Economic benefits start to flow from power line project after 15-year delay

The opinion piece below from TWW’s Greg Brophy originally ran in The Daily Sentinel on August 8, 2023 and can be accessed here.

Economic benefits start to flow from power line project after 15-year delay

Aug 8, 2023

By GREG BROPHY

Much has been said about the federal permitting reforms that were included in the bipartisan deal to raise the federal debt ceiling and avoid the threat of a first-ever default on the national debt.

Those reforms, originally championed by House Republicans and eventually supported by the Biden White House, will make the federal permitting process for newly proposed energy and infrastructure projects faster and more focused.

But if the Biden administration truly supports the cause of permitting reform, it will also have to move quickly on permitting decisions for existing proposals that have been stuck in the process for years.

Every day those projects continue to be held up under the old rules is another day that mostly rural communities will be denied the considerable economic benefits tied to the construction and operation of those projects.

Consider the case of the TransWest Express Transmission Project, which will connect wind farms in Wyoming with major urban centers on the West Coast.

Despite the clear benefits of the 732-mile transmission line, it was held up for 15 years in a textbook example of how broken the federal permitting process had become.

At one stage, different parts of the federal bureaucracy were actively working against each other on opposite sides of the debate over whether to build the project or whether to block it. Your tax dollars at work, as they say.

Earlier this year, sanity prevailed at last, and the project got the final approvals needed from the federal government. Construction started in June, and the groundbreaking brought together officials from across the spectrum: Republicans and Democrats, business groups and labor unions.

The event brought into focus something that was almost completely forgotten during the interminably long permitting process: The economic benefits from building and operating the power line itself.

TransWest Express is a $2.9 billion project, and in rural America, that’s a big deal. Not just because of the jobs tied to building and operating the project, but because of the local tax revenues a $2.9 billion capital project is able to generate.

An analysis prepared by TransWest estimates $891 million in property taxes will be paid across four states — Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Nevada — during the long-term life of this project.

A further $113 million in sales taxes will be generated as well, according to the TransWest analysis. Taken together, the property and sales taxes from this landmark transmission line project will total more than $1 billion over 50 years.

On average, that’s more than $20 million per year going into local services: From schools to law enforcement, fire protection to parks and recreation, public libraries to public hospitals.

Many of these local services in the rural West operate with budgets measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, so an extra $20 million per year on average is a big deal.

But that’s just scratching the surface. The construction of a major new transmission line will spur investment in new power generation projects that will connect to that transmission line. New solar arrays, wind farms, advanced nuclear reactors and other forms of electricity generation will generate further economic activity, including jobs and tax revenues.

These projects can make a huge difference in rural America. A study conducted by The Western Way, where I serve as Colorado state director, examined the upside for communities that see major new investments in renewable energy.

The study, which focused on the Eastern Plains of Colorado, found that funding for local services in a community with major renewable energy investments grew twice as fast as a neighboring community with little to no renewable energy investments.

“The construction phase boosts the Main Street economy and wind farms generate a lot of property tax revenue, which helps school districts, fire districts, county government, city government and other local services in our community,” Kit Carson County Commissioner Dave Hornung told the authors of the study.

The lesson from the TransWest Express case is that permitting delays don’t just hurt the companies that want to build infrastructure projects. Permitting delays also hurt local communities by denying them the economic benefits — including badly needed tax revenues — that flow from those projects.

Washington, D.C. bureaucrats don’t need to wait for a new round of permits, submitted under new rules, to make things better. They can start today by finding projects that have been needlessly delayed and give them the green light as soon as possible.

Greg Brophy is a farmer and former state senator from Wray. He is currently the Colorado Director for The Western Way.

A better way to store energy for the West’s power grid

This opinion piece from TWW’s Greg Brophy originally ran in Colorado Politics on July 12, 2023 and can be accessed here.


Over the next decade, rural communities in Western states have a huge opportunity to increase the amount of energy they provide to major urban centers. By making the most of this opportunity, we can strengthen our communities with more investment, jobs and funding for critical services.

That’s true across all energy technologies, including oil and gas, hydrogen, carbon capture and advanced nuclear. But it’s especially true for renewable sources of energy like wind farms and solar arrays, which have found a natural home on the eastern plains of Colorado, where I’m from, and in many other rural areas across the western United States.

We have some barriers to overcome, however. The most talked about is the need for more long-distance power transmission lines to move all that electricity from the farming and ranching communities where it’s produced to the cities and suburbs where it’s consumed.

But expanding the amount of energy storage available to power grid operators is another major challenge that deserves more attention.

With more storage, electricity generated when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining doesn’t have to be used right away — it can be used at any hour of the day or night, regardless of weather conditions.

That’s good for the reliability of the power grid, but it’s also good for rural communities, because energy storage effectively grows the market for the electricity they produce.

For this reason, lawmakers and power grid regulators need to look at all the viable energy storage technologies — not just bigger versions of the lithium-ion batteries that currently power our phones, laptops and even electric cars.

One of the most promising of those technologies is called pumped hydro storage. It’s not a new technology, and despite all the attention given to lithium-ion batteries, pumped hydro storage provides more than 90% of the energy storage available on the U.S. power grid today.

According to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), pumped hydro storage is “a mature technology that includes pumping water from a lower reservoir to a higher one where it is stored until needed.”

When electricity from renewable sources is used to run those pumps, that renewable energy is stored. When the water is released, “it flows back down through a turbine and generates electricity,” according to PNNL.

Effectively, pumped hydro storage functions as a water-based battery, using technology that’s been around a lot longer than lithium-ion battery technology.

For this reason, pumped hydro is one of the lowest-cost technologies for energy storage. According to PNNL, once built, a pumped hydro storage facility can function for 60 years or more without the same kind of maintenance and repair costs that apply to electrochemical battery technologies like lithium-ion.

Just like the batteries in your cellphone, laptop or electric car must be reconditioned or replaced over time, so do the much larger batteries used to store electricity for the power grid — and that adds cost.

That’s not the case for pumped hydro storage. “It doesn’t degrade no matter how much you cycle it up and down,” Matthew Shapiro, the CEO of rPlus Hydro, said in an interview with The Western Way.

With 15 pumped storage projects in development across the U.S., officials at rPlus Hydro say their technology isn’t meant to directly compete with electrochemical batteries. In fact, rPlus Hydro’s parent company — rPlus Energies — builds solar arrays that are paired with battery-based storage systems.

It turns out lithium-ion batteries are good at storing and discharging electricity in short bursts, while pumped storage hydro can provide many more hours of backup power to the grid.

“It’s not an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ dynamic,” Shapiro said. “Batteries are good for short durations of between two and four hours. Pumped storage typically works well over an eight-hour duration.”

Another cost-saving feature: pumped hydro storage doesn’t rely on the same supply chain as consumer electronics and electric cars. Though there are moves to reform project permitting and build more mines in America, the global supply of critical minerals needed for batteries and other low-carbon energy technologies is currently dominated by foreign nations, especially China.

Until that changes, “there’s a lot of concern about battery supply chains, especially with the growing appetite for electric vehicles in the automotive sector,” Shapiro said.

The lesson for lawmakers and regulators is clear: policies to expand energy storage can’t be solely focused on lithium-ion or other kinds of electrochemical battery technologies.

