, the incentives, now handled by utilities, have been cut, with Atlantic City Electric and Jersey Central Power & Light offering rebates of $1,000, while the rebate from PSEG ranges from $390 to $600, according to the report.
But Rebecca Mazzarella, a spokeswoman for PSEG, said that the company “has incorporated heat pumps for heating, cooling and water heating into our broad effort to help customers save money and energy.”
“Residential heat pumps qualify for rebates up to $750, and customers may be eligible for up to $15,000 in no-interest on-bill repayment to help offset the cost of energy efficient upgrades,” she said, adding that the utility also has programs offering energy efficiency rebates for commercial customers.
Vermont offers incentives of up to $2,000 for heat pumps, while Connecticut offers between $2,500 and $7,500, according to the New Jersey Conservation Foundation report. New York offers up to $1,600, the report says.
Speakers at the press event dismissed the suggestion, floated by some opponents of electrification, that heat pumps don’t work in cold weather. In response, they cited data that shows annual heat pump sales have surged in New England ― aided by incentives ― from about 70,000 sold in 2016 to close to 180,000 sold in the region in 2020, according to the report.
Maine has set a target of installing 100,000 air source heat pumps by 2025, but had already installed 75,000 by 2021, according to the Efficiency Maine Trust, which is assisting with the installation of heat pumps. New York State is investing $700 million to encourage energy efficiency measures and building electrification, mainly with clean energy heat pump technology. (See NY Pushes Electrification with Heat Pumps.)
New Emissions Rules
Electrification is part of Gov. Phil Murphy’s plan to help New Jersey reach a goal of 100% clean energy by 2050. The state’s 2020 masterplan update sets an GHG emissions reduction goal of 80% by 2050, and on Nov. 10, 2021, Murphy signed an executive order committing the state to a 50% cut in emissions by 2030.
The plan does not suggest a mandate to electrify buildings but calls for the building sector to be “largely decarbonized and electrified” by 2050, with a focus on “new construction and the electrification of oil- and propane-fueled buildings.”
The New Jersey Conservation Foundation report comes as the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is evaluating public response to proposed rules that would prohibit the installation of new commercial and industrial fossil fuel-fired boilers in certain circumstances. If the rules were to go into effect, the DEP would not issue a permit for a new fossil-fuel fired boiler of 1-5 MMBTU unless it is “technically infeasible” to use a non-fossil fuel boiler because of “physical, chemical or engineering principles” or because the interruption of the operation of an existing boiler could “jeopardize public health, life or safety.”
Electrification of the state’s building stock, however, does not have universal support. In January, the state Senate voted 35 to 3 in favor of a bill, S4133, that would prevent state agencies from requiring buildings to use electric heating or hot water boilers as part of the state’s carbon reduction efforts. The bill did not advance in the Assembly before the legislative session ended a few days later.
The bill was similar to other “preemption” bills, which were passed in 20 states last year, with broad and active support from the natural gas industry. (See NJ Legislators Back Alternatives to Electric Heat.) Proponents of the New Jersey bill argued that it is too soon to back electrification as the only solution when alternative fuels could also help cut emissions. Critics also say that heat pumps are expensive.
The New Jersey Conservation Foundation, however, said it is not looking for a mandate that requires the installation of electric appliances and boilers. The goal is to remove any barriers to the adoption of electrical products, provide incentives and advance a widespread understanding of the benefits of electrical heaters and boilers, said Barbara Blumenthal, research director for the foundation.
The incentives “are designed to help spur the innovation and growth and acceptance of the technology, so that as more people become aware, they see that there’s an opportunity and that opportunity becomes more accessible for everyone.”
LANSING, Mich. — In a case that could have statewide implications, Michigan’s Court of Appeals ruled that a Tuscola County Airport board improperly denied variances for eight new wind turbines near the airport, the latest decision in a number of court actions involving the wind farm operated by NextEra Energy Resources’ (NYSE:NEE) Pegasus Wind.
