By Frank Jossi for Energy News Network.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection reporting for the Joyce Foundation-Public News Service Collaboration

A coalition of labor and environmental groups is putting its support behind perennial Minnesota legislation meant to lift a barrier to building power lines in the rights-of-way of federal highways in the state.

NextGen Highways is a national collaboration that promotes co-location of utility infrastructure in existing highway corridors as a way to accelerate expansion of the electric grid.

The concept has widespread public support, according to the group's polling, but it also faces various legal, financial, and technical obstacles across the country.

"What we're trying to do in Minnesota - and in states across the country - is to identify barriers and work with our coalition partners to develop strategies to overcome those barriers," said Randy Satterfield, executive director of NextGen Highways.

One example in Minnesota is a state law requiring the Minnesota Department of Transportation to pay utilities if they are forced to move any assets, such as poles or towers, in federal highway rights-of-way. A pair of bills (House Bill 3900, Senate Bill 3949) would shift those costs to utilities instead, making it consistent with existing rules for state highway corridors.

Without that change, the state won't allow transmission projects to be built in its portion of federal highway rights-of-way. State transportation officials have proposed such legislation multiple times since 2012, but the bills have never succeeded amid opposition from utilities.

Many transmission projects already follow highway corridors, Satterfield said. They include several announced last year by MISO, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc. Three of those projects cover portions of Minnesota and follow highways for parts of their routes.

Not all transmission lines that share routes with highways are located within the public right-of-way. Some are built on adjacent private property instead, which still requires negotiations with hundreds of individual owners. When developers have the option of placing towers or burying lines within the public right-of-way, it can significantly streamline a project.

With clean energy's escalating growth trajectory, more solar and wind developers will request permission to build projects and power lines in rural communities, Satterfield predicted.

"I think we owe it to (communities) to at least consider utilizing existing linear infrastructure, like highways and interstates, for the transmission infrastructure," he said.

'This is a kind of low-hanging fruit'

Still, transmission developers wanting to take these routes often run into obstacles. Many state departments of transportation still recall a federal restriction, since rescinded, that did not allow transmission in federal highway rights-of-way, he said. Other states have no culture of allowing highway rights-of-way to co-locate with transmission.

NextGen Highways formed to advocate for transmission in highway corridors and to encourage states to remove any barriers to that goal. Minnesota is the first state where it has launched a state coalition to advance the concept.

"Transmission congestion is the biggest hurdle that we have to overcome to reach our 100% energy goals and to get more renewables and other forms of energy on the grid," said George Damian, government affairs director for Clean Energy Economy Minnesota, a nonprofit that is part of the coalition. "This is a kind of a low-hanging fruit. These rights-of-way owned by the state can be utilized for transmission."

Utilities, lawmakers and stakeholders continue to discuss the legislation. Theo Keith, Xcel Energy's spokesperson, said the utility has been "encouraged by the early conversations we've had with lawmakers and other stakeholders." Xcel has proposed hundreds of miles of transmission lines in road corridors and often shares easements with the transportation department, he said.

Keith cited the CapX2020 project as an example of Xcel and other utilities building a major transmission corridor adjacent to the Interstate 94 right-of-way.

"Building new transmission lines is critical to meeting our clean energy goals and those of the states in which we operate, including Minnesota's 2040 benchmark," he said.

Overcoming barriers

Minnesota can look to its neighbor in Wisconsin for an example of how highway corridors could be used for transmission. That state passed a law 20 years ago to make federal and state highway rights-of-way a priority for siting transmission. Satterfield, who once worked for a transmission company in Wisconsin, said the state's utilities built more than 200 miles of transmission projects on federal highways.

Wisconsin did not ask utilities to move poles or other assets on any of the projects, he said. Wisconsin's Department of Transportation coordinates and plans projects with utilities to avoid potential problems, such as highway lane expansion that could encroach on transmission lines.

In addition to changing the Minnesota statute on utility colocation on federal roads, the NexGen Highway Coalition wants the Legislature to consider a siting priorities law. The law requires utilities to consider existing transportation corridors, such as highways and railways, before opting for greenfield development.