Reforms to speed up the permitting process and incentivize the construction of energy storage facilities must be applied broadly to include established technologies, including pumped hydro storage.

Chasing new technologies is all well and good. But for the sake of our energy security and the rural communities that make that security possible, we must not lose sight of the technologies we already have.

Greg Brophy, from Wray, is a farmer and former state senator. He is the Colorado director of The Western Way.

Record Geothermal Production at Fervo Energy’s Nevada Pilot Project

Today, geothermal energy startup Fervo Energy announced that it had successfully completed a well test at it’s Project Red pilot plant in Winnemucca, Nevada.  The successful test means that Fervo Energy is the first company to successfully drill a horizontal well pair for commercial geothermal production, achieving lateral lengths of 3,250 feet, reaching a temperature of 376 °F, and proving controlled flow through rigorous tracer testing.  

“By applying drilling technology from the oil and gas industry, we have proven that we can produce 24/7 carbon-free energy resources in new geographies across the world. The incredible results we share today are the product of many years of dedicated work and commitment from Fervo employees and industry partners, especially Google,” said Tim Latimer, Fervo Energy CEO and Co-Founder.

The successful well test confirms the commercial viability of Fervo’s drilling technology and establishes Project Red as the most productive enhanced geothermal system in history. The 30-day well test, a standard for geothermal, achieved a flowrate of 63 liters per second at high temperature that enables 3.5 MW of electric production, setting new records for both flow and power output from an enhanced geothermal system.

Fervo noted that the data collected during pilot will enable rapid advancement in geothermal deployment, with Fervo’s next horizontal well pair planned to achieve more than double the power output of the pilot design.

Fervo’s results from Project Red support the findings of the DOE Enhanced Geothermal Earthshot and show that geothermal energy could supply over 20% of U.S. power needs and compliment wind and solar to reach a fully decarbonized grid. Fervo’s drilling and well test results pave the way for the U.S. to meet this goal ahead of schedule; with Fervo’s breakthrough, no technological barriers to geothermal deployment remain.

Fervo Energy CEO Tim Latimer detailed the accomplishment and the work that led up to it via Twitter:

Western Govs Release Geothermal Energy Report

The Western Governors’ Association released a new report, “The Heat Beneath Our Feet” which explores the opportunities to accelerate geothermal energy development and deployment across the West. Colorado Governor Jared Polis, the Chair of Western Governors’ Association focused on geothermal energy during his chairmanship over the last year. The report is a culmination of four workshops and six tours with input from the geothermal industry, policy makers, and other stakeholders.

The report’s recommendations to advance geothermal energy include:

  • Improve resource assessment and data collection: Increasing federal funding for resource assessments, coordinating efforts to target areas with the greatest potential, improving the federal repository of data relevant to geothermal development, and leveraging data from the oil and gas industry, as well as new technology, will increase our understanding of subsurface resources and foster additional geothermal development.

  • Mitigate risk in drilling and exploration: Risk and uncertainty contribute to relatively high up-front costs for geothermal development. Those costs can be abated by continuing federal investment to reduce uncertainty in geothermal exploration, exploring models to help developers secure financing for exploratory drilling and mitigate drilling risk, and extending existing tax incentives for the oil and gas industry to include geothermal development. • Optimize permitting and improve regulatory certainty: Permitting timelines can also be prohibitive for geothermal development. Lengthy delays can be mitigated by providing tools and resources to help stakeholders navigate the geothermal development process, increasing agency capacity for leasing and permitting, developing streamlined processes and categorical exclusions for geothermal leasing on par with other energy categories, expanding oil and gas exploration regulatory efficiencies to geothermal development, and collaborating with tribes and communities prior to and during project development. •

  • Expand funding opportunities: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funding for demonstration projects and the Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO) should be increased. Investment in energy transition communities should be encouraged.

  • Implement incentives for consumer adoption: Expedite the deployment of tax incentives, rebates, and enduser applications to spur the adoption of geothermal heating and cooling.

  • Develop workforce and contractor ecosystem: Geothermal energy can generate good jobs and create opportunities for workers and communities affected by the energy transition. Workforce development in the geothermal industry should be supported, including through the development of training and certification programs.

  • Increase awareness and education to develop geothermal markets: Develop guidance for policymakers, regulators, and utilities to better promote geothermal energy.

How environmental groups fuel forest fires

This piece from TWW’s John Karakoulakis originally ran in the Washington Examiner on June 28, 2023 and can be accessed here.

The Rocky Mountain West has some of the most beautiful forests in the world. Whether you enjoy hiking, fishing, or simply admiring the views from afar, we’re lucky to have these majestic natural resources in our backyard.

But living in close connection with these forests also takes real work. Public forests , for example, are managed by dedicated state and federal agencies staffed with wildlife biologists, soil scientists, hydrologists, and other professionals.

Too often, their work is made much more difficult — if not impossible — by far-left environmental groups who use strategic lawsuits to prevent forest management activities from taking place. It’s time that elected officials in the nation’s capital put an end to these abusive lawsuits or, at a minimum, roll back some of the worst impacts.

It isn’t just about helping people, who radical environmentalists view as irredeemably bad. It’s also about helping the wildlife species that these groups claim they are trying to protect.

Here’s why: For forest managers, a big part of their job is keeping the ecosystem healthy while also making sure it’s safe for people to live near and visit. That job is harder than it sounds, especially in the West, because people have understandably chosen to limit the natural role that fire plays in maintaining balanced forest ecosystems.

Without natural fires, large amounts of undergrowth can build up. Over time, the stockpile of fuel grows to dangerous levels, and when there is a fire, it’s much larger and more damaging than it should be.

That isn’t just bad for the people living in nearby communities; it’s also bad for wildlife. Ecologists have found that when forests grow too tall and too thick due to decades of fire suppression, there aren’t enough smaller, younger plants to provide the kind of habitat that many species need.

“In today’s situation, if you look at these big panoramic landscapes, what you see is an incredibly lower level of diversity, where the forest has all grown up and blended,” Paul Hessburg, a research landscape ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service, told Oregon Public Broadcasting back in 2018. “There are some critters still making a living in that landscape, but it has nowhere near the variety of the former landscape before it was homogenized.”

Small-scale, controlled burns are one tool that forest managers can use to mimic the role of natural fires. But mechanical thinning of the undergrowth, using everything from hand tools to rakes to chainsaws to wood chippers, is also a must, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

Piling up brush, thinning dense stands of trees, and pruning lower branches are some of the ways forest managers reduce the risk of catastrophic fires and encourage the kind of new growth and restoration that benefits wildlife.

But a faction of the environmental movement finds this kind of human activity in forests to be unacceptable, and for decades, these activists have been waging war against forest managers in the courts.

Perhaps the worst example is the 2015 victory of the Cottonwood Environmental Law Center in front of the ultraliberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

The decision allowed environmental groups to use the Endangered Species Act to derail existing forest management plans by forcing the federal government to go back and repeat years of consultation and desk work on those plans.

The Obama and Trump administrations worked with Congress to freeze the effect of the so-called Cottonwood decision, but that freeze recently expired. Today, there are 87 different forest management plans that could be brought to a halt by Cottonwood-style lawsuits, the U.S. Forest Service has warned .

