Renewable energy- wind and solar

Friday News Round-up: Wind vs. Environment and Politicians From Different Parties Agreeing

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From left to right, Siemens Energy North America President Rich Voorberg, Utah Office of Energy Director Gregory Todd, Colorado Energy Office Advisor James Lester, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Gov. Mark Gordon and Nevada Office of Energy Director Dwyane McClinton participate in a groundbreaking ceremony June 20, 2023 for the TransWest Express transmission line in Carbon County. (Dustin Bleizeffer/WyoFile)

We’ve been covering the tension between protectionist interests and renewable energy developers.
Here’s a few more.

1. Prairie-Chicken Listing Expected to Put Wind Farms in Crosshairs
At TSW we can’t afford a subscription to Bloomberg Law but here’s the link for those who have access. Definitely sounds interesting.

A Biden administration proposal to list the lesser prairie-chicken as endangered in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico could stymie oil and gas development in the largest U.S. petroleum basin, environmental attorneys say.

And one warns it could devastate another energy source—wind power.

2.  Wind turbines dry soil in Chinese grasslands.

Paper by Wang et al. open access.

 Our research shows that the operation of wind turbines will cause significant drying of soil, and this drought effect differs significantly according to season and wind direction. Our results show that 1) the soil moisture within wind farms decreases most significantly, with a decrease of 4.4 % observed; 2) in summer and autumn, the declines in soil moisture in the downwind direction are significantly greater than those in the upwind direction, with the opposite occurring in spring. (3) Wind farms aggravate the soil drying in grassland areas, which may have impacts on grassland ecosystems. Therefore, when building wind farms, we need to better understand their impacts on the environment.

I’m not pointing this out to say “wind turbines are bad”; more to say that this is one piece of information that has not yet been included in future models.  With the quantity of wind turbines some project, they themselves will  have impacts on climate and need to be included in models. But we don’t know how many there will be, nor exactly the impacts.  And so it goes…

A Special TSW Feature.. Members of Both Parties Agree on..

3,  New Transmission Lines Should Take Less Than 12 Years to Get Approved and… Climate Urgency

Thanks to reporter Dustin Bleizeffer of Wyofile- the whole story is interesting. Mark Gordon is the R Governor of Wyoming.

 

Though Gordon and the Interior officials often clash on energy and federal land use policy fronts, they all hailed TransWest Express — as well as the Chokecherry Sierra Madre wind energy project that will energize the line with 3,000 megawatts of power — as vital steps toward boosting clean energy to help address a climate emergency.

“We know that the time to act on climate is now,” Haaland said. “From coastal towns and rural farms to urban centers and tribal communities, climate change poses an existential threat. Not just to our environment, but to our health, our communities and our economic well being.”

“Gathered here,” Gordon said, “we see the first steps that we’re taking to make sure that we take the action that’s absolutely necessary to keep us from climate peril.”

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“Because there is an urgency as we see climate change, we know that we don’t have time to waste,” Gordon said. “We have to move with diligence forward to make sure that we address the issue of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere with alacrity and diligence and with dedication.”

4.   We Should Use Current Information in Decisions and Note Conflicts of Interest

Roger Pielke, Jr. testified at a Congressional hearing. You can read about it on his Substack.

Here’s a place of agreement as well.

Specifically, I referred to the misuse of outdated climate scenarios and our old friends RCP8.5 and RCP4.5, which you can read about in more detail below. Readers here will know that outdated climate scenarios are a big problem.

For me, it was notable that my testimony was favorably received by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) on the right and Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) Tim Caine (D-VA) on the left.

In fact, in his closing remarks Senator Whitehouse read from a recent post The Honest Broker on conflicts of interest in climate research:

Experts monetizing their expertise is one important reason why people become experts, and there is no problem with people seeking to make a buck. But where expertise and financial interests intersect, things can get complicated. That is why there are robust mechanisms in place for the disclosure and mitigation of financial conflicts of interest . . . All of this is just common sense. Your doctor can’t prescribe you drugs from a company that pays him fees. You wouldn’t think much of a report on smoking and health from a researcher supported by the tobacco industry.

In case you wonder what that has to do with climate, it turns out that some papers defending RCP 8.5 happen to be from people in consulting firms whose models are based on 8.5 and are advising their clients based on 8.5.  Which is not wrong, necessarily, as Whitehouse says, but needs to be disclosed.

Solar Industry Fried About Proposed BLM Reg (2): It’s a Big Change.. But No OIRA and a CX

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As environmental compensation for several solar farms, renewable energy developer Avantus retired grazing rights on 215,000 acres of federal land in California’s Kern County, including some with Joshua trees.(Avantus via LA Times)

Apologies to all who are not interested in the proposed BLM regulation.  I haven’t seen anything much in the press on it so thought I would dive in. Plus we only have 15 more days, and it’s not an ANPR like the MOG for the Forest Service, meaning we all have another go at the MOG (when it is a proposed rule) but not this one.

Other than Sammy Roth at the LA Times, who has been covering the protection/renewable energy tension for some time, I haven’t seen much coverage of the details of the regulation other than a bit of “good people want it, bad people don’t”.

Back to the solar industry letter: they raised two points that are worth further examination.

Is it or Ain’t it… a Big Change, and if Not, Why Are We All Here?

Why No OIRA?