Minnesota Department of Transportation Strategic Partnerships Director Jessica Oh said the agency had put forth five to six legislative proposals since 2012 to repeal the language in the statute regarding utility infrastructure near federal highways and will support continued efforts. Utilities opposed the measure because of the additional expense they might incur in projects, she said.

A change to the state law was also suggested in a report to the legislature based on permitting reform discussions held by the Public Utilities Commission, she said.

In studying Wisconsin's experience, the department learned the importance of early coordination with clean energy developers and utilities "is key to the success of the whole process." Minnesota transportation staff have conducted early planning sessions involving aerial encroachments on state highways with utility partners.

Oh said the department's "highest concern" around utility infrastructure has always been safety. Should the legislation pass, the transportation department will continue to work closely with utilities, especially since power lines will become instrumental in moving electric vehicles on highways.

Oh added Minnesota is among 11 states selected by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and the Transportation Research Board's National Cooperative Highway Research Program for a "moonshots" program for state departments of transportation. Oh leads the initiative in Minnesota to co-locate more transmission and broadband in highway corridors.

"We have a stake in this because of the electrification of transportation," Oh said. "I tend to think our fates are intertwined in energy and transportation."

Great Plains Institute convenes NextGen Highways, which partners with the Center for Rural Affairs, Clean Energy Economy Minnesota, Conservative Energy Forum, Fresh Energy, Laborers' International Union of North America-Minnesota and North Dakota, Mechanical Contractors Association, Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy and the National Audubon Society.


Frank Jossi wrote this article for Energy News Network.


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New York's Building Code Council is set to include the All-Electric Buildings Act in its 2025 code update.

The 2023 law bans natural gas and other fossil fuels in new buildings. All-electric cooking and heating will be required for new buildings of less than seven stories by 2026, and 2029 for taller buildings.

Michael Hernandez, New York policy director with Rewiring America, said it's one thing to pass laws and quite another to implement them.

"It is vitally important that we stop digging ourselves in a hole by building new buildings with fossil-fuel combustion systems installed in them," said Hernandez. "Those fossil-fuel combustion systems would be in place for the next 20 years, if not longer."

He added that it's impractical to install fossil-fuel systems that would be phased out before the end of its lifespan.

The council will hold a public comment period before voting on the new code language. Buildings are 32% of New York's annual greenhouse gas emissions - making them the state's largest emitter.

To meet its 2050 net-zero emissions goal, the state has to install 396,000 heat pumps above expected sales.

While the new language applies to new buildings, other programs exist for homeowners and building owners to go green.

Hernandez noted that funds from the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law are helping existing buildings convert to electricity.

He said this all begins with a free home energy audit from NYSERDA.

"They'll have a qualified contractor come look at your house," said Hernandez, "and say, 'okay, these are the energy efficiency measures that you would benefit from, and these efficiency measures will make your energy costs go down.' "

Those contractors can help homeowners receive state and federal rebates to implement the recommended measures.

Low-income New Yorkers can qualify for 100% of electrification and climate efficiency rebates depending on a person's household income.

By Ysabelle Kempe for SmartCitiesDive.
Broadcast version by Eric Galatas for Colorado News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Ambitious climate goals are bringing cities and counties face-to-face with a serious reality: the need for carbon dioxide removal.

Years ago, those concerned about the impacts of climate change were optimistic that reducing greenhouse gas emissions worldwide would be enough to address the problem. That era has passed. We've reached a point where carbon dioxide must also be removed from the atmosphere to meet international climate goals, according to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Although the private sector is spearheading many of the carbon dioxide removal projects currently underway, some U.S. local governments are beginning to consider leading such efforts. A survey of 128 city and county climate action plans revealed that about a third include specific mention of carbon dioxide removal, according to a 2023 report by carbon management firm Carbon Direct and Boulder County, Colorado.

"A growing number of [cities] have discovered that it's not going to be easy to [accomplish net-zero emissions] just through decarbonization," said Chris Neidl, impact director at Rethinking Removals, a nonprofit that aims to grow the carbon removal industry. "Carbon removal is [a strategy] that the vanguard of those places has already arrived at."

