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Good morning and happy Friday,

If you caught even a glimpse of the DNC this week, you know there was crazy energy emanating from Chi-town. The Dispatch “went to press” prior to the final night’s festivities, but as of Thursday the prevailing sentiment seemed to be that although Harris and others went light on climate policy, green leaders are OK with that.

That said, although some green groups fumed over the presence of fossil fuel organizations, there was still plenty of convention activity related to clean energy, and the last night may bring some additional climate messaging. 

Some observers argue that the Dems can do a better job of selling their environmental message to key groups like youths and Black voters; in any event, if Harris wins, she will inherit a climate countdown.

In other news, the EIA reports that the U.S added 20.2 GW of generating capacity in the first half of 2024, led by solar and energy storage, and it expects 62.8 GW to come online by the end of the year, positioning U.S. renewable energy capacity to exceed natural gas within 3 years.

Read on for more.

Stakes and Ladders

A just-released report from Berkeley Lab looks at how the renewable energy industry engages with host communities when developing large wind and solar projects. The study involved 123 professionals from 62 companies, and the findings are pretty interesting:

• Unsurprisingly, participants reported being “highly concerned” about increasing challenges to community engagement, such as “organized opposition, the spread of misinformation, high costs, and lack of evidence about which strategies to address opposition are the most effective.”

• The “high costs” listed in the preceding bullet are a bit of a head scratcher, as “industry expenditures on community engagement are small in comparison to other project development costs, often representing less than 0.1% of average total capital expenditures.” This points to “a potential opportunity to increase efforts without significantly affecting project costs.” 

• It’s worth noting that many of the developers surveyed view “community engagement” as “primarily a one-way process” in which the public may provide input on project siting or design, but not specific project decisions; as such, “collaborative relationships with communities might take developers out of their comfort zones.” 

⚡️ The Takeaway

Bad DADs? The authors say their findings “confirm that the ‘decide-announce-defend’ (DAD) model remains the predominant practice of the industry,” noting that the prevailing economic logic evaluates community engagement on the basis of profitability and “does not reward the pursuit of community engagement for moral reasons...(t)his helps explain how developers’ ability to engage with and respond to community concerns are only sustainable if they make economic sense, and there is a lack of empirical evidence that increased community engagement is cost-effective.” Sounds like a pressing research topic to us.

Solar on the Horizon

Wyoming has garnered more than a few headlines for big clean energy projects, including the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project and the TransWest Express transmission line. Yet despite having great solar resources, the state ranks 49th in the country. That could soon change, however...

• Currently, four utility-scale solar projects are under development, according to the state’s Industrial Siting Council; the average size is 320 MW, more than double the total existing installed capacity of 124 MW.

• Whether the Cowboy State’s lack of giddyup with respect to solar is due to the lack of an RPS or a lack of transmission, one thing is clear: residents are missing out on employment opportunities. In 2022, only 165 Wyomingites worked in solar, far fewer than in “neighboring states like Colorado and Utah, each home to more than 7,000 such jobs.”

• Almost every Wyoming county could potentially host utility-scale solar, which would be a “’much more evenly distributed tax generator’ compared with the fossil fuel industry, which generates local tax revenue in communities where coal, oil and gas are extracted” and redistributes funds to other communities.

⚡️ The Takeaway

An incredibly valuable epicenter. A few states to the east in Minnesota, Xcel Energy is working toward replacing its massive Sherco coal plant with a massive solar and energy storage facility. Some local residents have “questioned whether the solar farms would harm the soil with any chemicals;” it’s not clear whether they had similar concerns about growing crops around the 2,238 MW Sherco plant for decades, a single burner of which can “consume as much as 120,000 pounds of coal per hour.”

• Peach Crumble?: Georgia voters could make or break their state’s clean energy jobs boom

• Benefits Vastly Exceed LCOE: LBNL 2024 Land-Based Wind Market Report

• “Tangible Gains”: NREL 2024 Offshore Wind Market Report

• What Next?: First whales, now cables: Anti-wind activists push more false claims

• Energy Storage = Energy Savings: Adding 8.5 GW of energy storage could save Illinois ratepayers $3B, and Study suggests a big role for grid battery storage as Illinois shutters its coal power plants

• “Unprecedented”: MISO, SPP advance transmission plan that could support up to 53 GW

• Priorities: Investors are spending more to capture carbon than to capture wind

• Saying “I Do”: Biden marries big labor to big solar

• Retirement Reversal: Fossil fuel plant retirements are slowing down, and projected load growth is to blame, and How booming electricity demand is stalling efforts to retire coal and gas, in charts

• Go Figure: Conservative Republican Texas' main grid now has almost 25% of US installed utility wind and solar

• Golden State Gold: California hits milestones toward 100% clean energy, and Batteries are making CA’s power grid stronger, reducing risk of blackouts 

• Greening a Potential Black Eye: Solar panel recyclers pioneer new methods for greening the industry

• Running Out of Sheep Puns: 6,000 sheep will soon be grazing on 10,000 acres of Texas solar fields

• AK: Deal sets stage for a dramatic jump in solar power production

• DE, MD, VA: Leases awarded for off coast wind farm development

• IN: Council tables abatement request for new solar farm

• ME: Federal government grants first floating offshore wind power research lease

• MA: Barnstable citizen group goes to court on Town Council wind vote. Here is what's next.

• NY: Athens Town Council OKs amended solar energy law

• ND: Grand Forks County Commission discusses future of wind turbine blade transport

• OH: Large-scale research project to explore how solar and farming can co-exist

• PA: Proposed solar farm no longer moving forward in Luzerne County

• PA: Polk looks at zoning change for solar

• WI: Activists continue to rally against Wisconsin turbine project

Noting that “electricity demand in the Asia-Pacific is set to increase by 70 per cent by 2040 and more than double by 2050,” and that “58 million petajoules of solar energy fall on Australia each year,” developer SunCable aims to harness that potential to power the future. 

As they say Down Under, “Bonzer!”