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TRIPLING ENERGY RESEARCH SPENDING: Joe Biden was just handed a comprehensive roadmap to triple U.S. clean energy innovation spending over the next five years.
The research, from Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and the Information Technology Innovation Foundation, is detailed, down to line-item funding numbers a Biden administration could request to boost clean energy spending across the federal government in its first year.
It also outlines steps the White House and Congress could take almost immediately in 2021. That includes a recommendation that any next president issue a directive establishing a National Energy Innovation Mission and creating a new White House task force to coordinate among agencies.
Ramping up clean energy innovation spending will be absolutely critical to ensuring the U.S. has the technologies and the wherewithal to achieve Biden’s targets of a carbon-free power sector by 2035 and net-zero emissions economy-wide by 2050.
It’s also likely the most politically feasible climate policy a Biden administration could tackle with Congress in the short term.
Clean energy innovation should be the “the flagship keystone initiative” of Biden’s climate policies, said Varun Sivaram, the lead author of the research and a visiting senior fellow at Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
The U.S. has been lagging on energy spending: Currently, the U.S. invests just under $9 billion a year in clean energy research and development, said Colin Cunliff, a senior policy analyst at ITIF and a co-author of the roadmap. Cunliff tallied that amount by looking across the federal government, not just at the Department of Energy, where most energy R&D is housed.
That level pales in comparison to federal spending on innovation in other sectors, Sivaram said. For example, it’s less than a quarter what the U.S. spends on healthcare innovation and less than one tenth of what it spends on defense innovation. The report recommends tripling clean energy innovation spending, to at least $25 billion annually by 2025.
What about the politics? Right now, clean energy innovation spending is one of the only climate policies most Republicans could get behind, and a Biden administration and Congress would already have some bipartisan efforts to build on.
Cunliff said the suggested FY22 funding numbers outlined in the report were built from the bottom-up, using in part bipartisan energy bills from Senate Energy Committee Chairman Lisa Murkowski and the House Science Committee.
There’s a risk, though, that clean energy spending could become more political if a Biden administration pushes faster and farther on it, Sivaram said. But he recommended Democrats embrace “good faith Republicans” who see clean energy innovation as a “legitimate tool” to cut emissions.
Clean energy innovation is “literally the highest leverage way that you can spend $1 and get an emissions reduction in cumulative emissions over the next 50 years,” Sivaram added.
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RECAPPING THE DAY OF WILDFIRE POLITICS: Just hours after Biden slammed President Trump as a “climate arsonist,” the president made comments questioning mainstream climate science that could give his Democratic rival more ammo.
“It will start getting cooler. You just watch,” Trump told California Secretary of Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot during a briefing on the dozens of major wildfires engulfing the state and much of the West.
“I wish the science agreed with you,” Crowfoot countered. Trump, in response, said, “Well, I don’t think the science knows, actually.”
Biden, meanwhile, delivered some of his strongest comments to date on the damages of climate change and the costs of inaction, during remarks at the Delaware Museum of Natural History.
If Trump gets a second term, “these hellish events will continue to become more common, more devastating, and more deadly,” Biden said of the Western wildfires, droughts and flooding in the Midwest, and the Atlantic’s extremely active hurricane season.
FACEBOOK LAUNCHES CLIMATE SCIENCE INFORMATION CENTER: The move comes as the social media company has been in hot water with environmentalists and Democrats for refusing to flag claims made by those questioning mainstream climate science as misinformation.
Facebook, in a blog post Monday, said the new Climate Science Information Center is “a dedicated space on Facebook with factual resources from the world’s leading climate organizations and actionable steps people can take in their everyday lives to combat climate change.” The resource will house scientific data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other United Nations climate organizations, as well as federal agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The move is unlikely to placate critics: Facebook says it will still exempt claims made by politicians on climate change from its fact-checking system.
“No social media company has ever tried to do so for the simple reason that political speeches always are characterized by exaggerations, selected uses of statistics, and exaggerated claims of virtues from one candidate and vices of others,” Facebook global policy chief Nick Clegg told reporters, according to Reuters.
In addition to the new information center, Facebook is also committing to reach net-zero emissions across its value chain by 2030.
INVESTORS TO HOLD COMPANIES TO ‘NET-ZERO BENCHMARK’: Climate Action 100+, a group of more than 500 global investors representing more than $47 trillion in assets, told 161 CEOs Monday it will be judging them on whether they have a comprehensive net-zero emissions by 2050 target and their progress toward achieving it.
The letter was sent to CEOs across a variety of industries, including major emitters like oil and gas companies, utilities, and transportation companies. In particular, the investors say they want to ensure companies’ net-zero targets include all of their emissions (including indirect, or scope 3, emissions, the most difficult to reduce) and set medium-term targets prior to 2050.
