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November 20, 2024

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‘Quintessential’ NYC High-rise to Recycle Heat for Decarbonization Pilot

The owners of a commercial high-rise in Lower Manhattan are targeting lost heat as part of a decarbonization pilot for the Empire Building Challenge in New York.

“345 Hudson [St.] is the quintessential New York City building at 17 stories, with almost a million square feet, and built in the 1930s,” Michael Izzo, vice president of carbon strategy for the real estate firm Hines, said Thursday.

The building has 54% energy waste, which represents a significant portion of the $3 million the owners spend on energy each year, Izzo said during an Empire Building Challenge event hosted by Building Energy Exchange and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). Hines is the operating partner for Hudson Square Properties, a portfolio of 12 buildings that includes 345 Hudson.

As one of four high-rise retrofits selected in January for the building challenge, the pilot at 345 Hudson is all about decarbonizing heat through recycling, according to Izzo.

“When we talk about heating, our steam system was designed in the early 1900s, and our fossil-fuel systems and boilers in the 1950s,” he said. “That infrastructure has not changed.”

For the pilot, the owners will turn to air-to-air energy recovery and heat-pump technology to recycle energy. Some wasted energy from the building will transition to an adjacent building or go to thermal storage before any excess is vented outside.

New York City has more than 1 million buildings that are responsible for 70% of the city’s carbon emissions, according to Richard Yancey, executive director of Building Energy Exchange. Most of the city’s buildings, he said, were built before the advent of current codes and standards and “fall far short of their performance potential.”

The 2019 Climate Mobilization Act set emission standards for the city’s buildings that go into effect in 2024 and increase every five years. Those standards, together with a recent ban on fossil-fuel-burning equipment in new construction and renovations in the city, have “ignited a retrofit revolution at an unprecedented scale,” Yancey said.

By 2050, he added, 90% of the city’s buildings will need to complete energy efficiency upgrades.

“The retrofit market will be colossal,” reaching between $17 billion and $24 billion within 10 years, he said.

Launched in September 2020, the Empire Building Challenge now has 10 real-estate portfolio owners, representing 700 buildings, working on high-rise, low-carbon demonstrations.

Gov. Kathy Hochul awarded Hines, Empire State Realty Trust, L+M Development Partners and Omni New York $5 million each through a competitive solicitation for their replicable high-rise retrofit projects that address barriers to decarbonization.

“We’ve been working closely with these partners for well over a year,” said Janet Joseph, senior vice president of strategy and market development at NYSERDA. “We’re very excited to move to this next phase of implementation and, hopefully very soon, construction.”

Other Projects

The Empire State Realty Trust plans to make the Empire State Building carbon neutral by 2030, according to Dana Schneider, senior vice president and director of energy and sustainability.

Initial carbon reduction measures, such as moving from steam to electric chillers, have reduced emissions 54% in the iconic building, and the goal is 80%, she said.

Through the building challenge, the trust is upgrading the Empire State Building’s control systems to improve system performance.

“We’re doing a lot of work to control our steam,” which Schneider said will be critical while the trust tries to make a business case for replacing steam systems with electricity. “Sometimes that’s difficult to do, and it’s certainly difficult to do all at once.”

At The Heritage in Harlem, L&M will update the 600-unit apartment complex with an insulated façade and a thermal heat-pump system in one of the buildings.

The three-building complex was constructed in the 1970s as a prototype for affordable housing that integrated a federal Head Start program and a center for child development, according to Joseph Weishaar, vice president of L&M fund management.

Working with the building challenge will allow L&M to electrify domestic hot water on the property.

“There are new domestic hot water plants that can compete with natural gas on an operating cost basis, but their upfront cost is very high,” Weishaar said.

L&M will connect heat pumps to a centralized control system so that the building can respond to grid conditions.

Whitney Young Manor, a 12-story, 1970s apartment complex in Yonkers, will receive an insulated exterior façade upgrade as part of Omni’s pilot.

The building is on a path to carbon neutrality by 2035, said Anna Weiss, vice president of Omni.

One of the major retrofit challenges for the project, she said, is installing and maintaining technology that is not “fully vetted” for cold weather.

In addition to upgrading the building envelope, Omni will install an air-source heat pump heating and cooling system with a central loop. Domestic hot water will transition to a water heat pump system that feeds off the air-source central loop. Backup gas boilers will be available on the building’s roof in the event of extreme cold weather.

“If we have an emergent situation in a blackout, we can be assured that our tenants will still have heat and they will be comfortable in our apartments,” she said.

