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Coalition Calls for Robust Funding for Transmission in FY 2025 Budget

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a joint letter to Congress today, a diverse coalition of more than 40 national and regional organizations and companies requested robust funding for electric transmission deployment and research in the Department of Energy (DOE)’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget.

In the letter, the groups highlight how upgrading and expanding the nation’s transmission network has taken on new immediacy.

“For the first time in two decades, demand for electricity is rising,” the groups explain. “Capacity exists to support this increasing demand and with the right investments can be brought online quickly.”

The groups underscore the national security benefits of a modernized transmission system, noting reports of a sharp uptick in direct cyber and physical attacks on the grid.

The letter signatories ask Congress to consider specific funding requests for DOE’s Grid Deployment Office, Office of Electricity, and Loan Programs Office, along with additional borrowing authority for the Transmission Facilitation Program. Such funding “is critical to unleashing domestic clean energy resources, safeguarding against emerging threats, catalyzing billions in private capital investment, creating thousands of good-paying jobs, and delivering low-cost energy to families and businesses,” the groups write.

The signatories on the letter include Advanced Energy United, Advanced Power Alliance, Advancing Modern Powerlines (AMP) Coalition, Alliance for Clean Energy New York, American Clean Power Association, American Council on Renewable Energy, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Business Council for Sustainable Energy, Ceres, Clean Energy Buyers Association, Clean Grid Alliance, Conservative Energy Network, CTC Global, EarthGrid, Grid Action, Grid United, Hannon Armstrong Sustainable Infrastructure, Innergex, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Unit 1245, Interwest Energy Alliance, Invenergy LLC, League of Conservation Voters, Longroad Energy, MAREC Action, National Electrical Manufacturers Association, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, NextEra Energy Transmission, Niskanen Center, Oceantic Network, Onward Energy, Pattern Energy, RENEW Northeast, Renewable Northwest, Sierra Club, Solar Energy Industries Association, Sol Systems, Southern Renewable Energy Association, SouthWestern Power Group, Third Way, VEIR, and Working for Advanced Transmission Technologies (WATT) Coalition.

Click here to download a copy of the coalition letter.

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About ACORE:
For over 20 years, the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) has been the nation’s leading voice on the issues most essential to renewable energy expansion. ACORE unites finance, policy, and technology to accelerate the transition to a renewable energy economy. For more information, please visit www.acore.org.

About Advanced Energy United:
Advanced Energy United educates, engages, and advocates for policies that allow our member companies to compete to repower our economy with 100% clean energy. We work with decision makers at every level of government as well as regulators of energy markets to achieve this goal. The businesses we represent are lowering consumer costs, creating millions of new jobs, and providing the full range of clean, efficient, and reliable energy and transportation solutions. Together, we are united in our mission to accelerate the transition to 100% clean energy in the United States. Advanced Energy United is online at AdvancedEnergyUnited.org and @AdvEnergyUnited.

Media Contacts:

Alex Hobson, ACORE’s Senior Vice President of Communications, hobson@acore.org, 202.830.3592

Adam Winer, United’s Director of Communications, awiner@advancedenergyunited.org, 202.391.0884

The post Coalition Calls for Robust Funding for Transmission in FY 2025 Budget appeared first on ACORE.

https://acore.org/news/coalition-calls-for-robust-funding-for-transmission-in-fy-2025-budget/

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Why Is Trump Still Here?

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I challenge anyone to watch this short video and explain how Trump still has enough standing with the American people to remain president.

This is just so embarrassing.

Rich Americans aren’t happy that their country is a laughingstock around the world, but their fortunes are multiplying, so what’s the big deal?  How does personal integrity come into play when there is so much money at stake?

The MAGA crowd, i.e., uneducated white people, believe Trump when he says that he has brought back respect for the United States.

Why Is Trump Still Here?

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Celebrating America

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At left is the ultraconservative crap that Fox News feeds its viewers.

