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Policy Watch

What I’m Watching in Washington

A rundown of key policy moves from the past week.

capitol hill.
Heatmap Illustration/Wiki Commons

China, China, China – Republicans in Congress are trying to pressure the U.S. into an even more hawkish stance against Chinese battery supply chains ahead of the November election.

  • The top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Marco Rubio, wrote the Defense Department last week requesting the Defense Department blacklist the world’s largest battery manufacturer CATL, a Chinese company.
  • The House of Representatives is also scheduled to vote next week on a bill requiring the Homeland Security Department to blacklist CATL and other Chinese-owned battery manufacturers.
  • I’ve written a lot of stories about how many Republicans are trying to get the U.S. to entirely decouple its commercial enterprises from Chinese companies – a wholly different objective than building up U.S. industries so the nation can compete with and wean off China. (Like what the IRA did.)
  • No matter the national security justifications, forcibly decoupling from China would take essential supplies off the table for an energy transition.
  • What I’m watching for is if the Republican pressure influences how Kamala Harris approaches this topic, and whether she’ll differ from the Biden administration’s approach to China and batteries.

BLM’s solar plan The Bureau of Land Management last week released its long-awaited programmatic environmental impact statement for solar development across the Southwest, opening 31 million acres to potential projects across almost a dozen states.

  • The Biden administration says its steering development away from “wildlife and land conflicts,” but it already faces pushback from conservation activists. One of the most likely plaintiffs against the plan – the Center for Biological Diversity – released a statement critical of the document that noted it would impact a sizable amount of desert tortoise habitat.

Trump’s energy whisperer The Trump campaign told Reuters last week the former president would ax the EPA’s climate-minded power plant rules if elected… but that’s not what caught my eye.

  • No, what’s most notable is that the campaign official who made this news was former Trump administration Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, who is now a key figure at the MAGA-aligned America First Policy Institute.
  • I’ve covered Bernhardt for years and interviewed him last year upon the release of his book, “You Report to Me.” It’s my belief he is angling for an even more influential role in a future Trump administration that would leverage his expertise in the administrative state to make Trump far more successful at undoing energy and climate rules. (OMB?)

Other policy moves worth watching…

Nevada’s new plan Joe Lombardo, the Republican governor of Nevada, released a new statewide climate plan after the one put forward by his Democratic predecessor vanished. It’s getting panned.

‘Greenwashing’ push — The Agriculture Department launched an initiative aimed at combating misleading climate claims in the meat and poultry industries.

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Q&A

How the Wind Industry Can Fight Back

A conversation with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications

The Q&A subject.
Heatmap Illustration

Today’s conversation is with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications, a D.C.-based communications firm that focuses on defending zero- and low-carbon energy and federal investments in climate action. Moyer, a veteran communications adviser who previously worked on Capitol Hill, has some hot takes as of late about how he believes industry and political leaders have in his view failed to properly rebut attacks on solar and wind energy, in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act. On Tuesday he sent an email blast out to his listserv – which I am on – that boldly declared: “The Wind Industry’s Strategy is Failing.”

Of course after getting that email, it shouldn’t surprise readers of The Fight to hear I had to understand what he meant by that, and share it with all of you. So here goes. The following conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.

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Hotspots

A New York Town Bans Both Renewable Energy And Data Centers

And more on this week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.

  • Chautauqua, a vacation town in southern New York, has now reportedly issued a one-year moratorium on wind projects – though it’s not entirely obvious whether a wind project is in active development within its boundaries, and town officials have confessed none are being planned as of now.
  • Apparently, per local press, this temporary ban is tied to a broader effort to update the town’s overall land use plan to “manage renewable energy and other emerging high-impact uses” – and will lead to an ordinance that restricts data centers as well as solar and wind projects.
  • I anticipate this strategy where towns update land use plans to target data centers and renewables at the same time will be a lasting trend.

2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project will learn its fate under the Trump administration by this fall, after a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department must come to a decision on how it’ll handle a court challenge against its permits by September.

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Spotlight

The Wind Projects Breaking the Wyoming GOP

It’s governor versus secretary of state, with the fate of the local clean energy industry hanging in the balance.

Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

I’m seeing signs that the fight over a hydrogen project in Wyoming is fracturing the state’s Republican political leadership over wind energy, threatening to trigger a war over the future of the sector in a historically friendly state for development.

At issue is the Pronghorn Clean Energy hydrogen project, proposed in the small town of Glenrock in rural Converse County, which would receive power from one wind farm nearby and another in neighboring Niobrara County. If completed, Pronghorn is expected to produce “green” hydrogen that would be transported to airports for commercial use in jet fuel. It is backed by a consortium of U.S. and international companies including Acconia and Nordex.

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