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You don’t need us to say it: The 2024 election will have enormous stakes for America’s climate policy and the planet’s climate. But how well can we quantify those stakes? What would a Trump presidency — or a Harris presidency, for that matter — really mean for the country’s emissions trajectory?
On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Jesse and Rob speak with Sonia Aggarwal, the chief executive officer of Energy Innovation, a climate policy think tank that operates across North America, Europe, and Asia. She was previously special assistant to the president for climate policy, innovation, and deployment under President Joe Biden, and she co-chaired the Biden administration’s Climate Innovation Working Group. She and Jesse — another top-notch modeler — dive into what the data can and can’t tell us about the election and how to think about energy system models in the first place. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.
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Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Sonia Aggarwal: It is very clear in the modeling that there are certain policies that take us in the direction of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and other policies that take us in the direction of increasing greenhouse gas emissions compared to where we would be going otherwise.
Now, as Jesse said, there can be all kinds of things that happen that might change the specific numbers, but we certainly can tell in the models that if you look at a policy — that is, for example, a clean electricity standard — you’re going to see a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions when you adopt that standard. And that will happen against the background of lots of other things in the economy, but we know that the effect of that particular policy is to bring emissions down, and that’s very clear. So that’s one thing that we can definitely tell with the models.
Jesse Jenkins: Yeah. Maybe just one other point on this is that, what we had in our mind when we started the REPEAT Project was a role similar to what the Congressional Budget Office does to try to estimate the financial and budgetary impacts of congressional decisions, right? You know, Congress is making decisions all the time that affect revenues. They’re going to spend more money. They’re going to raise more money here and there. They’re going to lower taxes. They’re going to raise taxes. They’re going to expand this program. And Congress legitimately wants to have a sense of whether that’s going to increase or decrease the deficit and, you know, whether that’s going to raise more money than it spends or vice versa, and which programs have the biggest budgetary cost.
And so every bill is scored on this budgetary front, over a 10-year period in particular. And then, because they know it’s less certain beyond that, they put less weight on the period beyond 10 years. And I would bet every single one of those numbers is wrong, right? The Congressional Budget Office probably misses every single one of those numbers. But, they’re directionally correct, and they’re not wrong by orders of magnitude.
What they give Congress is the best information they have at the time — during the fog of war and enactment — to make a more informed decision about the financial implications of their policies. And I think that’s how we should think about the aggregate ensemble of models that have emerged to help us understand the climate implications of these decisions, as well.
Aggarwal: Be careful when you ask modelers questions about models, because you will …
Robinson Meyer: No, but this is, I think, the key question. Because I think there’s some degree to which these models kind of do act in a way that’s very authoritative and very useful to policymakers, right? I think that understanding them — just to be clear, in line with how you presented them, but I think still really important — as tools for decision-making under uncertainty and authoritative, you know, biblical accounts of exactly what a policy will do is the right way to understand, right?
This is a tool for thinking. It is a tool to bring into the rest of the thinking that you would do about, in this case, what the climate impacts of the 2024 election are. But it doesn’t mean that you should use it to throw out every other tool you have and every other piece of evidence we have, however, given that all the pieces of evidence are pointing in the right direction. I think it’s useful, in that regard, to get a sense of just how catastrophic for the climate a Project 2025 could be.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
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.
As a global leader in PV and ESS solutions, Sungrow invests heavily in research and development, constantly pushing the boundaries of solar and battery inverter technology. Discover why Sungrow is the essential component of the clean energy transition by visiting sungrowpower.com.
Antenna Group helps you connect with customers, policymakers, investors, and strategic partners to influence markets and accelerate adoption. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
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Did a battery plant disaster in California spark a PR crisis on the East Coast?
Battery fire fears are fomenting a storage backlash in New York City – and it risks turning into fresh PR hell for the industry.
Aggrieved neighbors, anti-BESS activists, and Republican politicians are galvanizing more opposition to battery storage in pockets of the five boroughs where development is actually happening, capturing rapt attention from other residents as well as members of the media. In Staten Island, a petition against a NineDot Energy battery project has received more than 1,300 signatures in a little over two months. Two weeks ago, advocates – backed by representatives of local politicians including Rep. Nicole Mallitokis – swarmed a public meeting on the project, getting a local community board to vote unanimously against the project.
