In central Ohio, a fight has been going on for more than a year between developers of a solar project and a so-called “grassroots” group that doesn’t want it built.

Knox Smart Development popped up late last year to fight the 120 MW Frasier Solar project, holding a town hall and otherwise campaigning to stir up opposition to the project. Kathiann Kowalski reported for the Energy News Network that the group has appeared at three public hearings in front of Ohio’s energy project siting board, and made more than 100 unique arguments against approving the project.

The problem? Half of those comments contained misinformation, and “do not present credible or compelling opposition to the proposed project,” said Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, a professor at Cleveland State University College of Law.

Last week, Knox Smart Development founder Jared Yost hinted at where some of Knox Smart Development’s support and misinformation may be coming from.

In a hearing with the energy siting board, Yost testified that Tom Rastin, the former head of oil and gas compressor company Ariel Corportation, is one of the group’s biggest donors. Rastin also reportedly leads The Empowerment Alliance, a dark money nonprofit that advocates for the natural gas industry. Another Empowerment Alliance leader spoke at one of Knox Smart Development’s town halls last year. 

Yost denied that The Empowerment Alliance influenced his opposition to the Frasier project, but clean energy advocates say Knox Smart Development is just another example of how fossil fuel interests are disguising themselves behind community-led groups to make their fights against clean energy feel organic and credible.

Read more about how misinformation is fueling this unfolding solar fight at the Energy News Network.

More clean energy news

👷 Unions’ clean energy: The Inflation Reduction Act’s labor standards for clean energy development could create as many as 3.9 million jobs across 6,285 burgeoning projects, a labor advocacy group says. (Utility Dive)

🔌 Virtual (power plant) reality: Xcel Energy in Minnesota wants to build virtual power plants that combine solar power generation and energy storage — a technology analysts say is “well past pilot scale” and ready for full deployment in North America. (Energy News Network, Utility Dive)

⚠️ Cautionary tale: State policies could supercharge utility-scale clean energy deployment, but experts say too rapid of an expansion could strengthen opposition, and that local participation in the siting process is still key. (Utility Dive)

🚘 EVs’ new charge: Experts say solid state batteries have the potential to transform the auto sector by giving electric vehicles hundreds of miles more of range per charge. (Inside Climate News)

🔋 Managing the load: Cleantech experts say home power management systems are set to become essential as homeowners switch to electric appliances and vehicles, as well as add at-home power generation. (Bloomberg)

🚍 Going for sustainability gold: A sustainability advocate says Los Angeles will need an “epic transportation reboot” to achieve a zero-emission Olympic Games in 2028. (Los Angeles Times)

🇺🇸 Plus, some politics:

• Conservatives for clean energy: A national advocacy group founded in 2016 aims to make the conservative case that clean energy will win in free market competition and support private property rights. (USA Today)
• Keeping climate quiet: Observers say Vice President Kamala Harris is seemingly making a “deliberate choice” to minimally mention climate as she tries to downplay divisive issues in her campaign, though allies say it’s still clear where she stands on the topic. (Washington Post, New York Times)
• Learning from Minnesota: U.S. climate advocates say Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s measured and bureaucratic approach to clean energy programs, and success in attracting federal funding, will lead to policy gains at the federal level. (E&E News)

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The misinformation at the heart of rural solar opposition is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Electric vehicles are cheaper to fuel and maintain than those with combustion engines. The opposite is increasingly true when it comes to vehicle registration fees.

Many states partially fund road upkeep with gasoline taxes, and it’s long been a popular line of attack by fossil fuel supporters to argue that EV drivers don’t pay their fair share. “The rest of us subsidize their use of our roads,” Pennsylvania state Rep. Ed Neilson recently told E&E News. Pennsylvania is home to the country’s second highest gasoline tax, and once it’s implemented, its $250 annual EV charge will be among the heftiest as well.

Supporters of steeper registration fees for EVs point to declining gas tax revenue as a reason to collect more. But here’s the thing: There just aren’t that many electric vehicles on U.S. roads yet. An Experian Automotive Market Trends report from the end of 2023 put the number at 3.3 million — a tiny piece of the estimated 280 million-plus cars in the country. The much bigger reason behind declines in gas tax revenue is the increasing fuel efficiency of combustion cars.

But 39 states — including many that have electric vehicle adoption goals and incentives — are still putting the blame on their small EV populations. As Minnesota state Rep. Frank Hornstein put it to E&E News, the fees are “more of an anti-electric vehicle policy than a road funding policy.”

“We’re not at a point where electric cars are in any way, shape or form quote-unquote ‘stealing’ from the gas tax,” Hornstein said. 

And sure, EV registrations are growing, with the National Renewable Energy Lab forecasting 30-40 million could be on the road by 2030. But fees that cut into EV savings could discourage drivers from making the switch, and make it hard to actually hit that goal.

More clean energy news

💸 Efficiency incentives on hold: The Inflation Reduction Act included $8.8 billion in home energy rebates to help households install heat pumps and make efficient improvements, but the U.S. Energy Department hasn’t approved most states’ plans for rolling out the funding. (Canary Media)

👷 Unions break into clean energy: The United Steelworkers form a neutrality agreement with solar company Convalt Energy as it plans to build two U.S. factories, marking a “significant breakthrough” into unionizing the domestic solar industry, the White House’s climate adviser says. (Axios)

🏭 Calculating LNG risks: Air pollution from liquefied natural gas export terminals in the U.S. is responsible for an estimated 60 premature deaths and $957 million in health costs each year, environmental groups find. (The Guardian)

🌬️ Wind wins: Wind turbines for the first time produced more electricity than coal over two consecutive months, according to the Energy Information Administration. (New York Times)

☑️ Forecasting FERC: Experts weigh in on how the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s newly adopted transmission rules might take shape under a Harris or Trump presidency, and how permitting legislation or a Supreme Court ruling could affect them. (E&E News)

🔌 Chargers’ next challenge: Experts say electric vehicle charger congestion poses the next challenge for deployment, as developers need to consider bursts of holiday and event travel once they’ve satisfied everyday charger needs. (Bloomberg)

🐑 Solar’s wooly good opportunity: A Texas farmer says demand for livestock to maintain vegetation around solar panels has provided “the greatest opportunity for the sheep industry in my lifetime.” (Canary Media)

🛢️ It’s hard to stop oil: The U.S. oil and gas industry’s boom under President Biden illustrates how difficult it is for a president to stop or even slow oil production because of legal, political and market factors. (Washington Post)

⚖️ Having second thoughts: Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions weakening federal policymaking authority are already giving regulators and agencies pause about implementing strong climate rules, for fear that they’ll be quickly overturned in court. (Grist)

☀️ Solar resilience: Experts share how advancing technology has made solar panels resilient in wind, small hail, and other weather conditions. (Washington Post)

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A scapegoat for state’s shrinking gas tax revenue is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

It’s been two years since President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, kicking off a wave of clean energy investments.

But two years on the books hasn’t guaranteed the IRA’s future. Republicans have been working to repeal parts of the law since it was passed, and former President Trump has lashed out against renewables and electric vehicles (at least those not made by Elon Musk’s Tesla) that have seen big benefits under the IRA.

The uncertainty is one reason some developers have delayed major manufacturing projects, the Financial Times reported. But a new plea from some Republicans may give them some reassurance.

Last week, 18 House Republicans wrote to Speaker Mike Johnson, warning him against fully gutting IRA incentives as their party works to repeal the law. The lawmakers still think the IRA is “deeply flawed,” but say eliminating its tax credits could upend energy projects already under construction and jeopardize billions of dollars of investments, including some in their districts.

Republican-held districts have received about four times more IRA funding than blue districts. It’s unclear if Democrats designed the law to have that effect, but either way the uneven flow of funds to conservative communities could complicate any push to repeal President Biden’s flagship climate law.

More clean energy news

🌎 Walz on climate: Kamala Harris’s selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate has energized climate advocates, but it is not clear how his record of advancing clean energy policies will be deployed in the campaign. (Inside Climate News, E&E News)

🖥️ Dissecting data center demand: Experts warn that estimates of soaring power demand from data centers could be overblown, with the risk of leaving ratepayers on the hook for new electricity infrastructure that may not be needed. (E&E News)

☀️ Renewables are winning: Wind and solar for the first time are on track to generate more power than coal plants in the U.S. this year thanks to a surge of solar deployment in 2023. (E&E News)

