The following commentary was written by Hilary Lewis, Steel Director at Industrious Labs, an advocacy organization focused on transforming heavy industry for climate, workers and communities. See our commentary guidelines for more information.

The domestic steel industry and the jobs that come with it have been in sharp decline for decades, disproportionately harming the Midwest and leaving behind the distasteful nickname of the “Rust Belt.” However, new federal funding is bringing a renewed hope of reshoring and reinvesting in American manufacturing and the many industries up and down the supply chain, including steel. While the headline investment in steel is a potential share of the $6.3 billion available for industrial demonstration projects, a critical tax credit for clean hydrogen cannot be overlooked as a potential game changer for the steel industry and steel communities. 

The Inflation Reduction Act’s 45V tax credit could provide hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding, and be used to put the steel industry on the path to reduce climate emissions by over 90 percent. As a result, this historic tax credit could lead to healthier air and economic investment, recasting the Midwest as a global leader in cleaner steelmaking. However, strict safeguards need to be implemented to ensure that only qualified projects receive the credit.

Steel is a fundamental part of our modern lives, responsible for the iconic skyscrapers, bridges, cars, and machinery we use everyday. It is also essential to switch to a clean economy, with recent federal legislation to build out renewables, revamp transmission and reshore domestic manufacturing expected to generate massive demand for steel. Most new steel in the U.S. is made in just over a dozen coal-burning blast furnaces surrounding the Great Lakes. Hydrogen can replace fossil fuels in modern steelmaking technologies to reduce pollution that harms human health and the environment – without sacrificing quality. Direct reduced iron technology can be built or retrofitted to use hydrogen in steel production, but the viability of this pathway relies on clean, affordable, and accessible hydrogen. The 45V hydrogen tax credit is essential to realizing this vision.

Earlier this year, the Treasury Department announced proposed rules for the 45V tax credit that would ensure that only hydrogen made with new, renewable energy would qualify. This is an enormous win for the climate. Creating hydrogen uses a significant amount of energy, and without rules to require new clean energy supply and accurate accounting for this hydrogen production, the process could bring more fossil fuel plants online to meet the spiked demand on the grid. Since green hydrogen is needed for the leading commercial pathway to clean up primary steelmaking, strict tax credit rules will ensure the hydrogen powering potential modern, clean steel plants is actually clean.

However, legacy energy companies are lining up to water down the tax credit proposal. Weak rules would put the green steel boom – and the billions of dollars in investment that come with it – at risk. Moreover, regional analyses from the U.S. show the need to invest in low-carbon steel to maintain Indiana steelmaker’s competitive edge and reverse Pennsylvania’s trending steel job losses. With an estimated 6.7 million tons of annual demand for near-zero emissions steel by 2030 in the U.S. alone, investing in modern, clean steel plants today can revitalize the steel industry and earn a price premium for steelmakers. Countries globally, from Namibia to Sweden, are already constructing green steel plants to cash-in on this opportunity. A robust 45V tax credit will allow industries like steel to bring a highly sought after commodity to market at a standard that meets customer expectations. 

We must get the 45V tax credit right to pave the way to decarbonizing steel and other high-priority, high-pollution industries. Transitioning the steel industry alone would require approximately 1.5 million metric tons of hydrogen – a huge potential source of demand for hydrogen companies that take advantage of the credit. Using hydrogen to clean up the steel sector should help drive us forward into a clean energy future, not come at the cost of our health and the climate. Failure to advance strong rules for clean hydrogen risks locking in more fossil fuels, harming communities, jeopardizing jobs, and sending business opportunities abroad.

Commentary: A little-known tax credit could revitalize Midwest steelmaking is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The following commentary was written by Shelley Hudson Robbins, Project Director at the Clean Energy Group. See our commentary guidelines for more information.

The North Carolina Utilities Commission just dropped a riveting order outlining the nightmare scenario that played out in control rooms and meeting rooms one year ago as Duke Energy struggled to keep a stable grid in the midst of Winter Storm Elliott. The December 2022 storm coincided with a collection of unexpected power plant failures, gas pipeline capacity and energy imports that failed to show up, and internal circuit controls that failed. It is hard to imagine a large section of our East Coast power grid going down. But we were close. The heroes of the story are only mentioned in a footnote: the line workers and field personnel who scrambled to their posts on what should have been a holiday weekend with family to figure out workarounds, manually turning circuits off and on to shed enough load to match available supply with a hobbled generation fleet.

