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Inside episode one of Shift Key, a new climate podcast from Heatmap News.
Late last month, Joe Biden made what has been hailed as one of the biggest climate policy decisions of the past year.
He announced that the federal government would temporarily stop approving new export terminals for liquified natural gas. The move was celebrated as a victory by climate activists and lamented by fossil-fuel companies; Donald Trump promised that, if elected, he will reverse the move.
But what will the pause really mean for the climate? Will it stop exports from rising in the near-term, and can we say with any certainty whether it will make carbon emissions go up or down? How should we even think about this decision?
In this inaugural episode of Shift Key, Heatmap’s new podcast, my co-host Jesse Jenkins, an energy systems expert and professor at Princeton University, and I unpack the president’s decision and try to figure out what — if anything — it means for the climate.
Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can also add the show’s RSS feed to your podcast app to follow us directly.
Here’s an excerpt from our conversation:
Robinson Meyer: Since this news came out, I think there's been a lot of discussion online about whether this is necessarily the optimal choice. Could we be using that gas to do something else? How should we be managing it? And I just want to make a point before we go on that this is literally what climate policy means.
There’s a sense I see from some places, which is like, well, “Is cutting off fossil fuel exports at this very arbitrary place, the optimal policy?” And I just want to make the point that like, number one, we are not on an optimal policy pathway at all. And in the absence of a policy that I think both you and I think is very unlikely to pass, which is a globally normalized carbon price that's imposed evenly in all jurisdictions and is priced at a level that we can attain the 1.5C or 1.6C, whatever end temperature goal we want to achieve –
Jesse Jenkins: Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say that's unlikely.
Meyer: Yes, in the absence of a global carbon price that is uniformly enforced across all jurisdictions, we are going to make suboptimal decisions. And not only are we going to make suboptimal decisions, but we are going to stop investing in fossil fuels below what would be economically optimal if climate change didn't exist. That's literally what climate change means.
And at the same time, we are going to invest above what would be economically optimal in all of these fossil fuels if you take climate change into account, because that is the signal failure of global climate policy, is that we keep plowing money into fossil fuels and under-investing in alternatives and in scaling up alternatives. We’ve underinvested in those things for at least 20 years. That’s a different show about whether we’re still doing it or how much we’re still doing it.
I just want to get into this whole discussion by saying when we talk about whether we're fiddling knobs in the right way, or enough this way, or enough that way, or whether we're taking all these things into account, we are never going to do this perfectly. And the whole point of climate change is at some point you just have to stop investing in the fossil fuel system.
Jenkins: Yeah, economists call this the second best policy or third best policy. I just call it “the real world.” We’re all just muddling through all the time and how we're going to make progress or not is whether we muddled through better or worse.
So I agree, it's theoretically helpful to think about what an economically ideal rationalized policy would be. But we're so far from that world that I think the question is, “is this better than the alternative decision you could make about this particular thing right here?”
And hopefully, that's the view that the Department of Energy is taking when they think about the public interest here. It's not like, well, could we have had some more ideal climate policy that meant we were doing something else over in this other part of the economy instead of doing this?
That's an interesting conversation to have on Twitter, but maybe not the core of the question that the DOE and the Biden administration are grappling with right here.
The full transcript is available here.
This episode of Shift Key was initially sponsored by …
KORE POWER: Headquartered in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho with clients on every continent, KORE Power provides functional solutions that push the front line of the transition to clean energy and form the backbone of the decarbonized future worldwide. As a fully integrated provider of battery cells and clean energy technology and solutions, KORE Power drives the energy transition through direct access to superior tech, clean energy manufacturing, and unmatched support for clean energy jobs and resilient, sustainable communities worldwide. KORE Power’s manufacturing capabilities and robust portfolio of products provide the commercial, industrial, utility and defense markets with next-generation battery cells, advanced energy storage systems that scale to grid+, intuitive asset management, and EV power and charging infrastructure support. KORE Power - the future of clean energy is here.