In addition to these potential unintended consequences, the Proposed Rule is a major agency action that would substantially alter the status quo of BLM’s management of federal lands and therefore should be scrutinized to examine its economic and environmental consequences. Among other things, the Proposed Rule:

• Requires OIRA Review. BLM’s effort to shield the Proposed Rule from OIRA review is inappropriate. At a minimum, it must be subjected to the detailed policy analyses required of “major rules” under the CRA, “significant regulatory actions” under Executive Order (EO) 12866, and “significant energy actions” under EO 13211.

Assuming that the solar folks did their homework (does anyone know where to look for this in the reg?), I guess that answers my question as to how the proposed regulation did not encounter some resistance from USDA about redefining “conservation” differently from long-standing and widely popular USDA programs.  In addition, it seems highly likely that DOE would be equally concerned about taking land off the table for solar and wind.  It seems to me that the Admin can’t argue that:

 By putting conservation on an equal footing with other uses, the proposal would help guide responsible development while safeguarding important places for the millions of people who visit public lands every year to hike, hunt, camp, fish, and more.

It’s a big thing that needs to be done, but not big enough to require OIRA.   As we used in say when working with Roadless, “they need to pick a lane.”  Except that politically generated proposals don’t have to.  Speaking with a forked tongue is an inherent tendency of all politicos, but I still think we need to point it out when it occurs.

A Categorical Exclusion?

Back to the solar folks.

• Requires Full NEPA Review. BLM proposes to comply with NEPA by applying a Departmental categorical exclusion (CX) typically used for “policies, directives, regulations, and guidelines that are of an administrative, financial, legal, technical, or procedural nature or whose environmental effects are too broad, speculative, or conjectural to lend themselves to meaningful analysis and will later be subject to the NEPA process, either collectively or case-by-case.” The Proposed Rule goes well beyond what is appropriate for consideration under a CX, and BLM should prepare an EIS analyzing the Rule’s environmental and economic impacts, including an evaluation of the potential negative consequences for renewable energy development on federally managed lands.

Some of us remember a NFMA Planning Rule that was required to have an EIS done when a CE was originally used.  I spent a large number of hours discussing this with lawyers so am hoping that some of them can shed some light on why or why not this kind of “procedures and definitions” only kind of reg deserves (or doesn’t) an EIS.

If a) the Proposed Rule is finalized with a CE and 2) people with funding for attorneys don’t like the Rule, it seems probable that, like the Planning Rule, an EIS would ultimately be required.

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More next time..

A Confusing Tale of Two BLM Regs: More Protection and More Development- Who Will Win?

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There are many interesting (to me) things about the Proposed BLM Rule (Conservation and Landscape Health) and I’m glad they gave us more time to post on it.

Yesterday I empathized with the Biden Admin who want to please both their protectionist friends and their renewable energy development friends. And yesterday it was also announced that

Interior Department Proposes Rule to Bolster Solar and Wind Development on Public Lands, Continue Progress on Efficient and
Responsible Permitting

WASHINGTON — The Department of the Interior today announced a proposed update of its renewable energy regulations to promote the development of solar and wind energy on public lands. The Bureau of Land Management’s proposed Renewable Energy Rule would reduce fees for these projects by around 80%, facilitate development in priority areas by streamlining review of applications, and deliver greater certainty for the private sector.

“The Department of the Interior takes seriously our responsibility to manage the nation’s public lands responsibly and with an eye toward the increasing impacts of the climate crisis. The power and potential of the clean energy future is an undeniable and critical part of that work,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Laura Daniel-Davis. “Under President Biden and Secretary Haaland’s leadership, this Administration is taking an all-hands-on-deck approach toward ambitious clean energy goals that will support families, boost local economies, and help increase climate resilience in communities across the West.”

This sounds terrific, I mean why charge them at all?

Here’s what the proposed regulation says

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is proposing to amend its existing right-of-way (ROW) regulations, issued under authority of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA). The principal purpose of these amendments would be to facilitate responsible solar and wind energy development on public lands managed by the BLM. The rule would adjust acreage rents and capacity fees for solar and wind energy, provide the BLM with more flexibility in how it processes applications for solar and wind energy development inside designated leasing areas, and update agency criteria on prioritizing solar and wind applications. The rule would also make technical changes, corrections, and clarifications to the existing ROW regulations. This rule would implement the authority granted to the Secretary of the Interior (Secretary) in the Energy Act of 2020 to “reduce acreage rental rates and capacity fees” to “promote the greatest use of wind and solar energy resources” and achieve other enumerated policy goals.

In the description it says..

Through the rent and fee adjustments contemplated in this rule, the BLM also expects that lower acreage rental rates and capacity fees for solar and wind energy generating facilities would translate into lower costs for energy deployment, increasing renewable energy market penetration in domestic energy production. By reducing costs to producers, these reduced rates may also reduce electricity costs to rate payers.

Let’s see.. the Feds and States already provide subsidies to wind and solar, and BLM will reduce rates that they pay, but this “may” reduce electricity costs to rate payers.  It would be nice if there were some guarantee that those  savings (conceivably given up by taxpayers) would be passed on to ratepayers.

At some point, if protectionist groups are in disagreement with industrializing federal landscapes, we can expect to see media campaigns about “welfare turbines”, echoing previous concerns about “welfare ranchers”,  royalties for oil and gas being too low, and all that.  Not that I know what they should be other than fair market value, which is enormously difficult to figure out since private and public land are rarely in direct competition.

On the other hand, if I were in the renewable industry I would wonder how these two rules would interact.  If the BLM were increasing the levers for protectionist control (the conservation rule, more intactness, more ACECs) at the same time, saying “if no one else (important to us) has a problem, we will streamline your permitting and charge you less.” Sure they would only pay 20% but first they need to lease a site.  Investors don’t like uncertainties, and there’s nothing less certain than possible long-term litigation in the federal courts.  While major ENGOs might not be on board to litigate these projects, our friends at other ENGO’s may take a different approach.

