The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Energy secretary: UConn efficiency assessment center a model for nation
NEW LONDON — U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Ganholm toured the vast construction site where the State Pier is being transformed into a launching pad for offshore wind projects on Friday, emphasizing the importance of such projects in bringing a new generation of energy independence to the United States.
Granholm, the former governor of Michigan, said she was dispatched to eastern Connecticut by President Joe Biden to bring attention to a series of local clean energy projects on which the administration has pinned some of its hopes of achieving a carbon-free electric grid by 2035.
“We are in a crisis right now, we know, because of all the barrels of oil that have been pulled off the market as a result of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” she said. “We’re on a war footing, so that means we’ve got to increase supply right now, but we cannot take our eye off the ball in terms of accelerating clean (energy). In fact, if this war shows us anything, it’s that we must accelerate toward clean so that we don’t find ourselves in this position in the future.”
During her swing through Connecticut — made in a hydrogen fuelcell-powered Toyota Mirai — Granholm also visited the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant in Waterford, which she called a “a facil
ity that's still got a lot of life in it.”
The twin-reactor plant, which opened in 1975, generates about 40 percent of the state's electricity. State lawmakers recently voted to lift Connecticut's longtime moratorium on new reactors at Millstone, making the site eligible for the development of smaller, modular reactors that Granholm touted as part of the “next generation” of nuclear technology.
Millstone's owner, Virginiabased Dominion Energy, has not announced any plans for new reactors of any kind at the facility.
Samantha Dynowski, state director for the Sierra Club, said Granholm's visit came at a “critical time” for reducing carbon emissions used in power production, noting that the state could experience record high temperatures for mid-May this weekend.
However, Dynowski and other environmental advocates have argued that the switch from fossil fuels should focus on renewable sources, and not nuclear or gas-derived alternatives such as hydrogen.
“We know those plants will go offline soon, so it's important that we advance wind and solar as quickly as possible,” she said. ”New nuclear is really not a financially feasible or environmentally safe way to move forward, but it is the reality we are living with right now.”
In New London, the secretary's tour focused on the $242 million project to transform the State Pier facility into an offshore wind hub. Two heavy-lift platforms will load parts for hundred of turbines onto a specialized jack-up vessel that will then install them in a series of wind farms off the coast of New York and Rhode Island.
When the three planned wind farms become fully operational over the next decade, they will produce enough electricity to power about 1.3 million homes, including about 300,000 in Connecticut.
While the project has come under scrutiny for its escalating costs and ties to a former state budget official under FBI investigation, Granholm's visit nonetheless drew a cadre of local leaders, including Gov. Ned Lamont, U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney and U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, as well as representatives of local trade unions whose hundreds of workers are constructing the new pier.
“This is the Holy Grail of public policy,” Murphy said. “Offshore wind gets you tons of jobs in the short term, it gets you tons of local economic development in the long run, it makes the country more secure and it helps save the planet. What other investment gets you all of that all at once?”
Earlier on Friday, Granholm visited Storrs to announce an expansion of a national network of industrial assessment centers to five additional universities, using a similar model to a program launched at the University of Connecticut with $1.7 million in federal grants.
The assessment centers, which Granholm said can help factories save up to $135,000 a year in energy costs, will be located at universities in Texas, Georgia, California and Delaware.
Granholm called the Department of Energy's Southern New England Industrial Assessment Center at UConn center the “an example of what we want to happen across the country.”
The new centers will be funded as part of a $500 million overall investment in energy efficiency programs at manufacturing plants as part of the bipartisan infrastructure law signed by Biden last year.
The UConn center is one of over 30 similar programs already in operation or in development around the county. After launching last year, the program is still in the process of training students to work with industrial companies to identify potential energy efficient upgrades at their plants, according to program director Liang Zhang.
“We look at all the main energy systems and consuming parts in the typical factory. Depending on the industry it could vary, we look at process heating and cooling, motors, compressors, compressed air, those are the main energy consumers on the floor,” Zhang said. “So the goal is to go in there using our engineering expertise to do the assessments and at the same time train our engineering students to be experts in this area.”
Six companies have already expressed interest in partnering with the center for assessments, Zhang said. Once the program is fully up and running, he said he expects to conduct around 20 assessments a year at factories in Connecticut, Rhode Island and the New York City area.