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Manchin, Playing to the Home Crowd, Is Fighting Electric Cars to the End
Senator Joe Manchin III’s opposition to government incentives for electric vehicles is a sticking point in negotiations over President Biden’s tax and spending package — talks that appear to be coming to a head this week after months of fits and starts. Mr. Biden and most Senate Democrats want billions of dollars in tax credits for consumers who buy electric vehicles, which they see as key to fighting climate change. [ read more … ]
Wind Energy
Meet the officials shaping Biden’s offshore energy strategy
A climate activist, mineral economist and former Army Corps regional director are among the officials crafting President Joe Biden’s closely watched strategy for offshore energy, which could shape the direction of renewables and oil drilling for years. Working in and around the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, they are helping steer the Biden administration’s approach to offshore oil and gas leasing and its ambitious plans to transition the nation’s oceans toward clean energy at a pivotal moment for both. [ read more … ]
SCOTUS
EPA faces legal dead ends after SCOTUS climate decision
Regulators at EPA will have to draft fresh carbon rules for power plants without knowing if they’ll survive the legal uncertainty created by the Supreme Court’s climate decision last month. That thrusts the agency into a yearslong process of writing rules to reduce power sector emissions with the risk that whatever they do could run afoul of the high court. If EPA runs repeatedly into legal dead ends as it refines its understanding of what the court will accept, it would leave the power grid unregulated for carbon for much of the decade, while potentially leading regulators to offer insufficient climate rules that might be accepted by the conservative court. [ read more … ]
Congress
Exelon, PG&E, PSEG and others call on Congress to pass ‘ambitious’ clean energy spending package
Major utilities, solar companies, storage developers and others have called on U.S. lawmakers to pass a reconciliation package that includes tax credits for wind, solar, and batteries, expanded efficiency incentives and support for clean transportation. Exelon Corp., Pacific Gas & Electric Corp., Public Service Enterprise Group and other companies are working to decarbonize but “corporate action alone is insufficient to meet the scope and scale of the climate crisis,” they said in a July 11 letter to Congressional leadership. Separately, more than 400 solar and storage companies organized by the Solar Energy Industries Association, known as SEIA, also advocated for a reconciliation package. [ read more … ]
The fossil fuel projects the White House may allow to win a climate deal
In the past week and a half, the White House has taken steps that would have been considered unimaginable when President Biden first took office, suggesting that it might greenlight drilling plans in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico that would produce hundreds of millions more barrels of oil. Despite violating the president’s climate pledges, officials have opened the door to these proposals as they wait to see if their approval could help finally secure Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin III’s (D-W.Va.) vote for a historic climate package stuck in Congress. Complicating their calculus is that White House aides do not even know if approving them — or Manchin’s other preferred energy projects, such as a pipeline in West Virginia — would bring the elusive senator on board. [ read more … ]
GOP offers offramp in chips vs. reconciliation fight
Schumer last week sent the first piece of a potential bill — the drug pricing provisions — to the parliamentarian for review. It was the first concrete step in the process, but there are still key points to be negotiated on energy and climate. For one thing, Manchin has opposed expanded tax credits for electric vehicles and a direct pay option for clean energy incentives. A potential deal could include extensions of wind, solar and carbon capture incentives and new credits for nuclear and energy storage. [ read more … ]
Republicans attack return of Obama DOJ settlement deals
Thirty-five Republican lawmakers last week urged the Justice Department not to revive a popular enforcement tool that the Trump administration had eliminated. In comments filed Friday on DOJ’s interim rule to bring back supplemental environmental projects, or SEPs, members of the House and Senate said the tool — which allows polluters to complete EPA-approved projects in exchange for lower fines — had resulted in “corrupt settlement agreements” with third parties during the Obama years. [ read more … ]
Climate
What Biden’s Saudi trip says about U.S. climate efforts
President Joe Biden heads to Saudi Arabia this week on a visit that exemplifies how much his administration’s approach to climate change has been rattled by shifting geopolitics and a spike in global energy prices. On the campaign trail, Biden pledged to make the oil-rich nation a pariah over the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. And at global climate talks last year, Biden said high energy prices only reinforced the urgent need to “double down on clean energy deployment” to prevent overreliance on one source of power. [ read more … ]
Energy Storage
US energy storage capacity tripled in 2021: EIA
Battery storage capacity in the United States more than tripled in 2021, growing from 1,438 MW in 2020 to 4,631 MW, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. More than 100 utility-scale projects were brought online last year, the agency said in a July 5 Electricity Monthly Update. The growth occured as storage use cases have expanded, EIA noted. Batteries have been used to provide ancillary services since 2016 but arbitrage, load management and the consumption of excess renewable generation applications saw “significantly increased levels of participation.” [ read more … ]
Markets
The Era of Expensive Oil Is Here to Stay
The underlying dynamics of oil supply and demand point to a prolonged period of higher prices, lasting months if not years. Demand for fuel is still growing as the world picks up where it left off before Covid-19 lockdowns. There’s a shortage of refineries to turn oil into fuel. And the world’s largest oil producers are hitting up against the limits of what they can drill. All this as Vladimir Putin’s war suppresses exports from Russia. [ read more … ]
Will Los Angeles Join a Ban on New Gas Stations?
With cities looking to reduce their dependency on fossil fuels and fight pollution, a handful have been experimenting with a less traditional approach: No new gas stations. Cities in the North Bay area of California, New York and British Columbia have passed moratoriums on future fuel outlets or are developing policies to do so. They’re part of the small but growing Safe Cities campaign, a movement backed by the environmental group Stand.Earth that supports local efforts to phase out fossil fuels. [ read more … ]
Note: News clips provided do not necessarily reflect the views of coalition or its member governors.