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A conversation with Jason Clark, former chief strategy officer for American Clean Power
With the election approaching, I wanted to talk to the smartest person I could find to explain how the election could affect the Inflation Reduction Act and ultimately renewable energy development. So I hit up Jason Clark, who was until recently chief strategy officer for American Clean Power during passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and the first years of IRS guidance.
Clark, who has started energy policy consulting firm Power Brief, put together a risk profile for every major IRA program in the event of unified Republican control in Washington. I talked to him about the risk analysis, what programs are most at risk, and whether we should care about oil companies supporting some parts of the law.
Why did you do this?
I spent the last six months traveling the world and during that time, I was blissfully tuned out on politics. Now that I’m back in D.C., and given how consequential this election is going to be – suffice it to say, I’m tuned back in.
I was close to the IRA drafting process – I’m familiar with the underlying bill and also how the government thinks about the programs. I recently started a company, Power Brief, that marries my love for clean energy policy and my old consulting habits: pretty visuals and PowerPoints. And looking at what might happen to the IRA felt like THE big thing happening in the space right now, so I wanted to dive deeper.
A lot of the content has been “will they/won’t they” analysis. How much do Republicans feel strongly about this bill overall? How much passion would Trump have for pushing for a full repeal? It’s been out there. But this is so complicated and has so many moving parts. I wanted to try and capture both the political reality for some of these programs and also the very practical reality of how the government thinks about the cost of these programs. The fact it can all be contained in one visual is to help people who care about climate policy and want to really understand what may happen depending on how the election turns out.
We know Congress is going to take a stab at a new tax bill next year. I’ve written about how the IRA would be targeted in that situation. Can you help our readers understand why these programs would be vulnerable in tax talks?
Classic partisan politics in D.C. By the nature of using reconciliation, the IRA was ultimately purely Democratic-led and that automatically paints it with a certain color. I think that [former] President Trump has been very unshy about criticizing the IRA, and when he doesn’t use the IRA moniker, he uses different monikers thereof. And people are going to be looking for the easiest path [to money to extend the Trump-era tax cuts].
What I don’t think is that it’ll be thrown out entirely. We’ve seen members of the House and Senate express support for parts of it–
Republicans?
Correct. There was a letter from 18 House Republicans to the [House] Speaker [Mike Johnson] saying we shouldn’t just throw this out, we should really look at it. And I think that there’s a lot of people who look at where the investment from the IRA is flowing – a lot of the dollars are going to Republican-controlled states and districts. Yes, that may insulate the whole bill from repeal outright but a lot of that is announced investment but hasn’t turned into steel on the ground and jobs yet.
So your chart singles out EV tax credits as most vulnerable to repeal. Why?
The universe of electric vehicle tax credits is fully at risk. We’ve seen it from Republican voters – constituents! – who feel that EVs are just some type of government mandated, this is some car you have to buy. But it also happens to be very, very expensive. When the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT} crunches the numbers about what this is going to cost between now and 10 years from now, it’s one of the most expensive portions of the legislation. So when you look at it and ask how much is it going to cost to ax this and give us the most savings in the tax code? You get this.
The IRA didn’t create these credits though. It simply expanded them. You think the entire credit could go away in a Republican trifecta?
I think the entire EV tax credit.
Okay. So next up on the chopping block per your chart is the renewable energy investment tax credit, or ITC. Why?
“Both the ITC and the PTC [production tax credit] when they shift into this new tech neutral paradigm have the same risk profile. For these, I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be a full repeal. I think the data about how much money is going into Republican districts is legitimate, and I think it will materialize. But there’s many spectrums of levers that someone can pull.
The tech neutral credit doesn’t end on a certain calendar year date. It ends when the U.S. sector hits a certain emissions target. The credit continues until that moment in time. One way to make the credit look less expensive on paper is to say, no, we are going to end it at a certain point. Take 2030 or 2032. You could codify a timeline on it, so the JCT won’t score the out-years on how expensive the credit is going to be. That is one version of it.
Another version of it is that there’s a base credit and then there’s added layers, like wage requirements or low-income area benefits. And that’s another thing you could pull to say, look, we’re not going to do that anymore.
What would be the impact on developers?
I don’t think a lot of folks appreciate just how long range some of this planning is, how long it takes to permit something, how long it takes to figure out the interconnection queue.
Companies aren’t thinking what are we going to build this year – they’re thinking what will be put online in 2035. So if the government changes the stability of that, companies start to pull back and say hey, let’s not go too crazy in the outyears. Baseline? It means fewer clean energy projects come online. The industry has been banking on a certain level of certainty to plan against. Any shockwave against that and some companies are going to look and ask if they have the assurance to move forward with this or not.
Okay well, candidly, to that I say: woof. So okay, your chart labels the PTC and energy efficiency credits as vulnerable. Why are they at risk if they cost less than other programs?
