Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information or to customize your cookie preferences.

MIT conductive concrete consortium cements five-year research agreement with Japanese industry

News Feed
Friday, May 3, 2024

The MIT Electron-conductive Cement-based Materials Hub (EC^3 Hub), an outgrowth of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub), has been established by a five-year sponsored research agreement with the Aizawa Concrete Corp. In particular, the EC^3 Hub will investigate the infrastructure applications of multifunctional concrete — concrete having capacities beyond serving as a structural element, such as functioning as a “battery” for renewable energy. Enabled by the MIT Industrial Liaison Program, the newly formed EC^3 Hub represents a large industry-academia collaboration between the MIT CSHub, researchers across MIT, and a Japanese industry consortium led by Aizawa Concrete, a leader in the more sustainable development of concrete structures, which is funding the effort.  Under this agreement, the EC^3 Hub will focus on two key areas of research: developing self-heating pavement systems and energy storage solutions for sustainable infrastructure systems. “It is an honor for Aizawa Concrete to be associated with the scaling up of this transformational technology from MIT labs to the industrial scale,” says Aizawa Concrete CEO Yoshihiro Aizawa. “This is a project we believe will have a fundamental impact not only on the decarbonization of the industry, but on our societies at large.” By running current through carbon black-doped concrete pavements, the EC^3 Hub’s technology could allow cities and municipalities to de-ice road and sidewalk surfaces at scale, improving safety for drivers and pedestrians in icy conditions. The potential for concrete to store energy from renewable sources — a topic widely covered by news outlets — could allow concrete to serve as a “battery” for technologies such as solar, wind, and tidal power generation, which cannot produce a consistent amount of energy (for example, when a cloudy day inhibits a solar panel’s output). Due to the scarcity of the ingredients used in many batteries, such as lithium-ion cells, this technology offers an alternative for renewable energy storage at scale. Regarding the collaborative research agreement, the EC^3 Hub’s founding faculty director, Professor Admir Masic, notes that “this is the type of investment in our new conductive cement-based materials technology which will propel it from our lab bench onto the infrastructure market.” Masic is also an associate professor in the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, as well as a principal investigator within the MIT CSHub, among other appointments.For the April 11 signing of the agreement, Masic was joined in Fukushima, Japan, by MIT colleagues Franz-Josef Ulm, a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and faculty director of the MIT CSHub; Yang Shao-Horn, the JR East Professor of Engineering, professor of mechanical engineering, and professor of materials science and engineering; and Jewan Bae, director of MIT Corporate Relations. Ulm and Masic will co-direct the EC^3 Hub.The EC^3 Hub envisions a close collaboration between MIT engineers and scientists as well as the Aizawa-led Japanese industry consortium for the development of breakthrough innovations for multifunctional infrastructure systems. In addition to higher-strength materials, these systems may be implemented for a variety of novel functions such as roads capable of charging electric vehicles as they drive along them.Members of the EC^3 Hub will engage with the active stakeholder community within the MIT CSHub to accelerate the industry’s transition to carbon neutrality. The EC^3 Hub will also open opportunities for the MIT community to engage with the large infrastructure industry sector for decarbonization through innovation. 

The MIT EC^3 Hub, an outgrowth of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, will develop multifunctional concrete applications for infrastructure.

The MIT Electron-conductive Cement-based Materials Hub (EC^3 Hub), an outgrowth of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub), has been established by a five-year sponsored research agreement with the Aizawa Concrete Corp. In particular, the EC^3 Hub will investigate the infrastructure applications of multifunctional concrete — concrete having capacities beyond serving as a structural element, such as functioning as a “battery” for renewable energy

Enabled by the MIT Industrial Liaison Program, the newly formed EC^3 Hub represents a large industry-academia collaboration between the MIT CSHub, researchers across MIT, and a Japanese industry consortium led by Aizawa Concrete, a leader in the more sustainable development of concrete structures, which is funding the effort.  

Under this agreement, the EC^3 Hub will focus on two key areas of research: developing self-heating pavement systems and energy storage solutions for sustainable infrastructure systems. “It is an honor for Aizawa Concrete to be associated with the scaling up of this transformational technology from MIT labs to the industrial scale,” says Aizawa Concrete CEO Yoshihiro Aizawa. “This is a project we believe will have a fundamental impact not only on the decarbonization of the industry, but on our societies at large.” 

