Atlanta plans to launch its first comprehensive plan to address climate resilience and the disproportionate impacts of climate change April 30. The Climate Resilience Action Plan sets goals that include reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 59% by 2030, adding 250 electric vehicle charging stations by 2025 and reducing the energy burden on 10% of the city’s most energy-burdened households. The Mayor’s Office of Sustainability and Resilience spent 18 months studying and gathering community input into how Atlanta’s three primary climate challenges — extreme heat, drought and flooding — affect the city’s different populations. The plan spells out how the city can respond at municipal and neighborhood levels “in ways that make our communities more climate-resilient and more equitable,” said Chandra Farley, Atlanta’s chief sustainability officer. Atlanta consistently ranks in the nation’s top five cities for energy burden, as indicated by the percentage of household income spent on energy bills, Farley said. Traditionally,  households spending 6% or more of their monthly household income on energy are considered energy burdened; Atlanta has many households that spend from 6% to 19% of their monthly income on utilities, Farley said. The Georgia city’s focus on creating energy equity has put the plan’s federal funding in the crosshairs of the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Farley said her team received a cease-and-desist letter regarding a grant it was working on with the Southeastern Energy Efficiency Alliance to address equity and building codes, for example. That grant is on hold as agreements are updated to remove DEI language. The city’s efforts to address inequity in energy burdens will continue, Farley said. “We understand that climate resilience must also be focused on the disproportionate impact that some of our distressed neighborhoods feel more acutely than other neighborhoods,” Farley said. “It is a

Dive Brief: Haven Energy is offering a “first of its kind” program to bring solar and battery storage systems to low- and moderate-income California utility customers at no cost to them, the company said Monday. The initiative, which sees Haven owning and operating the systems, is made possible by the state’s $280 million Self-Generation Incentive Program’s Residential Solar & Storage Equity framework, SGIP RSSE, Haven said. Haven is also partnering with The Energy Coalition, a Los Angeles nonprofit group, to install home battery systems for low- and moderate-income customers in Southern California through the Bassett Avocado Heights Advanced Energy Community program, it said. Dive Insight: As the Trump administration targets utility-scale clean energy development, experts say smaller-scale distributed energy resources could pick up some of the slack. In a January update to its Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Virtual Power Plants report, the U.S. Department of Energy said the country’s current VPP capacity of approximately 30 GW could scale to at least 80 GW by 2030 following a concerted effort by utilities, grid operators, resource aggregators and other stakeholders to encourage broader DER adoption, simplify program design and enrollment, and integrate VPPs into utility planning and wholesale markets. The announcements this week show Haven is doing its part to support the first two goals while delivering more capacity into a California wholesale market that offers multiple forms of support for DERs and VPPs. With the SGIP RSSE framework capable of supporting solar and storage installations for an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 qualifying California households, Haven anticipates deploying 10 MW of distributed capacity in what would become one of the state’s largest VPPs, the company said. Haven automatically enrolls its customers in an eligible demand response program for 10 years, it said. Haven has already installed more than 1,000 batteries under the

In this week’s Charging Forward, Eku Energy acquires a portfolio of seven UK battery energy storage system (BESS) projects from Bluestone Energy, while Gresham House leads industry criticism of Ofgem and NESO. This week’s headlines: UK BESS operators criticise long-duration energy storage scheme ‘bias’ Eku Energy acquires Bluestone Energy’s UK BESS portfolio Zenobe wades into UK zonal pricing debate Balance Power’s Hinksford BESS approved SAE secures £8.5m 240 MWh Welsh BESS E.ON and Superdielectrics collaborate on polymer-based energy storage International news: Gelion achieves sulphur battery breakthrough UK BESS operators criticise long-duration energy storage scheme ‘bias’ A group of UK BESS operators have written an open letter criticising UK authorities over its long-duration energy storage (LDES) revenue support plans. The firms, led by Gresham House, say there are significant flaws in the upcoming LDES cap and floor scheme which, they believe, will create “arbitrary barriers to entry” lithium-ion BESS projects. Other UK firms to sign the open letter include Zenobe, Field Energy, Eku Enegy, Harmony Energy, Adaptogen Capital and Voltwise Power. Together, the group represents 36% of the UK’s current operational BESS capacity. The group claims changes to the LDES scheme could save UK consumers as much as £2.22 billion compared to “unproven” technologies such as liquid air energy storage. © Supplied by Highview PowerA design image of a Highview Power liquid air energy storage system. . The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) initially said in January 2024 that it would exclude lithium-ion batteries from the LDES support scheme. However, officials subsequently said lithium-ion BESS would be eligible if they meet specific criteria, including a minimum eight-hour duration. But the group of developers said analysis from LCP Delta shows BESS is the “most competitive” LDES technology, adding the current scheme could “risk jeopardising” the government’s 27 GW target for shorter

