North Carolina’s Big Clean Energy Plan An Example For Battleground States
Courtesy of RMI.
By Heather House & Shelby Kuenzli
On October 13, 2021, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper signed into law the first major piece of climate legislation in the Tar Heel state in recent years. North Carolina House Bill 951 — Energy Solutions for North Carolina — was passed by both chambers of the North Carolina state legislature with bipartisan support. Being that North Carolina is a battleground or “moderate” state, this legislation speaks volumes about how climate solutions can become ground for both sides to advance priorities.
With the federal clean energy performance plan hanging in the balance, it’s more important than ever for states and local governments to step up and implement climate action plans. Sixteen states thus far have passed laws requiring greenhouse gas emissions reduction, yet the only other Southeastern state to have done so before October 13 was Virginia. Many typically progressive states have yet to pass similar legislation.
This breakthrough law allows North Carolina to transition from having a Clean Energy Plan and carbon reduction targets to having a concrete law with enforceable steps. The law, while not perfect, is an important step forward and a win for the climate. With this legislation in place, the imminent rulemakings of the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) will be an important focus for stakeholders to shape the implementation of this new law.
Solar panels in North Carolina organic garden, by Cynthia Shahan/CleanTechnica.
What’s in the Law
The Energy Solutions for North Carolina Act is a breakthrough for advocates and stakeholders across the state who have been working for years to advance a clean energy agenda. The Act directs the NCUC to take all reasonable steps to reduce carbon emissions from the electric sector 70 percent by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050. To achieve this goal, the NCUC will have to implement a plan with the electric public utilities including input from stakeholders.
Here are some significant wins from the Act:
- Of all new solar implemented, 45 percent will have to go through competitive solicitations and must be third-party owned and operated; the other 55 percent will remain utility-owned. This is a win for third-party solar developers and customer rates.
- All coal retirement expenses shall be at least 50 percent securitized, a step that can reduce the costs to utility customers of accelerated plant retirements.
- Performance-based regulations were authorized by H951. While this has the potential to be a win, the details of how the implementation shakes out will determine its success.
- The NCUC will explore on-bill financing of energy efficiency.
- The NCUC will develop a rider for a voluntary energy program that will allow customers to purchase renewable energy or renewable energy credits. This is posed to be a big win for commercial, industrial, and residential customers, but it remains unclear on whether this program will be inclusive of local governments.
These developments in isolation are wins for the state that stakeholders should be proud of; however, a lot of attention has been centered on the shortcomings of the Act. Consumers and consumer advocates, who are concerned about potential electricity rate increases, preferred 100 percent securitization of coal retirement costs and 100 percent competitive all-source procurement. While these targets were reduced, the passing of this legislation creates major strides forward in the right direction.
North Carolina’s Clean Energy Transition — Wins and Lessons Learned
While a lot of the legislation was crafted behind closed doors with few stakeholders directly involved, there were a lot of voices that helped influence this legislation that haven’t been historically present in energy or regulation engagements. For example, the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) led an inclusive stakeholder process that included local governments, businesses, industries, power providers, technology developers, residents, and others to increase the use of clean energy technologies, energy efficiency measures, and clean transportation solutions. RMI was honored to support DEQ and the state to run this inclusive stakeholder process and summarize the input from these groups that led to the development of the Clean Energy Plan (CEP).
Following the release of the CEP, DEQ and the state demonstrated commendable leadership. They didn’t put the plan on a shelf. Instead, they worked with a broad set of North Carolina stakeholders to explore two of the top CEP recommendations. DEQ was tasked with setting up “key stakeholder groups to design policies that align regulatory incentives and processes with 21st-century public policy goals, customer expectations, utility needs, and technology innovation.”
RMI supported this effort by facilitating a group of North Carolina energy stakeholders, alongside the Regulatory Assistance Project, through the North Carolina Energy Regulatory Process to develop recommendations for policy and regulatory changes. The efforts of these North Carolina stakeholders yielded a variety of policy proposals and proposed legislation that were carried forward into the 2021 legislative session.
Another component that may have contributed to this legislation was stakeholder input received on Duke’s 2020 Biennial Integrated Resource Plan (IRP). RMI, through the American Cities Climate Challenge Renewables Accelerator, in partnership with World Resources Institute, supported 15 North Carolina cities and counties in learning about pathways for elevating their goals and priorities. The local governments from across the state then requested that the NCUC take their clean energy goals into consideration when reviewing the IRP. All of these cities’ concerns became key topics during legislative discussions. This is prime example of the power that local governments have in swaying the clean energy conversation in their state.
The persistent work of cities, stakeholders, and advocates in North Carolina to make their voices, and the voices they represent, heard haven’t gone unanswered. While the resulting legislation in North Carolina may not be ideal from the perspective of all stakeholders, because of their efforts, the law now better supports a cleaner and more equitable energy transition plan.
