There is so much more to the “climate crisis” than public opinion, but here it is ...

From the Article of BeyondKona, Hawaii, June 25, 2022

At the end of the first full Supreme Court term with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. in place, liberal Justice Stephen G. Breyer said he was amazed — and not in a particularly good way — what President George W. Bush’s nominees to the bench had accomplished in such little time.

“It is not often that so few have so quickly changed so much,” Breyer said in June 2007.

But that was nothing compared to this week as three Trump-appointed justices, joined their other Republican-majority court justices in firing off two significant decisions in rapid succession. First, a Second Amendment gun rights ruling which flies in the face of rising public concerns over escalating national gun violence now targeting the most innocent of society; children. The Court majority’s second decision was another political win and a shock to many women, a second coming to others in the form of the most significant social ruling in modern times; overturning protections granted women by Roe v. Wade for the nearly 50 years which guaranteed a woman’s fundamental right to health care and abortion.

As significant as these two recent court decisions represent, what’s ahead for this GOP-controlled court will soon affect every American regardless of their sex, race, income, or political party — an environmental climate case now being decided by the Supreme Court. As in the case of the legal dismemberment of Roe v. Wade, this case is the product of a coordinated multiyear strategy led by Republican Attorneys General.

Within days, the Republican majority on the Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision that could severely limit the federal government’s authority to reduce carbon dioxide from power plants — pollution found to dangerously heat the planet’s climate.

Fossil Fuel Polluters Retaliate

On the front lines of this emerging battle is the case of West Virginia v. EPA, is the result of a coordinated, multi-decade strategy led by Republican Attorneys General, conservative legal activists, and their funders with ties to the oil and coal industries.

The polluter attack strategy is fairly straight forward; use the judicial system to rewrite environmental laws, weakening the executive branch’s ability to tackle global warming.

Coming up through the federal courts are more and more climate cases and headed to Supreme Court, some featuring novel legal arguments, each carefully selected for its potential to block the government’s ability to regulate industries and businesses that produce greenhouse gases. These legal strategies are becoming more and more sophisticated with time and money.

The plaintiffs seek to hem in what they call the “administrative state”, the E.P.A. and other federal agencies who set rules and enforce regulations that affect industrial sectors responsible for the majority of environmental crimes and offenses in which newer regulations are designed to rein in, e.g., global warming emissions, toxic air and water pollution violations, etc.

Congress has barely addressed the issue of climate change. Instead, for decades it has delegated authority to the EPA and other agencies because it lacks the political will, and equally important, the expertise possessed by the specialists who write complicated rules and regulations and who can respond quickly to changing science – a long standing practice now embedded in today’s Capitol Hill gridlock.

Follow the Money, Big Time

The Federalist Society is one of many money sources engaged in attacks on Federal environmental and climate protections. The Society is funded by the likes of Koch Industries, which has long fought and funded climate action roadblocks; the Sarah Scaife Foundation, created by the heirs to the Mellon oil, aluminum and banking fortune; and Chevron, the oil giant and plaintiff in the case that created the so-called “Chevron defense”. After a 1984 Supreme Court ruling, that doctrine holds that courts must defer to reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes by federal agencies on the theory that agencies have more expertise than judges and are more accountable to voters. “Judges are not experts in the field and are not part of either political branch of the government,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his opinion for a unanimous court ruling.

The forthcoming case; West Virginia v. E.P.A., No. 20–1530 on the court docket, is notable for the tangle of connections between the plaintiffs and the Supreme Court justices who will decide their case.

The Republican plaintiffs share many of the same donors behind efforts to nominate and confirm five of the Republicans on the bench — John G. Roberts, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

“It’s a pincer move,” said Lisa Graves, executive director of the progressive watchdog group True North Research and a former senior Justice Department official. “They are teeing up the attorneys to bring the litigation before the same judges that they handpicked.”

The pattern is repeated in other climate cases filed by the Republican AG’s now advancing through the lower courts: The plaintiffs are supported by the same network of conservative donors who helped former President Donald J. Trump place more than 200 federal judges, many now in position to rule on the climate cases in the coming year.

At least two of the cases feature an unusual approach that demonstrates the aggressive nature of the legal campaign. In those suits, the plaintiffs are challenging regulations or policies that don’t yet exist. They seek to pre-empt efforts by President Biden to deliver on his promise to pivot the country away from fossil fuels, while at the same time aiming to prevent a future president from trying anything similar.

The Stakes for Climate Cases ~ Limitations on action in the United States against global warming could doom global efforts to avert the worst climate disruptions.

Victory for the plaintiffs in these cases would mean:

>>> the federal government could not restrict tailpipe emissions because of vehicles’ impact on climate, even though transportation is the country’s largest source of greenhouse gases.
>>> the government also would not be able to force electric utilities to replace fossil fuel-fired power plants (the second-largest source of planet warming pollution), with wind and solar power, and
>>> executive branch could no longer consider the economic costs of climate change when evaluating whether to approve a new oil pipeline or similar project or environmental rule.

Those limitations on climate action in the United States, which has pumped more planet-warming gases into the atmosphere than any other nation, would quite likely doom the world’s goal of cutting enough emissions to keep the planet from heating up more than an average of 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with the preindustrial age.

A temperature rise greater than 1.5 degrees Celsius is the threshold beyond which scientists say the likelihood of catastrophic hurricanes, drought, heat waves and wildfires significantly increases. The Earth has already warmed an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius.

