Western Michigan University has gotten a significant funding boost, with a grant of more than $2 million from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The grant is earmarked for research on carbon capture and storage technology, as part of the "Clean MI" project. The initiative brings together students and faculty with other institutions to develop solutions for capturing CO2 emissions and safely storing them underground.

Mert Atilhan, professor of chemical and paper engineering at the university, said while keeping the study small-scale, there are two paths for CO2.

"We can just try to convert it to something else, which is pretty useful fuels," Atilhan outlined. "Number two, we can just stabilize it, make sure it's not going to go back to the atmosphere, and stay safe somewhere, where we are going to store it."

The Department of Energy has also chosen four Carbon Capture Large-Scale Pilot Projects located in power plants and industrial facilities in Kentucky, Mississippi, Texas and Wyoming. They will focus on point-source carbon capture, utilization and storage. The projects align with the Biden administration's target of a net-zero economy by 2050.

Kelly Cummins, acting director of the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations at the U.S. Department of Energy, said while carbon capture has been studied successfully by many scientists, storage has its own challenges, like ensuring underground drinking water is not compromised.

"CCS projects in the United States must be highly selective about where they store carbon dioxide, running extensive geologic assessments and modeling exercises before anything goes into the ground," Cummins asserted.

Autumn Haagsma, director of the Michigan Geological Repository for Research and Education, said the grant will fund research to understand how much underground space there is in rocks and how the space is connected. The space makes up a reservoir for the CO2.

"We're going to evaluate potential leakage pathways," Haagsma pointed out. "Then, we're also going to evaluate the integration with communities and societal considerations, and develop an easy-to-use publicly available tool, where we have all of this data and information available at the end of the project."

The Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership has completed injection of 2 million metric tons of CO2 into the Michigan Basin Project, a large-scale field site in the Lower Peninsula. Geologic formations in eastern Ohio are also part of a long-term effort to assess the CO2 storage potential in and near the Ohio River Valley.


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Missouri homes and businesses have installed enough solar energy to power 68,000 homes each year.

A new report released by the Solar Energy Industries Association showed more than half of all solar installations in the United States have come online since 2020, with more than 25% installed since the Inflation Reduction Act passed almost two years ago.

Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the association, noted for Missouri farmers and rural residents, the most significant expense is power, needed for pumps, heating grow houses and running equipment.

"They're not paying for the sunshine," Ross Hopper pointed out. "And so, when they install solar to run their pump, or when they install solar on top of a chicken house, it saves an incredible amount of money because they are now using the sun to energize their system."

The report noted in 2012, only California had more than 25,000 solar systems installed. Today, 23 states and territories can make that claim, and 11 have surpassed 100,000 solar installations. More than 38,000 are in Missouri, which ranks 34th in the nation.

Ross Hopper emphasized not only is the growth in solar energy happening quickly, but it is sustained and she predicts it will continue to be.

"It took 40 years for the United States to install a million solar projects, and then it only took eight years to get to 5 million, and that is indicative of the rapid growth," Ross Hopper stressed. "We think it'll only take six years to get to 10 million."

She added the solar industry supports the careers of about 2,900 Missourians and has invested $1.6 billion in the state's economy.


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A new rule from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission could improve Virginia's electric grid transmission capacity.

It requires utilities and grid operators to plan 20 years ahead to accommodate expected changes in energy production. The rule is designed to help Virginia meet the high energy demands of the growing data center market and prevent service disruptions in extreme weather.

Nick Guidi, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the rule will help the state reach its climate goals.

"For the first time in a lot of these states, the transmission planning process will have to explicitly take into account state goals and corporate clean energy goals," Guidi explained. "That hasn't really happened before."

He added the current process holds back state activity. The rule faced sharp criticism from FERC Commissioner Mark Christie. He characterizes it as a way to enact policies never passed by Congress and calls it "a blatant violation of the major questions doctrine." Guidi thinks it could lead to legal challenges.

Another new rule makes transmission siting easier.

Jon Gordon, policy director for the group Advanced Energy United, feels the FERC orders create advancements in transmission infrastructure development, calling it an arduous but necessary process to improve transmission capacity.

"I think as a country we've sort of gotten behind the 8-ball on upgrading our transmission infrastructure," Gordon asserted. "Now we've reached a point where we need to move quickly on transmission upgrades to ensure reliability."

He added more comprehensive long-term transmission planning is needed to ensure the lowest-cost transmission is built for reliability.

Virginia passed legislation making transmission easier. It comes as the state's grid operator, PJM Interconnection, which ranked poorly in a report due to a backlog of interconnection projects. The law means an additional 40% capacity for the current grid and saves the state congestion costs.


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A federal agency today is expected to announce reforms related to the power grid, which is stretched thin as the nation transitions away from fossil fuels.

It's a complex issue clean-energy advocates in the Midwest know far too well.

There's a push to expand transmission lines to accommodate the tidal wave of wind, solar, and other renewable projects.

Rules being unveiled could address the thorny issue of cost-sharing among states for the build-out.

More broadly, the Midwest Renewable Energy Association's Executive Director Nick Hylla said market dynamics are tricky - noting competing interests among utilities and developers in expanding the grid.

He said another issue is protecting wildlife.

"The history of management of transmission lines isn't some solid track record from an environmental-conservation point of view," said Hylla. "We could be doing a much better job in transmission corridors."

In these cases, decarbonization groups and conservationists are at odds with each other. Notably, a recent court ruling is allowing a transmission line project involving Wisconsin to advance.

Hylla said "non-wire alternatives" are emerging to help the movement without turning to the grid.

In Minnesota, Xcel Energy has been testing a program that incentivizes customers to curb energy use during peak demand.

Similar programs are taking shape elsewhere, but industry analysts say these initiatives are navigating their own barriers as they try to get off the ground.

Still, Hylla said an example of this approach along the East Coast is turning some heads.

"It's a BYOB program - Bring Your Own Battery program - that now, over 24,000 customers in three eastern states have subscribed to," said Hylla. "It's basically a subsidy to put a battery in your house and just to make sure that you're not using electricity in peak times. "

As governments, utilities and other entities face pressure to meet climate goals amid soaring demand for electricity, Hylla suggested these solutions will have to work hand-in-hand.

His group is focused on efficiencies, such as rooftop solar, to reshape the distribution of energy.

But he said large-scale renewable projects play a role, too, including the economic benefits for communities in which they're located.




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