The bill has finally wound its way through the legislature, backed by tremendous support in both chambers. It now heads to Republican Governor Phil Scott for his signature, which he has suggested he will not provide. But with two-thirds of the House of Representatives and 26 of 30 Senators supporting the law, the Vermont General Assembly could achieve an easy override should the governor choose to exercise his right to veto. Once the bill takes effect, Vermont will be the first state to make Big Oil pay for the impacts of climate disasters.

The post Vermont is on the cusp of making Big Oil pay for climate disasters appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The sun and the wind have been the country’s fastest growing sources of energy over the past decade, according to a report the nonprofit Climate Central released Wednesday. Meanwhile, coal power has declined sharply, and the use of methane (marketed as ‘natural gas‘) in electricity generation has all but leveled off. With the Inflation Reduction Act poised to kick that growth curve higher with expanded tax credits for manufacturing and installing photovoltaic panels and wind turbines, the most optimistic projections suggest that the country is getting ever-closer to achieving its 2030 and 2035 clean energy goals.

“I think the rate at which renewables have been able to grow is just something that most people don’t recognize,” said Amanda Levin, director of policy analysis at the nonprofit National Resources Defense Council, who was not involved in preparing the report.

In the decade analyzed by Climate Central, solar went from generating less than half a percent of the nation’s electricity to producing nearly four percent. In that same period, wind grew from four percent to roughly 10. Once hydropower, geothermal, and biomass are accounted for, nearly a quarter of the nation’s grid was powered by renewable electricity in 2023, with the share only expected to rise thanks to the continued surge in solar.

The vast majority of the nation’s solar capacity comes from utility-scale installations with at least one megawatt of capacity (enough to power over a hundred homes, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association). But panels installed on rooftops, parking lots, and other comparatively small sites contributed a combined 48,000 megawatts across the country.

“One thing that surprised a lot of different people who’ve read the report in our office was the strength of small-scale solar,” said Jen Brady, the lead analyst on the Climate Central report.

With residential and other small arrays accounting for 34 percent of the nation’s available capacity, “it lets you know that maybe you could do something in your community, in your home that can help contribute to it,” Brady said.

Still, the buildout of utility-scale solar farms continues to set the pace for how rapidly renewable energy can feed the country’s grid. According to Sam Ricketts, a clean energy consultant and former climate policy advisor to Washington Governor Jay Inslee, solar’s growth was driven by production and investment tax credits that President Barack Obama extended in 2015 and President Joe Biden expanded through the Inflation Reduction Act. Beyond these federal incentives that allow energy developers to claim tax credits equivalent to 30 percent of the installation cost of renewables, state policies that proactively drive clean energy or promote a competitive market in which the dwindling price of renewables allow them to outshine fossil fuels have been critical to ratcheting up growth. Yet, even with the accelerating expansion seen in the last decade, more investments and incentives are needed.

“As rapid as that growth has been, how do we make it all go that much faster?” Ricketts asks. “Because we need to be building renewables and electricity at about three times the speed that we have been over the last few years.”

Achieving that rate of build out is critical for achieving two of President Biden’s climate goals: cutting emissions economy-wide by at least half by 2030 and achieving 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035.

To realize those goals, the nation must reach 80 percent clean energy by 2030. “I dare say it’s even more important, for the time being, than 100 percent clean by 2035,” Ricketts said. Hitting that benchmark, he said, will require more federal and state policy pushes. Levin agrees.

“The IRA does a lot,” she said, “but it is not likely to do everything.”

The IRA has the ability to push renewable energy from roughly 40 percent of the nation’s energy mix, when nuclear is included, to more than 60 percent – or, in the most optimistic of scenarios, 77 percent.

But for the growth in capacity to be integrated into the system and utilized, the grid needs to be able to transmit electrons from far-off solar fields and wind farms to the places where they’re needed. While the transmission conversation most often revolves around building new lines and transmission towers, Levin notes that recent technology advances have made it possible to address half of these transmission needs simply by stringing new, advanced power lines on existing infrastructure that can handle bigger loads with fewer losses, in a process called “reconductoring.”

The other challenge that comes with building out clean energy is learning how to handle the way  wind speeds and sunshine fluctuate. While this is often levied as an argument against their reliability, Levin points out that a host of solutions exist – from expanding battery storage to adjusting loads when demand spikes – to ensure they’re reliable. The challenge is adopting them.

