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Policy Watch

Washington Goes Wild, Wyoming Pipelines Win

And more of the week’s top policy news around renewable energy.

Burgum and Musk
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Catching Up With the Trumps – You’d be forgiven if you’ve been confused by the news firehose that has been the early days of Trump 2.0. Here’s a quick breakdown of what matters most for developers…

     
  • DOE Secretary Chris Wright last night issued his first order decrying net-zero but supporting nuclear and hydropower energy generation. Unlike Trumpian comms, Wright’s order did not decry wind or solar energy.
  • Interior Secretary Doug Burgum issued his own flurry of orders earlier this week that open doors to lots more public lands going to resource extraction. Given the situation at BOEM and what we’re hearing is happening at the Fish and Wildlife Service, the jury’s still out on whether his entry into Interior will ease any permitting hardships for renewable energy.
  • At the EPA, crucial funding for renewables and other decarb projects remains on ice. Oh, and they’ve gutted the environmental justice office. It is unclear how any of this will impact permitting, though.
  • The next shoe we’re waiting to drop? Changes to IRA tax guidance from the Treasury Department, which has begun to pull back from promoting ESG in the investor community.
  • For these reasons, I believe it is worth it for anyone in the developer space to be watching how Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency interact with agencies overall, from any reductions in permitting staff size to changes in Treasury’s payment systems, which govern subsidies.

We’re Watching Wyoming – Business groups successfully killed an effort in Wyoming to inhibit eminent domain powers in the name of stopping CO2 pipelines.

  • Republican lawmakers had introduced legislation undercutting state regulations laying the groundwork for CO2 pipeline construction, targeting Governor Mark Godron’s support for an “all of the above” approach to energy that has room for decarb strategies preferred by the oil and gas sector.
  • But the bills have floundered amidst opposition from mining as well as coal interests who say they’ve invested too much in CO2 capture to turn back now, according to the news outlet WyoFile.
  • This is the most optimistic case study I can possibly point to that laws like the Inflation Reduction Act could stick around in a fully GOP federal government. Industry’s invested quite a bit. Guess we’ll see soon if Washington is like Wyoming.
  • Republican lawmakers had introduced legislation undercutting state regulations laying the groundwork for CO2 pipeline construction, targeting Governor Mark Godron’s support for an “all of the above” approach to energy that has room for decarb strategies preferred by the oil and gas sector.
  • But the bills have floundered amidst opposition from mining as well as coal interests who say they’ve invested too much in CO2 capture to turn back now, according to the news outlet WyoFile.
  • This is the most optimistic case study I can possibly point to that laws like the Inflation Reduction Act could stick around in a fully GOP federal government. Industry’s invested quite a bit. Guess we’ll see soon if Washington is like Wyoming.

Oh, and local control legislation in Virginia we’ve told you about has failed to advance in the Senate.


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Spotlight

The Blast Radius of Interior’s Anti-Renewables Order Could Be Huge

Solar and wind projects will take the most heat, but the document leaves open the possibility for damage to spread far and wide.

Wetlands, Donald Trump, and solar panels.
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It’s still too soon to know just how damaging the Interior Department’s political review process for renewables permits will be. But my reporting shows there’s no scenario where the blast radius doesn’t hit dozens of projects at least — and it could take down countless more.

Last week, Interior released a memo that I was first to report would stymie permits for renewable energy projects on and off of federal lands by grinding to a halt everything from all rights-of-way decisions to wildlife permits and tribal consultations. At minimum, those actions will need to be vetted on a project-by-project basis by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and the office of the Interior deputy secretary — a new, still largely undefined process that could tie up final agency actions in red tape and delay.

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Hotspots

Idaho’s Lava Ridge Wind Farm Faces a New Fight in Congress

We’re looking at battles brewing in New York and Ohio, plus there’s a bit of good news in Virginia.

The United States.
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1. Idaho — The LS Power Lava Ridge wind farm is now facing a fresh assault, this time from Congress — and the Trump team now seems to want a nuclear plant there instead.

  • House Republicans this week advanced an Interior Department appropriations bill that would indefinitely halt federal funding for any permits related to the proposed wind facility “unless and until” the president reviews all of its permits issued under the Biden administration. Biden had completed permitting right before Trump took office.
  • Trump had already ordered a stop to construction on the project as part of a Day 1 flurry of executive orders. But if this policy rider becomes law, it could effectively handcuff any future president after Trump from allowing Lava Ridge to move forward.
  • While Democrats tend to view riders like these unfavorably and attempt to get rid of them, government funding packages require 60 votes in the Senate to break a filibuster, which often means partisan policies from funding bills passed by previous Congresses are challenging to get rid of and can stick around for long stretches of time.
  • By that same logic, one would assume that the need to hit that 60 number now requires Democrats, so wouldn’t they need them and want to ditch this rider? Except one thing: it is exceedingly likely given past congressional fights that the party’s right flank in the House requests fresh concessions. Policy riders like these become chits in that negotiation – and I do expect this one to be an easy sop for this flank given the executive order is already in place.
  • There’s also the whole matter of whether LS Power will try to proceed with this project under a future president amidst increasing pressure on the company. That’s likely why Sawtooth Energy, an energy developer interested in building new small modular nuclear reactors, is now eyeing the project site.

2. Suffolk County, New York — A massive fish market co-op in the Bronx is now joining the lawsuit to stop Equinor’s offshore Empire Wind project, providing anti-wind activists a powerful new ally in the public square.

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Q&A

How to Fight Back Against Anti-Renewable Activists

Getting local with Matthew Eisenson of Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

The Fight Q&A subject.
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This week’s conversation is with Matthew Eisenson at Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. Eisenson is a legal expert and pioneer in the field of renewable energy community engagement whose work on litigating in support of solar and wind actually contributed to my interest in diving headlong into this subject after we both were panelists at the Society of Environmental Journalists’ annual conference last year. His team at the Sabin Center recently released a report outlining updates to their national project tracker, which looks at various facility-level conflicts at the local level.

On the eve of that report’s release earlier this month, Eisenson talked to me about what he believes are the best practices that could get more renewable projects over the finish line in municipal permitting fights. Oh — and we talked about Ohio.

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