By running current through carbon black-doped concrete pavements, the EC^3 Hub’s technology could allow cities and municipalities to de-ice road and sidewalk surfaces at scale, improving safety for drivers and pedestrians in icy conditions. The potential for concrete to store energy from renewable sources — a topic widely covered by news outlets — could allow concrete to serve as a “battery” for technologies such as solar, wind, and tidal power generation, which cannot produce a consistent amount of energy (for example, when a cloudy day inhibits a solar panel’s output). Due to the scarcity of the ingredients used in many batteries, such as lithium-ion cells, this technology offers an alternative for renewable energy storage at scale. 

Regarding the collaborative research agreement, the EC^3 Hub’s founding faculty director, Professor Admir Masic, notes that “this is the type of investment in our new conductive cement-based materials technology which will propel it from our lab bench onto the infrastructure market.” Masic is also an associate professor in the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, as well as a principal investigator within the MIT CSHub, among other appointments.

For the April 11 signing of the agreement, Masic was joined in Fukushima, Japan, by MIT colleagues Franz-Josef Ulm, a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and faculty director of the MIT CSHub; Yang Shao-Horn, the JR East Professor of Engineering, professor of mechanical engineering, and professor of materials science and engineering; and Jewan Bae, director of MIT Corporate Relations. Ulm and Masic will co-direct the EC^3 Hub.

The EC^3 Hub envisions a close collaboration between MIT engineers and scientists as well as the Aizawa-led Japanese industry consortium for the development of breakthrough innovations for multifunctional infrastructure systems. In addition to higher-strength materials, these systems may be implemented for a variety of novel functions such as roads capable of charging electric vehicles as they drive along them.

Members of the EC^3 Hub will engage with the active stakeholder community within the MIT CSHub to accelerate the industry’s transition to carbon neutrality. The EC^3 Hub will also open opportunities for the MIT community to engage with the large infrastructure industry sector for decarbonization through innovation. 

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

‘Cloud-milking’: the zero-energy technique keeping young trees alive

The project that began in the Canary Islands mimics the way leaves capture water droplets from fog in order to produce waterThey call it cloud milking, a zero-energy technique to extract water from fog that is revolutionising the recovery of forests devastated by fire and drought.The idea began as a pilot project in the Canary Islands. The plan was to exploit the moisture-laden “sea of clouds” that hangs over the region in order to aid reforestation, and has since been extended to several other countries to produce drinking water, and to irrigate crops. Continue reading...

They call it cloud milking, a zero-energy technique to extract water from fog that is revolutionising the recovery of forests devastated by fire and drought.The idea began as a pilot project in the Canary Islands. The plan was to exploit the moisture-laden “sea of clouds” that hangs over the region in order to aid reforestation, and has since been extended to several other countries to produce drinking water, and to irrigate crops.“In recent year the Canaries have undergone a severe process of desertification and we’ve lost a lot of forest through agriculture. And then in 2007 and 2009, as a result of climate change, there were major fires in forested areas that are normally wet,” said Gustavo Viera, the technical director of the publicly-funded project in the Canaries.Viera said that after the devastating fires they sought ways to deliver water to remote, mountainous areas without creating infrastructure, or using fossil fuels to extract ground water from deep wells.The project, named Life Nieblas (niebla is the Spanish word for fog) began, backed by the EU, intended to mimic the way that the leaves of the local species of laurel trees capture water droplets from fog, by using sheets of plastic mesh erected in the path of the wind. As the wind blows fog through the mesh, water droplets collect and fall into the containers below, which is used to irrigate new saplings until they have sufficient leaves to capture the water themselves.However, the wind, though vital to the original structure, proved a problem as it destroys all but the smallest structures.“We needed to solve the problem of the fragility of the netting while minimising the environmental impact,” Viera said. “We developed a system that imitates pine needles, which are very good for capturing water while also letting the air pass through, and it’s a system that can easily be replicated in other locations and that’s also easy to transport to where it’s needed.”In the new models, water condenses on the fine metal fronds of the structures, replicating the way conifers collect water from the atmosphere.The water is discharged automatically without any energy supply or CO₂ emissions and no machinery is used to transport it from one place to another. No electrical systems are used for irrigation and the water footprint is also reduced as no aquifers or rivers are exploited. The only power needed is for building the collectors and getting them in place.A slightly different technique is also being applied to reforest an abandoned quarry in Garraf, a rugged area south of Barcelona.“Here we are using individual water collectors of the type used to keep herbivores from eating young plants,” said Vicenç Carabassa, the project’s head scientist, who works for the Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF), a public research institute at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.“They collect rain and the heavy dew that falls on summer mornings and also provide shade.”Carabassa pointed out that not every type of fog is suitable because some don’t have a high enough moisture content. The ideal fog is orographic or mountain fog, which exists in many Mediterranean regions and also in northern Portugal.“The Canaries are the perfect laboratory to develop these techniques,” said Carabassa. “But there are other areas where the conditions are optimal and where there is a tradition of water capture from fog, such as Chile and Morocco.”The method is now being used to supply drinking water and water for irrigation to the Chilean coastal village of Chungungo in Coquimbo province, while in the Cape Verde archipelago Life Nieblas collectors, combined with locally-made wooden structures, are providing 1,000 litres of water per day, which is used to irrigate crops and water livestock.All the information necessary to create fog collectors is freely available to the public on the project’s website, and Viera said they’ve had many enquiries.The benefits are palpable. In the Barranco del Andén ravine in Gran Canaria, 35.8 hectares (96 acres) have been reforested and 15,000 trees of various laurel species have been planted, with a survival rate of 86%, double the figure of traditional reforestation.“We have recovered the forest’s potential to capture atmospheric carbon and estimate that we have captured around 175 tonnes of CO₂ per year,” Viera said.The Life Nieblas project saves not only in fossil energy consumption and CO₂, but it is also cheaper and uses less water than traditional reforestation systems.“We’re living with drought throughout the Mediterranean and also in the Canaries and now every drop of water counts,” said Carabassa, adding that we have to learn to live with much less water.“This technique is never going to be an alternative to a desalination plant but in remote areas where water supply is difficult and expensive this can be a real alternative.”