On federal land alone, there is already an 80 million-acre backlog of forest ecosystems that need restoration work. The wildfire threat posed by this backlog has been called a “ crisis ” by the Biden administration, which is attempting to fast-track forest-thinning projects over the next decade.

But the Biden forest plan and other forest management proposals to reduce the backlog are now clouded in uncertainty because of the renewed threat of legal action.

Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) is leading a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers to fix this problem. “An immediate resolution to this decision is vital to allow land managers and wildlife biologists to follow the best available science to improve the health of our forests, reduce the risk of severe wildfires, advance wildlife habitat projects, and support good paying timber jobs,” Daines and his fellow lawmakers told the Biden administration earlier this year.

It’s hard to fathom how an idea with this much bipartisan support still struggles to get traction inside the Beltway. Regardless, it’s time for real leaders in both parties to come up with a permanent legislative fix to this problem.

For communities facing the growing threat of catastrophic wildfires, it truly is a matter of life and death.

John Karakoulakis is director of The Western Way, a nonprofit organization focused on free market solutions to Western U.S. conservation issues.

Why debt deal’s permitting reforms are a win for rural economies

This opinion piece from TWW’s Steve Handy originally ran in the Deseret News on June 19, 2023 and can be accessed here.

Less than six months ago, a new conservative majority in the U.S. House of Representatives put an end to one-party Democratic rule in the nation’s capital.

After the left-wing legislative and regulatory onslaught that characterized the first two years of President Joe Biden’s term, the rise of Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the GOP Conference was a badly needed reprieve for center-right voters.

Frankly, if all the Republican House majority accomplished was stopping bad bills from becoming bad laws, that would have been enough. But the recent deal reached between McCarthy and Biden over the nation’s debt ceiling also included a massive win for conservative, rural communities — especially those in Western states.

The debt ceiling bill also includes major reforms to the federal permitting process for energy projects, which have been a major source of economic growth for farming and ranching communities in the American West.

This growth has been artificially constrained, however, due to a federal permitting process that has grown unwieldy and open to political manipulation by environmental activists and other opposition groups.

Transmission lines, mining projects, oil and natural gas pipelines and many other energy infrastructure projects have been tied up in knots because of the problematic federal permitting process. As a result, rural communities have been limited in the amount of energy and energy-related products they can make and sell to urban centers and overseas buyers.

But the Fiscal Responsibility Act will tip the scales back towards a balanced, functional permitting system that provides strong environmental protections without limiting the economic potential of rural America, and especially Western states, where the federal government is the biggest landowner. 

In particular, the Fiscal Responsibility Act brings some badly needed commonsense to permitting reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, which opposition groups have learned how to manipulate to their advantage.

Instead of using far-fetched hypotheticals to block or delay projects, federal permitting reviews must now be focused on “reasonably foreseeable environmental effects” and “a reasonable range of alternatives.”

Environmental impact statements will now have to be completed within two years, instead of being dragged out indefinitely. Not only that, there will be page limits on completed environmental impact statements, which will also help to keep regulators focused on the real issues at hand.

The Fiscal Responsibility Act also requires a single agency to lead the environmental review of a permit application, instead of having multiple arms of the federal government conducting duplicative and sometimes contradictory reviews.

This will help prevent the kind of bureaucratic battles that can add years to the federal permitting process. In one infamous case, a transmission line project that would connect wind farms in Wyoming with big cities in California was stuck in the permitting review process for 15 years, until it was finally approved in April.  

The permitting reforms in the Fiscal Responsibility Act have stayed mostly “under the radar” but they are still hugely important, Republican Utah Congressman Blake Moore said.

The National Environmental Policy Act hasn’t been meaningfully reformed in 40 years, and the improvements that Republicans fought for and won will “greenlight more American energy and infrastructure projects without crippling restrictions and procedural hurdles,” Moore said. 

These projects will build stronger connections between the predominantly rural communities where energy is produced and the domestic and international markets where that energy is consumed.

Simply put, the more energy we can produce and sell, the more prosperous our communities will be — and the Fiscal Responsibility Act will help make that happen.   

Steve Handy is a former state legislator and the Utah director for The Western Way, an organization focused on market-competitive solutions to environmental and conservation challenges. He also served as a communications consultant for the recent Western States Hydrogen Hub application.  

TransWest Express Project Kicks Off Construction

The TransWest Express Transmission Project began construction on June 20, 2023. The groundbreaking in Carbon County, Wyoming was attended by Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon, U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, Utah Office of Energy Director Gregory Todd, Nevada Office of Energy Director Dwayne McClinton and others.

The 732-mile HVDC and HVAC TWE Project will provide important new bulk transmission capacity to benefit the entire West. The TWE Project will interconnect with the PacifiCorp system in Wyoming, with the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power and Intermountain Power systems in Utah, with the NV Energy system in Nevada, and with the California Independent System Operator.

“The TWE Project’s successful development represents recognition by stakeholders of all kinds and at all levels that collaborating to build a stronger power grid is vital to build a stronger nation,” said Bill Miller, president and CEO of TransWest Express LLC. “We deeply appreciate the support we’ve received from so many people along the way. We are thankful for everyone who celebrated this milestone with us today. Now, we look forward and are focused on assuring the TWE Project’s successful construction.”

The TransWest project will result in significant economic benefits to western states and rural counties. TWE estimates the following benefits from the $2.9 Billion dollar project investment.

Additionally, TransWest anticipates the purchase and delivery of construction materials, substation equipment and transmission towers will generate about $113.5 million in total sales and use tax revenue.

From left: TransWest COO Roxane Perruso; TransWest CEO Bill Miller; Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm; Rich Voorberg, Siemens Energy North America President; Gregory Todd, Utah Office of Energy Director; James Lester, Colorado Energy Office Advisor; Interior Secretary Deb Haaland; Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon; Dwyane McClinton, Nevada Office of Energy Director; Maury Galbraith, Colorado Electric Transmission Authority Director; Derek Donley, IUOE Western Region Director; and Jeff Neitzel, IBEW 8th District International Representative. Additional key partners (not pictured) are the team from Barnard Wilson Joint Venture, including Tim Barnard, Chairman, Barnard Construction Co., and Don Wilson, CEO of Wilson Construction.

Congress can speed up America’s push for cleaner energy

This opinion piece from TWW’s Steve Handy originally ran in the Deseret News on June 5, 2023 and can be accessed here.

For more than a decade, America has been moving away from foreign sources of energy to homegrown sources of energy, and from high-carbon fuels to low-carbon fuels.

That’s not because of a big government program — it’s pure economics. The cost of domestically produced natural gas and renewable energy sources like wind and solar plummeted during the 2010s, and so did America’s carbon emissions.

Today, we could be producing much more homegrown energy and cutting carbon emissions at an even faster pace. But ironically, federal environmental regulations and left-wing green groups are slowing things down.

That’s because to create new sources of energy, you have to build things. Like transmission lines to move electricity from wind farms in the countryside to homes and businesses in the city. Or pipelines to move natural gas from where it’s produced to homes, businesses, factories, power plants and export terminals. Or mines that dig up the metals needed to make grid-scale batteries and electric cars.   

And yet, thanks to decades of lobbying and lawsuits, the federal permitting system for large construction projects in the U.S. has become almost unworkable.