After Legislation Comes Implementation
While the Energy Solutions for North Carolina Act is a big win for the state and an example of bipartisan climate collaboration, more work is ahead of North Carolina stakeholders. Over the next 180 days, the commission will host several proceedings and rulemakings that will determine the extent to which the Act’s vision is realized. North Carolina stakeholders need to provide input to ensure the ambition of the North Carolina Clean Energy Plan’s main carbon reduction target is met equitably. RMI was pleased to have the opportunity to support North Carolina stakeholders in getting to this point and looks forward to continuing to support them in realizing the law’s target CO2 reductions.
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Environment
Trump’s Russia oil sanctions could just be starting as low prices leave room to escalate
President Donald Trump could further rachet up sanctions against Russia’s oil sector, with an expected global surplus of crude next year leaving the U.S. room to escalate while insulating American drivers from a price shock.
The Treasury Department on Wednesday announced sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two largest oil exporters, citing Moscow’s “lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine.”
The sanctions mark the “most material move to date by the United States to shutter the Russian war ATM,” Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital markets, told clients.
The sanctions took the oil market by surprise. U.S. crude prices spiked nearly 6% to trade above $60 per barrel in response after many traders had discounted the risk of escalation due to Trump’s focus on keeping energy prices low.
Benchmark West Texas Intermediate U.S. crude oil prices hit five-month lows Monday and are down nearly 14% this year. The market has been under pressure as OPEC+ increases production and renewed trade tensions between the U.S. and China trigger fears of a global economic slowdown.
Weaker oil prices have given Trump scope to act against Russia while shielding U.S. motorists, said Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy and a former energy advisor to President George W. Bush. The White House likely saw this as an opportune moment to hit Moscow, with the U.S. midterm elections still a year away, Croft said.
“It’s about hurting the Russian finance ministry while protecting the U.S motorist,” McNally said.
Escalation on the horizon
Trump’s sanctions, which take full effect Nov. 21, are likely designed to force Russia to sell its oil at a steeper discount to global benchmark Brent rather than immediately targeting Moscow’s export volumes, McNally said. This would reduce Russia’s petroleum revenue while avoiding a price spike that pinches Americans’ pocketbooks, he said.
But the oil market faces a looming surplus in 2026 that would give Trump more leeway to escalate sanctions against Russia further next year, by directly targeting its export volumes, according to the former Bush advisor.
This would carry the added benefit of aiding U.S. shale oil producers who are under financial pressure from low prices, McNally said. U.S. shale executives have been deeply critical of Trump’s push to lower crude prices in anonymous responses to a quarterly survey conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
“You can afford to do it because next year it won’t cause $100 oil — if anything it will help oil prices from dropping to $20 a barrel and killing shale,” McNally said.
“Next year somebody has to cut big – OPEC, Russia, Iran or shale,” he said. “Take your pick. The president doesn’t want shale to lose 2 million barrels a day plus like it did in 2020. He may want $40 oil but he doesn’t want $20 oil.”
Immediate market impact
The oil market may be close to pricing in the sanctions after the announcement caught traders by surprise, McNally said. Where prices go from here depends on how the measures are implemented. If the sanctions are loosely enforced, U.S. oil could dip back into the $50s but there’s also a risk that prices could push higher if the administration takes a hard line, the analyst said.
Lukoil and Rosneft account for more than half of Russia’s more than 5 million barrels per day in exports, according to data provided by Kpler. Trump’s sanctions come after former President Joe Biden in January sanctioned Russia’s third and fourth largest producers, Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegaz.
India remained the largest buyer of Russia crude oil in September followed by China and Turkey, according to Kpler data. Trump has been pressuring India with tariffs to stop its imports of Russian crude.
“Refiners in India, China and Turkey are expected to conduct internal risk assessments on dealings with the sanctioned Russian firms while waiting for clarifications from their governments,” Matt Smith, an oil analyst at Kpler told clients in a note.
That could lead to oil being “being resold — at steep discounts — to refiners willing to take the risk, such as already-sanctioned entities” or small, independent, privately-owned refineries in China, Smith said. “However, a major disruption to Russian crude exports appears unlikely,” he said.
Belgian aviation support brand Shire is hoping to change the airport ground support equipment (GSE) game with a line of purpose-built baggage and cargo tractors engineered from the ground up as electric vehicles.
A spinoff of M-ECS (Mertens Electrification & Control Systems), a Belgian engineering company with expertise in automation, electrification, IoT, and smart systems, Shire is leaning on its decades of engineering know-how to develop purpose-built electric GSE that, they believe, is vastly superior to retrofit designs that put electric motors in spaces originally designed for ICE.
