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Biden vows to act on climate if Congress won’t
“Let me be clear: Climate change is an emergency,” Biden said. “In the coming weeks I’m going to use my power to turn these words into formal, official government actions. When it comes to fighting climate change, I will not take ‘no’ for an answer.” As Biden spoke, temperatures were spiking in the U.S. and around the globe, hitting 115 degrees in Texas and Oklahoma and prompting alerts in 28 states. More than 60 million Americans are expected to endure triple-digit heat over the next week, and a brutal heat dome is moving over Europe. [ read more … ]
Wind Energy
Wind farms could join oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico
The Biden administration is eyeing chunks of the Gulf of Mexico as new areas to expand its growing offshore wind ambitions. Today, President Joe Biden proposed opening up 700,000 acres off the coasts of Galveston, Texas and Lake Charles, Louisiana to future wind development. The administration is now looking for public input on developing those locations, after its proposal today to make them official “wind energy areas” where lease sales could be held in the future. [ read more … ]
Commentary
Tomlinson: Fact-checking the GOP’s false claims about wind power as Texans worry about broken grid
The Texas electric grid is broken and undoubtedly needs more generation, but in a bid to boost the fossil fuel industry over renewable sources, Republican officials are employing lies, damned lies and statistics. The dirty tricks are expected in an election year and when billions of dollars are at stake. People living in West Texas have known for millennia that the air is often still on sunny summer afternoons. No one ever suggested wind would meet peak demand in the summer, but it blows like the dickens at night and the rest of the year. [ read more … ]
States
Intense heat pushing Texas grid to the brink highlights need for long-duration storage, experts say
Energy storage of different durations and attributes is needed to absorb excess intermittent renewable energy and fill in resource gaps as extreme weather, electric vehicles and building electrification push up demand on U.S. power grids moving towards decarbonization. But the growth of storage faces key mineral shortages and other roadblocks, said experts at a webinar conducted by Our Energy Policy last week. Domestic mining of energy storage elements and manufacturing of technologies can avoid many of those challenges. Developing storage technologies onshore with the support of the federal government and venture capital will keep costs down by avoiding growing shipping costs and geopolitical challenges, storage experts said. [ read more … ]
Climate
Climate emergency and oil: What to watch
Gasoline prices continued to slide yesterday, but the decline did little to lessen the political pressure on the Biden administration, which has been urged to use emergency powers to act on climate change as legislative deals unravel. President Joe Biden is expected to announce an executive action today on climate change, but one that stops short of a broad emergency declaration, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said yesterday. The idea of an emergency order is still “on the table” but unlikely to happen this week, she said. “He’s not going to just stop with the actions of tomorrow,” said Jean-Pierre, referring to the president’s trip today to the Brayton Point Power Station, a closed coal plant, in Somerset, Mass. [ read more … ]
U.K. shatters heat record 3 times in a matter of hours
Extreme heat shattered records in the United Kingdom yesterday as temperatures hurtled above 104 degrees Fahrenheit for the first time since the country started keeping measurements. It may well be a startling glimpse into the country’s climate future as the planet continues to warm. Before now, the highest temperature ever recorded in the United Kingdom was 101.7 degrees, observed in Cambridge in July 2019. Yesterday, as a staggering heat wave gripped the nation, temperatures rose to 102.4 degrees in the English village of Charlwood, officially breaking the record. [ read more … ]
Biden searches for climate emergency ‘sweet spot’
President Joe Biden is poised to unlock sweeping new powers to combat climate change — in theory, at least. Stymied in Congress by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Biden is considering whether to declare a national emergency on climate. Such a move would grant the White House a freer hand to reshape supply chains, international trade and energy markets. In practice, though, the White House faces a balancing act between climate executive action and Biden’s other top priorities. Many of the emergency powers available to Biden would threaten his near-term efforts to lower gasoline prices and counter Russia’s war in Ukraine.
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Regan to Dems: EPA not ‘out of the game’ on climate
EPA Administrator Michael Regan met earlier this afternoon with moderate Democrats and reassured the lawmakers that climate remains a top priority for the Biden administration, despite recent setbacks in the Supreme Court and Senate. “My message was climate has always been a focus of the agency. We’re going to continue to use all the tools in the toolbox. I walked them through the [West Virginia v. EPA] Supreme Court ruling and how it’s a setback, but it doesn’t take EPA out of the game,” Regan told E&E News as he left a closed-door Capitol Hill meeting with the New Democrat Coalition. [ read more … ]
Congress
Senate Dems shrug at long odds, vow renewed climate push
An increasingly vocal group of Senate Democrats wants to keep negotiating with Sen. Joe Manchin on a climate bill, but they face massive hurdles, and President Joe Biden is expected to move ahead with executive action. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) made it official yesterday: Democrats are moving forward on a smaller party-line reconciliation package centered on drug pricing and health care. [ read more … ]
Democrats have no appetite for yanking Manchin’s gavel
Democrats have little interest in removing Sen. Joe Manchin from the Energy and Natural Resources chair, despite calls from the environmental community to oust the Democratic West Virginia senator after he killed climate legislation last week. Many Democratic senators are trying to avoid talking about Manchin, given that they still need his vote on nominations and on a slimmed down reconciliation package centered on drug pricing and the Affordable Care Act. Others think removing him from the helm of ENR is a downright bad idea. [ read more … ]
EVs
Electric Cars Start Covering More Ground Than Combustion Counterparts
Using an EV more in times of high gasoline prices is to be expected, but one of the open questions in the industry has been whether EV drivers will consistently cover more miles on average than gas or diesel car owners. In many countries it’s difficult to get a clear read, mostly because EVs are still a very small share of the total number of cars on the road. But to get a hint of where things may head, we can turn to Norway. The latest data released from the nation’s statistical agency shows battery-electric vehicles now drive more miles annually on average than cars running purely on gasoline or diesel. Average distance traveled by the latter two car segments has fallen steadily the last 15 years. [ read more … ]
Note: News clips provided do not necessarily reflect the views of coalition or its member governors.