Green Energy

Federal climate politics in the US remains as gridlocked as ever, but the past few years have seen a remarkable flourishing of climate and clean energy policy at the subnational level, in states and cities across the country.

This has given rise to all sorts of deep analysis — about the potential and limitations of states as laboratories of democracy, about the role of cities in the 21st century, about the ability of subnational actors to offset federal inaction — but, oddly, the simplest lesson of all often goes unstated.

In point of fact, all these subnational jurisdictions, for all their differences, used the same simple trick to achieve policy success.

What is that trick? Well, it’d be no fun if I just told you!

Instead, let’s run through a quick review of recent subnational policy progress on climate and clean energy. Perhaps, by the end of this list, if you squint just right, you’ll see the trick for yourself.

States and cities are leading the charge on clean energy

Here are some highlights from the past few years at the state level:

• In Washington state, Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, working for the first time with solid Democratic majorities in both houses of the state legislature, passed a suite of ambitious bills on clean electricity, clean buildings, electric vehicles, banning hydrofluorocarbons, and boosting energy efficiency standards.
• In Nevada, newly elected Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, working with Democratic majorities in both houses of the state legislature, passed a bill committing the state to 50 percent renewable electricity by 2030 and 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2050.
• In Colorado, newly elected Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, working with Democratic majorities in both houses of the state legislature, passed an astonishing suite of climate and clean energy bills. One committed the state to economy-wide greenhouse gas reductions (not just from electricity but from all sectors) of 50 percent by 2030 and 90 percent by 2050. There were also bills on utility reform, electric vehicles and EV charging, community solar gardens, building energy codes, oil and gas leasing, and (believe it or not) much more.

• In New Mexico, newly elected Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, working with Democratic majorities in both houses of the state legislature, passed a bill committing the state to 50 percent carbon-free electricity by 2030, 80 percent by 2040, and 100 percent by 2045 (among other things).
• Last year in California, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, working with Democratic majorities in both houses of the state legislature, passed a bill committing the state to 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045.
• Last year in New Jersey, newly elected Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, working with Democratic majorities in both houses of the state legislature, passed a bill committing the state to 50 percent renewable electricity by 2030; Murphy also issued an executive order setting up a study of 100 percent clean electricity by 2050.
• New York, Massachusetts, and Maine — all of which have Democratic legislatures and two of which (Massachusetts’s Republican Gov. Charlie Baker being the exception) have Democratic governors — are currently mulling similar policies.

And here are a few highlights from the local level:

• Last month in Los Angeles, Democratic Mayor Eric Garcetti, working with a Democratic city council, unveiled “LA’s Green New Deal,” which would, among other things, commit the city to 100 percent clean energy across every economic sector by 2050. (LA is the largest US city to make such a commitment.)
• Last month in New York City, Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio, working with a Democratic city council, passed a sweeping set of climate bills, which would, among other things, target emissions from existing buildings. “Its proponents bill the legislation as the largest single mandate to cut climate pollution by any city in the world,” reports Andrew Kaufman.
• Last month in Chicago, Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel, working with a Democratic city council, passed a bill committing the city to 100 percent renewable energy by 2035.

• Last month in Boise, Idaho, Democratic Mayor David Bieter, working with a purportedly nonpartisan but in reality Democratic city council, passed a bill committing the city to 100 percent renewable energy by 2035.
• Last month in Missoula, Montana, Democratic Mayor John Engen, working with a Democratic city council, adopted a resolution committing the city to 100 percent renewable energy by 2030.
• Last year in Cincinnati, Ohio, Democratic Mayor John Cranley, working with a Democratic city council, adopted a resolution committing the city to 100 percent renewable energy by 2035.
• Last year in Washington, DC, Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser, working with a Democratic city council, passed a bill committing the district to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2032. It also established a sustainable energy trust fund and tightened building efficiency standards.

That list could go on — there are more than 120 US cities committed to 100 percent clean electricity — but you get the idea.

A notable feature all these jurisdictions have in common

Have you figured out the one weird trick yet? You probably have, but for those just catching up, let’s spell it out.