“If the Supreme Court uses this as an opportunity to really squash E.P.A.’s ability to regulate on Climate Change, it will seriously impede U.S. progress toward solving the problem,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University.

But many conservatives say the decision violates the separation of powers by allowing executive branch officials rather than judges to say what the law is. Associate Justice Gorsuch wrote that Chevron allowed “executive bureaucracies to swallow huge amounts of core judicial and legislative power.” In other words, elected judges and politicians are more qualified than scientists and agency experts to determine public harm when it comes to climate change and other environmental impacts.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)

From the Report of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Executive Summary~ This report, the 2021 U.S. Geothermal Power Production and District Heating Market Report, was developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Geothermal Rising (previously the Geothermal Resources Council, or GRC), with funding support from the Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO) of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

The report presents analysis of the current state of the U.S. geothermal market and industry for both the power production and district heating sectors, with consideration of developing power projects.

Geothermal heat pumps, although a key technology in the wider use of geothermal resources, are outside the scope of this report.

U.S. Geothermal Power Generation — Key Findings

>> Current U.S. geothermal power generation nameplate capacity is 3,673 MW from 93 power plants. Of this capacity, 1,300 MW are located on public lands.

>> California and Nevada contribute more than 90% of the current U.S. geothermal power generation, with additional contributions from plants in Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, New Mexico, Oregon, and Utah.

>> From the end of 2015 through the end of 2019, the United States brought seven new geothermal power plants online in Nevada, California, and New Mexico, adding 186 MW of nameplate capacity. In the same time period, 11 plants were retired or classified as non- operational, subtracting 103 MW of nameplate capacity. The remaining difference in capacity from 2015 to 2019 can be attributed to the reduction of nameplate capacity at individual plants.

>> After the data for this report were collected, Ormat brought the Steamboat Hills expansion in Nevada online, increasing its generating capacity by 19 MW. In addition, in late 2020, the Puna geothermal plant was brought back online, which should increase geothermal net-generation numbers in 2021.

>> Geothermal companies operating in the United States have a combined 58 active developing projects and prospects across nine states, with a majority located in Nevada.

>> Of these projects, five are in Phase IV, the phase immediately preceding project completion. Three are located in Nevada, and two are in California.

>> From November 2019 through September 2020, nine new geothermal Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) have been signed across four states. Included in these agreements are plans for the first two geothermal power plants to be built in California in a decade—Hell’s Kitchen and Casa Diablo IV.

>> Geothermal power provides several non-cost advantages, including supplying continuous baseload power, ancillary grid services, resilience, environmental benefits, and a small land footprint compared to other renewable energy technologies.

>> Twenty-eight states have renewable portfolio standards (RPS) that count geothermal power as an eligible resource, seven of which include direct use. RPSs support geothermal development by requiring a certain amount of electricity sold by utilities to come from renewable energy sources.

U.S. Geothermal District Heating — Key Findings

• Currently, there are 23 geothermal district heating (GDH) systems in the United States, with a capacity totaling more than 75 MW of thermal energy (MWth). The systems range in size from 0.1 MWth to over 20 MWth.

• Of these 23 commercial projects, 10 received DOE loan and grant support. Federal, state, and local funding support have proven critical to develop a majority of the existing GDH projects in the United States.

• The oldest GDH installation dates from 1892 in Boise, Idaho, and the most recent installation was completed in 2017 in Alturas, California. The remaining systems are located in California, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, and South Dakota.

• The majority of the GDH systems in the United States are more than 30 years old.

• The average U.S. levelized cost of heat (LCOH) value for GDH systems is $54/MWh, slightly lower than the average European LCOH value of $69/MWh. However, this LCOH is slightly higher than the 2019 average U.S. residential natural gas LCOH. Estimated LCOH for existing U.S. systems ranges from $15 to $105/MWh, a range that is consistent with the range of LCOH for existing European GDH systems.

• U.S. GDH systems tend to be smaller in size (average of 4 MWth) than European GDH systems (continent-wide average of ~17 MWth), and orders of magnitude smaller than the average GDH system in China (~1,000 MWth).

• U.S. GDH systems run at 23% capacity, on average. This low utilization factor is due to frequent operation at less than full capacity and the seasonality of heating needs (i.e., the system is not needed for satisfying heating demands year-round).

• As of 2020, few policy mechanisms intended to support GDH development are in place in the United States.

Conclusions ~ This report is intended to provide policymakers, regulators, developers, researchers, engineers, financiers, and other stakeholders with up-to-date information and data reflecting the 2019 geothermal power production and district heating markets, technologies, and trends in the United States. Geothermal Rising collected U.S. geothermal power production data via a questionnaire sent to all known U.S. geothermal operators and developers. This questionnaire requested information about both existing power production capacity and developing projects, which was then added to an existing GEA database and shared with NREL. For GDH systems, an NREL geothermal direct-use database
was updated with information obtained from news articles, publications, and interviews conducted in 2020 with project owners, operators, and other stakeholders.

#######+++++++#######+++++++########

Geothermal Energy Development in West Virginia ~ Here is a link to the House Bill 4098 that passed in WV on March 12, 2022, the last day of the Legislative Session for this year. It remains for the approval of the Governor, which is expected.

https://www.wvlegislature.gov/Bill_Text_HTML/2022_SESSIONS/RS/bills/HB4098%20SUB.pdf

Think about this, investments need to look to the future, take the long view!