Learn more at Korepower.com
ADVANCED ENERGY UNITED: Advanced Energy United educates, engages, and advocates for policies that allow our member companies to compete to power our economy with 100% clean energy. We work with decision makers at every level of government as well as regulators of energy markets to achieve this goal. The businesses we represent are lowering consumer costs, creating thousands of new jobs every year, and providing the full range of clean, efficient, and reliable energy and transportation solutions. The U.S. market for advanced energy products and services reached nearly $375 billion in 2022. Together, we are united in our mission to accelerate the transition to 100% clean energy in the United States.
Learn more at info.advancedenergyunited.org/heatmap
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
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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.
What are you referencing when you say, ‘the wind industry’s strategy is failing’?
Anyone in the climate space, in the clean energy space, the worst thing you can do is go silent and pretend that this is just going to go away. Even if it’s the president and the administration delivering the attacks, I think there’s an important strategy that’s been lacking in the wind and other sectors that I don’t think has been effective. There was a recent E&E News story that noted a couple of wind developers when asked for comment just say, “No comment.” This to me misses a really big opportunity to not get in a fight with people but talk about the benefits of wind.
Not taking advantage of milestones like ground breaking or construction starting is a missed opportunity to drive public opinion. If you lose support in public opinion, you’re going to lose support from public officials, because they largely follow public opinion.
And there’s no way that’s going to change if you don’t take the opportunities to talk about the benefits that wind can provide, in terms of good-paying local jobs or supplying more electrons to the grid. By almost any measure the strategy employed so far has not really worked.
Okay, but what is the wind industry strategy that isn’t working? What are they doing to rebut attacks on the technology, on property values, on the environment?
We’re not hearing them. We’re not hearing those arguments.
You can’t let criticisms go unanswered.It would better serve the industry and these companies to push back against criticisms. It’s not like you can’t anticipate what they are. And what do you have to lose? You’re in the worst position of any energy sector in this political moment. It would be nice to see some fight and sharp campaign skills and strategic effort in terms of communication. And there’s no strategic value from what I can tell in [being silent].
I understand not wanting to pick a fight with folks who hold your fate in their hands, but there’s a way to thread a needle that isn’t antagonizing anybody but also making sure the facts have been heard. And that’s been missing.
You’d specifically said the industry should stop ‘being paralyzed in fear and start going on offense.’ What does that look like to you?
Taking every opportunity to get your message out there. The lowest hanging fruit is when a reporter comes and asks you, What do you think about this criticism? You should definitely reply. It’s lifting up third-party voices that are benefiting from a specific project, talking about the economic impacts more broadly, talking about the benefits to the grid.
There’s a whole number of tools in the toolbox to put to use but the toolboxes remain shut thus far. Targeted paid media, elevating the different voices and communities that are going to resonate with different legislators, and certainly the facts are helpful. Also having materials prepared, like validators and frequently asked questions and answers.
You’re trying to win. You’re trying to get your project to be successful and deliver jobs and tax revenue. And I think it would be wise for companies to look at the playbooks of electoral campaigns, because there’s lots of tools that campaigns use.
How do renewable energy developers get around the problem of partisanship? How do you get outta that through a campaign approach?
These projects are decided locally. It’s deciding who the decision-makers are and not just letting opponents who are getting talking points through right-wing media show up and reiterate these talking points. Oftentimes, there’s no one on the pro side even showing up at all, and it makes it really easy for city councils to oppose projects. They’re losing by forfeit. We can’t keep doing that.
And more on this week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.
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.
3. Bedford County, Pennsylvania – Arena Renewables is trying to thread a needle through development in one of the riskiest Pennsylvania counties for development, with an agriculture-fueled opposition risk score of 89.
4. Knox County, Ohio – The Ohio Power Siting Board has given the green light to Open Road Renewables’ much-watched Frasier Solar project.
5. Clay County, Missouri – We’ll find out next week if rural Missouri can still take it easy on a large solar project.
6. Clark County, Nevada – President Trump’s Bureau of Land Management has pushed back the permitting process for EDF Renewables’ Bonanza solar project by at least two months and possibly longer .
