House Democrats are marketing their $1.5 trillion infrastructure package as a massive investment in climate change and clean energy, but leadership is still silent on the emergency tax credit relief that renewable energy developers have been seeking for months.
“This is the largest tax investment in combating climate change that Congress has ever made on the renewable front,” said Rep. Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat who leads the House Ways and Means Committee, in remarks on Thursday.
“I’ve always been a believer in incenting certain behaviors, and what better way to do that than through attacking climate change, embracing the renewables, and putting millions and millions of Americans to work?” Neal added.
Neal joined House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and several other committee leaders in unveiling a sweeping infrastructure package on Thursday. The bill, the Moving Forward Act, combines a nearly $500 billion surface transportation bill with several other pieces of legislation on energy, water, housing, and education, according to a fact sheet. The text of the bill is not available yet.
But while the Democrats’ bill includes a heavy climate change focus, it doesn’t appear to include the short-term tweaks to federal tax incentives that wind and solar companies are seeking to withstand the pandemic.
The renewable energy industry, which has lost nearly 100,000 jobs since the start of the pandemic, has asked Congress to allow companies to redeem their tax credits temporarily as direct cash payments to get around frozen tax equity markets. The industry is also asking for one-year extensions to the solar and wind tax credits to account for coronavirus-related project delays.
Without such relief, it will be difficult for clean energy companies to rehire workers and regain their footing after the pandemic, supporters said. Rank-and-file Democrats, too, are making those arguments to Pelosi.
“It’s hard to keep workers on payroll even with federal support when projects employees would return to are collapsing,” the eight Democratic co- and vice-chairmen and chairwomen of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition wrote to Pelosi and committee leaders in a letter on Thursday.
Their letter follows a separate push from 180 Democrats earlier this week calling on Pelosi to act quickly on the short-term tax credit relief.
The infrastructure legislation does include $70 billion to modernize the electricity grid, which Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat, said would help accommodate more renewable power. In addition, the bill includes substantial investments in electric vehicle charging infrastructure and zero-emissions buses and establishes incentive programs to reward states for reducing their transportation-related carbon emissions.
“This is the application of the principles of the Green New Deal, and this proves that we can both deal with climate change, fossil fuel pollution, and actually create millions of new, high-paying American jobs,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat who leads the House Transportation Committee and is shepherding the bill through the legislative process.
Pelosi said Thursday that the House will vote on the infrastructure package before July 4.
“The Grim Reaper has said nothing is going any place in the Senate,” she said, referring to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. But she said there is “tremendous interest” in moving infrastructure legislation, including from the White House.
Nonetheless, the climate-heavy focus of Democrats’ messaging is likely to complicate the politics.
Senate and House Republicans, as well as President Trump, have slammed Democrats’ efforts as akin to the Green New Deal and faulted Pelosi and other Democratic leaders for cutting out their Republican colleagues.
“The House Democrats’ partisan highway bill is a road to nowhere,” said Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican who leads the Senate Environment Committee, in a statement. Barrasso led the development of the Senate’s surface and water infrastructure legislation, all of which are bipartisan and cleared his committee unanimously.
House Democrats should look to that work as a model when they “are ready to be serious,” Barrasso added.
Republicans on the House Transportation Committee introduced their own legislation Thursday that would reauthorize surface transportation funding at current levels. Their bill includes provisions to strengthen the resilience of transportation infrastructure against extreme weather, though they don’t mention climate change.
“Surely, there was common ground to be found, including on resiliency and climate issues,” said Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri, the top Republican on the Transportation Committee, in remarks during a Wednesday markup of the Democrats’ surface transportation bill.
He added that Republicans “don’t automatically oppose” addressing those issues but that “there is a difference between addressing the issue and transforming every single core infrastructure program into a climate change program.”
Graves and other Republicans on the committee raised many objections during a marathon two-day markup of the Democrats’ bill that totaled 24 hours, but the legislation ultimately cleared by voice vote on party lines. Lawmakers accepted 34 Republican amendments and 23 Democratic amendments to the bill.