It’s so bad that even far-left environmental activist Bill McKibben — godfather of the “keep it in the ground” movement — can admit that things have gone too far.

“I’m an environmentalist, which means I’ve got some practice in saying no,” McKibben recently wrote in Mother Jones magazine. “But we’re at a hinge moment now, when solving our biggest problems … means we need to say yes to some things.” McKibben’s article was even headlined: “Yes In Our Backyards.”

Actions, however, speak louder than words — which is why new conservative leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives is a big deal if you want to see America start to build things again.

In late March, the House passed a major permitting reform bill: The Lower Energy Costs Act. The bill, which is now before the Senate, streamlines and simplifies 1970s-era permitting procedures so that project developers can get a clear yes or no answer on whether construction can proceed much faster than is possible today.

In the decades since the National Environmental Policy Act and other landmark environmental statutes were passed, environmental activists and overzealous regulators have learned how to slow down the permitting review process as much as possible, adding years of delay, expense and uncertainty.

According to Utah Congressman John Curtis — chairman of the House Conservative Climate Caucus — the bill will support the development of clean energy technologies, improve energy efficiency, and promote energy independence by improving the permitting process for all sources, from wind and solar to oil and natural gas. 

“Republicans care deeply about this Earth, emission reductions, affordable energy, and energy independence, all of which are achieved by this bill,” Curtis said after the bill cleared the House in a bipartisan vote. 

So what happens next? One possibility is that leaders in the Senate decide to do nothing and keep the nation’s broken permitting system in place for the benefit of a small number of activist groups. That would expose these groups and their allies in Congress as hypocrites, since they claim to support the move away from foreign sources of energy to homegrown sources of energy, and from high-carbon fuels to low-carbon fuels.

Hopefully, however, common sense will prevail. The leading champion for permitting reform in the Senate is Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

Last year, Manchin spent months developing his own proposal for streamlining the permitting process, which wouldn’t remove any environmental safeguards, but would speed up the time it takes to get a final answer from regulators or the courts.

“The United States of America is more litigious than any nation on Earth,” Manchin said late last year when his proposal was blocked in the Senate. “It takes longer to do anything here.” 

Hopefully, leaders in Congress — especially members of our own delegation from Utah — now have a chance to restart the debate over permitting reform.

When members from across the political spectrum can see there’s a problem, commonsense solutions can be found — and must be found. 

If we hope to lower energy prices and lower emissions at the same time, there’s no way around it; we have to start building in America again.   

Steve Handy is a former state legislator and the Utah director for The Western Way, an organization focused on market-competitive solutions to environmental and conservation challenges.

UT Opportunities in Energy Innovation

Steve Handy, Utah’s Director for The Western Way, recently joined Utah leaders from industry, academia, government and the non-profit sector at a luncheon with Representative Blake Moore, a Republican, who represents Utah’s 1st Congressional District to discuss Opportunities in Energy Innovation.

The moderator for the discussion was Brian Steed, Director of Utah State’s Institute for Land, Water, and Air.

Steed framed the discussion as a “listening opportunity” for Congressman Moore to hear from a wide-ranging audience about energy development, management and the advancement of new energy.

Congressman Moore remarked that he is fully vested in an “all of the above approach” to energy and that he wants to find ways to reduce federal regulations in order for innovative approaches in energy development can advance. “From my travels throughout the state and listening to many of you, I know that Utah is an energy powerhouse and has a bright future. I want to be at the table assisting you in any way that I can. My team knows how strongly I feel about energy issues,” said Moore. “The door is always open.”

Western hydrogen hub shows the way forward on energy — and politics too

This opinion piece from TWW’s Steve Handy originally ran in The Salt Lake Tribune on May 16, 2023 and can be accessed here.

Without much fanfare, a group of Western governors last month submitted plans to the federal government to build a major center for hydrogen production in the Rocky Mountain region. The governors of four states — Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico — are hoping to secure $1.25 billion in federal funding to help make the proposal, dubbed the Western Interstate Hydrogen Hub, a reality.

This is a bigger story than you might think, for reasons of policy and politics.

Hydrogen may not get the same kind of press as solar panels, wind turbines or electric cars. But ramping up U.S. hydrogen production is critically important for our future energy security.

For example: Hydrogen can be used to power heavy vehicles that don’t perform as well with batteries, such as trucks, buses, trains and even commercial aircraft. Hydrogen can be blended with natural gas to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, factories and even residential sources like furnaces and hot-water heaters.

Hydrogen can also be stored and used to generate electricity or heat at any time of the day or night — what power grid operators call a “dispatchable” energy source. This can provide another option besides natural gas-fired power plants and large-scale batteries for backing up renewables like wind and solar.

So positioning Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico as a major hub of hydrogen production — a fuel with so many uses and markets all over the world — is a huge step in the right direction from an economic point of view.

Today, most U.S. hydrogen is made from natural gas in a process that releases carbon emissions into the atmosphere. So even though hydrogen itself may not have direct carbon emissions when used as a fuel, the indirect emissions from how it is made can’t be ignored.

The Western hydrogen hub will tackle this challenge in three principal ways: First, by capturing and storing the carbon emissions during natural gas-based hydrogen production; second, by developing technologies that can use wood waste and other biomass as an alternative feedstock for hydrogen production; and third, by perfecting a process called electrolysis to produce commercial quantities of hydrogen using only electricity and water.

The $1.25 billion federal grant will be enough to begin the development of eight different hydrogen projects across the four states and generate 26,000 jobs, according to state officials.

This level of technological collaboration is impressive enough. But the political collaboration that underpins the planned hydrogen hub is also remarkable.

For example: After the four states submitted their latest plans to the federal government, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, issued a statement that couldn’t have been more bullish.

“Utah has long advocated for doing things a little differently, and in our state, that little bit of difference has led to a lot of innovation and economic success,” said Gov. Cox. “Our partnership in this four-state application is no different. If the Department of Energy wants to spur innovation in hydrogen as an energy source, this is the place.”

Meanwhile, in neighboring Colorado, a statement from Democratic Gov. Jared Polis also fully embraced proposed hydrogen hub. “The investment in these eight hydrogen projects is a crucial step to achieving shared energy independence goals and my goal of 100% renewable energy in Colorado by 2040,” Polis said.

These two elected officials have vastly different political views and core constituencies, and yet, they are united behind the idea of creating a major new industry — hydrogen production — in our region.

In today’s highly polarized political environment, this is no easy feat. But it’s a welcome development, and one that the Biden administration should consider closely when deciding the fate of the $1.25 billion grant application.

Because these four Western states aren’t just showing the path forward for a critically important new energy source. They’re also presenting a powerful example of what can happen when elected leaders with divergent views are willing to sit down, talk and find a few areas of agreement to work on together.


Steve Handy is a former state legislator and the Utah director for The Western Way, an organization focused on market-competitive solutions to environmental and conservation challenges. He also served as a communications consultant for the recent Western States Hydrogen Hub application.

TWW Urges Congress to Support A Permanent Fix to the "Cottonwood" Decision

The Western Way joined other like minded common sense and free market based conservation groups this week urging Congress to support a permanent fix to the “Cottonwood” decision which would improve forest restoration and reduce the risk of wildfires.