There are going to be certain things where the dollars and cents lose out to the political policy realities. On energy efficiency, it would be easy to make that whole category a continuation over the fight on gas stoves or heat pumps and frame them as tax credits for wealthy people to do expensive stuff on their homes, costing the rest of the country. I don’t think it’s as much of a kitchen table conversation per se but it’s up there. Even if it doesn’t save them that much money, it does face the risk of being that low-hanging fruit.
Well, alrighty then. What about 45X? That’s pretty crucial to many manufacturers out there today.
I think both Democrats and Republicans can stand behind more domestic manufacturing coming to the United States. That’s something that is a bipartisan consensus and reducing that, harming that, will pose a liability for politicians. Now similarly, you could shorten the window and amounts, but at the end of the day, it’s a lot more politically resilient despite being seen as the most expensive part of what was included in the IRA.
You ranked about half of the IRA’s programs – hydrogen, carbon capture, sustainable aviation fuels, and more – as being both low cost and at low risk for repeal. Why?
What they benefit from is a greater resonance with Republican policymakers. Carbon capture and sequestration, sustainable aviation fuels and biofuels, hydrogen – all of these things get more of a shrug with Republicans when you talk to them. And that is why you see major oil and gas groups come out and say, hey, let’s not repeal the whole IRA.
But repealing the programs at risk while keeping these other programs… how would that outcome impact the pace of decarbonization?
Drastically. It would effectively remove the economic premise for all future renewable energy generation. It gets rid of a key driver of the shift toward electric vehicles. I think if you repealed everything in the red, then I think what you’ve done is you’ve gotten rid of all the reasons capital is pouring money into renewable energy projects and storage right now. In that scenario you’d see a drastic slowdown in climate ambitions in the electric power sector and also the EV transition that’s been happening.
So… the oil companies telling Trump to keep some of the IRA is a cold comfort, then?
Knowing it doesn’t go away fully is a cold comfort looking at this risk analysis.
What did this exercise teach you about the IRA?
I think that a lot of the net benefit of the decarbonization that translates to jobs and economic development is really, really close, and a lot of what is in the IRA would be lower risk if more of that had been pushed through faster. I think implementation and the natural barriers of the lack of transmission, siting and permitting challenges… There's a confluence of things that make it hard to quickly double the size of the sector but a lot of stuff is coming. But there’s capital behind it, plans behind it, and I think they’re going to build a lot more. As they do that, the sentiment is going to change behind it, but we have to get to that promised land first.
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Plus, what a Texas energy veteran thinks is behind the surprising turn against solar and wind.
I couldn’t have a single conversation with a developer this week without talking about Texas.
In case you’re unaware, the Texas Senate two days ago passed legislation — SB 819 — that would require all solar and wind projects over 10 megawatts to receive a certification from the state Public Utilities Commission — a process fossil fuel generation doesn’t have to go through. The bill, which one renewables group CEO testified would “kill” the industry in Texas, was approved by the legislature’s GOP majority despite a large number of landowners and ranchers testifying against the bill, an ongoing solar and wind boom in the state, and a need to quickly provide energy to Texas’ growing number of data centers and battery manufacturing facilities.
But that’s not all: On the same day, the Texas Senate Business and Commerce Committee approved a bill — SB 715 — that would target solar and wind by requiring generation facilities to be able to produce power whenever called upon by grid operators or otherwise pay a fine. Critics of the bill, which as written does not differentiate between new and existing facilities, say it could constrain the growth of Texas’ energy grid, not to mention impose penalties on solar and wind facilities that lack sufficient energy storage on site.
Renewable energy trades are in freak-out mode, mobilizing to try and scuttlebutt bills that could stifle what otherwise would be a perfect state for the sector. As we’ve previously explained, a big reason why Texas is so good for development is because, despite its ruby red nature, there is scant regulation letting towns or counties get in the way of energy development generally.
Seeking to best understand why anti-renewables bills are sailing through the Lone Star State, I phoned Doug Lewin, a Texas energy sector veteran, on the morning of the votes in the Texas Senate. Lewin said he believes that unlike other circumstances we’ve written about, like Oklahoma and Arizona, there really isn’t a groundswell of Texans against renewable energy development. This aligns with our data in Heatmap Pro, which shows 76% of counties being more welcoming than average to a utility-scale wind or solar farm. This is seen even in the author of the 24/7 power bill – state Senator Kevin Sparks – who represents the city of Midland, which is in a county that Heatmap Pro modeling indicates has a low risk of opposition. The Midland area is home to several wind and solar projects; German renewables giant RWE last month announced it would expand into the county to power oil and gas extraction with renewables.
But Lewin told me there’s another factor: He believes the legislation is largely motivated by legislators’ conservative voters suffering from a “misinformation” and “algorithm” problem. It’s their information diets, he believes, which are producing fears about the environmental impacts of developing renewable energy.