The trick is: elect Democrats.

There are many differences among these jurisdictions in size, ambition, and policy details, but one thing they all have in common is that Democrats have the power to pass policy despite Republican opposition. It’s not that no Republicans voted for any of these measures — there were R votes here and there, so some could charitably be called “bipartisan” — but that Republicans were not in a position to block any of them.

Last year, Nevada had a Republican governor; he vetoed a clean energy mandate. This year it has a Democratic governor; he signed it.

That’s how it works, in practice. When Democrats take control, in numbers that preclude Republican veto power, they pass thoughtful, ambitious policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and accelerate the clean energy transition. Where Republicans have the power to block such policies, they do. There are exceptions — all hail Illinois — but they are comparatively rare.

Perhaps climate and clean energy shouldn’t be partisan. But at the present moment, purely as a descriptive matter, they are partisan.

Many people find that situation distasteful. And they are rightly concerned with how to bring Republicans around on these issues — after all, Republicans still have veto power in most states and the federal government. There’s a whole cottage industry devoted to wooing conservatives on these issues, and I wish it godspeed. Perhaps someday the GOP will find a way to participate in good faith in this collective undertaking, though right now, the signs on that front are not good.

Until then, though, it is as my colleague Matt Yglesias said: By far the simplest and most reliable way for most people to express support for climate and clean energy policy is to vote against Republicans and for Democrats.

It’s not ideal. But it is what it is.

Project developers in India are unwilling to bid for large-scale solar and wind energy tenders, sounding alarms across government circles. The western state of Gujarat witnessed significant under-subscription of solar and wind energy tenders last week.

The state of Gujarat managed to attract bids for only 900 megawatts against an offered capacity of 1.7 gigawatts across two solar power tenders. So far only 500 megawatts of capacity has been allocated to project developers from among the 900 megawatts.

The first tender with capacity of 700 megawatts was issued for the Raghanesda Solar Park. Only four companies placed bids to set up a total of 600 megawatts of capacity. These included Tata Power Renewable Energy, Engie, and two government-owned companies. The maximum tariff that developers could bid for in this tender was Rs 2.70/kWh (3.8US¢/kWh).

All the four initial bidders managed to secure rights to develop projects after the financial bidding round. However, only 500 megawatts capacity was auctioned as the state government decided to reduce the capacity on offer from 700 megawatts to 500 megawatts after the 100 megawatt under-subscription.

Engie secured 200 megawatts at the lowest tariff bid of Rs 2.65/kWh (3.8US¢/kWh) followed by two state government-owned companies which secured 100 megawatts each at Rs 2.68/kWh (3.84US¢/kWh) tariff each. Finally, Tata Power Renewable Energy secured 100 megawatts at Rs 2.70/kWh.

Gujarat had auctioned the same capacity for the same solar power park in January 2019. The 700 megawatt tender had received bids for 1.75 gigawatts at that time. However, after the completion of financial bidding, the state government decided to scrap the auction. Tariff bids realized in that auction ranged from 2.84/kWh (4.08¢/kWh) to Rs 2.89/kWh (4.15¢/kWh). This could be one of the major reasons for several leading project developers staying away from the auction.

Gujarat has also issued a tender for the first phase of Dholera solar power park. The Gujarat government plans to set up a 5 gigawatt solar power park at Dholera, which will make it one of the largest solar power parks in India. The government had offered 1 gigawatt of capacity in the first phase but drew bids only for 300 megawatts from two developers.

Finally, 250 megawatts were auctioned to a state government-owned company and Tata Power Renewable Energy at a tariff of Rs 2.75/kWh (3.91US¢/kWh).

Last month, the Solar Energy Corporation of India suffered a setback when developers submitted bids only for 600 megawatts compared to the offered capacity of 1.2 gigawatts in the seventh edition of the national wind energy auctions.

Siemens Corporate Technology (CT) US, Siemens’ central research and development unit in the US, announced it was selected for a $6.4 million research award from the US Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) to advance solar energy’s role in strengthening the resilience of the US electricity grid. This project will create an innovative Energy Management System that can coordinate distributed microgrids to work together. The system will utilize diverse technologies to increase grid resilience against natural disasters or cyber-attacks as well as autonomously restore power during a blackout using smart inverters.

