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Balance of power: why Loch Ness hydro storage schemes are stirring up trouble

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Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Brian Shaw stood at the water’s edge of Loch Ness and pointed to a band of glistening pebbles and damp sand skirting the shore. It seemed as if the tide had gone out.Overnight, Foyers, a small pumped storage power station, had recharged itself drawing up millions of litres of water into a reservoir high up on a hill behind it, ready for release through its turbines to boost the UK’s electricity supply. That led to the surface of Loch Ness, the largest body of freshwater in the UK, falling by 14cm in a matter of hours.Shaw, an expert in freshwater salmon who runs the Ness District Salmon Fishery Board, believes this is a warning of things to come. “I had a complaint about the level of Loch Ness dropping by a foot overnight,” he said, gesturing at the shore. “It’s actually dropped six inches over the course of the day. That wouldn’t happen naturally.”Foyers power station was built in 1974, and after a 40-year absence, pumped hydro storage is back on the agenda and with it fresh questions about who the water belongs to.Power companies are racing to meet one of the biggest challenges of the green energy revolution: how to store excess power from the large windfarms being built around the UK to provide an energy reserve to cope with peak demand and wind-free days.Developers hope to build 11 pumped hydro storage projects with the combined capacity of 10GW, equivalent to 10 large nuclear power stations, to help meet a government target to install up to 8GW of long-duration energy storage by 2030. Most of the projects are in the Scottish Highlands, with two in north Wales. Not all will go ahead.Loch Ness has been earmarked for three of these projects – the most of any waterbody in the UK. Two are of a similar size to Foyers. However, the third, at Glen Earrach on the north side of the loch, will be one of the most powerful envisaged, offering up to 30GWh of electricity.Building the power station will cost about £3bn, but its backers argue that the 2GW plant has a great advantage over local competitors: it makes the best use of gravity.Glen Earrach’s storage reservoir is Loch nam Breac Dearga, tucked under a rocky mountain nearly 500 metres above sea level, flanked by banks of snow and iced-over peat bog. Because it is close to Loch Ness and high up, they say its “head height” – the distance its water has to travel to reach the turbines – makes it one of the most efficient on offer.Roderick MacLeod, whose family owns the estate where the project would be built, said: “For the same amount of water, for the same size of tunnels, for the same size of machines, you are getting three times more power, three times more energy stored and so you’re getting three times the consumer benefit. That’s the key selling point.”Glen Earrach Energy is proposing to construct a pumped storage hydro site on the north-west side of Loch Ness. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The GuardianGlen Earrach’s proposals have fuelled significant amounts of anxiety locally. It is the third such plan proposed for Loch Ness but also the largest by far.More than a dozen agencies, conservation bodies and local businesses have lodged objections or raised questions about Glen Earrach with the Scottish government’s energy consents unit, which oversees power station applications.Its critics fear that if all four plants are approved, that could significantly affect the loch’s delicate ecology, its migrating salmon and trout, the loch’s leisure cruising firms and its archaeological sites, including a prehistoric crannog, or human-made island.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionShaw estimates that if all the plants simultaneously refilled their reservoirs, the surface of Loch Ness could fall by up to 1.2 metres, or by 27m cubic metres. If all that water was suddenly discharged, it would upset the loch’s delicate hydrology and water temperatures, affecting juvenile salmon.The invertebrate charity Buglife said Glen Earrach alone could lower the loch’s surface by nearly half a metre when it recharges its upper loch. It raises concerns about the risks to insects such as northern damselfly, the brilliant emerald dragonfly and a species of cranefly.Glen Earrach Energy is in a fiercely fought contest to persuade Ofgem, the energy regulator, to award it the electricity supply agreement it needs to raise the billions of pounds to build the plant. Ofgem’s evaluation process starts this spring. Meanwhile, Glen Earrach has been lobbying Labour ministers, MPs and policymakers, urging them to study its numbers.MacLeod said the firm would soon publish a detailed environmental impact assessment to answer ecological concerns and has funded a joint survey with Shaw’s fisheries board to investigate environmental threats to Loch Ness’s juvenile salmon.MacLeod said the loch was naturally recharged by its surrounding rivers, making any reductions in its surface level short-lived. Shaw, meanwhile, acknowledged that the Scottish Environment Protection Agency set legal limits on pumped storage schemes that prevented firms drawing water when levels were too low.In an attempt to prove how seriously it takes its social obligations, Glen Earrach Energy is offering to make community benefit payments of up to £25m a year – the largest ever proposed by a power company.“The landscape is kind of everybody’s,” MacLeod said. “I think it’s only right that it should provide a return to the community, because it has an impact on the community and in this particular context, that’s got to do with water. We’re essentially paying for water use, as a rent on the water we use.”