The order includes a striking fact: Duke Energy’s fleet of options included almost no demand side resources. During the storm, Duke Energy Progress (DEP) and Duke Energy Carolinas (DEC) only called upon 200 megawatts of demand response each. Compared to the distributed load curtailment resources that are available to neighboring grid operator PJM, which includes 13 states plus the District of Columbia, this seems surprisingly small.

PJM has more than 30 curtailment service providers (CSPs), and over 2 million commercial and residential customers participate as load management resources, with an installed load management capacity of 7,699 megawatts in 2022-2023. Fifty-three percent of these resources were able to respond within 30 minutes. The CSPs actually delivered just shy of 10,000 megawatts of load reduction between 2 and 4pm on December 24. As PJM reported  in its September 2023 Load Management Report, demand response resources “over-performed” during the Winter Storm Elliott event.

PJM’s December 24, 2022 peak load was 136,000 megawatts, according to the grid operator’s report on the Winter Storm Elliott event released last July. PJM, like Duke, was in crisis management mode during the winter storm, but ultimately the grid operator was not forced to shed load.

DEP’s peak load on the morning of December 24 was 14,840 megawatts, and DEC’s peak load at roughly the same time was 21,768 megawatts, for a combined peak load of 36,608 megawatts. DEP was forced to shed 800 megawatts of load by turning circuits off and back on, and DEC was forced to shed 1,000 megawatts. Duke Energy’s combined peak load during Winter Storm Elliott is the equivalent of about 27 percent of PJM’s peak load during the storm. If Duke Energy had a proportionate amount of demand response capacity (PJM had 10,000 megawatts), that would have provided at least 2,700 megawatts of capacity to call upon. But Duke did not have this resource and instead, the utility shed 1,800 megawatts by turning circuits off and then back on, cutting power for hours to customers in North Carolina. Could demand response – if it were in place in DEP and DEC – have prevented the blackouts that endangered vulnerable customers on Christmas Eve? The math says yes.

In its December 22 order, the NCUC did not recommend that Duke Energy develop a more robust demand response program, even though these programs have proven to be cost effective and reliable. In PJM, fossil resources were not reliable during Winter Storm Elliott, but demand response “over-performed.” Instead, the Commission focused on improved load forecasting, avoiding planned outages in December, winterizing the fleet, improving gas-electric interdependencies, and it required Duke to file reports on just about everything except demand response.

Distributed demand response can take many forms, including aggregated behind-the-meter battery storage and aggregated control of heating loads, water heating, and EV charging. Participants in aggregated DR programs are compensated for performance, a feature that can help ease energy burden. Aggregation of these resources has proven valuable to capacity markets in parts of the country that have grid operators making decisions about dispatchable assets rather than monopoly utilities making those decisions. Further, Winter Storm Elliott demonstrated that aggregated demand response resources are reliable during winter peak demand when fossil resources fail for a myriad of reasons. This level of reliability should be reflected in how utilities incentivize these resources.

Duke Energy’s North Carolina utilities are required to achieve carbon reduction goals established by the state legislature in House Bill 951. Clean Energy Group filed its December 2023 report Distributed Energy Storage: The Missing Piece in North Carolina’s Decarbonization Efforts, prepared by Applied Economics Clinic, in the Duke Energy Carbon Plan Integrated Resource Plan comments docket as a way to launch the discussion by providing policymakers and advocates the information they need to harness the full potential of distributed battery storage as a demand response tool. Development of a robust portfolio of demand side resources in North Carolina will be a crucial element of meeting the challenges associated with load growth while simultaneously achieving the goals set forth in the North Carolina Carbon Plan.

Commentary: Demand response could have prevented blackouts in North Carolina is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The following commentary was written by Alli Gold Roberts, state policy director, and Zach Friedman, federal policy director, at Ceres. See our commentary guidelines for more information.

We are at a crucial period in the shift to electric vehicles. A growing number of companies are moving to electrify their corporate fleets to reduce costs on fuel and maintenance, and the auto industry is making significant investments into battery and vehicle production in the United States — recognizing they need to stay competitive in a changing global market toward clean cars and trucks.  