From an Article by Bill McKibben, New Yorker Magazine, April 3, 2021

A report by BlackRock, the world’s largest investment house, shows that those who have divested from fossil-fuels have profited not only morally but also financially.

In a few months, a small British financial think tank will mark the tenth anniversary of the publication of a landmark research report that helped launch the global fossil-fuel-divestment movement. As that celebration takes place, another seminal report — this one obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the world’s largest investment house — closes the loop on one of the key arguments of that decade-long fight. It definitively shows that the firms that joined that divestment effort have profited not only morally but also financially.

The original report, from the London-based Carbon Tracker Initiative, found something stark: the world’s fossil-fuel companies had five times more carbon in their reserves than scientists thought we could burn and stay within any sane temperature target. The numbers meant that, if those companies carried out their business plans, the planet would overheat. At the time, I discussed the report with Naomi Klein, who, like me, had been a college student when divestment campaigns helped undercut corporate support for apartheid, and to us this seemed a similar fight; indeed, efforts were already under way at a few scattered places like Swarthmore College, in Pennsylvania.

In July, 2012, I published an article in Rolling Stone calling for a broader, large-scale campaign, and, over the next few years, helped organize roadshows here and abroad. Today, portfolios and endowments have committed to divest nearly fifteen trillion dollars; the most recent converts, the University of Michigan and Amherst College, made the pledge in the last week.

No one really pushed back against the core idea behind the campaign— the numbers were clear — but two reasonable questions were asked. One was, would divestment achieve tangible results? The idea was that, at the least, it would tarnish the fossil-fuel industry, and would, eventually, help constrain its ability to raise investment money. That’s been borne out over time: as the stock picker Jim Cramer put it on CNBC a year ago, “I’m done with fossil fuels. . . . They’re just done.” He continued, “You’re seeing divestiture by a lot of different funds. It’s going to be a parade. It’s going to be a parade that says, ‘Look, these are tobacco, and we’re not going to own them.’ ”

The second question was: Would investors lose money? Early proponents such as the investor Tom Steyer argued that, because fossil fuel threatened the planet, it would come under increased regulatory pressure, even as a new generation of engineers would be devising ways to provide cleaner and cheaper energy using wind and sun and batteries.

The fossil-fuel industry fought back — the Independent Petroleum Association of America, for instance, set up a Web site crowded with research papers from a few academics arguing that divestment would be a costly financial mistake. One report claimed that “the loss from divestment is due to the simple fact that a divested portfolio is suboptimally diversified, as it excludes one of the most important sectors of the economy.”

As the decade wore on, and more investors took the divestment plunge, that argument faltered: the philanthropic Rockefeller Brothers Fund said that divestment had not adversely affected their returns, and the investment-fund guru Jeremy Grantham published data showing that excluding any single sector of the economy had no real effect on long-term financial returns. But the Rockefeller Brothers and Grantham were active participants in the fight against global warming, so perhaps, the fossil-fuel industry suggested, motivated reasoning was influencing their conclusions.

The latest findings are making that charge difficult to sustain. For one thing, they come from the research arm of BlackRock, a company that has been under fire from activists for its longtime refusal to do much about climate. (The company’s stance has slowly begun to shift. Last January, Larry Fink, its C.E.O., released a letter to clients saying that climate risk would lead them to “reassess core assumptions about modern finance.”) BlackRock carried out the research over the past year for two major clients, the New York City teachers’ and public employees’ retirement funds, which were considering divestment and wanted to know the financial risk involved.

Bernard Tuchman, a retiree in New York City and a member of Divest NY, a nonprofit advocacy group, used public-records requests to obtain BlackRock’s findings from the city late last month. Tuchman then shared them with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a nonprofit that studies the energy transition.

In places, BlackRock’s findings are redacted, so as not to show the size of particular holdings, but the conclusions are clear: after examining “divestment actions by hundreds of funds worldwide,” the BlackRock analysts concluded that the portfolios “experienced no negative financial impacts from divesting from fossil fuels. In fact, they found evidence of modest improvement in fund return.” The report’s executive summary states that “no investors found negative performance from divestment; rather, neutral to positive results.” In the conclusion to the report, the BlackRock team used a phrase beloved by investors: divested portfolios “outperformed their benchmarks.”

In a statement, the investment firm downplayed that language, saying, “BlackRock did not make a recommendation for TRS to divest from fossil fuel reserves. The research was meant to help TRS determine a path forward to meet their stated divestment goals.” But Tom Sanzillo — I.E.E.F.A.’s director of financial analysis, and a former New York State first deputy comptroller who oversaw a hundred-and-fifty-billion-dollar pension fund — said in an interview that BlackRock’s findings were clear. “Any investment fund looking to protect itself against losses from coal, oil, and gas companies now has the largest investment house in the world showing them why, how, and when to protect themselves, the economy, and the planet.” In short, the financial debate about divestment is as settled as the ethical one —you shouldn’t try to profit off the end of the world and, in any event, you won’t.

These findings will gradually filter out into the world’s markets, doubtless pushing more investors to divest. But its impact will be more immediate if its author — BlackRock — takes its own findings seriously and acts on them. BlackRock handles more money than any firm in the world, mostly in the form of passive investments — it basically buys some of everything on the index. But, given the climate emergency, it would be awfully useful if, over a few years, BlackRock eliminated the big fossil-fuel companies from those indexes, something they could certainly do. And, given its own research findings, doing so would make more money for their clients — the pensioners whose money they invest.