Oil bigwigs open wallets for Trump after billion-dollar request 

Oil and gas tycoons made significant contributions to the Trump campaign after the former president asked the industry for $1 billion to support his reelection bid — and reportedly said it would be a “deal” for them to do so. A source told The Hill earlier this year that the $1 billion request at an...

Oil and gas tycoons made significant contributions to the Trump campaign after the former president asked the industry for $1 billion to support his reelection bid — and reportedly said it would be a “deal” for them to do so. A source told The Hill earlier this year that the $1 billion request at an April fundraiser was not framed as any sort of quid pro quo. Nevertheless, Democrats have described the incident as corruption and said they would investigate it, and this was the first election where several oil industry donors opened their pockets for Trump. Two executives who reportedly attended Trump oil industry fundraisers this spring later made significant contributions to Trump-aligned political committees — something they hadn’t done in previous presidential cycles. Cheniere Energy CEO Jack Fusco donated $250,000 to the joint fundraising Trump 47 Committee in June, according to records from the FEC. The committee then distributed $6,600 to the Trump campaign and $243,400 to the Republican National Committee (RNC). As a joint fundraising committee, the Trump 47 Committee allocates funds to the Trump campaign and the RNC and, once the contribution limits are maxed out, to other participating political committees. Fusco attended a dinner where Trump told energy executives that they should raise $1 billion to support his return to the presidency and that doing so would be a “deal” because of the money they would save on taxes and regulations, according to The Washington Post. The Post reported that other attendees included executives from companies including Occidental Petroleum, though it did not name them. In July, Occidental President and CEO Vicki Hollub also appears to have donated $41,300 to the RNC through the Trump 47 Committee, according to the contribution memo, and another $41,300 to the RNC on the same day. Campaign finance records show she gave $6,600 to the Trump campaign and $5,000 to Save America, Trump's leadership PAC, through Trump 47. The FEC’s website lists “retired” as the employer of the Vicki Hollub who made the $41,300 donations, but she shares the middle initial and mailing address of the Vicki Hollub who leads Occidental, according to other FEC receipts. Some of the other donations from Vicki Hollub do not list an employer at all, but still list the same mailing address. Separately, The Post reported that at a different fundraiser in May, Trump promised oil and gas companies that he would reduce Federal Trade Commission (FTC) scrutiny of their mergers and acquisitions. Trump specifically promised Occidental better treatment after Hollub complained that the agency is delaying Occidental’s acquisition of oil and gas producer CrownRock and probed her phone, according to The Post.  A spokesperson for Occidental did not respond to The Hill’s requests for comment and clarification. A Cheniere Energy spokesperson declined to comment. The Guardian and The Post reported that Hollub, alongside Energy Transfer Partners's Kelcy Warren and Continental Resources’s Harold Hamm co-hosted the May fundraiser for Trump. Hamm, a major Trump donor, also reportedly organized the April fundraiser. While Hamm supported former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley earlier this election cycle, he had backed Trump in 2020 and 2016. Hamm gave a total of $320,000 to the Trump Victory PAC, the former president’s joint fundraising PAC, in 2020 and a total of $449,400 in 2016. In late March, Hamm donated $614,000 to the Trump 47 Committee. He also gave $200,000 to the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. in November 2023, less than two months after he contributed $100,000 to the pro-Haley SFA Fund. Spokespeople for Continental did not respond to requests for comment from The Hill. Bryan Sheffield, who founded the oil and gas-focused private equity group Formentera Partners, told The Hill that Hamm had called him “and talked me into joining his efforts on helping [T]rump.” “He is a good salesman, [because I] was still team Haley,” wrote