Here’s a link to the proposed regulation, called “Rights-of-Way, Leasing, and Operations for Renewable Energy.”

As usual, if anyone finds a good write-up on this, please link below.

Solar Industry Fried About Proposed BLM Reg (1)

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As I mentioned before, the Biden Administration has a tough row to hoe keeping its protectionist friends and its development friends (solar, wind and transmission) happy on the same pieces of ground.  It’s really hard to write regs that favor some development, but not other development without stating some logic say.. uranium mining is bad, solar arrays and wind turbines are good, if the stated goal is carbon-free energy.  Interest groups don’t have to be rational, but it’s nice to at least try in a regulation. Hence some degree of regulatory fuzz.  But the regulatory fuzz may make your friends mistrustful, especially when, as in this case,  two sets of friends are not in alignment. And here we are with the solar industry groups’ letter, (thanks to Sammy Roth of the LA Times) which I think generally says “we don’t really trust you.”  Pretty much like many current user groups. From the letter:

The Renewable Energy Industry’s principal concerns with the Proposed Rule are as follows:

• Establishes Duplicative Land Conservation Program and Lowers Bar for Establishing ACECs. BLM already has effective and well-understood tools to conserve public lands that authorize the BLM State Director to evaluate and designate ACECs for resources of regional significance. Those existing tools can be used to protect landscapes and ecosystem resiliency without adoption of the Proposed Rule. The Proposed Rule would allow local BLM Field Managers to establish ACECs to protect resources of local importance, likely eliminating potential renewable energy development on vast tracts of Federal Land, and to do so without publication for notice and comment in the Federal Register. These changes to current regulations should not be adopted.

My bold: is this true? I like giving field managers authority, but aren’t we for public processes (and dare I say, well-known ones like the RMP process)?

• Establishes Broadly Defined and Unworkable Land Management Standards. The Proposed Rule requires local BLM Field Managers to protect broadly defined “intact landscapes,” prioritize “ecosystem resiliency,” and apply “land health” standards designed for grazing land in all areas and decisions. Local staff would likely not process applications (by giving them “low priority” under the regulations) in areas that will potentially be preserved in Resource Plan Amendments as “intact landscapes.” In addition, because arid lands cannot by their nature meet ecosystem resiliency or grazing land health standards, projects would be denied even though those standards are by their nature inappropriate for application to desert areas. Ecosystem resiliency standards and grazing land health standards should not be applied to renewable energy projects in desert areas; current biological resource protection standards amply protect these lands. Similarly, protection of landscapes, where appropriate, should occur through State Director approval of ACECs, not a separate process.

What is broken about current protections for projects of all kinds?  Why do more meaningless paperwork about what “land health” means?

• Creates Significant Litigation Risk. By establishing a programmatic mandate to require local officials to set aside intact landscapes and to apply inapposite ecosystem resiliency and grazing land health standards to solar applications on arid land, the Proposed Rule will expose BLM and developers to significant litigation risk from parties asserting that BLM failed to account properly for and consider these standards in the context of specific projects, or, more broadly, in the adoption of landscape level planning initiatives, such as the planned update to the Solar PEIS.

It appears that the solar industry’s Admin friends may have.. closer friends. Perhaps in large organizations with a contingent of environmental lawyers?  Maybe a larger check needs to be written to the 24 campaign?

• Undermines the Administration’s Clean Energy Goals. Currently, BLM is considering approximately 220 applications for solar, wind, geothermal and transmission projects. Many BLM Field Offices are already understaffed, overworked, and unable to process renewable energy applications at the pace necessary to meet the Administration’s climate change goals on federally managed lands. Implementation of the Proposed Rule at the BLM Field Office level is likely to divert attention and already constrained resources from processing renewable energy permits. Furthermore, adoption of the Proposed Rule will likely result in conflicting standards and mandates at the BLM Field Office level without guidance as to how these conflicts should be resolved, resulting in ambiguity, uncertainty, increased risk and delay.

This was a concern of many of the people at our public meeting in Denver.  So the BLM says it doesn’t have people to do the work it’s required to do by law, but needs to spend employees time on thinking and mapping intactness and defining land health.  One person at our meeting wondered where the money was coming from for this, she was told that it was coming from the IRA.  So climate bill money is used to make things more difficult for.. the renewable energy industry. OK, then.

The solar industry does like the conservation lease idea.  At our Denver meeting, BLM folks said that conservation leases were an idea they undertook due to input from their “industry partners”.   Why would you think federal land mitigation is better than private land mitigation, which the BLM already does?  Perhaps to get more money for restoration? But when I asked in Denver, they said the funds from leases were going to the Treasury.  So really, what they would do is enable BLM and industry to determine who else should be kicked off federal lands for an industry’s compensatory mitigation. To me, the idea of mitigation on private land makes more sense.   That seems to give (certain) industries or NGO’s a leg up in determining what happens on federal land, beyond the permit boundary itself.  What if Vail Resorts wants to kick some OHVers off someplace in Utah to mitigate its negative effects?  It’s like dividing up the BLM between (certain) industries and certain non-users.. all in the name of the environment.  Without actually making the case that the status quo with existing procedures is all that bad.