With broad support for a permanent Cottonwood fix and a clear need for immediate action, it’s time for Congress to address this problem. Senator Steve Daines’s Cottonwood proposal (S. 1540) and Representative Matt Rosendale’s Forest Information Reform Act (H.R. 200) would allow forest managers to get back to restoring forests and recovering species.

The Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) details what the “Cottonwood” decision is and why it needs to be fixed:

The 2015 Cottonwood v Forest Service ruling, requires the Forest Service to halt forest restoration projects throughout a forest whenever a new species is listed, critical habitat is designated, or other new information is discovered about a species in that forest. The projects can’t proceed until the Service consults with the Fish and Wildlife Service over whether to change its overarching forest plans, a slow and expensive process. 

Pausing projects to protect vulnerable species may sound reasonable, but the reality is that this is a duplicative and distracting process. The Service already analyzes this new information before proceeding with specific projects, ensuring that no harm can come to species. The additional plan-level analysis is a duplicative bureaucratic obstacle. 

A temporary legislative fix was put in place in 2018, but it expired in March 2023. With Cottonwood left unchecked, Forest Service Deputy Chief Chris French estimates projects could grind to a halt in 87 forest plans across the West. According to French, completing duplicative analysis for all of these forest plans would take “somewhere between 5 and 10 years and tens of millions of dollars.” With an 80-million-acre forest restoration backlog, that’s time and money the Forest Service does not have. 

That’s why this bipartisan congressional action is so welcome. It’s past time Congress establishes a permanent fix for Cottonwood. 

Read more about why a fix for Cottonwood is urgently needed here.

The TransWest Express transmission line is a win for rural communities. Why did approval take 15 years?

This opinion piece by TWW’s Greg Brophy originally ran in UtilityDive on May 16, 2023 and can be accessed here.

One of the biggest economic development opportunities in rural America is supporting the expansion of new electricity sources.

Whether you’re talking about wind farms, solar arrays, advanced nuclear power plants or large-scale batteries, rural communities are a natural home for these technologies — especially the rural communities of the West.

As a result, we’ve seen a wave of investment in electricity generation — especially wind and solar — across rural America during the past 20 years. But we haven’t reached our potential and there’s plenty of room left to grow. 

What’s holding rural America back? It’s a lack of transmission lines to move electricity from states like Colorado and Wyoming, where it’s generated, to states like Nevada and California, where it’s consumed.

Recently, however, there was some good news on this front: The federal approval of a major new transmission line connecting wind farms in Wyoming to California.

The TransWest Express project will span more than 700 miles and add 3,000 MW of new transmission capacity to the power grid. For perspective, that’s enough capacity to move electrical output of three large-scale nuclear power plants.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the project is badly needed because “the wind in Wyoming peaks in the afternoon and stays strong into the evening, meaning it could help California keep the lights on after sundown.”

The construction of the TransWest Express transmission project is expected to create more than 1,000 jobs, and once complete, it will be the largest addition to the Western power grid in decades.

That’s the good news, but here’s the bad news: It took the federal government 15 years to review and approve the TransWest Express project.

Fifteen years: That’s more than triple the time it took for the U.S. to win World War II.

Despite securing approvals from four states, 14 local governments and a slew of private landowners along the proposed route, the developers of TransWest Express hit a brick wall with the federal government, which owns two-thirds of the land that the transmission line will cross.

The massive delay in approving the TransWest Express project was the result of an overly complex and too easily derailed federal permitting process for major infrastructure projects.

Despite being put on the so-called “fast track” in 2011 by the Obama administration, the project got bogged down in red tape and squabbling between different arms of the federal bureaucracy.

At one point, an agency housed inside the U.S. Department of Agriculture even used $3 million of taxpayer money to buy a conservation easement that added years of additional delays to the permitting process, even though the rest of the federal bureaucracy was ready to approve the project.

Rural America cannot afford this kind of insanity to continue, which is why the bipartisan work on permitting reform in Congress is so critically important.

The Lower Energy Costs Act, which recently passed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, is about a lot more than producing more of our own oil and natural gas — as important as that is.

The bill also includes critical reforms to speed up the permitting review process for a wide spectrum of energy and mining projects, so that the developers of those projects don’t have to wait several years — or more than a decade in some cases — for a clear “yes” or “no” answer.

The ball is now in the court of the U.S. Senate, which is controlled by Democrats. But the prospect of bipartisan cooperation on this subject is strong, thanks to the work being done by Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and supportive officials in the executive branch.

Manchin has proposed legislation that would streamline the permitting process so that decisions could be reached faster, without lowering the bar on environmental protections. Democratic leaders in the Senate have obstructed his efforts, but even the Biden administration supports the proposed reforms.

“We can move faster by setting tighter deadlines for agencies to complete environmental reviews,” John Podesta, a top energy adviser to President Joe Biden, said recently at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston. “We can move smarter by making it easier to approve projects with low environmental impact.”

“But Congress needs to do its job … and pass permitting reform legislation,” Podesta concluded.

Despite our polarized politics, there’s simply too much agreement on this subject for nothing to change, and for 15-year delays in the federal permitting process to still be possible.

The rural communities of the West need these reforms badly. Right now, we have the potential to vastly increase the amount of energy we provide for the U.S. economy, but no way to get that energy to market.

Our communities are poorer as a result, and that is why Republicans and Democrats must find a way to work through their differences on this issue.

Greg Brophy is a farmer and former state senator. He is the Colorado director of The Western Way.

With divided government, clean energy, pro-business policies can thrive side-by-side in Nevada

This opinion piece from TWW’s John Karakoulakis was originally published in the Reno Gazette Journal on April 29, 2023 and can be accessed here.

With divided government, clean energy, pro-business policies can thrive side-by-side in Nevada

John Karakoulakis

In these polarized political times, it’s easy to view the major political parties as total and irreconcilable opposites. If Democrats support one thing, then Republicans must oppose it, and vice versa.

But when you look closer at individual policy issues, it’s never that simple, and that’s a good thing. One of the best examples is energy policy, which is a critically important topic right now in Nevada.

With the election of Governor Joe Lombardo, we now have divided government in Nevada. But that doesn’t mean the expansion of clean energy in our state will grind to a halt, or even slow down. Because there is plenty of room for both parties to work together on smart energy solutions for Nevada.

A great starting point is Gov. Lombardo’s plan to shield Nevadans from sudden spikes in energy demand from neighboring California. These spikes are becoming a bigger problem, because California is retiring more of its own power plants and relying more heavily on imported electricity from states across the West.

Shortly after he was sworn in, the governor called for the construction of new in-state sources of electricity generation to limit California’s influence over the Nevada energy market. On March 27, he provided more detail with a major executive order that seeks “energy independence” for Nevada.

“Nevada's advancement of energy independence will spur economic development, lead job creation, drive low-cost energy for Nevadans and reduce carbon emissions for future generations of Nevadans,” Gov. Lombardo’s executive order says.

The executive order calls for a “balanced approach” that advances “sustainability and reliability” at the same time, rather than the state government picking winners and losers. The goal should be a “robust, diverse energy portfolio” that includes “solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, natural gas … hydrogen, energy storage, and other resources needed to meet the vast energy demands in the state.”

To be clear: By throwing his weight behind the construction of new power generation in Nevada, Gov. Lombardo is also supporting the construction of new clean energy sources — because they are cheaper than the alternatives.

