Green Wave Of Renewable Energy To Crash The Red State Party

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The political divide right here within the US could appear fairly lower and dried when the subject turns to renewable vitality, however don’t be fooled. The vitality transition is gaining steam in virtually each state, no matter what their lawmakers say or do, with Louisiana and Tennessee offering the most recent in a protracted sequence of examples.

Renewable Vitality & The Dreaded ESG

State-level renewable vitality opponents have coalesced their efforts round attacking the environment, social, and governance (ESG) pointers well-liked with many monetary corporations and companies today. Decarbonizing is a main function within the setting slot, and that explains why the fingerprints of fossil vitality stakeholders might be present in new state legal guidelines geared toward tipping the legislative scales in opposition to ESG broadly, and renewable vitality extra particularly.

Nevertheless, the naming and shaming of ESG within the halls of the state legislature doesn’t at all times monitor with the goals of the native improvement authorities, or with state economic development offices. CleanTechnica retains discovering examples of generous incentive packages provided to scrub tech producers to put down stakes in red statesregardless of the anti-ESG rhetoric of different public officers.

The Inflation Reduction Act can also be incentivizing clear tech producers to arrange operations in professedly anti-ESG states. Particularly, we’re noticing that states within the Southeast are attractive to manufacturers as a result of a protracted historical past of “right to work” legislationfostering a wealthy pool of non-union employees.

To ice the cake of disconnection, earlier this month plans have been introduced to arrange a brand new inventory trade in Dallas, to cowl Texas and different states within the Southeast. Coincidentally or not, the TXSE challenge consists of Louisiana, Tennessee, and nearly each different state within the former Confederacy, along with Texas.

As for disconnect, when you guessed that the main ESG-friendly financial firm BlackRock is without doubt one of the chief buyers within the TXSE, run proper out and purchase your self a cigar.

Louisiana Catches Renewable Vitality Fever

Into this image steps Louisiana. Pink-state politics apart, Louisiana’s personal in-state offshore development trade is credited with offering the gear and engineering abilities behind the Block Island offshore wind farm. Block Island was commissioned for business electrical energy era all the best way again in 2016 as the very first renewable vitality set up of its variety within the US. Block Island’s 5 wind generators have set the stage for a string of massive wind farms alongside the Atlantic Coast.

To be clear, the Block Island wind farm shouldn’t be positioned in Louisiana waters. That distinction went to Rhode Island, the place the political winds have been extra amenable to offshore wind. Now Louisiana appears decided to take up the renewable vitality management mantle once more. The state is poised to turn into the first on the Gulf Coast to faucet into offshore wind resources within the Gulf of Mexico.

Nearly all the offshore exercise within the US comes underneath a federal leasing program, however Louisiana will probably be an exception. The state has laid plans to plant some of the turbines in waters that come underneath its personal authority.

Of Course, Inexperienced Hydrogen

When you’re questioning what’s motivating the sudden curiosity in offshore wind, that’s query. The wheels have been set in movement when former Democratic governor and renewable vitality fan John Bel Edwards was in workplace. For some motive, the present management has not made a severe effort to cease the momentum.

We’re guessing that’s as a result of the highly effective Louisiana ammonia trade is pushing to switch fossil-sourced hydrogen with green hydrogenwhich deploys renewable vitality to push hydrogen fuel from water, resulting in the demand for extra wind and solar energy, too.

Final summer season, the Louisiana Financial Improvement workplace introduced that it was placing collectively an incentive bundle for the agency Monarch Vitality to arrange a green hydrogen plant in Ascension Parish. In September, the Louisiana department of the main US vitality agency Entergy adopted up with phrase that it might present sufficient renewable vitality — specifically, solar energy — to run the Monarch facility.

Supplying clear kilowatts for the inexperienced hydrogen plant is simply the tip of Entergy’s plans for Louisiana. “Entergy Louisiana recently made the largest renewable power expansion request in state history by filing a request with its regulator, the Louisiana Public Service Commission, for approval to add an additional three gigawatts of solar power to its generation portfolio,” Entergy defined in a press assertion final September.

Doing the maths, that’s 3,000 megawatts, an enormous bounce up from Louisiana’s present roster of simply 617 megawatts.

Tennessee To Be A Renewable Vitality Titan

Turning now to Tennessee, we discover this pink state poised, considerably extremely, to host a brand new photo voltaic manufacturing facility geared toward each the home and abroad markets.

That’s proper, abroad. When was the final time a US photo voltaic producer exported photo voltaic panels in any important amount? When you can monitor that down, drop us a notice within the remark thread.

The corporate behind the brand new manufacturing facility is ReCreate, a brand new challenge of Create Vitality founder and CEO Dean Solon, and the CEO of RECOM Applied sciences, Hamlet Tunyan. The agency will deploy Create Vitality’s present facility in Portland, Tennessee.

“This new venture will disrupt the solar market by establishing a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility dedicated to producing up to 5GW of modules and cells for the North American and EU markets,” ReCreate acknowledged in a press launch on June 14.

Neither Create nor RECOM has surfaced on the CleanTechnica renewable vitality radar but, so now we have some catching as much as do. Within the meantime, ReCreate follows a now-familiar sample of pink states internet hosting new factories that produce the instruments for killing off fossil fuels in different states.

Tennessee ranks a lowly #30 among the many 50 states for put in photo voltaic capability, but when all goes in keeping with plan these 5 gigawatts’ price of ReCreate photo voltaic modules will substitute coal, fuel, and oil energy throughout North America and Europe.

Tennessee can also be heading for an vitality makeover of its personal. When Ford introduced plans for a new mega-campus within the state again in 2021, the corporate anticipated that extra renewable vitality would turn into obtainable. “BlueOval City was designed with sustainability top of mind, and the company’s goal is for the Tennessee Electric Vehicle Center assembly plant to be carbon neutral and use carbon-free electricity,” Ford reminded all people earlier this yr.

Who’s Afraid Of The ESG?

CleanTechnica has already spilled loads of ink on the anti-ESG movement in Texas and elsewhere, so we received’t repeat ourselves right here. When you’re searching for new examples, right here’s a current one from Tennessee that includes an assault on — you guessed it — BlackRock.

Louisiana already jumped the gun on BlackRock again in 2022 and now it’s taking intention at different A-list monetary corporations with an curiosity in the energy transition.

Nonetheless, home-state companies are following the ESG cash, one current instance being the the A-list engineering firm APTIM, headquartered in Baton Rouge. The agency is pitching a 2040 internet zero objective, although it has reportedly offered extra financial support to Republican candidates than Democrats.

“Looking forward, we will continue to prioritize making meaningful reductions in our carbon footprintand we plan to formally integrate nature-based considerations as reporting standards advance,” defined a spokesperson for the agency simply final week, on June 12.

Who’s afraid of the ESG, certainly.

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Photograph (cropped): ESG or not, two entrepreneurs intention to make Tennessee a renewable vitality powerhouse, with a proposed 5 gigawatt solar factory.