 

 

 

Ramping Up Green Energy Permitting.. BLM asks for $20 Mill to Accelerate

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I got this map from the Greenwire story so it might not be the latest one.
There must have been something in the air.. after I posted the previous post on BLM geothermal permitting, I found this story from E&E News. It’s paywalled, so here are some excerpts.

It plans to do this primarily through organizational changes designed to more quickly review and approve applications forright-of-way grants for projects on BLM lands, according to a budget justification document.
The budget proposal would allow BLM to:
* Create a “project management office” that would support “technical development of BLM field staff for the review and permitting” of solar, wind and geothermal projects “and related transmission and battery storage infrastructure.” One goal is to coordinate with the Department of Energy to tap into $400 billion in grants provided through the Inflation Reduction Act “to advance clean energy.”
* Name a task force of experts to help with breaking “permitting bottlenecks and challenges,” as well as hiring additional staff at BLM Renewable Energy Coordination Offices in the West who are tasked with prioritizing renewable energy project applications.
* Establish a geothermal regional project support team. BLM has reported that there are 48 geothermal power plants
operating on bureau-managed lands, with a total 2,500 MW capacity.
BLM declined to answer specific questions about its renewables budget request in time for publication.
But the bureau says in the budget document that the increased funding, if approved, would “support siting, leasing, processing rights-of-way applications, and oversight of renewable energy projects and transmission lines connecting to renewable energy projects.”

The FS and other agencies have had trouble hiring people, but maybe these jobs would be work at home so perhaps more attractive.

While the pace of renewables development the Biden administration hopes to achieve might be faster than before, it’s not terribly impressive, either, said Carey King, a research scientist and assistant director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas, Austin.
King noted that in Texas, which has very little federal land and few zoning laws, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) already has about 35,000 MW of wind power capacity in operation — by far the most of any state — and has turned its attention to solar. There is more than 8,000 MW of installed solar capacity in 2021, with plans to add another 8,000 MW capacity by the end of this year.
“The BLM plans sound about the same size as Texas rate of permitting/installation,” he said.

But.. the federal lands are subject to a different regulation scenario with a variety of different stakeholders as we have seen in the Geothermal Toad project.

BLM is on pace to approve 48 wind, solar and geothermal energy projects with the capacity to produce an estimated 31,827 MW of electricity — enough to power roughly 9.5 million homes — by the end of the fiscal 2025 budget cycle, according to an Interior Department report to Congress last year (Greenwire, April 20, 2022).
Much of that effort has focused on solar resource-rich Nevada, where the bureau in the last year has removed tens of thousands of acres of federal lands for use while it evaluates commercial-scale projects.
BLM last year removed the equivalent of 185 square miles of federal lands in southern Nevada’s Esmeralda County from new mining claims and other uses for two years while it studies seven utility-scale solar power projects that would have the capacity to produce 5,350 MW of electricity, or enough to power roughly 1.8 million homes (E&E News PM, July 26, 2022).
BLM last week segregated from new mining claims and other uses 5,281 acres straddling Clark and Nye counties in Nevada, about 40 miles west of Las Vegas, while it studies the proposed 500-MW Mosey Solar Project (E&E News PM, March 20).
The Mosey project is near three other large-scale solar project proposals covering nearly 16,000 acres of federal lands southeast of Pahrump, Nev., that BLM in 2021 withdrew from new mining claims while it evaluated each.
But the buildup has prompted some pushback from those worried about impacts to natural resources.
A number of residents in Nevada and California told BLM during an online hearing last month to gather public feedback on the bureau’s plan to update its 2012 Western Solar Plan (E&E News PM, Feb. 14).
“We are basically, to put it very simply, we are right in the middle of this attack of solar on our community,” said Don Sneddon, a Desert Center, Calif., resident who asked BLM to designate in the plan “exclusion zones” around towns and residential areas to prevent solar power plants from encroaching on homes. “Very simply said, the human element needs to be considered.”

As to Biden Admin alignment, it appears that the new Avi Kwa Me National Monument was protected partially in response to concerns of the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe. There’s an open access article on this on Greenwire.

“To us, this is the last of what’s left out there,” said McDowell, who serves as project manager of the Topock remediation project, which aims to address groundwater contamination near the Topock Maze, a geoglyph near Needles, Calif., considered to be spiritually important to the tribe.

“Every time we turn around, there’s a proposal to put in a wind farm or a solar project that would wipe this landscape out,” she said.

McDowell noted that the Mojave are not opposed specifically to wind energy development, but rather its impact on an important area.

“It’s not that we’re against any type of energy development. It’s just where you put it at,” McDowell said. “And unfortunately, to people that don’t live here, don’t come from here … or don’t know the land like the Mojave people do, they see it just as a piece of desert, as a landscape than can be bulldozed and cleared.”

What Happened to This Bill? Public Land Renewable Energy Development Act

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UPDATE: I called Levin’s office and it was reintroduced in January and is HR178. Without reading it carefully it looks similar.

Last week we talked about the USG picking some priority sites for renewable energy on Federal lands.  It was proposed by Congressperson Levin (current member of House Natural Resources Committee)  of S. Cal. in 2021. Here’s his press release.

The Public Land Renewable Energy Development Act helps combat the climate crisis and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by promoting the development of wind, solar, and geothermal energy on public lands. The bill includes measures to ensure a fair return for impacted states and communities and directs revenues to fund conservation. In addition, the bill incentivizes development in lower-conflict priority areas, while ensuring impacts to wildlife, habitat, and cultural resources are avoided and minimized.

