Xcel Energy is proposing a new approach to powering the grid in Minnesota.

The utility recently told state regulators it wants to build a network of solar-powered energy storage hubs, located strategically on its grid and linked with technology so they can be operated in concert with each other.

The result would be what’s known as a “virtual power plant.” By simultaneously discharging the batteries, for example, the collection of distributed resources can function similar to a conventional power plant.

It’s a solution some clean energy advocates have long pushed for as an alternative to larger, centrally located projects that are more reliant on long-distance transmission and create fewer local economic benefits. Xcel’s new embrace of the concept likely reflects the evolving economics of clean energy and the urgency to replace generation from retiring coal-fired power plants.

“I welcome our now-agreement about the importance of distributed energy resources in their future procurement plans,” said John Farrell, director of the Energy Democracy Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

Virtual power plants 101

Virtual power plants use sophisticated software and technology to aggregate energy from batteries, smart thermostats, electric vehicles, storage and other connected devices. The clean energy nonprofit RMI predicts virtual power plants nationally could reduce peak loads by 60 gigawatts and cut annual energy expenditures by $17 billion by 2030.   

Several utilities, as well as solar and storage companies, have developed virtual power plant programs around the country. Perhaps the best-known is National Grid’s ConnectedSolutions program in New England, which includes residential batteries, electric vehicle batteries, and thermostats.  

In May, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed legislation requiring Xcel Energy to create a virtual power plant plan in that state by next February. 

Xcel is pitching the Minnesota project on its own as part of its latest long-range resource plan. In a recent Public Utilities Commission filing, Xcel proposes combining 440 megawatts of solar power with 400 megawatts of battery storage at dispersed locations. Designed to be flexible, the program might add backup generation and energy efficiency measures in the future. 

A virtual power plant, Xcel said, would save ratepayers money, improve reliability, accelerate clean energy development, and reduce energy disparities by playing assets in underserved communities. The “new approach equips us to confidently meet incoming load growth, deliver unique customer and community value, and support economic development,” the company said in its filing.

Kevin Coss, a spokesperson for the company, said the proposal “is part of a larger plan to better serve the grid and our customers while meeting anticipated growth in energy demand. The program would grow our distributed energy resources as a complement to our existing plans for additional utility-scale renewable and firm dispatchable generation to advance the clean energy transition.”

Advocates reaction

Clean energy advocates say the approach could reduce Xcel’s need to build more infrastructure at a time when electricity demand continues to grow and its fleet of aging fossil fuel plants reach closure dates.

A recent study in Illinois suggested that pairing solar with storage could be the most economical and environmentally beneficial way to maintain grid reliability as the state transitions to 100% clean energy.

“Utilities always treated distributed energy resources as something that happened to them and that they had to figure out how to accommodate because they were being told to,” said Will Kenworthy, Vote Solar’s Midwest regulatory director. 

The company’s interest in more distributed resources could lead to a more flexible grid, one that helps mitigate substations congestion and allows it to store energy from wind farms for use during high-demand periods, Kenworthy said.

One area of disagreement between the utility and some clean energy advocates is who should own the facilities. Unlike in Colorado, Xcel is proposing to own the Minnesota solar and storage hubs itself, collecting money to build them — plus a rate of return — from ratepayers. 

That’s not the best deal for customers, and it prevents local communities and developers from being able to share the financial benefits of distributed energy, said Farrell, of the Energy Democracy Initiative. If Xcel owns the virtual power plant, the cost could be higher than they would be with an open, competitive process.

Farrell pointed to the recent opposition to an Xcel electric vehicle charging plan in which it sought to own all of the chargers. Convenience stores and gas stations argued Xcel had an unfair market advantage as the incumbent utility and would own too much of the state’s charging network. Xcel withdrew the proposal in 2023 after regulators reduced the charging network’s size.

As Xcel’s plan evolves, Farrell wants Xcel to allow businesses, homeowners, and aggregators to also participate by selling their battery capacity or demand response into the program.

The Minnesota Solar Energy Industries Association, which promotes battery storage, also takes a dim view of Xcel owning a virtual power plant.

“This is an area where competition would likely provide better service, lower cost and more choice to ratepayers,” said regulatory and policy affairs director Curtis Zaun. “Monopolies are not particularly good at providing the best service at a reasonable rate because that is inconsistent with their investors’ interests.”

