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Politics loom large around Ohio EV battery plant

By Andy Balaskovitz

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POLITICS: An electric vehicle battery factory bolstered by President Biden’s climate law has lifted the economy in a northeastern Ohio county but doesn’t appear to have boosted Democrats’ prospects. (CNN)

OVERSIGHT: Ohio utility regulators urge the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in its favor and allow for more court intervention to decide federal energy rules when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission deadlocks. (E&E News)

COAL:

  • Wisconsin environmental groups call on We Energies to abandon its plan to convert a coal plant along Lake Michigan to natural gas and return to its original plan to close the facility by 2025. (Journal Sentinel, subscription)
  • “We’re turning a page in our history books,” a Consumers Energy official says while leading public tours of a hulking coal plant along Lake Michigan that’s scheduled to close by mid-2025. (MLive, subscription)

STORAGE: A battery storage project under construction in rural Wisconsin shows how storage is an underused transmission asset because of unresolved regulatory questions with grid operators, experts say. (Utility Dive)

EMISSIONS: Large tech firms part of the Sustainable Steel Buyers Platform launch a competitive bidding process asking steelmakers to deliver 1 million metric tons of near-zero emissions steel a year by 2028. (Canary Media)

GRID:

  • Iowa economic development officials say the state’s ​“stable” electric grid is helping to attract data centers, including a newly proposed $750 million campus in Cedar Rapids. (Cedar Rapids Gazette)
  • PJM’s independent market monitor says the grid operator’s new metric for measuring power plant availability inflated prices in the most recent capacity auction by nearly 50%. (Utility Dive)
  • Duke Energy’s rate increase request in Ohio to pay for grid infrastructure improvements would hike average customer bills by about $135 a year after three years. (WCPO)

SOLAR:

  • Activists gather outside AEP Ohio’s Columbus headquarters to call on the company to stop lobbying against state legislation to open community solar projects. (Spectrum News)
  • A nearly 200-year–old church in northern Michigan is switching from propane to heat pumps and plans to add solar thanks to cost savings under the Inflation Reduction Act. (WSJM)

BIOFUELS: The removal of a massive pile of waste grain from a former Nebraska ethanol plant that contaminated a nearby stream nearly four years ago is set to be completed by the end of next year. (Nebraska Examiner)

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