It's still a new concept for local governments to be the ones taking the lead on carbon removal projects. Even among the 128 local climate action plans highlighted in Carbon Direct and Boulder County's report, many describe carbon removal as a secondary benefit of actions that primarily address other issues. Cambridge, Massachusetts, for example, plans to plant trees for shade. The fact that trees suck up and store planet-warming carbon dioxide is a bonus, the report says.

The term carbon removal casts a large net, describing the process of drawing planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it for decades, centuries or longer. Carbon removal strategies are usually categorized in two buckets: nature-based solutions like reforestation and technology-based solutions like direct air capture.

"The localities have often focused on nature-based [solutions] because the technology-based are more expensive. There's less known about them," said Wil Burns, co-director of American University's Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal.

However, local governments could play a meaningful role in bringing down the cost of the technology by serving as laboratories for testing small-scale projects, he said. "Because the cost is so high, we're not getting sufficient demand for carbon removal," he said. "But we're not going to get sufficient demand until the costs come down."

Local projects "can show what doesn't work before we start trying to spend huge amounts of money at the national level," Burns said. Already, the Biden administration has poured billions of dollars into supporting direct air capture technology.

But carbon removal, especially done with technology-based solutions, is controversial. Critics including scientists and climate advocates worry that it's a distraction from the unfinished imperative of transitioning off fossil fuels - a concern bolstered by oil companies' public enthusiasm for carbon removal as a way to continue selling fossil fuels for years to come. Additionally, environmental justice advocates have criticized the fact that some operations for carbon removal projects are sited near neighborhoods long burdened with industrial pollution.

Local carbon removal in practice

Undertaking a carbon removal project can be daunting for local governments that lack the technical expertise, staff and money to "do it right," Burns said. "There's ways to do [carbon removal] responsibly," he said, "and there's ways to do it irresponsibly."

Even seemingly simple nature-based projects must be carefully planned to deliver the intended effect. "If you don't have the capital to maintain those trees, a lot of times those trees die in a couple of years," Burns said.

Measuring the amount of carbon dioxide such projects remove presents another technical hurdle. "If you can't measure, it didn't happen. That's no overstatement," Neidl said, noting that measurement, reporting and verification processes are improving.

Burns pointed to Boulder as the type of jurisdiction poised to succeed at carbon removal. "They're backed by a large research university there that does a lot of its own carbon removal," he said. "The state of Colorado provides resources."

Boulder County is also a founding member of the 4Corners Carbon Removal Coalition, a network of six local governments in Colorado, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico committed to undertaking locally led carbon removal projects.

Last year, the coalition's first campaign awarded $390,000 in grants to four local projects that store carbon pulled from the atmosphere in concrete.

In Flagstaff, Arizona, for example, a masonry plant will be retrofitted to capture from the air carbon dioxide, which it will use to cure concrete blocks. A project in Durango, Colorado, will build wall panels from industrial hemp, which removes carbon from the air via photosynthesis faster than any other agricultural rotation crop, according to 4Corners. That project will also store carbon in the form of biochar in cement-like building materials. Biochar is a stable, durable form of carbon created by partially combusting organic matter in the presence of limited oxygen.

Concrete-focused projects have emerged as a promising carbon removal avenue for local governments for several reasons. The process of storing carbon in concrete is well understood, Burns said. Plus, municipalities are some of the largest concrete customers, 4Corners co-founder and Director Ramón Alatorre said. "There are concrete facilities pretty much scattered all over the world, nearby any sort of urban and non-urban space," he said. "Any projects that we could demonstrate as being able to work at a block facility in Flagstaff, that's inherently replicable."

Alatorre said that at this early stage, his group is more concerned with projects' scalability and replicability than how much carbon they individually remove from the atmosphere.

"That said, we want to see good measurement," he said. "We want high-quality carbon removal, but if it's a project that's only going to remove less than 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide, that could be fine in terms of wanting to catalyze something that has potential."