Pegasus operates several wind farms in Michigan’s Thumb region, the location of the greatest concentration of wind farms in the state. Some local governments in the multicounty agricultural region have welcomed wind farms, but others have resisted vigorously. Pegasus’ efforts to locate a wind farm near Tuscola County’s airport have engendered more than a dozen legal cases in both state and federal court, said Heidi Stark, a member of the county’s Planning Commission.
In November 2019, the Tuscola Circuit Court reversed the Tuscola Area Airport Zoning Board of Appeals’ (AZBA) decision rejecting variances for 33 Pegasus turbines, which are now operating. A month before that decision, Pegasus submitted variance applications for eight additional turbines within the airport’s zoning area.
In this case, Pegasus Wind v. Tuscola County and Tuscola County Airport Zoning Board of Appeals (Docket No. 355715), the Tuscola County circuit judge ruled the AZBA had authority to deny the eight variances, although the Federal Aviation Administration and Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) had issued “determinations of no hazard.”
But Appeals Judge Michelle Rick, joined by Judge Douglas Shapiro, ruled that the circuit court erred in its ruling and the variances should be granted. Judge Christopher Murray dissented.
‘Practical Difficulty’ vs. ‘Unnecessary Hardship’
The Michigan Airport Zoning Act requires zoning boards of appeals to allow a variance “if a literal application or enforcement of the regulations would result in practical difficulty or unnecessary hardship and the relief granted would not be contrary to the public interest, but would do substantial justice and be in accordance with the spirit of the regulations.”
The Tuscola Area Airport Zoning Ordinance, in contrast, requires the AZBA to grant a variance if a petitioner establishes any oneof those factors, as long as the FAA and MDOT’s Aeronautics Commission has found no hazard.
The court said that the circuit court improperly “conflated” the terms “practical difficulty” and “unnecessary hardship.”
It said many of the zoning cases cited by the circuit court and the parties on appeal did not differentiate between practical difficulty and unnecessary hardship because the prior zoning law allowed variances for both reasons.
This “variance map” included in the court’s ruling shows numerous wind turbines (blue rocket shapes) around the Tuscola County Airport (center). | Michigan Court of Appeals
That changed with the 2006 Michigan Zoning Enabling Act, which said only a showing of practical difficulty — and not unnecessary hardship — is required to justify the grant of “nonuse” variances, which are concerned with the area, height and setback requirements of structures.
“Because there appears to be confusion between the requirements of practical difficulty and unnecessary hardship, we use this case as an opportunity to distinguish those requirements in the application of variances,” the court said. “The law is clear that practical difficulty and unnecessary hardship are two separate things, and being unique to or inherent in the property is a requirement of hardships, not practical difficulty.
“The question is whether Pegasus has any use for this land under the current zoning — it does not — and whether entering into the agreements with knowledge that the land was subject to the zoning ordinance rendered these hardships self-created — also no,” the court continued. “Accordingly, none of the AZBA’s three stated reasons for concluding that Pegasus failed to establish a practical difficulty is supported by the record, let alone supported by substantial evidence, and the circuit court misapplied the practical difficulty standard.”
Public Interest
The court said the circuit court also erred by affirming the AZBA’s determination that the variances would be contrary to the public interest and protection of the airport’s approach.
The AZBA said the turbines would require a 300-foot increase in minimum descent altitude and that there was no evidence that the energy generated by the project is needed or would be used in the surrounding community.
The court said, however, that there are already numerous turbines “in and around the airport.”
“The record does not contain any evidence supporting a finding that the addition of these eight turbines would or could create risks and situations different from what is already happening as a result of the numerous wind turbines already built.”
While the case deals directly with Tuscola County, many local governments in Michigan have adopted zoning ordinances to effectively block development of wind and solar farms. The AZBA ordered the case published, which means the ruling must be followed in similar cases unless a higher court overturns it.
Pegasus could not be reached for comment. Lawyers for the county could not be reached for comment on whether it will appeal to the state Supreme Court. The Supreme Court refused to hear an earlier case involving Pegasus and Tuscola County.
