In 2021 the COVID-19 pandemic threw global supply chains into disarray, making clear the need to build more resilient supply chains.

America has the innovation, engineering expertise, and natural resources to revive our supply chain. But our industry needs to be able to perform no matter what the world throws at us, whether it’s some unseen supply chain crisis, a meltdown in global logistics, or commodity price shocks.

Fortunately, since the IRA’s passage in August of 2022, American Clean Power Association (ACP) has documented over 47 new clean energy manufacturing facilities that created 18,000 jobs. That’s on top of the four new U.S. factories Nextracker opened or expanded with its supply partners in 2021-2022.

The clean energy transition faces another serious challenge: rural communities rejecting job-creating renewable energy projects. Even permitted projects face opposition, with disgruntled neighbors harassing landowners. More than 100 local ordinances have passed in recent years that block or restrict clean energy projects.

We need to engage and think differently about how we connect with our customers and consumers of electricity. If we don’t get our conversation with rural Americans right, we risk billions of development dollars and our best chance at a sustainable long-term national energy supply.

What if the work we’ve already done on reshoring could help? What if bringing factory work and energy security back to America is something we could meaningfully share with rural Americans as they consider whether to host renewable energy production in their communities?

Polling is instructive: In December 2021, Morning Consult found 90% of voters think it’s important that the U.S. “produce its own renewable energy equipment here in America.” As Americans, we want things made in America because we identify with the experience of people like Michelle Barszcz, a Lead Line Operator at our partner, BCI Steel’s, new tube mill near Pittsburgh. Michelle is supporting her three children in the very same factory her grandfather worked at when she was a kid. That factory was shuttered, but it now produces critical utility-scale solar tracker components for clean energy projects in the heart of our country. Michelle is someone many Americans can relate to, and she has a perspective to share with them. You can hear her story in this video here.

We firmly believe that renewables’ ability to cut our foreign energy dependence is one of the most compelling points we can make to rural Americans. Through military service, many have seen firsthand the risk of relying on other countries for our energy. They also know that foreign dictators can’t stop the wind from blowing in Wyoming or the sun from shining in Virginia.

We agree with ACP that new projects, especially domestic manufacturing facilities, are a winning argument because they help Americans connect renewable energy with new jobs and local economic growth. Investments such as the newly dedicated tube mill in Memphis with our partners MSS Steel Tubes will create 130 good-paying manufacturing jobs. With this new factory we’re both boosting our speed and reliability in supplying customers, and we’re investing in American communities. If we communicate what we’re doing, we stand a good chance of increasing the popularity of clean energy among neighboring residents.

Because of these efforts, the 800 MW Double Black Diamond project in central Illinois will be equipped with American-made solar panels on Pittsburgh-made steel; and along with our partner Swift Current Energy, we’re letting everyone know it. As an industry, we’ve underinvested in conveying the benefits of our projects to host communities. We can’t afford to do that anymore.

We’ve seen incredible progress and tremendous growth the past 10 years. Our technology works. It’s cost-effective. And it provides energy security and high-quality jobs. We’ve graduated from megawatts to gigawatts, and now we’re on a trajectory for decisions that will have profound consequences for America and the world economy.

McCarthy Building Companies solar installer at the Swift Current Double Black Diamond solar project building the Nextracker “golden row” exemplary row for training and quality purposes. Photo: Swift Current Energy

We need to have focus and discipline not just in how we operate, but also in how we communicate. Our industry has the opportunity to showcase the economic and environmental benefits of solar energy to an expanding American landscape — whether that is farmers, ranchers, rural neighborhoods, or desert communities. The good news is that good business practices are equipping us with strong communications assets. Let’s get out there and use them.

Dan Shugar is the Founder and CEO of Nextracker and a Board Member of American Clean Power Association.

The US wind and solar industries have received a boost with the introduction of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which includes numerous measures aimed at incentivizing investment in renewable energy.

The American Clean Power Association (ACP) has described the Act as the “single largest investment in renewable power in the history of this country, and the largest investment in climate action to date.”

It is predicted that solar will represent 54% of the new US utility-scale electric-generating capacity added in 2023, equating to 29.1 GW while battery storage should be able to deliver 17%, and wind 11%.