Getting the details right

Virtual power plants are different than demand response, such as thermostat savings programs, in that they add value to the grid “without any change needed to the homeowner’s behavior,” said Amy Heart, senior vice president for policy at Sunrun, a home solar and storage company that participates in virtual power plants in the Northeast and in Texas, California, and Puerto Rico. 

Heart said the “devil is in the details” when creating a robust demand response program. A program in Arizona failed, she said, because of the underperformance of the single company it selected to aggregate resources.

Sunrun developed a virtual power plant in four New England states, enrolling more than 5,000 solar and storage customers to share their capacity on the grid. In the summer of 2022, Sunrun’s virtual power plant shared more than 1.8 gigawatt hours of electricity.

Typically, Sunrun customers agree under contract to share a portion of their battery backup 30 to 60 times annually for three hours or less for each event. The process is automated, with Sunrun’s software connecting to customer batteries and sending utilities power during high-demand times or predictable peak loads. Customers receive payment for the electricity provided.  

Heart said the best systems are open to individual customers and aggregators using different battery storage brands. Giving a virtual power plant “room to grow, breathe, and adapt will be important,” she added.

The Xcel virtual power plant proposal is part of the multi-year Upper Midwest Integrated Resource Plan, which regulators have been reviewing and will likely approve, with many changes, later this year.

In Minnesota, Xcel Energy looks to mimic power plant with solar and storage networks is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

While the Northeast is ramping up efforts to electrify the diesel-powered truck fleets that rumble through its major freight corridors, the region lacks a vision for what the increased electricity demand will mean for the grid and vehicle charging infrastructure. 

A new study headed up by National Grid, the utility company, aims to lay out a clear path forward. 

Brian Wilkie, National Grid’s director of transportation electrification in New York, said the two-year study will pinpoint future critical charging locations along highways in nine Northeast states, and advise as to where major transmission upgrades will be needed. 

The study is pulling together transportation planning and electric transmission distribution planning expertise, “two sectors of the economy that never really talk to each other,” Wilkie said.

A multi-state approach

It’s clear that future power demands along the highways will be significant. A study released last year by National Grid projected power demand growth across 71 highway charging sites in New York and Massachusetts. It determined that as soon as 2030, more than a quarter of those sites will require a level of charging capacity equal to the demand of an outdoor professional sports stadium. 

And by 2045, some of the most high-demand locations will require charging capacity equivalent to the electric load of a major industrial site.

The upgrades required, including high-voltage, transmission-level interconnections, will be costly and take four to eight years to complete, the report concluded. 

The expanded study will cover Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. While that swath of land extends well beyond National Grid’s service territory, “if you don’t have a more regional view, you fail to study it properly and you don’t allow for the type of cooperation that is required across state borders,” Wilkie said. “The transportation sector doesn’t honor state lines.” 

The study is being funded with a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, which announced the award last month as part of the Biden administration’s efforts to accelerate the creation of zero-emission vehicle corridors across the country.

The project “is extremely well-timed,” said Sarah McKearnan, senior manager for clean transportation at Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, known as NESCAUM, a nonprofit association of state air quality agencies and a participant in the study. 

“Over the next five years, states will have access to very significant levels of federal funding to expand public charging stations,” she said. “This project will provide essential input that Northeast states can use to guide decisions about how to spend that funding.” 

NESCAUM facilitates a zero-emission vehicle task force that last year released a multi-state action plan for electrifying medium- to heavy-duty vehicles. The plan highlights the need for state and utility coordination to plan for grid transmission and distribution capacity, something the National Grid study will help lay the groundwork for. 

Big rigs and big data

Zero-emission trucks are expected to expand rapidly throughout the region in coming years, not least because all of the states in the study group except New Hampshire are signatories to a memorandum of understanding promising to work together to foster widespread electrification of those vehicles. 

In addition, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey have adopted California’s Advanced Clean Trucks rule, which requires truck makers to sell an increasing number of zero-emission vehicles beginning with model year 2025.

The trucking industry is preparing for that transition, but they also understand that they won’t be able to sell zero-emission trucks at scale if the infrastructure isn’t in place to support them, said Diego Quevedo, utilities lead in Daimler Truck North America’s infrastructure and consulting department for zero-emission vehicles. 

Daimler Truck North America, the country’s largest commercial vehicle manufacturer and a participant in the National Grid study, began studying the feasibility of zero-emission vehicles in 2017. Their goal is to have a zero-emission vehicle offering in every lineup that they sell by 2039, in order to transition all customer fleets to zero-emission by 2050, Quevedo said. 