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Washington Bill Would Create Council to Coordinate EV Buildout

Washington state lawmakers have introduced a bill that would create a council to help phase in the adoption of electric vehicles and manage the state’s spending of federal funds targeted at building EV-related infrastructure.

“Presently, there are four agencies in charge of these vehicles’ electrification. We need a coordinated strategy,” SB 5908 sponsor Sen. Marko Liias (D), chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, said during a hearing on the bill Thursday.

Led by the state’s Commerce and Transportation departments, the Interagency Electric Vehicle Coordinating Council’s duties would include developing a strategy to ensure that the state is prepared for EVs to account for all new car sales in 2035. The new body would also gather and disseminate information about EV programs, policies and funding.

If approved, the council’s most pressing task would likely be to identify and coordinate EV-related grant programs stemming from the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed last year. Washington is expected to receive $71 million from the act to expand EV charging networks, in addition to $4.7 billion in highway aid, some of which could be eligible for allocation to EV-related projects.

The council’s other responsibilities would include:

      • developing a statewide electrification roadmap that is coordinated with an EV mapping and forecasting tool required in state law (See Inslee Vetoes Part of Wash. EV Mapping Bill.);
      • create an industry EV advisory committee to provide input on ways to more effectively and efficiently decarbonize the transportation sector through electrification policies;
      • identifying policy challenges and existing barriers in electrification policies; and
      • ensuring the state’s EV strategy benefits disadvantaged communities.

Thursday’s committee hearing picked up only two people testifying on the bill, both in support.

Debbie Driver, Gov. Jay Inslee’s senior transportation adviser, testified in favor of creating an interagency council to focus on EV policy. The original version of the bill had called for establishing an altogether new agency to address the issue.

“It brings together the best and the brightest in our state agencies,” Driver said.

Annabel Drayton of the NW Energy Coalition also supported the council’s creation, but she said the bill should add protections for consumers to its duties.

While 246 people signed up to oppose the bill, none testified, so no reasons for the opposition publicly surfaced. Eleven others who signed up in support of the bill also failed to testify.

Full adoption of the bill will be contingent on the state’s transportation budget providing funding for the council by June 30.

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CARB Preparing Full Course of ZEV Rules for 2022

The California Air Resources Board could adopt by year-end several regulations intended to speed the transition to zero-emission vehicles, including the Advanced Clean Cars II rules.

Cars, trucks, commercial harbor craft and locomotives are covered by the proposed regulations, according to a presentation to the CARB board during a Jan. 27 meeting.

“The single element that binds these efforts and drives them all is the transition away from combustion,” CARB Executive Officer Richard Corey said.

Corey described Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II), which would move the state to 100% zero-emission car sales by 2035, as “one of the most significant climate and clean air efforts for 2022.” The board is expected to consider the regulation on June 9, followed by a second hearing and vote in August.

ACC II would be a follow up to California’s current Advanced Clean Cars regulation, with the new regulation covering cars starting with model year 2026.

The regulations include a low-emission vehicle program, which sets emission standards for light- and medium-duty vehicles. The second piece of ACC is a ZEV program, which requires car manufacturers to supply a certain number of battery-electric, fuel-cell electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles each year.

As of October, 15 states and the District of Columbia had adopted California’s Advanced Clean Cars regulation.

A new feature of the proposed ACC II regulation is a system of environmental justice credits within the ZEV program. For example, automakers could receive credits for selling EVs at a discount to community programs offering services such as ZEV car-sharing. (See CARB Plan Would Allow Interstate Transfer of ZEV Credits.)

The proposal also includes warranty and durability requirements for ZEVs, which would “assure consumers that ZEVs can serve as true replacements to conventional vehicles,” Corey said.

“This will support providing dependable, high-quality zero-emission vehicles on the secondary market as well,” he added.

Cost Impact Study

As part of the regulatory process, the state Department of Finance released a Standardized Regulatory Impact Assessment (SRIA) for ACC II on Feb. 1.

ZEVs have higher upfront capital costs but lower operating costs, and the regulation should result in net savings for car buyers, the SRIA said.

The analysis estimated that the total cost of the proposed regulations from 2026 to 2040 would be $289 billion and total savings would be $338 billion, for a net savings of $49 billion.

The net savings includes about $16 billion in reduced tax and fee revenue, which would have negative implications for state and local government, according to the assessment.

The next step in the ACC II rulemaking will be an Initial Statement of Reasons (ISOR) that explains the justification for each provision in the regulation. CARB expects to release the ISOR in mid-April for 45 days of public comment.