BlackRock could accomplish even more than that. It is the biggest asset manager on earth, with about eight trillion dollars in its digital vaults. It also leases its Aladdin software system to other big financial organizations; last year, the Financial Times called Aladdin the “technology hub of modern finance.” BlackRock stopped revealing how much money sat on its system in 2017, when the figure topped twenty trillion dollars. Now, with stock prices soaring, the Financial Times reported that public documents from just a third of Aladdin’s clients show assets topping twenty-one trillion.

Casey Harrell, who works with Australia’s Sunrise Project, an N.G.O. that urges asset managers to divest, believes that the BlackRock system likely directs at least twenty-five trillion in assets. “BlackRock’s own research explains the financial rationale for divestment,” Harrell told me. “BlackRock should be bold and proactively offer this as a core piece of its financial advice.”

What would happen if the world’s largest investment firm issued that advice and its clients followed it? Fifteen trillion dollars plus twenty-five trillion is a lot of money. It’s roughly twice the size of the current U.S. economy. It’s almost half the size of the total world economy. It would show that a report issued by a small London think tank a decade ago had turned the financial world’s view of climate upside down.

Chemical cracker plants result in unneeded plastics and excess air pollution

From an Article by Mary Anne Hitt, Sierra Magazine, January – February, 2021

Third, we stopped attempts to expand drilling while we reclaimed abandoned wells, mines, and drilling sites. The oil and gas industry was in a precarious place as 2020 came to a close. It was struggling to compete with renewable energy, facing the wrath of communities angry about drilling and pipelines, and grappling with dwindling returns from fracking, which made the industry’s finances look more like a pyramid scheme.

Through on-the-ground organizing, we prevented the fossil fuel industry’s last-gasp attempt to establish new markets for its products. We blocked the construction of more than a dozen proposed fracked-gas export terminals and halted the creation of a new “Cancer Alley” of chemical and plastics plants in the Ohio River valley.

We forced the industry to stop drilling next to homes, schools, and communities. And we secured protection from drilling on Indigenous lands, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Bears Ears National Monument.

Meanwhile, we created jobs for thousands of oil, gas, and coal workers. We put 120,000 people to work plugging over 2 million abandoned oil and gas wells and addressing methane leaks that were roasting our planet.

Congress also passed the RECLAIM (Revitalizing the Economy of Coal Communities by Leveraging Local Activities and Investing More) Act to fund reclamation projects and community-led economic development in Appalachia.

## Part D is scheduled for tomorrow on FrackCheckWV.net.

This Article appeared in the January/February edition of SIERRA with the headline “A Love Letter From the Clean Energy Future.”

>>>>>. >>>>>. >>>>>. >>>>>. >>>>>.

See also: Bipartisan RECLAIM Act passes House as part of infrastructure bill | Steve Valk, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, July 8, 2020

The bill was reintroduced in the 116th Congress in April of 2019 by Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA) and accumulated 65 cosponsors, including 14 Republicans. A Senate version of the bill was introduced by Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-WV) and had 6 Democrat cosponsors, but has died in Committee.

From Dominion Energy Virginia’s 2018 Integrated Resource Plan

From an Essay by Ivy Main, Power for the People VA, May 22, 2019

Recently I criticized a Dominion Energy advertisement that boasted, misleadingly and inaccurately, about the company’s investments in solar energy.

By contrast, the company’s investments in greenwashing are transparent and heartfelt. Dominion has suffered through several bad months here in Virginia and would very much like to change the conversation.

Indeed, the company’s problems keep mounting. In the course of just two days this month, SCC commissioners lit into the company for telling Wall Street one thing and regulators another; the corporate customers behind Virginia’s data center boom filed a letter saying they want no part of Dominion’s fracked-gas build-out; and a coalition of libertarian, environmental and social justice groups called for a breakup of Dominion’s monopoly.

Fortunately, Dominion’s PR offensive was only just ramping up. A full-page newspaper ad, predictably light on detail, promises the company will cut its climate-heating methane emissions in half. That would be a nice trick from the company whose Atlantic Coast Pipeline will be responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all Virginia’s power plants put together.

In case you doubt the company’s sincerity, Dominion just joined a corporate coalition calling for a price on carbon. This must have been in the works about the same time Dominion was criticizing Virginia’s proposed entry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which actually puts a price on carbon.

Hey, The Washington Post fell for it. Greenwashing works.

And that brings us to the (literally) incredible claim that recently appeared in Dominion Energy’s Twitter feed: “The future of our planet depends on clean energy, which is why more than 85% of our generation comes from clean energy sources such as solar.”

Let us pause for a moment to reflect that this tweet comes from a company whose solar generation amounts to a rounding error.

Dominion Energy Virginia’s most recent Integrated Resource Plan includes a handy pie chart revealing what is actually in its energy mix:

Nuclear: 33% — Natural gas: 32% — Coal: 18% —
Purchased (wholesale) power: 10% (that’s coal and gas)
Non-Utility Generation (purchased under contract): 5% (more coal)
Renewable: 2% (almost all hydro and biomass, plus a smidgen of solar) and Oil: 0%

Now, it is true that Dominion Energy the holding company owns more generation than Dominion Energy Virginia the electric utility. For one thing, it just bought another utility in South Carolina. According to the information Dominion provided to investors in March, its South Carolina generation looks like this:

Natural gas: 39% — Coal: 36% — Nuclear: 21% — Hydro: 3%

Nobody looking at these figures could find a basis in reality for a claim of 85% clean energy. It is so preposterous that I just have to ask: Why only 85%?

