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Politics

The Greens Go to Court

On congestion pricing, carbon capture progress, and Tim Kaine.

The Greens Go to Court
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions:New Orleans is experiencing another arctic blast, with wind chills near 20 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday • Continued warm, dry conditions in India threaten the country’s wheat crop • Heavy rain in Botswana has caused widespread flooding.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Big Greens’ first lawsuit of Trump 2.0

Environmental groups filed their first lawsuit against the Trump administration on Wednesday, challenging Trump’s moves to open up public lands and waters to oil and gas drilling. Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Oceana, among others, are contesting the president’s executive order revoking Joe Biden’s protections of parts of the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans from oil and gas leasing. The groups claim that the president has the authority to create these protections but not to withdraw them — a right reserved for Congress — and notes that a federal court confirmed this after Trump attempted to undo similar Obama-era protections during his first term.

2. Trump declares checkmate on congestion pricing

President Trump made his move to kill New York City’s congestion pricing program on Wednesday. In a letter to Governor Kathy Hochul, Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he was reversing the Department of Transportation’s approval of the scheme, citing the impacts on drivers and claiming the program violated federal statute. Trump declared it “DEAD” in a Truth Social post, where he also proclaimed that New York had been “SAVED” and closed with “LONG LIVE THE KING.” The Metropolitan Transit Authority, which runs the program and relies on funding from it, immediately challenged the decision in a federal court and said it would continue to operate the program “unless and until a court orders otherwise.”

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  • 3. The climate and clean energy ups and downs of 2024

    A sweeping annual report from BloombergNEF and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy has a number of hopeful and concerning stats about what happened in America’s energy transition last year.

    The Good:

    • Solar and energy storage deployments continued to break records
    • Corporate procurements of clean power nearly doubled, with 183 deals signed, including new investments in nuclear plants
    • EV sales grew by 6.5% year on year, and legacy automakers finally started to show up for the party

    Chart of new clean energy buildouts.Chart courtesy of the Business Council on Sustainable Energy

    The Bad:

    • Emissions ticked up slightly, by 0.5%, with industrial emissions accounting for most of that growth due to rising natural gas use
    • Demand for natural gas reached a record high of 99.7 billion cubic feet per day, which includes LNG exports, and investment in natural gas infrastructure increased from $32 billion in 2023 to $49 billion
    • Onshore wind power additions declined for the fourth consecutive year

    4. Hydrogen and carbon capture lagging

    The same BNEF report also paints a lackluster picture of clean hydrogen and carbon capture development, two technologies that should benefit from generous federal subsidies. The U.S. had just 79 megawatts of “green” hydrogen production capacity by the end of 2024, with plans to build 34.7 gigawatts in the coming years.

    The hydrogen industry was in limbo last year as it awaited final rules for claiming the production tax credit. Green hydrogen is made from carbon-free electricity and water. But most hydrogen announcements in 2024 — some 77% — were for “blue” hydrogen, which is made from natural gas using carbon capture. And while there’s a growing pipeline of carbon capture projects, with plans to deploy the tech in new sectors like ammonia and chemical production, U.S. carbon capture capacity has remained unchanged since 2020.

    5. Kaine and Heinrich go after Trump’s “energy emergency”

    In a press conference on Wednesday, Senators Tim Kaine of Virginia and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico detailed their plan to invalidate President Trump’s declaration of an energy emergency. In early February, the two introduced what’s called a “privileged joint resolution” to terminate the emergency declaration, a type of legislation that the Senate is required to vote on. “We’re going to force a vote, force everybody to declare where they are on this sham emergency declaration,” Kaine said. Kaine and Heinrich made the case that the U.S. produced more oil and gas last year than at any point in history, and discussed the many domestic manufacturing projects and jobs that President Trump’s war on clean energy has put under threat. The vote is expected next week.

    THE KICKER

    Sweden’s Supreme Court threw out a class action lawsuit brought by Greta Thunberg and other activists against the nation for not doing enough to stop climate change.

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    Energy

    If Wind and Solar Are So Cheap, Why Do They Need Tax Credits?

    Removing the subsidies would be bad enough, but the chaos it would cause in the market is way worse.

    Money and clean energy.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    In their efforts to persuade Republicans in Congress not to throw wind and solar off a tax credit cliff, clean energy advocates have sometimes made what would appear to be a counterproductive argument: They’ve emphasized that renewables are cheap and easily obtainable.

    Take this statement published by Advanced Energy United over the weekend: “By effectively removing tax credits for some of the most affordable and easy-to-build energy resources, Congress is all but guaranteeing that consumers will be burdened with paying more for a less reliable electric grid.”

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    Green
    Politics

    The Megabill’s Most Bizarre Fossil Fuel Handout

    A new subsidy for metallurgical coal won’t help Trump’s energy dominance agenda, but it would help India and China.

    The Capitol.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Crammed into the Senate’s reconciliation bill alongside more attention-grabbing measures that could cripple the renewables industry in the U.S. is a new provision to amend the Inflation Reduction Act to support metallurgical coal, allowing producers to claim the advanced manufacturing tax credit through 2029. That extension alone could be worth up to $150 million a year for the “beautiful clean coal” industry (as President Trump likes to call it), according to one lobbyist following the bill.

    Putting aside the perversity of using a tax credit from a climate change bill to support coal, the provision is a strange one. The Trump administration has made support for coal one of the centerpieces of its “energy dominance” strategy, ordering coal-fired power plants to stay open and issuing a raft of executive orders to bolster the industry. President Trump at one point even suggested that the elite law firms that have signed settlements with the White House over alleged political favoritism could take on coal clients pro bono.

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    Ideas

    The GOP Megabill Is Playing Right Into China’s Hands

    Two former Department of Energy staffers argue from experience that severe foreign entity restrictions aren’t the way to reshore America’s clean energy supply chain.

    Xi Jinping and solar panels.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    The latest version of Congress’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” claims to be tough on China. Instead, it penalizes American energy developers and hands China the keys to dominate 21st century energy supply chains and energy-intensive industries like AI.

    Republicans are on the verge of enacting a convoluted maze of “foreign entity” restrictions and penalties on U.S. manufacturers and energy companies in the name of excising China from U.S. energy supply chains. We share this goal to end U.S. reliance on Chinese minerals and manufacturing. While at the U.S. Department of Energy and the White House, we worked on numerous efforts to combat China’s grip on energy supply chains. That included developing tough, nuanced and, importantly, workable rules to restrict tax credit eligibility for electric vehicles made using materials from China or Chinese entities — rules that quickly began to shift supply chains away from China and toward the U.S. and our allies.

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