The company has about 40% of the country’s market share in Class 6 through 8 trucks, “anywhere from your really big U-Haul box trucks all the way to the semi-tractor trailers you see on the highway,” he said. 

What they bring to the National Grid study is data. They use a software system that pings GPS coordinates from their Class 8 vehicles out in the field — some 230,000-250,000 tractors nationwide. The data is aggregated and anonymized so there is no specific customer information.

“You can look at where these vehicles operate, where they are stopping, how long they stop, how far they travel before they stop,” Quevedo said. “Assuming that those vehicles in the future are battery electric, you can determine what the future load requirements will be to replenish those electric miles that they’re traveling. It can give utilities very good insight into the future hotspots for load.”

David Mullaney, a principal at RMI’s carbon-free transportation team and a core participant in the study, said they will be looking at truck traffic through existing highway truck stops, as well as the ports of New York and New Jersey.

“But we don’t look at every truck stop out there,” said Mullaney, who has done similar modeling studies elsewhere in the U.S. and co-authored the earlier National Grid study. “We are preliminarily looking at places with proximity to big electrical infrastructure, where it is cost-effective to bring more electricity to.”

Targeting high-traffic sites that can connect to the transmission system more easily will allow charging infrastructure to be scaled more quickly and result in “no-regrets” investments, McKearnan said.

Who pays?

Perhaps the biggest challenge in getting all this done is figuring out how to pay for it. Utilities typically spread the cost of infrastructure investments across their ratepayer base, with regulator approval. But in this case, “it would be deeply unfair to put it on the average ratepayer,” Mullaney said. 

Federal and state governments may need to think more broadly about who is benefiting from these investments, and spread the costs around accordingly, he said. For example, trucking companies who longer have to pay for diesel, truck stops that are selling more products because trucks stop there to charge, and the public, whose health benefits from cleaner air. 

“We have to look at high diversification of revenue streams,” he said. 

Wilkie agrees that it will require more creative thinking about how to allocate the cost of this infrastructure. One idea is highway toll stratification, in which electric trucks pay higher tolls to offset some of the costs. 

“We’re going to have to change the paradigm a bit,” he said. “But we can’t let that conversation stop us from taking action.”

Electric trucks are coming. Will the Northeast’s grid be ready for them? is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Massachusetts utility National Grid has launched a new initiative to give drivers rebates for charging their electric vehicles during off-peak hours, but some advocates worry the incentives aren’t high enough to propel meaningful change.  

The new program rewards customers who charge their vehicles between 9 p.m. and 1 p.m., when demand on the grid is lower and the power flowing into the system is generally cleaner and less expensive. The goal of the program is to ease the burden on the grid, help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and motivate more drivers to consider switching from gasoline-fueled cars.

“It helps improve the business case for charging at home and hopefully encourages some customers to buy electric vehicles,” said Rishi Sondhi, clean transportation manager for National Grid. 

Today, electric vehicles make up just 56,000 of the 5 million vehicles registered in the state. But Massachusetts has set the ambitious target of putting 300,000 zero-emissions vehicles on the road by 2025 as part of its plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. 

As electric vehicle adoption increases, so will the load on the power grid. Currently about 44% of electric vehicles’ charging in Massachusetts is done during times of peak demand, according to National Grid’s testimony to the state public utilities department. If that pattern holds as more people buy electric vehicles, the transmission and distribution infrastructure will require expensive upgrades, and older, dirtier power plants will be called into action more often. 

Getting drivers to charge their vehicles during times of lower demand could help avoid the worst of these impacts. 

“It is much more beneficial to the power grid and also the planet when [electric vehicle] drivers charge during off-peak hours,” said Joseph Vellone, head of North America for Ev.energy, a charging software company that is partnering with National Grid on the program. 

National Grid hopes its new program will help drivers make that shift. During the summer, customers will receive a rebate of 5 cents per kilowatt-hour for charging during off-peak hours; the rest of the year the rebate will be 3 cents. 

Since the program opened to the full customer base in April, about 1,000 people have enrolled. Current participants are on track to save about $100 per year as compared to charging during peak times. 

A consumer who drives a Nissan Leaf 1,000 miles per month would end up saving roughly $15 each month in the summer — a savings of 17.3% compared to standard National Grid rates — and $9 per month — 10.4% savings — over the rest of the year. Savings would likely be lower for a plug-in hybrid, which uses less electricity to travel the same distances. 