I mean, seriously, if you have traveled this far into the realm of fantasy, why not claim 100%? Or heck, with a nod to Spinal Tap, why not 110%? Clearly the people making this stuff up are rank amateurs.

All of which is to say: come on, Dominion, you can do better.

Proposed Longview Power electric energy complex on Mason Dixon Line

From an Article Ben Conley, Morgantown Dominion Post, February 23, 2019

MORGANTOWN — Already operating one of the world’s most advanced and efficient coal-fired power plants, Longview Power is ready to invest an estimated $1.2 billion to build natural gas and solar power generation facilities.

Longview Power President and CEO Jeffery Keffer said the company plans to bring the new facilities online in 2020, making Longview an “all of the above” energy center.

The bulk of the investment, about $900 million, will go toward the creation of a natural gas combined cycle plant to be located near Longview’s Fort Martin Road coal facility.

While the gas plant will be significantly smaller, it will generate 1,200 megawatts, far outpacing the 710 megawatts generated by its coal-fired predecessor.

“This will be smaller, but more efficient in a lot of ways because of the type of equipment that’s used,” Keffer said of the gas-powered turbines at the heart of the plant. “We’ll be using the latest types of these so that we’ll have high efficiency. Again, the same idea that went into Longview — the latest equipment, most advanced technology and a fuel that’s abundant and easily available.”

The natural gas facility will be fed using a 6.2-mile, 20-inch gas pipeline that will run into Pennsylvania to connect with Trans Canada’s Columbia 1804 interstate transmission line.

Keffer said all necessary rights of way have been secured, and environmental studies and permitting procedures with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission are well under way. Longview is working with Thrasher Engineering on the $30 million pipeline, the majority of which will run underground.

Once the natural gas plant is completed, the staging areas used in its construction will be part of a series of solar arrays covering 350 acres near the plant and in Pennsylvania. When the sun is shining, the solar arrays will generate about 50 megawatts, offsetting a significant portion of the power used to operate the coal plant.

“The solar takes about 350 acres and produces 50 megawatts, and that’s if the sun is shining. The gas plant takes 26 acres and produces 1,200 megawatts. That gives you a sense, you know, when people say we’re going to all renewables, I’m not sure where that’s all going to take place,” Keffer said, noting the solar arrays have an estimated cost of $70 million.

He went on to say that the two-plus-year buildout will likely generate about 6,000 construction jobs. The natural gas plant will likely generate between 30 and 40 permanent jobs.

“Using the infrastructure we already have here reduces our upfront cost. Where we can also economize is just in the number of jobs,” Keffer said. “Typically a plant like this would create maybe 50 jobs, permanently. We would be able to utilize our resources already here in terms of maintenance people, our accounting people and that sort of thing.”

As incentive to build the $2.2 billion coal plant locally, Longview entered into a payment in lieu of taxes agreement with the Monongalia County Commission in 2008.

Commission President Tom Bloom said a separate agreement will be worked out regarding the upcoming improvements.

“We’re excited about the investment locally,” Bloom said. “Yes, we will need to set up another agreement. What that is, we don’t know at this time. It’s too premature to say exactly what that would look like.”

VA, KY, and PA Gaining Solar Power Projects, Big Time!

From the Front Porch Blog, Appalachian Voices, March 21, 2019

Ten community revitalization projects that will reclaim old coal mining sites in Southwest Virginia will receive $10 million in grant money. Projects range from community revitalization initiatives like multi-use trains and water infrastructure improvements to commercial-scale solar. The grants are apportioned through congressional funding for the Abandoned Mine Lands Pilot Program and will be administered by the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy.

Russell County and the Dante Community Association will receive $269,000 for a project that includes development of multi-use trails to connect downtown Dante to other nearby communities and recreation areas, and the sealing of two open mine portals. In Wise County, the Mineral Gap Data Center and Sun Tribe Solar, a Virginia-based solar company, will receive $500,000 for a 3.46-megawatt solar installation to power the data center and for work to remediate old coal mine features near the site.

“We are elated to have been selected for this grant. Every dollar that we receive builds hope, which is necessary to keep a volunteer-driven community motivated and advancing,” said Carla Glass, Chair of the Dante Community Association. The development of the multi-use trails in Dante are intended to support the community’s vision of attracting sports enthusiasts and other tourists to the area and motivate local entrepreneurs to locate new, profitable ventures in Dante.

Developers for the Wise County solar project — the first of its kind in Virginia — estimate that the annual land lease as well as annual site operations and maintenance activities will infuse more than $1 million into the Wise County Industrial Development Authority and support local contractors over the solar project’s 35-year life span.

“We know that solar can succeed when projects are built in partnership with local stakeholders in both the public and private sectors, and this funding from Virginia’s Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy shows the strength of the partners we’ve found in the teams at the Wise County IDA and Mineral Gap Data Center,” said Taylor Brown, Chief Technical Officer of Sun Tribe Solar.