💸 Where the IRA is working: Federal data shows Inflation Reduction Act tax credits for renewable energy systems were most popular in Florida and the Southwest, while people in cold-climate states were more likely to utilize energy efficiency credits. (New York Times)

🏭 Deploying clean heat: The Department of Energy is using authority under the Defense Production Act to deploy $85 million to speed up manufacture of heat pumps. (The Hill)

👷 Solar gets working: An intensive 13-week training course in Illinois is connecting workers from underrepresented backgrounds to employers as part of a broader effort to create 1,000 solar jobs in Chicago. (Energy News Network)

📊 Catching tailwinds: A new report examining 70 countries says the U.S. ranks the worst on progress toward an international goal to triple wind generation by 2030. (Associated Press)

🛢️ Carbon capture casualty: Using captured carbon dioxide to extract more oil and gas releases more carbon into the atmosphere than it puts underground by prolonging the use of fossil fuels, environmental groups say in a new report. (States Newsroom)

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The Republicans who want to save the IRA is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Over the course of more than a century, the fueling infrastructure for gasoline cars has matured to a point where drivers rarely have to think about it. Find a gas station, swipe a credit card, and fill up the tank. We’ve come a long way from buying gasoline from a barrel at the pharmacy to fill up the Model T.

While electric vehicle charging stations are more common, it is still an infrastructure in its infancy. And even though electricity is more or less universal, it is the chargers themselves – and how people use them – that are proving to be the sticking point.

CNN journalist Peter Valdes-Dapena experienced this first-hand recently, on a relatively short road trip on the I-95 corridor between New York and Philadelphia. While Valdes-Dapena had no problem locating a high-speed charging station, he was stuck waiting in line for several hours behind other drivers taking a long time to charge up.

What’s taking so long? Fast-charging beyond a certain capacity, say, 80%, can damage EV batteries. So, many cars are programmed to stop fast-charging at that point and charge more slowly to top off the battery. That means drivers, accustomed to filling up the tank as they would a gasoline car, can cause delays as they stay plugged in until the battery reaches 100%. 

Electrify America has a solution for these so-called “charger hogs” – cutting drivers off at 85% and charging an additional fee to remain at the charger, potentially cutting wait times in half.

While that particular problem has a relatively simple solution, drivers are also encountering chargers that don’t work at all, eroding trust in public charging infrastructure and, in turn, electric vehicles themselves, as recently reported by Canary Media.

That problem is compounded by a patchwork of chargers developed and operated by different companies. Which means collaboration will be key.

“When drivers say the charger doesn’t work, there’s a complex set of reasons why the charger doesn’t work,” ChargerHelp’s CEO Kameale Terry told Canary Media. ​“It’s not as simple as a gas station. And to fix something that complex, we need to take a more collaborative approach.” 

Part of that collaborative approach is standardizing and sharing data – so that common issues can be identified and technicians trained to fix them.

“The car experience is great — people like electric vehicles,” Terry said. “We have a gap in infrastructure, and now we have to come together to figure out what to do about it.” 

More clean energy news

✌️ They knew: A compilation of government documents shows climate change was discussed in Congress and the media in the 1960s and 1970s, including a Nixon administration report that said “the greatest consequences of air pollution for man’s continued life on earth are its effects on the earth’s climate.” (Grist) 

🔌 Getting connected: The Department of Energy awards $2.2 billion in grants to eight transmission projects that, matched with $10 billion in private investment, are expected to support 13 GW of new clean energy. (Canary Media)

🏭 Inefficient coal: Indiana is emblematic of a larger problem as utility-owned coal plants are dispatched despite the availability of cheaper resources like wind and solar, costing ratepayers hundreds of millions and contributing to air pollution. (Energy News Network)

📈 Carbon market scrutiny: A key oversight body says nearly one-third of the carbon offset credits on the market do not meet its standards, a sign of further upheaval in a process that is already heavily criticized. (Bloomberg)

🌡️ Climate impacts: Low-income households are increasingly vulnerable to extreme heat, highlighting the urgency of ensuring equitable access to electricity and energy efficiency measures, advocates say. (Associated Press)

🏢 Staying cool: Massachusetts awards $53 million — with plans for additional funding — to allow affordable housing operators to execute energy efficiency retrofits to reduce carbon emissions, cut energy bills, and create healthier, more comfortable homes for residents. (Energy News Network)