Ev.energy’s platform connects to participating electric vehicles and monitors their charging activity. Massachusetts customers enrolled in the program can use the Charge Smart MA app to see their charging history and savings. The platform is essentially the go-between, urging consumers to charge at optimal times and displaying the results of their choices in the app. 

“We’re just collecting the charging data and leaving it to the customer to do the right thing, then rewarding them for it,” Vellone said.

So far, customer feedback has been good, Ev.energy reports. Orland Pacheco, an early electric vehicle adopter who lives in Rockport, participated in the pilot off-peak charging program and is pleased with the results and the feeling that he is participating in meaningful change.

“I want to be a responsible consumer,” he said. “I also want to help others understand — consumers have to be a part of the solution.”

The right size for rebates

Encouraging off-peak charging is vital for a smooth transition to electric transportation, said Anna Vanderspek, electric vehicle program director at the Green Energy Consumers Alliance. However, the rebate levels National Grid has set are far too low, she said. 

The current numbers reflect the lower cost of buying power during off-peak hours and the savings gained by avoiding the need to build more power plants to meet peak demand. National Grid has said the rebate levels were set by simply passing on its savings to the consumer. 

But there are also other ways overnight charging saves money for the utilities that are not accounted for in the current numbers, Vanderspek said.

To determine the scale of these savings, the Green Energy Consumers Alliance asked nonprofit consulting group Applied Economics Clinic to assess how much cost utilities could really avoid if customers shifted their vehicle charging to off-peak hours. The clinic found that National Grid’s calculations fail to account for the fact that off-peak charging could prevent the need for costly upgrades to transmission and distribution systems and would lower the company’s spending on emissions abatement by cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions. 

If these and other factors were incorporated, the savings from off-peak charging would be between 13.1 cents and 15.1 cents per kilowatt-hour, the clinic testimony concluded. National Grid should set its incentive rate at something closer to these numbers to be accurate and transparent, and to provide a more powerful incentive to would-be electric vehicle buyers, Vanderspek said. 

“We need off-peak rebates, but we need them to account for all the benefits,” she said. “That will accurately reflect the costs of charging at that time, but will also increase the price signal.”

It is also important for the state’s other major utility, Eversource, to launch an off-peak charging program and scale its rebates appropriately, she said. Because the two major utilities have different offerings right now, electric vehicle salespeople can have a harder time outlining the benefits for potential buyers, creating a confusing and less appealing market for zero-emission vehicles. 

What’s next

Even as the new program is kicking off, however, National Grid is already looking ahead to new versions of off-peak charging programs. Ev.energy’s software can also execute what is often called managed or flexible charging, taking control of individual drivers’ charging systems and turning the charging on when demand on the grid is low and off when demand rises. 

National Grid has requested state approval to implement such programs and is waiting for the decision from regulators. 

“It could be coming to Massachusetts, which is very exciting,” Vellone said. 

There is even some discussion about the possibility of managing charging activity to coincide with times when renewable power sources are contributing intensively to the grid, particularly as anticipated offshore wind developments come online. And in the more distant future, there could be incentives for consumers to use their electric vehicles for energy storage, earning rebates for discharging power back into the grid as needed. 

For now, the existing program will help National Grid prepare for a more electrified transportation future by normalizing off-peak charging as expected and conventional behavior, generating valuable data about the charging behavior of consumers, and allowing the utility to test out different platforms and communication strategies. 

“We felt that this is the right time to start,” Sondhi said, “to get ahead of the curve so we’re ready with our systems and our processes in place.”

National Grid offers incentives for off-peak electric vehicle charging. Are they enough? is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The Rhode Island Attorney General’s Office says state regulators should block the sale of the state’s largest electric distribution utility until the buyer assures that it can comply with the state’s ambitious new climate law.

PPL Corp. announced in March that it had agreed to acquire Narragansett Electric from its parent company, National Grid, for $5.3 billion. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the sale in September. PPL is now before the state Division of Public Utilities and Carriers seeking final approval. 

In written testimony for the attorney general’s office, consultants Mark Ewen and Robert Knecht, principals at Industrial Economics, noted that the state’s Act on Climate, enacted into law earlier this year, sets one of the most aggressive goals for greenhouse gas reductions in the nation. And while PPL Corp. “appears to agree that it will need to undertake extraordinary efforts” to meet those goals, it has offered “little in the way of proposals” for doing so, they said.