Marc Silverstein, spokesperson for Mineral Gap, said the company envisions this as “just the beginning” of solar energy development in Southwest Virginia. “Leveraging renewable solar power to create new jobs and long-term economic opportunity for the people and businesses of this region is the perfect way to build on Southwestern Virginia’s legacy of energy production, and to honor the men and women who are working to strengthen Appalachian communities by focusing on a sustainable, eco-friendly, prosperous future.”

Silverstein states that Mineral Gap hopes to be a good community steward by developing projects in the county that will create jobs and financial opportunities while helping the environment, “all in efforts to revitalize areas that have been negatively impacted by the economic realities of the coal industry.”

“We see this project as a single stepping stone toward transforming the state of Virginia into a green-energy-based economy,” says Silverstein. “Our hope is that this pilot project will be replicated across Southwest Virginia and grow into a huge economic benefit for the region and for the entire Commonwealth.”

==========================

Virginia approves largest solar power plant east of the Rockies

From an Article by John Weaver, PV Magazine, August 10, 2018

Virginia regulators have approved construction of the four part solar power plant, whose output is partially being sold to Microsoft. The 500 MW-AC facility is being developed by sPower.

As of last night the Pleinmont Solar facility, a 500 MW-AC plant under development by sPower in Spotsylvania County, has received approval from the Virginia State Corporation Commission to move forward. The case documentation (20 page PDF) touches on the broader challenges surrounding the project: Mostly an investigation into potential environmental effects on water and solar module toxicity – issues that the solar industry addressed long ago – but also interconnection and long-term financial health.

The projects will sit on 6,000 acres of land owned by sPower, of which 3,500 will be used for construction. Much of the site is cleared forest and timber land. The site is traversed by several logging roads and two transmission lines, including an east-west 115 kilovolt (“kV”) line and a north-south 500 kV line, which bisect the site. The electricity will be sold into the PJM Interconnection market, with Microsoft holding a contract for 315 MW.

sPower plans to deploy a combination of First Solar and Jinko Solar modules, which will be mounted on the DuraTrack HZ v3 single axis tracking racking system developed by Array Technologies.

As part of a documentation package submitted by sPower was a “worst case pile-driving noise scenario”. The company did a noise per distance analysis, with a great color coding tool.

Also included in this package was a project decommissioning analysis. The company suggested the project has a 35-year lifetime, and a $31 million decommissioning cost.

The 500 MW power plant will be owned by four unique special purpose vehicles (SPEs), Pleinmont Solar 1 – 75 MW, Pleinmont Solar II – 240 MW, Highlander Solar Energy Station 1 – 165 MW, and Richmond Spider Solar – 20 MW. Each of these SPEs are a wholly owned subsidiary of sPower Development Company, who itself is a wholly owned subsidiary of FTP Power.

sPower’s white paper also delved deeply into how toxicity is dealt with at a solar power plant. Specifically, the state asked questions about the materials inside of the First Solar portion of the installation. sPower noted that the molecular structure of cadmium (CdTe) used onsite isn’t water soluble, and that even if the modules were ground up into fine dust (not what happens when a module cracks), worst-case scenarios are 3,000-7,000 times lower than Cd concentrations in commonly used fertilizers.

First Solar also has a dedicated recycling program for its modules, which ensures that such modules are highly unlikely to end up in the waste stream at the end of life. When a First Solar plant was hit by a tornado a few years back, the broken modules were collected and materials recycled – and the CdTe is now back in the field inside of new solar modules.

As the four plants are on one piece of land, this will be the largest solar project East of the Rocky Mountains when built at 500 MW, and one of the largest in the world.

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Toyota Plans Major Solar Array In The Ohio Valley (Kentucky)

From an Article by Sydney Boles, Ohio Valley ReSource, March 13, 2019

Automaker Toyota is planning to announce a major investment in solar and other renewable energy in Appalachia and the Southeastern U.S. The plan includes a massive new solar facility on an old surface coal mine property in Kentucky.

Sources close to the deal tell the Ohio Valley Resource that the Kentucky site is part of a much larger plan. Toyota plans to purchase roughly 365 megawatts, of renewable energy, primarily from developers in Appalachia and the South.

“A project of this magnitude is certainly significant,” said Alex Hobson, director of communications for the Solar Energy Industries Association, a leading industry research group. “You’re talking enough energy to power about 50,000 homes.”

Toyota has already undertaken ambitious energy efficiency goals, with a similarly sized solar array installed on its headquarters in Plano, Texas. But once completed, Toyota’s solar mega-project would place the automaker among the largest corporate investors in renewable energy.

The portion of the project scheduled to be built in Pike County, Kentucky, is a 15- to 20-year power purchase agreement. Partners in the development include: coal company RH Group; French renewable energy company EDF Renewables; and Adam Edelen, former state auditor and current candidate for governor in Kentucky’s democratic party primary.

At 100 megawatts, the site would be largest solar array in Kentucky and, according to one of the project’s developers, would likely be visible from space. The project is expected to cost $130 million, will be built on a 700-acre reclaimed surface mine site and could create between 50 and 100 renewable-energy jobs in a region still reeling from the loss of coal employment.

Toyota declined to confirm the scope of the project. A spokesperson issued a written statement hinting at an upcoming announcement. “We have been working with certain electric power providers on a very innovative initiative.”

Developers say the massive project is a smart business decision that happens to make a larger point: It’s proving that Kentucky’s economic future is in energy production, but perhaps that energy won’t be limited to coal and other fossil fuels.

