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NEW PRESSURE FROM THE LEFT: A group of left-wing House Democrats is lending support to requirements for utilities to reach 100% renewable electricity by 2030, a more aggressive target than that sought by President Joe Biden and top House Democrats.
The renewable electricity target, laid out in a resolution introduced yesterday by Reps. Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, matches the requirements several left-wing environmental groups are pressuring top Democrats to endorse. Those groups have been fighting to convince Biden and top Democrats to ditch carbon capture and nuclear energy as part of their plans to green the power sector, instead focusing only on renewable energy.
Last month, hundreds of environmental and grassroots groups, including Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and 350.org, sent a letter to lawmakers calling on them to pursue a national standard requiring 100% renewable power by 2030.
Thus far, the Biden administration and top House Democrats have refused to budge. National climate adviser Gina McCarthy said also last month that the administration won’t leave nuclear or carbon capture out of its green infrastructure plans. Biden will instead find other ways to address the concerns raised by activists that those technologies wouldn’t address the pollution harming poorer and minority regions, she said.
Nonetheless, there appears to be at least a handful of House Democrats that endorse 100% renewable power by 2030. Seven other Democrats, including Green New Deal author Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, joined Bush and Bowman on their resolution.
The details: The resolution itself didn’t explicitly call for a national renewable electricity standard. Instead, the resolution focuses on bolstering public power, as opposed to investor-owned utilities, proposing the federal government or other public entities acquire private investor-owned power companies that don’t meet strict “climate and justice requirements.”
In addition, the lawmakers call on all already-existing public power companies and cooperative power systems to reach 100% renewable power by “no later than 2030,” including the biggest public power entity, the Tennessee Valley Authority.
The resolution has the backing of more than 40 environmental groups, including several that signed the May letter calling for a national renewable electricity standard.
A threat to Biden’s plans? With Democrats’ margins slim in the House, Biden and Democratic leaders can’t afford to lose many votes from their own if they intend to pass substantial climate policy, which is likely to include a target to reach carbon-free power by 2035.
The question is whether left-wing Democrats would be willing to collectively fight for a renewable electricity-based target that excludes resources such as natural gas, nuclear energy, and carbon capture — a move that would throw a wrench in Biden’s plans.
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.
WYOMING’S BET ON SMALL NUCLEAR REACTORS COULD LAUNCH AN INDUSTRY: If Bill Gates’s TerraPower can successfully build an advanced nuclear reactor at a retiring coal plant in Wyoming, it will establish the new form of carbon-free nuclear power as a resource in the transition to cleaner energy, Josh writes for a deep dive for our magazine today on the importance of the project.
As developers of new reactors promise a smaller, cheaper, and safer alternative to financially struggling large nuclear plants, skeptics have questioned whether they can be counted on to fight climate change. The first of these reactors are not expected to be on the market until late this decade.
But proponents say a new partnership announced this week by TerraPower, utility PacifiCorp, and Republican leaders in Wyoming shows that small nuclear reactors can serve a unique role by creating a credible alternative for coal plants and their workers in a way that wind and solar can’t.
“A lot of fossil fuel-dependent communities are pushing back against the energy transition because they don’t see a future in it,” said Alex Gilbert, project manager of the Nuclear Innovation Alliance. “Advanced nuclear provides a vision for the future.”
Match made in heaven? The nuclear power industry and its supporters have long touted small reactors as a cleaner replacement for coal, given similar attributes (24/7 power) and job quality (high paying and unionized).
Siting a nuclear project at a coal plant also enables the reactors to link up with existing transmission lines and other infrastructure, reducing potential construction costs. Similarly, nuclear plants can use the same water source that a coal plant has used.
But TerraPower is the first to try and prove that a switch from coal to small nuclear reactors can work.
“This is really a unique way to demonstrate how new advanced nuclear reactors can provide different end uses and different value than just traditional large reactors,” said Niko McMurray, nuclear policy director at ClearPath, a conservative clean energy group.
WILDFLOWER LISTING COULD THREATEN LITHIUM PROJECT: The Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to list a rare wildflower as an endangered species, a move that could threaten a massive lithium mine proposed for construction in Nevada.
The agency’s decision, outlined in a notice published today, comes after years of back-and-forth between Ioneer, the Australian-based company proposing to build the mine, and environmental groups seeking to protect the wildflower.
The wildflower, known as Tiehm’s buckwheat, is only known to grow in Nevada’s Rhyolite Ridge, a region halfway between Las Vegas and Reno with one-of-a-kind mineralogy Ioneer hopes to take advantage of to produce lithium at some of the world’s lowest costs.
The fight over Ioneer’s project exemplifies the tension the Biden administration faces more broadly as it pursues an aggressive climate agenda while also attempting to bolster conservation efforts in the United States.
More in Abby’s story from yesterday.
COAL GROUPS JOIN CALLS FOR SCOTUS TO WEIGH EPA CLIMATE AUTHORITY: The National Mining Association and coal-heavy utility Basin Electric Cooperative are supporting an effort from GOP attorneys general to convince the Supreme Court to rule on the scope of EPA’s authority to regulate power plant greenhouse gas emissions before the Biden administration even issues a new regulation.
