by Patrick Seroogy
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One critical way that the build-out of renewable energy, vital for combating climate change, faces obstacles is in the lack of necessary infrastructure to accommodate it. The electric grid, to which all energy-generating facilities must connect to transmit power, is a critical part of this infrastructure. Battery storage helps with this buildout because it can store, and release later, wind and solar energy when their production is lower from lack of wind or sunshine.
However, the current state of the grid does not have the capacity to accommodate significant future renewable energy development nor such projects already waiting to connect to the grid. While there is a pressing need for building out the grid, especially transmission – and there is a flood of ventures seeking to produce renewable energy – the process in place for building out the grid cannot keep pace.
Transmission development has been slow, expensive, and administratively cumbersome for decades[1] (only recently seeing significant change). As with most utility-scale energy infrastructure, clean energy facilities must undergo extensive environmental review and permitting to comply with federal, state, and local regulations. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a Department of Energy research center, says that the average wait time in the interconnection queue is 3-5 years while the amount of generating capacity waiting to connect to the grid increases yearly.
To help speed up this process, states and developers are utilizing an efficient approach: reusing old fossil fuel power plants (or other brownfield sites) for siting clean energy infrastructure, like battery storage. Coal plants, most of which were built during the 1970s-80s, are being phased out, or simply retired (by 2030) because of their age. This is influenced by the United States and other countries winding down their reliance on coal, among other fossil fuels, as a part of the energy transition.[2] Rather than demolishing these plants, their reuse is efficient for the siting of beneficial battery storage.
Large-scale battery storage is a vital factor for the reliability of renewable energy because of its intermittent patterns of generation. Fossil fuel power plants, in contrast, can meet energy predictably because of the nature of burning a fuel – done on demand. However, renewable energy generation is not unreliable per se. “Renewables” are unlimited by default and their reliability is as much an engineering question as it is about diversifying our sources of renewable generation (e.g., supplementing solar with biomass).
Battery storage is a help in making renewable energy generation able to more reliably serve the transmission grid and meet the ever-growing need for energy. The practice of reusing or redeveloping previously used or disturbed sites is not necessarily new in environmental law or policy. However, there are two specific, practical advantages to this approach with respect to siting clean energy like battery storage. The first is that redeveloping an already-developed piece of land reduces the environmental review otherwise needed for siting new facilities.
For example, a Nevada electric utility transformed a coal plant shut down in 2020 into the state’s largest battery and energy storage system (BESS). Called the Reid Gardner BESS, it stores excess wind and solar energy whose facilities’ peak generation happens during mid-day but tapers off toward the evening. The BESS then uses the energy it stored to offset energy demand and the corresponding stress on the grid during peak hours of demand, which happen from 5 PM to 9 PM.
The Reid Gardner BESS had an easier time with construction and permitting because it replaced a previous power facility rather than building one new. It used “already disturbed” land whose redevelopment did not warrant duplicative review, so it faced a shorter approval process before Nevada’s public utility commission.[3]
The second primary advantage of redeveloping sites is that the old facility is already connected to the grid. A new facility needs new interconnection infrastructure. The distance between renewable energy facilities and population centers is problematic because of the time-consuming and expensive process of siting long-distance transmission. And, again, the interconnection queue delaying many renewables projects can take years to get out of. However, a new facility that repurposes a retired one need not build new or upgrade as much transmission.
The Nevada BESS enjoys this advantage. Another example on the other side of the country is New York city turning a natural gas plant into its largest BESS after the plant retires in 2025. This project will be the state’s first for this purpose. New York has the goal of deploying 6 gigawatts of battery storage by 2030, and the 15 megawatts that this project offers is one step closer to that goal.
There is no national renewable energy goal, even though the Biden administration has facilitated[JH1] hundreds of billions of dollars of investment into clean energy projects nationwide. Even the Reid Gardner BESS will have 40% of its $250 million cost subsidized by Inflation Reduction Act (2021) funding. This approach helps with the needed build out of renewable energy, and the administration has otherwise developed a comprehensive approach to tackling the energy transition.
[1] See Kenneth Sercy & Johan Cavert, Siting, leasing, and permitting of clean energy infrastructure in the United States, Niskanen Center (Mar. 14, 2024), https://www.niskanencenter.org/siting-leasing-and-permitting-of-clean-energy-infrastructure-in-the-united-states/.
[2] Michelle Lewis, Breaking: US, other G7 countries to phase out coal by early 2030s, Electrek (Apr. 29, 2024), https://electrek.co/2024/04/29/us-g7-countries-to-phase-out-coal-by-early-2030s/.
[3] See Application of Nevada Power Company d/b/a NV Energy, under the provisions of the Utility Environmental Protection Act, for a permit to construct the Reid Gardner Battery Energy Storage System (“BESS”) Project consisting of a 230 kV BESS substation, a 230 kV transmission line, interconnection facilities at the existing Reid Gardner Substation, and associated facilities to be located in Clark County, Nevada, Docket No. 22-03039, 2023 WL 2559359, at *2 (Nev. P.S.C. Mar. 9, 2023) (granting order for NV Energy to construct a BESS at “existing Reid Gardner substation” and finding that modifications to NV Energy’s proposal did “not change the disturbed land”).
About Patrick Seroogy
Patrick Seroogy is a third-year law student at The George Washington University Law School. He has keen interests in environmental law and energy law, in particular as it relates to clean energy. He holds a bachelor’s degree with double majors in Political Science and Economics from The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences. LinkedIn