In fact, the theme of U.S. 250th birthday party would be liberty and justice for all Americans, not just rich white people.

Celebrating America

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Siemens Gamesa Warns Europe, Shell Sells Offshore Wind

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Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Siemens Gamesa Warns Europe, Shell Sells Offshore Wind

Allen covers Siemens Gamesa’s warning that Europe is 40 GW short on offshore wind, Shell’s plan to sell its offshore wind farms, Maine’s multi-state bidding round, and Egypt’s grid financing deal.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTubeLinkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

The wind industry got a warning this week… and it came from the top.

Siemens Gamesa, the world’s largest maker of offshore wind turbines, says governments in Europe may be running out of time. The company’s chief executive sounded the alarm Thursday. Europe is currently forty gigawatts short of its one-hundred-and-twenty gigawatt offshore target for twenty thirty. Sixteen gigawatts of projects in Germany alone are at risk of delay, tangled up in lengthy permitting and grid connection backlogs. The plants are running full today. But without new orders soon, factories could go dark for contracts starting in twenty twenty-eight.

“It is not yet an existential threat,” said Siemens Gamesa chief Vinod Philip, “but it could become one.” He stopped short of predicting shutdowns. But he said the company would likely have to downsize resources if governments fail to act quickly. Europe’s offshore supply chain has already committed fourteen billion euros to meet the twenty thirty targets. That is roughly sixteen billion dollars… with no guarantee the orders will follow.

Meanwhile… one of the world’s biggest oil companies is quietly walking away from wind. Shell is preparing to sell its offshore wind farms in a deal that could fetch more than one billion dollars. The company has hired advisers to run the process, which could launch before the year is out, with a sale expected sometime in twenty twenty-seven.

Shell once dreamed of becoming the world’s largest electricity producer. That vision died when its current chief executive took over in early twenty twenty-three and shifted the focus back to fossil fuels and shareholder returns. Since then, Shell has been unwinding its green power portfolio piece by piece. It sold its European onshore renewables arm. It sold Indian renewable company Sprng Energy, which it had bought just years earlier for one-point-five-five billion dollars. And it walked away from planned offshore wind farms in Scotland. When this latest sale closes, Shell will have little wind left in its portfolio.

But where one door closes… another opens. Up in the northernmost corner of Maine, a region that has sat on one of the best wind resources in the country for years, a long-awaited breakthrough may finally be at hand. The Maine Public Utilities Commission is closing its latest round of bidding for wind and solar generation in Aroostook County, plus the new transmission lines needed to move that power south to the rest of New England. The target: at least twelve hundred megawatts. Enough to power hundreds of thousands of homes.

Maine is not going it alone this time. Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont are sharing the cost of the new transmission infrastructure. The previous attempt in twenty twenty-one fell apart. Costs rose. Deals could not be finalized. Landowners fought the proposed one-hundred-forty-mile power line. This time, officials say things are different. The multi-state partnership changes the math. And northern Maine’s wind resource has not gone anywhere. Dozens of energy companies have signed up to compete, from local developers to major multinationals. If everything goes to plan, the best-case scenario puts new turbines spinning in the twenty thirties.

And half a world away… Egypt is making a major investment to keep pace with its own renewable ambitions. The Egyptian prime minister this week witnessed the signing of a financing agreement worth sixty billion Egyptian pounds, earmarked for the national electricity transmission network. That money will go toward upgrading the grid so it can absorb the solar and wind power Egypt plans to add in the coming years. The target: forty-five percent of national electricity from renewable sources by twenty twenty-eight. The electricity minister said modernizing the grid is a “continuous and evolving process,” and that implementation timelines are being compressed to meet that twenty twenty-eight deadline.

The wind is shifting. The question is… who moves with it.

And that’s the state of the wind industry for the 15th of June 2026. Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy podcast tomorrow.

Siemens Gamesa Warns Europe, Shell Sells Offshore Wind

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