How the Act will impact wind

The Act extends the production tax credit and investment tax credit for wind – and solar – until 2024 before transitioning to a technology-neutral tax credit that will remain in place until 2032 or when electric-sector emissions fall to 75% of 2022 levels, whichever is later.

From the perspective of wind, before the enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act, the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind projects was available only to facilities that began construction (or Safe-Harbored) before 1 January 2022. The IRA extends the PTC to wind projects that begin construction before the end of 2024.

In 2023, it is expected that 6.0GW will be added to the annual US utility-scale wind capacity.

How the Act will impact solar

The Act provided a timely boost for the US solar industry. It includes long-term solar and storage tax incentives, as well as investments in domestic solar manufacturing.

Provisions in the IRA include significantly expanding US tax credits for solar projects – the revised PTC provides a base credit of 0.5 cents per kilowatt hour (KWh) of electricity produced. For wind and solar projects that satisfy the applicable wage and apprenticeship requirements, the credit rate would be extendable up to 2.6 cents per KWh. With also hitting bonus levels for: Domestic Content, Energy and low income communities.

Following a year of disruption due to supply chain and pandemic challenges, 2022 projects are likely to come online at the same time as 2023 projects delivering 29.1 GW of utility-scale solar capacity.

According to ACP, “Including these stable policies in the IRA…will finally unleash the full economic potential of swiftly deploying wind, solar, energy storage and transmission – and our industry is ready to deliver.”

How the Act will boost battery energy storage

With such incentives, the wind and solar industries will see the number of farms increase dramatically. ACP’s preliminary assessment of the Act concluded that it would deliver an estimated 525 to 550GW of new, utility-scale clean power during the period 2022-2030.

The ACP added: “With stable policies in place, we expect annual wind, solar, and energy storage capacity installations to grow to over 90 GW by the end of the decade, more than tripling the 28 GW installed in 2021.”

Interestingly, more battery storage capacity will be developed in 2023 than wind capacity with a 9.4 GW forecast to be added to the existing 8.8 GW of battery storage capacity.

Why and how to protect assets

Such rapid expansion will command higher focus on fire risks as operations, maintenance, and production needs increase exponentially. While fires in the renewable sector are rare, as more wind, solar farms, and battery storage units come online, the industry needs to remain diligent to prevent occurrences from rising as deployment expands.

While infrequent in the renewable energy sector, when they do happen, fires represent a real danger to site personnel and the environment, as well as being costly to the owners and operators. Additionally, public perception could quickly move from being in favor of wind and solar to being against it if fires increase in frequency.

A very effective way to mitigate risks, is to undertake a proper fire risk assessment (FRA) to ensure on-site detection and suppression technology is fitted at the time of installation. By being proactive, operators can earn the trust of investment, insurance companies, and the local community from the word go.

Fire suppression systems are not just available during manufacturing or construction, the technology can also be retrofitted to existing live units. Automatic fire suppression systems like Firetrace automatically target specific ignition sources allowing a flexible, modular approach that can be customized for different makes and models of wind turbines, solar inverters and energy storage units.

Learn more about how automatic fire suppression systems work.

This is a guest blog post from ACP Member Firetrace International.  To learn more information on how to become an ACP member, please visit our membership page.  

Keeping our workforce safe on the job is the clean energy industry’s top priority. ACP Conferences like OMS unite members who are leading the charge into the future of safety in the industry using cutting-edge technology and techniques. OMS 2023 Exhibitor Invenergy Services details one of its recent findings regarding site safety:

A few years ago, Invenergy Services’ environmental health and safety (EHS) team approached its operations engineering team with a challenge: They noticed a cyclical pattern in injuries year-over-year from 2015 through 2019 and hoped our performance analytics team could utilize our operational data analytics tools to investigate. 

To begin, we asked: How can we apply data science methods to better understand factors that impact our safety performance? 

Over the past few years, the clean energy industry has put great emphasis on improving safety cultures at each site, tracking metrics, collecting safety data, and communicating the importance of safety. At the same time, improvements in data science applications when applied to operating assets have proven to reduce operating expenses. By combining these two trends, we can use data science applications and machine learning tools to analyze safety data at a more granular level to improve the health and safety of all those working in this industry.

