California Gov. Gavin Newsom, D, announced Wednesday that he has certified the Cornucopia Hybrid Solar Project using the California Environmental Quality Act’s judicial streamlining provision, speeding up the construction of 300 MW of solar along with 300 MW of battery storage. Once a project is certified, courts must decide on CEQA challenges to it within 270 days to the extent feasible, while still allowing those challenges to be heard, said a release from Newsom’s office.  The BayWa r.e. Americas project will be located in Fresno County, California, and is expected to power around 300,000 homes in the area.  Newsom’s office said the project’s combined 300 MW of generation and 300 MW of battery capacity will allow the solar farm to dispatch electricity at times of peak demand, “including evening and nighttime hours when renewable generation is limited.” The project’s developers also plan for it to be agrivoltaic, with sheep “grazing alongside solar panels to help manage vegetation,” said the governor’s office. A project’s selection for a judicial streamlining certification can reduce lawsuit-related delays from three to five years to around 270 days, said the governor’s office. This process was authorized by a 2021 state law allowing the governor to make those certifications, and a 2023 state law expanding the list of eligible projects to include certain green infrastructure projects.  Only 24 projects have been certified under the law so far. The certification came a few days after California regulators approved new maintenance and operation standards for battery storage resources, including a requirement for facility owners to develop emergency response and emergency action plans, following a January fire at Vistra Energy’s Moss Landing battery facility in California.  “The project aligns with California efforts focused on proactively addressing safety for battery storage systems through comprehensive state-level collaborations and regulatory updates,” said Newsom’s office.

The State University of New York at Albany is beginning a $30 million decarbonization project that will enable it to shut down its gas-fired boilers during the summer months, it announced earlier this month.  The project will install a high-efficiency electric centrifugal chiller and a heat recovery chiller, both connected to a new geothermal well field consisting of between 90 and 135 wells in a campus parking lot. The chillers will replace two gas-fired absorption chillers in the campus’ 1960s-era central power plant, the university says. In addition, the project will modify domestic hot water systems in over 25 buildings and install new low-temperature hot water piping in the campus athletic facilities. The geothermal heat recovery chiller will be able to meet all of the campus cooling, heating and domestic hot water loads during the summer months, the university says. The move is projected to reduce the university’s annual fossil fuel consumption by 16%, according to Indu, the energy officer at the University at Albany.  The pipes throughout the campus that deliver hot water can create technical problems when transitioning to geothermal or other non-combustion heating technologies because of their small diameter, Indu said.  With those pipes, “You cannot make steam or high-temperature hot water without burning some sort of fossil fuel,” Indu said.  This limitation is why the university will only be able to turn off its gas-fired boilers during the summer months. “As the heating load starts to increase, our pipe sizes are too small to heat the campus with just 180-degree [Fahrenheit] water,” she said.   Next steps To overcome the limitations of existing pipes, the university is evaluating the construction of a satellite energy hub: a fully electrified geothermal heat recovery plant on the other side of campus, closer to where major loads like residential buildings and

A shift in federal government priorities has created uncertainty over federal funding for energy efficiency and sustainability initiatives, but state and local governments are continuing to develop building performance policies.  While large cities have led the way on implementing building performance standards and benchmarking policies in the past few years, smaller cities — those with populations under 100,000 — could continue to push these policies forward in 2025, according to James Burton, manager of policy engagement and tracking at the Institute for Market Transformation. This is in spite of staffing and funding challenges that could more substantially impact them, Burton said.  Even with limited resources, municipalities across the country are working to implement environmental policies, ranging from building performance standards to energy benchmarking to energy codes, Burton said in a blog post. These policies provide a way for them to meet goals to reduce energy use, lower utility bills and advance climate action, he said. IMT works with cities and municipalities to develop and implement building performance standards that align with the goals of the National Building Performance Standards Coalition, a group of state and local governments that in January reaffirmed their commitment to implementing BPS. Evanston, Illinois, is an example of a smaller municipality pushing ahead on climate action. It became the first government to pass a building performance standard in 2025 with its Healthy Buildings Ordinance. The HBO, which will cover commercial and multifamily buildings over 20,000 square feet, condominiums over 50,000 square feet and municipal buildings over 10,000 square feet, requires these buildings to achieve zero on-site emissions and 100% renewable electricity procurement by 2050, Burton said.  The HBO follows many of IMT’s best practice recommendations, such as setting multiple metrics to encourage efficiency alongside emissions reductions and setting up a community accountability board to ensure equity in the