The bill establishes a revenue sharing mechanism ensuring a fair return for relevant stakeholders. The revenue sharing mechanism will distribute certain revenues derived through the bill by returning 25 percent to the state where development occurs, 25 percent to the counties of origin, 25 percent deposited into a fund for sportsmen and conservation purposes, and 25 percent directed for the purposes of more efficiently processing permit applications and reducing the backlog of renewable energy permits.

Here’s a link to the bill.

(a) PRIORITY AREAS.—
5 (1) IN GENERAL.—The Secretary, in consulta6 tion with the Secretary of Energy, shall establish
7 priority areas on covered land for geothermal, solar,
8 and wind energy projects, consistent with the prin9 ciples of multiple use (as defined in the Federal
10 Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (43
11 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.)) and the renewable energy per12 mitting goal enacted by the Consolidated Appropria13 tions Act of 2021 (Public Law 116–260). Among
14 applications for a given renewable energy source,
15 proposed projects located in priority areas for that
16 renewable energy source shall—
17 (A) be given the highest priority for
18 incentivizing deployment thereon; and
19 (B) be offered the opportunity to partici20 pate in any regional mitigation plan developed
21 for the relevant priority areas.
22 (2) ESTABLISHING PRIORITY AREAS.—
23 (A) GEOTHERMAL ENERGY.—For geo24 thermal energy, the Secretary shall establish
25 priority areas as soon as practicable, but not  later than 5 years, after the date of the enactment of this Act.
3 (B) SOLAR ENERGY.—For solar energy—
4 (i) solar designated leasing areas (in

5 cluding the solar energy zones established
6 by Bureau of Land Management Solar En

7 ergy Program, established in October
8 2012), and any subsequent land use plan
9 amendments, shall be considered to be pri10 ority areas for solar energy projects; and
11 (ii) the Secretary shall complete a
12 process to consider establishing additional
13 solar priority areas as soon as practicable,
14 but not later than 3 years, after the date
15 of the enactment of this Act.
16 (C) WIND ENERGY.—For wind energy, the
17 Secretary shall complete a process to consider
18 establishing additional wind priority areas as
19 soon as practicable, but not later than 3 years,
20 after the date of the enactment of this Act.

Something that’s interesting about this bill is who endorsed it .. (Ormat are the geothermal folks involved in the geothermal/toad litigation we talked about last week.  Anyway,

The following organizations have endorsed the bill: The Wilderness Society, American Clean Power, Natural Resources Defense Council, Solar Energy Industries Association, EDF Renewables, Ormat Technologies Inc, Trout Unlimited, National Association of Counties, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, and Outdoor Alliance.

Is Something Rare (Almost) Everywhere? Geothermal vs. Toads and the Search for Land for Renewables with Fewest (No?) Impacts

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Ormat’s Steamboat Hills geothermal plant outside Reno, Nev., supplies electricity to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. (Ormat Technologies)

 

Update: the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe is a plaintiff  with CBD on this lawsuit against this project.

Another excellent piece by Sammy Roth of the LA Times in his Boiling Point newsletter. The Times has something like 99 cents for six months which IMHO is worth getting if you only read Sammy’s work. He also has links to interesting articles on wind and solar and wildlife that I hadn’t seen. And perhaps you can sign up for his Boiling Point newsletter without being a subscriber.  This is a controversy about something considered to be good for decarbonization (geothermal) but has localized environmental impacts. We usually see this as a “good ENGO’s vs. bad industry” kind of thing, but this seems to be a “good ENGO vs. good industry” kind of thing. I like how Sammy interviews both Patrick Donnelly of CBD and folks from Ormat, the geothermal company, and tries to put the pieces together.

Looking through our lens posited yesterday considering the Biden Admin and Native people, I don’t see any mention of Native concerns in this piece (I’m checking with the reporter).  Also the Biden Admin would have to go with the science of the USFWS because of the unique science-based characteristics of ESA (Jon can correct me on this).  And perhaps their own views of “scientific integrity” as Jon brought up here yesterday.

 

The nation’s largest geothermal power company is preparing to sue the Biden administration over its decision to protect a tiny toad, in the latest high-stakes showdown between renewable energy development and wildlife conservation.

In a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — a copy of which was shared exclusively with The Times — Ormat Technologies Inc. warned Wednesday that it would sue the wildlife service in 60 days if the agency doesn’t revisit its decision to declare the Dixie Valley toad an endangered species. That decision might otherwise derail Ormat’s plan for a Nevada geothermal plant that could potentially supply climate-friendly electricity to California.

Federal scientists say the 2-inch amphibian’s wetland habitat — the only place it’s found on Earth — is threatened by Ormat’s renewable energy project. The Reno-based company disputes that conclusion, arguing it’s grounded in shoddy science.

Paul Thomsen, Ormat’s vice president of business development, told me federal officials wrongly assumed his firm’s geothermal production would drain the nearby Dixie Meadows, when the company’s tests have suggested otherwise. He also said the Biden administration had illegally invoked the Endangered Species Act based on speculative future harm to the toad.

“For us, the precedent there is terrifying,” Thomsen said. “If this action were to stand, many renewable energy projects in the West could be thwarted simply based on a concern, with no evidence that they may impact a species in the future.”

“We’re being convicted of a crime that we haven’t committed,” he added.

To help avert the worst consequences of global warming — which is already fueling deadlier and more destructive heat waves, fires, droughts and floods — the U.S. must build huge amounts of renewable energy infrastructure at a breakneck pace.