To begin our analysis, we compiled safety data, as well as each site’s operational data, including work management and labor hours on a monthly level.  This allowed us to start looking at trends and correlations month over month. We  found that incidents were slightly seasonal even when the data was normalized by workload. Additionally, we found some variables that were related to increases and decreases in safety incidents. We used these trends to gauge reporting culture at each of our wind sites. But we did not stop there.

We went back to the EHS team with our findings and decided to dig deeper to include site technicians’ daily schedules and workloads in our analysis. Analyzing this data at a daily level, we looked at the number of technicians who were injured, technicians who weren’t, and compared their workloads each week. Using a clustering algorithm, this new data led us to identify three different categories of technician injuries. The purple cluster (shown on the chart below) are injuries possibly impacted by fatigue. These technicians had a higher workload than average on the day of injury and in the days leading up to the injury. The green cluster represents possible “opportunity.” These were technicians with a high workload on the day of the injury, but not in days leading up to it. And the orange cluster represents injuries with no obvious factor behind the injury.  

By applying data science techniques to safety data, my team was able to dig into extremely large quantities of safety and operational data to draw conclusions about injury patterns and implement multiple solutions. Some of these solutions include Hazard Hunt Thursdays, which encourage sites to identify potential hazards, higher-quality safety observations, and regular communication between EHS and my data science team. 

But the most important takeaway is that analyzing safety data is an important way to identify and address risks and hazards before they become injuries. Analytics has many future implications for managing risk metrics that will be important to the clean energy industry. Often, we are focused on predicting and preventing major component failures but applying the same practices to analyzing safety data could have significant benefits for injury and even fatality prevention. As machine learning tools evolve, it is important that our industry remains committed to utilizing them for the improvement of safety practices. As my team has shown, while we’ve historically applied these tools to operational data, there are valuable takeaways and improvements that come from analyzing safety data, too. 

This is a guest blog post from ACP Member Invenergy Services. To learn more information on how to become an ACP member, please visit our membership page.    

The clean power industry continues to face substantial barriers to project deployment, which could put numerous projects at risk. In particular, the siting of solar, onshore wind and storage projects requires a multitude of processes including lease negotiations, contracts, local governing body permits, applicable state and federal permits (environmental, wildlife, etc.) and ongoing community engagement, all of which can increase costs and delay or at worst terminate projects. 

But these challenges also present opportunities. Engaging stakeholders and community members in early conversations, can not only minimize negative outcomes, but maximize the positive outcomes in ways that may have initially gone unnoticed.

Permitting has never been in the spotlight like it is today. This is why this year’s Siting and Environmental Compliance Conference is more important than ever.  The #ACPSiting23 conference brings together industry leaders, subject matter experts, environmental and land use planning professionals, and other stakeholders to tackle the burning issues we face at the local level while exchanging best practices and technical knowledge to help us achieve our collective goal of advancing the clean energy transition. Together, we can continue to be an industry that ensures responsible, successful, efficient project siting and permitting.

Siting conference sessions will cover issues impacting onshore wind, solar, and energy storage development and will dive into: 

• Policy & Regulatory Reforms 
• Permitting Challenges 
• Community Engagement and Local Affairs, including Tribal Engagement 
• Decommissioning and Disposal/End-of-Life Strategies 
• Emerging Technologies, and more. 

In addition to engaging and informative sessions, the conference will offer networking opportunities, exhibition space, and additional learning opportunities from poster presentations that will give attendees the opportunity to discuss challenges, solutions, and best practices one-on-one with the subject matter experts.

Join ACP and hundreds of siting and permitting professionals at the Siting Conference and Environmental Conference in greater Albuquerque this March 28 – 29.  Visit the conference homepage to view the most up-to-date agenda and speaker and exhibitor lists and register today.  

For the last two weeks I have met with board members, members of Congress, Administration officials, friends and colleagues who run other energy and business associations. I’ve met with labor leaders, environmental leaders, and spent a ton of time with the talented and hard-charging ACP staff. And as you know, these are tough issues and just about everybody has a different opinion. 

