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The Biden administration on Monday announced progress on 15 major renewable energy projects, an apparent effort to project confidence in an industry facing major challenges.
All developments are on federal lands in the West, including a geothermal lease sale in 12 counties in northern Nevada, a new transmission line west of Phoenix and the completed construction of more than 800 megawatts of solar in the southern California.
“This administration is taking a fully collaborative approach toward ambitious clean energy goals,” said Deb Haaland, secretary of the Department of the Interior, which oversees public lands.
The administration wants to issue permits for 25 gigawatts of renewable energy on public lands by 2025, enough to power about five million homes. It’s a goal that could be surpassed if all the projects announced Monday are completed.
The announcements come at a time of setbacks for offshore wind farms. Orsted, a Danish developer, recently announced that he would scrap two wind farms planned off the coast of New Jersey, citing problems with supply chains, global inflation and rising interest rates.
Avangrid, a subsidiary of a Spanish utility, Iberdrola, terminated a long-term power purchase agreement for the Park City Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts. Over the summer, Avangrid pulled out of another project with Commonwealth Wind for a marine farm south of Martha’s Vineyard.
According to consultancy ClearView Energy Partners, 24 percent of contracted offshore wind capacity is now at risk. The cancellations threaten the administration’s goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030.
The problems with renewable energy extend to electric vehicles. General Motors CEO Mary Barra acknowledged a “difficult” transition when the company announced it would miss its goal of making 100,000 electric vehicles in the second half of this year and another 400,000 in the first six months of 2024. Honda ruled out a $5 billion deal with General Motors to build an affordable electric vehicle. Ford Motor announced it would delay the start of production at one of its two electric vehicle battery plants in Kentucky.
Republicans who oppose a transition away from fossil fuels said the headwinds showed that clean energy is not economically viable.
“President Biden’s obsession with green energy is raising the cost of living and undermining the American economy,” said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming. “Even billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded loans are not enough to make their green economic nightmare work.”
Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, said the Inflation Reduction Act that President Biden signed last year to invest $370 billion in clean energy was not enough to overcome inflation and rising rates. of interest.
But John Larsen, a partner at Rhodium Group, a nonpartisan energy research firm, called the economic challenges “a bump in the road” and noted there were bright spots.
A record number of 300,000 electric vehicles were sold in the United States in the third quarter of 2023, about 8 percent of all vehicle sales. Manufacturers are expected to sell one million electric vehicles this year, another record, Larsen said.
Clean electrical installations also suffered an impact record of almost 6 gigawatts this year. That’s 13 percent more than a year ago, she said. And a report Rhodium did with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that $213 billion has been invested in clean energy manufacturing and deployment in the United States between mid-2022 and mid-2023, an increase of 37 percent from the previous year.
“So far, on a net basis, 2023 still looks promising,” Larsen said. “If we have the same conversation again in a year, it would be worrying.”
The Interior Department announcement highlighted two major solar projects now underway: a 500-megawatt photovoltaic facility in Riverside County, California, that can power 146,000 homes and the nearby Arlington Solar Energy Center that is generating 364 megawatts to power 111,000 homes. Both projects include energy storage in batteries.
This week, the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of the Interior agency that manages 245 million acres of public lands, is scheduled to issue a draft environmental review of a 500-kilovolt transmission project through Utah and Nevada that is scheduled to receive federal funding. The agency also plans to approve construction of another 500-kilovolt transmission line crossing public lands about 60 miles west of Phoenix. When completed, the line will supply electricity from a 150-megawatt solar generation facility in Maricopa County, Arizona.
The Bureau of Land Management is also announcing a geothermal lease sale, offering 45 parcels totaling 135,067 acres in Nevada, inviting public comments on seven solar projects in Nevada expected to generate 5.3 gigawatts of electricity, and developing drafts of environmental reviews for geothermal exploration. project in Lyon County, Nevada, as well as a 700-megawatt solar photovoltaic and battery storage system in Yuman, Arizona.
Ms. Haaland said that since 2021 the Biden administration has approved 46 clean energy projects, including six solar farms, 10 geothermal facilities and 20 transmission lines on approximately 35,000 acres of federal lands. Together, they would produce electricity to supply more than 3.5 million homes.