As Scottish energy firms race to meet challenges of storing power, critics fear proposals will affect delicate hydrology of lochBrian Shaw stood at the water’s edge of Loch Ness and pointed to a band of glistening pebbles and damp sand skirting the shore. It seemed as if the tide had gone out.Overnight, Foyers, a small pumped storage power station, had recharged itself drawing up millions of litres of water into a reservoir high up on a hill behind it, ready for release through its turbines to boost the UK’s electricity supply. That led to the surface of Loch Ness, the largest body of freshwater in the UK, falling by 14cm in a matter of hours. Continue reading...

Brian Shaw stood at the water’s edge of Loch Ness and pointed to a band of glistening pebbles and damp sand skirting the shore. It seemed as if the tide had gone out.

Overnight, Foyers, a small pumped storage power station, had recharged itself drawing up millions of litres of water into a reservoir high up on a hill behind it, ready for release through its turbines to boost the UK’s electricity supply. That led to the surface of Loch Ness, the largest body of freshwater in the UK, falling by 14cm in a matter of hours.

Shaw, an expert in freshwater salmon who runs the Ness District Salmon Fishery Board, believes this is a warning of things to come. “I had a complaint about the level of Loch Ness dropping by a foot overnight,” he said, gesturing at the shore. “It’s actually dropped six inches over the course of the day. That wouldn’t happen naturally.”

Foyers power station was built in 1974, and after a 40-year absence, pumped hydro storage is back on the agenda and with it fresh questions about who the water belongs to.

Power companies are racing to meet one of the biggest challenges of the green energy revolution: how to store excess power from the large windfarms being built around the UK to provide an energy reserve to cope with peak demand and wind-free days.

Developers hope to build 11 pumped hydro storage projects with the combined capacity of 10GW, equivalent to 10 large nuclear power stations, to help meet a government target to install up to 8GW of long-duration energy storage by 2030. Most of the projects are in the Scottish Highlands, with two in north Wales. Not all will go ahead.

Loch Ness has been earmarked for three of these projects – the most of any waterbody in the UK. Two are of a similar size to Foyers. However, the third, at Glen Earrach on the north side of the loch, will be one of the most powerful envisaged, offering up to 30GWh of electricity.

Building the power station will cost about £3bn, but its backers argue that the 2GW plant has a great advantage over local competitors: it makes the best use of gravity.

Glen Earrach’s storage reservoir is Loch nam Breac Dearga, tucked under a rocky mountain nearly 500 metres above sea level, flanked by banks of snow and iced-over peat bog. Because it is close to Loch Ness and high up, they say its “head height” – the distance its water has to travel to reach the turbines – makes it one of the most efficient on offer.

Roderick MacLeod, whose family owns the estate where the project would be built, said: “For the same amount of water, for the same size of tunnels, for the same size of machines, you are getting three times more power, three times more energy stored and so you’re getting three times the consumer benefit. That’s the key selling point.”

Glen Earrach Energy is proposing to construct a pumped storage hydro site on the north-west side of Loch Ness. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Glen Earrach’s proposals have fuelled significant amounts of anxiety locally. It is the third such plan proposed for Loch Ness but also the largest by far.

More than a dozen agencies, conservation bodies and local businesses have lodged objections or raised questions about Glen Earrach with the Scottish government’s energy consents unit, which oversees power station applications.

Its critics fear that if all four plants are approved, that could significantly affect the loch’s delicate ecology, its migrating salmon and trout, the loch’s leisure cruising firms and its archaeological sites, including a prehistoric crannog, or human-made island.

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Shaw estimates that if all the plants simultaneously refilled their reservoirs, the surface of Loch Ness could fall by up to 1.2 metres, or by 27m cubic metres. If all that water was suddenly discharged, it would upset the loch’s delicate hydrology and water temperatures, affecting juvenile salmon.

The invertebrate charity Buglife said Glen Earrach alone could lower the loch’s surface by nearly half a metre when it recharges its upper loch. It raises concerns about the risks to insects such as northern damselfly, the brilliant emerald dragonfly and a species of cranefly.

Glen Earrach Energy is in a fiercely fought contest to persuade Ofgem, the energy regulator, to award it the electricity supply agreement it needs to raise the billions of pounds to build the plant. Ofgem’s evaluation process starts this spring. Meanwhile, Glen Earrach has been lobbying Labour ministers, MPs and policymakers, urging them to study its numbers.