But more important, everyone I’ve met with wants to work with the American Clean Power Association to advance our energy transition. There’s never been a more dynamic or optimistic moment for the U.S. and global energy policy. The imperative to simultaneously grow and decarbonize our economy while strengthening national security is the defining challenge of the next 30 years.

In my career, I’ve tried to do two things: to develop real climate solutions and build the durable, bipartisan policy necessary to implement and sustain them. This is the moment where we have to join these two commitments to secure the promise of the remarkable legislation that passed last year and work together to make it happen.  

I founded the Bipartisan Policy Center about 15 years ago because I believed that our country was truly divided, but not ungovernable. We harness the power of collaboration, and we combine the best ideas from both parties, and we developed and advocated for principled and politically viable policy solutions. We can and must do the same to create durable, broad-based support for the clean energy transition. 

Every day, ACP members are innovating. They are investing, creating economic opportunity and good jobs. I am eager to work with ACP members to make sure that every community in the country benefits from this dramatic transformation.  

ACP was created to inform, to organize and to focus the interest and the insight of 750 companies working together to build a clean energy future. We have a lot of work to do, and I really look forward to meeting with our member companies and their staff so I can share our plan to grow the American Clean Power team and to strengthen the organization so we can get the job done.  

A Policy Forum Like No Other

This year’s February 15th event will be a celebration. For almost a decade, the energy storage industry has advocated a federal investment tax credit (ITC) specifically for energy storage. And we did it! We finally have a storage ITC with the enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) last summer. And the U.S. energy storage industry has made other strides too: in the last decade, we secured nine state deployment targets, over $1 billion in state incentives, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)’s landmark Order 841, and a variety of RTO/ISO updates to market products.

So, what’s left to do? Did we solve all the problems? (Hint: nope!) This year’s Policy Forum looks ahead at developing opportunities for energy storage in a post-IRA world.

What We’ll Discuss: State, Federal, Industry and Markets Conversations

The state policy conversation at the 2023 Policy Forum will focus on how restructured states—that is, states where choices for electric reliability are made by regional markets, rather than utilities and state regulators—can make policy progress on storage. State policymakers know they need energy storage to achieve their clean energy mandates. While storage deployment targets have been effective for inducing procurements in vertically structured states, they do not translate well in restructured states, where market mechanisms are the desired basis for resource choices. We need new answers “beyond targets” in those states. I’m thrilled to explore this challenge with David Sandbank, Vice President of NYSERDA, which has proposed a novel Indexed Storage Credit program; Abe Silverman, General Counsel for New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, which has proposed an innovative Clean Capacity Credit program; and Carrie Zalewski, Chair of the Illinois Commerce Commission, where policymakers face similar challenges and are considering versions of these ideas. (For those of you attending the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ Winter Policy Summit, we’ll be just a few blocks away—pop out and join us!)

The electricity markets conversation at the 2023 Policy Forum will pick up where the state policy conversation leaves off, discussing how RTOs/ISOs are shaping opportunities for storage. While storage began in ancillary services markets and has recently entered energy markets, the role of storage in resource adequacy and capacity markets remains contested. Market designs will continue to evolve for a grid with greater deployments of storage and renewables, the pace of which will be increasingly determined by interconnection queues. I’m very excited to geek out on where markets are going with FERC Commissioner Allison Clements as well as bringing leading RTO/ISO experts–like Walter Graf from PJM and Anna Foglesong from MISO–onstage to talk through their own market’s evolution and resource adequacy challenges.

The federal policy conversation at the 2023 Policy Forum will broaden the lens to what is happening in the wake of the storage ITC. The energy storage industry still faces large-scale challenges including implementing the IRA, combating rising global trade tensions, and promoting domestic supply chains and infrastructure. And the post-IRA politics of clean energy are changing, in part due to a new period of divided government. On that last point, I am pleased that Jason Grumet, founder of the Bipartisan Policy Center and ACP’s new CEO, will offer his vision for the storage and renewables industries and lead our keynote policy dialogue on the 118th Congress.

