Daily on Energy: What the solar industry wants from Biden clean energy push

“The policy really is a long-term, stable tax regime so that companies understand what the rules of the road are,” Hopper told Abby. That could be a long-term extension of solar tax credits (as President Joe Biden has proposed in his infrastructure plan) or a carbon tax, she said.

“We are less concerned about that specific tool, and much more concerned about the long-term, durable nature of the policy,” Hopper added, noting it has to offer enough stability to encourage companies to deploy capital.

To support the Biden administration’s carbon-free power by 2035 goal, the solar industry would grow to more than 900,000 jobs (versus 400,000 jobs by 2030 under current policies), according to projections from the SEIA, the Solar Foundation, BW Research, and the Interstate Renewable Energy Council.

The solar industry’s expected growth comes after a year where employment dipped amid the pandemic and as technology made utility-scale solar installations more efficient. According to the group’s census report, solar employment dipped 6.7% in 2020, even as the industry installed record levels of capacity last year.

Will those new solar jobs be “good-paying, union jobs” as Biden has promised? The census report notes that 10.3% of solar workers are unionized, comparable with the national rate of 10.8% and unionization rates for the overall construction trade and manufacturing sectors.

Nonetheless, Hopper said it isn’t a “binary choice” that a job “either has to be union or it’s bad.” While she said she wouldn’t be surprised to see unionization rates increase in the solar industry, she noted that the solar industry offers “good-paying, family-supporting jobs” even if they aren’t unionized.

The census report also notes that unionization doesn’t apply in much of the residential solar industry (which makes up more than half of total solar jobs) because of the large share of sole proprietorships.

The data and Hopper’s comments suggest Biden may face a challenge in fulfilling his promise to make clean energy jobs unionized, and it raises the question of whether and how Biden would impose unionization on the industry.

Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers Josh Siegel (@SiegelScribe) and Abby Smith (@AbbySmithDC). Email [email protected] or [email protected] for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.

THREE SECTORS DRIVING INCREASE IN METHANE: Fossil fuel production, waste, and agriculture together account for more than half of global methane emissions, but there are opportunities to reduce emissions from those sectors by as much as 45% in the next decade at little cost, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Program and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition.

The greatest potential to curb methane in the next decade is in the fossil fuel sector, the report says. Those reduction measures would also cost the least or, in some cases, even have negative costs as captured methane can be resold for revenue in the oil and gas sector.

“One thing the report calls for very strongly is not building any more of this fossil fuel infrastructure,” said Drew Shindell, a Duke University professor who chaired the Climate and Clean Air Coalition panel working on the report. “If we are phasing this out over the next couple of decades, the first thing to do is don’t make that challenge harder.”

The assessment comes as global methane levels are spiking, reaching the highest levels on record last year according to updated data yesterday from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

What the U.S. is doing to address methane: During a news conference on the report, Rick Duke, a climate and foreign policy adviser to special climate envoy John Kerry, said the U.S. has been raising policies to curb methane emissions in conversations with other countries.

The EPA will be working with other governments to implement standards to reduce methane from oil and gas production and the waste sector, Duke said. He added that the Department of Agriculture will similarly work with other countries and the farming industry to tackle agricultural methane, accounting for the biggest chunk of methane from human activities.

Nonetheless, the Biden administration didn’t set a specific target to reduce methane as part of its new Paris Agreement commitment, despite significant pressure from environmental groups to do so.

CHINA’S EMISSIONS PROBLEM IS HUGE: China’s emissions of greenhouse gases have more than tripled over the last three decades and now for the first time exceed those of all developed countries combined, according to new research today.

China contributed 27% of global emissions in 2019, far exceeding the U.S. — the second highest emitter at 11%, followed by India (6.6%) and the European Union (6.4%), the Rhodium Group found.

In 2019, China’s emissions reached 14,093 million metric tons of carbon equivalent, a more than tripling of 1990 levels, and a 25% increase over the past decade.

That level of emissions is greater than the amount combined from all members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, as well as 27 EU member states, which emitted 14,057 million metric tons of carbon equivalent in 2019.

China’s emissions were less than a quarter of developed country emissions in 1990. But now, whether the country takes action this decade to reduce emissions, chiefly by getting off coal, is crucial to whether the world meets international climate goals.

Despite China’s huge emissions growth, the U.S., which industrialized before China, has contributed the most cumulative emissions of any country.

Check out this handy chart detailing China’s emissions compared to developed countries.

US-EU LOVEFEST ON CLEAN ENERGY DEVELOPMENT: Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and her European counterpart avoided sticky issues during a joint appearance at the EU-US Future Forum, focusing on cooperating on combating climate change through driving down the costs of exportable clean energy technologies.

“We want to learn from you and partner with you to solve these big problems,” Granholm told Kadri Simson, European commissioner for energy, at the forum hosted by the European Union’s delegation to the U.S. and The Atlantic Council. “We are more powerful together.”

Simson said a new clean technology alliance with the U.S. would focus on joint research programs into technologies such as carbon capture, energy storage, and hydrogen.

“We are very interested in working closely with the U.S.,” Simson said. “We are on the same page.”

The two leaders were not asked about areas of potential conflict, such as the prospect of the EU imposing a border carbon adjustment.

