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DEMOCRATS HEAD TO THE PICKET LINES: Democratic members of Congress are joining auto workers behind the picket lines in solidarity as the UAW begins strikes against the Big Three automakers.
Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan posted a video Friday morning holding a picket sign in Wayne, Ohio.
“These are folks who sacrificed over the years to make sure that these companies were successful,” Peters said.
Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, is traveling to Detroit to appear at a rally alongside UAW president Shain Fain. Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who’s up for reelection this year, is also joining workers in Toledo.
Those that can’t make it are issuing statements of solidarity through press releases.
GOP places blame on Biden electric vehicle push: Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas blamed the strikes on President Joe Biden in an X statement on Friday, asserting that the strikes are due to “Biden & his demagogues obsession w/ unreliable & unaffordable Electric Vehicles that no one wants to buy.”
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AUTOMAKERS REACT TO UAW STRIKE: “Small and medium-sized manufacturers across the country will feel the brunt of this work stoppage, whether they are a union shop or not,” the National Association of Manufacturers said in reaction to the strike.
The UAW’s requests would have cost the auto industry an estimated $80 billion over the next four years—which Ford CEO Jim Farley told CNBC would have driven Ford into bankruptcy. UAW was seeking worker pay that’s “four, five, even six times as high” as the pay for tenured teachers, military personnel, and firefighters in the U.S., he said. “There’s no way we can be sustainable as a company” under those terms, he added.
He also criticized UAW leadership for failing to engage more on negotiations, noting that they did not come back to the table with a counteroffer for automakers until four hours before the midnight deadline Thursday. “We’ve been putting contract [offers] in, negotiating with ourselves, for the last two weeks,” he said. “I don’t know what Shawn Fain is [or has been] doing, but he’s not negotiating this contract with us.”
Stellantis, too, said it was “extremely disappointed” by what it described as the UAW leadership’s “refusal” to engage in talks. “We immediately put the company in contingency mode and will take all the appropriate structural decisions to protect our North American operations,” it said.
BIDEN PROMISES ON WIND SLIPPING OUT OF REACH? President Joe Biden’s goal of decarbonizing the U.S. economy by 2050 through the deployment of offshore wind is hitting a number of snags, due to soaring costs and supply chain delays – threatening his goal of building out 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind along U.S. coastlines this decade.
As Reuters reports, soaring material costs, high interest rates and supply chain delays have led project developers such as Orsted, Equinor, BP, Avangrid, and Shell to either cancel or renegotiate power contracts for the first commercial-scale wind farms – projects that are expected to begin operations between 2025 and 2028.
Companies are saying they’re remaining committed to the projects, which have the combined capacity of more than 6,000 MW. Delays, however, have resulted in the need to create new contracts and secure specialized equipment in demand all over the world.
“The U.S. will not reach the 30 GW by 2030 target,” Samantha Woodworth, North American wind analyst at Wood Mackenzie, told Reuters in an email, citing “recent upheaval.” The energy research firm estimates 21 GW of offshore wind along U.S. shores in 2030, breaking 30 GW by 2032. More on that here.
ENVIRONMENTALISTS SEEK SHUTDOWN OF DIABLO NUCLEAR PLANT REACTOR: Two environmental groups called on the NRC yesterday to immediately shut down one of two reactors at California’s last remaining nuclear power plant, citing safety concerns that they say warrant additional testing at the Diablo Canyon facility and threaten potential “catastrophe.”
In their filing, Friends of the Earth and Mothers for Peace cited concerns with a pressure vessel located in Diablo Canyon’s Unit 1 reactor, which they said had not been tested in nearly 20 years. Prolonged exposure risks deterioration, embrittlement, or other damage, they groups argued, which could make it susceptible to cracking.
Pacific Gas & Electric “has repeatedly postponed essential metallurgical tests and ultrasound inspections over the past two decades” on the vessel, they added.
In response, PG&E spokeswoman Suzanne Hosn said Diablo has an “excellent” and safe operating record, noting it is among the highest-performing plants in the nation according to the NRC’s own assessment.
The filing from the environmental groups is the latest salvo in a yearslong fight over Diablo, the last remaining nuclear plant in California. It supplies 17% of California’s greenhouse-gas-free electricity supply and 8.6% of the state’s total electricity, and was approved this year to extend operations beyond its planned shutdown date in 2025 amid concerns over California’s aging power grid. Read more from Breanne here.
