Legalectric

Brainfart today while working on Data Requests.

NextEra’s Grant County Solar Energy Center Citizen Concerns and Their Justifications

If you’re wanting to site solar on land, rather than on rooftops, wouldn’t transmission easements be a logical place to site solar?

Some lines have distribution underbuilds for convenient interconnection, and many have distributions crossing at various points, for convenient interconnection.

Trees have been cleared, and clearances should be sufficient to allow for low arrays.

Why not? Do tell…

From wind siting, I know that siting decisions are often backwards, and with solar, that is certainly the case. They get the land first, and then figure out how to connect. Distributed solar isn’t even considered, siting near load isn’t even considered. There are better ways to do this.

The judge’s Order arrived, and it’s disappointing, to put it mildly.

The judge’s decision focused on the belief that these matters had been litigated in another forum, so we couldn’t do it again. Litigated? Intervention is not necessarily litigation, though certainly AFCL intervened in the Freeborn Wind docket, and certainly did not in the Plum Creek, Three Waters or Buffalo Ridge dockets. And in this District Court proceeding, Lisa Agrimonti let me know that another attorney would be lead in this case, that their firm was putting a “litigator” on it. Hmmmm, Agrimonti’s not a litigator, and put Alethea Huyser on the job, so the firm admits that what we, Freeborn Wind and AFCL, were doing in those dockets was not litigation, right, I get it… uh-huh… sigh…

How do we deal with these systemic problems in wind siting? 25 years and still no rules? Setbacks aren’t sufficient to prevent noise standard violations and people need to leave their homes to be able to sleep, so far two families reached settlements and buyouts to get away from noisy turbines. Wind projects pay out for blinds so people can sit in the dark, or suggest going to Florida, to avoid shadow flicker inflicted on them. At the PPSA Annual Hearing last week, the DOT said it wants the 250 foot setback from roads reevaluated. The Public Utilities Commission has actual and constructive notice of these problems for years, yet nothing happens…

Let’s see… rulemaking Petitions denied over and over. The only time we’ve had a contested case, the judge recommended denial because developer had not demonstrated compliance with noise standard, and recommended a lower number of hours as “acceptable” for shadow flicker.

Once more with feeling — the ONLY time, the FIRST time, in Minnesota history where there was a contested case on a wind siting permit, the only time it could arguably be said the issues were “litigated,” the ALJ recommended that the permit be denied!

WE WON!!! ALJ Recommend Freeborn Permit be DENIED, or…

May 14th, 2018

The PUC turned that around in a private settlement with the developer, excluding intervenors.

Freeborn? PUC upends ALJ’s Freeborn Wind Recommendation

September 21st, 2018

Now what… How many more complaints, how many more landowner settlements, before they fix this mess?

What’s the point of intervening, becoming a party? What’s the point of raising issues at the Power Plant Siting Act Annual Hearing (for 23 years)? What’s the point of over and over raising the systemic problems in the PUC’s wind siting? How do we work “within the system” when the system is broken?

RIGHT NOW! It’s the PPSA Annual Hearing… sigh… here we go again.

Go to webex, Event # 146 311 2620. The powerpoint slides will be here (and will also be filed on eDockets).

To be able to comment, you have to get on the phone 866-609-6127, Conference ID: 4449079, and to comment, you need to press #1 and get in queue.

Here is the Commerce info about this year’s projects:

And for the record, folks, note that wind is not exempt from many of the parts of the PPSA:

Here’s a study from 2018 that I found in connection with a recent article about the controversy over the Colstrip coal plant and whether it will be rehabbed, whether it will continue to provide Idaho with some power after withdrawal from Washington state.

Idaho regulators have Colstrip concerns

Here’s the study:

Carbon Capture was to be considered in the plan for Colstrip rehab, but here’s the conclusion:

45Q CO2 tax credits? Get out the waders. From our “good friends” at Great Plains Institute, its Primer: Section 45Q Tax Credit for Carbon Capture Projects.

To implement the reformed 45Q, the US Treasury requested public comments in IRS Notice 2019-32 on several key issues. The IRS issued guidance on beginning and continuous construction requirements along with a revenue procedure for business partnerships that include investors claiming the tax credit. The IRS released proposed regulations to address additional implementation issues, including requirements for demonstrating secure geological storage, credit recapture, credit transferability and contractural assurance, and requirements for lifecycle analysis of emissions reductions for projects that beneficially use CO2 or CO to convert manufacture fuels, chemicals, or other useful products like cement.

https://www.betterenergy.org/blog/primer-section-45q-tax-credit-for-carbon-capture-projects/

Yes, Great Plains Institute has a big money-suck program AGAIN, pushing “carbon capture and storage/sequestration.”

Money suck? Yes, look at this from 2017 IRS 990, most recent I could find, but for sure there is more since:

Current Legalectric post, and going back… been there, done that, must we?

More Carbon Capture PR BS

February 21st, 2020

CO2 pipelines? It’s a red herring!

March 22nd, 2017

Do really need to go through this again? Apparently, because as Bill Grant, formerly Deputy Director of Commerce on the Energy side, and before that Izaak Walton League forever, said circa 2005 and coal gasification and CCS, “we need to find a way forward for coal.” We’ve been there, done that, and carbon capture is a pipedream:

And even though we knew it then, the science and economics were in the record, regulators and applications paid little attention until plant after plant was blocked, denied, and withdrawn. Then again, they got a LOT of money to promote coal gasification and carbon capture, but those of us without funding, without resources, kept at it, and prevailed.

IEDC gets carried away

February 15th, 2007

And here are the presentations from that fiasco, the shameful promotion of CCS contrary to science and economics:

Presentations at IEDC

February 16th, 2007

CO2 sequestration is so… like… not happening!

January 26th, 2007

Great Plains Institute – is Joyce getting their $$ worth?

January 18th, 2007

PJM’s “independent” Monitoring Analytics (don’t know how independent it really is) has released its State of the Market report for the first two quarters of 2020, and there are some most interesting observations in this report. First, here’s the report:

The intro is astounding for the admissions about the electric market, decreased demand, and coal’s role:

That’s from page 2 of the PJM 2Q SoM Report.

Much of this new world is due to COVID, but the changes you see were in the works prior to COVID, which hit primarily starting 2nd Quarter. Demand has been lessening for a long time (the big increase circa 2003-2005 was when PJM territory expanded). Note that unlike MISO, it’s not strictly summer peaking, three peaks were in winter!

The histrionic squeals of “freezing in the dark on a respirator without a job” … or is it “in an incubator without a job,” either way, those fears did not materialize, and with the billions of dollars in transmission based on those hyped-up fears, where are we now? Another day older and deeper in debt…

And if you need wallpaper, do put up the LMP maps:

PJM: https://www.pjm.com/library/maps/lmp-map.aspx

MISO: https://api.misoenergy.org/MISORTWD/lmpcontourmap.html (something weird is going in MISO, the entire upper half is YELLOW!