MacLeod said the firm would soon publish a detailed environmental impact assessment to answer ecological concerns and has funded a joint survey with Shaw’s fisheries board to investigate environmental threats to Loch Ness’s juvenile salmon.

MacLeod said the loch was naturally recharged by its surrounding rivers, making any reductions in its surface level short-lived. Shaw, meanwhile, acknowledged that the Scottish Environment Protection Agency set legal limits on pumped storage schemes that prevented firms drawing water when levels were too low.

In an attempt to prove how seriously it takes its social obligations, Glen Earrach Energy is offering to make community benefit payments of up to £25m a year – the largest ever proposed by a power company.

“The landscape is kind of everybody’s,” MacLeod said. “I think it’s only right that it should provide a return to the community, because it has an impact on the community and in this particular context, that’s got to do with water. We’re essentially paying for water use, as a rent on the water we use.”

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EPA to steer environmental cops away from energy companies

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicated this week that it will steer its environmental cops away from energy companies.  The EPA can pursue civil or criminal cases against polluters. In 2023, the Biden administration said it would focus its environmental cops on companies who violate laws related to climate change, toxic “forever chemicals” and carcinogenic...

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicated this week that it will steer its environmental cops away from energy companies.  The EPA can pursue civil or criminal cases against polluters. In 2023, the Biden administration said it would focus its environmental cops on companies who violate laws related to climate change, toxic “forever chemicals” and carcinogenic coal waste. In a press release on Wednesday, the Trump EPA said it will revise environmental law enforcement guidelines in a way that does not “shut down energy production.” The Trump administration also said it would reject a Biden-era focus on environmental justice – which seeks to prioritize communities with disproportionately high pollution levels and few resources, including communities of color.  “The Biden-Harris Administration paired burdensome, legally questionable regulations with unpredictable but punitive enforcement aimed at shutting down American energy and manufacturing and promoting so-called ‘environmental justice,’” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement.  “By re-aligning enforcement with the law instead of activist goals, we can help deliver economic prosperity and energy security while ensuring compliance with sound regulations,” he added.  The EPA said in its press release that it would refocus efforts on “the most pressing health and safety issues.” It did not say what those were.  The announcement came in conjunction with additional announcements from the EPA that it wanted to reverse a broad suite of regulations that seek to limit climate change and pollution from power plants and cars. 

Ban on new drilling confirmed as ministers consult on North Sea’s ‘clean energy future’

Gas and oil industry cautiously welcomes government proposals that could ease tax burden on sectorThe UK government has pledged to “unleash the North Sea’s clean energy future”, as it confirmed plans to ban new drilling licences but also unveiled proposals that could ease the tax burden on the oil and gas sector.The “windfall” tax on North Sea drillers, introduced in 2022 to help support households facing rising energy bills after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, would be scrapped from 2030, the Treasury confirmed on Wednesday. Continue reading...

The UK government has pledged to “unleash the North Sea’s clean energy future”, as it confirmed plans to ban new drilling licences but also unveiled proposals that could ease the tax burden on the oil and gas sector.The “windfall” tax on North Sea drillers, introduced in 2022 to help support households facing rising energy bills after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, would be scrapped from 2030, the Treasury confirmed on Wednesday.In its place, ministers will consult on a new regime, under which duties move in tandem with global wholesale energy prices, something the industry said would provide its investors with “certainty”.Alongside the tax plans, the government announced an eight-week consultation on how to manage the North Sea’s transition from oil and gas to cleaner forms of energy, without triggering mass job losses.The proposals follow through on Labour’s manifesto commitment not to permit any new drilling licences.The GMB and Unite trade unions have opposed the measure, warning of a repeat of the devastation visited on coalmining communities if no plan is put in place to protect workers.Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, said the consultation would avert job losses in the North Sea oil industry during the transition to hydrogen, renewable energy and technologies such as carbon capture and storage.“The North Sea will be at the heart of Britain’s energy future,” Miliband said. “For decades, its workers, businesses and communities have helped power our country and our world.“Oil and gas production will continue to play an important role and, as the world embraces the drive to clean energy, the North Sea can power our plan for change and clean energy future in the decades ahead.”Extensions on the life of existing drilling licences would not be affected, ensuring that oil fields could “operate for the entirety of their lifetime”, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said.The government also said that developers would be able to resume applying for consents for already licensed projects, as a result of “revised” environmental guidance on offshore projects.This follows a supreme court ruling last year that requires regulators to consider the impact of burning oil and gas in environmental assessments of new projects.The oil industry issued a cautious welcome to the government’s blueprint for reforming taxation.North Sea drillers currently pay a 40% tax on their profits, as well as the 38% energy profits levy brought in by the previous government in response to energy companies recording bumper profits as oil and gas prices surged in response to war in Ukraine.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Business TodayGet set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morningPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionUnder proposals that would come in from 2030, tax rates would be more closely linked to changing wholesale prices. That mechanism would mean the tax rate would rise if wholesale prices also jumped sharply due to an oil and gas price shock.The trade body Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) welcomed plans it said would protect jobs and allay investors’ concerns about a volatile tax regime.David Whitehouse, the chief executive of OEUK, said a sliding-scale tax regime would “help to begin to give certainty to investors and create a stable investment environment for years to come”.Greenpeace welcomed the “reaffirmation of the government’s world-leading commitment to end our reliance on North Sea oil and gas”.Mel Evans, climate team leader at Greenpeace UK, said: “Our over-reliance on volatile and expensive fossil fuels is the reason our energy bills have remained so high in recent years.“The government clearly recognises that creating a renewable energy system can provide this country and its energy workers with economic opportunities and stable, future-proofed jobs.”