Chevron Corp. and TotalEnergies SE have unlocked new production of up to 75,000 barrels a day of oil and 50 million cubic feet a day of gas with the startup of the deepwater Ballymore field. Located about 120 kilometers (74.56 miles) off the coast of Louisiana in around 6,600 feet of water, Ballymore holds estimated recoverable resources of 150 million barrels of oil equivalent (MMboe) according to the partners. “Ballymore, the latest in a series of Chevron projects to start up in the past year, represents another step towards the company’s goal to produce 300,000 net barrels per day of oil equivalent from the Gulf in 2026”, operator and 60 percent owner Chevron said in an online statement. Ballymore, a tieback, is Chevron’s first development in the Norphlet trend of the United States Gulf. Ballymore is in the Mississippi Canyon area. “The start-up of Ballymore will increase TotalEnergies’ production capacity in U.S. deepwater to more than 75,000 boe/d and contribute to the Company’s targeted hydrocarbon production growth of over 3 percent in 2025”, Nicolas Terraz, president for exploration and production at TotalEnergies, said separately. The French energy giant owns 40 percent of Ballymore. “The United States is a major market for the deployment of our integrated energy model, which combines low breakeven and low emissions oil and gas projects with LNG and integrated power developments”. Ballymore was discovered 2018. The partners approved the development May 2022. In another Gulf partnership, Chevron and TotalEnergies put online the Anchor field in the third quarter of 2024. Chevron said the development is the first to successfully deploy a high-pressure deepwater technology. The technology, which consists of components for drilling, completion, intervention and subsea production, can safely operate at up to 20,000 pressure per square inch in reservoirs that are 34,000 feet below sea level

Made-in-China oil supertankers are set to be slapped with more hefty charges under America’s latest proposal to penalize ships manufactured in the Asian nation as the trade war between Washington and Beijing rages on.  China-made supertankers sailing under non-Chinese owners or operators can expect to be hit with a surcharge of nearly $1.9 million upon calling at a US port under the new rules, according to estimates by the research arm of Arrow Shipbroking Group. The sum balloons to $5.2 million for any China-owned or -operated ships, the firm said in an April 18 note. Under Washington’s previous proposal, market observers had estimated charges of up to $3.5 million per US port call.  The drastic spike in fees under the latest proposal by the United States Trade Representative stems from a new method of calculating levies based on the vessel’s cargo capacity, or net registered tonnage. From mid-October, the cost for any China-made vessel operated by a non-Chinese entity stands at $18 per nrt, with rates rising to $50 should the tanker be owned or operated by a Chinese company. That’s in contrast with the previous proposal that levied charges on a per-visit basis.  As a result, supertankers such as VLCCs face much costlier fees with this methodology, as compared with smaller ships such as aframaxes. Under the new rules, product tanker of different sizes stand to pay between $575,000 to $1.2 million per US visit for ships that are owned or operated by China.  All in all, the new levies are seen as less severe than before, after taking into account carve-outs and exemptions, said Arrow. However, it “still has the potential to impose heavy tolls on shippers, and Chinese owners in particular,” the company said.  Most of the tankers currently trading on water are South Korean-built, however, with the Chinese

In an EBW Analytics Group report sent to Rigzone by the EBW team today, Eli Rubin, an energy analyst at the company, said the May natural gas contract is “flirting with [the] $3.00 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) psychological level”. “The May natural gas contract sank to $2.994 yesterday and closed at $3.016 – a year to date low,” Rubin noted in the report, adding that Henry Hub spot natural gas traded at $3.15 per MMBtu. “While the $3.00 level may offer support, technicals indicate further weakness ahead,” Rubin warned in the report. “However, maintenance on the Permian Highway pipeline could limit supplies to the Gulf Coast this week, sustained weather driven demand is possible into the weekend, and daily LNG feedgas nominations are up with recoveries at Sabine Pass and Plaquemines,” Rubin went on to state. According to Rubin, fundamental catalysts aligning with the $3.00 benchmark could prevent further declines. “Still, the emergence of storage surpluses and very weak spring fundamentals suggest deeper losses may continue,” Rubin said in the report. “May-October contracts average $3.37 per MMBtu, and another 10 percent decline would put prices on a trajectory to reach the October five-year storage average of 3,753 billion cubic feet,” Rubin added. “While the outlook for Cal 2026 increasingly appears underpriced, it could remain so for an extended period before eventually rising,” Rubin added. In a separate EBW report sent to Rigzone by the EBW team yesterday, Rubin noted that the natural gas physical market was showing “signs of weakness”. “The May natural gas contract flirted with the 200-day moving average at $3.21 per MMBtu repeatedly last week, but closed above the key benchmark every day,” Rubin highlighted in that report. “As Henry Hub spot prices dropped below $3.00 over the weekend to a ten-week low, however, increasing bearish