Good morning and happy Friday,

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This week, Texas set a record for the amount of power it got from the sun (36.11%), and BloombergNEF reports that global energy transition investments hit a record $1.8 trillion in 2023.

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And even though 2023 was a historically unproductive year in Congress, that didn’t stop the energy industry from “boosting spending significantly” to lobby “on a host of priorities,” including permitting reform and the IRA. 

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Last but not least, if you’re looking for something fun to do this Valentine’s Day, what better way to show your love for clean energy than by participating in this meeting on siting projects in rural areas, hosted by the Rural Climate Partnership? 

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Read on for more.

Ohio State’s mascot Brutus Buckeye may have a cheery disposition, but a recent overview of Ohio’s utility-scale solar market in 2023 underscores that things are far from sanguine for clean energy developers. Here are a few headlines:

• Solar applications filed with the Ohio Power Siting Board (OPSB) hit their peak in 2021, but thanks mostly to Senate Bill 52, which was passed that year and created “restricted areas” in which the OPSB can’t permit wind and solar, applications went off a cliff in 2022 and continued their decline in 2023.
• In 2023, more counties jumped on the “ban solar” bandwagon, even in places where no solar projects were proposed. Here again, S.B. 52 “empowered counties to pass restriction zones over all or part of the county preemptively rejecting all new solar projects.”
• In response to concerns that “solar development represents a loss of farmland,” the OPSB will now require “the development of a comprehensive Agricultural Protection Plan (APP) designed to minimize impacts to agricultural land use during construction, operation, maintenance, and decommissioning,” among other new permit conditions.

Singing with the Supremes. 2022 saw the first OPSB denials of solar projects that failed to meet a vague legal requirement that the project be “in the public interest.” Unsurprisingly, the affected projects all challenged the determination, and in response to denied applications for rehearing, two have appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court. Stay tuned.

States have a vital role to play in achieving net-zero emissions and creating a prosperous clean energy future, and a thought piece from global consulting giant McKinsey & Co. lays out a roadmap for how they can help decarbonize the U.S. economy. Here are a few important directions:

• The ability of states to influence the energy sector through policies and regulatory frameworks is unique, and as such it behooves them to be proactive and adopt comprehensive strategies.
• McKinsey estimates that deploying U.S. climate solutions at scale will require more than $27 trillion of capital spending through 2050 ($900 billion per year on average). The IRA and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) authorize hundreds of billions in spending, but “Now is the time for states to consider how to access and use this financial support.”
• The article outlines three tactical steps state leaders can take to efficiently and equitably meet net-zero goals, in addition to highlighting four essential roles for state leaders: convenor, planner, coordinator, and catalyst.

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You can get there from here. In summary, the article makes the case that state-level action and leadership are essential if the U.S. is to achieve a successful and equitable clean-energy transition. “By initiating and accelerating state-level decarbonization – and playing one or more of four essential roles –  state leaders can help scale climate technologies, achieve net-zero objectives, and ensure the nation and planet benefit.”

• Empty Threats: The 2024 election and the IRA
• Chinese Twin: Can solar manufacturing succeed in the U.S?
• The Holdouts: The quest for a better power grid
• Painted Ladies: REWI’s painted blade study
• Upping the Ante: Senators call for solar tariff increases

• New Jersey’s BPU clarifies solar siting restrictions
• LTE: Renewable energy helps the community
• Lee County, IL ZBA to consider special use permit for 600-megawatt solar farm
• PSC gets public input on wind farm proposed for North Dakota coal country
• Mohawk Planning Board requiring new application for solar project
• Bannock County, Idaho officials rush to approve ordinance to regulate proposed solar 
• Solar moratorium approved by Hartland, NY town board
• Tazewell County Board approves a new solar farm in Illinois

Oil and gas operations consume a lot of power, and as pressure mounts for them to cut GHG emissions, many have ditched diesel-power generators in favor of electricity. In places like the Permian Basin) of West Texas, that means a lot of the power they’re getting is coming from wind and solar, further cutting their carbon footprints.

While that may sound like a positive trend from a climate perspective, it’s offset by the fact that “the Permian produces nearly 6 million barrels of oil a day, up from just 1.3 million barrels about a decade ago.”

In any case, oil and gas companies in the region need a lot of power – 16 GW, according to S&P Global – and today, less than a third of that is coming from the grid, because a lack of transmission capacity is creating bottlenecks. While they lobby for more infrastructure and wait for the electrical grid to catch up, some producers are setting up their own natural gas generation.

Lack of access to grid power threatens to stall the sector’s efforts to further curb emissions, and that’s a pretty big deal. According to the International Energy Agency, “using electricity to power equipment instead of diesel or natural gas could halve the 700 million metric tons of carbon emissions from global oil and gas production by 2030.”

Of course, we would be remiss if we were to mention the Permian without a nod to its most famous fictional tourist attraction, the Permian Basin Superorganism, aka Mystery Flesh Pit National Park. Happy reading!