Power struggle: will Brazil’s booming datacentre industry leave ordinary people in the dark?

While millions live with regular blackouts and limited energy, plants are being built to satisfy the global demand for digital storage and processing – piling pressure on an already fragile system Thirty-six hours by boat from Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, Deodato Alves da Silva longs for enough electricity to keep his tucumã and cupuaçu fruits fresh. These highly nutritious Amazonian superfoods are rich in antioxidants and vitamins, and serve as a main source of income for farmers in Silva’s area. However, the lack of electricity to refrigerate the fruit makes it hard to sell their produce.Silva’s fruit-growing operation is located in the village of Boa Frente, in Novo Aripuanã municipality, one of Brazil’s most energy-poor regions, where there is only one diesel-powered electricity generator working for a few hours a day. Continue reading...

Thirty-six hours by boat from Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, Deodato Alves da Silva longs for enough electricity to keep his tucumã and cupuaçu fruits fresh. These highly nutritious Amazonian superfoods are rich in antioxidants and vitamins, and serve as a main source of income for farmers in Silva’s area. However, the lack of electricity to refrigerate the fruit makes it hard to sell their produce.Silva’s fruit-growing operation is located in the village of Boa Frente, in Novo Aripuanã municipality, one of Brazil’s most energy-poor regions, where there is only one diesel-powered electricity generator working for a few hours a day.The 17 families in the community pay for the diesel, but because of the high price, everyone agrees to use the generator only between 6pm and 10pm. This is also the only time they can communicate with the outside world – the region has no mobile phone connection, only satellite internet.“Power is supplied for just four hours a night. The motor is switched off and only switched back on the following night,” says Silva, 72, a rural health worker and fruit-grower who has lived in the area since he was born.“I would have a much higher income if we had power to preserve the cupuaçu pulp. Our community is a big producer of tucumã, but the lack of power prevents conservation.”More than 1.3 million Brazilians still live, like Silva, with little or no electricity. Even though it has one of the world’s cleanest power grids, the country has a vulnerability: its reliance on hydroelectric power, which causes fluctuations in power generation and blackouts in times of severe drought.Brazil has one of the cleanest energy grids in teh world, but is heavily reliant on hydropower, which can lead to blackouts in drought conditions. Photograph: Jeff BotegaYet Brazil is attracting the attention of big datacentre companies, which consume huge amounts of energy. According to the Brazilian Data Centre Association (ABDC), 46 new datacentres are either under construction or being planned across the country. There are already 60 centres in operation.By using cooling systems with excessive water use, these companies consume more than small citiesThe rush to build datacentres is part of the growing digitalisation of the Brazilian economy as large multinationals seek more data storage and processing for cloud platforms, apps, and critical private and government services.Brazil has become a hub to meet growing demand in Latin America for streaming, e-commerce and AI apps, as expanding regional server capacity is critical to minimising delays in transferring data.“If all the data was stored solely in the US, communication would be inefficient and delayed,” says João Xavier, director of institutional relations at ABDC.Rodrigo Pastl Pontes, monitoring manager at Brazil’s National Confederation of Industry, says the need to expand the number of datacentres is closely related to “Industry 4.0” – the integration of technologies to make manufacturing more intelligent, automated and interconnected.An impression of Scala Data Centers’ planned 700-hectare AI City in Rio Grande do Sul. ‘This is our response to the demand for artificial intelligence,’ the firm said. Illustration: Scala Data Centers“Industry 4.0 offers flexibility that meets customer requirements in real time, allowing the company to reorganise constantly,” says Pontes. “Secure datacentres are essential for this.”One study put Brazil’s Industry 4.0 market at $1.77bn (£1.40bn) in 2022 and expects it to reach $5.6bn by 2028.With an eye on local and global markets, as well as its largely renewable power grid, Amazon and Microsoft have announced new investments in Brazilian datacentres.Amazon plans to invest 10.1bn reais (£1.35bn) in expanding its datacentres and infrastructure over the next 10 years. The company claims to have established solar and windfarm projects with the capacity to match its energy consumption in Brazil – enough to supply 100,000 homes.Itaipu hydroelectric dam in Foz do Iguaçu. Though Brazil has vast hydropower potential, recent droughts have underlined its vulnerability to the climate crisis. Photograph: Bloomberg/GettyMicrosoft is planning to invest R$14.7bn in the country. With datacentres in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the company has signed a deal with the energy company AES Brasil to be supplied for 15 years from a Rio Grande do Norte windfarm.Campaigners and experts say the problem is that implementing new energy projects, even renewable ones, could harm local communities just as the country needs to adapt its power grid to the climate crisis.Vinícius Oliveira, a specialist at the Energy and Environment Institute, says: “The impact of datacentres depends on where they are installed and on the type of energy the Brazilian power grid will need to meet the load demanded.