CT US was selected as a part of the Energy Department’s effort to invest in new projects that enable grid operators to rapidly detect physical and cyber-based abnormalities in the power system and utilize solar generation to recover quickly from power outages. Siemens is one of several projectsthat will develop grid management technologies that show how solar energy will enhance power system resilience, especially at critical infrastructure sites. Collaborative efforts between Siemens and the DOE are expected to begin by Summer 2019.

The Siemens CT team will be led by Ulrich Muenz and Sindhu Suresh and work with partners from DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Columbia University, Siemens Digital Grid and Holy Cross Energy to develop, validate, and demonstrate a highly innovative, three-layer Energy Management System (EMS) for Autonomous and Resilient Operation of Energy systems with RenewaAbles (AURORA).

This project continues CT’s collaborative work with the DOE’s US National Laboratories to strengthen, enhance, and modernize the nation’s electric grid and critical infrastructure. In January 2019, CT signed an MOUwith National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), to conduct integrated experiments within their respective research and development facilities to help integrate innovative power electronic devices with the electric grid, including smart inverters for solar panels, batteries, and electrical vehicles that are capable of supporting the nation’s power system.

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico―It looks like something out of a brochure advertising what renewable energy could offer a remote, storm-ravaged island.

Electrical lines still hang perilously from poles across the street, but inside the mint-green, one-story Ciudad Dorada senior center, fans blow cool air and refrigerators stocked with insulin and other medicines run cold even as the noon sun broils in a cloudless Caribbean sky. On its roof are a set of Tesla photovoltaic solar panels, attached via cable to a pair of Tesla batteries hitched to the wall beneath.

And yet, a diesel generator growls on full blast behind the center.

Workers from Tesla, billionaire Elon Musk’s electric car and solar energy giant, arrived on Vieques just weeks after hurricanes Irma and María crippled the aging electrical grid and severed the transmission cable that connected this island to the Puerto Rico mainland seven miles west. The company selected the senior center as one of 11 sites on the darkened island that it would equip with power-producing panels and batteries.

Constructing the system was simple. But when workers attached the panels and batteries to the old electrical wiring in the former schoolhouse, the batteries blew out.

“It doesn’t work,” a nurse at the senior center said in Spanish during a HuffPost visit in late February. “It never has.”

The circuitry issue proved ominous. Officials promised that Tesla’s effort heralded a brighter future on Vieques, one that would free the island from dependence on fossil fuels and make it a model for the rest of Puerto Rico. But apparent supply shortages, regulatory hurdles, and a lack of long-term planning dashed those hopes. Today the island still depends on dirty power from the mainland, and some solar panels and batteries sit useless and broken with another hurricane season less than a month away.

“We’re back to square one,” said Edgar Oscar Ruiz, 34, a local activist pushing for renewable energy on Vieques. “Tesla came in with great intentions, but that’s not enough.”

Vieques’s experience shows what renewable-energy experts say are the risks of relying on corporate goodwill to deliver transformative change and highlights the potential hurdles that Puerto Rico now faces as it seeks to convert the territory’s entire electricity system to renewable energy and sell off parts of its public utility.

“There’s a cautionary tale here,” said Andrea Luecke, president of the Solar Foundation, an industry nonprofit.

A sunny proposal

Tesla staffers arrived in Puerto Rico a week after Hurricane María made landfall on September 20, 2017, and before many relief workers. By November, the company sent an unsolicited proposal to the Puerto Rican government. The pitch included building solar power microgrids―which would produce and distribute power autonomous of the territory’s main electrical grid―on Vieques and Culebra, its smaller, more touristy neighbor. The content of the proposal, though never made public, is confirmed in a study released by the Puerto Rican government. Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rosselló touted the effort in December 2017.

“These projects are part of the measures we are taking to build a better Puerto Rico after the passage of Hurricane María and ensure a reliable service for the benefit of the citizens who reside here,” Rosselló told Radio Isla 1320 back then.

