Good morning and happy Friday,

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In this week’s headlines, California announces a plan for 100% clean energy by 2045 while the state sees a new wave of pushback on solar, the Treasury Department released updated guidance for a program that offers incentives for clean energy manufacturing in communities that have been dependent on coal (worth a look) and a new report finds and aggregates 228 local restrictions against wind and solar from across the country (might want to share this with your origination teams!)

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Oh, and the U.S. debt deal put energy permitting reform’s thorniest issue (transmission) in the “future problems” category. 

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Read on for more. 

In his opinion piece this week, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman counters Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ notion of a “woke mind virus” by positing the presence of an “anti-woke mind virus.” He argues his case in the context of the anti-renewables movement currently gripping Texas and other states across the country. Here are the contours of this contagion:

• Krugman argues that “A significant faction of Americans...hates anything it considers woke,” resisting sacrifice or “even mild inconvenience in the name of the public good” – and that this anti-woke mind virus even infects attitudes on issues that are woke-adjacent, such as limiting activities that harm the environment.
• In Texas, embracing an “anti-woke” mindset means Republicans staunchly oppose wind and solar development – despite the fact that these technologies have significantly enriched the state and even the fossil-fuel industry – because it’s a way to fight back against perceived liberal hegemony.
• In a similar vein, CleanTechnica notes that renewables have become a flash point in America’s culture wars. For example, North Dakota has threatened to sue its neighbor Minnesota over the latter’s impending adoption of policies that call for “100% carbon-free electricity and 55% renewable electricity by 2040,” because this would preclude purchasing energy from NoDak’s coal-fired power plants.

Contortionists. “Anti-woke” Texas Republicans have shown they’re willing to contort themselves into a position that abandons “free-market, anti-regulation ideology” because it’s a way to fight back against those they perceive as their enemies. But as any student of history knows, tribal politics don’t pay off in the long run. Instead of waging war on those with different ideological viewpoints, we should be joining forces to win the big battle to transform our relationship between carbon and the economy.

Passage of the Inflation Reduction Act last August filled clean energy advocates with hope, and as state legislative sessions wrap up, the IRA is beginning to bear fruit. Colorado and Minnesota have passed policies that will incentivize adoption of clean technology, and other states are following suit – although it isn’t smooth sailing everywhere. Here are some notable moves:

• In May, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed a package of bills that aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 100% by 2050, including automating and streamlining local solar energy permitting. A new decarbonization tax credit law creates some $200 million in tax incentives to promote low-carbon, clean energy initiatives.
• Not to be outdone, lawmakers in the Great Lakes State have passed a $2 billion budget bill that “dedicates hundreds of millions of dollars to cutting greenhouse gas emissions,” in part by providing tax rebates that incentivize the adoption of clean energy technologies.
• Things are less straightforward in Montana, where residents enjoy a constitutionally guaranteed right to a clean environment – and the country’s largest recoverable coal reserves. This awkward juxtaposition of competing interests has, among other things, resulted in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit in which 16 Montana youths charge that the state government’s support for the fossil fuel industry violates their constitutional rights.

States are key. The Montana case is scheduled to go to trial this month. Meanwhile, proponents of the IRA will continue looking to state legislatures to take actions that leverage its potential. In a December webinar, Mike O’Boyle, electricity director at Energy Innovation noted that “Though the legislation is transformative, the IRA is not sufficient on its own to achieve the promise of rapid emissions reductions in the electricity sector. State action is also essential.”

• Totally Bananas: There Is NIMBY and now there is BANANA
• Mid-west Momentum: Minnesota Emerges as a leader in renewables transition
• Wind Economics: Will wind face more competition from nuclear?
• Energy Independence: Ukraine Sees New Virtue in Wind Power: It’s Harder to Destroy

• Open Road Renewables receives OPSB approval for 144-MW solar project
• Toyota to support Kentucky's largest solar project
• Commissioners approve moratorium for wind in Akron, Colorado

OK, this week’s dispatch from the Mad Scientists department is a bit of a stretch, but it’s kinda cool, so stay with me. Researchers have figured out how to produce energy from thin air – although not too thin, because it requires humidity – and nearly any material can be used to accomplish this, “producing clean energy with little pollution.”

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The basic idea is that these air-powered generators – called “Air-gen” units – would function as tiny batteries. The devices, “the size of a fingernail and thinner than a single hair, (are) dotted with tiny holes known as nanopores.” Water in the air passes through the nanopores, creating a charge imbalance that effectively produces a continuously operational battery.

While the concept is, ahem, “electrifying,” the technology is a ways away from shocking the energy sector. One unit produces “almost enough to power a dot of light on a big screen,” and it would take a mere billion or so Air-gens, “stacked to be roughly the size of a refrigerator,” to produce a kilowatt and “partly power a home in ideal conditions.” Still, if researchers can figure out how to scale the power output while also reducing the size of the devices, someday we could all be walking around with personal power packs!