Narragansett Electric distributes electricity and natural gas to about 780,000 customers in Rhode Island. PPL is a utility holding company that operates three electric/gas utilities providing service in Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Virginia.

Under state statute, in order for the sale to be approved, regulators must determine that “the facilities for furnishing service to the public” will not be diminished, and that the terms of the sale are “consistent with the public interest.”

Clean energy advocates have called on regulators not to approve the sale without ensuring that PPL is committed to modernizing the electric grid, prioritizing in-state renewable energy generation, and complying with the Act on Climate. That law requires policymakers to come up with a plan to reduce emissions to 45% below 1990 levels by 2030, 80% below by 2040, and net-zero by 2050. 

That nation-leading law “should be of interest to a company that wishes to be forward-looking,” said Kenneth Payne, a former senior policy advisor to the state Senate who has been involved in drafting numerous renewable energy policies over the years. “Someone who wants to stick with the old status quo? … That’s not what we have in mind here in Rhode Island.”

Ewen and Knecht also flagged what they called PPL’s apparent expectation of a continued expansion of and investment in its natural gas distribution network. They recommend that as a condition of the sale, the company be limited to spending on gas mains needed for public safety and completing projects already underway. 

Then within a year after the sale, PPL should have to submit a detailed evaluation of the long-term viability of the natural gas distribution system in the context of the Act on Climate, the consultants said.

The Acadia Center, an intervenor in the proceeding, shares the same concern, said Hank Webster, Rhode Island director and staff attorney. 

“Both National Grid and PPL seem to plan on continuing to expand the natural gas distribution system precisely when we need to be reducing our reliance on fossil fuels,” Webster said. “They clearly think it’s the largest area of rate-based expansion for them. That’s at odds with the law.”

Experts for the state have also expressed misgivings about how the proposed sale will impact ratepayers, who currently benefit from National Grid’s large, regional presence. 

Gregory Booth, a consultant testifying on behalf of the advocacy section of the public utilities division, said Narragansett currently has the support of about 5,100 National Grid employees who provide “significant cost and capability synergies.” That support will be lost in the proposed acquisition, which will unwind “decades of integration” between Narragansett Electric and National Grid’s operations in Massachusetts and New York, he said. 

“The acquisition cannot be found to be in the public interest without specific information in the filing demonstrating that PPL will achieve the same level of operational efficiency,” Booth said in his testimony. 

National Grid’s work to date on a grid modernization plan and advanced metering would also likely be lost in an acquisition, he noted. Proposals in those areas were before state regulators, but were put on hold after the sale was announced. Now, PPL is “signaling” that its own advanced metering and modernization plans may not be compatible with National Grid’s investments in those areas, Booth said.

Seth Handy, a lawyer representing several solar developers who are seeking intervenor status in the proceeding, noted that National Grid had delayed implementation of advanced metering in Rhode Island because they were working first on programs in New York and Massachusetts. 

“They said, we will be in a much better position to implement it in Rhode Island after that,” Handy said. “Now, we are left in the lurch.” 

Handy said he was encouraged by experts’ attention to clean energy issues in the proceeding so far. The public interest demands the “utility’s proactive implementation of new policies and practices in managing the distribution and transmission systems,” he said. 

PPL and National Grid have until Nov. 23 to submit rebuttal testimony. The division will hold public hearings on the petition next month. A decision is expected at the end of February.

Rhode Island utility sale could be complicated by state climate law is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

This story was originally published on Sept. 26 by THE CITY. Sign up here to get the latest stories from THE CITY delivered to you each morning.

Federal officials are launching a civil rights investigation into fossil fuel projects in Brooklyn, where construction of a natural gas pipeline has sparked accusations of environmental racism.

The Environmental Protection Agency will examine whether the state Department of Environmental Conservation violated federal laws when it did not consider the impact of National Grid’s North Brooklyn Pipeline in an environmental review of related plans to upgrade the utility’s Greenpoint hub, according to a letter obtained by THE CITY.

At the heart of the issue: National Grid’s proposal to upgrade its facility to add two new vaporizers to gassify low-temperature combustible liquefied natural gas, or LNG. National Grid also plans to extend the pipeline to that facility, carrying gas for processing and storage.

Lawyers representing multiple Brooklyn community groups filed a complaint in August with the U.S. Department of Justice, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy and Department of Transportation.

The complaint alleges that the location and operation of the pipeline and related projects discriminate against communities of color along the nearly seven-mile route in violation of federal and state environmental and civil rights laws.