Around the same time, Tesla contacted the municipal government on Vieques to begin talks about buying public land on which to build a microgrid, according to Carlos Jirau, a development consultant working for the mayor.

“Tesla was asking for the possibility to acquire land from the municipality to develop a microgrid,” Jirau said. He said he requested a formal proposal but never heard back.

It’s easy to understand the opportunity Tesla saw. In 2016, the company had converted the entire electrical supply of Ta’u, a 600-resident island in American Samoa, to solar power and batteries. A year later, Tesla built a massive solar and battery farm on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

Vieques represented not only another test case for its technology but a chance to do some good. The island―dubbed “the colony of the colony” by some locals because of its history of human and environmental exploitation―was languishing in what would become the second-longest blackout in world history.

Tesla worked quickly. It installed equipment at the Susana Centeno Hospital, the island’s lone medical center. It deployed units to Ciudad Dorada, the Boys and Girls Club of Vieques, an elderly daycare center, two water supply plants, a sewage treatment facility and three private homes occupied by elderly, single women.

“We’re just trying to be as helpful as we can in Puerto Rico,” a Tesla spokesman told HuffPost. “We had employees on the ground working to restore power as soon as the hurricane cleared, and we still have full-time employees there to this day. We’re committed to our efforts to expand clean energy there, including the large number of current and planned solar and storage installations across the island.”

For the most part, those targeted efforts to restore power after the storm succeeded. The company convinced many on the island of solar energy’s potential and several other sites are now also installing panels, according to Mark Martin, a coordinator with the nonprofit Vieques Love who worked with Tesla.

“Vieques was abandoned,” Martin said, so the speed with which Tesla got electricity flowing again left an impression. “It was a culture change,” he said. “On the island, you can see a turn in the thinking.”

But larger permanent changes to infrastructure were limited.

At one water-treatment facility, the battery sat dormant and, during HuffPost’s visit to the site in late February, the field of solar panels was overgrown with weeds and brush. Several panels bore the shattered imprints of horse hooves, a predictable problem on an island with one wild horse for every two humans. The hospital―damaged and mold-infested from the storm―was permanently shuttered. After they helped to power a makeshift medical center, Tesla moved those solar panels, along with other equipment, to some of the 11,000 other sites it started work on across Puerto Rico.

Tesla didn’t boast about its Vieques projects specifically, and it wasn’t the only company to send equipment to the island; San Francisco-based Sunrun also deployed units after the storm. But Tesla’s efforts earned the most praise in media outlets including Fortune and Inc., in no small part due to Musk’s celebrity and his high-profile, if at times bizarre and calamitous, disaster-relief efforts in other places. One popular clean-tech blog cited Vieques when it bellowed, “Musk’s Philanthropy Deserves Headlines.”

If Tesla had planned to lay the groundwork for an island-wide microgrid, existing regulations created an obstacle. On the territorial level, the state-owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority enjoyed a monopoly on power generation and distribution. Years of neglect and billions in debt left the power grid that PREPA oversaw fragile and unprepared to integrate new technologies. On the national level, the Federal Emergency Management Agency largely limits its funding aid for post-hurricane repairs to projects that restored existing infrastructure―which made novel improvements, such as solar power microgrids, difficult to finance with public money.

The federal funding has also been fodder for a fight in Washington as President Donald Trump has raged against Puerto Rico, accusing its officials of mishandling relief money, and Democrats argue that a White House blinded by racism has left millions of American citizens to suffer.

Regulatory changes in Puerto Rico over the past year, however, promise to make it simpler to build renewable energy in the future. Last May, territorial regulators finalized rules easing the way for microgrids, though PREPA’s bankruptcy still complicates the process. In December, Rosselló signed a bill legalizing locally owned energy cooperatives. In March, the Puerto Rican legislature approved a bill mandating that 100 percent of the island’s electricity will be generated from renewable sources by 2050.

