The White House’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) has proposed a rule that would streamline and accelerate the permitting process for new renewable power facilities, as the U.S. looks to decarbonize its energy mix. The proposed rule, the Bipartisan Permitting Reform Implementation Rule, would enforce changes to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a broad piece of legislation that oversees permitting for projects on federal land and was signed into law in the 1970s. The proposed changes include imposing a two-year limit on environmental impact studies for new projects on federal land and adding page limits for documents pertaining to environmental approval applications, in an effort to speed up the permitting process that has hamstrung many new clean energy projects.
Federal regulators on July 27 approved new rules to speed up the process for connecting wind and solar projects to the electric grid, in an attempt to reduce the growing delays that have become one of the biggest obstacles to building renewable energy in the United States. More than 10,000 energy projects — mostly wind, solar, and batteries — were seeking permission to connect to electric grids at the end of 2022, up from 5,600 two years earlier. It now takes five years for the typical power plant to get approval, twice what it did a decade ago, and developers say the process has become dysfunctional. The new rules by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees electricity markets, aim to streamline that approval process, known as the interconnection queue.
The California Energy Commission (CEC) approved over $17 million on July 26 to advance floating offshore wind research into environmental monitoring technologies to reduce impacts to wildlife as the state works to meet its goal of 25 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2045. The CEC set a preliminary goal of up to 5 GW of offshore wind by 2030 and 25 GW by 2045.
The CEC on July 26 approved a new program that would tap into thousands of distributed solar-charged and standalone batteries located at homes and businesses throughout the state to meet the state’s growing electricity needs, particularly on hot summer evenings. The concept is sometimes called a virtual power plant (VPP) and it is now featured in an innovative new part of the CEC’s Demand Side Grid Support program. Approximately 100,000 solar-charged batteries are currently installed at businesses and homes throughout the state.
WattEV has received $40.5 million in grant funding to develop additional electric truck charging stations in Northern California and Oregon. This announcement comes right after launching their latest public charging depot for electric commercial trucks at the Port of Long Beach. The fresh capital has been earmarked for constructing a solar-powered truck charging depot near Sacramento International Airport and a grid-connected charging depot in Salem, Oregon.
Clearway Energy has closed $421 million in financing for the 147 MW/588 MWh four-hour Rosamond Central lithium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS) in Kern County. Expected to reach commercial operation in 2024, the project will be paired with the already operational 192 MW Rosamond Central solar PV project.
The battery boom continues in the San Diego region, with an energy storage project unveiled this week in Chula Vista that can power nearly 3,000 homes for each hour it provides electricity to the grid. Six battery storage containers owned and operated by local renewable energy company EnerSmart will deliver 6 MW and 12 MWh of energy by interconnecting with a nearby San Diego Gas & Electric substation, promising to relieve strain on the state’s power system and reduce the chances of blackouts.
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