But across the American West, endangered-species concerns have emerged as a key barrier to construction of solar farms, wind turbines, power lines and lithium mines that would supply electric-car batteries. Lawsuits and protests from conservation activists, Native American tribes and rural residents are poised to slow or block a growing number of projects.

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As far as Donnelly is concerned, the geothermal industry has a “dirty little secret,” which is that its facilities frequently dry up hot springs. He pointed me to a 2000 research paper from the U.S. Geological Survey concluding that when geothermal plants are built, impacts to nearby water features such as hot springs, geysers and steam vents “should be viewed as the rule, rather than the exception.” The paper cited several decades-old examples involving Nevada plants since acquired by Ormat.

“There’s this huge body of peer-reviewed literature,” Donnelly said.

When I asked Ormat’s Thomsen about that literature, he told me the geothermal plants cited in the research paper used an older technology that the company has phased out at most of its facilities. As for Dixie Meadows, he told me Ormat’s flow testing found no direct connection between the deep geothermal reservoir and shallower springs that he said feed the wetlands.

He also noted that Ormat recently reduced the plant’s proposed size from 60 megawatts to 12 megawatts, and that the company agreed to extensive real-time monitoring to ensure the wetlands aren’t affected. He said the monitoring would cost roughly $1.5 million a year during the geothermal facility’s operation, adding to a likely construction cost of around $60 million.

Federal officials, Thomsen said, failed to take those factors into account before protecting the Dixie Valley toad last year.

“We support the Endangered Species Act,” Thomsen said. “We want it to be implemented properly.”

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An Interior Department spokesperson declined to comment on Ormat’s 60-day notice warning of a potential lawsuit.

But in its species assessment of the Dixie Valley toad, Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service cited research that it said showed the springs feeding Dixie Meadows “are not hydraulically isolated from the underlying geothermal reservoir.” As a result, the toad’s wetland habitat “can be impacted by production pumping and/or injection for the geothermal project,” the agency wrote.

Donnelly, meanwhile, pointed me to data showing that temperatures and water levels increased in one spot at Dixie Meadows after Ormat finished flow testing — a possible indication of underground hydraulic links that could put the toad at risk.

“The toads have this incredibly delicate relationship to temperature,” Donnelly said. “If you start cooling off those springs, they might all freeze to death. And if you start heating up those springs, they might all boil to death.”

Asked about the temperature and water level changes, Ormat’s senior legal counsel, Laura Jacobsen, told me via email that small amounts of data from a single spring are “far from sufficient to establish the flow test impacted the springs,” especially with temperature readings “within the variable baseline range for that spring.” The company also pointed me to a Bureau of Land Management document concluding that flow tests “indicate little to no observed changes in spring discharge conditions.”

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I’ve been shining a light on similar battles across the region through The Times’ Repowering the West series. I’m now writing Part 3, dealing with solar sprawl in southern Nevada. Next month I’ll travel to Idaho to report Part 4, about why the red state’s dominant power company set a goal of 100% clean energy even when lawmakers haven’t ordered it to do so.

In the meantime, Dixie Meadows is far from the only geothermal conflict I’m tracking. Another project contemplated by Ormat could be built just outside Gerlach, a Nevada town best known as the gateway to the Burning Man art and music festival. Local residents and Burning Man leaders are fighting to block exploratory drilling, saying a geothermal plant could industrialize their rural outpost and scare off tourists. The San Francisco Standard’s Maryann Jones Thompson wrote about the controversy.

I was also struck by a recent study from the U.S. Geological Survey, funded in part by Ormat, finding that populations of greater sage-grouse — an iconic Western bird known for its mating dance, and a prime example of the extinction crisis — “declined substantially in years following the development of the geothermal energy plants” in Nevada, as the Geological Survey described the study. The agency has built a mapping tool that it says can help companies find low-impact spots to build geothermal plants.

“It’s great that they’ve developed a tool that can identify areas that are more or less sensitive,” Ormat’s Thomsen said.

Ultimately, that’s what it’s going to come down to: finding the best places to put renewable energy. It’s as true for small-footprint geothermal plants as it is for sprawling solar farms, vast fields of wind turbines and lengthy power lines.

A person could wonder if the first step in renewable energy buildout would have been to work with companies to identify sites with less potential for wildlife and Indigenous concerns. Rather than set targets, make assumptions, fund companies, and when they are far down the road, say “oops, not there.”

Seems like we might have done better by making sure top-down determinations of what should be done with renewable energy installations are actually viable in the real world.

Celebrate Valentine’s Day with a BLM Solar EIS Scoping Meeting! Or Check Out Other Opportunities For Input

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The dark brown areas on this map depict lands in southwest Wyoming that might be suitable for utility-scale solar energy development. The image was taken from the Nature Conservancy’s “Wyoming Brightfields Energy Siting Initiative” online mapping tool. (The Nature Conservancy)
 

.Dustin Bleizeffer of Wyofile has a really nice article looking at solar in Wyoming.  Here’s the BLM page for checking out other scoping meeting opportunities (they seem to be by state and tomorrow is Wyoming). Also the powerpoints and other miscellaneous info describing the project can be found here.

“Federal land managers are calling for public input on plans to select sites for solar energy projects in Wyoming, developments that — if poorly sited — could interrupt wildlife migrations or ruin critical habitats and cultural resources

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management plans to reboot a 2012 initiative to attract more utility-scale solar energy development on federal lands, expanding its scope to include Wyoming among 10 other western states. One conservation group is already weighing in, drawing a map of where solar farms might have the least impact.