Ambitious public policy — from federal tax credits to the clean vehicle standards adopted by a growing number of states — is helping to grow the market for electric vehicles. Still, there is more work to be done to create the strong, advanced domestic auto and trucking industries we need to meet the growing demand. Achieving that vision will require more collaboration, investments, and policy action. And much of that must go toward building out the infrastructure to support electric vehicles — the charging stations, the supply chains, the workforces, and more.  

That is why Congress rightly included strategic investments in domestic electric vehicle and charging infrastructure manufacturing and deployment in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, a historic investment in U.S. competitiveness that was signed into law two years ago this week.  

The law delivered on a generation of urgent calls to invest in U.S. infrastructure, and has already begun delivering billions upon billions of dollars to upgrade and modernize bridges, roads, tunnels, railways, airports, electric grids, water pipes, and much more. Widely supported by the public and private sectors alike, the bipartisan achievement is a testament to the virtue of good-faith collaboration to address a long-term challenge. And that includes building the infrastructure we need to create a more sustainable and forward-looking transportation system by supporting the growth of electric vehicles. 

The law’s investments include programs designed to increase ease of electric vehicle charging. Most prominently is the creation of the first-ever national electric vehicle charging network, a $7.5 billion partnership between the federal and state governments. By helping to fund a half-million new chargers across the nation’s highways, the National Electric Vehicle Initiative will provide predictability to motorists that they will be able to charge up on the interstate system every 50 miles or so. Every state submitted a plan to participate in the program, with Ohio as the first to break ground at a charging station near Columbus in October and more states quickly following suit. 

The package also brought a $7 billion investment to U.S. electric vehicle supply chains, helping to ensure the most crucial electric vehicle components are made, processed, and assembled here in the U.S. These programs will bolster U.S. energy security by reducing our dependency on international markets as electric vehicles grow in popularity. 

And the law’s electric vehicle investments provide a robust foundation for the market to build upon. Manufacturers like Siemens, for example, have expanded their footprint in the U.S. to support the build-out of the charging network, including at a new manufacturing hub in Texas. And through their strike this fall, the United Auto Workers won union representation at battery plants that received investments under the bipartisan infrastructure law — including at Ultium Cells, a joint venture from General Motors that received a $2.5 billion Department of Energy loan for facilities in Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. This victory supports the creation of good-paying jobs and ensures workers and communities benefit from the clean vehicle transition. 

At Ceres, the sustainability nonprofit where we each work with companies to support public policies that are good for the climate and the economy, we have seen firsthand as businesses increasingly prioritize technology and solutions that are good for the climate and for their bottom lines. That is why they are increasingly vocal advocates for public policies that help expand electric vehicle growth and reduce vehicle miles traveled.

In 2022, they pushed for passage of the nation’s largest-ever federal climate and clean energy investment, the Inflation Reduction Act and its tax credits designed to encourage both manufacturing and sales of electric vehicles in the U.S. — leading to even greater private investment in electric vehicle manufacturing and infrastructure. And this year, leading businesses are pushing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to finalize strong anti-pollution standards that would further accelerate the widespread adoption of electric and other clean vehicles, while also providing certainty for their investments, and strengthening the competitiveness of the U.S. auto and trucking industries. 

Businesses have long been among the strongest champions of upgrades to the infrastructure the economy depends on, as seen in the strong corporate support for the 2021 infrastructure bill. And just like roads and bridges are key drivers of economic activity, electric vehicle growth and the ambitious policies to encourage it are only possible with the right infrastructure in place. Two years in, thanks to continued partnership between the public and private sectors, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is now beginning to deliver it.

Commentary: Two years in, bipartisan infrastructure law is driving electric vehicle growth  is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

This commentary was submitted by Sneha Ayyagari, a Clean Energy Leadership Institute Fellow and a Program Manager for Clean Energy Initiative at the Greenlining Institute. See our commentary guidelines for more information.

Winter is coming, and having resilient homes is crucial in climate disasters. For instance, Texans were woefully unprepared for Storm Uri which resulted in 246 deaths. While my family shivered under blankets, temperatures in our house stayed safe since we had insulation and a heat pump that kicked into gear when we had short periods of power. It was devastating hearing of families living in poorly insulated homes exposed to hypothermia. Weatherizing buildings and switching to efficient systems like heat pumps can be lifesaving in extreme weather and generally be more comfortable and can save residents money. 