The U.S. Department of Energy on Monday announced it would withdraw four appliance efficiency standards and officially postpone the effective dates for three other rules, continuing the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency’s appliance efficiency program. While several of DOE’s actions were previously announced or are relatively minor, the agency’s decision to withdraw a rule related to electric motors is “uncharted territory,” Appliance Standards Awareness Project Executive Director Andrew deLaski said. DOE has “officially withdrawn four conservation standards, including standards on electric motors, ceiling fans, dehumidifiers, and external power supplies,” the agency said in a statement. “This continued commitment to the American people will slash unnecessary red tape and regulations that raise prices, reduce consumer choice, and frustrate the American people.” DOE also announced it has officially postponed the effective dates for three home appliance rules, including those covering test procedures for central air conditioners and heat pumps, efficiency standards for walk-in coolers and freezers and standards for gas instantaneous water heaters. “By removing burdensome regulations put in place by the Biden administration, we are returning freedom of choice to the American people, ensuring consumers can choose the home appliances that work best for their lives and budgets,” Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in a statement. “This power should not belong to the federal government.” DOE first said in February that it planned to postpone the implementation of several appliance energy efficiency standards finalized by the Biden administration. The natural gas sector hailed the announcement as a win for consumer choice, while efficiency advocates warn the decision could add billions to utility bills. While delaying or not finalizing rule updates begun under the previous administration isn’t particularly noteworthy, deLaski said DOE’s decision on electric motors is different. That rule was signed by a DOE official and put out to the

If sited in the correct locations, around eight 1,200 MW offshore wind farms could be connected to the New England grid and operate simultaneously at full power without first constructing new transmission infrastructure and without significant curtailment, said a Friday report from ISO New England. ISO-NE’s analysis found that up to 38% of existing major coastal substations in New England that it studied “may be electrically suitable for a 1,200 MW offshore wind interconnection without constructing any new transmission infrastructure and without upgrading any existing transmission infrastructure to address thermal concerns.” Up to 86% of the substations studied may be suitable for connection without new infrastructure, but some of them would require upgrades, said the regional transmission organization. The analysis also found that “a much smaller subset of these substations may be able to accommodate a 2,000 MW wind farm without any new transmission infrastructure.” However, ISO-NE said, this report is “based solely on N-1 DC thermal steady-state analysis, which helps provide high-level information about system constraints” and neither the initial study nor this offshore wind-specific analysis included “the more detailed analyses” of a full interconnection study. “Though full interconnection studies are required, high-level results suggest that significant amounts of offshore wind may be able to connect to the region without upgrades,” the ISO said in the report’s conclusion. “However, achieving these totals will depend on careful planning and coordination between states and stakeholders.” This analysis indicates that relocating some offshore wind points of interconnection further south, from Maine to the Boston area, could lead to “significant cost savings,” said the report. Even if those points of interconnection are moved, though, “upgrades are still necessary on the North-South interfaces to accommodate the combination of load growth from electrification and significant increase in generation build out in northern New England,” the report

Colonial Pipeline Co. defended a proposal for operational changes on its fuel network after objections from oil majors Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. and commodities trader Trafigura. Colonial, which operates the largest gasoline pipeline in the US, said the changes “will enhance pipeline integrity and reliability and create more capacity for shippers” in a Monday filing with the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.  According to the filing, the proposed changes would mitigate risks associated with “pressure cycling,” which occurs when changes in internal pressure lead to stress in the pipe wall. By transporting fewer products on the pipeline route, among other changes, “Colonial will experience fewer segment slowdowns and shutdowns (and the associated restarts) that more frequently arise when transporting multiple products in the same cycle,” the company said in the filing. Trafigura, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and several other refiners previously filed motions asking the regulator to block Colonial’s proposed changes. Among the potential changes are halting the transport of volatile grade five gasoline on the maxed-out pipeline and boosting capacity by several thousand barrels a day. Shippers on the system, which transports about 2.5 million barrels of fuel a day from the refinery belt of Texas and Louisiana to demand centers in the East Coast, say the changes will contribute to operational hurdles and higher costs. Large swaths of the East Coast, where several refineries have shuttered in recent years, depend on Colonial’s pipeline to meet fuel demand, giving it an outsized effect on the domestic fuel market. If approved, the changes would likely take effect in September. WHAT DO YOU THINK? Generated by readers, the comments included herein do not reflect the views and opinions of Rigzone. All comments are subject to editorial review. Off-topic, inappropriate or insulting comments will be removed. MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR Bloomberg