That is especially true for solar, which has plummeted in cost over the past 10 to 15 years and is now the cheapest source of new electricity generation that utilities can build, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Therefore, a program to build more power generation in Nevada is a program to build more renewable power in Nevada.

But the governor’s executive order goes even further, calling for the development of “transmission and energy infrastructure to ensure that Nevada is a regional leader in exporting its solar, wind and geothermal resources.”

At the same time, Gov. Lombardo wants more transmission infrastructure to import reliable, low-cost, clean energy from other states when it’s needed. Another critical element of the executive order: Policies that “reduce regulations and streamline the permitting process for shorter approval times for energy projects” which are too often caught up in red tape and litigation from activist groups.

The governor’s order is a huge vote of confidence in the state’s future as a major clean energy investment hub — and a promising sign of bipartisan cooperation in this area.

Though, to be honest, this shouldn’t come as a surprise when you consider some of the private-sector investments that are already being made in Nevada.

Earlier this year, Tesla announced a $3.6 billion expansion of its operations in Nevada. The expansion will be focused on building electric semi-trucks, which is the next frontier in electrifying the transportation sector.

Days later, General Motors announced a $650 million investment in the Thacker Pass mine in Nevada, which will produce lithium for use in electric vehicle batteries. Today, the U.S. produces a tiny fraction of the world’s lithium, and developing a domestic supply chain for lithium and other critical minerals can prevent the kind of disruption we saw with semiconductors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Then, in early March, the developers of a massive $2.5 billion pumped-hydro energy storage project in eastern Nevada’s White Pine County submitted their final license application to federal regulators in Washington, D.C.

While Republicans and Democrats may have different reasons for supporting investments in clean energy technologies, that hardly matters. What matters is they agree.

Investments in clean energy power generation, clean energy manufacturing, and clean energy supply chains are good for businesses and working families in Nevada. It’s not rocket science, it’s just common sense. And we should all welcome that fact that victories for common sense can also be victories for the environment.

John Karakoulakis is director of The Western Way, a nonprofit that seeks pro-market solutions to environmental challenges.

TWW Supports Commonsense NV Geothermal Legislation

Nevada Assemblywoman Melissa Hardy (R, District 22 in Clark County) is running an important bill this session to support Nevada’s geothermal industry by trying to streamline permitting for new development. The bill also requires the state to conduct a study which will assess new opportunities for geothermal and how best to deploy the technology, so Nevada remains a leader in the space. Assemblywoman Hardy’s bill, AB-315 passed out of the Assembly Growth and Infrastructure Committee earlier this month.

“I support Governor Lombardo’s balanced approach to energy policy in the state, and AB315 aligns with that goal to promote the growth of Nevada’s geothermal industry in all sectors,” said Assemblywoman Hardy. “As we move towards a sustainable and energy-independent future, it is crucial to embrace all forms of renewable energy, including geothermal. I will continue to work with the administration, my colleagues and stakeholders to ensure we have a product that promotes a more sustainable future for Nevada’s natural resources.”

The Western Way is proud to support this legislation from Assemblywoman Hardy which would bolster a homegrown energy resource that will strengthen Nevada’s power grid and provide a boost to the economy with new jobs and investment.

Click here to read AB-315.

The answer to solar and wind energy storage isn’t giant batteries — it’s mountain reservoirs

This piece from TWW’s Steve Handy was ran in the Deseret News on April 5, 2023 and can be accessed here.

For the past decade, the price of low-carbon energy sources has fallen at an astonishing rate. Electricity from newly built wind turbines is 70% cheaper than it was 10 years ago and electricity from solar panels is 90% cheaper.

But to take full advantage of the falling price of wind and solar power, we need to find a way to store the electricity from these sources, so it can be used when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.

In the rapidly expanding field of energy storage, the development of large-scale batteries gets a lot of attention. But there’s another much simpler solution that’s ready to go today — pumped-storage hydropower — especially in Western U.S.

Pumped-storage hydropower has been used for decades. During times of low energy demand, surplus renewable electricity on the power grid is used to pump water uphill into a reservoir. Later, when demand is higher, the stored water is released. As it flows back downhill, the water runs through a hydroelectric generator, sending electricity back to the power grid.

It’s a remarkably efficient energy storage technology. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, pumped storage returns roughly 80% of the electricity it consumes to the power grid — on par with much newer battery storage technologies.

But the expanded use of pumped-storage hydropower is being held back. The problem has nothing to do with the technology — instead it’s red tape.

Across the country, there are 67 pumped-storage hydropower projects in various stages of planning, according to 2021 data from the National Hydropower Association. Together, these projects would add 52.5 gigawatts of storage capacity to the power grid, almost tripling the amount of energy storage that’s in use today nationwide.

However, the national association says only three of the 67 proposed projects have received authorization from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, “and none have begun construction.” These regulatory delays are a bigger deal in the western U.S. than other parts of the country, because more than 60% of the proposed projects would be built to support our region’s power grid.

In Utah, for example, there are six pumped-hydro storage projects waiting on regulatory approvals, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee.

In Wyoming, a single storage project that’s been proposed in the heart of coal country would represent a $2.5 billion infrastructure investment, according to rPlus Hydro, the company behind the project.

In Nevada, rPlus is planning another large-scale pumped-storage hydropower project, estimated to be worth roughly $2 billion.

Besides supporting the power grid and allowing greater use of renewable electricity at all hours of the day and night, the Wyoming and Nevada projects will create roughly 500 construction jobs and 35 permanent jobs each, according to company estimates.

If you’re wondering why Western states are getting so much attention from pumped-hydro storage developers, it’s because of our mountain geography. 

As the National Hydropower Association explains: “Using electricity from the grid to pump water from a lower elevation, (pumped-storage hydropower) creates potential energy in the form of water stored at an upper elevation.” Needless to say, in the West, we have no shortage of “upper elevation” to work with. 

It’s time for governors, state legislatures and members of Congress to figure out the causes of the permitting backlog for pumped-storage hydropower projects and get these projects moving. That should be easier in the West, because as the NHA notes, many of the projects in our region “are off-river or closed loop meaning they have fewer environmental impacts.”

To be sure, water is a sensitive subject in the West. But we have an opportunity to use our water resources wisely to lead the nation in energy storage and increase the use of renewable sources of electricity.

Surely, that’s something that project developers, grid operators, electricity consumers and even environmental activist groups can get behind.

Steve Handy is a former state legislator and the Utah director for The Western Way, an organization focused on market-competitive solutions to environmental and conservation challenges.

Let's keep Arizona's innovative energy sector on the right track

This piece from Greater Phoenix Chamber President and CEO Todd Sanders and TWW’s Jaime Molera originally ran in the Phoenix Business Journal on March 31, 2023 and can be accessed here.

Arizona’s innovative energy sector is surging, but we must stay ahead of the competition. There’s an unfortunate trend in national politics to assume that everything is, well, political. This is particularly the case when it comes to energy policy.

Extreme voices on both sides of the aisle want the public to believe that some energy sources are “red,” while others are “blue,” and that investments in these energy sources are all driven by politics.

But here in the states, and especially in Arizona, we know better. By keeping taxes low, cutting red tape and maintaining an affordable cost of living, Arizona has been a magnet for businesses of all kinds, from aerospace to bioscience to financial services.

