Electricity generated from renewables surpassed coal in the United States for the first time in 2022, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) announced Monday. Renewables also surpassed nuclear generation for the second year in a row, after doing so for the first time in 2021. Growth in wind and solar significantly drove the increase in renewable energy and contributed 14% of the electricity produced domestically in 2022. Hydropower contributed 6%, and biomass and geothermal sources generated less than 1%. California produced 26% of the national utility-scale solar electricity followed by Texas with 16% and North Carolina with 8%.
The board of San Diego Community Power committed Thursday to using 100% renewable energy by 2035, in an urgent effort to slow the effects of climate change. It sets the board’s deadline a decade earlier than the recently adopted state targets of supplying all commercial power through renewable energy by 2045 and reaching carbon neutrality by that year. The resolution didn’t provide a detailed list of actions needed to meet that target. But a San Diego Community Power spokesperson says the agency has a purchase agreement with Viking Solar Energy Generation and Battery Storage Project in Imperial Valley and is reviewing proposals from other solar developers, with projects planned for 2026 through 2028.
A Reno-based geothermal company is threatening to sue the Biden administration over its decision last year to designate a rare toad as an endangered species. Ormat Technologies Inc., the country’s largest geothermal power company, warned Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in a letter Wednesday of an impending lawsuit if the Dixie Valley Toad remains listed as an endangered species. The letter, which was first obtained by the Los Angeles Times, alleges that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act when it listed the Dixie Valley toad as an endangered species late last year.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on March 22 approved three sets of incentives for NV Energy, a Berkshire Hathaway Energy subsidiary, to build its roughly $2.5 billion Greenlink Nevada transmission project. FERC’s decision comes during a critical period for transmission development in the United States. A build-out of the transmission system is seen as needed to bolster grid reliability amid increasingly extreme weather and to provide access to renewable energy to meet greenhouse gas reduction goals.
The technology group Wärtsilä has completed two major interconnected energy storage systems in south Texas totaling 200 MW and owned by Eolian L.P., a portfolio company of Global Infrastructure Partners. Construction of the projects began in January 2021 to meet the flexibility and reliability needs of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas market.
Construction has begun on a major wind-energy project north of Flagstaff located on Babbitt Ranch land. The Salt River Project will purchase the energy generated by the 161 MW project being developed by the company NextEra Energy. The project is set to start delivering energy by 2024.
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