Sheffield, who said he did not attend the April or May fundraisers. Sheffield had contributed $6,600 to Haley’s campaign and loaded a total of $320,000 into the pro-Haley super PAC, SFA Fund, according to FEC records. Haley dropped out of the race in March 2024. Sheffield gave $844,600 to the Trump 47 Committee in May, one of the biggest donations the joint fundraising committee has reported receiving so far this election cycle. Of that topline total, $6,600 went to the Trump campaign, $413,000 to the RNC and $5,000 to Trump’s Save America leadership PAC. While Sheffield has contributed to Republican candidates and committees since 2012, this is his first time financially backing Trump, according to FEC records. He told The Hill while he is "generally a [R]epublican," Sheffield also voted for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D) in 2016 and supports Austin Mayor Kirk Watson (D) "It seems I'm a confused moderate at times," Sheffield wrote, "probably like most [A]merican voters." Just over two weeks before the donation date listed on the FEC website, his father, former Pioneer CEO Scott Sheffield, had his own run-in with the FTC as part of the company's proposed merger with Exxon. When the FTC cleared a merger between Exxon and Pioneer in early May, they barred the elder Sheffield from the board to prevent "collusive activity,” alleging he had colluded with OPEC and OPEC+ to keep oil prices high. The younger Sheffield said that while the donation “timing is strange” amid the Pioneer deal, he ultimately wrote the Trump 47 check because the “industry is under attack from a political party, even though our resources lift poverty.” “[It's] frowned upon, on using agencies as political weapons,” he added. Other energy executives who reportedly attended April or May Trump fundraisers have also made significant contributions to the Trump campaign and groups supporting him. Warren, executive chairman of Energy Transfer Partners — one of the owners of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline — donated a whopping $5 million to pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. in late May. Warren also gave $10 million to the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action in 2020. Another Energy Transfer Partners executive, Ray Davis, who also co-owns the Texas Rangers baseball team, gave $407,300 to the joint fundraising committee in June. Of that total, $395,100 went to the RNC, $6,600 went to the Trump campaign and $5,000 went to Save America.  Reports did not indicate that Davis attended the dinner, and spokespeople for Energy Transfer did not respond to questions from The Hill.  Davis did not appear to make similar contributions in 2020. "Soft money" contributions from individuals and PACs affiliated with the oil and gas industry have skyrocketed during the 2024 election cycle. These donors have given at least $147.7 million to party committees and outside groups, according an analysis from OpenSecrets of reports filed with the FEC as of Oct. 17. In line with historical trends, the vast majority of that total — $134 million — has gone toward groups supporting conservatives. While OpenSecrets’ 2024 totals do not yet include the latest monthly and pre-general contribution reports, industry affiliates have contributed more than twice as much soft money as they did during the entire 2020 election cycle, when they gave a total of $65.9 million. The Trump campaign has also been the biggest recipient of "hard money" donations from individuals and PACs affiliated with the oil and gas industry. According to OpenSecrets' analysis of FEC reports through Oct. 17, Trump has received around $1.7 million in “hard money” contributions from these industry donors, while the Harris campaign has received $938,648. “Kamala Harris is controlled by environmental extremists who are trying to implement the most radical energy agenda in history and force Americans to purchase electric vehicles they can’t afford,” said Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary. Leavitt did not directly address questions from The Hill about donations from executives who attended Trump’s fundraisers.

3 Questions: Bridging anthropology and engineering for clean energy in Mongolia

Anthropologists Manduhai Buyandelger and Lauren Bonilla discuss the humanistic perspective they bring to a project that is yielding promising results.

