US Can Reach 100% Clean Power by 2035, DOE Finds, but Tough Reliability and Land Use Questions Lie Ahead
by Herman K. Trabish (Utility Dive) New aggressive planning is needed to identify the long-duration storage technologies and find the land to grow enough resources to reach Biden net zero emissions goals, a DOE national lab reports. — Four major viable paths to a net zero emissions “clean electricity” power system by 2035 “in which benefits exceed costs” are detailed in an August study by the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, or NREL.
But it does not explain how adequate land to reach a 90% clean electricity penetration can be acquired or how reliability will be protected beyond that 90% penetration, stakeholders acknowledged.
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But resolving the continuing local opposition to building new infrastructure will require smarter planning, environmentalists said.
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The four paths to a 100% clean power sector by 2035, even with 66% higher demand from transportation and building electrification, can lead to a net zero emissions economy by 2050, the NREL study said.
One path assumes “improved cost and performance” of all zero emissions technologies, including carbon capture, NREL reported. Another assumes more transmission capacity from “improved transmission technologies” and “new permitting and siting approaches,” a third assumes higher costs from generation and transmission constraints, and the last assumes limited carbon capture.
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Nuclear is likely to be 9% to 12% of generation in 2035 under three of NREL’s scenarios but could more than double to 27% with siting and permitting constraints on generation and transmission, models found. But that is unlikely because the cost-effectiveness of investments in wind, solar, storage and transmission is “clearly” better than that of new nuclear, NREL’s Denholm said.
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Between 1,400 miles and 10,100 miles of new high voltage transmission will be needed annually to achieve net zero power sector emissions in 2035, reaching “1.3 times to 2.9 times current capacity,” NREL estimated.
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Access to adequate land is a more immediate concern creating uncertainty about meeting the 2035 net zero emissions power sector goal, stakeholders agreed.
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Planning for land
The 2035 goals could require new generation at “three to six times” recent growth rates, new rights-of-way for “doubling or tripling” transmission, and “new pipelines and storage for hydrogen and CO2,” DOE found.
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And the still uncompleted stakeholder process at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reform transmission planning includes proposals to streamline permitting. But neither get at the innovative reforms really needed, stakeholders said.
Smart planning can protect “sensitive natural areas and working lands” and reach economy-wide net zero emissions cost-effectively by 2050, TNC’s Power of Place – West study agreed.
Without improved planning, the 2050 goal would require “up to 39 million acres” in the 11 studied states for new generation and transmission infrastructure and cost $260 billion, TNC’s modeling found.
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But TNC’s approach may be “an optimistic outlook,” and underestimate the “intense opposition” in local communities to new infrastructure buildouts, the Los Angeles Times observed October 6.
“Local community opposition is real and will likely continue to make siting and permitting a challenge,” but might be addressable, said University of Notre Dame Associate Professor of Sustainable Energy Policy Emily Grubert, who has worked with federal agencies on related issues.
To earn a community’s trust, development proposals “should explain why a project is needed, why the community’s resources are needed, and how the community can benefit,” Grubert said. They should also “assure the community its concerns have been heard and it will be protected,” she added.
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“No project should go ahead without a Community Benefit Agreement to assure real benefits for the host community,” agreed NRDC’s Greene. But in many places, “political polarization has turned reasonable project development questions into obstructive, misinformation campaigns,” Greene said. “Overcoming that will take a lot of work,” he added.
“People, especially in smaller communities, can get very passionate, and even exchange death threats, which shows how important and undervalued trust is,” Grubert agreed. READ MORE
Getting Renewable Energy Connected (NRDC)
Gridlock? | Why transmission could shatter Joe Biden’s US green energy dreams (RECharge)
Allete, Grid United plan $2.5B transmission line linking Western, Eastern interconnections (Utility Dive)
Electricity Transmission is Key to Unlock the Full Potential of the Inflation Reduction Act (Princeton University)
Jenkins, J.D., Farbes, J., Jones, R., Patankar, N., Schivley, G., “Electricity Transmission is Key to Unlock the Full Potential of the Inflation Reduction Act,” REPEAT Project, Princeton, NJ, September 2022. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7106176
Debt deal short-circuits help for the grid (Power Switch)
Excerpt from NRDC: If new solar, wind, and storage resources can’t get connected, the transition to clean energy will slow, states will fail to meet their climate targets, and everyone will pay more than they need to for power. READ MORE
Excerpt from Inside Climate News: While there is agreement that rural resistance to wind and solar is an impediment to development, experts disagree about whether it’s a good idea to deal with this opposition by yanking power away from local officials.
“I think, in the short term, (the Illinois law) will get a whole lot of wind and solar built,” said Sarah Mills of the University of Michigan, who writes about land use conflicts over renewable energy development.
But she has concerns that the benefits may end up being smaller than the harm that comes from the way the law solidifies the idea that urban areas are imposing renewable energy on rural areas.
“This is not the way you build bridges between urban and rural areas,” she said. “It’s making that chasm even wider.”
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Sarah Fox, a Northern Illinois University law professor, said there is a growing awareness that local control of development can be harmful if the result is a shutdown in new construction due to pressure from local residents.
“It has become so clear that if we are serious about decarbonization, then the scale on which we need to be adopting renewable energy is vast,” she said.
Her legal work includes representing property owners in Piatt County, located in central Illinois, who have leased their property for Goose Creek Wind Farm, a 300-megawatt proposal. County officials in January approved a moratorium on wind farm applications, but that doesn’t include the application for Goose Creek, which is still pending.
Fox said the existential threat of climate change means that the regulatory system needs to err on the side of allowing renewable energy development, even if that means reducing local control.
Battles to Build Renewable Projects Can Be ‘Really Ugly’
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Kevin Semlow, the Farm Bureau’s director of state legislation, said his larger concern isn’t about the loss of local control; it’s about how the law seems to occupy an uncomfortable middle ground between local and state control, with counties remaining in charge but severely limited in what they can do.
“Since you’re basically having a statewide system, why don’t you have a statewide agency that would be over it, so there’s just more cohesiveness and uniformity?” he asked.
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New York’s law was adopted in 2020 through provisions inserted into state budget legislation. The law set up a new state office to accelerate the process of building utility-scale wind and solar projects, with power that supersedes local regulations.
California passed its law in 2022, giving the California Energy Commission enhanced authority to issue permits for large clean energy projects.
Now that Illinois has joined the two coastal states in limiting local control, advocates have asked which state is likely to be next. Mills of the University of Michigan said she has heard of efforts to promote similar legislation in Indiana and Michigan.
But neither state seems likely to pass something, at least not in the near future.
Indiana lawmakers tried in 2021 to pass a bill that would have set statewide rules about wind farm applications, taking power away from local governments, some of which had enacted bans. READ MORE
Excerpt from Power Switch: In the meantime, the transmission clock is ticking. Abe Silverman, who studies barriers to clean energy growth at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said the worst-case scenario is that adding the study into the debt ceiling deal delays any real action.
“We need thousands of miles of new transmission by the early 2030s. That’s going to take at least five years to permit and at least another five years to build,” he told Nidhi. “So we’re in 2025 before we even get started.” READ MORE