FLIPPING THE BIRD: The Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service proposed a rule today to revoke a Trump administration regulation finalized in its last days reinterpreting the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act to roll back energy companies’ legal liability for killing birds incidentally during operations.

“The Migratory Bird Treaty Act is a bedrock environmental law that is critical to protecting migratory birds and restoring declining bird populations,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.

Under the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law, it’s possible that oil and gas companies would no longer be liable for killing birds during events like BP’s Deepwater Horizon. Because of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the enforcement of “incidental take,” BP paid a $100 million settlement that went toward funding wetland restoration.

The Biden administration’s Fish and Wildlife Service is taking public comments on its proposed reversal of the Trump rule until June 7.

HOUSE DEMOCRATS’ LEASING REFORMS GET COMMITTEE APPROVAL: The House Natural Resources Committee passed a number of Democratic bills yesterday that could help deliver on Biden’s effort to reform the federal oil and gas leasing program by raising costs on producers and imposing stricter regulatory requirements.

The bills, sponsored by Reps. Alan Lowenthal, Katie Porter, and Mike Levin (all Democrats from Western states), would increase royalty rates, rental fees, and minimum bid amounts, strengthen bonding requirements on producers, meaning that when a company goes bankrupt, there is more assurance they could foot the bill to reclaim their wells, and require companies to disclose the amount of methane emitted from each well on public lands.

“The good old days of shoveling taxpayer money to Big Oil and then sticking us with the cleanup bill are over,” said Raul Grijalva, Democratic chairman of the committee.

VOTERS LIKE CARBON PRICING AND CES: Majorities of Americans support both carbon pricing and a clean electricity standard as policies to reduce emissions, according to a new poll commissioned by the Electric Power Supply Association, a trade group representing competitive power suppliers.

Support for a clean electricity standard is higher at 69% compared to 56% who endorsed carbon pricing in the poll conducted by Morning Consult.

Interestingly, a majority of Democrats and Republicans back both policies, while Independents showed strong support for the clean electricity standard.

The majority of people also expressed support for natural gas when the fossil fuel was described as helping to ensure reliability during the clean energy transition.

Of those polled, 79% endorsed “maintaining some existing generating facilities, like natural gas plants, as backup options to renewable energy sources to ensure reliability.”

Natural gas was perceived as the most “reliable” energy source of eight tested, with 80% saying it is very or somewhat reliable (solar also scored high on these marks at 72%).

The poll consisted of 2,200 adults conducted online late last month.

DEMOCRATS PUSH ELECTRIC HIGHWAY: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Andy Levin re-introduced legislation yesterday to support the buildout of a nationwide network of high-speed electric vehicle chargers along the national highway system within five years.

Ocasio-Cortez said during a news conference that the bill, which would also ensure at least 50% of the grant funding goes to build chargers in disadvantaged regions, is part of the “Green New Deal suite of bills.”

The bill would have the secretary of Transportation develop a plan within a year to build enough high-speed chargers so people can drive an electric car anywhere in the country “without fear of running out of juice,” Levin said. Within two years, the agency would need to determine how best to pay for those chargers.

Ocasio-Cortez also credited efforts such as her and Levin’s legislation with pushing much of the Democratic Party to think bigger when it comes to electric vehicle adoption. She pointed to Biden’s joint address to Congress, where he touted his goal to build more than 500,000 public electric vehicle chargers.

“We heard about really building up infrastructure across the United States in exactly that aggressive way that we were told was impossible just two years ago,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

DIRECT AIR CAPTURE SET TO GROW EXPONENTIALLY: Global capacity for direct air capture, which pulls carbon directly from ambient air, will grow 150-fold by 2024, with the first large-scale facility set to come online that year, Bloomberg NEF said in a new report yesterday.

Carbon Engineering, a Canadian-based firm, is working to build a direct air capture facility that would capture 1 million tons of carbon per year by 2024. That facility, which will be located in the Permian Basin, would be 250 times larger than the current largest facility, according to BNEF.

Current global direct air capture capacity is just 6,415 tons of carbon per year, the BNEF report notes. The other two major direct air capture firms — Climeworks and Global Thermostat — are moving more “iteratively,” building a series of slightly larger facilities, BNEF says.

The Rundown

New York Times As cars go electric, China builds a big lead in factories

Bloomberg Peak LNG looms in Europe with investors wary of new projects

Reuters Gas producer EQT Corp to buy private driller Alta Resources for $3 bln

CNN Biden administration details plans to conserve 30% of US land and water by 2030

Calendar

THURSDAY | MAY 6

1 p.m. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm will testify remotely on DOE’s FY 2022 budget request before the House Appropriations Committee’s Energy and Water Development Subcommittee.

TUESDAY | MAY 11

10 a.m. 216 Hart. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure will hold a hearing titled, “Equity in Transportation Infrastructure: Connecting Communities, Removing Barriers, and Repairing Networks across America.”

THURSDAY | MAY 13

10 a.m. 366 Dirksen. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing to examine offshore energy development in federal waters. It will also consider the nomination of Tommy Beaudreau to be deputy secretary of the Interior.

10:30 a.m. The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee will hold a remote hearing on Superfund provisions in the “CLEAN Future Act.”