“We may have environmental impacts in soil, deforestation, building road access. Native flora will be eliminated. We may have real-estate speculation, with land becoming more expensive and families being displaced.” Oliveira also anticipates greater demand for water, as datacentres generally require vast amounts to cool servers.Osório windfarm in Rio Grande do Sul. Brazil has one of the world’s cleanest electricity grids but demand is rising so fast that small nuclear reactors are now being considered. Photograph: Alamy“By using cooling systems with excessive water use, these companies consume more than small cities,” he says, stressing that better infrastructure for distribution and power generation will also be required.“This level of investment may affect energy rates,” he adds. “In the end, the consumers bear the cost.”skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Global DispatchGet a different world view with a roundup of the best news, features and pictures, curated by our global development teamPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionIf they are going to build datacentres where people don’t even have access to power, the companies need to provide compensationAccording to last year’s National Energy Balance report, the industry consumes about 31% of Brazil’s energy, second only to transport. Projections suggest Brazil’s electricity demand will grow by more than 30% by 2050.Experts fear that datacentres’ high water consumption will raise pressure on the power grid, as hydroelectric plants supply about half of all power. Lower water levels in reservoirs raise the chances of blackouts and increase demand for pricier and more polluting thermal power plants, fired by oil, gas and coal.Incidents such as the 2001 water crisis, which caused rationing, and the severe 2014-15 drought, when reservoirs reached record lows, show how a lack of rainfall can threaten the national power supply.Itajá in Goiás during a blackout last year. Demand for electricity in Brazil is predicted to grow by more than 30% by 2050. Photograph: Vinicius Souza/AlamyYet the energy ministry remains optimistic. In a statement, it said: “The growth of the datacentre sector in Brazil shows the country’s capacity to become a technological hub in South America, driven by a robust and predominantly renewable power grid.”By 2026, global datacentre power demand is projected to reach up to 1,050 terawatt-hours – equivalent to about four times the UK’s annual electricity consumption. This has prompted greater interest in alternative energy sources such as small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), as seen in the plan by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, to use them in the US.According to Raul Lycurgo, president of the state-owned company Eletronuclear, nuclear power can meet Brazil’s needs. “Nuclear is the only [power source] that does not generate greenhouse gases,” he says.But the idea faces opposition due to high capital costs and concerns about how to manage radioactive waste. “Countries with no alternatives can afford to use a more expensive energy,” says Ricardo Lima, an energy consultant. “We have much cheaper alternatives than nuclear – we have solar, wind, hydroelectric.”Energy has been an issue as the climate crisis increasingly tests the Brazilian power grid. Roraima, in the Amazon region, the only state in the country not connected to the national grid, experienced blackouts last year due to severe drought and poor infrastructure.Ivone Medeiros, lights her way with a candle as she climbs the stairs after more than seventy hours without electricity following a storm that knocked down power cables, in São Paulo, in November 2023. Photograph: Carla Carniel/ReutersRio Grande do Sul faced dramatic floods, leaving millions of residents in the dark. In São Paulo, the country’s wealthiest city, a recent blackout caused by heavy rain affected more than 3 million people.Plans to expand the datacentre industry also contrast with the energy poverty affecting millions – a problem not limited to the Amazon. A study using the Multidimensional Energy Poverty Index indicated that 11% of Brazilian households lived in energy poverty in 2018 – a percentage rising to 16% in rural areas.Elaine Santos. ‘People lose food and medication,’ she says. ‘The shortages create tension’Even in São Paulo, the country’s largest metropolis, residents face increasingly frequent blackouts. Elaine Santos, a researcher in energy poverty at the University of São Paulo, faces the problem herself, as she lives in Santo André, a suburb of the city.“People lose food and their medication; the bakery closes,” she says of the power cuts. “The shortages create tension, as everyone knows they will have to cope with their losses alone in neighbourhoods where people live in extremely vulnerable conditions.”Santos believes the tech companies must look at the local effects caused by their growing share of the country’s power supply.“If they are going to build datacentres where people don’t even have access to power, the companies need to provide compensation,” she argues. “Since Brazil is being sold, the compensation must be robust.”