“It doesn’t matter whether you care about the environment or not, this is pure economics,” said Ryan Johns, vice president of business development at RH Group. In a nod to Toyota’s slogan, Johns added, “If we don’t diversify our thinking, we’re never going to be able to keep moving forward.”

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Philadelphia plans a massive solar plant in Adams County

From an Article by Susan Phillips, StateImpact Pennsylvania, November 1, 2018

Philadelphia’s plan to cut its carbon emissions now includes a proposal to purchase energy from a massive solar farm in south central Pennsylvania. The proposal is part of the city’s plan to use renewable energy for all city operations by 2030.

If approved, the solar farm in Adams County, near Gettysburg, would be the largest in Pennsylvania. Christine Knapp, director of Philadelphia’s Office of Sustainability, says the 70-megawatt facility would help the city reach its renewable energy goal. “We would like to do something like this inside the city as well, we just don’t have as much abundant and cheap land as there is in Adam’s County,” said Knapp.

Knapp says the city will buy all the energy from the facility under a 20-year-deal fixed at current rates. She says hopefully that will mean savings in the future when conventional energy costs are expected to rise. “The cost is about the same as what we currently buy, so that’s what’s making the economics work for us,” she said.

Philadelphia City Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown introduced a bill on Thursday that would allow the city to enter into a power purchase agreement with the Philadelphia Energy Authority, which will work with Adams Solar LLC, an entity of national solar developer Community Energy.

“Moving forward in a tangible matter with this goal symbolizes how we grow towards a greener and more sustainable Philadelphia,” Reynolds Brown said in a statement. City officials say job fairs for workers on the project would be held in both Philadelphia and Adams counties.

Last month, Philadelphia became one of 20 cities awarded about $2 million as part of the Bloomberg American Cities Climate Challenge, which includes the development of renewable energy.

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See also: The Modern Jobs Act Will Promote Solar Power in West Virginia

Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) in WV, VA & NC

Commentary by Ivy Main, Virginia Mercury, March 20, 2019

In December of last year, regulators at the State Corporation Commission took the unprecedented step of rejecting Dominion Energy Virginia’s Integrated Resource Plan. Among other reasons, the SCC said the utility had inflated projections of how much electricity its customers would use in the future.

On March 8, Dominion came back with a revised plan. And sure enough, when it plugged in the more realistic demand projections used by independent grid operator PJM and accounted for some energy efficiency savings, the number of planned new gas plants dropped in half. Instead of eight to 13 new gas combustion turbines, the revised plan listed only four to seven of these small “peaker” units.

Yet there is a good chance Dominion is still inflating its demand numbers. Although the re-filed plan is short and vague, it appears Dominion isn’t figuring in the full amount of the energy efficiency programs it must develop under legislation passed last year.

SB 966 required Dominion to propose $870 million in energy efficiency and demand-response programs designed to reduce energy use and the need for new generation. But Dominion has proposed just $118 million in its separate demand-side management filing.

Moreover, the company has concocted a theory whereby it can satisfy that $870 million requirement by spending just 40 or 50 percent of it and pocketing the rest. Dominion argues that since the Virginia code allows a utility to recover lost revenue resulting from energy efficiency savings, it can simply reduce the required spending by the amount of lost revenue it anticipates.

It’s a great theory, suffering only from being wrong. But it does suggest that Dominion’s demand figures in the IRP are based on plans to spend just a fraction of the energy efficiency money required by SB 966.

If the SCC decides Dominion can’t withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in efficiency spending, that additional spending will have to be factored into demand projections. Thus the IRP’s demand projection can only go down — and with it, the number of gas plants that might be “needed.”

And yet even the resulting number is likely too high. Several of Dominion’s large corporate customers have been trying to leave its fond embrace to seek better renewable energy offerings elsewhere. (The SCC recently rejected Walmart’s effort to defect.) If they or others were allowed to leave, how much would that further reduce the need for new generation?

For that matter, those customers and many others, including many of the tech companies responsible for what demand growth there is, say they want renewable energy, not fossil fuels. Dominion claims the renewable generation will have to be backed by gas peaker plants, but energy storage would serve the same purpose and further reduce the need for gas. The SCC will rule on that question when — and if — Dominion ever requests permission to build one of those peakers. It is possible the utility will never build another gas plant.

That’s bad news for Dominion Energy’s other line of business, gas transmission and storage. With demand for new gas generation here evidently falling off a cliff, Dominion’s ability to rely on its customer base as an anchor client for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline becomes increasingly doubtful.

Dominion may actually have conceded as much in its re-filed IRP. In response to the commission’s order that Dominion include pipeline costs in its modeling of the costs of gas generation, Dominion merely stated, without discussion, that it is using the tariff of the pipeline owned by the ACP’s competitor Transco, which supplies gas to Dominion’s existing plants.

This statement continues a pattern of Dominion attempting to avoid any mention of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline in commission proceedings, lest it invite hard questions. But Dominion can’t have it both ways. If it will use Transco, it doesn’t need the ACP. If it plans to use the much more expensive ACP and just isn’t saying so, it has lowballed the cost of gas generation and is misleading the SCC.

(NOTE: Dominion claims the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will provide supply diversity that will benefit customers, but critics argue that there’s no way the new pipeline gas will be cheaper than existing sources after factoring in construction costs and profit.)

