Morning Brief: VP nominee Kamala Harris’ climate-change agenda, One grid battery to rule them all

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VP nominee Kamala Harris has a particular climate-change agenda: environmental justice. The former California AG, with proposed Climate Equity Act, has already indicated she’ll address air quality in poorer zip codes and punish those who pollute. Senator Kamala Harris, who Biden tapped to be his running mate on Tuesday, has grown increasingly firm in her commitment to a particular angle when it comes to man-made climate change: environmental justice. Her addition to the top of the Democrats’ ticket for November comes just days after she released new legislation, the Climate Equity Act. In it, she and co-sponsors aim to ensure that any environmental regulation or legislation would be rated based on its impact on low-income communities, similar to a Congressional Budget Office score. Source: Market Watch

Vistra approved to build a grid battery bigger than all utility-scale battery storage in the U.S. combined: A permit to expand Vistra’s natural gas-fired Moss Landing generation station in Monterey County, California to 1,500 MW/6,000 MWh has been approved, setting the stage for the world to see gigawatt-scale battery energy storage for the first time ever. Compare the size of the proposed Vistra battery expansion with the list of the largest battery energy storage installations in the world.

Source: pv magazine US

“Capacity deferral is the primary source of storage value” Big batteries derive most their value from replacing gas peaker plants and averting the installation of excessive amounts of transmission and generation infrastructure. However, batteries cannot replace all gas plants, MIT researchers found. From a holistic economics perspective, there is a certain share of storage that is considered cost-efficient. With battery costs declining, that share is constantly increasing. Source: pv magazine global

Secretary of Energy visits Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for dedication of energy storage facility: “Our administration is determined to lead the world in development, utilization and exportation of energy storage technologies,” said Secretary Dan Brouillette. “We’re going to do it through efforts such as this Grid Storage Launchpad facility which will enable us at DOE to begin to scale energy storage technologies from the lab to the marketplace to increase domestic manufacturing ultimately in America.” The Grid Storage Launchpad will require $75 million of federal funding plus $35 million from PNNL, Battelle and the state. Source: KEPRTV

 

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