Advanced Clean Fleets

CARB will also continue to work this year on the proposed Advanced Clean Fleets regulation, which aims to achieve zero-emission truck and bus fleets in the state by 2045, where feasible. The proposal would require a zero-emission transition for some vehicles sooner. All drayage trucks, for example, would be required to be zero-emission by 2035.

In connection with Advanced Clean Fleets, CARB has been holding a series of workshops on medium- and heavy-duty truck infrastructure. (See Calif. Ponders Heavy-duty FCEV Expansion; Concerns Arise over EV Truck Impact on Calif. Grid Reliability.)

CARB expects Advanced Clean Fleets to go to the board for a first hearing by the end of this year.

Boats, Trains

Last year, CARB proposed amendments to its Commercial Harbor Craft regulation, whose goal is to reduce emissions of diesel particulate matter, nitrogen oxides and reactive organic gases from diesel engines used on boats.

The proposed amendments would include a requirement for new and in-use short-run ferries to upgrade to zero-emission vessels by the end of 2025. Many tugboats would be required to use Tier 4 engines equipped with diesel particulate filters.

The harbor craft regulation is expected to go to the board for final approval in the next few months.

CARB is also working on an in-use locomotive regulation that it expects to present to the board in the fall. The proposal would apply to all line-haul, switch and passenger locomotives that operate within the state.

As proposed in a discussion draft of the regulation, locomotive operators would be required to place funds each year into a “spending account” based on the emissions of their locomotives. Zero-emission locomotives in a fleet would receive a credit, which could be deducted from the amount that must be paid into the spending account.

Operators would use money in the spending account to buy or lease locomotives that meet increasingly stringent emission standards, with a zero-emission requirement starting in 2035.

“Cleaning up railyards is crucial to cleaning up the air in our hardest-hit communities,” Corey said.

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Van Welie Calls on FERC to Coordinate NE Winter Reliability Conversations

ISO-NE CEO Gordon van Welie resumed his push for winter reliability solutions Thursday, pointing to near misses last month as motivation to make policy changes, while also reiterating that the RTO has limited agency in fixing the region’s problems.

Van Welie’s memo to the NEPOOL Participants Committee followed up on recent exchanges he has had with state officials after ISO-NE issued vocal warnings about the reliability of the grid in New England ahead of this winter. (See New England’s Reliability Debate Bleeds into FERC Compressor Decision.)

A lack of extended extreme weather has spared the region from the worst effects so far this season, but van Welie warned in his latest memo that policymakers still need to find solutions.

The message was a familiar refrain. A changing generation mix is leading to new problems and could be “insufficient in the face of the wrong combination of severe weather, non-gas generation contingencies and fuel supply chain issues,” van Welie wrote.

It also came with a new twist: an “evolving situation” in New York, including the shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear plant and increasing gas consumption, that could lead to reductions in how much energy it exports to New England.

On one of the biggest issues —
 how to store energy for longer durations —
van Welie laid out a few possible solutions, including more hydro imports from Quebec, increased LNG imports and more dual-fuel capability.

But his biggest ask in the new memo was for better coordination, and he placed the onus on FERC to get everyone into the same room.

“We plan to continue talking with the states about this issue, and we’ve asked FERC to continue to focus on these issues with us until we find a solution. We are hoping that they will utilize their convening power to get all the right parties together later this year,” he wrote.

January Scares

Several incidents on cold days in January that led ISO-NE to briefly take emergency actions paint a picture of the vulnerabilities that van Welie is describing.

The first was on Jan. 11. NYISO told ISO-NE in the morning that it would likely have to reduce imports because of constraints on its own system. Around noon, a pole on the Phase 2 line from Hydro-Quebec tripped. Throughout the day, 1,100 MW of generation went down, and in total, an expected surplus of 1,278 MW turned into a deficit of about 1,200 MW.

The RTO had to commit additional units and declared a Master/Local Control Center Procedure No. 2, preparing for abnormal conditions on the grid.

The problems ultimately self-resolved, with imports resuming from New York and the Phase 2 trip fixed.

But the next day brought more challenges. Canaport LNG lost its electric feed, and ISO-NE had to notify New England pipelines that they should expect additional demand. The line was restored a few hours later.

The Millstone nuclear plant in Connecticut also went down for nearly a week during January for repairs.

“These are many of the major contingencies we worry about, and they all occurred within the span of two weeks,” van Welie wrote. “Thankfully, the region did not experience extended severe weather during this time frame, and we have been able to manage through them.”