But Arizona’s business climate is racking up major wins in the clean energy sector, too.

In just the past few months, our state has seen a surge of investment in battery and solar cell manufacturing.

In early December, American Battery Factory, announced a $1.2 billion gigafactory for advanced battery cells will be built in Tucson. American Battery Factory specializes in the manufacturing of lithium iron phosphate, or LFP, batteries.

LFP batteries are an alternative to the lithium-ion technology used in laptops, cell phones and most electric vehicles on the road today. The Tucson factory is expected to support 300 jobs when it opens in 2024 or early 2025, with that number eventually growing to 1,000 jobs.

Arizona now a battery-making hub

On the heels of this announcement, another battery manufacturer – Sion Power – unveiled plans to double the size of its existing operations in Tucson. The expansion will add 150 jobs and boost the local economy by more than $300 million over the next five years, according to the Arizona Commerce Authority.

Sion Power is the developer of another new battery technology, which is designed to be lighter than existing lithium-ion batteries, but with a larger storage capacity.

And just last week, South Korean battery giant LG Energy Solution

Ltd. has confirmed its plans to move forward with building a huge battery complex in Queen Creek, representing a $5.5 billion investment.

Thanks to these investments, and others by battery firms such as Li-Cycle and KORE Power, our state has a “reputation as a national epicenter for battery manufacturing,” said Sandra Watson, the Arizona Commerce Authority’s President and CEO.

In early January, yet another investment in clean energy manufacturing was announced – this time in Phoenix.

The state’s first solar module manufacturing facility, to be operated by JA Solar, should be operational by the end of the year and create more than 600 new jobs. JA Solar’s $60 million facility in Phoenix will build solar panels for homes, businesses, and large- scale projects by utility companies.

Company representatives praised state and local officials for ensuring the site selection process ran smoothly – a testament to our state’s positive business climate.

With all this welcome news, there is a natural temptation to become complacent, to take Arizona’s status as a leading clean energy state for granted. That would be a big mistake, of course.

Competition from other states

In the wake of Covid-19, many industries are fundamentally rethinking their overseas supply chains and choosing to make more of their products here in the United States. The energy sector is no different.

There’s a major push to build more batteries, solar panels and other technologies domestically, and the same can be said for the raw materials that must be mined in order to build a whole host of clean energy sources.

This represents a massive opportunity for Arizona – but other states are eager to capitalize as well. While our state economy has many natural strengths, the private and public sectors will need to work together closely to ensure we stay ahead of the pack.

For example: We need to keep investing in community colleges and other educational institutions that can produce well-trained and highly skilled workers who are ready to work in clean energy. Finding and retaining talented workers is a massive factor in deciding where to build or expand.

Another challenge: Making sure Arizona’s research and development tax incentives are keeping pace with the needs of business. After all, scientific breakthroughs and other innovations that happen in Arizona are more likely to create jobs in Arizona.

Building on Arizona’s existing leadership in this space doesn’t have to be hard. But it won’t happen on its own, either.

There’s no time like the present for job creators, policy makers, communities and workers to develop a clean energy game plan that keeps Arizona in the lead for decades to come. Sure, it may require putting politics aside in order to accomplish what’s best for our state. But that’s not a bad thing, either.

Todd Sanders is president and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Chamber; Jaime A. Molera is state director of The Western Way and a partner with Molera Alvarez LLC.

AZ Lands $5.5 Billion Investment for State of the Art Battery Facility

LG Energy Solution announced it will invest approximately $5.5 billion to build a battery manufacturing complex in Queen Creek, Arizona. The investment is the largest single investment ever for a stand-alone battery manufacturing facility in North America.  It is also more than four times the amount that LG Energy Solution initially announced last year to manufacture cylindrical EV batteries in the same location.

"Our decision to invest in Arizona demonstrates our strategic initiative to continue expanding our global production network, which is already the largest in the world, to further advance our innovative and top-quality products in scale and with speed," said Youngsoo Kwon, CEO of LG Energy Solution.

When completed the complex will consist of two manufacturing facilities - one for cylindrical batteries for electric vehicles (EV) and another for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) pouch-type batteries for energy storage systems (ESS).

With the new battery manufacturing complex in the southwestern state, LGES will boost its production capacity in major product segments, develop more cohesive partnerships with its customers in both EV and ESS sectors, and cut back on the logistics cost by bringing its new manufacturing facilities in close proximity to its customers.

The new manufacturing facility for LFP pouch-type batteries for ESS, which is the first ESS-exclusive battery production facility in the world, aims to start production in 2026. With LG Energy Solution Vertech, Inc.'s fully integrated energy storage solutions, LGES will further expand its presence in the entire ESS value chain.  

The company's new manufacturing facilities will utilize a state-of-the-art smart factory system that carries out all decision making on machine-produced data. By implementing this key measure to enhance product quality, the Arizona facilities will aim to increase yield, improve manufacturing processes, and boost productivity to better respond to the ever-rising battery demands in the region.

Bill to demystify tax credits would have been a win for fiscal conservatism and clean energy

This opinion piece from TWW’s Steve Handy originally ran in the Salt Lake Tribune on March 16, 2023 and can be accessed here.

Bill to demystify tax credits would have been a win for fiscal conservatism and clean energy

Can you be fiscally conservative and support tax credits for renewable energy projects and other types of business investment?

As the state director of The Western Way, a non-profit focused on conservative and market-competitive solutions to environmental and conservation challenges, I get that question a lot.

And I can answer without hesitation: Yes.

I know this might clash with political and media stereotypes about energy and the environment. Big-government progressives are the champions of renewable energy and small-government conservatives only believe in fossil fuels — or so the narrative goes.

But the reality is much different. Case in point: The debate over a measure to reform clean energy tax credits in the Utah Legislature this year.

In early February, state Rep. Kay Christofferson, R-Lehi, introduced a bill – HB407 Incentives Amendments – that sought to reform the way a whole host of tax credits — from clean energy to historic preservation to motion picture production — are awarded by state officials.

While the initial draft of the bill would have immediately ended many of these tax credits, Christofferson listened to concerns and made some thoughtful changes.

The bill, as amended, would have brought new accountability and transparency measures to the way tax credits are awarded. Instead of just awarding credits to companies based on the paperwork they submit, HB407 would have required state officials to take additional steps of formally certifying their eligibility.

HB407 would also have required that state officials publish the details of each tax credit awarded on the internet, allowing the general public to decide for themselves if the incentives are worthwhile.

“Some of the credits are probably doing great things, and some we don’t know because we don’t have enough information on them,” Christofferson told the Salt Lake Tribune.

If HB407 had become law, state lawmakers and taxpayers would have had much greater visibility into Utah’s existing tax credits for wind, solar, geothermal and other forms of clean energy – along with other incentives for investments in other industries, too.

Then, armed with that information, the people of Utah and their elected representatives could decide what’s working, what isn’t and how it could be fixed. This would have been much more sensible than amending or repealing certain tax credits based on a political philosophy or a hunch.

In any debate about the tax breaks the state of Utah offers businesses, it’s also critically important to remember that our state economy doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

Utah is competing with other states for business investment – and those states offer tax incentives, too. While our biggest selling point will always be our commitment to free enterprise and a pro-business climate, we will also need to continue to offer modest tax incentives, some $200 million per year across all sectors, in order to stay competitive.