“This policy provides a pathway, a very robust pathway, for solar and batteries,” Rosselló told HuffPost in an interview last month, noting that the island had issued a request for proposals of new projects. “Companies like Tesla, Sunrun and others will be able to bid for that.”

The Puerto Rican government wants Vieques to be the test case for microgrids, Omar Marrero, director of the territory’s Public-Private Partnership Authority, told Quartz in an interview published in May.

“Whatever the generation [source], we all agree on microgrids,” he said.

‘A solar graveyard’

But agreeing on microgrids is just a first step. Puerto Rico produced just 2 percent of its power from renewables before the hurricanes, despite an existing law that required 12 percent, InsideClimate News reported. The new legislation’s ambitious benchmarks―20 percent by 2022 and 40 percent by 2025―seem at odds with PREPA’s plans to build out natural gas import terminals, pipelines and power generators.

It’s not enough either to build the solar panel and battery farms. They have to be maintained. The busted solar panels at the facility on Vieques’s northern shore is a textbook case of what Jenean Smith, an executive at the California-based nonprofit solar installer Grid Alternatives, calls a “solar graveyard.”

The term refers to the phenomenon of companies or nonprofits bringing photovoltaic panels and batteries to underdeveloped economies and then leaving them to fall into disrepair as the locals administering the systems struggle to maintain them.

“We see it with off-grid systems all around the world, where well-intentioned organizations will install systems, get a lot of PR, get funding upfront, then they leave,” Smith said by phone. “And there’s a disconnect between the PR and the reality on the ground.”

The best way to avoid this, Smith said, is for companies or foundations that fund these projects to put aside extra money to hire and train maintenance staff.

“We proactively visit all of the systems we’ve installed and we make sure we check in with people,” she said. “You have to build in a budget a project-management system―not just for when it’s installed but for the next five, 10, 15 years.”

The new rules allowing energy co-ops offer some hope. The model retains the public ownership that opponents of PREPA’s privatization want but empowers the community benefiting from the project to help maintain the operation, according to Nelson Colón, chief executive of the Puerto Rico Community Foundation, a nonprofit that is building solar co-ops in the territory.

“There is a challenge when a private commercial entity comes and deploys solar panels and batteries―then the community is not engaged, the community is not part of it,” Colón said by phone. “In our model, the community is a very active participant.”

The foundation is raising money for a fund to build a “Green Corridor” of co-op projects from Culebra through Vieques, all the way to the western tip of the main island.

That local-ownership model offers fewer openings for private companies to shake down ratepayers. It also sets a standard for long-term contracts that factor in system maintenance.

“There’s a tendency of companies wanting to rush in and fix things and be as reactive as possible,” Luecke said. “That tendency is wrong.”“There’s a tendency of companies wanting to rush in and fix things and be as reactive as possible,” Luecke said. “That tendency is wrong.”

For Tesla, reacting to public need in select places has paid dividends, at least in terms of good press. The projects in Ta’u and Kauai generated adulatory coverage. Last July, the firm said it would do the same for the entire island nation of Samoa. In January, Tesla set its sights on Greece’s backyard of islands.

But historically, the company’s ambitions have often outpaced its capacities. Over the past year, Tesla repeatedly said in calls with investors that it was prioritizing production of the Model 3 car over batteries for solar units. Wait times for parts of a solar-power system ranged from six months to a year, USA Today reported last summer. Customers who bought batteries and solar roofing faced delays twice as long as what salespeople originally promised, according to a June 2018 report in Business Insider. One purported buyer last July claimed on Twitter that the company informed him that all shipments and installs were “halted indefinitely.”

“We would have done more in stationary storage last year except we were cell-starved for vehicle production,” Musk said in an earnings call in January. “So we had to convert a bunch of stationary storage lines, battery lines, to vehicle battery lines.”

For the handful of Vieques residents who tried to buy Tesla batteries themselves, this became an obstacle, said Ruiz, the local activist.

“We were told there’s a nine-month waiting list,” he said. “It just never materialized.”

A dark past

While Vieques has become a vacation hub in recent years, drawing tourists to quiet black-sand beaches and the world’s brightest bioluminescent bay, its newfound Instagram glamour belies a disturbing past and a lasting, toxic legacy.

