Inexperienced Wave Of Renewable Vitality To Crash The Pink State Social gathering

Join every day information updates from CleanTechnica on e mail. Or observe us on Google Information!

The political divide right here within the US could appear fairly reduce and dried when the subject turns to renewable vitality, however don’t be fooled. The vitality transition is gaining steam in virtually each state, no matter what their lawmakers say or do, with Louisiana and Tennessee offering the newest in a protracted collection of examples.

Renewable Vitality & The Dreaded ESG

State-level renewable vitality opponents have coalesced their efforts round attacking the atmosphere, social, and governance (ESG) tips fashionable with many monetary companies and companies lately. Decarbonizing is a major characteristic within the atmosphere slot, and that explains why the fingerprints of fossil vitality stakeholders will be present in new state legal guidelines geared toward tipping the legislative scales in opposition to ESG broadly, and renewable vitality extra particularly.

Nonetheless, the naming and shaming of ESG within the halls of the state legislature doesn’t all the time monitor with the goals of the native improvement authorities, or with state financial improvement workplaces. CleanTechnica retains discovering examples of beneficiant incentive packages supplied to scrub tech producers to place down stakes in purple states, regardless of the anti-ESG rhetoric of different public officers.

The Inflation Discount Act can be incentivizing clear tech producers to arrange operations in professedly anti-ESG states. Particularly, we’re noticing that states within the Southeast are engaging to producers attributable to a protracted historical past of “proper to work” laws, fostering a wealthy pool of non-union employees.

To ice the cake of disconnection, earlier this month plans had been introduced to arrange a brand new inventory alternate in Dallas, to cowl Texas and different states within the Southeast. Coincidentally or not, the TXSE venture consists of Louisiana, Tennessee, and virtually each different state within the former Confederacy, along with Texas.

As for disconnect, when you guessed that the main ESG-friendly monetary agency BlackRock is without doubt one of the chief traders within the TXSE, run proper out and purchase your self a cigar.

Louisiana Catches Renewable Vitality Fever

Into this image steps Louisiana. Pink-state politics apart, Louisiana’s personal in-state offshore building business is credited with offering the tools and engineering expertise behind the Block Island offshore wind farm. Block Island was commissioned for industrial electrical energy technology all the way in which again in 2016 as the very first renewable vitality set up of its type within the US. Block Island’s 5 wind generators have set the stage for a string of large wind farms alongside the Atlantic Coast.

To be clear, the Block Island wind farm isn’t situated in Louisiana waters. That distinction went to Rhode Island, the place the political winds had been extra amenable to offshore wind. Now Louisiana appears decided to take up the renewable vitality management mantle once more. The state is poised to develop into the first on the Gulf Coast to faucet into offshore wind assets within the Gulf of Mexico.

Just about all the offshore exercise within the US comes below a federal leasing program, however Louisiana will likely be an exception. The state has laid plans to plant a number of the generators in waters that come below its personal authority.

Of Course, Inexperienced Hydrogen

When you’re questioning what’s motivating the sudden curiosity in offshore wind, that’s a great query. The wheels had been set in movement when former Democratic governor and renewable vitality fan John Bel Edwards was in workplace. For some purpose, the present management has not made a severe effort to cease the momentum.

We’re guessing that’s as a result of the highly effective Louisiana ammonia business is pushing to exchange fossil-sourced hydrogen with inexperienced hydrogen, which deploys renewable vitality to push hydrogen fuel from water, resulting in the demand for extra wind and solar energy, too.

Final summer season, the Louisiana Financial Improvement workplace introduced that it was placing collectively an incentive bundle for the agency Monarch Vitality to arrange a inexperienced hydrogen plant in Ascension Parish. In September, the Louisiana department of the main US vitality agency Entergy adopted up with phrase that it might present sufficient renewable vitality — particularly, solar energy — to run the Monarch facility.

Supplying clear kilowatts for the inexperienced hydrogen plant is simply the tip of Entergy’s plans for Louisiana. “Entergy Louisiana just lately made the biggest renewable energy growth request in state historical past by submitting a request with its regulator, the Louisiana Public Service Fee, for approval so as to add an extra three gigawatts of solar energy to its technology portfolio,” Entergy defined in a press assertion final September.

Doing the maths, that’s 3,000 megawatts, an enormous leap up from Louisiana’s present roster of simply 617 megawatts.

Tennessee To Be A Renewable Vitality Titan

Turning now to Tennessee, we discover this purple state poised, considerably extremely, to host a brand new photo voltaic manufacturing facility geared toward each the home and abroad markets.

That’s proper, abroad. When was the final time a US photo voltaic producer exported photo voltaic panels in any vital amount? When you can monitor that down, drop us a be aware within the remark thread.

The corporate behind the brand new manufacturing unit is ReCreate, a brand new venture of Create Vitality founder and CEO Dean Solon, and the CEO of RECOM Applied sciences, Hamlet Tunyan. The agency will deploy Create Vitality’s present facility in Portland, Tennessee.

“This new enterprise will disrupt the photo voltaic market by establishing a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility devoted to producing as much as 5GW of modules and cells for the North American and EU markets,” ReCreate acknowledged in a press launch on June 14.

Neither Create nor RECOM has surfaced on the CleanTechnica renewable vitality radar but, so we now have some catching as much as do. Within the meantime, ReCreate follows a now-familiar sample of purple states internet hosting new factories that produce the instruments for killing off fossil fuels in different states.

Tennessee ranks a lowly #30 among the many 50 states for put in photo voltaic capability, but when all goes in keeping with plan these 5 gigawatts’ price of ReCreate photo voltaic modules will change coal, fuel, and oil energy throughout North America and Europe.

Tennessee can be heading for an vitality makeover of its personal. When Ford introduced plans for a brand new mega-campus within the state again in 2021, the corporate anticipated that extra renewable vitality would develop into accessible. “BlueOval Metropolis was designed with sustainability high of thoughts, and the corporate’s objective is for the Tennessee Electrical Automobile Heart meeting plant to be carbon impartial and use carbon-free electrical energy,” Ford reminded everyone earlier this yr.

Who’s Afraid Of The ESG?

CleanTechnica has already spilled loads of ink on the anti-ESG motion in Texas and elsewhere, so we received’t repeat ourselves right here. When you’re searching for new examples, right here’s a latest one from Tennessee that includes an assault on — you guessed it — BlackRock.

Louisiana already jumped the gun on BlackRock again in 2022 and now it’s taking intention at different A-list monetary companies with an curiosity in the vitality transition.

However, home-state companies are following the ESG cash, one latest instance being the the A-list engineering agency APTIM, headquartered in Baton Rouge. The agency is pitching a 2040 internet zero objective, although it has reportedly supplied extra monetary help to Republican candidates than Democrats.

“Wanting ahead, we’ll proceed to prioritize making significant reductions in our carbon footprint, and we plan to formally combine nature-based issues as reporting requirements advance,” defined a spokesperson for the agency simply final week, on June 12.

Who’s afraid of the ESG, certainly.

Comply with me @tinamcasey on Bluesky, Threads, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Picture (cropped): ESG or not, two entrepreneurs intention to make Tennessee a renewable vitality powerhouse, with a proposed 5 gigawatt photo voltaic manufacturing unit.