“He’s actively working against the interests of his district,” Lewin said of Sparks. “It’s algorithms. I don’t know what folks think is going on. People are just getting a lot of bad information.”
One prominent example came from a hailstorm during Hurricane Uri last year. Ice rocks described like golfballs rained down upon south-east Texas, striking, among other things, a utility-scale solar farm called Fighting Jays overseen by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. The incident went viral on Facebook and was seized upon by large conservative advocacy organizations including the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
What’s next? Honestly, the only thing standing between these bills and becoming law is a sliver of hope in the renewables world that the millions of dollars flowing into Texas House members’ districts via project investments and tax benefits outweigh the conservative cultural animus against their product. But if the past is prologue, things aren’t looking great.
And more of the week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Westchester County, N.Y. – Residents in Yonkers are pressuring city officials to renew a moratorium on battery storage before it expires in July.
2. Atlantic County, New Jersey – Sorry Atlantic Shores, but you’re not getting your EPA permit back.
3. St Clair County, Michigan – We may soon have what appears to be the first-ever county health regulations targeting renewable energy.
4. Freeborn County, Minnesota – Officials in this county have rejected a Midwater Energy Storage battery storage project citing concerns about fires.
5. Little River County, Arkansas – A petition circulating in this county would put the tax abatement for a NextEra solar project up for a vote county-wide.
6. Van Zandt County, Texas – Officials in this county have reportedly succeeded in getting a court to impose a restraining order against Taaleri Energy to halt the Amador battery storage project.
7. Gillespie County, Texas – Peregrine Energy’s battery storage proposal in the rural town of Harper is also facing a mounting local outcry.
8. Churchill County, Nevada – Battery storage might be good for Nevada mining, but we have what appears to be our first sign of revolt against the technology in the state.
A conversation with Mike Barnwell of the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters and Millwrights
Today’s conversation is with Mike Barnwell at the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters and Millwrights, a union organization more than 14,000 members strong. I reached out to Barnwell because I’d been trying to better understand the role labor unions could play in influencing renewables policy decisions, from the labor permitting office to the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act. So I called him up on my way home from the American Clean Power Association’s permitting conference in Seattle, where I gave a talk, and we chatted about how much I love Coney Island chili in Detroit. Oh, and renewable energy, of course.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
I guess to start, we covered Michigan’s new permitting and siting law. What role did your union play in that process?
Locally, with the siting laws, we were a big part of that from the local level all the way to the state. From speaking at the Capitol down to city council and building authority meetings about projects happening in areas and cleaning out some of the red tape to make these possible.
It’s created jobs for our members current and future.
So you see labor as being helpful in getting permitting done faster?
Being labor maybe I’m biased but I think it is. I say labor collectively, we’ve got a pretty good coalition here in Michigan.
Do you think unions like yours will be similarly influential in the future of the Inflation Reduction Act back in Washington, D.C.?
Let me put it this way: the requirements of registered apprenticeships being on site come back to creating jobs for our members. Otherwise it’s just hiring anybody off the street – unskilled and unsafe workplaces. We train our folks through our apprenticeships and that legislation is ensuring safety on the jobs for one, let alone letting them build careers and pensions.
We’re a carpenter-centric union but this all falls under the work of what we do. We’ve been implementing our four-year apprenticeship program — every kind of renewable energy training you can think of, we’ve implemented it into our programs. It’s hands on. We have mockups at our training centers where [projects] get built and torn down and built and torn down. When you talk about a utility-scale solar project, it’s an average of 160-170 individuals working on that project. Without proper skills training they can’t work in coordination with each other.
How are you feeling about the future of the tax credits?
Uneasy.
The current leadership, they obviously have different views than the past leadership did. Lookit – when you talk about the IRA that has done nothing but create jobs for the blue collar working man in not just our state but around the nation. Here in Michigan, it almost went from zero to sixty in 10 seconds. It was miraculous what they did for us. We went from scratching and clawing in trying to procure these projects to now the IRA requiring skill training and prevailing wage and benefits and health care, which what as a union we’re all about.
Just in the last year, we’ve brought on over 300 new members just for solar alone. That’s all because of the federal tax credit and the language in the IRA.
Last question – what role do you see labor playing in the process of getting individual projects permitted and built?
Our role in that, I’ve been to plenty of these community meetings myself but it’s the actual working guy, the guy who is using his tools every week, who goes and speaks up to their county or town leadership about the benefits of these projects.
That big BlueOval battery plant in Marshall, Michigan – I don’t know if that would’ve been permitted without the work of our members being at those meetings, letting their voices be heard. There was obviously an opposition voice as well, but ours were a bit louder in the room. People want to hear the voices that say yes we want it and here’s why. This is how I support my family from the work on these projects. Otherwise it would’ve never gotten off the ground.