In 2021, Michael Short, an associate professor of nuclear science and engineering, approached professor of anthropology Manduhai Buyandelger with an unusual pitch: collaborating on a project to prototype a molten salt heat bank in Mongolia, Buyandelger’s country of origin and place of her scholarship. It was also an invitation to forge a novel partnership between two disciplines that rarely overlap. Developed in collaboration with the National University of Mongolia (NUM), the device was built to provide heat for people in colder climates, and in places where clean energy is a challenge. Buyandelger and Short teamed up to launch Anthro-Engineering Decarbonization at the Million-Person Scale, an initiative intended to advance the heat bank idea in Mongolia, and ultimately demonstrate its potential as a scalable clean heat source in comparably challenging sites around the world. This project received funding from the inaugural MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium Seed Awards program. In order to fund various components of the project, especially student involvement and additional staff, the project also received support from the MIT Global Seed Fund, New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET), Experiential Learning Office, Vice Provost for International Activities, and d’Arbeloff Fund for Excellence in Education.As part of this initiative, the partners developed a special topic course in anthropology to teach MIT undergraduates about Mongolia’s unique energy and climate challenges, as well as the historical, social, and economic context in which the heat bank would ideally find a place. The class 21A.S01 (Anthro-Engineering: Decarbonization at the Million-Person Scale) prepares MIT students for a January Independent Activities Period (IAP) trip to the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar, where they embed with Mongolian families, conduct research, and collaborate with their peers. Mongolian students also engaged in the project. Anthropology research scientist and lecturer Lauren Bonilla, who has spent the past two decades working in Mongolia, joined to co-teach the class and lead the IAP trips to Mongolia. With the project now in its third year and yielding some promising solutions on the ground, Buyandelger and Bonilla reflect on the challenges for anthropologists of advancing a clean energy technology in a developing nation with a unique history, politics, and culture. Q: Your roles in the molten salt heat bank project mark departures from your typical academic routine. How did you first approach this venture?Buyandelger: As an anthropologist of contemporary religion, politics, and gender in Mongolia, I have had little contact with the hard sciences or building or prototyping technology. What I do best is listening to people and working with narratives. When I first learned about this device for off-the-grid heating, a host of issues came straight to mind right away that are based on socioeconomic and cultural context of the place. The salt brick, which is encased in steel, must be heated to 400 degrees Celsius in a central facility, then driven to people’s homes. Transportation is difficult in Ulaanbaatar, and I worried about road safety when driving the salt brick to gers [traditional Mongolian homes] where many residents live. The device seemed a bit utopian to me, but I realized that this was an amazing educational opportunity: We could use the heat bank as part of an ethnographic project, so students could learn about the everyday lives of people — crucially, in the dead of winter — and how they might respond to this new energy technology in the neighborhoods of Ulaanbaatar.Bonilla: When I first went to Mongolia in the early 2000s as an undergraduate student, the impacts of climate change were already being felt. There had been a massive migration to the capital after a series of terrible weather events that devastated the rural economy. Coal mining had emerged as a vital part of the economy, and I was interested in how people regarded this industry that both provided jobs and damaged the air they breathed. I am trained as a human geographer, which involves seeing how things happening in a local place correspond to things happening at a global scale. Thinking about climate or sustainability from this perspective means making linkages between social life and environmental life. In Mongolia, people associated coal with national progress. Based on historical experience, they had low expectations for interventions brought by outsiders to improve their lives. So my first take on the molten salt project was that this was no silver bullet solution. At the same time, I wanted to see how we could make this a great project-based learning experience for students, getting them to think about the kind of research necessary to see if some version of the molten salt would work.Q: After two years, what lessons have you and the students drawn from both the class and the Ulaanbaatar field trips?Buyandelger: We wanted to make sure MIT students would not go to Mongolia and act like consultants. We taught them anthropological methods so they could understand the experiences of real people and think about how to bring people and new technologies together. The students, from engineering and anthropological and social science backgrounds, became critical thinkers who could analyze how people live in ger districts. When they stay with families in Ulaanbaatar in January, they not only experience the cold and the pollution, but they observe what people do for work, how parents care for their children, how they cook, sleep, and get from one place to another. This enables them to better imagine and test out how these people might utilize the molten salt heat bank in their homes.Bonilla: In class, students learn that interventions like this often fail because the implementation process doesn’t work, or the technology doesn’t meet people’s real needs. This is where anthropology is so important, because it opens up the wider landscape in which you’re intervening. We had really difficult conversations about the professional socialization of engineers and social scientists. Engineers love to work within boxes, but don’t necessarily appreciate the context in which their invention will serve.As a group, we discussed the provocative notion that engineers construct and anthropologists deconstruct. This makes it seem as if engineers are creators, and anthropologists are brought in as add-ons to consult and critique engineers’ creations. Our group conversation concluded that a project such as ours benefits from an iterative back-and-forth between the techno-scientific and humanistic disciplines.Q: So where does the molten salt brick project stand?Bonilla: Our research in Mongolia helped us produce a prototype that can work: Our partners at NUM are developing a hybrid stove that incorporates the molten salt brick. Supervised by instructor Nathan Melenbrink of MIT’s NEET program, our engineering students have been involved in this prototyping as well.The concept is for a family to heat it up using a coal fire once a day and it warms their home overnight. Based on our anthropological research, we believe that this stove would work better than the device as originally conceived. It won’t eliminate coal use in residences, but it will reduce emissions enough to have a meaningful impact on ger districts in Ulaanbaatar. The challenge now is getting funding to NUM so they can test different salt combinations and stove models and employ local blacksmiths to work on the design.This integrated stove/heat bank will not be the ultimate solution to the heating and pollution crisis in Mongolia. But it will be something that can inspire even more ideas. We feel with this project we are planting all kinds of seeds that will germinate in ways we cannot anticipate. It has sparked new relationships between MIT and Mongolian students, and catalyzed engineers to integrate a more humanistic, anthropological perspective in their work.Buyandelger: Our work illustrates the importance of anthropology in responding to the unpredictable and diverse impacts of climate change. Without our ethnographic research — based on participant observation and interviews, led by Dr. Bonilla, — it would have been impossible to see how the prototyping and modifications could be done, and where the molten salt brick could work and what shape it needed to take. This project demonstrates how indispensable anthropology is in moving engineering out of labs and companies and directly into communities.Bonilla: This is where the real solutions for climate change are going to come from. Even though we need solutions quickly, it will also take time for new technologies like molten salt bricks to take root and grow. We don’t know where the outcomes of these experiments will take us. But there’s so much that’s emerging from this project that I feel very hopeful about.