“Utilities are risk averse,” she said, “and their commissions can also be risk averse. And so it’s getting them to be comfortable with thinking about the way that they provide electricity and the way that they manage their system a little differently.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. Read the original story here.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

The post U.S. sees surge in renewable energy over last decade appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The rule, which follows three years of deliberation among regulators, automakers, and others, places increasingly stringent standards on the amount of CO2 and other pollutants cars can emit. The goal is to further electrify the country’s fleet through 2032, when President Joe Biden hopes to see every other car sold be electric or a plug-in hybrid.

“Three years ago, I set an ambitious target: that half of all new cars and trucks sold in 2030 would be zero-emission,” Biden said in a statement posted on social media. “Together, we’ve made historic progress. Hundreds of new expanded factories across the country. Hundreds of billions in private investment and thousands of good-paying union jobs. And we’ll meet my goal by 2030 and race forward in the years ahead.”

The guideline, which takes effect with the 2027 model year, drew support from automakers and the leader of one industry trade group appeared with Michael Regan, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, as he announced the regulation. Standing alongside gleaming chargers and spotless electric vehicles — underscoring the point of the new rule — Regan called the regulation “the strongest vehicle pollution technology standard ever finalized in United States history.”

Should the regulation survive the inevitable legal challenges — Louisiana’s Republican attorney general told the New York Times she plans to fight it in court — it will avoid more than 7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions over the next 30 years, according to the EPA. Those gains will inevitably boost public health as well.

“EPA just took a critical step to address climate change and reduce air pollution,” Harold Wimmer, president and CEO of the American Lung Association, said in a statement. “Stronger limits on pollution from cars, pickups, and SUVs will improve the air that everyone breathes and help prevent future health harms from climate change.”

How automakers meet the new guideline is up to them, as the rule is agnostic of the technologies they use to do so. Despite fearmongering from some corners of society and a specious warning from a fossil fuel trade group that the rule is an “EPA car ban,” EVs are but one approach. Plug-in hybrids and increasingly efficient internal combustion engines are other options, as the regulation only requires automakers to meet increasingly strict average emission limits across their entire product lines.

Still, the industry has made a major push into electrification and sold a record 1.2 million EVs last year. Sales slowed in recent months, however, and the new regulation will require a tenfold increase in sales within eight years. John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, called that a “stretch goal” but said Wednesday, “The future is electric.”

The EPA’s standard is less aggressive than what was included when it proposed the rules in April, a concession the Biden administration made to automakers and the United Auto Workers. Manufacturers worried the original pace was too fast, and workers worried about job security. Electric vehicles tend to have fewer parts — meaning fewer people are needed on assembly lines — and many factories are located in right-to-work states hostile to organized labor.

“I know I’ve been a thorn in your side this last year,” Bozzella, whose organization represents 42 automakers and industry suppliers, told Regan from the stage during Wednesday’s event. “But it’s only because automakers are committed to electrification, and we want this transformation to EVs — our shared goal, by the way — to succeed over the long haul.”

EPA just took a critical step to address climate change and reduce air pollution.
-Harold Wimmer, president and CEO of the American Lung Association

Tempering the guideline will likely lead to a slower near-term ramp up in vehicle electrification, but the final rule nonetheless positions the sector to see EVs account for 67% of sales by 2032, according to a memo from the Alliance for Automotive Innovation.

While climate advocates by and large applauded the new guideline, many felt the Biden administration should have acted more aggressively.

“This rule falls far short of what is needed to protect public health and our planet,” Chelsea Hodgkins, a senior policy advocate with Public Citizen, said in a statement. The organization issued a report noting the vast resources the industry expended to weaken the rule, and said, “EPA is giving automakers a pass to continue producing polluting vehicles.”

The Union of Concerned Scientists also expressed disappointment, noting that “the science is clear on both the urgent need to cut climate-endangering emissions and the fact that we can make the cuts we need. We don’t have many opportunities to reduce transportation pollution, and it’s disappointing that this rule falls short of what’s possible.”

Still, any slack that may come from the federal effort may be picked up by the states. California plans to ban the sale of new internal combustion vehicles by 2035. Eight states have followed suit, pointing the way toward what is possible.

This article originally appeared in Grist. Read the original story here.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

The post Biden takes ‘critical step’ to decarbonize transportation with new tailpipe rules appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Across nearly every segment tracked by Rhodium Group and its collaborators at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, investments have not only increased since President Joe Biden signed the legislation, the rate of growth has quickened, too. In the 12 months from October 2022 through September 2023, $220 billion poured into everything from battery factories to solar farms to emerging technologies like hydrogen, including $34 billion in federal spending, mostly in the form of tax credits.