“The benchmark will ensure it’s clear which companies are acting on climate change as a business-critical issue and embracing a net-zero future,” said Stephanie Pfeifer, CEO of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change who is on the Climate Action 100+ steering committee. “Investors will be paying particular attention to those shown to be falling short.” Also signing the letter were the CEOs of other major investor networks, including Ceres, the Asia Investor Group on Climate Change, the Principles for Responsible Investment, and the Investor Group on Climate Change.
ANOTHER ONE: Connecticut on Monday became the fifth state to sue ExxonMobil, accusing the oil major of lying to the public about its products’ contribution to climate change. It’s the fourth such lawsuit against Big Oil in just two weeks, following similar challenges from Delaware, Charleston, South Carolina, and Hoboken, New Jersey.
The pile-on doesn’t bode well for big oil companies, especially Exxon, which is named in all the lawsuits. Already the oil companies have suffered setbacks in court trying to move some of the cases from state to federal court, seen as a more favorable venue for the industry.
Exxon and industry attorneys have said the lawsuits are political and counterintuitive to tackling climate change. But Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, a Democrat, rejected that argument in an interview with Bloomberg Law, saying if Exxon were serious about tackling climate change, it would offer to help fund efforts to adapt to its effects, as the state’s lawsuit is seeking.
“If they’re ready to do that, I’ll go to them,” Tong told Bloomberg Law. “I’ll put my mask on, get on a plane, and we’ll sit in a conference room for as long as it takes to negotiate that settlement.”
BY THE NUMBERS…PUBLIC HEALTH BENEFITS OF ELECTRIC CARS: Moving more quickly and broadly to electric cars in the U.S. could dramatically cut air pollution, delivering $72 billion in public health benefits by 2050, according to a new report from the American Lung Association.
The report, released Tuesday, models a scenario in which all passenger car sales would be zero-emissions vehicles by 2040. Such a transition would slash vehicle emissions of nitrogen oxides by 1 million tons in 2050 (82% below a business-as-usual case) and fine particulate matter by more than 30,000 tons in 2050 (a 62% cut), the American Lung Association finds.
The public health group estimates those emissions cuts would avoid around 6,300 premature deaths, more than 93,000 asthma attacks, and 416,000 lost work days. A widespread shift to electric vehicles would also cut cars’ greenhouse gas emissions by more than 1.4 billion metric tons in 2050, the report says.
CARPER WANTS PROBE OF EPA GENERAL COUNSEL’S OFFICE: Sen. Tom Carper, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment Committee, is asking the EPA’s inspector general to probe why EPA political appointees, rather than career agency lawyers, are listed as the primary attorney on several lawsuits, a move Carper calls “extraordinary.”
“Moreover, it is striking that each of these filings pertain to cases that raise legal questions that go to the heart of EPA’s authority to address some of the nation’s most pressing environmental challenges,” Carper wrote in a letter Tuesday to EPA Inspector General Sean O’Donnell. Those included lawsuits over the EPA’s rewrites of several major Obama-era regulations that significantly narrowed the agency’s authority, such as carbon limits for power plants and pollution controls for waterways.
Carper is raising questions about whether Trump appointees spearheading the EPA’s defense in these cases means legal advice from career agency lawyers is being sidelined. “My office has been told by one individual familiar with one of these cases that career attorneys refused to sign at least one of the filings because they likely presented arguments that have no legal merit at all,” Carper wrote.
DAIMLER AG HIT FOR EMISSIONS CHEATING: The German automaker and its American subsidiary Mercedes-Benz will pay roughly $1.5 billion under a settlement agreement with the EPA, the Justice Department, and the California Air Resources Board, the agencies announced Monday.
The civil penalty the automaker will pay, totalling $875 million, is the second largest in Clean Air Act history (behind Volkswagen, also caught in an emissions cheating scandal). Daimler will also repair and remove the defeat devices from all affected vehicles at no cost to customers, expected to cost roughly $436 million, according to the proposed settlement.
EPA staff discovered Daimler’s defeat devices through testing at its vehicles lab in Michigan following the Volkswagen scandal, according to the agencies’ news release.
The Rundown
New York Times Pipeline politics: Why Nord Stream 2 is back in the spotlight
Wall Street Journal OPEC extends forecast for decline in global oil demand
Washington Post Two major Antarctic glaciers are tearing loose from their restraints, scientists say
New York Times Magazine and ProPublica How climate migration will reshape America
Wired The Trump team has a plan to not fight climate change
Calendar
WEDNESDAY | SEP. 16
10 a.m. The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change holds a remote hearing titled, “Building a 100 Percent Clean Economy: Opportunities for an Equitable, Low-Carbon Recovery.”
10 a.m. 366 Dirksen. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee holds a confirmation hearing to consider Allison Clements and Mark Christie to be members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
10 a.m. 106 Dirksen. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee holds a hearing entitled “Stakeholder Reactions: The Navigable Waters Protection Rule under the Clean Water Act.”
2:30 p.m. 366 Dirksen. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests, and Mining holds a hearing to review various bills.