Now, 4Corners is working on a campaign to support projects that leverage what it calls "liability" biomass to remove and durably store carbon from the atmosphere. That biomass can be small trees, branches and other residue that accumulates in overgrown forests or is left by logging operations, or it could be yard waste and municipal organics. Such biomass sources are rich in carbon that has been removed from the air, but without intervention, they soon release carbon back into the atmosphere as they decompose or burn, Alatorre said. The forest residues also pose other risks, he added: They can increase wildfire risk and challenge reforestation efforts.

What's next for local carbon removal

Carbon removal efforts by municipalities outside of what Burns calls the "usual cast" of communities that are progressive on climate action, like Boulder, "may bode well" for the uptake of locally led carbon removal projects, he said. But it's not yet clear whether such homegrown efforts will become mainstream, he said.

"A lot of cities are contemplating that carbon removal is going to be part of their net-zero plans," Burns said. "But I think most of [them are] contemplating they're just going to farm out and buy [carbon] credits."

For local governments interested in this work, explicitly incorporating carbon removal into net-zero plans "is a really important first step," Rethinking Removal's Neidl said. Local and state decision-makers can incorporate environmental justice requirements in carbon removal policy, he added, pointing to a Massachusetts bill that would require state-supported projects to be approved by the director of environmental justice.

A California group is looking to create a model for bringing the community into the development of industrial carbon removal. The Community Alliance for Direct Air Capture - equipped with $3 million in federal funding - plans to work with residents in the San Joaquin Valley to determine whether and how a carbon removal facility should be built in the community. If the project doesn't gain the community's support, the coalition has promised to halt it, E&E News reports.

Local governments can also recruit "objective" consultancies, nonprofits or university groups to help manage carbon removal projects, Burns said. "They can help provide some initial guidance to avoid some of the pitfalls."

As state governments become increasingly savvy on carbon removal, local governments can also look to them for resources, he said.

"You have states like Washington, California, New York and Massachusetts that are increasingly viewing carbon removal as part of their state plans," he said. "They're contemplating that local governments are going to be partners with them, so they're starting to develop the kind of resources that can help local governments to facilitate those things in a way that's sensible."


Ysabelle Kempe wrote this article for SmartCitiesDive.


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Kentucky Power, one of eastern Kentucky's largest utilities, has a new energy efficiency and conservation proposal for its customers. The state's Public Service Commission is expected to make a decision on the plan this fall.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, taking even small steps to conserve energy, such as turning off lights and electric appliances when not in use, can help lower energy bills.

Chris Woolery, energy projects coordinator for the Mountain Association, said aside from a weatherization program for low-income residents, the utility has not offered any extensive energy efficiency programs until now. He argued eastern Kentucky residents need more options, as they experience ongoing rate hikes, higher energy bills and increasing extreme weather.

"They really need robust investments in energy efficiency and battery storage," Woolery pointed out. "That could lower their bills and make their homes and communities more resilient. "

Kentucky Power said it is looking to defer the need for new sources of power in the future and help lower ratepayers' usage and bills. The proposal includes a Home Energy Improvement Program and Commercial Energy Solutions Program. Both programs offer energy audits performed by professional contractors for qualified customers, and new incentives for upgrading to more energy efficient products.

Woolery emphasized while the proposal is encouraging, it is not enough to offset cost in one of the Commonwealth's most energy-burdened regions. He contended the proposal could include measures that help customers install solar, and investments in smart appliances and battery storage; adding other states have developed models Kentucky could follow.

"Green Mountain Power in Vermont is one example that is investing in battery storage to reduce outages," Woolery noted. "They're doing it in a way that is cost-effective and helps the whole membership, because they save money during peak power times. They saved over a million dollars in one week during the heat wave."

He added the Kentucky Public Service Commission is increasingly paying attention to public comments.

"In a recent case with the same utility, Kentucky Power, they have made a ruling on a rate increase proposal that cited public comment," Woolery emphasized. "That shows that public comment works."

The Commission is accepting public comments on the case until Oct. 31. Residents can find more information on how to submit a comment by visiting the Kentuckians for Energy Democracy website at k4ed.org.