This is unfair to customers, and it may backfire on Dominion. The ACP received its federal permit on the strength of contracts with affiliate utilities, but Dominion hasn’t yet asked the SCC to approve the deal. Leaving the ACP out of the discussion in the IRP year after year makes it harder to win approval. When and if the company finally asks the SCC for permission to (over)charge ratepayers for its contract with the ACP, it will not have built any kind of a case for a public need or benefit.

This is not just a risk that Dominion Energy chose to take, it is a risk of the company’s own creation. It defied the Sierra Club’s efforts to have the commission review the ACP contract early on, knowing it would face vigorous opposition from critics. But since then, its chances for approval have only gotten worse. Back then, the pipeline cost estimate came in at $3 billion less than it is today, Dominion Virginia Power was halfway through a massive buildout of combined-cycle gas plants, and the IRP included several more big, new, gas-hungry combined-cycle plants.

Now the ACP’s cost has climbed above $7 billion and may go as high as $7.75 billion, excluding financing costs, CEO Tom Farrell told investors last month in an earnings call. Meanwhile, the IRP includes an ever-shrinking number of gas plants, to be served by a different pipeline.

One investment management company told clients in January the spiraling price tag may make the ACP uncompetitive with existing pipelines. And Farrell faced a host of cost-related questions in his call with investors.

But Farrell downplayed the risk when it came to a question from Deutsche Bank about the need for SCC approval. Managing Director Jonathan Arnold asked, “On ACP, when you guys are talking about customers, does that include the anchor utility customers, your affiliate customers? Does whatever you’re going to negotiate with them need to be approved by the state regulatory bodies?”

Farrell’s answer sounds nonchalant. “In Virginia, it’s like any other part of our fuel clause. It will be part of the fuel clause case in 2021 or 2022 along with all the other ins and outs of our fuel clause.”

Oh, Mr. Farrell, it is not going to be that easy.

Dominion Electric Integrated Resource Plan

From an Article by Dan Heyman, Gilmer Free Press, February 15, 2019

The demand the huge Atlantic Coast Pipeline was intended to meet is disappearing, according to documents from the corporations behind the project.

Dominion and Duke Energy own almost all of the pipeline, as well as the electric utilities it would supply with natural gas. When applying for a federal permit, they argued it was needed to meet rising electricity demand in North Carolina and coastal Virginia.

But Cathy Kunkel, an energy analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said utility filings in those states now show the outlook has changed dramatically – in part because of competition from cheap, renewable energy.

“Dominion is not projecting any increase in natural-gas demand until 2032,” Kunkel said. “Duke is still planning to build some natural-gas plants, but most of that has shifted to the late 2020s.“

The energy companies say they need more pipeline capacity to move fracked gas out of the Marcellus and Utica fields of northern West Virginia, where the price for it is artificially depressed by a transportation bottleneck.

Dominion is now telling regulators in Virginia that it expects
demand for electricity from natural gas to stay essentially
flat for the next decade and a half.

The 600-mile pipeline across the three states has faced a number of setbacks, including lawsuits by landowners and conservationists. It was recently announced that the total cost of the project would rise to $7.5 billion, and its opening would be delayed until 2021.

If the builders can get state utility regulators’ approval, they can shift the full expense of the line onto ratepayers, along with a guaranteed profit. But Kunkel said investors in the utilities may be starting to worry about the financial risks.

“The project has been delayed by these court challenges, it’s also over-budget,” she said. “And if the state regulators say, ‘You clearly don’t need all of the gas capacity that you signed up for here; we’re not going to let you charge it to your ratepayers,‘ then that would be a very significant blow.“

Kunkel said the incentives tend to make utilities and pipeline companies overestimate demand and overbuild capacity. She said that’s becoming a more serious issue as climate change poses increasing risks.

Kunkel helped write the analysis for a report from IEEFA and Oil Change International.

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The Vanishing Need for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline —
Growing Risk That the Pipeline Will Not Be Able to Recover Costs From Ratepayers

See also: SCC cracks open the door on Dominion’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline costs| Power for the People VA

Letter from the Climate Change Lobby to Support Jobs And Clean Energy

Dear Friends,

If you are concerned about the economic future of West Virginia, please consider contacting Committee Chair of Technology and Infrastructure, Jim Butler, to voice your support for HB 2589 (The Modern Jobs Act). HB 2589 is a bipartisan legislative effort to give large electricity users the ability to protect and create jobs by providing them the freedom to purchase solar electricity generated on former coal mines.

This bill creates jobs and diversifies the economy. It helps manufacturers protect existing jobs by stabilizing their large electricity bills. It helps corporations with renewable energy targets site in West Virginia. And it grows West Virginia’s solar industry, while putting old coal mines back into productive use. The economic and environmental benefits of the bill are undeniable, but we need your help to get it onto the agenda.

The fate of the bill currently rests with Committee Chair Jim Butler, who is responsible for deciding the committee agenda. Please call or email Delegate Butler today to voice your support for HB 2589 and ask for a fair vote (and don’t forget to share this email with other concerned West Virginians) — You could be the deciding factor in whether this important bill moves forward!

You can read and review The Modern Jobs Act here.

You can contact: Delegate Jim Butler, (304) 340-3199, Jim.butler@wvhouse.gov

Thank You!

Logan Thorne, Board of Directors, Citizens’ Climate Lobby WV
(304)-657-5455