In the last week, the mining group and utility filed separate briefs in support of the attorneys general, who are seeking to head off a stricter power plant carbon rule from Biden’s team. The effort challenges a ruling from a federal appeals court in January, just one day before Biden took office, that scrapped the Trump administration’s weaker carbon standards and essentially gave the Biden administration a clean slate to regulate.
However, the state attorneys general, along with the mining group and coal-heavy utility, want the Supreme Court to decide definitively how much authority the EPA has to control power plant greenhouse gas emissions.
“Declining to answer the Question Presented now will leave the energy economy, especially the coal-fired energy sector, in a state of significant uncertainty for years, while all must wait for the EPA to act on the D.C. Circuit’s mandate for a new rulemaking that considers generation shifting,” the National Mining Association wrote in its filing. “If that mandate is wrong, the years lost will cause needless harms that cannot later be undone.”
Basin Electric, in its filing, said a broad EPA regulation requiring utilities to shift from coal and gas to renewables “would severely undermine Basin Electric’s (and other electric generation utilities’) ability to continue transitioning to more diverse energy portfolios while meeting the Nation’s energy demands.”
FORD HIT RECORD ELECTRIC VEHICLE SALES LAST MONTH: Fresh off the unveiling of its all-electric F-150 pickup truck, the automaker said yesterday its electric vehicle sales grew 184% in May, reaching a new record monthly sales of more than 10,000 electric cars.
Just last week, Ford’s CEO Jim Farley announced plans to increase the company’s spending on electric models to $30 billion, and the company expects 40% of its entire vehicle volume to be electric by 2030. Ford has also produced more all-electric Mustangs so far this year than the gas-powered version of that model, per Bloomberg.
PRESSURE GROWS ON BIDEN TO DUMP REPUBLICANS: Liberal climate activists are escalating their calls for Biden move to a more clean energy-centric reconciliation package instead of trying to reach a narrower bipartisan infrastructure deal.
Activists with the Sunrise Movement are protesting outside the White House this morning, demanding a meeting with Biden and calling on him to stop negotiating with Republicans.
“It’s time to meet with us, the young organizers that elected him, instead,” said Varshini Prakash, executive director of Sunrise Movement.
Another influential group, Evergreen Action, is sounding the alarm that Republicans’ real aim in negotiations is to “run out the clock” on Biden’s “popular” clean energy agenda and make it harder for Democrats to pass a larger reconciliation bill later this year, as the 2022 midterms get closer.
“Reversing course now and allowing bad-faith GOP negotiations to push him to a plan with a fraction of that ambition would be a disaster for our climate,” said Evergreen executive director Jamal Raad in a statement yesterday.
HOUSE DEMOCRATS’ VISION FOR INFRASTRUCTURE: House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Democrats introduced a $547 billion surface transportation bill today that calls for huge investments in transit and rail to reduce the nation’s reliance on road travel.
The package, spent over five years, provides $109 billion for transit and $95 billion for rail — including a tripling of funding to Amtrak. It also provides $4 billion for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, while encouraging states to repair existing roads rather than build new ones.
Democratic committee chairman Peter DeFazio of Oregon said the bill represents a “core piece” of Biden’s American Jobs plan by “tackling climate change head-on.”
Committee Democrats plan to markup the legislation next week, taking a different approach than the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, which advanced a bipartisan $303.5 billion surface transportation bill last week.
GRANHOLM AND MANCHIN PITCH CLEAN ENERGY IN COAL COUNTRY: Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Sen. Joe Manchin announced a new collaboration between a West Virginia manufacturer and the offshore wind industry during a two-day visit to his home state that started yesterday.
Partners in the project will build a ship, made using steel manufactured in West Virginia, to transport parts for offshore wind projects that are set to explode on the U.S. East Coast.
Utility Dominion Energy will own the ship that will be built with the help of Steel of West Virginia. The Danish company offshore wind company Orsted and energy provider Eversource will charter the ship, which is expected to be built by the end of 2023.
The ship is intended to overcome hurdles from the Jones Act, which prohibits tankers from hauling goods and commodities, such as oil or natural gas, between U.S. ports unless the ships are American made, owned, and crewed.
Granholm and Manchin plan to tour an underground coal mine and a rare earth elements lab today. The Associated Press has more on their visit.
The Rundown
New York Times Tasked to fight climate change, a secretive UN agency does the opposite
Wall Street Journal Smugglers undercut green targets for air conditioners, refrigerators in Europe
Reuters Biden’s electric vehicle plan includes battery recycling push
Bloomberg How China beat the U.S. to become world’s undisputed solar champion
Calendar
TUESDAY | JUNE 8
10 a.m. 366 Dirksen. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing to consider the nominations of Tracy Stone-Manning to be director of the Bureau of Land Management, Shalanda Baker to be director of the office of minority economic impact at the Department of Energy, Samuel Walsh to be general counsel at the Department of Energy, and Andrew Light to be an assistant secretary of energy for international affairs.
10 a.m. SD-342 Dirksen. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing titled, “Threats to Critical Infrastructure: Examining the Colonial Pipeline Cyber Attack.”
1:05 p.m. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm delivers remarks on her vision for nuclear energy at the Nuclear Energy Institute’s Nuclear Energy Assembly.
WEDNESDAY | JUNE 9
10 a.m. 301 Russell. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a hearing titled, “PFAS: the View from Affected Citizens and States.”
