The amount of geothermal this bill will enable pales in comparison to the solar and wind energy that should be getting installed today if it were not for the current corrupt administration.
Thanks for the deep dive. Might be good to get a NEPA expert on next. Section 1110(b)(2) requires specific issues to be raised during public comments to preserve judicial review of an Environmental Impact Statement. But the Trump Administration has removed the Draft EIS step. So there are no public comments other than to propose what the scope of the EIS should be. If important data, assumptions or analytical errors first appear in the Final EIS, with no subsequent comment period, how could the public meaningfully review or challenge them? The comment opportunity is now gone and this bill also seems to remove the possibility of judicial review as well. Seems like an absurd result.
I appreciate the guests emphasizing that this is a federal permitting bill. And as such its impact will be geographically disparate. It's likely very good west of the Rockies where there's a lot of federal land. But where I live and work, in Indiana, most of the bottleneck is at the township and county level and the benefits of this bill will likely be much smaller than they are out west.
Palken's list of hidden vectors stood out, capacity especially. PJM's monitor put about $9.3 billion of the $14.7 billion 2025–26 capacity bill down to data-center load, and none of that is network cost. Does anything in the bill reach capacity charges, or is that left to FERC and states?
I don't see in what universe democrats should think people will be ok with getting more renewable energy at the cost their clean water. Transmission lines generally are suspended above water bodies unless their pylon foundations are sited in wetlands which is probably not a significant obstacle to transmission siting. Pipelines have to tunnel under or pass over water bodies and because they carry toxic and/or flammable material are a much more significant risk to water. So we are giving the bigger risk here a big pass.
Daniel is clearly very intelligent and well spoken. Though I think his analysis of this bill is pollyanish and might reflect his time with Senator Frackenlooper. There is no need to be bi-partisan on this and no need to give so many handouts to oil and gas and hard rock mining.
The laws we have are pretty good. They could some tweaking no-doubt (especially with geothermal). But more helpful would be to fully fund the agencies that do this work. They have been under attack since Reagan and Trump gutted the already threadbare land management agencies.
If there is a particular issue, then we should address that issue, rather than take a sledgehammer to the whole thing.
The gee-golly let’s all get along Hickenlooper approach is going to put our public lands, wildlife, and air in greater peril.
listened to the whole pod, twice! I work in clean energy and volunteer for a conservation non-profit, so my world is very split on this issue. After so much research, it's clear to me this may be the best chance we'll get for a long while and we absolutely need to take it, but its hard to tell a room full of conservationists that one of the costs is taking away one of their primary tools for protecting old growth ecosystems (NEPA process litigation).
Does "genuinely better" in the following except include externalities such as global warming?
"It tells us a priori that our policymakers on both sides of the aisle believe that their resources are genuinely better and will succeed in a level playing field, and they want them to succeed, and they’re willing to tolerate the other side’s resources succeeding if they’re wrong. "
I recognize that there has been anti-carbon pricing on this channel, but if we could get carbon pricing, then it seems it would certainly tilt the scale to renewables and cleaner energy.
Another issue that the speaker raised around fossil fuels caught my interest. Having us develop more fossil energy that could help bankrupt Russia and hence help Ukraine seems like a positive to me. Just trying to see a silver lining of this bill yielding more fossil fuel from the US.
Did the 1994 FERC Policy Statement apply specifically to "load" (retail customers)? My understanding was that it was intended to prevent charging two stacked rates for the same service over the same facilities in *wheeling*.
Second, it's not entirely clear from SEC. 2107(a)(3)(A)(i)-(ii) whether the revenue requirements for incremental upgrades vs. existing facilities would be calculated based upon mutually exclusive sets of facilities--if they were, then it would seem to correspond more to what FERC called in the 1994 statement "line-by-line 'or' pricing" as opposed to "and" pricing. Does Daniel have an opinion on how those sections ought to be interpreted for implementation by transmission owners or RTOs as they are currently worded?
