Delaware releases updated energy ‘playbook’ to combat climate change

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Delaware is updating its state energy plan for the next five years, with a renewed focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and expanding the use of renewable technologies.

Before now, the plan hadn’t been updated since 2009. The Governor’s Energy Advisory Council was established in 2004 and charged with improving it every five years. The council was revived and expanded in 2022 and began gathering public input in 2023. It approved 82 recommendations in January from its four working groups that focused on categories including energy justice, renewable energy and clean technologies, energy efficiency, grid modernization and workforce development.

Ed Kee chaired the advisory council and proposed the working groups. He said members sorted through hundreds of suggestions and public feedback to settle on the guidance it ultimately endorsed.

“It’s time to use the plan to guide us, to guide Delaware,” Kee said. “It only works if we get this thing and keep it off the bookshelf and keep it on our desks, so it’s not a document hidden away on our computer somewhere.”

Shawn Garvin, outgoing secretary of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, said the new state energy plan maps out strategies to meet Delaware’s energy and emission reduction goals while maintaining a reliable grid and increasing energy justice in disadvantaged communities.

“As we continue to grow existing programs and put in place new initiatives to reduce emissions, we will need to ensure we are meeting our current and future energy needs,” he said. “This energy plan provides a playbook to do just that.”

The Delaware Climate Change Solutions Act of 2023 requires a 50% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from a 2005 baseline by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050. The state has also passed legislation creating an offshore wind procurement program.

A controversial offshore wind project that would bury electric cables under Delaware-controlled waters and coastline for a controversial offshore wind project received another setback this week when the Sussex County Council voted down a request from Renewable Development, a subsidiary of US Wind, to build a substation near a former power plant there. It’s expected to appeal. The project is already the subject of litigation.

US Wind’s Maryland Offshore Wind Project off the Delmarva coast has proposed running power transmission cables from its wind farm three miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean to 3Rs Beach at Delaware Seashore State Park. The cables would run beneath Delaware-regulated wetlands, state waters and the Indian River Bay and connect to a substation.

Garvin said the energy plan is a living document. He said whatever happens with that project, offshore wind energy will remain part of Delaware’s future.

“The energy plan itself recognizes that there’s a bunch of different stuff,” he said. “It’s not designed to say, ‘By 2025 this will happen, by 2026 we will do this.’ It’s saying, ‘Here are the opportunities. Let’s pursue these.’ Obviously offshore wind is one of those.”

Delaware is the lowest-lying state in the U.S. Garvin said that means it’s impacted by climate change and sea level rise through more frequent intense storms and flooding, and an increase in sunny day flooding associated with tides.

Garvin said the 2021 Climate Action Plan was similar to a navigational device because it provided strategies that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase resilience to climate change.

Strategies that are included in the updated state energy plan include assessing the feasibility of adopting a Low Carbon Fuel Standard, expanding clean energy workforce development programs, and identifying policy gaps and directing policies and programs to help impacted underserved communities.