CALIFORNIA PROPOSES HIGHER RATES FOR PG&E CUSTOMERS: California regulators released two new rate proposals for PG&E customers yesterday that could drive up power bills for consumers by as much as $26 per month, as the utility seeks to help protect against wildfire spread and increase prevention efforts.
PG&E is seeking rate increases large enough to boost revenue by 13%, the Associated Press reports, down from its original request of 26%. Part of that plan, which must be reviewed every four years by California’s Public Utilities Commission, includes burying some 2,100 miles of power lines—a lengthy and expensive project, though one that can go a long way in stopping new fires and preventing others from spreading further.
The Utility Reform Network told the Associated Press that the proposal would raise costs for average residents by between $24 and $28 per month by 2026. “Both proposed decisions adopt substantial and painful increases to monthly bills, far beyond the cost of inflation, which [we believe] should be a cap for bill increases,” Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, told the outlet.
HOUSE PASSES BILL BLOCKING CALIFORNIA-STYLE LIMITS ON ICE-POWERED CARS: House lawmakers voted 222-190 yesterday to approve a bill aimed at protecting sales of gas-powered vehicles in the U.S. as California and other states seek to ban the sales of new ICE vehicles by 2035.
As we reported yesterday, the “Preserving Choice in Vehicle Purchases Act,” introduced by Republican Rep. John Joyce of Pennsylvania, would amend the Clean Air Act and block the EPA from granting waivers for regulations that “ban the sale or use of new motor vehicles with internal combustion engines.”
It comes as California has pushed to ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles in the state by 2035, a move that would have ramifications for the 17 other states that follow its rules. Republicans have noted that those states make up 40% of new car sales nationwide.
“For more than a century, the internal combustion engine has allowed people to increase their mobility and raise their standard of living,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers said on the House floor yesterday. “Restrictive government mandates isn’t how we’re going to lead the next 100 years. Yet that’s what EPA and California are trying to do.” The bill is all but certain to be a nonstarter in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
UPDATE ON PERMITTING REFORM MEETING: The heads of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee met on the issue of permitting reform this week, releasing a statement Thursday following the meeting.
“We are in agreement that we must act to accelerate our permitting system and are committed to reaching a bipartisan solution that prioritizes American energy security, reliability and affordability,” read the joint statement from Chairman Joe Manchin and Ranking Member John Barrasso.
No further details: While the statement reaffirms that the two committee leaders are in alignment on permitting reform, it doesn’t go any further on what was actually discussed.
SCHATZ’S CARBON REMOVAL BILL: Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii introduced a new bill that would direct departments and agencies to further invest and research carbon removal technologies – following the Biden administration’s move to fund direct air capture plants in Texas and Louisiana.
The bill, the Carbon Dioxide Removal Research and Development (CDR R&D) Act, would direct nine federal departments and agencies to fund and conduct research, development, and demonstration of carbon removal technologies over the next decade. Research focuses include direct air capture, carbon uptake in forests and agriculture, ocean-based carbon removal, carbon mineralization, geologic sequestration, and carbon utilization.
“Climate change is the greatest challenge of our generation. To fight it, we need to do everything, including removing carbon dioxide pollution from the atmosphere,” Schatz said in a statement.
In conflict with environmentalists: This is another instance of the climate hawk putting himself at odds with some left-leaning environmentalists, some of whom oppose DAC projects on the logic that they give the fossil fuel industry a lifeline instead of forcing corporations to transition to renewable energy. Schatz has also previously backed a Manchin-proposal on federal permitting reforms, arguing that reforms are necessary to meet Democrats’ goal of curbing U.S. carbon emissions by 40% by 2030 and to speedily build out the nation’s electrical grid. But many environmentalists are weary of permitting reforms allowing for the faster buildout of brown energy projects instead, such as oil and gas.
Companion legislation has been introduced by Democratic Rep. Paul Tonko of New York. Read Schatz’s bill here.
SOARING URANIUM PRICES HIGHLIGHT DEMAND FOR NUCLEAR POWER: Prices for uranium have soared by 20% so far this year, according to new data from the World Nuclear Association (WNA), rapidly outpacing growth for other metals as more leaders look to the material as a means of producing nuclear power and carbon-free electricity, rather than weapons production.
According to the report, which is published biennially, uranium demand is expected to rise to a whopping 130,000 tonnes by 2040, up from some 65,650 tonnes in 2023. The growth is expected to be underpinned largely by demand from China, which is embracing nuclear as it seeks to wean the country off of its coal dependence. Small modular reactors are also expected to play a role in new growth, the report said. Read it in full here.
The Rundown
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