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Killingly Stays Alive After DC Circuit Halts FERC’s Termination Order

The Killingly Energy Center saga is not over yet.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay Friday on FERC’s order to terminate Killingly’s capacity supply obligation, allowing the proposed Connecticut natural gas plant to participate in ISO-NE’s capacity auction Monday.

The stay came just 72 hours before Forward Capacity Auction 16 for delivery year 2025/26. (See Experts Expect Stable or Decreased Prices in ISO-NE Capacity Auction.)

“Absent other legal developments, the ISO will comply with this order in the conduct of the auction and will therefore unwind the actions it had taken to terminate Killingly,” ISO-NE said in a notice to stakeholders Friday evening. “After FCA 16 is conducted, should FERC confirm the termination of Killingly, the ISO would adjust the auction results to reflect the removal of Killingly.”

ISO-NE had requested the termination of Killingly’s CSO in November, saying that the project would not be able to meet key milestones for fulfilling its capacity obligations.

FERC approved the termination Jan. 3, writing that it was “persuaded by the evidence” presented by ISO-NE (ER22-355). That meant Killingly would have to forfeit its CSO for 2022/23 and would not be able to take part in FCA 16. (See FERC Accepts ISO-NE Request to Terminate Killingly CSO.)

The D.C. Circuit ruled that the order cannot be enforced until FERC “resolves” developer NTE Energy’s Jan. 11 petition for rehearing.

The rehearing request would be automatically denied “by operation of law” if the commission does not act on it within 30 days.

The court’s full opinion was not yet available as of Saturday. Judge Robert Wilkins noted in the order that he would have denied the stay, but Judges Neomi Rao and Ketanji Brown Jackson sided with NTE.

The developer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a second notice Sunday, the RTO said it had declined suggestions that it delay the auction. Instead, ISO-NE said it will calculate prices and quantities cleared with and without Killingly. “The ISO intends to keep these results confidential until there is greater certainty about Killingly’s status. This will protect the commercially sensitive information that might otherwise be revealed as part of the auction finalization process,” said Allison DiGrande, director of Participant Relations & Services. “This approach will allow the ISO to conduct the auction in a timely fashion, consistent with the requirements of its tariff, while addressing the uncertainty created by the recent D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals order.”

DiGrande said the RTO also will not reveal the results of any clearing in the substitution auction until Killingly’s status is resolved. “The ISO believes that this is the most prudent path to both minimize disruptions to the administration of FCA 16 and the required timing of [Forward Capacity Market] activities related to subsequent auctions. After due consideration, the ISO is confident that this approach will ensure the integrity of the auction while also complying with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals order.”

In a subsequent notice on Feb. 11, the RTO announced that NTE had been suspended from the markets and told stakeholders that “a
market participant would not be allowed to participate in an Forward Capacity Auction (FCA) unless it was in compliance with the Financial Assurance Policy.”

Five business days after being suspended, a company’s CSO would be terminated and financial assurance forfeited.

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Oregon IOUs Seek to Nix Wildfire Plan ‘Joint Inspections’

Oregon’s investor-owned utilities are asking state regulators to alter key provisions in a newly proposed set of rules designed to bolster utility wildfire mitigation plans.

Portland General Electric (PGE), PacifiCorp and Idaho Power on Wednesday jointly filed a draft of the proposed rules that eliminates a requirement that the IOUs collaborate with other users of shared utility poles, such as telecommunications and cable providers, on 10-year inspections to ensure compliance with wildfire safety standards.

Under current regulations, electric utilities are solely responsible for regular inspection of poles supporting their lines, the costs for which are recovered from ratepayers. In crafting the new rules requiring joint inspections, Oregon Public Utility Commission (OPUC) staff were looking to spread the cost of those inspections to other beneficiaries.

The joint inspection provision emerged as a major sticking point at a Jan. 18 OPUC meeting, when the commission voted to proceed with a formal rulemaking process for the broader ruleset that includes the provision despite utility objections. The commissioners urged commission staff and the IOUs to negotiate a revision for the commission to consider before the rulemaking begins. (See Ore. PUC Advances Wildfire Rulemaking Despite Utility Concerns.)

The IOUs voiced concern about the complexity — and risk — of relying on joint inspections, especially for utility poles in high fire-risk areas that might have multiple users and owners.