However, for more than a third of residents living in rental housing, accessing incentive programs that allow them to make these upgrades in their homes is very difficult. These barriers are especially high for residents in multifamily affordable housing and mobile homes where many people who are most susceptible to heat-related illnesses live.

States and local governments should implement federal funding with renters in mind. The Department of Energy’s Home Energy Rebates (HER) program provides $8.8B in rebate funding for energy efficiency and electrification projects and an additional $200M for states to develop complementary contractor training programs. States can provide their most vulnerable residents health, economic, and environmental benefits by prioritizing low-income renters in their applications for Home Energy Rebate funding.

To ensure the benefits of this program reach tenants, states should:

Prioritize robust tenant protections 

Renters should not have to fear that their landlords would use building upgrades as a reason to raise rents or displace them (as has happened in construction projects including apartment renovations in Los Angeles). At a minimum, HER guidance states that the owner must agree to rent the dwelling to a low-income tenant and cannot increase rent as a result of energy improvements for two years. Tenants must also have written notice of their rights in a specific and verifiable mechanism. States should go further to specify clear enforcement and penalties. They should ensure that tenants have access to legal services and support in reporting violations without fear of retaliation. Administrators should prohibit rent increases due to HER or at least extend the window of preventing rent increases to at least 10 years following the precedent of other programs. 

In addition to building decarbonization programs, states should adopt policies such as rental efficiency standards, rental registries, eviction protections, and rent-stabilization measures to preserve affordability and increase the quality of rental housing. State and local renter protections such as California’s Transformative Communities Draft Program Guidelines and Berkeley’s Existing Buildings Electrification Strategy include a list of tenant protections and anti-displacement resources. 

Center the expertise of environmental justice, tenants rights, and environmental groups 

States have many resources from tenant advocates, environmental justice leaders, and policy groups to build from. This letter led by Just Solutions Collective in collaboration with 60 environmental justice, housing, workforce, and environmental organizations has detailed recommendations on reducing barriers for tenants. Strategic Actions for a Just Economy shared recommendations on developing a tenant protection plan to prevent rent burden, limit evictions, minimize disruptions to tenants, and design enforcement and penalty systems. The Greenlining’s Equitable Building Decarbonization Framework shares how to design a community-led approach to implementation. Just Solutions Collective provides recommendations on ensuring access to low income renters, and Green and Healthy Homes Initiative and Building Decarbonization Coalition  shares lessons learned from past federal building retrofit programs. Other resources include American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy’s webinars and Energy Innovation’s report on ways to design effective outreach strategies. 

Regional and local community based organizations should be compensated to be part of the program administration team and help with outreach, implementation, and evaluation of the Home Energy program. The HER application also requires that states create Community Benefits Plans that describe anticipated economic and direct benefits especially for disadvantaged communities. As states develop their community benefits plans, they should ensure that benefits to low income tenants are prioritized within the scope of the goals.

Pair HER rebates with other relevant state and local policies

Stacking and braiding federal funding with other state, local, and utility housing, energy, and building retrofits programs can maximize benefits to renters while streamlining the effort of property owners applying for multiple programs. Philadelphia’s Built to Last and Washington’s Weatherization and Health are good examples of holistic programs.

Now is the time to act

Families shouldn’t have to choose between affording rent and having a safe and healthy place to live, especially in the face of climate disasters. States have a historic opportunity to drastically improve the lives of tenants. By collaborating with tenants, state energy offices can create strong applications in 2024 that ensure healthy, affordable, and climate-resilient housing for all.

Commentary: States’ historic opportunity to make homes for renters healthy and safe is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

This commentary was submitted by Holly Caggiano, Ph.D., assistant professor in the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia, and Sara Constantino, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Psychology Department and the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University. See our commentary guidelines for more information.

After paying our monthly utility bills, most of us take for granted the complex network of infrastructure and institutions that keep the lights on. This is changing. The average monthly electricity bill for residential customers nationally increased 13% from 2021 to 2022, rising from $121 to $137 a month, while climate change and aging and mismanaged electrical infrastructure have contributed to a string of disastrous wildfires. Confronted with rising costs of living and the urgent need to protect the environment, people across the country are taking a serious look at how their utilities are owned and operated. 