The BLM will host public scoping meetings Feb. 13 from 12:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. (click here to register), and Feb. 14 from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (click here to register). The deadline for public comment on the plan is March 1.

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Evaluating landscapes

Wyoming’s nascent commercial solar energy industry, which consists of two facilities in operation so far, has already provided an example of poor planning that harmed wildlife.

The Sweetwater Solar farm, located on BLM land north of Green River, straddles Highway 372 in an area that wildlife officials knew to be part of a pronghorn migratory route. After construction, wildlife biologists observed it created a bottleneck for the ungulates.

Such poor siting can and should be avoided, Loyka said. With more renewable energy development to come, The Nature Conservancy embarked on a West-wide effort to take inventory of public land values to learn where it makes sense to develop solar — as well as wind and other forms of renewable energy — and where the industrial development might clash with other land values.

Because utility-scale solar energy farms are typically fenced off, they can “industrialize” the lands they occupy and even interrupt wildlife corridors that provide a lifeline between seasonal habitats, Loyka said. That’s why scrutiny is critical, he said.

Some protections against industrial development already exist for U.S. Forest Service lands, sage grouse core areas and other designated wildlife and wetlands habitats. Other areas without existing protections might also warrant avoidance, depending on local knowledge, Loyka said. But there remains room for suitable development.

Despite existing land-use evaluations and continuing modeling, any attempt to truly understand opportunities for “smart” energy development requires intense “ground-truthing,” Loyka said. That’s why TNC Wyoming is soliciting input from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, county commissioners and several Wyoming conservation groups.

TNC Wyoming also recently sought input from Wyoming lawmakers during a “Camo at The Capitol” event this month.

“Right now, we’re wanting to talk to stakeholders across the state,” said Monika Leininger, TNC’s Wyoming director of energy and climate solutions. “Sportsmen are really important stakeholders because we know that you all are in touch with Wyoming wildlife and lands,” she told a crowd of lawmakers and hunters Feb. 2 at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens.

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Developers tend to prefer to build on private land because it’s easier than going through federal permitting, Loyka said. The intent of updating the BLM’s Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement is to help speed up the federal permitting process, in part, by collecting and evaluating local input.
But the prospect of intentionally encouraging renewable energy development on BLM-managed lands raises concerns of industrializing undisturbed areas.Jay Carey of Denver said his family owns property west of Larmie that’s growing into a small residential community among interspersed BLM tracts where wild horses might struggle to survive if public lands are fenced off for utility-scale solar installations.
“​​It would be very hard on the local wildlife to take another 900 acres off of the grazable land for the large animals, not to mention the access to water and for them to be able to move around,” Carey said.For more information see the program’s website.”

 

This map from a study shows year-round (2017–2019) movements of migratory pronghorn captured from the Opal herd, which migrates through the study area periodically in response to harsh winter conditions. (Screengrab/Trade-offs between utility-scale solar development and ungulates on western rangelands)

“We think there’s an intelligent way of going about how this stuff hits the landscape,” Loyka said. “We want to see this smart-from-the-start planning that looks at both the resource value and the economic value of lands and how we can protect the most high-value areas such as wildlife habitat.”

TNC’s Power of Place study builds “energy modeling tools with the latest ecosystem and wildlife habitat data to advise the deployment of clean energy infrastructure across the West.” Although the work is far from complete, the study offers an optimistic view: “Western states can affordably and reliably meet all their future energy needs, achieve economy-wide net-zero greenhouse gas emissions reductions by 2050, and avoid the loss of their most sensitive natural areas and working lands.”

Some protections against industrial development already exist for U.S. Forest Service lands, sage grouse core areas and other designated wildlife and wetlands habitats. Other areas without existing protections might also warrant avoidance, depending on local knowledge, Loyka said. But there remains room for suitable development.

Eagle Take Permitting Streamlining USFWS Rule

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Jon and SJ’s discussion of owls reminded me. of this proposed reg about eagles.

I don’t really understand too much about this proposed rule, but I do like what appears to be the capability of FWS to have already figured out that something they did in 2016 isn’t working and needs to be changed.. and they are changing it.  It also looks like “permitting reform.”

We propose amendments to these regulations to better align with the purpose and need described in the 2016 PEIS. In the 2016 Eagle Rule, the Service sought to:

(1) increase compliance by simplifying the permitting framework and increasing certainty;

(2) allow for consistent and efficient administration of the program by Service staff;

(3) regulate based on best available science and data; and

(4) enhance protection of eagles throughout their ranges by increasing implementation of avoidance, minimization, and mitigation of adverse impacts from human activities.

Since implementation of the 2016 Eagle Rule, it has become clear that the Service’s amended permitting structure did not fully achieve the goals of the 2016 PEIS. For bald eagles, populations have continued to grow. While this is good news in terms of preserving the species, it also means that bald eagles are interacting more often with human activities and infrastructure, resulting in a higher demand for permits authorizing the disturbance take and nest take of bald eagles. The current permit framework places an administrative burden on the public and the Service that is not commensurate with what is required to effectively preserve bald eagles. For golden eagles, a goal of the 2016 Eagle Rule was to increase compliance and improve consistency and efficiency relating to permitting golden eagle take at wind-energy projects. However, those goals have not been realized. While participation in the permit program by wind energy projects has increased since 2016, it still remains well below our expectations. Low application rates and permit-processing requirements that some have perceived as burdensome have resulted in few permits being issued for wind projects as compared to the number of operational wind projects in areas where golden eagles occur. As a result, golden eagles continue to be taken without implementation of conservation actions to offset that take.