Europeans settled Vieques in the 19th century, circumventing the peasant farming economy that thrived on the Puerto Rican mainland to establish an entirely slave-based sugar plantation model. When Spain abolished slavery in 1873―a decade after the United States―many former slaves and newcomers from other Caribbean islands became agregados, essentially feudal sharecroppers who continued the harsh work of planting and harvesting sugarcane. That system lasted from the United States’ invasion in 1898 until the 1940s, when the U.S. Navy decided to build a base to defend its Caribbean colony from German U-boats.

Wielding the power of eminent domain, the military compensated some landowners but refused to pay poor farmers, instead bulldozing their homes and forcing them into a small area making up barely a third of the island. After World War II, the Navy turned half of Vieques into a target range for new weapons, including uranium-based munitions. Around 2000, the Navy accidentally killed a local resident in a bombing run, triggering a protest movement that many here call “the struggle,” which culminated in the military deciding to close the base. That choked off the island’s main economic engine.

Today, much of Vieques is a Superfund site. The cancer rate is 30 percent higher than in the rest of Puerto Rico, and hypertension is four times as common, according to research cited by Al Jazeera.

The storms a year and a half ago inflamed the existing inequity on this island of roughly 9,000.

Even before officials condemned the Susana Centeno Hospital, the storms wrecked its Diagnostic and Treatment Center, which provided dialysis to 10 people on the island. As a result, those patients, many of them fragile, had to make an arduous 25-mile trip by land and air to the Fresenius Kidney Care Center in Humacao on the Puerto Rican mainland.

Vieques feels locked in what NBC News called the “never-ending task” of rebuilding. In March 2018, municipal documents submitted to Puerto Rico’s housing department as part of a federal block grant program showed that the island needed at least $65 million to repair homes and public infrastructure. A year later, Vieques remains tattered, with many damaged homes covered in blue tarps easily visible from its main roads.

It took 18 months to reconnect Vieques to the Puerto Rican power grid. At the western tip of the island, the rebuilt transmission cable from the mainland is protected only by a mangled nest of chainlink fence surrounding a hastily poured block of concrete.

So it’s no surprise that long-time residents like Kathy Gannett are cynical about the future of projects like a microgrid.

“Was it good that Tesla came in and served our emergency needs? Of course. But it was terrible they left their equipment to decay when we’re so in need of resources,” she said. “But we are overwhelmed by just fighting for basic things like our ferry service and getting a decent hospital, so those issues take all of our time.”

Yesterday marked a milestone in the world of corporate sustainability, prompting a flood of praise from environmentalists.

Then came the criticism.

At issue is Daimler AG’s announcement that it plans to make its passenger fleet carbon neutral by the end of 2039. It appeared to mark the most ambitious commitment of any automaker to clamp down on planet-warming emissions

“To us the Paris Agreement is more than an obligation—it’s our conviction. And we have set a clear course to help prevent further acceleration of climate change,” Ola Källenius, the incoming CEO of the German automaker, said in a blog post yesterday.

The news from the owner of Mercedes-Benz drew swift praise from greens, who noted that transportation is now the largest source of emissions in the United States.

“Today’s announcement is a new start for the automotive industry to take on its full responsibility in tackling climate change,” Helen Clarkson, CEO of the nonprofit Climate Group, said in a statement yesterday.

But as the day wore on, greens began to point out some perceived flaws with the company’s pledge to slash emissions.

For one thing, Daimler’s commitment hinges on 2039, whereas a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that the world has until 2030 to stem catastrophic climate change.

In particular, the IPCC report called for cutting greenhouse gas emissions 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 to avert the worst impacts of global warming, including more extreme drought, wildfires and food shortages for potentially hundreds of millions of people.

“I think it’s really positive that they’re setting a goal. The majority of automakers have not set similar goals. But at the same time, it’s important to keep the context in mind in terms of where we need to go. The IPCC report calls for a 45% reduction by 2030,” said Carol Lee Rawn, senior director for transportation with Ceres, a nonprofit that works with businesses and investors to promote sustainability.