After groundbreaking bills on jobs and solar, Illinois tackles the grid

Since 2017, sweeping legislation in Illinois has sparked a solar-power boom and launched ambitious energy-equity and green-jobs programs. Now, for the third time in under a decade, state lawmakers, advocates, and industry groups have their sights set on ensuring that clean energy momentum. The focus this…

Since 2017, sweeping legislation in Illinois has sparked a solar-power boom and launched ambitious energy-equity and green-jobs programs. Now, for the third time in under a decade, state lawmakers, advocates, and industry groups have their sights set on ensuring that clean energy momentum. The focus this legislative session is the electric grid. Stakeholders worry the state’s clean energy progress will stagnate if it can’t expand and fortify its infrastructure for moving and storing electricity. Advocates are backing a wide-ranging bill known as the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act, or CRGA, which they describe as the successor to the 2017 Future Energy Jobs Act and the 2021 Climate and Equitable Jobs Act. Solar and energy-storage industries are backing another bill that includes even more ambitious goals for building out new transmission and energy storage. There’s widespread agreement that Illinois’ current grid is not ready for the state’s mandated transition to 100% clean energy by 2050, especially as overall electricity demand climbs thanks to the proliferation of data centers in Illinois. As in other states, Illinois’ long interconnection queues and lengthy transmission planning processes through the regional transmission organizations make it hard to connect renewable energy sources. CRGA, introduced Feb. 7, aims to make more efficient use of existing grid infrastructure through a transparent audit of the current system and the adoption of grid-enhancing technologies. It would facilitate new transmission buildout by making it easier for merchant transmission developers to get state permits and by allowing high-voltage transmission lines to be built in highway rights-of-way. It also calls for 3 gigawatts of new energy storage to be added to the grid. “Transmission is crucial to a reliable and affordable grid because it allows us to move clean energy from place to place and be more resilient in cases of extreme weather,” said James Gignac, Midwest policy director for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate and energy program. The industry-backed transmission and storage bill (HB 3758), introduced Feb. 7, calls for 15 GW of new energy storage, which the bill’s backers say would save consumers $2.4 billion over 20 years. The bill calls on the Illinois Power Agency, which procures energy for the state’s utilities, to also procure energy storage. Gignac said studies by advocacy groups indicate 3 GW of storage is sufficient for the near-term. Both industry and advocacy groups backed a ​“skinny bill” that passed in the legislature’s January lame-duck session, launching an analysis of energy storage needs by the Illinois Commerce Commission, due on May 1. Stakeholders generally agree that new energy legislation is especially crucial given the Trump administration’s rollbacks to clean energy incentives and mandates. “A lot of federal funding we just don’t know the future of, so the role of states and local governments is more important than ever now,” said Jen Walling, executive director of the Illinois Environmental Council. Study first Illinois does not do the type of comprehensive planning for energy use and transmission that electric utilities do in states with vertically integrated energy markets. In Illinois, separate companies generate and transmit electricity, with the idea that the open market will match supply with demand. But experts say centralized planning is necessary to ensure that clean energy can meet the state’s needs. “The market is not necessarily going to get us where we need to go on resource adequacy and reliability,” said John Delurey, Midwest deputy program director of the advocacy group Vote Solar. CRGA calls on the state to undertake a clean-resource planning process involving the commerce commission, state Environmental Protection Agency, and Illinois Power Agency, similar to what utilities in other states do with integrated resource plans. The bill also mandates public studies of the grid to determine where it is underutilized and how the latest technology could more efficiently move electrons around — increasing the grid’s capacity without building new wires. “A lot of incumbent transmission owners have confidence in their traditional approaches and tend to rely on those” instead of adopting new grid-enhancing technology, said Gignac. As an example, he pointed to software that can help grid operators reroute power through less congested pathways, a tool reminiscent of Google Maps for road traffic. “There’s potentially a financial disincentive for [companies to embrace] some of these technologies,” Gignac added, ​“because they can often be cheaper solutions” than building new transmission, which earns companies a guaranteed profit from ratepayers. Clean energy advocates say more transmission lines are needed, but they want a comprehensive study to know exactly where and how much.

