Minnesota utility regulators have approved the state’s first stand-alone energy storage project, an important milestone in Minnesota’s effort to transition to producing completely carbon-free electricity.
The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission approved a site permit for the 150-megawatt Snowshoe Energy Storage Project, which will be built on an 18-acre site west of Rochester, near the town of Byron.
The batteries will store excess electricity produced by nearby solar and wind farms, and then discharge the power during times of high demand — for example, when people return home from work and school and turn on their air conditioners.
Several battery energy storage systems have been built or approved recently in Minnesota in conjunction with solar energy projects, including a facility approved in July in Faribault County, south of Mankato.
But the Snowshoe project, to be developed by Spearmint Energy, a battery system developer based in Miami with an office in Eden Prairie in the Twin Cities area, is the first standalone battery system to be built in the state that will be connected directly to the electric grid.
If you like this post, you’ll love our daily environmental newsletter, EnviroPolitics.It’s packed daily with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Please do not take our word for it; try it free for a full month
New Jersey lawmakers from both chambers questioned energy experts and state officials on August 14 about surging electricity prices, setbacks to offshore wind projects, and the future of New Jersey’s clean energy strategy.
The hearing, held in the shore town of Point Pleasant by the Senate Environment and Energy Committee and the Assembly Environment Committee, featured testimony from the president of the Board of Public Utilities and a diverse lineup of academics, industry leaders, and policy advocates. Their insights revealed both the promise and pitfalls of the state’s ambitious energy transition.
🔍 Speaker Highlights
Christine Guhl-Sadovy – President, NJ Board of Public Utilities
• Announced $100 in bill credits for residential customers to offset recent 20% electricity rate hikes.
If you like this post, you’ll love our daily environmental newsletter, EnviroPolitics.It’s packed daily with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Please do not take our word for it; try it free for a full month
Consumers Energy had planned to retire the J.H. Campbell coal-fired power plant in May, but President Trump ordered it to keep operating, citing an energy emergency that critics say isn’t happening. (Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
A new report finds the Trump administration’s push to keep dirty, aging fossil-fueled power plants from closing down could end up costing U.S. utility customers between $3 billion and nearly $6 billion per year by the end of Trump’s term — and that’s a conservative estimate.
Thursday’s report from consultancy Grid Strategies was commissioned by Earthjustice, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Sierra Club, four environmental groups that have joined states in challenging the Department of Energy’s use of emergency powers to keep the J.H. Campbell coal plant in Michigan and the Eddystone oil- and gas-burning plant in Pennsylvania running.
Both plants were set to close earlier this year, but the DOE used its emergency authority under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to order them to stay open for 90 days, and it could issue more orders to keep them running beyond that time period.
In July, the DOE issued a report claiming that the country faces threats of massive blackouts if the federal government doesn’t intervene. But critics say that to arrive at this conclusion, the DOE cherry-picked data and ignored the massive amounts of new solar, wind, and battery resources set to come online in the coming years.
If you like this post, you’ll love our daily environmental newsletter, EnviroPolitics.It’s packed daily with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Please do not take our word for it; try it free for a full month
ELKTON, Md. — Debbie Blankenship’s wheelchair carved perfect lines in the grass as she rolled into her backyard garden, passing a wooden arch filled with small grapes, a bush with plump blueberries, and yellow crates filled with sprouting potatoes.
She stopped at a dirt patch with a burial marker for her beagle — the latest of her dogs to die of cancer.
“They are all buried back here. It’s like a pet cemetery,” she said, catching her breath from navigating the hilly terrain. Gazing at the burial site, she spoke about her own long battle with cancer.
For decades, Blankenship chalked up her health problems, including losing her right leg to an infection, to bad luck. Then in 2023, she received a phone call from W.L. Gore & Associates, which makes waterproof membranes such as Gore-Tex and a host of other products. Gore wanted to test Blankenship’s well water for PFOA, a highly toxic “forever chemical” that was used to make PTFE, commonly known as Teflon.
“That’s when the light went off,” she said. She and her dogs were the only members of the household to drink the well water. Her husband and children always drank bottled water.
If you like this post, you’ll love our daily environmental newsletter, EnviroPolitics.It’s packed daily with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Please do not take our word for it; try it free for a full month
But under the second Trump administration and a Republican-majority Congress largely hostile to renewable energy, the industry in New Jersey and elsewhere is facing a series of barriers after years of growth, and all the while it is buffeted with back-and-forth tariffs that spark international trade disputes.
Chief among these barriers is a new federal law that weakened renewable energy tax credits for wind and solar power and a recent Trump administration decision to cancel all funding from a $7 billion grant program that goes to residential solar projects for lower-income homes.
“I think it’s, coupled with the pending repeal of the tax credits, really a one-two punch that is going to make it harder for people to go solar, save money and create jobs,” Ben Delman, editorial director for Solar United Neighbors, a nonprofit advocacy group, said of the new law and the canceled grant money.
“The industry is trying to figure out where to go next,” Delman said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News. “In some ways, it feels like we’re walking backwards.”
Expiring tax credit
Changing tariffs and interest rates are also barriers for the industry, he said.
Because of a new federal budget law Congress wrote this year, a federal tax credit to help people pay to put solar panels on their homes will expire Dec. 31, instead of in 2034, almost a decade ahead of schedule.
If you like this post, you’ll love our daily environmental newsletter, EnviroPolitics.It’s packed daily with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Please do not take our word for it; try it free for a full month
The location of today’s joint meeting of New Jersey’s Senate and Assembly environmental committees, scheduled for 10 a.m., has been relocated from Toms River, NJ to the:
Point Pleasant Municipal Court at 2233 Bridge Avenue in Point Pleasant, NJ
The committees will take testimony from invited speakers on the topics of:
Tidal and wave energy,
Geothermal energy,
Demand-side management,
Advanced nuclear technologies, and,
The progress of the Board of Public Utilities in exploring energy technologies.
It’s possible, but not guaranteed, that you may listen to the testimony here
Please ignore the previous post stating that the meeting was canceled.