Madeline Page, clean cars campaign coordinator with Public Citizen, said she also would have liked to see Daimler provide a faster timeline.

“Every week we get even more and more urgent warnings about climate change,” Page said. “I think to confront that threat, we need to get to zero-carbon emissions as soon as possible across sectors.”

In addition, Daimler failed to clarify whether its commitment applies to the vehicles themselves or whether it extends to their life-cycle carbon emissions.

That’s an important distinction. The former means that all Daimler vehicles would be zero emission by 2039, whether they were electric or powered by hydrogen fuel cells. The latter means that Daimler would continue to produce gasoline-powered cars through 2039, but it would purchase carbon offsets to compensate for the pollution from their tailpipes.

“It’s hard to tell exactly what they mean by becoming carbon neutral by 2039,” said Kate Larsen, who leads transportation research at the Rhodium Group, an economic consulting firm with a focus on climate policy.

“If the goal really means that the vehicles themselves will be zero emission rather than offset, I think that is ambitious and in line with where we need to be to meet our climate goals, with the caveat that all other sectors of the economy also have to do their part,” Larsen said.

Dan Becker, executive director of the Safe Climate Campaign, agreed with this sentiment.

“The worst thing about a car is what comes out of its tailpipe,” Becker said. “Carbon neutral could be wonderful for the planet if it means you’re dramatically reducing emissions, and less wonderful for the planet if it means you’re only [offsetting] the emissions by planting a bunch of trees in Guatemala.”

Asked to clarify, a Daimler spokesperson provided a vague statement that did not alleviate the confusion.

“We regard sustainability along the entire value chain,” the spokesperson said in an email. “This includes concrete measures including the supply chain, the production of vehicles, the vehicle-use phase and recycling concepts.”

Finally, greens faulted Daimler for not censuring the Trump administration’s rollback of greenhouse gas and fuel economy standards, which stands to undermine its strides toward sustainability in the United States.

“If Daimler is serious about cutting global warming pollution, they should announce their opposition to Trump’s rollback of the clean car standards and attack on California’s Clean Air Act authority,” Becker said.

Page noted that Mercedes-Benz is a member of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade organization that lobbied the Trump administration to relax the car rules.

“I do question Mercedes’ continued involvement in the Auto Alliance,” Page said. “How does their membership in the trade association go with their announcement today? One way for them to make clear that today’s announcement is made in good faith would be for them to take a strong stance against the rollback.”

She added: “It’s positive to see voluntary commitments, but they just aren’t enough. And that’s why we need standards in the first place.”

SEVEN MONTHS AFTER Puerto Rico announced an end to the longest blackout in U.S. history, caused by a devastating hurricane that left nearly 3,000 people dead, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló last month signed a bill committing the island to go 100% renewable by 2050.

The governor, a Democrat, as well as environmental groups and local community advocates, cheered the move, one they said would ultimately eliminate Puerto Rico’s dependence on expensive imported oil, gas and coal, and make the island more resilient to hurricanes that are only expected to become more powerful with climate change.

“We have designed a regulatory framework to transform our energy system to a resilient, reliable and robust one with fair and reasonable rates for all consumers,” Rosselló said in a statement upon signing the bill in April.

Federal overseers in the nation’s capital, however, apparently have other ideas.

Weeks after Puerto Rico’s legislature approved the 100% renewables bill in April, and before it won Rosselló’s signature, Republican members of Congress and the Trump administration came out against the plan.

“It’s just unrealistic,” Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, said in an April 9 hearing on Puerto Rico’s energy infrastructure. “This might be a nice concept of social engineering, but it is still political interference with your primary goal, which is to provide affordable and abundant energy.”

The same day, the Trump administration called for building up natural gas infrastructure around San Juan, including a single sprawling multibillion-dollar project that would generate twice the output of an average gas plant in the U.S.

Speaking later at the House hearing, Energy Department Assistant Secretary Bruce Walker acknowledged that such an “investment may be at odds with” Puerto Rico’s renewable energy mandate goals but contended that it would be the most cost-effective approach to generating electricity.

