The 42 inch MVP is excessive in diameter and length

From an Article by Mike Tony, Charleston Gazette Mail, Jun 1, 2021

The Mountain Valley Pipeline faces a consequential summer. So do the streams and wetlands that the pipeline’s developers are seeking permission to cross.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will decide by July 2 whether to grant or deny additional time to West Virginia and Virginia environmental regulators to consider water permit requests from the joint venture that owns the pipeline, according to Corps Huntington District spokesman Brian Maka.

Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC, the joint venture that owns the pipeline, still has applications pending with West Virginia and Virginia state environmental regulators for about 300 water crossings while it seeks approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to tunnel under 120 additional waterbodies.

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection asked last month for an additional 90 days beyond the 120 days the Corps of Engineers gave the agency to review Mountain Valley Pipeline’s water permit request. In March, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality requested an additional year to review the pipeline permit application. Both departments previously said that they hadn’t heard back from the Corps.

The pipeline already has had adverse impacts on West Virginia’s waters. State environmental regulators proposed a consent order earlier this year requiring Mountain Valley to pay a $303,000 fine for violating permits by failing to control erosion and sediment-laden water.

“Based on what I’ve seen thus far, I don’t know how they can permit this activity knowing that there are going to be additional impacts to water resources because of MVP’s track record,” West Virginia Rivers Coalition staff scientist Autumn Crowe said.

Asked about the Rivers Coalition’s arguments, Natalie Cox, spokeswoman for Equitrans Midstream, the Canonsburg, Pennsylvania-based lead developer of the project, argued that the claims placed specific policy agendas above that of environmental protection. “Mountain Valley welcomes the opportunity to work with all stakeholders to address environmental protection concerns and ensure that best practices are implemented,” Cox said. Cox noted that Mountain Valley is seeking individual water permits after legal challenges from environmental groups prompted it to abandon a blanket water permit issued by the Corps.

The Rivers Coalition and other project opponents have said the pipeline’s greenhouse gas emissions make it a bad idea, especially given the International Energy Agency’s call last month for no new investments in fossil fuels.

The West Virginia DEP will hold a virtual public hearing June 22 on whether it should approve a water permit for the project. The pipeline has sought and received water permit approval from West Virginia before. “The WVDEP will consider whether the components of the activity, resulting in a discharge to waters and contemplated by the federal [Corps] permit and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission license, will comply with the state’s water quality requirements and what conditions may be necessary to ensure that compliance,” acting department spokesman Terry Fletcher said in an email.

This article has been edited for length. See full story HERE

Solar systems at a farm in Versailles, Kentucky

From an Article by Dan Gearino, Inside Clean Energy, May 20, 2021

The people in Kentucky’s small rooftop solar industry are used to fighting for their livelihoods against utilities, but they aren’t used to winning. So a ruling last week from the Kentucky Public Service Commission was a surprise and a relief. The commission rejected a proposal from the utility Kentucky Power that would have gutted net metering, the policy that says rooftop solar owners can sell their excess electricity back to the grid.

Kentucky Power customers with rooftop solar have long been able to get the full retail rate for excess electricity. The utility had proposed to cut that rate to 4 cents per kilowatt-hour. The commission ruled that the rate will be 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, much more than the utility wanted and only a little bit less than the current level.

“My initial reaction to this decision was one of relief,” said Matt Partymiller, general manager at Solar Energy Solutions, a solar installer in Lexington and president of the Kentucky Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group. But, he added, “that feeling of relief was quickly followed by the realization that this part of a long continued effort that we’re going to have to be fighting against.”

Kentucky’s utilities and many of its elected officials have worked to stop rooftop solar from gaining a foothold, arguing that solar customers do not pay an appropriate share of the costs of maintaining the grid, even though the state has very little rooftop solar. Kentucky ranked 40th in the country in electricity generation from small solar systems in 2020, right behind Arkansas and ahead of Kansas, according to the Energy Information Administration.

A 2019 law, signed by then-Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican, said that new solar customers would no longer get the full retail price for excess electricity. Utilities would need to submit proposals for the new rates to the commission. Kentucky Power, a subsidiary of Ohio-based American Electric Power, was the first major utility to propose new rates, making this case the commission’s first opportunity to show how it would interpret the law.

In its ruling, the commission disagreed with Kentucky Power’s arguments and found that the utility was undercounting the financial benefits of rooftop solar for the grid. Also, the commission called attention to how small the problem was that Kentucky Power was trying to solve, noting that there were only 46 households benefiting from net metering in the utility’s territory in 2020.

The utility said those households were getting an unfair subsidy from net metering that added up to about $40,000 per year. The commission responded by saying that this “purported subsidy” amounts to only 24 cents per year for each of the utility’s non-solar customers and is a small fraction of other subsidies embedded in Kentucky Power’s rates.

“It was Kentucky Power’s intent to provide a fair and balanced approach for all customers, not just the net metering customers,” said Cindy Wiseman, a Kentucky Power spokeswoman, in an email in response to a question about the commission’s ruling. “Our regulatory team is still reviewing the order and discussing it to gain a better understanding of the path forward.”

The three-member commission has one member who was appointed by Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, and two who were appointed by Bevin.

Partymiller, whose company has about 35 employees and may be the largest solar installer in the state, was careful not to overstate the significance of the decision, because it just covers one utility, and the commission still needs to rule on other utilities’ plans.

He said the rooftop solar industry has some big challenges in Kentucky even with this ruling. One of the biggest is a law that sets a cap on how much customer-owned electricity generation can come online before there is a drastic cut in net metering rates. This law, which predates the 2019 net metering legislation, will kick in when rooftop solar and other customer-owned resources hit 1 percent of peak electricity demand in each utility’s territory.

Kentucky Power probably is years away from hitting the 1 percent cap, but the mere existence of the cap is a problem because it puts a ceiling on growth for solar companies, Partymiller said.

He said he would like to see the Legislature and governor increase the cap or repeal it, but he also knows that there is a long fight ahead to make that happen.

I have read many decisions by state regulatory commissions about net metering, and the Kentucky ruling stands out for the methodical way it dismantles some common arguments made against rooftop solar about how non-solar customers are heavily subsidizing customers with solar. I would not be surprised to see the Kentucky commission’s findings cited in other states to argue for the benefits of rooftop solar, something I was not expecting, but there it is.