“We have significant concerns that the proposed joint inspection mandate will cause delays to find and remediate issues found in high fire-risk zones and inevitably increase wildfire risk,” Larry Bekkedahl, PGE senior vice president of advanced energy delivery, said at the Jan. 18 meeting.

Bekkedahl said PGE preferred to continue the existing policy of solo inspections, a position backed by representatives from PacifiCorp and Idaho Power. Commissioner Mark Thompson sympathized with the IOUs, even suggesting he was disinclined to vote in favor of the rulemaking over doubts that the commission could resolve the joint inspection issue during the formal process.

The IOUs offered a blunt solution to the problem in their redline draft, striking the definition of “joint inspection” and any additional references out of the proposed rules — an approach likely to get pushback from commission staff.

More Redlines

The redline draft also addresses the IOUs’ concerns regarding another section of the proposed rules that could put utilities in conflict with municipal codes when trimming trees away from lines in high fire-risk zones within urban areas. The IOUs’ revisions would clarify that utilities are exempt from local ordinances around tree trimming and removal in such zones, giving primacy to OPUC standards.

Last month, the utilities suggested that the commission modify those provisions to focus utility trimming operations on only the highest risk areas, typically located outside urban areas, thereby avoiding conflicts. They appeared to change tack in response to Commissioner Letha Tawney’s questions about whether municipal codes sufficiently accounted for wildfire risk, raising concerns that ignitions in populated areas could create “real havoc.”

The IOUs suggested additional revisions, giving them more latitude in responding to safety violations discovered on non-utility-owned — or “foreign-owned” — poles, including the right to issues a pole owner a notice that specifies a timeline for repair.

“If the pole owner or equipment owner does not replace the reject pole or repair the equipment within the timeframe set forth in the notice, then the operator of electric facilities may repair the equipment or replace the pole and seek reimbursement of all costs and expenses related to correction or replacement of the reject pole or equipment including, but not limited to, administrative and labor costs related to the inspection, permitting and replacement of the reject pole,” the IOUs wrote.

A utility would also be authorized to charge the pole owner a replacement fee amounting to 25% of the cost of the work.

OPUC will meet again on Feb. 8 to discuss the wildfire mitigation plan rules.

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CARB Promises Closer Look at Biomethane Role in LCFS

Prompted by a petition from environmental justice groups, California regulators will take a closer look at the role of dairy-manure biomethane in the state’s low-carbon fuel standard this year.

The petition, submitted in October to the California Air Resources Board, asked CARB to launch a rulemaking to exclude biomethane derived from dairy or swine manure from the agency’s low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS).

The groups contend that the LCFS overstates the climate benefits of using the so-called “factory farm gas” as a transportation fuel. They say the LCFS credit system provides incentives for farm expansion, leading to increased air and water pollution. (See Petition Would Bar ‘Factory Farm Gas’ from CARB LCFS Credits.)

The petitioners include Public Justice, Food and Water Watch, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the Association of Irritated Residents, Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, and the Vermont Law School Environmental Justice Clinic.

In a response dated Jan. 26, CARB Executive Officer Richard Corey denied the groups’ request to amend LCFS at this time, calling the requests for near-term rulemaking “premature.” Corey noted that CARB will revisit the LCFS in 2023, after completing an update to its climate change scoping plan this year.

But during a CARB board meeting on Jan. 27, Chair Liane Randolph asked CARB staff to hold a public workshop in the next few months specifically on the role of dairy-manure biomethane in the LCFS, to be followed by a report to the board.

Randolph’s request came after several other board members weighed in on the issue.

Board member Tania Pacheco-Werner asked if CARB could conduct a technical review of information on dairy-manure biomethane that has come to light since the LCFS regulation took effect. She said the answers are important as several dairy-digester projects are in the development pipeline.

“Personally, I want to see resolution of this as quickly as possible,” said Pacheco-Werner, who is a governing board member for the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District.

Carbon-intensity Benchmarks

CARB’s low-carbon fuel standard assigns a carbon intensity score to different transportation fuels. It also sets a carbon-intensity benchmark that fuel providers must meet. Providers that don’t meet the benchmark can make up the difference by buying credits awarded to producers of low-carbon intensity fuels.

Dairy-manure biomethane is a fuel potentially eligible for credits under the LCFS.

The environmental justice groups’ petition alleges that the LCFS credit system doesn’t account for emissions throughout the full life cycle of the biomethane, which is generated from the anaerobic digestion of dairy cows and swine manure.

The petition says the credit system incentivizes expansion of the factory farms, which allegedly has disproportionate environmental and health impacts on low-income communities and communities of color, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley.