🤖 Solar machine: Renewable energy company AES introduces a pickup truck-sized robot that it says can install heavy solar panels twice as fast as humans can and at half the cost. (New York Times)

⚛️ Fusion breakthrough?: A company developing a nuclear fusion prototype at a Tennessee nuclear plant raises capital from enthusiastic investors who see potential for an alternative to creating nuclear power from fission. (Knoxville News Sentinel) 

☀️ Waste to energy: Inflation Reduction Act funding will support multiple Ohio solar projects on former landfills and at a retiring coal plant. (Energy News Network) 

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For electric vehicle charging, the devil is in the details is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

All over the country, small and niche farming operations have proved solar panels and agriculture can not only work well together, but can actually be mutually beneficial.

In Maine, low-growing blueberries have had some success being planted around panels. In Vermont, fussy saffron thrives around an array. And there are plenty of farms where sheep and other small livestock graze around solar panels, enjoying the shade while keeping vegetation under control.

Now, an Ohio research project aims to find out how farming/solar partnerships — also known as agrivoltaics — can succeed on a much bigger scale, the Energy News Network reports.

At the 1,900-acre Madison Fields project, Ohio State University researchers planted popular crops grown in huge numbers across the Midwest — mainly alfalfa, hay, and other forage crops — among an 180 MW solar array. Researchers found these crops grew well among solar panels in an earlier, smaller pilot, but it’s unclear how feasible it is to grow them on a large scale.

“You hear a lot about produce and specialty crops,” explained Sarah Moser, the director of farm operations and agrivoltaics at Shell subsidiary Savion, which built the solar array. But raising them is “hard to do on 1,000 acres.”

Another part of the project focuses on farm equipment, including whether tractors and other wide equipment can fit between rows of solar panels. And after crops are harvested, the farm will bring in sheep to help trim back any extra vegetation. Researchers will keep an eye on the sheep’s health, and take note of what other care they’d need to live among solar panels.

It’s all in an attempt to alleviate fears in Ohio and beyond that solar farms are using up valuable agricultural land — though as one agricultural conservation group has found, urban sprawl is a much bigger threat.

Read more about the Madison Fields project at the Energy News Network.

More clean energy news

💧 Hydrogen debate continues: As the federal government starts sending funding to seven hydrogen hubs, researchers and advocates warn the industry could worsen greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution if it uses non-renewable power to make the fuel. (Grist/Public Health Watch)

☎️ Unexpected IRA lifeline: Former President Trump promises to halt Inflation Reduction Act spending if he’s elected, but legal and practical challenges, as well as Republican governors and lawmakers benefitting from the law, could hinder his efforts. (Politico)

🛢️ ‘Sacrifice zone’: A surge in oil and gas production, largely driven by fracking, has turned the U.S. into the world’s top producer — and fuels concern that the Gulf Coast is becoming a “sacrifice zone for the oil and gas industry.” (The Guardian)

💲 Tax credit firsts: A set of projects across Washington, D.C., and California mark the first time a company sold its Inflation Reduction Act solar tax credits to another company, a key tool to help encourage solar in new construction. (Canary Media)

💸 Paying for nothing: A condition of free trade agreements often lets fossil fuel companies pursue and secure big payouts if governments cancel their projects. (Inside Climate News)

🏛️ Federal proving ground: The U.S. General Services Administration, which runs the nation’s federal buildings, is using Inflation Reduction Act funding to decarbonize its infrastructure and derisk new technologies that can help other buildings cut their emissions. (Canary Media)

⚖️ Emissions rule fight continues: Republican state attorneys general ask the Supreme Court to temporarily block the U.S. EPA’s power plant emissions rule after a federal appeals court declined to do so. (CNN)

✅ Duality of the deal: Climate advocates hope Vice President Kamala Harris rekindles her support for the Green New Deal as she runs for president — as do Republicans, who hope to paint Harris as an “avowed radical.” (New York Times)

🔋 Batteries’ recycling edge: Researchers argue that the recyclability of electric vehicle battery minerals give them an environmental advantage over fossil fuels, despite the massive impact of mining for lithium and other components. (Canary Media)

🌬️ Winds of change: Wind development continues to divide residents in Midwest states, as misinformation leads to restrictive local regulations and local economic benefits can take years to materialize. (Associated Press)

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Agrivoltaics scale up with new research project is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.