The Department of Energy promised this tribal nation a $32 million solar grant. It’s nearly impossible to access.

Washington’s Yakama Nation received both the grant and a $100 million federal loan. Held up by a series of bureaucratic hurdles, the funding could expire before the government lets the tribal nation touch a dime.

The Department of Energy gave the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation what seemed like very good news earlier this year: It had won a $32 million grant for a novel solar energy project in Washington state. Built over a series of old irrigation canals, the proposed solar panels would generate electricity for tribal members without removing farm acreage from cultivation. The location would preserve the kinds of culturally sensitive land that have prompted concerns about other renewables projects. Months after announcing the grant, the same department is making it nearly impossible for the tribal nation to access the money. “It is because literally the feds cannot get out of their own way,” said Ray Wiseman, general manager of Yakama Power, the tribally owned utility. The bureaucratic whiplash stems from the fact that while one part of the Energy Department hands out money for clean energy projects, another part decides which projects get access to the Northwest electrical grid. The Bonneville Power Administration’s process for approving connections comes with such exorbitant costs and is mired in such long delays that the federal grant could well expire before the tribe can touch a dime. It’s a dilemma that persists despite the Biden administration’s explicit promise last year to help tribes create new sources of renewable power affordably and quickly. Bonneville and the Energy Department blame the holdup on a glut of renewable energy proposals that are creating a need for massive transmission upgrades across the country. In a joint statement on behalf of Bonneville and its parent agency, Energy Department spokesperson Chris Ford said the government is required to put all energy proposals through the same process with the same costs. Read Next Why aren’t tribal nations installing more green energy? Blame ‘white tape.’ Taylar Dawn Stagner But Ford added that federal agencies are “exploring different options within the law to both speed the process and reduce the costs the Yakama Nation would have to pay.” The White House Council on Environmental Quality, which brokered the agreement pledging to help tribes build renewables, said in a statement the administration is coordinating with tribes and others in “taking action to deliver a clean, reliable electric grid and make federal permitting of new transmission lines more efficient.” But council spokesperson Justin Weiss didn’t answer questions from Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica about why the Yakama project was stalled and what specific steps the White House has taken to help speed tribal energy connections. Renewable energy supporters say the Yakama solar case shows that if the White House can’t keep the federal bureaucracy from undermining its own goals, then it’s making promises it can’t keep. Nancy Hirsh, who’s worked since the 1990s for a coalition that advocates for clean power in the Northwest, said the situation is exactly what she feared would happen after the tribal agreement was signed. “This is just the thing that we need to fix,” Hirsh said, “the left hand not connected with the right hand.” An unprecedented promise The Yakama reservation in Central Washington bears the scars of the federal government’s energy policies. Transmission lines stretching across tribal properties were built a century ago without permission. The country’s largest nuclear waste cleanup site, Hanford, has poisoned parts of the tribe’s ancestral land under the Department of Energy’s watch. Families on the reservation were displaced from their homes along the river to make way for massive reservoirs and hydroelectric dams. Those dams nearly wiped out runs of wild salmon that are vital to Indigenous cultures and that the U.S. government swore in treaties it would preserve. Even today, the development of renewable energy often risks encroaching on land held sacred by tribes, who have argued they are cut out of the decision-making process. President Joe Biden seemed to offer a fresh approach to tribal sovereignty, declaring it a priority for his administration shortly after taking office in 2021. Soon, the White House began negotiations to end a decades-old lawsuit by tribes and environmental groups who want some of the Northwest’s federal dams torn down to keep local salmon populations from going extinct. Read Next Washington solar project paused amid concern about Indigenous sites B. ‘Toastie’ Oaster The result of the talks was what the administration called a “historic” deal. The tribes would put their lawsuit on hold. In return, the White House promised to help tribes develop up to 3 gigawatts of renewable energy. That could power all the homes in a city roughly the size of Portland, Oregon. More significantly to the tribes, it’s enough to replace the output of the four dams on the lower Snake River deemed most detrimental to salmon. “It will take all of us committing to this partnership now and for years to come to lift the words off the page and bring this agreement to life,” White House senior adviser John Podesta said at the signing of the agreement with Northwest tribes in February. “I want you to know that President Biden and Vice President Harris and the whole administration are committed to making that happen.” Yakama Nation Chair Gerald Lewis also voiced hope when he signed the agreement with the Biden administration. “The last time energy was developed in the Columbia Basin, it was done on the backs of tribal communities and tribal resources,” Lewis said at the time. “Now we have an opportunity to do better.” The Yakama Nation’s proposal would seem to exactly fit the bill. Its initial plan was to cover 10 miles of irrigation canals with solar panels and to outfit the canals themselves with small-scale hydroelectric turbines. That would generate enough electricity to power a few thousand homes on the reservation, which has a population of about 30,000. In addition to avoiding the tribe’s culturally sensitive lands, the project wouldn’t encroach on any wildlife habitats. And covering the irrigation canals would shade the water so that less of it evaporates in the sun. The Department of Energy awarded its $32 million grant for the