Finally, I think it will be important to take stock of the evolving relationship between the U.S. energy storage industry, policymakers, and other power sector stakeholders. In my November 2022 blog I wrote about how the storage industry has gone from struggling to get policy attention and market traction to now post-IRA having “good problems” that come with overwhelming demand. With great power comes great responsibility, and I’m honored to have longtime industry veterans like Kiran Kumaraswamy of Fluence and Polly Shaw of Plus Power join me onstage to use our insights from the last decade of our advocacy to forecast the next decade of advocacy ahead for the energy storage industry.

Of course, most of all, there will be all of you and your colleagues—connecting with each other as much as our esteemed speakers. I expect a jubilant mood. So come join us this February 15—register today!

Elliot Mainzer, CEO of the California ISO, at the 2022 Energy Storage Policy Forum.

Former FERC Commissioners Norman Bay and Colette Honorable and Deputy Director for Policy Christy Walsh at the 2022 Energy Storage Policy Forum.

Right now, wind and solar projects pay an estimated $2.8 billion a year in landowner lease payments and state and local taxes. Accelerated clean energy deployment in the U.S. will deliver even more economic benefits and bring in new revenue to communities across America.  Look for no further proof than a recent report that found that renewable energy and battery storage projects are generating tens of billions of dollars in tax revenue and landowner payments in Texas, 60 percent of which benefits rural counties.

The new report, written by University of Texas Austin and IdeasSmiths’ Dr. Joshua Rhodes and released by the Advanced Power Alliance (APA), Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation and the Texas Association of Business, showcases how tax revenue and landowner payments are making an impact in Texas communities. The “Economic Impact of Renewable Energy in Rural Texas” report found:  

• Over their lifetime, the current fleet of utility-scale wind and solar projects in Texas will generate between $4.7 billion and $5.7 billion in new tax revenue to local communities 
• If all projects with interconnection agreements are built, existing and planned utility-scale wind and solar projects will pay between $8.1 billion and $10 billion in total tax revenue over their lifetimes 
• A county in Texas could expect to receive between $9.4 million and $13.1 million in lifetime taxes (including school taxes) for a 100 megawatt (MW) solar project located in its boundaries and between $16.8 million and $20.3 million for a 100 MW wind project.  
• A Texas landowner could expect to collect between $16.2 million and $33 million in payments over the lifetime of a 100 MW wind farm, depending on the length of contract and location in the state.  
• A Texas landowner could expect to collect between $5.2 and $27.7 million in payments over the lifetime of a 100 MW solar farm, depending on the length of the contract and location in the state. 

In addition to providing reliable and affordable domestic energy to Texans, clean power projects are generating economic opportunities to localities and landowners. As the country’s long-time clean energy leader, the Lone Star State has reaped huge benefits from wind, like tens of thousands of well-paying jobs and significant economic development in rural communities. 

Investing in clean energy and transmission can empower rural America by creating new jobs and spurring billions of dollars in economic activity and in in the process, create a healthier environment with zero-emissions clean energy. This new report highlights the significant economic boost rural economies can expect as clean power growth accelerates across the country.

To learn more and download the report, visit the APA’s website.  

Amidst the unpredictable headwinds, American Clean Power remained ferocious in our advocacy and leadership, delivering historic achievements, including the largest clean energy bill in American history.

Inflation Reduction Act

In the heat of summer 2022, ACP helped make the impossible possible when our tireless advocacy helped pass the largest boost to clean energy in American history: the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The IRA provides the clean energy industry tax certainty for the next decade.

In 2023, we look forward to working alongside our members on IRA implementation. We know implementation is critically important to their business, and in partnership with them, we are leading the industry’s engagement with government stakeholders.

Providing Essential Industry Resources

We also laid the groundwork for the entire industry to advocate effectively across the country. As the industry’s voice, this year ACP:

• Brought 11,000+ attendees together at industry-leading clean energy events from coast-to-coast
• Released almost a dozen proprietary clean power market reports, held a dozen webinars breaking down the findings for members, and created countless resources across all industry topics
• Created best practices for an Energy Transition for All in collaboration with members
• Represented the industry’s voice with 10,000 mentions of ACP across the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, AP, and other major outlets

Matching the Association to the Industry

ACP was incorporated just two years ago, but we already play an instrumental role in advancing American clean energy. For that reason, in 2023 we must continue building a best-in-class association.

