NetZero Insider Weekly Intelligence Report: Resources

Welcome to another NetZero Resources Intelligence Report, a day late because of the holiday to honor fallen American military personnel, but no less full of news.

We start off with three developments with Northeast utilities, each bearing on the clean energy transition in New York or New England.

National Grid announced it would invest $35 billion in its New York and Massachusetts infrastructure over the next five years, about 60% of it for electrical upgrades needed to accommodate the decarbonization goals of those states. John Cropley has the story, which includes news that the U.K. company plans to sell National Grid Renewables, its U.S. onshore renewables business.
Cropley also covered the announcement by Iberdrola that it would acquire the 18.4% stake in Avangrid that it does not already own. The Spanish energy company and its Connecticut-based subsidiary have significant clean energy goals: Avangrid has 8.7 GW of renewable capacity in 24 states and is a partner in the first large-scale U.S. offshore wind farm.
The Massachusetts DPU approved agreements between Constellation Energy and the state’s investor-owned gas utilities to keep the Everett LNG import facility operating through May 2030. Jon Lamson reports that the utilities have pressed to keep Everett open as a reliability measure, and that environmental advocates opposed extending the operating life of this key piece of fossil fuel infrastructure.

It was also a busy week for wind energy news off the nation’s east, west and south coasts.

Federal regulators issued their final environmental impact statement on the Atlantic Shores proposal. Hugh Morley reports that the wind farm is expected to have “major” impacts on fishing, ship traffic, the North Atlantic right whale and the view from land if it is built as planned off the New Jersey coast.
Cropley has a story on the impact of the modernized federal regulations for offshore wind energy development that will take effect July 15, based on interviews with three offshore wind industry veterans, each with a distinct perspective.
Two recently released studies look at the specific challenges of building offshore wind energy generation in the Gulf of Mexico. Cropley focuses his writing on the threat posed by the hurricanes that hit the region regularly and hard: The report concludes some classes of turbine will be at elevated risk there.
The U.S. offshore wind industry trade group Oceantic Network authored a new report on steps needed to make a future floating wind industry thrive on the West Coast. Cropley has the details, a recurring theme of which is “do not repeat the mistakes made on the East Coast.”
Also on the West Coast, NetZero Insider’s Ayla Burnett has a story out of the Pacific Offshore Wind Summit, at which developers called for California to send clear market signals by setting an interim goal of 10 GW of floating wind installed by 2035 on its way to 25 GW by 2045.

Finally, Steve Huntoon offers a reality check on long-duration energy storage in an opinion piece pointing out the inescapable need to backstop wind and solar generation and the fantastically high cost of meeting that need with battery technology. Natural gas-fired generation with carbon capture is a better option, he writes.

Other news media served up an array of coverage of other subjects this past week:

The Associated Press has a piece on a powerful Iowa tornado that, along with the tragedy of human fatalities, caused a rare incident of toppled wind turbines.
E&E News examines a major hurdle to widespread use of clean hydrogen: transporting it from where it is generated to where it is needed.
Renewable Energy World has a blurb on the new Baldy Mesa solar-plus-storage farm in the Mojave Desert, where Amazon is using machine learning models to optimize performance by analyzing up to 33 billion data points per year.
BloombergNEF reports that investment in power grids will need to exceed investment in renewable energy generation in order to meet the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. Oh, and meeting that goal will cost $34 trillion more than previously projected, BNEF added.
Finally, The Revelator takes a look at the U.S. wood pellet industry’s environmental impact as it supplies biomass fuel for power generation in Europe and Asia, where it is subsidized as a form of renewable energy.

All this and much more is gathered in this week’s Intelligence Report:

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Biofuels
Biogas
Biomass
Carbon Capture
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Fossil Fuels
Grid Enhancing Technologies
Hydrogen
Hydropower
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Minerals
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Biofuels

International

U.S. Biofuels Maker Defends Used Cooking Oil From China

An increase in UCO shipments from China has stirred speculation that some imports may not be authentic and instead are mixed with fresh vegetable oils, potentially undermining U.S. biofuel laws. AgWeb

U.S.

Biofuel groups ask Supreme Court to review Fifth Circuit Court's SRE decision

At issue is the U.S. EPA's denial of several small refinery exemption petitions. Ethanol Producer