7. Klickitat County, Washington – Washington State has now formally overridden local opposition to Cypress Creek’s Carriger solar project after teeing up the decision in May.
It’s governor versus secretary of state, with the fate of the local clean energy industry hanging in the balance.
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.
One can guess why investors thought this rural Wyoming expanse would be an easier place to build: it’s an energy community situated in the middle of the Powder River Basin and the state’s Republican governor Mark Gordon has supported wind projects in the state publicly, not just with rhetoric but votes in favor of them on the State Board of Land Commissioners.
Wind is also often proposed on private land in Wyoming, which is supposed to make things easier. You may remember the Lucky Star and Twin Rivers wind farms, a pair of projects whose progress I’ve watched like a hawk because they’re tied to the future of wind permitting at the national level. As we first reported, the Trump administration is proceeding with potentially approving the transmission line for Lucky Star, a project that would be sited entirely on private land, and Twin Rivers received its final environmental review in the last days of the Biden administration, making it difficult for anti-wind advocates to curtail.
Unlike those projects, Pronghorn has created a fork in the road for wind in Wyoming. It’s because the people in its host community don’t seem to want it, the wind projects were on state land, and there’s politics at play.
Despite being considered an energy community, Converse and Niobrara are both areas with especially high opposition risk, according to Heatmap Pro, largely due to its low support for renewable energy, its demographics, and concerns about impacts to the local ranching economy. After Gordon and other members of the state land use board approved two wind facilities for the hydrogen project, a rancher living nearby sued the board with public support from the mayor of Glenrock and the area’s legislators in the statehouse. A member of the Converse County zoning board even published a “manifesto” against the project, detailing local concerns that are myriad and rooted in fears of overburden, ranging from water use and property value woes to a general resentment toward an overall rise in wind turbines across the county and state.
What’s probably most concerning to wind supporters is that this local fight is bubbling up into a statewide political fracture between Gordon and his secretary of state Chuck Gray, who is believed to be a future candidate for governor. Grey was the lone dissenting vote against the two wind projects for Pronghorn, saying he did not support the projects because they would be assisted by federal tax credits Trump is trying to gut. Gray then took to mocking the governor on social media for his stance on wind while posting photos of broken wind turbines. Gordon wound up responding to his secretary of state accusing him of being the “only member of the state land board to vote against individual property rights and Wyoming schools.”
“That is his prerogative to be sure, but it demonstrates his disregard for the duties of his office and a determination to impose his personal preferences on others, no matter the cost,” Gordon stated.
I’ve been reaching out to Pronghorn and its founder Paul Martin to try and chat about what’s happening in Wyoming. I haven’t heard back, and if I do I’ll gladly follow this story up, but there’s a sign here of an issue in Wyoming whether Pronghorn gets built or not – areas of Wyoming may be on the verge of a breaking point on wind energy.
I heard about the Pronghorn project in conversations this week with folks who work on wind permitting issues in Wyoming and learned that the Gordon-Gray feud is emblematic of how the wind industry’s growth in the state is making local officials more wary of greenlighting projects. Whether Gordon’s position on private property wins out over Gray taking up the mantle of the anti-wind conservative critic may be the touchstone for the future of local planning decisions, too.
At least, that’s the sense I got talking to Sue Jones, a commissioner in Carbon County, directly southwest of Converse County. Jones admits she personally doesn’t care for wind farms and that it’s “no secret with the county, or the developers.” But so far, she hasn’t voted that way as a commissioner.
“If they meet all our rules and regs, then I’ve voted to give them a permit,” she told me. “You can’t just say no to anything. It’s a good thing that we value private property rights.”
Jones said the problem in Carbon County and other areas of Wyoming is “saturation level.” Areas of the state where only a handful of landowners hold thousands of acres? That’s probably fine for wind projects because there’s a low likelihood of a neighbor or two having a genuine grievance. But as wind has grown into population-denser areas of the state the dissent is becoming more frequent.
My gut feeling is that, as we’ve seen in many other instances, this resentment will bubble up and manifest as sweeping reform – unless the wind industry is able to properly address these growing concerns head on.