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Good morning and happy Friday,

An EnergyWire article this week looks at how competing market plans from CalISO and an Arkansas-based grid operator are moving toward federal review, meaning “governance concerns have gone from theoretical to imminent as utilities decide which market they will join.” And that’s not the only story of interest involving FERC this week, as the departure of a key regulator “threatens to stymie clean power.”

In other news, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released its long-awaited update to the Eagle Rule. The revisions include expanding the permitting options available for wind development in areas with eagle risk and are expected to facilitate wind energy development by reducing uncertainty. That said, industry insiders have noted some ambiguity in the rule.

Last but not least, a new report finds that a significant percentage of energy storage systems have fire detection and suppression defects.

Read on for more.

Follow the Pipeline

In Michigan, a ballot initiative seeks to overturn part of the state’s Clean Energy Future legislation passed last November. The initiative positions itself as a grassroots effort, but a report released last fall points to several ties between the folks leading the initiative and the fossil fuel industry. Here’s a quick overview:

Kevon Martis, the Lenawee County commissioner spearheading the effort, says it’s “funded entirely by rural residents and receives no industry support of any kind.” However, these exercises usually ring in at around $8 million a pop – and “They’re not getting that from…$10 or $20 contributions.”
The watchdog group Energy and Policy Institute says the ballot initiative has received messaging help from a public relations firm that has represented fossil fuel interests, including pipeline companies – raising questions about who’s footing the multi-million-dollar bill for the ballot.
The ballot initiative frames itself as protecting property rights, but many landowners want to host renewable energy projects – and feel that opponents of renewables “are actually undermining landowners’ property rights and often don’t understand the financial pressures facing farmers.”

⚡️ The Takeaway

Expertise matters. While opponents of MI’s legislation believe it wipes out local control over land use decisions, proponents argue state-level oversight is necessary to expedite clean energy development and meet the targets set by the MI Healthy Climate Plan, arguing it’s reasonable to allow the Michigan Public Service to help make decisions about the siting of large energy projects “just as they oversee pipelines and energy transmission infrastructure.” For what it’s worth, Colorado lawmakers seem to agree and are prepping legislation to limit local power over wind and solar projects.

To Solar or Not to Solar?

A new study looks at the factors affecting Pennsylvania farmers’ decisions to embrace or reject solar leases. The study’s lead author is an assistant professor of community development and engagement at Penn State who was inspired to research the issue by a family member who’s a dairy farmer. Here are a few things moooving the needle in the Keystone state:

The study’s sample size was small, consisting of just nine farmers from across the state who had been offered and/or accepted a solar lease, and nine “solar stakeholders” including municipal officials, lawyers involved with solar leases, and solar company representatives.
A key takeaway is that increased income alone isn’t sufficient to convince farmers to lease their land – other factors include the productivity of the land as well as its historical importance to the individual’s family.
In this context, the potential for agrovoltaics stands out as something worthwhile exploring. Study participants indicated dual land use options “did not factor...into their current long-term plans.”

⚡️ The Takeaway

A magnificent microcosm. Noting that “Pennsylvania has a complex mixed-use landscape with long, complicated histories of energy extraction, like coal mining and fracking, in rural communities,” the lead author believes this backdrop “provides a fascinating opportunity to understand how renewable energy transitions build from what has happened in the past toward something new.”

Naturally Gassy: Natural gas is set to overtake coal as the largest source of emissions from U.S. power plants
Lean on Me: Wind and solar are reliable in extreme weather
Yin Meet Yang: The Planet Needs Solar. Can We Build It Without Harming Nature?
Power Struggle: Some Midwest states seek to ban wind and solar projects

A Hot Way to Cool the Planet

Many moons ago, we told you about a major breakthrough in nuclear fusion, which has the potential to someday deliver ‘near-limitless energy.’

Well, we’re not quite there yet, but we are another step closer: last week, researchers in England announced that they had set a nuclear fusion record. Specifically, they were able to sustain 69 megajoules of fusion energy – enough to power roughly 12,000 households – for five seconds, using just 0.2 milligrams of fuel.

As you may recall, nuclear fusion involves combining atoms and has been the holy grail of researchers for decades. It’s the same process that powers the sun and other stars, and if it could be deployed on a large scale, “it would offer an energy source devoid of the pollution and greenhouse gases caused by burning of fossil fuels.”

To achieve their feat, scientists and engineers used the Joint European Torus (JET) — a huge, donut-shaped machine known as a tokamak – into which they fed deuterium and tritium.

They then raised temperatures in the machine to 150 million degrees Celsius – around 10 times hotter than the core of the sun – to generate fusion energy. Forced by the extreme heat to fuse together, the deuterium and tritium formed helium, releasing enormous amounts of heat in the process – heat which is subsequently harnessed to produce electricity. Sounds like a hot way to cool down the planet.