The current permit framework places an administrative burden on the public and the Service that is not commensurate with what is required to effectively preserve bald eagles.

I think that’s probably true of many areas in the broad area of permitting.

Also perhaps someone could explain.. as to the golden eagles, are they saying that people are taking eagles without permits? Wouldn’t that require some enforcement action? Or is it too hard to figure out who is doing this?  Hopefully someone out there knows more about this.

I did find some news stories about the broader topic of wind farms and eagles, but not about these tweaks to the regs.

The Manchin One-Pager on Regulatory Reform, Helpful or Not?

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The stars and the faint arm of the Milky Way can be seen over a wind farm just north of Medicine Bow on January 3, just before moonrise. The glow along the horizon is light from Casper, more than 80 miles away.
Kyle Grantham, Casper Star-Tribune

 

So it appears that there are at least three policy positions surrounding decarbonization of energy. Now remember that decarbonization is an environmental goal.  But many different kinds of decarbonizing projects have environmental impacts (think powerlines, wind turbines, solar arrays, rare metals and uranium mining).  Some people think we must achieve all kinds of targets within 10 years, or the planet is kaput. Others look at our track record in the US and say, we can’t get this stuff built in 10 years with current procedures.  If this is an emergency, we should invoke emergency procedures.

So we have some people … 1) decarbonization will work without regulatory reform, agencies should just hire more folks (more gas same brake, in my terminology);

2) we want regulatory reform for some projects (wind and solar) and not for others (oil and gas);

3) Let’s get regulatory reform for key energy projects, including oil and gas (this is the Manchin point of view).

These debates are related to our forest world via energy projects sited on FS and BLM land, and whether proposed reforms would make sense for other types of forest projects.

In this Salt Lake City Tribune article:

Although the text of the bill has not been made public, a one-page memo on Manchin’s website indicates it could include significant reforms to NEPA.

Over 650 environmental groups from across the country are opposing the bill, which they fear will amount to a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry. In a letter to Congressional leaders, the groups wrote that the “legislative language that was clearly drafted in consultation with the American Petroleum Institute (API),” a reference to a watermark on a leaked memo with the letters API.

The prospect of altering bedrock environmental law and permitting processes has divided the Democratic caucus. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, announced his opposition to attaching the bill to must-pass spending legislation, and over 70 members of the House of Representatives have signed a similar letter.

In a new policy paper published this week, Pleune referenced the Manchin deal and argued that weakening environmental protections in the name of expediency would be a mistake.

“Accepting unfettered environmental degradation in exchange for clean energy would achieve short-term gains in exchange for long-term pain,” she wrote. “The unrelenting challenges caused by climate change provide an almost daily reminder that downplaying environmental risks does not make them go away.”

Do the ideas in the memo seem like “unfettered environmental degradation” to you?  Or do you think they are unnecessary, or won’t work to speed things up? What has been your own experience, and would any of these help? Let’s move past the rhetoric to the reality and practicality.

Energy Permitting Provisions
*Designate and prioritize projects of strategic national importance.
 Direct the President to designate and periodically update a list of at least 25 high-priority energy
infrastructure projects and prioritize permitting for these projects.
 Require a balanced list of project types, including: critical minerals, nuclear, hydrogen, fossil fuels, electric transmission, renewables, and carbon capture, sequestration, storage, and removal.
 Criteria for selecting designated projects includes: reducing consumer energy costs, improving energy reliability, decarbonization potential, and promoting energy trade with our allies.
*Set maximum timelines for permitting reviews, including two years for NEPA reviews for major
projects and one year for lower-impact projects.
 Require a single inter-agency environmental review document and concurrent agency review processes.
 Designate a lead agency to coordinate inter-agency review.
 Expand eligibility for the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (FPISC) streamlining and transparency programs to ensure smaller energy projects, critical minerals and mining, and other key programs can benefit from FPISC. Provide FPISC funds to accelerate permitting.
 Improve the process for developing categorical exclusions under NEPA.

*Improve Section 401 of the Clean Water Act by incorporating improvements from both the Trump
and Biden administrations.
 Require one of four final actions within one year of certification requests: grant, grant with conditions, deny, or waive certification.
 Clarify that the basis of review is water quality impacts from the permitted activity, based on federal, State, and Tribal standards.
 Require certification applications to include available information on potential water quality impacts.
 Prohibit State or Tribal agencies from requesting project applicants to withdraw applications to stop/pause/restart the certification clock.
 Require States and Tribes to publish clear requirements for water quality certification requests, or else default to federal requirements.

*Address excessive litigation delays.
 Set statute of limitations for court challenges.
 Require that if a federal court remands or vacates a permit for energy infrastructure, the court must set and enforce a reasonable schedule and deadline, not to exceed 180 days, for the agency to act on remand.
 Require random assignment of judges for all federal circuit courts.
* Clarify FERC jurisdiction regarding the regulation of interstate hydrogen pipeline, storage, import, and export facilities.
*Enhance federal government permitting authority for interstate electric transmission facilities that have been determined by the Secretary of Energy to be in the national interest.
 Replace DOE’s national interest electric transmission corridor process with a national interest determination by the Secretary of Energy that allows FERC to issue a construction permit.
 Require FERC to ensure costs for transmission projects are allocated to customers that benefit.
 Allow FERC to approve payments from utilities to jurisdictions impacted by a transmission project.

*Complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Require the relevant agencies to take all necessary actions to
permit the construction and operation of the Mountain Valley Pipeline and give the DC Circuit jurisdiction
over any further litigation.