The report shows, among other things, the scale of investments that the government can spur with a clear commitment to a specific course of action. Both figures reveal a substantive increase in the financial pressure building behind the transition to a clean economy and testify to the role progressive policies play in pushing that economic transformation forward.

“It’s proving the value of the federal government taking the lead, putting in place policy that says, ‘This is the direction that we’re headed: supporting decarbonization, supporting clean energy,’” said Hannah Hess, an associate director of climate and energy at Rhodium Group who co-authored the report.

By taking that lead, many billions more have flowed into the clean economy. In 2023, the sector as a whole logged new records for yet another year. Utility-scale solar and storage grew more than 50% compared to 2022 to a total of $53 billion. Investment in the entire EV supply chain hit $42 billion — up 115% over the previous year. Meanwhile, retail spending by businesses and households on things like EVs, heat pumps, and rooftop solar came in at $118 billion, all told.

Nonetheless, several economists and analysts said that, while impressive, the rate of investment revealed in the Clean Investment Monitor still isn’t enough for the U.S. to achieve its climate goals. We can certainly cut emissions by 40%, as stated in the Inflation Reduction Act, but we’re still far from the 50% reduction needed by 2030 to meet its commitments under the Paris Agreement.

“We have more work to do,” said Catherine Wolfram, a professor of energy economics at MIT. While not involved with the Clean Investment Monitor, much of Wolfram’s work at MIT has studied the expected economic impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act. Though she doesn’t see the level of investment as yet being sufficient to achieve that ambitious goal, she underscored that the Inflation Reducation Act remains a big win, especially as a symbol of America’s commitment to climate action.

By holding a torch to the path the nation’s economy can take toward a future in which excess emissions fade into myths and fables, the government has garnered investments in projects that won’t receive federal support for years to come. In particular, Hess pointed out that more than one-fifth of the $239 billion spent in the 2023 calendar year on clean investments went toward manufacturing, particularly to all things EV. In many cases, companies are spending tens, sometimes hundreds, of millions of dollars to build factories on the promise that they will receive tax credits once batteries, solar panels, and other products start coming off the assembly line.

This reality has some investors keeping a keen eye on Congress.

Bob Keefe, executive director of the nonpartisan advocacy group E2, said that the dozens of attempts by Republican members of Congress to repeal or otherwise roll back provisions and funding sources in the Inflation Recuation Act is making some investors squeamish.

We have more work to do.
– Catherine Wolfram, a professor at MIT

“Nobody’s going to want to invest in something if the policies that [are] driving it are under threat,” Keefe said. “I mean, just the mention of ‘threat’ is enough to spook people.”

Even with those policy scares and a looming election whose outcome may jeopardize the Inflation Reducation Act’s various funding streams, E2 has nonetheless tracked announcements for hundreds of clean energy projects across 41 states since the legislation passed, with $4 billion worth of investments announced in February alone.

As long as the government doesn’t “screw it up,” Keefe said, “We are quite literally on the cusp of the biggest economic revolution we’ve seen in this country in generations.”

The trends for this have crystallized. Yes, the wind industry stumbled on land and at sea, according to the report, but it’s poised to find its footing again. But every other sector saw substantial, even startling, growth — particularly emerging technologies like hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel. That broad category saw a tenfold increase in spending in 2023, hitting $9.1 billion.

Federal investments are already exceeding the Biden administration’s own estimates, and this spending, as Hess pointed out, will only increase. Barring unexpected obstructions, the government is on track to inject not the oft-cited figure of $369 billion, but perhaps as much as $1 trillion or more into the clean economy through Inflation Reduction Act-related spending alone, according to estimates by Wolfram and her colleagues.

Wherever the final dollar figure falls, the report from Rhodium Group emphasizes the energy and enthusiasm there is behind this economic transition. To those who aren’t forehead deep in economic forecasting, the outpouring has been so expansive as to be wholly unexpected.

“Nobody could have ever predicted that we would see this type of investment, this type of job creation,” Keefe said. “It’s absolutely incredible.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. Read the original story here.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

The post With Inflation Reduction Act, U.S. is on the cusp of ‘biggest economic revolution’ in generations appeared first on Corporate Knights.