Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Podcast

The EPA’s Carbon Crackdown Is Finally Here

Inside a special edition of Shift Key.

EPA Headquarters.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

One of the most important pieces of the Biden administration’s climate policy has arrived: On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency issued new rules restricting climate pollution from coal-fired plants and natural gas plants that haven’t been built yet. The rules will eliminate more than a billion tons of greenhouse gas pollution by the middle of the century.

They are the long-awaited “stick” in the Biden administration’s carrots-and-sticks climate policy. So how do the rules work? Why do they emphasize carbon capture so much? And is this the end of coal in America? On this special episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse dig into the regulations and why they matter to American climate policy. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer is founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins is a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.

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 is an excerpt from our conversation:

Jesse Jenkins: Going all the way back to the Bush era, the coal industry and power industry have been telling us over and over and over again that carbon capture is the solution to retain coal plants and and gas plants without emitting CO2.

We’ve had demonstration projects at scale, for exactly that technology, in the United States and in Canada. We have enacted — largely at the behest of those interests — extensive subsidies for carbon capture, $85 per ton of CO2 captured and stored under the 45Q tax credit that was extended and expanded by the Inflation Reduction Act. We are investing, I think, over $4 billion in building CO2 network infrastructure to help create trunk lines that could capture CO2, accept CO2 injections and take them to where they can be stored. We’re investing in demonstration or initial buildout of CO2 storage basins. And we’re investing in demonstrations of carbon capture across a variety of industries through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

So like, all of the money is there from the government in response to the argument from the industry that this is the way forward. And now what EPA is doing is saying, “Okay, it’s time to go. You’ve got to actually do it.” And so they’re, of course, now going to flip the tune and say, “No, no, no, no, no, we can’t do that. We can’t do that. It’s not possible.”

Robinson Meyer: Yesterday, the Edison Electric Institute — which has the current CEO Dan Brouillette, who was the Trump administration’s Energy Secretary. The Edison Electric Institute is the trade association of U.S. shareholder-owned electric utilities, and so if you have a privately owned utility, it probably belongs to EEI. He put out a statement saying: “While we appreciate and support EPA’s work to develop a clear, continued path for the transition to cleaner resources, we are disappointed that the agency did not address the concerns we raised about carbon capture and storage. CCS is not yet ready for full scale, economy wide deployment, nor is there sufficient time to permit, finance, and build the CCS infrastructure needed for compliance by 2032.”

And I just want to point out here — Heatmap will continue to cover, obviously, these conversations about CCS. But I do want to just point out that, as you were saying, for decades, the utility industry has been telling us that CCS is so close. They’re so ready for primetime on it. They are just, they’re desperate to install CCS. This is the answer. Clean coal, clean natural gas, they’re going to do it. And now the EPA has been, you know, cowabunga it is, or you know, eff it, we ball, on CCS, right? And now that EPA is like, “Okay, it’s time to play,” they’re not coming out. They’re scared. They’re hiding at home.

I just want to highlight this dynamic because I think it is absolutely core to the whole thing. And no matter what convoluted legal arguments we are going to be subjected to over the next five years as this thing winds through the courts — hopefully less time — there’s just a central tension here, which is that the EPA has ostensibly given the utility industry what it has been asking for decades and decades, which is an excuse to do the wide-scale deployment of CCS, largely at taxpayer expense. And the utility industry doesn’t want to do it.

This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by…

KORE Power provides the commercial, industrial, and utility markets with functional solutions that advance the clean energy transition worldwide. KORE Power's technology and manufacturing capabilities provide direct access to next generation battery cells, energy storage systems that scale to grid+, EV power & infrastructure, and intuitive asset management to unlock energy strategies across a myriad of applications. Explore more at korepower.com.

Watershed’s climate data engine helps companies measure and reduce their emissions, turning the data they already have into an audit-ready carbon footprint backed by the latest climate science. Get the sustainability data you need in weeks, not months. Learn more at watershed.com.

Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

Green

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Q&A

You, Too, Can Protect Solar Panels Against Hail

A conversation with VDE Americas CEO Brian Grenko.

This week's interview subject.
Heatmap Illustration

This week’s Q&A is about hail. Last week, we explained how and why hail storm damage in Texas may have helped galvanize opposition to renewable energy there. So I decided to reach out to Brian Grenko, CEO of renewables engineering advisory firm VDE Americas, to talk about how developers can make sure their projects are not only resistant to hail but also prevent that sort of pushback.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Hotspots

The Pro-Renewables Crowd Gets Riled Up

And more of the week’s big fights around renewable energy.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Long Island, New York – We saw the face of the resistance to the war on renewable energy in the Big Apple this week, as protestors rallied in support of offshore wind for a change.

  • Activists came together on Earth Day to protest the Trump administration’s decision to issue a stop work order on Equinor’s Empire Wind project. It’s the most notable rally for offshore wind I’ve seen since September, when wind advocates protested offshore opponents at the Preservation Society of Newport County, Rhode Island.
  • Esther Rosario, executive director of Climate Jobs New York, told me the rally was intended to focus on the jobs that will be impacted by halting construction and that about a hundred people were at the rally – “a good half of them” union members or representing their unions.
  • “I think it’s important that the elected officials that are in both the area and at the federal level understand the humans behind what it means to issue a stop-work order,” she said.

2. Elsewhere on Long Island – The city of Glen Cove is on the verge of being the next New York City-area community with a battery storage ban, discussing this week whether to ban BESS for at least one year amid fire fears.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Spotlight

How a Carbon Pipeline Is Turning Iowa Against Wind

Long Islanders, meanwhile, are showing up in support of offshore wind, and more in this week’s edition of The Fight.

Iowa.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Library of Congress

Local renewables restrictions are on the rise in the Hawkeye State – and it might have something to do with carbon pipelines.

Iowa’s known as a renewables growth area, producing more wind energy than any other state and offering ample acreage for utility-scale solar development. This has happened despite the fact that Iowa, like Ohio, is home to many large agricultural facilities – a trait that has often fomented conflict over specific projects. Iowa has defied this logic in part because the state was very early to renewables, enacting a state portfolio standard in 1983, signed into law by a Republican governor.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow