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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Tesla has reportedly yet to start testing its robotaxi service in Austin without a safety driver behind the wheel – just weeks before the planned launch.
For months now, Tesla and CEO Elon Musk have been hyping the launch of “Tesla Robotaxi”, a Uber-like ride-hailing service powered by autonomous Tesla vehicles, starting with a launch in Austin, Texas in June.
We have extensively reported that this launch is disappointing compared to what Tesla promised for years: that all its consumer vehicles built since 2016 are capable of self-driving.
Instead, Tesla plans to build an internal fleet of “10-20” Model Ys and have them offer ride-hailing services in a geo-fenced area around Austin, Texas, helped by human teleoperations. This is very similar to what Waymo has been offering in other cities for years, specifically in Austin, for months now.
Even with the significant downgrade in self-driving capabilities promised with this project, there are many doubts about Tesla’s ability to achieve the lesser goal.
That’s because the robotaxi service will be based on Tesla’s ‘Supervised Full Self-Driving’ program, which is currently achieving about 500 miles between critical disengagements fleet-wide, according to the latest crowdsourced data.
Tesla will be able to improve on that by optimizing a version for the geo-fenced area in Austin and it has been training its neural nets for that for months with vehicles going around Austin.
However, a new report now claims that Tesla has yet to start testing its service without safety drivers at the wheel – similar to Tesla’s public ‘Supervised FSD’. The Information wrote in a new report:
Elon Musk’s deadline for launching Tesla’s first robotaxi service, in Austin, Texas, is weeks away, but the company hadn’t started testing its cars without a human safety driver as of last month, according to an engineer close to the testing and a former employee. That’s a crucial step required before Tesla can launch the pilot service for customers.
For comparison, before launching its paid ride service in Austin, Waymo tested its vehicles with safety drivers in the area for 6 months and then without safety drivers for another 6 months.
Waymo has now taken over a significant market share of ride-hailing rides in the Texas capital, but it still has limitations; for example, it doesn’t drive on the interstate.
The report also mentions that Tesla has been working with local emergency services in Austin to develop intervention plans in order to avoid causing issues if its autonomous vehicles fail.
Electrek’s Take
This is the biggest softball goal. It’s a fraction of what was promised, it’s something that others have achieved before. It’s a punt created for Tesla to finally get a “win” in self-driving.
If they can’t even make it, it would be disastrous, but at least, I hope that it will finally open the eyes of many Tesla shareholders to the reality that Tesla is actually behind in autonomous driving and that Musk’s latest claims that Tesla will have “millions of robotaxi on the road” in 2026 are just the same as when he claimed it would happen in 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019: corporate puffery.
My main concern now is for public safety. I have little hope of US regulators being able to stop Tesla considering Trump is firing anyone who got in Musk’s way after he gave him over $250 million.
If Tesla brings its cowboy approach to this, it could get bad quickly.
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The development of Rivian’s R2 validation builds continues to progress. We know so because the American automaker’s founder and CEO, RJ Scaringe, continues to pepper us with welcome updates with plenty of fantastic images. The latest post features the inner workings of Rivian’s Maximus drive unit, which will propel the upcoming R2 EVs when they hit the market next year.
Another day, another exciting social media update from RJ Scaringe. Nine days ago, the Rivian CEO shared a peek at the company’s new Maximus drive unit, designed to be more compact and efficiently built to help reduce cost-per-unit production.
Our only look was from outside the drive unit’s casing at the time, but it was exciting news nonetheless. As an encore, Scaringe posted photos of the R2 validation builds on a pilot line at the automaker’s facility in Normal, Illinois.
This evening, Scaringe took to Instagram and X once again to share a better look at the inner workings of the Rivian Maximus drive unit. Check it out:
RJ shares more images of Rivian’s Maximus development
Rivian’s CEO posted the three images above, which showcase some interesting perspectives of the developing drive unit. As previously shared by Rivian, Maximus uses a new continuous winding technique that reduces the total welds per stator and thus the total overall cost of building each one.
For comparison, Rivian’s current Enduro drive unit requires 264 stator welds, while Maximus only needs 24. You can see the stator windings in the image above to the left. Scaringe shared excitement in the progress of the Rivian team’s Maximus drive unit as well as some insight in his post:
I love the packaging on Maximus — the drive unit for R2. It has a side mounted inverter that utilizes flat area at the end of the motor to minimize the length of bus bars, keeping them light and efficient. The large planar shape also allows all processing and power electronics to exist on a single printed circuit board.
The inverter chassis closes out the oil cooled motor cavity and seamlessly routes coolant from the power modules to the drive unit’s heat exchanger with no extra parts.
Overall, the inverter part count is reduced by 41% relative to Enduro and structural inverter lid saves more parts and fasteners by also serving as the drive unit mount. I love this design efficiency. (heart emoji)
Looks fantastic, RJ. We can’t wait to see the visual progress of the R2 you share next!
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On today’s thrilling episode of Quick Charge, we’ve a huge spike in global EV sales and a huge dip in Tesla deliveries. Plus a whole bunch of news from Toyota, including an updated bZ that’s just a bit better than before … but is a bit better going to make a big difference?
We’re also on track for more than 1 in 4 new cars sold this year to be electric, with a whole lot more hybrids coming in to make up the difference and drive fuel demand down to a new yearly low. All this, plus the top 5 cheapest EVs to insure when you hit the play button.
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