project at the end of February. Soon after, the agency posted an interview about the plan with Lewis and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on its Facebook page bearing the caption, “Sometimes, the great ideas are the ones right in front of us.” Washington’s U.S. senators, Democrats Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, each issued news releases announcing the grant and praising the project, saying the canals could boost water conservation by 20% and cut the reservation’s power bills by 15%. But those ambitions quickly ran up against stark realities, according to the people directly involved in bringing the project to life. “Everybody thinks that the federal government gave us 32 million bucks,” Wiseman, the general manager for Yakama Power, said. “They did not.” Stuck in bureaucracy In its landmark accord with tribes, and in documents supporting the accord’s implementation, the White House promised more than money. It vowed to muster the full clout of the federal government to achieve the plan’s goals. Specifically, the agreement said the energy department, working with Indigenous leaders, would find “legal and regulatory options” for getting projects connected to the grid faster and for making them affordable for tribes. That didn’t prevent the first tribal project to come along — the Yakama Nation’s — from getting caught in a snare of bureaucracy. In addition to the grant from the Energy Department’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, Yakama Power was promised a nearly $100 million rural clean energy loan from the Department of Agriculture. But it cannot access any of the federal money without first obtaining a “power purchase agreement,” which essentially offers proof that the electricity the tribal utility plans to generate has a destination. That’s hard for the tribe to do because it can’t get a purchase agreement until its project connects to the grid, which is owned by Bonneville, itself an arm of the Energy Department. Bonneville’s earliest estimate of when it will finish studying connection requests such as the Yakama Nation’s is 2027, but the federal agency says it could be longer. Read Next The green transition will make things worse for the Indigenous world Taylar Dawn Stagner That’s just one of many steps. The tribe can’t distribute electricity from the new solar project until Bonneville completes upgrades to the section of its transmission system that serves the reservation, including the installation of a new electrical substation. The federal agency’s estimate for what it would charge for the substation alone: $144 million. Building transmission lines to and from the new solar array would drive the cost higher still, but Bonneville hasn’t done those estimates yet. The Yakama would have to bear those costs. The tribe had counted on some rate increases to pay for the solar array, but covering the unexpectedly high cost of the upgrade would add hundreds of dollars more to a household’s monthly utility bill, Wiseman said. That’s on a reservation where nearly 20% of residents have incomes below the poverty line. Another financial hurdle: Inflation has driven up construction costs for the solar array itself in the two years since the project was proposed. Even if the tribe can come up with all the extra money needed, time is working against the project. Bonneville says it will take five to seven years to build the substation after it’s paid for. All the delays will push the tribe up against a 2031 deadline to use or lose its $32 million grant and $100 million loan. They were funded under the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, which both expire that year. Wiseman is no longer confident of how many miles of canal, if any, the utility can cover with solar panels. He’s unsure whether Yakama Power will need to opt for a much smaller solar array that lacks the specialized hardware needed to suspend the panels above the irrigation canals. “I have serious questions about whether or not these things will survive to go forward,” Wiseman said. The green energy traffic jam The Yakama Nation in many ways faces the same pressures that are holding back new wind and solar farms across the country. The surge in such projects over the past decade has jammed up the system that grid operators like Bonneville Power Administration use when evaluating requests to connect to the grid. The onslaught of green power has also taxed a grid designed to carry much less energy. And yet the new supply is badly needed to meet soaring demand, driven in part by thearrival of energy-guzzling data centers in the past decade. Bonneville is changing the way it studies energy proposals to streamline the process. But renewable developers, advocates and industry analysts have published a white paper with a list of more than 20 recommendations that they say can create the grid the Northwest needs and that, for the most part, they say Bonneville has not addressed. Read Next For a just transition to green energy, tribes need more than money Taylar Dawn Stagner In the meantime, despite the Biden administration’s agreement last year to help tribes, their projects have not moved to the head of the line. Hirsh’s group, the clean and affordable energy coalition, was party to the lawsuit that the tribal deal was meant to settle. She said the government’s failure to deliver on its clean energy promises “could jeopardize the agreement.” Yakama Nation leaders say because of the long history of energy development violating tribal rights, and because reservations were set up with marginal infrastructure, the federal government should not treat tribes the way it does any other energy developer. The Department of Energy, however, says its lawyers have yet to find a way through federal energy regulations or treaty law to let the agency deal with tribal projects differently. Wiseman continues to incur costs on behalf of Yakama Power, planning for the solar project while doubts linger over whether all the pieces will come together in time. “If I can’t get the transmission access that we need — whether intentional, unintentional, whatever you want to call it — Bonneville will have single-handedly killed these projects,” Wiseman said. “And that’s why at this point, I feel incredibly frustrated, because beating them up doesn’t do me any good.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Department of Energy promised this tribal nation a $32 million solar grant. It’s nearly impossible to access. on Sep 29, 2024.