“Retrofitting remains essential in the short term,” explains Toon (his real name) Mertens, founder of M-ECS. “But purpose-built electric machines are the real path to long-term efficiency, safety, and resilience.”
With the short distances driven at limited speeds under extreme loads, ground handling and support equipment (GHE/GSE) at airports present a nearly ideal use case for battery-electric vehicles. That’s a good thing, too. As demand for on-road fossil fuels drops, airports and airlines – historically responsible for about 4% Earth’s global warming – are becoming a bigger and bigger slice of a rapidly shrinking pie when it comes to the fossil fuel emissions generated by the aviation and air travel industries as a whole.
Shire’s first products are the all-electric baggage and cargo tractors shown, above. Shire calls these “a natural starting point,” as these vehicles alone can account for nearly 30% of ground emissions at major airports. But, as significant as those vehicles are, GSE is already looking into other vehicle families specifically tailored to the unique needs of its airport customers.
Shire product line
- Shire_TT22e: Electric baggage tractor with lead-acid battery (battery included). Li-ion option 50–70 kWh.
- Shire_TT22e-DC: Double-cabin (5 seats) baggage tractor, 80V 67.2 kWh Li-ion.
- Shire_TT30e: 4-ton cargo tractor, high-voltage 70 kWh Li-ion.
- Shire_TT40e: 6-ton cargo tractor, high-voltage 140 kWh Li-ion.
No word yet on whether or not Shire’s products will make it to North America — if they do, zero emission initiatives like those at the new JFK ONE terminal could make a great home for them.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Shire, via Airside.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk managed to find a way to turn lobbying, which is typically one of the most efficient ways to spend money as a company, into a net revenue loser for his company – flipping the script again from a true “innovator” in the field of corporate destruction.
Tesla released its 10-Q filing today, to supplement its Q3 shareholder letter and conference call from yesterday’s quarterly report.
The filing gives us more detail about what’s going on with Tesla’s financials, namely, how Tesla managed to have record revenue last quarter and yet still have a 40% drop in operating income from the year-ago quarter.
One explanation for this drop is lost revenue from regulatory credits. Regulatory credits have been a relatively stable portion of Tesla’s earnings over the years, as it is one of few companies producing more electric vehicles than it is legally required to.
What are regulatory credits?
Several governments have committed to reducing pollution, and one way that they can do so is by requiring automakers to make less-polluting vehicles.
Generally, if an automaker fails to meet the guidelines set up by government, they have to pay a penalty for polluting the air too much and harming everyone with that pollution. Or, instead of paying that penalty, they can buy credits from a company that exceeded the guidelines, thus transferring money from the companies that are doing a bad job to the companies that are doing a good job.
Every government has a slightly different way of implementing requirements and credit swaps, but this is generally how it works on a high level.
Put aside for the moment that these penalties, or the cost of credit swaps, are almost always far lower than the actual amount of damage done by pollution, this is at least one method that governments can and have used to try to encourage cleaner air and lower health costs for the populations they govern.
Rules changed by republicans to cost you more money
That is, until the republican party came along. Buried in the $4 trillion giveaway to wealthy elites passed by republicans earlier this year was another provision to reduce the cost of regulatory fines in the US to $0.
Congress could not legally eliminate the fines, since they are mandated by the Clean Air Act, and republicans in Congress didn’t want to modify the Clean Air Act because it would be more obvious to everyone that they want dirty air, and because they didn’t have the votes to do so. But they did have the votes to do an end-run around democracy and eliminate the fines, which makes the regulation effectively useless.
So now, automakers have less incentive to work on making their cars more efficient. This means you’ll be buying more gasoline, that each gallon will have higher prices (and the increased price won’t go to any social good, but rather to line oil companies’ pockets), and that you’ll suffer from more air pollution which leads to higher health costs for everyone.
When, in contrast, President Biden had strengthened this rule, just the modifications made by his administration were estimated to save $600-700 over the lifetime of each vehicle, or $23 billion in total across the US. But that’s only from Biden’s improvement of the rule; the rule in total saves much more, in comparison to not having the rule at all.
But what does this all have to Elon Musk?
Elon Musk lobbied to have these rules removed, harming his company
During the 2024 US election, Elon Musk spent a total of $288 million on bribes to get anti-EV candidates elected. He did this despite full public knowledge that these candidates opposed electric vehicles, and had promised to harm them.
But, due to Musk’s social media addiction to his bizarre upside-down twitter feed, he and many others convinced themselves that somehow, harming EVs would be good for EVs.
So, Musk spent the millions, got what he wanted, claims it was all because of him (egotistical much?), and as a result, his company… is worse off.