The petition asks CARB for a rulemaking to amend the LCFS to exclude all fuels derived from factory farm gas, or to modify LCFS to account for emissions over the entire lifecycle of dairy-manure biomethane.

In his response to the groups’ petition, Corey said CARB’s long-range scoping plan, which takes a big-picture look at greenhouse gas-reduction strategies, may include recommendations regarding the LCFS. CARB expects to finalize the scoping plan update by the end of the year.

Corey said information gathering is another key step before the agency makes changes to the LCFS. He said during the CARB board meeting that some of the issues raised regarding the LCFS are not new, and “I have not seen the evidence of the claims that are being made.”

“If there truly is new data that is contrary to the historical record and the underlying analysis, I’m very interested in seeing that,” Corey said.

Corey and other CARB senior managers met with petitioners before issuing a response, and he said further dialogue is welcome.

Methane-reduction Goal

The debate over dairy-manure biomethane came up during public comments in response to a CARB presentation on 2022 priorities.

Michael Boccadoro, executive director of Dairy Cares, a dairy industry coalition, said the digesters are essential to helping the dairy sector meet California’s goal of reducing methane emissions by 40%.

“Without digesters, there is no way to achieve the 40% goal,” Boccadoro said during the CARB board meeting. “Without markets like the LCFS for utilization of the methane that is captured, these projects are not economic and cannot be financed and implemented.”

Boccadoro previously described dairy digesters as the state’s most cost-effective and successful climate investment.

Other speakers expressed disappointment with Corey’s response to the petition.

“This petition has been brushed aside with empty promises [that] it will be considered in the future,” said Tom Frantz with the Association of Irritated Residents. “In other words, ‘Blah, blah, blah.’”

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ISO-NE’s Plan to Delay MOPR Removal Wins out at NEPOOL

NEPOOL’s senior stakeholder committee Thursday signed off on a plan to delay the elimination of ISO-NE’s minimum offer price rule (MOPR), which the RTO abruptly threw its support behind last week after months of working on a different proposal that would have removed the contentious rule immediately.

The debate over the plan initially put forward by generators Calpine and Dynegy, which ISO-NE can now submit to FERC, is the latest volley in a long-running dispute over the effects of a rapid transition to renewables on the reliability of the region’s grid.

The MOPR sets a price floor for bids into the capacity market, designed to prevent what its backers say are “artificially” low prices caused by the participation of state-supported resources.

ISO-NE said that its backing of the two-year transition away from the MOPR, rather than immediate removal, is designed to slow the entry of state-sponsored resources into the capacity market to a “steady pace” rather than a “sudden, voluminous and permanent shift.” (See In Late Twist, ISO-NE Calls for 2-Year Delay on MOPR Elimination.)

The grid operator has worried that reliability of New England’s grid could suffer from a rapid influx of sponsored resources and an exodus of existing generators.

“What I know, based on what we’ve observed and studied and seen, is that a transition offers the most measured way forward … and gives us much-needed time to put in place critical reforms,” ISO-NE COO Vamsi Chadalavada told stakeholders at the Participants Committee meeting Thursday. “We are convinced of this position and this judgment, and we do need your support, because the best way for us to move forward is collectively, rather than arguing back and forth about what’s right and what’s wrong.”

The transition plan was backed by generation, transmission and supplier sectors in the NEPOOL vote Thursday. It’s also not opposed by five of the six New England states (with New Hampshire as the outlier because the state opposes MOPR removal altogether).

But renewable developers, advocates and environmental groups have cried foul, arguing that the RTO has not made its case convincingly that the transition is necessary for reliability.

“The ISO provided no quantitative support … that deviating from its blueprint established nine months earlier to impose a delay will reduce reliability risks,” the nonprofit RENEW Northeast wrote in a memo this week, also noting that “temporary programs have a habit of being extended.”

“The grid operator’s saying we’re not going to allow new clean energy resources to fairly compete in the region’s market until almost the end of the decade,” Bruce Ho, senior advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an interview. “That’s pretty extreme and really doesn’t seem in line with what [FERC] has been pushing for.”

Joe Curtatone, president of the Northeast Clean Energy Council, took to Twitter to slam the MOPR transition proposal.

“Much of what shapes our energy supply and the fate of our climate takes place in meetings few people know about, like at NEPOOL today,” the former Somerville, Mass., mayor wrote. “There’s a rule that forces clean energy to submit higher bids that protect fossil fuel suppliers. It’s grimy insider baseball, and it needs to stop.”