“DOE believes an increase in the natural gas generation in San Juan would be one of the single most valuable investments for PREPA’s long-term recovery,” Walker said in written testimony.

As Puerto Rico repairs its electric grid, experts say that expanding some gas infrastructure, such as by converting heavily polluting existing coal plants to cheaper, cleaner-burning gas plants, makes sense. The utility has proposed a series of smaller-scale projects it says will better support the eventual roll-out of renewables.

The Energy Department’s plant proposal, meanwhile, is off the table, Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority CEO Jose Ortiz says.

“It’s not technically wrong, but it’s against the public policy,” Ortiz says.

That wasn’t initially the case. PREPA in February introduced a five-year plan that called for less than a quarter of the island’s electricity to come from renewable sources such as solar and wind, plus battery storage, with the rest to be made up mostly from new natural gas infrastructure, as well as oil and coal. Puerto Rico’s energy regulator rejected the proposal, sending PREPA back to the drawing board, and the utility is now considering a plan that more closely mirrors the law signed by the island’s governor last month.

This revised plan is nominally consistent with the mandate of shifting to renewables in that Ortiz says it will operate in the short term while infrastructure is put into place. He says the shorter-term plan will involve a series of five-year contracts with plant owners and operators that will likely involve converting some coal plants to gas and building several other facilities, including three import terminals for liquefied natural gas.

“We still have 31 years to go to the full renewable target as the law enacted, and in the meantime we need a cheaper fuel,” Ortiz says. “We are basically trying not to hold long-term contracts and also not to invest in big infrastructure.”

Some experts remain skeptical that the short-term approach won’t detract from the ultimate goal. Cathy Kunkel, of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a nonprofit research organization, pointed out that even relatively smaller natural gas projects require sizable investments – ones large enough to lock Puerto Rico into continued reliance on imported fuels that could well upend its effort to go 100% renewable.

“It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to build a new natural gas plant and say, ‘We’re only going to run this for five years.’ You’ll just never recover your investment on that, not to mention needing to build port infrastructure to get the natural gas to Puerto Rico,” Kunkel says.

It remains far from certain – perhaps even doubtful – that Puerto Rico will reach 100% renewables by 2050. In 2010, for example, the legislature passed Law 82, requiring PREPA to generate 12 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2015. As of this year, or before even Hurricane Maria, that tally stood at 4 percent.

“We already had a beautiful law, and we didn’t comply,” says Elivan Martinez Mercado, a fellow at the Energy Institute at the University of Texas-Austin and energy journalist in Puerto Rico. “We may have another beautiful law, and it would not solve anything if we will not comply with it.”

The challenge has less to do with technology than political machinations, financial mismanagement, as well as everyday corruption and incompetence that for decades has plagued PREPA, which filed for bankruptcy in the wake of Hurricane Maria and is expected to be privatized.

“There’s been a long history of corruption in the energy sector,” Kunkel says. Much-needed repairs languished for years, and contracts remained hidden from public view. Most glaringly, and most recently, a Montana-based company named Whitefish Energy Holdings, with only two employees, won a $300 million contract to make repairs to the grid – a pricetag later found to include twice the normal wages for utility workers and abnormally high meal rates.

Ortiz acknowledges that PREPA’s past performance does little to inspire confidence in the utility’s current plans, saying the credibility questions are “correct.”

Consumers are not waiting to see what happens. Individual residents and neighborhoods are investing in rooftop solar and batteries, many with support from environmental nonprofits and community organizers. By one measure, supplying rooftop solar and batteries to Puerto Rico’s poorest residents would cost $1.4 billion – $600 million less than one of the planned new natural gas plants.

“Most of the deaths during Hurricane Maria were related to lack of power. So solving Puerto Rico’s energy situation is a matter of life and death, and it’s a matter of economic development,” Mercado says. “These are the priorities: saving lives and having a good quality of life and not losing too much money when a blackout comes for too many days. This affects small businesses, this affects households, this changes everything. So this is the priority for the population.”