For perspective, $200 million is roughly 0.75% of Utah’s total state budget of approximately $29 billion per year.

And in the case of renewable energy, there’s a good reason for wanting those investments to be made here instead of another state.

In 2021, The Western Way commissioned an economic analysis of utility-scale renewable energy projects across 11 counties in Utah. By “utility scale,” the economists who prepared the report meant large wind farms, solar arrays and geothermal plants built by power companies, as opposed to rooftop solar projects and other renewable energy investments from individual homeowners and small businesses.

Over a roughly 15-year period, these large renewable energy projects generated $5.3 billion in construction and investment activity and more than 9,000 jobs.

These projects are mostly located in rural areas of the state and make a valuable contribution to the local tax base in these communities. The report from $24.6 million in annual property tax payments to local governments, in fact – money that supports public schools and other essential local services.

It’s clear that wind, solar and geothermal energy makes a major contribution to our successful state economy. Because of our wide-open spaces and high altitude, southern Utah in particular is attractive to utility scale solar.

The economics work, but offering targeted tax breaks to businesses in this sector may also be necessary to prevent other states from luring these projects away. As long as Utah taxpayers see a return on that investment, I’d argue it’s worth it.

Should those tax breaks remain permanent, or should they be phased out over time? I don’t pretend to know the answer to that question. But as a fiscal conservative, I do know that any answer should be based on the facts – and bills like HB407 can make those facts easier for the general public to access.

Steve Handy is a former Utah legislator and the Utah director for The Western Way, an organization focused on market-competitive solutions to environmental and conservation challenges.

Energy Innovation Spotlight: Spiral Welded Wind Turbine Towers Move to Commercialization

Earlier this month, Keystone Tower Systems and GE announced a major milestone in the development of spiral welded wind towers with the installation and operation of the first such tower on a 2.8MW GE turbine.  Keystone Tower System, headquartered in Denver, CO, is driving innovation in the market which could fundamentally change the economics, manufacturing, and installation of wind projects across the country. 

Spiral welded towers can be twice as tall and 10 times faster to build than conventional towers.  They also use less steal, so they are also more affordable than conventional towers.   Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, Keystone’s proprietary manufacturing process will eventually be deployed on-site at wind farms.  This will eliminate tower diameter restrictions by eliminating the need for delivery height restrictions on bridges and overpasses.   All of this results in taller towers that can access better and more consistent wind resources which will lower costs and land usage. 

Using on-site tower manufacturing will also create new economic benefits for communities where wind farms will be located, such as more local jobs during the construction phases and direct spending in local economies to build the towers. 

“This is the culmination of a dream we had to bring advanced manufacturing to the tower industry to help drive down the cost of wind energy and expand where wind is competitive into new regions,” said Eric Smith, Keystone’s co-founder and CTO. “I’m very proud of the years of hard work our team has invested in developing and scaling up tapered spiral welding.”  

“This collaboration with Keystone is an example of GE’s commitment to working with partners to bring new and innovative technology to the wind industry and advance domestic manufacturing,” said Vic Abate, GE Renewable Energy’s CEO, Onshore Wind. “We are delighted to be a part of this exciting opportunity for our workhorse products, with the goal of providing affordable, sustainable renewable energy to our customers and helping to deliver on the energy transition.”

Private sector innovation, market forces, and early stage R&D investments from the Department of Energy are driving this rapidly advancing technology which could have profound impacts on how wind energy gets built in the United States. 

Watch the video below to see how spiral wielded wind tower manufacturing works:

GUEST COLUMN: A more resilient power grid is crucial

This piece from TWW’s Greg Brophy first ran in The Gazette on February 5, 2023 and can be accessed here.

The North American power grid is a modern technological miracle: Almost 6,000 power plants and more than half a million miles of transmission lines, spanning the United States, Canada and parts of Mexico.

The size, scope and complexity of our grid is so vast, it’s often called “the world’s largest machine.” And like any machine, it requires maintenance, repair and upgrading over time.

But in recent years, power grid operators have also had to deal with something else: deliberate attacks on the electrical system. And it’s a threat that we need to take more seriously here in Colorado.

This issue gained fresh attention in December when gunfire crippled two electrical substations in Moore County, N.C. The attacks left 45,000 customers without power for days and forced critical local services, such as water systems and health care facilities, to generate their emergency power until the damage could be repaired.

In the words of one state official, the attackers turned a vibrant rural community into a “ghost town” for days. Many residents found conditions unlivable and fled the area, while those who remained were subject to public safety curfews.

Just before the North Carolina incident, the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin warning of increased chatter among domestic extremist groups about attacking the power grid. In fact, physical and cyber threats against the grid, from domestic and international actors, have been building for years.

In 2022, physical attacks and incidents of computer hacking against electrical infrastructure surged to their highest level in a decade, according to an analysis of federal incident reports by Politico.

A separate review of federal data also found that human-caused grid disturbances are a bigger threat in the Western U.S. and Western Canada than anywhere else in North America. The number of cases on the Western grid is up 46% since 2011, in fact.

So what can be done to thwart these efforts?

While there is a role for increased physical security, it’s clear that we cannot build a fortress around the power grid. It’s simply too large and too much a part of our daily lives for that kind of response.

Here in Colorado, however, the beginnings of a solution are starting to take shape.

To prevent attacks from succeeding, Xcel Energy is investing in technology upgrades and cybersecurity enhancements. In 2021, those investments totaled more than $100 million.

But Xcel is also exploring other ways to prevent attacks on the power grid, by changing the rules of the game. The state’s largest utility company is testing technology that will make the grid less centralized and therefore limit the impact of an attack or natural disaster in any single location.

The Community Resiliency Initiative is building “microgrids” in six locations that are designed to function independently if there’s a problem on the wider Xcel system. Using battery storage, the microgrids will keep electricity in reserve for homes and businesses during a natural disaster or a human-caused outage.

These steps are encouraging, but given the highly regulated nature of the grid, this is not a challenge that utility companies and power system operators can meet on their own.

For example: State legislators and regulators should explore ways to increase penalties for successful and attempted acts of electrical grid sabotage. Better still, they should also ensure that the security plans developed by utility companies receive closer scrutiny and are updated to match the heightened threats facing the grid.

But tougher penalties and enhanced security is only one side of the coin. Lawmakers and regulatory officials should also work with utility companies to speed up the modernization of the power grid, so that even successful attacks have little impact.

Microgrids are definitely part of the solution. But bigger and more diverse storage options for the larger grid are important too, such as the molten salt technology that Xcel is exploring as an option for the Hayden coal plant site in northwest Colorado.

Likewise, distributed energy sources — in the form of rooftop solar panels, hydrogen fuel cells, advanced geothermal systems and technologies that use waste heat from industrial processes to generate electricity — can play a much bigger role.

But often, the barriers to building a stronger, more resilient grid aren’t technological — they’re regulatory, legal and political. After all, most of the laws governing the electricity sector are based on what the power grid looked like in the mid- to late- 20th century.

But time doesn’t stand still, and neither should we. The world’s largest machine is due for a major tune-up, and the longer we wait, the more expensive it will get.

Greg Brophy of Wray is a farmer and former state senator. He is the Colorado director of The Western Way.