I really appreciate this deep dive into the BAAJA legislation. Daniel Palken presented pros and cons to the bill in a seemingly balanced way.
This is a compromise bill.... and that's the ONLY kind of bill that will get passed in Congress. Regarding the timing, I agree wholeheartedly that the urgency of the climate and energy situations in the US make this bill the right opportunity at the right time. Delaying and waiting another two or four years for the hope of a better bill only wastes time.
These Senators worked for months, years, on coming to a compromise and should be applauded. I'm a longtime climate policy advocate and am eager to see the bill pass in the Senate and eventually in the House. Fingers crossed!
the data center cost-allocation provision is the whole tell. a megawatt isn't a megawatt until it has a timestamp, and right now the timing risk is being socialized onto whoever can't say no
Do the DC wonks realize that giant powerlines are the most loathed of all energy infrastructure other than perhaps residual oil burning peakers in urban 'hoods.
Yes, rolling blackouts are much better. Jokes aside, a real problem with renewables at high penetration is intermittency. Batteries solve the hours, but interregional transmission lines could smooth the days. We just have virtually zero right now, so there's a ceiling on renewable penetration, and a real need for gas backup until those lines are built.
Yeah, I get the intermittency or variability. IMHO, in most of the US west of Appalachia all that's needed to get to very high renewable %, are targeted intra-regional transmission lines. An good example is Xcel's Power Pathway here in CO, which was specifically planned to connect the SE prairie, with its great wind and solar, to Front Range metro. To me a bad example of inter-regional connections is the recent announcement of transmission bridging of "the seam" between east CO and west KS, including a very expensive converter station. It's just connecting two rural areas rich in wind and solar, which I don't see as having very different generation profiles. Even if it enables some power wheeling from long distances, the use of that by wind/solar overgeneration will be at an extremely low capacity factor.
At one moment in the show it's mentioned that in some dreamy future some maybe potential geothermal powerplants in NV and UT will need to transfer power to the Midwest or East. I'm dubious that there aren't other better solutions and that somehow anyone is going to build 4-5 new transmission lines across ten states for it.
I follow Australian decarbonization a bit. An article/pod on RenewEconomy discussed some remote mines with 30ish MW loads I think, and they went from mostly diesel to 85-90% wind/solar/batteries (kinda basic 4 hour ones). I'm sure the wind and solar are overgenerating and curtailed quite a bit to get this, and so the $/kWh might be highish, but I'm fine with gas backup for 10-15% for the rest of my lifetime and we can get on with electrification. Another interesting tech being deployed now in the wind belt during overgeneration is thermal storage of otherwise curtailed wind generation. (Antora Energy's power-to-steam at ethanol plants in SD and KS.) I doubt that tech, or cheap sodium-ion battery tech is "in the models."
Emissions have been increasing for the last twenty years. All (minus net emissions which will be costly to do) those emissions have to replaced by renewables PLUS all the added renewables needed because engines (more efficient) will be replacing all most all fossil fuel energy systems.
Any legislation that allows more fossil fuels for energy makes the above situation even more difficult to achieve.
The size of EIS documents is not the fault of citizens and environmental organizations weighing in on the process, rather, it is more often an effort on the part of agencies to overwhelm citizen participation with details, often of marginal relevance. The main problem with NEPA is courts have allowed agencies to game the process to an absurd extent. One quick example illustrates this point. NEPA supposedly requires agencies to consider "all reasonable alternatives." In a recent Tennessee Valley Agency (TVA) EIS considering the building of new gas generating plants TVA considered the gas plant and the "no action alternative" that is always required as a default. They did not consider energy efficiency, solar, wind, battery storage nor any combination of these even though every one of those alternatives was cheaper, faster, and less polluting! In my opinion NEPA needs strengthening, not weakening!
The amount of geothermal this bill will enable pales in comparison to the solar and wind energy that should be getting installed today if it were not for the current corrupt administration.
I listened to the whole pod! It was very helpful; I've been seeing various comments about the bill and this was very useful context.