The transition plan does allow for up to 700 MW of capacity from state-subsidized resources to enter the market through a renewable technology resources (RTR) exemption in Forward Capacity Auctions 17 and 18 (300 MW in FCA 17 and 400 MW in FCA 18). And the committee approved an amendment from RENEW Northeast that would carry over any unused megawatts between those two years.

The plan now faces an uncertain future at FERC.

Members of the commission’s Democratic majority, Chairman Richard Glick and Commissioner Allison Clements, wrote recently that the MOPR makes ISO-NE’s tariff unjust and unreasonable, and that the RTO should move forward “expeditiously” with eliminating it. (See FERC Weighs in as ISO-NE Prepares for Capacity Auction.)

A FERC spokesperson said that Glick “does not want to risk prejudging the matter” and will wait for an official filing before the commission to comment on the ISO-NE proposal.

“What ISO-NE is proposing doesn’t seem to align with what commissioners are asking the grid operator to do,” Ho said. “I think we saw very clearly from the chairman … that he expects ISO New England to get rid of the unjust and unreasonable MOPR rule.”

Consent Agenda

The Participants Committee also approved three items on its consent agenda:

  • changes to the resource retirement process to allow retirement bids to be updated later in order to give generators more flexibility, proposed by Calpine and recommended by the Markets Committee last month. (See NEPOOL Markets Committee Briefs: Jan. 12, 2022.)
  • biennial review revisions to ISO-NE Operating Procedure No. 5 (Resource Maintenance and Outage Scheduling) Appendices A (Operable Capacity Calculations) and B (Outage Request Form), as recommended by the Reliability Committee.
  • revisions to Appendix G (Designated Blackstart Resource Commitment) to OP-11 (Blackstart Resource Administration), as recommended by the RC.
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New Jersey Committee Advances $45M Electric Bus Bill

The New Jersey Senate Transportation Committee approved a bill Thursday that would allocate $45 million for a three-year pilot program for electric school buses.

The bill (S759), which advanced with a 6-0 vote and one abstention, would create a program under which six districts or contractors each year would assess the reliability and effectiveness of using electric buses in place of diesel-powered vehicles. At least half of the districts or contractors would be in low-income, urban or environmental justice communities.

During the pilot, the performance of the buses would be evaluated and data on costs, maintenance, fuel and bus speed and movements would be collected and submitted to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

The bill’s introduction comes amid concerns from environmental groups that the state should move more quickly toward electrification of school and transit buses. As of last October, there were no electric school buses registered in New Jersey, said Atlas Public Policy, a Washington D.C.-based consultant on transportation and building electrification issues.  (See NJ Floats New Electric Bus Plan.)

Three environmental groups spoke in support of the bill, and nobody opposed it.

“Senate Bill 759 will begin the process of replacing diesel school buses,” Anjuli Ramos, New Jersey director at Sierra Club, told the committee. While up-front costs of electric buses are high, she said, clean energy buses can be cheaper in the long run.

“The economic and environmental benefits of using electric school buses far outweigh using diesel buses,” Ramos said.

Project Delay

Converting to electric buses is one piece of the New Jersey effort to get 330,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2025 and reach 100% clean energy by 2050. The state is mid-way through enacting a rule proposal to encourage the creation of charging stations that would service electric buses and medium- and heavy-duty trucks. (See NJ’s EV Charger Rules Face Scrutiny.)

New Jersey has allocated $22 million since 2019 for 18 school districts or bus contractors to help buy 71 electric school buses. Pam Frank, CEO of ChargEVC-NJ, an advocacy group that champions electric vehicle policies, told a senate committee in November that none of the buses are in operation.

The $45 million pilot program bill follows similar legislation introduced in November that secured Senate approval, 35-3, but did not advance in the assembly before the legislative term ended in January. That bill followed legislation that would have allocated $10 million to fund three test projects, which also did not pass.

Doug O’Malley, state director of Environment New Jersey, said he hoped the bill “can move forward quickly in both houses.”

“This pilot program is designed not only to get electric school buses on the road, but be able to figure out what works,” he said.

NJ Transit, the state’s mass transportation agency, said this week that the delivery of eight buses for the pilot in Camden has been delayed by more than six months.

The agency approved a $9.5 million purchase of eight buses in October as part of an effort to convert its fleet of 3,000 buses to zero emission by 2040. The buses will operate out of the Newton Avenue Bus Garage in Camden, which is undergoing a $3 million renovation, including the installation of chargers.