Electric utilities, which can act as generators, distributors and/or service providers, play a key role in the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. For decades, a small number of for-profit, investor-owned utilities (IOUs) have powered most of the country. On November 7th, Maine challenged this model with Ballot Question 3, The Pine Tree Power initiative, proposing a transformation of the state’s two largest IOUs into a non-profit, democratically-managed public utility. 

Before the vote, the Washington Post dubbed Maine the “epicenter” of the nation’s growing anger with electric utilities. Customer approval ratings of Central Maine Power (CMP) and Versant–the state’s two largest IOUs, owned by parent companies in Spain and Canada–are among the lowest in the country, but Maine is just one of an increasing number of states where people are raising concerns. Groups across the country have called for public takeover of IOUs, claiming investors prioritize profit over system maintenance, disregard consumer safety, and delay climate action. 

While many IOUs have embraced climate action on paper, their actions say otherwise. One recent study found that electric utilities have pushed climate delay, doubt, and denial over multiple decades, promoting messaging explicitly designed to absolve inaction. Reporting also reveals widespread corruption and attempts to halt regulation to encourage clean energy and reduce ratepayer costs. Climate activism group 350.org labeled CMP one of the biggest anti-climate lobbyists in Maine. 

IOUs have also been implicated in destructive and deadly wildfires. Hawaiian Electric Company recently acknowledged responsibility for the Maui wildfires—they failed to shut off power despite high winds and dry conditions. California’s PG&E narrowly avoided a trial on manslaughter charges for their role in the 2020 Zogg fire that killed four. IOUs know that the public is worried by their questionable safety records, responding with expensive PR campaigns. These tactics come from an old playbook. In The Big Myth, Erik M. Conway and Naomi Oreskes describe 1920s propaganda campaigns to push privatization that ushered in higher rates for homeowners and bigger profits for corporations. A century later, we’re back to questioning this model. 

Private utilities in Maine spent millions lobbying against the ballot initiative and the governor was vocally opposed. We ran a survey with the Climate and Community Project to learn more about how Mainers were feeling in the lead up to the vote. We found that Mainers are overwhelmingly concerned about keeping the lights on, with 88% of respondents very or somewhat worried about current and future energy costs. And despite the lobbying efforts of the private utilities, most respondents believe that their utilities should be locally owned and operated (55%) and not-for-profit (66%).

While these sentiments weren’t reflected in the election results, the reasons are nuanced. Our data suggests that many Mainers weren’t rejecting public-ownership itself, but were looking for a more fully realized plan, citing ambiguities about how the takeover would be financed, if costs would be passed to consumers, and if it would hold up in court—67% of our respondents thought it was somewhat or very likely that Pine Tree would face legal and regulatory challenges. 

Despite investor-owned utilities pouring money into campaigns to oppose public power, there is growing momentum to reconsider how our power systems are owned and operated. One recent success is New York’s Build Public Renewables Act, which passed into law in May. After four years of organizing by Public Power NY, a coalition of more than twenty community organizations, the law authorizes the New York Power Authority to build renewable energy projects that help meet the state’s climate goals and include strong labor standards. Municipalization of utilities is also a hot topic in Western states, with ongoing organizing in California and Texas. 

Some supporters of the Pine Tree Power campaign hoped that a win would fuel more initiatives across the country. In our poll, 41% of respondents thought it was somewhat or very likely that if passed, Pine Tree Power would spark a larger cross-state movement towards public ownership of energy resources. Despite Mainers choosing to stick with their current model for now, the ballot initiative brought national attention to the issue and has encouraged many to question the status quo. Rather than signaling the end of the road for public power in Maine, this vote could be the beginning of a sustained conversation about transforming our utilities. The research, organizing and discussions that went into the Pine Tree campaign provide a foundation for future efforts to improve the service, safety and sustainability of our energy infrastructure—and start to shift the energy narrative about what is possible, and desirable. 

In Maine, we saw how the movement for public power united people across demographic and party lines. Rural or urban, Democrat or Republican, we all deserve access to clean, affordable, and reliable electricity. Climate change is forcing us to reconsider how we produce energy but it doesn’t need to stop there. This is an opportunity to reimagine who owns energy infrastructure and whose interests it serves. 

Commentary: Despite Maine defeat, public power still on the agenda in the U.S. is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.