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Good morning and happy Friday,
The world said goodbye to Pope Francis, the first climate pope, this week. The 266th pontiff “championed environmental protection” and “framed climate change as an urgent spiritual issue.”
Environmental advocacy groups and climate non-profits braced for the worst amid rumors of an Earth Day strike at their tax-exempt status, but the White House said they weren’t being targeted.
As companies reported their first-quarter results, tariffs dominated clean energy earnings calls. Tesla had a dismal Q1 that was “rescued by a lucrative side hustle” – energy storage – but tariffs could have an outsized impact on that part of the business.
Meanwhile, Heatmap reports that all eyes are on Texas as anti-renewables bills advance, “despite a large number of landowners and ranchers testifying against” one of the bills.
Lastly, signaling a major shift in energy politics, wind, solar, and battery storage have overtaken natural gas as the nation’s “bridge fuel,” says NextEra Energy CEO John Ketchum.
Read on for more.
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The Elephant in the Room
In a guest blog post this week, Brian Cashion, director of engineering at Firetrace International, writes that focusing on the impact of tariffs on energy storage “distracts from the bigger elephant in the room” – community opposition – and that public pushback presents the greatest threat to the burgeoning BESS market. Here’s an overview:
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Mr. Cashion argues that the BESS industry should focus “on addressing local push back, tackling misconceptions around [the technology’s] impressive safety record, and educating citizens on the benefits of BESS.”
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Specifically, he advocates for proactively consulting local planning authorities and fire services on site design and “engaging local communities from the outset,” with a particular focus on explaining the benefits of BESS and safety protocols, especially related to fire risk.
- On that point, however, he notes that EPRI’s 2024 white paper on BESS failure incidents found that between 2018-2023, “BESS failure incidents dropped by a whopping 97%.” That equates to “one fire in every 35 GW of batteries installed,” making such incidents quite rare.
⚡️ The Takeaway
Demographics are not destiny. It can be tempting to think that support or opposition to clean energy cleaves along party lines, but many parts of the country illustrate that this isn’t always the case. A drive across Iowa means passing countless farms with “Trump signs and wind turbines,” and most residents embrace the massive economic benefits wind energy brings to their state. As the BESS sector contends with rising scrutiny, now is the time to double down on communications strategies that center safety, reliability, and local value—before misinformation fills the vacuum.
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Queue Jumping?
Interconnection queue reform is a hot topic for clean energy developers. In February, FERC’s approval of PJM’s Reliability Resource Initiative raised the ire of some in the industry, and now a similar situation is unfolding in MISO, where a recent proposal was supported by incumbent utilities but panned by the clean energy crowd – here’s why:
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MISO’s proposal would “allow power plant owners to interconnect to the grid at a different location when they replace a retiring generator” as long as it can be demonstrated that “the new interconnection point is ‘electrically equivalent’ to the original point and that the change will not harm the grid operator’s transmission system.”
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Several utilities commented in favor of this idea, saying it could “support a wide variety of resource types” and would be more cost-efficient, “potentially by preventing redundant high voltage lines from being built.”
- Clean energy trade groups disagreed, saying the proposal “would result in an unjust, unreasonable and unduly discriminatory interconnection process that is inconsistent with FERC precedent.”
⚡️ The Takeaway
No cutting the line. The clean energy camp’s central argument is that MISO’s proposal “would effectively allow incumbent generators to jump ahead in interconnection queues, likely driving up network upgrade costs to other interconnection customers by taking up transmission capacity they had expected to use,” adding that “substitute points of interconnection” shouldn’t necessarily get a pass on the rigorous impact studies other interconnection customers are required to perform.
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Hot & Salty
Back at the end of January, we told you about how China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), also known as the "artificial sun,” set a new record for nuclear fusion. This week we have news from the Middle Kingdom about a different kind of reactor: one that uses thorium as the radioactive fuel source.
“Egads!” you may be thinking: “Wasn’t there something about this technology in declassified U.S. documents?” Correctamundo! “In the 1960s, American researchers built and tested early molten salt reactors, but…eventually shelved the program in favor of uranium-based technology,” leaving the research available to the public. But we digress.
Chinese scientists began building a 2 MW thorium molten salt reactor in the Gobi Desert in 2018, and it began operating in 2024. This is a big deal, because “experts have long viewed thorium reactors as the next leap in energy innovation.” In fact, “some scientists estimate that a single thorium-rich mine in Inner Mongolia could theoretically supply China’s energy needs for tens of thousands of years.”
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Earlier this month it was revealed that the scientists had achieved a major breakthrough in that they were able to load fresh fuel into the reactor while it was operating. The feat prompted the project’s lead scientist to opine that China “now lead(s) the global frontier” in the technology.
The next step is already underway – a 10 MW thorium molten salt reactor that is scheduled to reach criticality by 2030. Researchers are also exploring the potential for thorium to serve as an emission-free source of power for ships. Pass the molten salt.
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Building American power requires a powerful team. |
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