After setbacks, the Biden administration is talking about sustainable energy gains
The Biden administration on Monday announced progress on 15 major renewable energy projects, a clear effort to instill confidence in a sector facing major challenges.
All of the development is on federal lands in the West, including a geothermal lease sale in twelve Northern Nevada counties, a new transmission line west of Phoenix and the completed construction of more than 800 megawatts of solar in Southern California.
“This administration is taking an all-hands-on-deck approach toward ambitious clean energy goals,” said Deb Haaland, secretary of the Department of the Interior, which oversees public lands.
The government plans to issue permits for 25 gigawatts of renewable energy on public lands by 2025, enough to power about five million homes. It’s a goal that could be surpassed if all the projects announced Monday reach completion.
The announcements come at a time of setbacks for offshore wind farms. Orsted, a Danish developer, recently announced that this is the case the cancellation of two planned wind farms off the coast of New Jerseyciting supply chain issues, global inflation and rising interest rates.
Avangrid, a subsidiary of Spanish utility Iberdrola, has terminated a long-term power purchase agreement for the Park City Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts. Over the summer, Avangrid withdrew from another project with Commonwealth Wind for an offshore farm south of Martha’s Vineyard.
According to consultancy ClearView Energy Partners, 24 percent of contracted offshore wind capacity is now at risk. The cancellations threaten the government’s goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030.
The problems with renewable energy extend to electric vehicles. General Motors CEO Mary Barra acknowledged a “bumpy” transition as the company announced it would miss its goal of building 100,000 electric vehicles in the second half of this year and another 400,000 in the first six months of 2024 . Honda scrapped a $5 billion deal with General Motors to build an affordable electric vehicle. Ford Motor announced it has postponed the start of production at one of its two electric vehicle battery plants in Kentucky.
Republicans opposed to a transition away from fossil fuels say the headwinds have proven that clean energy is not economically viable.
“President Biden’s green energy obsession is driving up the cost of living and undermining the American economy,” said Sen. John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming. “Even billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded loans are not enough to make his green economic nightmare work.”
Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, said the Inflation Reduction Act that President Biden signed last year to invest $370 billion in clean energy was not enough to address inflation and rising interest rates.
But John Larsen, a partner at Rhodium Group, a nonpartisan energy research firm, called the economic challenges “a bump in the road” and noted there were bright spots.
A record number of 300,000 electric vehicles were sold in the United States in the third quarter of 2023, approximately 8 percent of all car sales. Manufacturers are expected to sell one million electric vehicles this year, another record, Larsen said.
Clean electricity installations were also affected record of almost 6 gigawatts this year. That’s 13 percent more than a year ago, he said. And a report that Rhodium did with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed that $213 billion had been invested in clean energy production and deployment in the United States between mid-2022 and mid-2023, an increase of 37 percent over the previous year.
“So far, 2023 continues to look promising on net,” Mr. Larsen said. “If we had the same conversation again in a year’s time, it would be disturbing.”
The Interior Department’s announcement highlighted two major solar energy projects now underway: a 500-megawatt photovoltaic facility in Riverside County, California, that could power 146,000 homes, and the nearby Arlington Solar Energy Center that generates 364 megawatts to to supply 111,000 homes with electricity. Both projects include battery energy storage.
This week, the Bureau of Land Management, the agency under the Department of the Interior that manages 245 million acres of public lands, will release a draft environmental analysis of a 500-kilovolt transmission project through Utah and Nevada that will receive federal funding. The agency also plans to approve construction of another 500-kilovolt transmission line that will cross public lands about 60 miles west of Phoenix. When completed, the line will supply electricity from a 150-megawatt solar generating facility in Maricopa County, Ariz.
The Bureau of Land Management also announces a geothermal lease sale offering 45 parcels totaling 135,067 acres in Nevada, seeking public comment for and designing seven solar projects in Nevada expected to generate 5.3 gigawatts of electricity of environmental assessments are being developed for a geothermal exploration. project in Lyon County, Nev., as well as a 700-megawatt solar photovoltaic and battery energy storage system in Yuman, Ariz.
Ms. Haaland said the Biden administration has approved 46 clean energy projects since 2021, including six solar farms, 10 geothermal facilities and 20 transmission lines on about 35,000 acres of federal land. Together these would produce electricity for more than 3.5 million households.