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A curious absence at the State of the Union.
Would the IRA by any other name be as sweet to voters?
It’s a valid question. President Biden’s final State of the Union address before the November election represented as good a chance as any for him to make his pitch to the American people — and he did so without ever saying the name of his most significant piece of legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act.
That might seem like a curious, or even downright disastrous, choice to make regarding a law that has struggled with branding. Though the actual contents of the law are popular with voters, some 63% of Americans say they’ve heard “not much” or “nothing” about the IRA, according to a 2023 Heatmap poll. And while the “Inflation Reduction Act” is only a little more descriptive than “H.R.5376,” the law has been called “misnamed” and “silly” from the start, in large part because it obscures all trace that it is, in actuality, the biggest climate law in U.S. history.
On Thursday night, Biden appeared to lean into that confusion rather than fight it. Or, perhaps more accurately, he seemed to double down on the avoidance inherent in the law’s very name. Far from giving up on touting the IRA’s accomplishments, Biden repeatedly boasted about “clean energy, advanced manufacturing,” and creating “tens of thousands of jobs here in America.” He further referred to a Stellantis plant in Belvidere, Illinois, that reopened partly due to a federal grant made possible by the IRA.
Meanwhile, other laws got shout-outs. He cited the CHIPS and Science Act — which rivals the Inflation Reduction Act for dryness. He credited the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for “46,000 new projects … across your communities.”
It was also notable that the economic upsides of the IRA were largely separated from Biden’s brief mention of “confronting the climate crisis” in the second half of his speech. Just as he’d paid rote attention to childhood literacy initiatives and veteran healthcare, Biden reiterated his established goals like “cutting our carbon emissions in half by 2030,” “building and installing 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations,” and “conserving 30% of American lands and waters by 2030.” Absent were mentions of consumer incentives, like the IRA making heat pumps, solar panels, and EVs more accessible. Tellingly, his lone new climate announcement pertained to a rather minor piece in his more extensive agenda: Biden promised to triple the Climate Corps of young people working in clean energy “in a decade.”
This divorce of climate change from the economy in the speech is, in actuality, a little like what the name “Inflation Reduction Act” is functionally doing, too. The Biden administration has consistently moved its climate goals forward by not calling attention to the fact that they are climate goals. After all, any Republicans who voted against something called the “Inflation Reduction Act” could be hammered for being — what, pro-inflation?! At the same time, using the State of the Union to draw attention to specific economic accomplishments that just so happen to be in the clean energy space allows Biden to go toe-to-toe with Donald Trump on the economy — an issue voters are more concerned about this election cycle than the climate — without letting such a talking point be dismissed as green liberal woo-woo.
Biden can’t avoid talking about climate directly, of course. It’s an issue that is important to young voters, and some progressives worry he’s losing their support over his approval of the Willow oil drilling project. No wonder, then, that the most prominent part of the State of the Union’s climate section centered on a program explicitly designed to create jobs for 18- to 35-year-olds.
This isn’t a matter of cynicism — it’s messaging. Admittedly, that is a bit ironic, given that the long-standing criticism of the IRA is that no one knows what it is. Still, Biden is embracing the very spirit of the name of the Inflation Reduction Act by never saying the words.
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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.