NJ Transit said this week that the agency expected the first of the new buses to arrive by the end of 2021. But they are now scheduled for arrival in June, with the full complement of eight arriving by the end of the year. The agency agreed to the delay during the solicitation phase, at the request of vendors who sought more time to prepare, a spokesperson told NetZero Insider.

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Report Warns of Growing Cyber Dangers

A handful of high-profile cyberattacks grabbed headlines last year, but cybersecurity advisory firm Tenable said in a report this week that the biggest challenge for the security community continues to be “age-old security challenges in new infrastructure.”

“Organizations continue to struggle with protecting, or even defining, the perimeter. Migration to cloud platforms, reliance on managed service providers, software and infrastructure as a service have all changed how organizations must think about and secure the perimeter,” the 2021 Threat Landscape Retrospective said. “Fragmented security solutions and poorly defined security outcomes must be left behind to match the complexity of the modern attack surface.”

Tenable’s goal was to highlight the security issues that plagued the public and private sector last year. While big events drew most of the public’s attention last year — for example, the compromise of the SolarWinds Orion network management software that began in December 2020, and the ransomware attack against Colonial Pipeline in May — the firm said these hacks were the tip of the iceberg, with 1,825 total breach events detected from Nov. 1, 2020 to Oct. 31, 2021.

OT, IT in ‘Attackers’ Crosshairs’

While details on many of last year’s cyber incidents have not been disclosed due to security and privacy concerns, or the desire of companies involved to avoid embarrassment, Tenable’s analysis shows more than 260 terabytes of data was stolen comprising 1.8 billion files, documents or emails.

About 38% of all breaches that Tenable analyzed were the result of ransomware attacks, such as the one against Colonial that led to the shutdown of the company’s entire pipeline network and stifled the flow of petroleum products to the U.S. East Coast. (See Colonial CEO Welcomes Federal Cyber Assistance.) Meat supplier JBS suffered a similar ransomware attack; like Colonial, its leadership decided to pay the attackers to unlock their computer systems and prevent the release of sensitive data. The two companies’ ransoms amounted to the equivalent of around $16 million.

While the Colonial and JBS breaches garnered national attention and concern at the highest levels of government, the energy, infrastructure and utilities sectors accounted for only a small fraction of ransomware attacks and total breaches. As in 2020, Tenable found that attacks fell most heavily on the healthcare sector, which accounted for nearly a quarter of the year’s total events, followed by education, with 13%.

However, the firm warned that utilities and other critical infrastructure operators should not rest easy, since last year’s incidents “proved that information technology (IT) and OT [operational technology] environments are in attackers’ crosshairs,” along with critical infrastructure. And since many of the same software tools are used across multiple industries, successfully breaking into one common platform can render all its users vulnerable.

This is what happened with the SolarWinds hack, in which the breach of the Orion software — now attributed to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service — may have exposed the information of thousands of customers, including the Department of Energy and FERC. (See FERC, E-ISAC Report Details Reach of SolarWinds Compromise.) The same hackers have since been blamed for additional attacks, including breaches of Microsoft and computer services provider Pulse Connect Secure.

Zero-days Across Common Software

A common point of entry for hackers are zero-day vulnerabilities, defined by Tenable as software or hardware flaws that are “unknown to a vendor prior to [their] public disclosure, or [have] been publicly disclosed prior to a patch being made available.” The firm identified 105 zero-day vulnerabilities in 2021, of which 83% are known to have been exploited in the wild. The report said that details of these weaknesses “are often kept under wraps” to prevent them from being exploited.

Two-thirds of the discovered vulnerabilities originated with just three companies: 28% in Microsoft products, 21% from Apple, and 18% from Google. Thirty percent of the vulnerabilities were detected in web browsers and 26% were in operating system software, with the rest found in web apps, email clients, office suites and other software products.

2021 zero-day vulnerabilities by vendor (Tenable) Content.jpg2021 zero-day vulnerabilities by vendor | Tenable

 

Tenable warned that while these vulnerabilities are “primarily leveraged in limited, targeted attacks” and therefore usually have limited impact at first, cybersecurity professionals cannot afford to disregard their dangers.

“The true value of a zero-day vulnerability is often not defined by its exploitation prior to discovery, but by the blog posts and proof-of-concept code published in the weeks and months after disclosure,” Tenable said. “Zero-day vulnerabilities typically become more problematic for most organizations after they’ve made the transition to legacy status, particularly if an organization has not yet applied available patches before widespread exploitation begins.”