After a rigorous CEO search process, our Board of Directors voted unanimously for Jason Grumet to take the helm of ACP in 2023.

As the founder and president of Bipartisan Policy Center, Jason joins ACP with a strong belief that we can build consensus on clean energy issues – even in a divided country.

As 2023 dawns, ACP has the right leader for the right moment.

But it will take continued collaboration to ensure that storage, wind, solar, and transmission are all aligned to do what our workers, our economy, and our climate future demand that we do. With our members help, we can – and we will.

Thank you for your trust in us and tireless support. We couldn’t do what we do without you. Happy holidays.

Onwards to 2023.

At the same time, developers struggled mightily to plug in projects this year as supply chains remained tight, detentions kept many solar projects from receiving panels, and grid connection issues delayed projects from starting to deliver power. Overall, this points to a slowdown from record levels seen in 2021 and 2020. So, paradoxically, while the industry is well positioned for accelerated future growth, 2022 will not live up to expectations.

With that in mind, let’s look at key clean energy highlights from this past year.

Passage of historic clean energy investment 
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) represents the single largest investment in renewable power and climate action in our nation’s history.  A key feature of this legislation is the extension of production and investment tax credits through 2024 before transitioning to a technology-neutral tax credit. The latter tax credit will remain in place until 2023 or when electric-sector emissions fall to 75% of 2022 levels, whichever is later. For the first time, energy storage is eligible for the investment tax credit, while domestic manufacturing of clean energy components is incentivized through additional tax credits.

ACP’s initial analysis of the IRA demonstrates the enormity of the legislation’s impact on the nation’s clean energy landscape. We expect that the IRA will deliver an estimated 525 to 550 gigawatts (GW) of new, utility-scale clean power from 2023-2030. Building on the existing clean power fleet, there will be roughly 750 GW of clean power capacity operating in 2030. 

Beyond providing clean and reliable energy, projects installed thanks to the IRA will have outsized benefits on their surrounding communities. Building 525 to 550 MW of new capacity will generate between $550 to $600 billion in capital investment. More broadly, construction of these projects is expected to generate over $900 billion in economic activity and add nearly $500 billion to U.S. GDP across the decade. After construction, ongoing maintenance and operations will contribute over $14 billion to U.S. GDP each year while generating nearly $29 billion in annual economic activity.

American made clean power
Between the passage of federal incentives and the end of November, ACP is tracking more than $40 billion of new utility-scale clean energy investment announced. Alongside private investment, 20 new domestic manufacturing facilities supporting utility-scale clean energy have been announced, bringing with them 7,000 new American jobs. 

Throughout 2022, numerous clean energy manufacturers have announced plans for new U.S. facilities, strengthening a future made-in-American clean power supply chain. For instance, First Solar, a leading American tier 1 solar manufacturer, is investing heavily in its manufacturing capabilities throughout the U.S. The company is investing $1 billion in a new 3.5 GWdc manufacturing facility in the Southeast and expanding its footprint in Ohio with a $185 million investment to increase manufacturing capacity in the state by 0.9 GWdc. In total, the solar manufacturer expects to have a workforce of over 3,000 in four states, while supporting 15,000 indirect and induced jobs by 2025.1 

Once-abandoned manufacturing sites are also getting new life thanks to clean energy manufacturing companies. In Iowa, TPI Composites, a wind turbine maker, closed its doors in 2021, cutting 700 jobs. Now, thanks in part to support from the IRA, TPI Composites and General Electric have signed a 10-year agreement, allowing turbine blade production to resume in 2024, bringing Iowans back to work. Nextracker and BCI Steel have also announced plans to renovate the abandoned Bethlehem Steel factory in Pittsburgh, PA. The Pittsburgh facility is Nextracker’s third partnership with a steel manufacturing partner in 2022 as part of the company’s commitment to rebuilding America’s steel and solar supply chains. 

The IRA has also given many utilities the opportunity to reduce electricity costs for customers, providing over $2.5 billion of consumer savings to 15 million Americans. Companies explicitly tied these savings to federal incentives that make new project investment less expensive, meaning utilities can rely less on customer rate increases to fund projects.