According to Heatmap Pro’s proprietary modeling of local opinion around battery storage, there are likely twice as many strong opponents than strong supporters in the area:
Heatmap Pro
Yesterday, leaders in the Queens community of Hempstead enacted a year-long ban on BESS for at least a year after GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, other local politicians, and a slew of aggrieved residents testified in favor of a moratorium. The day before, officials in the Long Island town of Southampton said at a public meeting they were ready to extend their battery storage ban until they enshrined a more restrictive development code – even as many energy companies testified against doing so, including NineDot and solar plus storage developer Key Capture Energy. Yonkers also recently extended its own battery moratorium.
This flurry of activity follows the Moss Landing battery plant fire in California, a rather exceptional event caused by tech that was extremely old and a battery chemistry that is no longer popular in the sector. But opponents of battery storage don’t care – they’re telling their friends to stop the community from becoming the next Moss Landing. The longer this goes on without a fulsome, strident response from the industry, the more communities may rally against them. Making matters even worse, as I explained in The Fight earlier this year, we’re seeing battery fire concerns impact solar projects too.
“This is a huge problem for solar. If [fires] start regularly happening, communities are going to say hey, you can’t put that there,” Derek Chase, CEO of battery fire smoke detection tech company OnSight Technologies, told me at Intersolar this week. “It’s going to be really detrimental.”
I’ve long worried New York City in particular may be a powder keg for the battery storage sector given its omnipresence as a popular media environment. If it happens in New York, the rest of the world learns about it.
I feel like the power of the New York media environment is not lost on Staten Island borough president Vito Fossella, a de facto leader of the anti-BESS movement in the boroughs. Last fall I interviewed Fossella, whose rhetorical strategy often leans on painting Staten Island as an overburdened community. (At least 13 battery storage projects have been in the works in Staten Island according to recent reporting. Fossella claims that is far more than any amount proposed elsewhere in the city.) He often points to battery blazes that happen elsewhere in the country, as well as fears about lithium-ion scooters that have caught fire. His goal is to enact very large setback distance requirements for battery storage, at a minimum.
“You can still put them throughout the city but you can’t put them next to people’s homes – what happens if one of these goes on fire next to a gas station,” he told me at the time, chalking the wider city government’s reluctance to capitulate on batteries to a “political problem.”
Well, I’m going to hold my breath for the real political problem in waiting – the inevitable backlash that happens when Mallitokis, D’Esposito, and others take this fight to Congress and the national stage. I bet that’s probably why American Clean Power just sent me a notice for a press briefing on battery safety next week …
And more of the week’s top conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Queen Anne’s County, Maryland – They really don’t want you to sign a solar lease out in the rural parts of this otherwise very pro-renewables state.
2. Logan County, Ohio – Staff for the Ohio Power Siting Board have recommended it reject Open Road Renewables’ Grange Solar agrivoltaics project.
3. Bandera County, Texas – On a slightly brighter note for solar, it appears that Pine Gate Renewables’ Rio Lago solar project might just be safe from county restrictions.
Here’s what else we’re watching…
In Illinois, Armoracia Solar is struggling to get necessary permits from Madison County.
In Kentucky, the mayor of Lexington is getting into a public spat with East Kentucky Power Cooperative over solar.
In Michigan, Livingston County is now backing the legal challenge to Michigan’s state permitting primacy law.
On the week’s top news around renewable energy policy.
1. IRA funding freeze update – Money is starting to get out the door, finally: the EPA unfroze most of its climate grant funding it had paused after Trump entered office.
2. Scalpel vs. sledgehammer – House Speaker Mike Johnson signaled Republicans in Congress may take a broader approach to repealing the Inflation Reduction Act than previously expected in tax talks.
3. Endangerment in danger – The EPA is reportedly urging the White House to back reversing its 2009 “endangerment” finding on air pollutants and climate change, a linchpin in the agency’s overall CO2 and climate regulatory scheme.