Kashmere Gardens, Fifth Ward gets $20 million for solar energy generation and ecosystem enhancements

Part of the grant will fund nature-based solutions, like the installation of native trees and grasses, intended to address runoff from the contaminated site as well as flooding and heat. 

Lucio Vasquez/Houston Public MediaEntrance to Kashmere Gardens. Taken on December 12, 2019.Northeast Houston residents around a cancer-causing contamination site will see ecosystem enhancements and a solar energy system thanks to a $20 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. Houston City Council unanimously voted to accept the grant on Wednesday. "The purpose of that project is to uplift communities that have been challenged by environmental injustices," said Loren Hopkins, chief environmental science officer for the Houston Health Department. The soil under a Union Pacific Railyard in the Kashmere Gardens and Fifth Ward area has long been contaminated by the cancer-causing chemical creosote, used to treat wood in the 1900s. A plume of soil pollution extends under more than 100 homes in the area. Part of the grant will fund nature-based solutions, like the installation of native trees and grasses, intended to address runoff from the contaminated site as well as flooding and heat. "We’re expecting nature-based changes throughout the area to work on just improving the quality of the air and the water and the runoff and the soil," Hopkins said. The grant will also fund a community solar energy system. Residents will be trained and employed to construct the system. "We have available land in Fifth Ward, and so we always ask what we are going to do with this land," said Council Member Tarsha Jackson, who represents the area. "This is what we can do. Putting solar on this land — that’s going to help residents if we have another storm with power outages." Hopkins said the health department is still selecting a location for the solar system. On Wednesday, Council Members Julian Ramirez and Twila Carter expressed concerns. They pointed to a stalled solar project in the Sunnyside neighborhood, where residents were promised the conversion of a 240-acre landfill into a solar farm. The initiative floundered this year as the company sought funding. Dori Wolfe, Houston-area program coordinator for nonprofit advocacy group Solar Neighbors United, said community engagement will be important for the success of the Northeast Houston project. "Having community at the table — knowing what the benefits are and how they’re going to be distributed — is vital to getting acceptance, and that is one of the things that Sunnyside solar array has to keep working on," Wolfe said. According to the ordinance approved by the City Council, the solar system in Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens is expected to improve the area's resilience in the case of outages during climate disasters. The start date for construction is still up in the air as the city's health department selects a site for the solar array.

Suggested Viewing

Join us to forge
a sustainable future

Our team is always growing.
Become a partner, volunteer, sponsor, or intern today.
Let us know how you would like to get involved!

CONTACT US

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Subscribers receive a free day pass for streaming Cinema Verde.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.