How the British Broke Their Own Economy

With the best intentions, the United Kingdom engineered a housing and energy shortage.

What’s the matter with the United Kingdom? Great Britain is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, which ushered in an era of energy super-production and launched an epoch of productivity advancements that made many life essentials, such as clothes and food, more affordable. Today, the country suffers from the converse of these achievements: a profound energy shortage and a deep affordability crisis. In February, the Bank of England reported an ongoing productivity slump so mysterious that its own economists “cannot account fully” for it. Real wages have barely grown for 16 years. British politics seems stuck in a cycle of disappointment followed by dramatic promises of growth, followed by yet more disappointment.A new report, titled “Foundations,” captures the country’s economic malaise in detail. The U.K. desperately needs more houses, more energy, and more transportation infrastructure. “No system can be fixed by people who do not know why it is broken,” write the report’s authors, Sam Bowman, Samuel Hughes, and Ben Southwood. They argue that the source of the country’s woes as well as “the most important economic fact about modern Britain [is] that it is difficult to build almost anything, anywhere.” The nation is gripped by laws and customs that make essentials unacceptably scarce and drive up the cost of construction across the board.Housing is an especially alarming case in point. The homeownership rate for the typical British worker aged 25 to 34 declined by more than half from the 1990s to the 2010s. In that same time, average housing prices more than doubled, even after adjusting for inflation, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.[Read: How the U.K. became one of the poorest countries in Western Europe]The housing shortage traces back to the postwar period, when a frenzy of nationalization swept the country. The U.K. created the National Health Service, brought hundreds of coal mines under state control, and centralized many of the country’s railways and trucking and electricity providers. In 1947, the U.K. passed the Town and Country Planning Act, which forms the basis of modern housing policy. The TCPA effectively prohibited new development without special permission from the state; “green belts” were established to restrict sprawl into the countryside. Rates of private-home building never returned to their typical prewar levels. With some spikes and troughs, new homes built as a share of the total housing stock have generally declined over the past 60 years.The TCPA was considered reasonable and even wise at the time. Postwar Britain had been swept up by the theory that nationalization created economies of scale that gave citizens better outcomes than pure capitalism. “There was an idea that if we could rationalize the planning system … then we could build things in the right way—considered, and planned, and environmentally friendly,” Bowman told me.But the costs of nationalization became clear within a few decades. With more choke points for permitting, construction languished from the 1950s through the ’70s. Under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the Conservatives rolled back nationalization in several areas, such as electricity and gas production. But their efforts to loosen housing policy from the grip of government control was a tremendous failure, especially once it was revealed that Thatcher’s head of housing policy himself opposed new housing developments near his home.Housing is, as I’ve written, the quantum field of urban policy, touching every station of urban life. Broken housing policies have a ripple effect. In London, Bowman said, the most common options are subsidized flats for the low-income and luxury units for the rich, creating a dearth of middle-class housing. As a result, the city is bifurcated between the über-wealthy and the subsidized poor. “I think housing policy is a major driver of a lot of anti-foreigner, white-supremacist, anti-Black, anti-Muslim attitudes among young people who are frustrated that so-called these people get free houses while they have to live in a bedsit or move somewhere an hour outside the city and commute in,” Bowman said.[Read: The urban family exodus is a warning for progressives]Constrictive housing policy in Britain has also arguably prevented other great cities from being born. If the University of Cambridge’s breakthroughs in biotech had happened in the 19th century, Bowman said, the city of Cambridge might have bloomed to accommodate new companies and residents, the same way Glasgow grew by an order of magnitude around shipbuilding in the 1800s. Instead Cambridge remains a small city of fewer than 150,000 people, its potential stymied by rules all but prohibiting its growth.The story for transit and energy is similar: Rules and attitudes that make it difficult to build things in the world have made life worse for the British. “On a per-mile basis, Britain now faces some of the highest railway costs in the world,” Bowman, Hughes, and Southwood write. “This has led to some profoundly dissatisfying outcomes. Leeds is now the largest city in Europe without a metro system.” Despite Thatcher’s embrace of North Sea gas, and more recent attempts