Historic offshore wind leases across our nation’s coasts
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) held three offshore wind lease auctions in 2022. The first, held in February, took place in the New York Bight, a stretch of ocean between New York and New Jersey. The auction, for six lease areas with the potential for at least 5.6 GW of capacity, lasted three days and drew winning bids totaling roughly $4.37 billion. This record-breaking offshore wind lease auction highlights the strong opportunities for developers in the region. 

BOEM held two additional offshore wind lease auctions in 2022. In May, an auction for two lease areas in the Carolina Long Bay region resulted in winning bids totaling $315 million. Combined, the two areas have a potential capacity of at least 1.3 GW. This lease auction represents the southernmost lease sale on the East Coast, bringing more clean, reliable offshore wind energy to the Carolinas.

In December, BOEM held the nation’s first offshore wind lease auction on the West Coast. The lease auction, for two leases off Northern California and three leases off the Central Coast, lasted two days and drew winning bids totaling $757 million. Deep waters in these lease areas necessitate the use of floating offshore wind. The U.S. is primed to be a leader in the development of floating offshore wind technology.

Delays, delays, delays
Despite expected future investment and growth, the industry currently faces supply chain and trade roadblocks stagnating new installations. ACP is tracking clean power project delays happening since the end of 2021 and the volume is staggering – over 36 GW of clean power are delayed. These are projects that should otherwise be online and delivering clean power to Americans.

More than 8 GW of projects have experienced multiple delays. Delays are setting many projects back by more than just a few months; of the 14.2 GW of delayed capacity that was expected online in the third quarter of the year, only half of it is expected to come online by the end of the year. On average, delays are well over six months.

Solar projects make up 63% of the delayed capacity, primarily due to an inability to obtain panels as a result of continuing trade restrictions. Wind accounts for just less than a quarter of all delayed capacity. Wind delays are caused by ongoing supply chain constraints and grid interconnection delays. Battery storage has been the least affected, continuing to achieve record quarter after record quarter for new installations, but has not gone totally unimpacted. Nearly 5 GW of battery storage capacity, primarily paired with delayed solar projects, has experienced delays.  

Historic clean power projects begin operations 
Despite headwinds, clean energy developers have been able to bring online multiple historic projects this year. One project that cannot go without mention is Traverse Wind, one of the largest single phase wind projects to be commissioned in the country to date. The 998 MW Oklahoma project, developed by Invenergy, came online in the first quarter of the year. There are now 356 General Electric turbines operating at the site and providing power to the Southwestern Electric Power Company and Public Service Company of Oklahoma. American Electric Power Company (AEP) chairman, president, and CEO Nicholas K. Akins stated that the project’s completion was a “significant milestone in [AEP’s] efforts to provide clean, reliable power to [their] customers while saving them money.”

NextEra’s Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility, which came online this year in Oregon, is a prime example of the growth of hybrid clean energy projects. Wheatridge, featuring 300 MW of wind capacity, 50 MW of solar, and 30 MW/120 MWh of battery storage capacity, is the largest fully operational hybrid facility in the U.S. combining all three technologies. The project is playing a big part in getting Portland Gas and Electric, who is purchasing the output, closer to their goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power served to customers by at least 80% by 2030. 

Battery storage has been growing rapidly over the past few years, in part because of increasingly large standalone projects commissioning. One example of that is the Crimson Storage project, the largest single-phase battery project currently operating. The project, located on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land in the California desert, was developed by Axium Infrastructure and Canadian Solar. Two California utilities, Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric, hold long-term contracts with the project, thanks in part to reliability mandates made by the California Public Utilities Commission. 

As the year comes to a close, the clean energy industry has much to celebrate, yet lots of work still left to do.  More than 216 GW of clean energy are currently operating and powering homes and businesses across the nation. With the passage of the IRA, historic investment is poised to help the industry exponentially increase annual deployments while building out a domestic supply chain.  However, several roadblocks remain. To realize the full power potential of the clean energy industry in the coming year, Washington must focus its efforts on improving trade policies, enacting common sense permitting reform, and finalizing effective tax implementation.  And if these important policies come to fruition, clean power will continue to grow across the country and power more homes and American businesses, create jobs and spur a new era of American manufacturing.