Good morning and happy Friday,

We’re pleased to say that this week’s Dispatch has plenty of good news: Climate Power reports that Michigan is leading the country in a clean energy jobs boom, creating more than 15,800 jobs in the past year, and in Sweden, what’s old is new again as a company builds a commercial-scale – and carbon negative – wind turbine tower from wood.

Of course, it isn’t all wine and roses – E&E reports that “West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is gearing up for yet another fight with the Biden administration, this time over how to implement a tax subsidy for clean hydrogen” – but last month saw some positive developments in project siting and queue reform.

Read on for more.

In what some renewable energy advocates may hope is a portent of things to come, Oregon’s Energy Facility Siting Council (EFSC) recently approved a large multi-technology clean energy project after determining that a county ordinance that could have blocked the project didn’t apply. Here’s the scoop:

• Proposed for Umatilla County in northeastern Oregon, the Nolin Hills Energy project will combine wind, solar, and battery technology to provide up to 600 MW of carbon-free power. 
• The project encountered headwinds due to a setback code that prohibited placing wind turbines within two miles of a residence – a requirement that is significantly greater that what’s found in many communities across the country.
• The restrictive code was championed not by residents in the vicinity of the Nolin Hills project, but rather by a group based in a town 30 miles away that objected to a different wind project.

Siting superpowers. At the conclusion of a hearing last month, the EFSC voted unanimously to grant Nolin Hills Energy a site certificate at the end of the hearing, “agree(ing) with the Oregon Department of Energy that it should not take the county ordinance into consideration because state land-use planning goals don’t require such setbacks.” The governor of Oregon has “siting superpowers” that allow bypassing land use regulations for semiconductor projects – and “there has been talk” of doing the same to fast-track renewable energy projects.

FERC rulings may not be a common source of pillow talk, but last week brought one we can all get excited about: Order No. 2023, the Final Rule on Improvements to Generator Interconnection Procedures and Agreements, delivers long-awaited relief in several areas. Here are some key points:

• First and foremost, the rule does away with the “first-come, first-served” study process in favor of a “first-ready, first-served” approach that will prioritize projects that are ready to be built.
• In addition, the reforms will speed up the process with which applications are reviewed by using a cluster study process that encompasses multiple projects at once.
• And, review processes will now account for technological advancements in generation and transmission, including allowing for co-location of generation facilities and requiring transmission providers to evaluate alternative transmission technologies in their studies.

Hallelujah. Backlogged interconnection queues have become the bane of renewable energy developers across the country as some 2,000 GW of wind, solar and storage projects – nearly the amount of all installed capacity in the U.S. today – languish in purgatory. The current average time of five years to connect to the grid “isn’t going to cut it if the Biden administration wants to reach its goal of achieving a 100 percent clean power grid by 2035.” So to Order No. 2023, we say: Amen!

• Ruined Margins: Soaring Costs Stress US Offshore Wind Companies
• Recycling Run: The first generation of panels: A recycling industry is taking shape
• Mid-Atlantic Maritime: Biden Admin Finalizes 3 Wind Energy Areas off Mid-Atlantic

• The Fayette County. IN Board of Commissioners approved a moratorium on solar farms.
• Southampton Town, NY proposed a six-month moratorium on battery storage systems
• The Henry County, VA Board of Supervisors approved an amendment capping the acreage allowed for solar farm development in the county
• The Jefferson County, TN Commission voted to ban the development of a battery energy storage system
• Erie County's, OH commissioners voted unanimously to ban new industrial-scale wind farms and solar farms in much of the county
• Virginia Beach neighbors fight back over proposed battery storage facility 

The U.S. Department of Energy has launched the “Cleanup to Clean Energy” initiative which seeks to repurpose parts of DOE-owned lands, including areas that were used in the nation’s nuclear weapons program, into sites that host wind, solar, and energy storage facilities.

In total, about 70,000 acres for potential development have been identified at five sites in Washington, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico and South Carolina. The initiative stems from Executive Order 14057, which calls for federal agencies “to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2030 and directs them to authorize use of their real property assets, including land for the development of new clean electricity generation and storage.”

The initiative will turn “Cold War era atomic bomb sites” such as the Hanford nuclear site, pictured above, into powerhouses for clean energy production. The DOE says it will work with a diverse range of stakeholders, including industry, federal entities, tribes, state, and local officials to explore opportunities to lease federal land for the buildout of utility-scale clean energy projects.