to loosen fracking regulations, Britain’s energy markets are still an omnishambles. Per capita electricity generation in the U.K. is now roughly one-third that of the United States, and energy use per unit of GDP is the lowest in the G7. By these measures, at least, Britain may be the most energy-starved nation in the developed world.Scarcity is a policy choice. This is as true in energy as it is in housing. In the 1960s, Britain was home to about half of the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors. Today, the U.K. has extraordinarily high nuclear-construction costs compared with Asia, and it’s behind much of Europe in the share of its electricity generated from nuclear power—not only France but also Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, and Romania.What happened to British nuclear power? After North Sea oil and gas production ramped up in the 1970s and ’80s, Britain redirected its energy production away from nuclear power. Even this shift has had its own complications. In the past few years, the U.K. has passed several measures to reduce shale-gas extraction, citing earthquake risks, environmental costs, and public opposition. As a result, gas production in the U.K. has declined 70 percent since 2000. Although the country’s renewable-energy market has grown, solar and wind power haven’t increased nearly enough to make up the gap.The comparison with France makes clear Britain’s policy error: In 2003, very large businesses in both countries paid about the same price for electricity. But by 2024, after decades of self-imposed scarcity and the supply shock of the war in Ukraine, electricity in the U.K. was more than twice as expensive as in France.There is an inconvenient subcurrent to the U.K.’s scarcity crisis—and ours. Sixty years ago, the environmentalist revolution transformed the way governments, courts, and individuals thought about their relationship to the natural world. This revolution was not only successful but, in many ways, enormously beneficial. In the U.S., the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act brought about exactly that. But over time, American environmental rules, such as those in the National Environmental Policy Act and the California Environmental Quality Act, have been used to stop new housing developments and, ironically, even clean-energy additions. Similarly, in the U.K., any individual who sues to stop a new project on environmental grounds—say, to oppose a new road or airport—generally has their legal damages capped at £5,000, if they lose in court. “Once you’ve done that,” Bowman said, “you’ve created a one-way system, where people have little incentive to not bring spurious cases to challenge any new development.” Last year, Britain’s high-speed-rail initiative was compelled to spend an additional £100 million on a shield to protect bats in the woods of Buckinghamshire. Finding private investment is generally difficult for infrastructure developers when the path to completion is strewn with nine-figure surprise fees.Some of Britain’s problems echo across the European continent, including slow growth and high energy prices. More than a decade ago, Germany began to phase out nuclear power while failing to ramp up other energy production. The result has been catastrophic for citizens and for the ruling government. In the first half of 2024, Germans paid the highest electricity prices in the European Union. This month, Social Democrats were punished at the polls with their worst defeat since World War II. Bowman offered a droll summary: “Europe has an energy problem; the Anglosphere has a housing problem; Britain has both.”These problems are obvious to many British politicians. Leaders in the Conservative and Labour Parties often comment on expensive energy and scarce housing. But their goals haven’t been translated into priorities and policies that lead to growth. “Few leaders in the U.K. have thought seriously about the scale of change that we need,” Bowman said. Comprehensive reform is necessary to unlock private investment in housing and energy—including overhauling the TCPA, reducing incentives for anti-growth lawsuits, and directly encouraging nuclear and gas production to build a bridge to a low-carbon-energy economy.Effective 21st-century governance requires something more than the ability to win elections by decrying the establishment and bemoaning sclerotic institutions. Progress requires a positive vision of the future, a deep understanding of the bottlenecks in the way of building that future, and a plan to add or remove policies to overcome those blockages. In a U.S. context, that might mean making it easier to build advanced semiconductors, or removing bureaucratic kludge for scientists while adding staff at the FDA to accelerate drug approval.[Read: A simple plan to solve all of America’s problems]In the U.K., the bottlenecks are all too clear: Decades-old rules make it too easy for the state to block housing developments or for frivolous lawsuits to freeze out energy and infrastructure investment. In their conclusion, Bowman and his co-authors strike a similar tone. “Britain can enjoy such a renewal once more,” they write. “To do so, it need simply remove the barriers that stop the private sector from doing what it already wants to do.”

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