“We’ve been saying all along that this [pipeline] project disproportionately impacts communities of color, but now we have a federal agency that is going to investigate, legally, how this project does that,” said Britney Wilson, a lawyer and director of the Civil Rights and Disability Justice Clinic at the New York Law School. “This is a great first step, and it’s really important that this racial-specific analysis and investigation be done.”

According to the letter, the EPA’s External Civil Rights Compliance Office will look into the matter — focusing specifically on the DEC’s role.

Jeff Wernick, a DEC spokesperson, said the state agency subjects all environmental permit applications to “a transparent and rigorous review process that encourages public input at every step” — keeping in line with federal and state public health and environmental standards.

Karen Young, a National Grid spokesperson, said the project is “fully compliant with all applicable laws and regulations.”

“We trust that EPA will reach this conclusion following its investigation and dismiss the complaint,” she added.

Civil Rights Act eyed

The feds will examine whether the state discriminated “on the basis of race and national origin” when DEC found that National Grid’s plans to expand its liquefied natural gas facility in Greenpoint would not have a negative environmental impact, according to a letter the EPA sent Thursday to lawyers representing the community groups.

The lawyers had challenged the DEC’s finding, noting that the agency’s environmental review did not take into account the pipeline, which they argue is a related and interdependent part of the overall facility expansion.

So far, the gas pipeline is operational from Brownsville to East Williamsburg. A final phase to Greenpoint is on tap, pending further review.

The DEC’s failure to assess the pipeline’s impact on communities by excluding it from the environmental review, the lawyers argued, amounted to a dereliction of the agency’s duty to protect communities of color as required by civil rights laws.

But DEC says it has not received an application for the pipeline, and it has not approved or denied any permits for the facility expansion at this point.

The EPA will also examine whether DEC is in compliance with nondiscrimination requirements to ensure accessibility for people with disabilities and who speak languages other than English.

That stems from the complaint’s allegation that many community members did not know about the pipeline until construction was underway. The DEC hosted three hearings on the proposed Greenpoint facility expansion as part of the final stage of the pipeline, but did not hold others about the route elsewhere, the DEC confirmed. The complaint argues the agency should have done so, so that New Yorkers potentially affected by the pipeline could have weighed in.

“I’m really excited to finally get some more information about what happened,” Wilson said.

A year of protests

The civil rights complaint asked the feds to investigate not only the DEC, but the state Department of Public Service and National Grid. The complaint alleged the company misled the public about the nature of the pipeline project and that the DPS improperly approved it.

The Department of Public Service has disputed misleading residents. The EPA says it can’t investigate DPS and National Grid because the entities don’t receive money from the agency and therefore don’t fall under its jurisdiction.

But the federal Department of Justice, Department of Transportation and Department of Energy could still take up investigations into DPS and National Grid, according to the EPA’s letter.

National Grid says the pipeline project is necessary to ensure its customers have access to gas for cooking, heat and hot water. Construction on the pipeline, which began in May 2017, remains unfinished.

Brooklyn residents have been protesting the pipeline for more than a year, saying the project runs counter to state and city climate goals to decrease reliance on fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases when burned.

Opponents contend the pipeline will result in prolonged dependence on gas, leading to unnecessary environmental and health-related harms that will disproportionately fall on communities already vulnerable to high rates of pollution.

The state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act mandates a 85% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and reductions in carbon — meaning the state will have to electrify and largely have to come off gas to mitigate climate change.

As part of a spate of initiatives to decarbonize the construction industry — including Local Law 97, which imposes emissions caps on buildings starting in 2024 — Mayor Bill de Blasio vowed to ban gas hook-ups in new buildings by 2030. The administration is negotiating a bill with the City Council that would achieve that goal, potentially sooner.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, de Blasio’s likely successor, has indicated he supports the decarbonization efforts, but has questioned the feasibility of those deadlines and doesn’t want to penalize building owners for noncompliance.

Meanwhile, foes of the liquefied natural gas depot have been pushing back against National Grid’s plans to expand it and possibly truck LNG to the site — activities the utility also says are necessary for energy reliability.

Lawyers representing local North Brooklyn community groups in September filed a motion in state Appellate Court to stop trucking-related construction on the site until an environmental review of the impacts is complete.

THE CITY is an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that serves the people of New York.

Feds open probe into Brooklyn fossil fuel plans amid environmental racism accusations is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.