According to the company’s 10-Q filing, Tesla lost $1.41 billion worth of revenue in just the last 9 months that it would have had if not for changes in regulatory regimes. Here’s the passage, in financial speak:
Automotive Regulatory Credits
As of September 30, 2025, total transaction price allocated to performance obligations that were unsatisfied or partially unsatisfied for contracts with an original expected length of more than one year was $3.27 billion. Of this amount, we expect to recognize $877 million in the next 12 months and the rest over the remaining performance obligation period. Changes in regulations on automotive regulatory credits may significantly impact our remaining performance obligations and revenue to be recognized under these contracts. In 2025, governmental and regulatory actions have repealed and/or restricted certain regulatory credit programs tied to our products, contributing to the $1.41 billion decrease in our remaining performance obligations as of September 30, 2025 compared to December 31, 2024.
Translated, that means that the value of the various contracts that Tesla has to sell regulatory credits to other companies has reduced by $1.41 billion dollars as compared to where they were at the end of last year. Tesla says that the specific reason for this is due to the change in regulatory credits that its bad CEO lobbied for.
Some could argue that the value of Musk’s lobbying was to get a foot in the door, and to be able to influence republicans to do less anti-EV stuff than they might have otherwise done, but that hasn’t turned out to be the case. There is no indication that republicans have softened their anti-EV position, and in fact, they keep doubling down on trying to harm you and ignoring science. And besides, Musk hasn’t even maintained any relationships, after a very public breakup.
So, somehow, Musk managed to turn lobbying spend from one of the most efficient possible ways a corporation can spend money, into one of the most inefficient ways.
Lobbying is generally highly efficient spend; Musk flips the script again
Normally, lobbying is considered an incredibly efficient way for companies to make money. Various analyses have suggested that the average return on investment from lobbying dollars is anywhere between 22,000% and 104,000%. (Yes, this is a problem, but it’s not what we’re discussing at the moment).
However, in this case, lobbying produced a loss of 489% of the money spent – and that’s just counting the losses caused by the last 9 months, and only in regulatory credits. Those credits are pure profit, too, with no cost of revenue associated with them, so this is just a straight loss of money for the company and its shareholders.
In addition to those losses, there’s the lost revenue from vehicle sales. While this has not yet been recognized by the company, going forward Tesla sales will experience a dip now that all of Tesla’s automotive and home energy products – essentially, all of the products that Tesla sells – have been made more expensive in the US due to political changes.
Either Tesla can choose to lower prices to maintain post-credit pricing and take a hit to margins of $7,500 per vehicle and 30% on home energy products, or it can hold prices the same and lose customers due to lower affordability of its products, or it can release subpar long-awaited products that cost more and are worse than the thing they’re replacing.
Needless to say, none of these options are great for business.
And so, since vehicle credits didn’t end until the end of Q3, and since home energy credits go away at the end of this quarter (and if you want your last chance to get in before they do, get started here), that means business going forward from this quarter will be a lot worse.
In addition to the lost revenue from credits, there is another issue which is more difficult to track, but is definitely happening.
That is the issue of brand damage that Musk’s political activities have had on the company. Tesla is the only EV brand with negative perception, and it’s directly correlated to Musk’s political activities. His actions haven’t just harmed Tesla domestically, but abroad, where the company has lost business opportunities in in the UK, Australia, Germany, Denmark, and has seen falling sales in most territories, along with protests and embarrassed owners.
Tesla has already lost a lot of sales and will lose more, which means less revenue, and less profit. That $1.41 billion is just a start.
Despite directly harming Tesla, Musk wants you to pay him $1 trillion to stay on
Despite this horrendously inefficient use of funds by a CEO who has shown time and time again that he is outright hostile to the company he runs, Musk has also directed the company to spend more funds on an advertising effort to give him up to $1 trillion worth of Tesla stock.
The trillion-dollar number takes into account some optimistic stock growth for the company (which is unlikely given Musk’s recent performance as CEO, where earnings have dropped precipitously), but is still around 40x more than Tesla has ever made over its entire history. It’s also the largest CEO payday in history by multiple orders of magnitude.
Regardless of whether stock appreciates enough to give Musk all the shares covered under the plan, there is still room in the proposals for him to be granted well over 200 million newly printed shares of stock for doing nothing whatsoever, leading to dilution of voting rights and share value for current shareholders. The plan gives Musk’s personal friends on Tesla’s board significant discretion in this matter, and saddles the company with his poor leadership for another decade.
It would also give him a huge source of wealth, which he could turn into cash, to spend on other lobbying activities to harm Tesla’s business, as he has proven above that he is happy to do. If Musk can manage to lose Tesla $1.41 billion plus with $288 million, imagine what he could do with $1 trillion.
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