GRID: In New York, community opposition leads New Leaf Energy to cancel plans to develop a lithium-ion battery storage facility in a Long Island town. (SI Live)
ALSO: Hydro-Québec says it’s still ready to deliver the hydroelectricity it’s contracted to provide Massachusetts despite lengthy delays in the necessary transmission line build-out. (CommonWealth Magazine)
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TRANSPORTATION:
• Maryland’s incoming governor and Democratic elected officials want to dust off plans to develop a 14-mile-long east-west light rail route in Baltimore. (WBAL TV)
• New York City officials hold up the development of a protected bike lane along a Lower Manhattan courthouse amid objections from judges and court officers, who frequently use an existing traffic lane to illegally park. (Gothamist)
• New legislation would open up thousands of rebates worth between $400 – $1,200 for residents of Washington, D.C., to purchase electric bikes. (DCist)
CLEAN ENERGY: A spokesman for New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy declined to comment last week on a new report finding state officials have misused nearly $2 billion from the state’s Clean Energy Fund since 2010. (New Jersey Monitor)
CRYPTOMINING: New York regulators face a lawsuit from several environmental nonprofits over the approval of a cryptomining operation’s peaker plant purchase. (The Guardian)
BUILDINGS:
• A Maine real estate developer hopes to replicate his new project — a new condo building in Portland featuring rooftop solar panels, heat pumps and electric vehicle chargers — elsewhere in the state. (News Center Maine)
• Developers say they’ll soon break ground on a massive project to convert the former Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery into a life sciences hub. (Axios Philadelphia)
• New Jersey regulators will soon issue draft rules that would require new coastal developments to be propped at least six feet above projected flood levels. (E&E News, subscription)
CLIMATE:
• Meteorologists say 2022 was Massachusetts’ sixth-warmest year in recorded history, a year the state experienced its second-warmest summer ever. (WCVB)
• A lack of frozen ground in Maine creates muddy conditions preventing loggers from cutting wood, shutting down numerous operations. (Maine Public Radio)
SOLAR:
• A consumer products recycling business in New Bedford, Massachusetts, installs almost 2 MW of rooftop solar, putting the company nearly halfway toward its solar capacity goal. (news release)
• Some observers say the financial structure of Maine’s community solar program hurts low-to-moderate-income households who aren’t subscribed. (Bangor Daily News)
• A Vermont town planning commission says it won’t recommend a proposed location of a long-delayed 2 MW solar array be considered a “preferred site” because of viewshed concerns. (Bennington Banner)
• A Tibetan Buddhist retreat center in Vermont drafts plans for a 500 kW ground-mounted solar array to electrify its facility as well as roughly 135 nearby homes. (news release)
FUEL CELLS: New York officials host a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Plug Power’s new $125 million green hydrogen fuel cell factory, which they say will create “1,600 new, good-paying jobs.” (news release)
UTILITIES:
• Four communities in New Hampshire’s Upper Valley will be among the first to receive electricity from a community power aggregation program in the state this spring. (Valley News)
• New York’s Long Island Power Authority proposes a new standard rate for 2024 to incentivize customers to shift power usage to off-peak hours. (WSHU)
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