Thanks for the deep dive. Might be good to get a NEPA expert on next. Section 1110(b)(2) requires specific issues to be raised during public comments to preserve judicial review of an Environmental Impact Statement. But the Trump Administration has removed the Draft EIS step. So there are no public comments other than to propose what the scope of the EIS should be. If important data, assumptions or analytical errors first appear in the Final EIS, with no subsequent comment period, how could the public meaningfully review or challenge them? The comment opportunity is now gone and this bill also seems to remove the possibility of judicial review as well. Seems like an absurd result.
Thanks, Hal. I'll pass the NEPA expert suggestion along to David, along with your point about Section 1110(b)(2) and the comment windows.
I appreciate the guests emphasizing that this is a federal permitting bill. And as such its impact will be geographically disparate. It's likely very good west of the Rockies where there's a lot of federal land. But where I live and work, in Indiana, most of the bottleneck is at the township and county level and the benefits of this bill will likely be much smaller than they are out west.
Palken's list of hidden vectors stood out, capacity especially. PJM's monitor put about $9.3 billion of the $14.7 billion 2025–26 capacity bill down to data-center load, and none of that is network cost. Does anything in the bill reach capacity charges, or is that left to FERC and states?
I don't see in what universe democrats should think people will be ok with getting more renewable energy at the cost their clean water. Transmission lines generally are suspended above water bodies unless their pylon foundations are sited in wetlands which is probably not a significant obstacle to transmission siting. Pipelines have to tunnel under or pass over water bodies and because they carry toxic and/or flammable material are a much more significant risk to water. So we are giving the bigger risk here a big pass.
Daniel is clearly very intelligent and well spoken. Though I think his analysis of this bill is pollyanish and might reflect his time with Senator Frackenlooper. There is no need to be bi-partisan on this and no need to give so many handouts to oil and gas and hard rock mining.
The laws we have are pretty good. They could some tweaking no-doubt (especially with geothermal). But more helpful would be to fully fund the agencies that do this work. They have been under attack since Reagan and Trump gutted the already threadbare land management agencies.
If there is a particular issue, then we should address that issue, rather than take a sledgehammer to the whole thing.
The gee-golly let’s all get along Hickenlooper approach is going to put our public lands, wildlife, and air in greater peril.
listened to the whole pod, twice! I work in clean energy and volunteer for a conservation non-profit, so my world is very split on this issue. After so much research, it's clear to me this may be the best chance we'll get for a long while and we absolutely need to take it, but its hard to tell a room full of conservationists that one of the costs is taking away one of their primary tools for protecting old growth ecosystems (NEPA process litigation).
Does "genuinely better" in the following except include externalities such as global warming?
"It tells us a priori that our policymakers on both sides of the aisle believe that their resources are genuinely better and will succeed in a level playing field, and they want them to succeed, and they’re willing to tolerate the other side’s resources succeeding if they’re wrong. "
excerpt
Thank you for a wonderful conversation.
I recognize that there has been anti-carbon pricing on this channel, but if we could get carbon pricing, then it seems it would certainly tilt the scale to renewables and cleaner energy.
Another issue that the speaker raised around fossil fuels caught my interest. Having us develop more fossil energy that could help bankrupt Russia and hence help Ukraine seems like a positive to me. Just trying to see a silver lining of this bill yielding more fossil fuel from the US.
Questions for you or for Daniel:
Did the 1994 FERC Policy Statement apply specifically to "load" (retail customers)? My understanding was that it was intended to prevent charging two stacked rates for the same service over the same facilities in *wheeling*.
Second, it's not entirely clear from SEC. 2107(a)(3)(A)(i)-(ii) whether the revenue requirements for incremental upgrades vs. existing facilities would be calculated based upon mutually exclusive sets of facilities--if they were, then it would seem to correspond more to what FERC called in the 1994 statement "line-by-line 'or' pricing" as opposed to "and" pricing. Does Daniel have an opinion on how those sections ought to be interpreted for implementation by transmission owners or RTOs as they are currently worded?
