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Climate Bill ‘Transformative’ for Auto and Energy Industries
Democrats are proposing to expand cash incentives for buyers of electric vehicles, along with billions of dollars for automakers, battery manufacturers and suppliers to build or retool factories in the United States. There is money to help consumers pay for rooftop solar panels, for electric vehicle chargers and for fuel-efficient heat pumps. Filled with compromises, the proposal offers something to all sides of the energy industry. There is a 10-year extension of tax credits for wind, solar and other renewable energy and tax credits for carbon capture technology that companies like Exxon Mobil have invested in. The bill would introduce a new fee on methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure while giving fossil fuel companies access to more leases on federal lands and waters. [ read more … ]
Wind Energy
First-of-a-kind N.Y. offshore wind plan shows grid challenge
New York deepened its commitments to offshore wind last week, announcing it would buy power from a large suite of projects while adding requirements for transmission that could set a national precedent. Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement that New York has begun soliciting project proposals from developers to build at least 2,000 megawatts of offshore wind — enough for about 1.5 million homes. [ read more … ]
Unexploded bomb discovery flags growing challenge for offshore wind
The first large offshore wind farms in the United States are unearthing unexploded munitions from World War II, representing a potentially growing challenge for both developers and U.S. policymakers as the emerging industry anchors off America’s coasts. While surveying the seafloor in the waters of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay in recent weeks, the Danish firm Ørsted found 11 unexploded weapons, prompting a warning to mariners by the Coast Guard. [ read more … ]
Solar Energy
How Joe Manchin’s change of heart could revive the U.S. solar industry
“This is a historic climate bill, but it’s also one of — if not the — most significant industrial policy bills of this era,” said Harry Godfrey, who oversees domestic manufacturing policy for Advanced Energy Economy, a trade group that represents clean tech companies eager to ramp up U.S. production. The boost to the industry comes at a time of solar power reckoning for America. [ read more … ]
Reconciliation Bill
Generally
Here’s What’s in Democrats’ $370 Billion Climate Spending Deal
In a breakthrough that surprised much of Washington, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Joe Manchin announced Wednesday they agreed on a plan that includes a record $370 billion in spending to fight climate change. The deal — if it can pass muster with all 50 Democrats in the Senate, as well as progressives in the House — would cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 40% by the end of the decade, according to analysts. That helps put the US on track to meet President Joe Biden’s goal of cutting emissions by as much as 52% from 2005 levels by the end of the decade. [ read more … ]
Big things in Democrats’ budget reconciliation package
The Democrat’s proposal would undo a 10-year moratorium on offshore wind leasing established by former President Donald Trump for North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. The bill would also order Interior to begin offshore wind planning for the U.S. territories by 2025, including Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The legislation addresses one of offshore wind’s most pressing future challenges in the Northeast by directing $100 million of otherwise unappropriated federal dollars to Interior for transmission planning. [ read more … ]
Transmission
How Manchin-Schumer would change energy, from oil to solar
The Schumer-Manchin proposal does not include a new investment tax credit (ITC) for long-distance high-voltage transmission lines proposed by some congressional lawmakers and endorsed by the Biden administration. While some transmission developers can probably take advantage of the federal loan guarantees included in the Schumer-Manchin plan, “many cannot,” Gramlich said in an email yesterday. “Cost isn’t the key barrier for transmission lines. There are numerous, cost-effective projects that just don’t get built. The real barriers are siting and permitting times and cost allocation,” Jenkins said in an email. The tax credit makes the financing a bit easier but is probably not a difference-maker in getting lines built, he added.
[ read more … ]
EVs
Biden Has a $5 Billion Plan to Eliminate America’s EV Charging Deserts
Montana’s vast spaces and epic vistas, its mountains and boundless plains, seem made for a road trip. Just not in an electric car. There’s almost no place in public to plug in. Across Montana’s 147,000 square miles, the state government recently counted 57 charging stations, most of them clustered in towns and cities rather than along the highway. Traveling the long stretches between communities requires careful planning, or leaving the EV at home. [ read more … ]
Senate climate deal: Boost or barrier for EVs?
The Senate’s sweeping climate and energy bill would do nothing less than reshape how cars are made in the electric age, offering automakers nearly irresistible inducements to build the supply chains in America — or more to the point, not in China. In reaching for this goal and a laundry list of others related to electric vehicles, the bill — which resulted from a deal between Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Energy and Natural Resources Chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) — invents new rules that the government has never applied to vehicles, leaving some experts scratching their heads over how it is supposed to work in practice. [ read more … ]
Markets
‘Not the same oil industry.’ Record profits don’t create jobs.
Oil field jobs, which plummeted during the pandemic and recession two years ago, haven’t recovered even though the oil industry itself is back on its feet and many companies are recording healthy profits. Overall employment in the sector increased to about 633,000 jobs in June, which is still about 10 percent lower than the pre-pandemic level of about 707,000, according to the Energy Workforce and Technology Coalition, a trade group. [ read more … ]
States
Leaked: US power companies secretly spending millions to protect profits and fight clean energy
The CEO of the biggest power company in the US had a problem. A Democratic state senator was proposing a law that could cut into Florida Power & Light’s (FPL) profits. Landlords would be able to sell cheap rooftop solar power directly to their tenants – bypassing FPL and its monopoly on electricity. “I want you to make his life a living hell … seriously,” FPL’s CEO Eric Silagy wrote in a 2019 email to two of his vice-presidents about state Senator José Javier Rodríguez, who proposed the legislation. [ read more … ]
Note: News clips provided do not necessarily reflect the views of coalition or its member governors.