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1994-11-03/html/94-27091.htm
I really appreciate this deep dive into the BAAJA legislation. Daniel Palken presented pros and cons to the bill in a seemingly balanced way.
This is a compromise bill.... and that's the ONLY kind of bill that will get passed in Congress. Regarding the timing, I agree wholeheartedly that the urgency of the climate and energy situations in the US make this bill the right opportunity at the right time. Delaying and waiting another two or four years for the hope of a better bill only wastes time.
These Senators worked for months, years, on coming to a compromise and should be applauded. I'm a longtime climate policy advocate and am eager to see the bill pass in the Senate and eventually in the House. Fingers crossed!
the data center cost-allocation provision is the whole tell. a megawatt isn't a megawatt until it has a timestamp, and right now the timing risk is being socialized onto whoever can't say no
Do the DC wonks realize that giant powerlines are the most loathed of all energy infrastructure other than perhaps residual oil burning peakers in urban 'hoods.
Yes, rolling blackouts are much better. Jokes aside, a real problem with renewables at high penetration is intermittency. Batteries solve the hours, but interregional transmission lines could smooth the days. We just have virtually zero right now, so there's a ceiling on renewable penetration, and a real need for gas backup until those lines are built.
Yeah, I get the intermittency or variability. IMHO, in most of the US west of Appalachia all that's needed to get to very high renewable %, are targeted intra-regional transmission lines. An good example is Xcel's Power Pathway here in CO, which was specifically planned to connect the SE prairie, with its great wind and solar, to Front Range metro. To me a bad example of inter-regional connections is the recent announcement of transmission bridging of "the seam" between east CO and west KS, including a very expensive converter station. It's just connecting two rural areas rich in wind and solar, which I don't see as having very different generation profiles. Even if it enables some power wheeling from long distances, the use of that by wind/solar overgeneration will be at an extremely low capacity factor.
At one moment in the show it's mentioned that in some dreamy future some maybe potential geothermal powerplants in NV and UT will need to transfer power to the Midwest or East. I'm dubious that there aren't other better solutions and that somehow anyone is going to build 4-5 new transmission lines across ten states for it.
I follow Australian decarbonization a bit. An article/pod on RenewEconomy discussed some remote mines with 30ish MW loads I think, and they went from mostly diesel to 85-90% wind/solar/batteries (kinda basic 4 hour ones). I'm sure the wind and solar are overgenerating and curtailed quite a bit to get this, and so the $/kWh might be highish, but I'm fine with gas backup for 10-15% for the rest of my lifetime and we can get on with electrification. Another interesting tech being deployed now in the wind belt during overgeneration is thermal storage of otherwise curtailed wind generation. (Antora Energy's power-to-steam at ethanol plants in SD and KS.) I doubt that tech, or cheap sodium-ion battery tech is "in the models."
Emissions have been increasing for the last twenty years. All (minus net emissions which will be costly to do) those emissions have to replaced by renewables PLUS all the added renewables needed because engines (more efficient) will be replacing all most all fossil fuel energy systems.
Any legislation that allows more fossil fuels for energy makes the above situation even more difficult to achieve.
Sid Madison
The size of EIS documents is not the fault of citizens and environmental organizations weighing in on the process, rather, it is more often an effort on the part of agencies to overwhelm citizen participation with details, often of marginal relevance. The main problem with NEPA is courts have allowed agencies to game the process to an absurd extent. One quick example illustrates this point. NEPA supposedly requires agencies to consider "all reasonable alternatives." In a recent Tennessee Valley Agency (TVA) EIS considering the building of new gas generating plants TVA considered the gas plant and the "no action alternative" that is always required as a default. They did not consider energy efficiency, solar, wind, battery storage nor any combination of these even though every one of those alternatives was cheaper, faster, and less polluting! In my opinion NEPA needs strengthening, not weakening!