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Politics

Biden’s Big Earth Day Agenda

On expanding solar access, the American Climate Corps, and union news

Biden’s Big Earth Day Agenda
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Torrential rains forced Mauritius to shut down its stock exchange • “Once in a century” flooding hit southern China • In the Northern Hemisphere, the Lyrid meteor shower peaks tonight.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Biden kicks off Earth Day with $7 billion for expanding solar access

Today is Earth Day, but President Biden and his cabinet are celebrating all week long. Senior members of the administration have scheduled a national tour of events and announcements related to the president’s climate and environmental record. It starts with Biden’s visit to Prince William Forest Park in Triangle, Virginia, today, where he will announce $7 billion is being awarded to 60 state and local governments, tribes, and national and regional nonprofits through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Solar for All initiative, which aims to support solar in low- to moderate-income communities. The average grant size will be more than $80 million, and the funding will be used to design new programs and bolster existing ones that subsidize the cost of rooftop solar installations, community solar projects, and battery storage.

There’s a lot more on the schedule for the rest of the week, but here’s an abbreviated version:

Today: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is out West helping break ground on the Brightline West High-Speed Rail Project; Arati Prabhakar, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, is in Maine to announce $123 million in funding for habitat restoration; Energy Secretary Tom Vilsack heads to Pennsylvania to announce funding for clean energy projects.

Later this week: Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland will be in New Orleans to unveil new measures to develop an offshore wind economy; Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm heads to New Mexico to talk about new efforts to support domestic solar and wind manufacturing; and Haaland will cut the ribbon at a new visitors’ center at Delaware’s First State National Historical Park.

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  • 2. American Climate Corps website officially up and running

    The Biden administration launched the jobs board for the American Climate Corps (ACC) today. Nearly 2,000 jobs and training opportunities will be listed on ClimateCorps.gov, which is still in beta form but “will be regularly updated” as new positions become available. In addition, three states – Vermont, New Mexico, and Illinois – are launching their own state-based climate corps programs. The administration also said ACC members will have access to an “apprenticeship readiness curriculum” during their terms, which will train them up on skills needed in the green energy economy.

    3. EPA expected to release final power plant rules

    The EPA’s final power plant emissions regulations are expected this week. CNN reported the administration is considering ditching its “cutting edge” proposal for new natural gas plants to use hydrogen as well as natural gas to generate electricity, which would mean future gas-fired and existing coal-fired power plants would rely on carbon capture and storage to cut their emissions. Other rules governing wastewater and solid combustion waste from coal plants are also expected to be finalized, according toE&E News.

    4. A quick recap of the World Bank and IMF spring meetings

    In case you missed it: The World Bank and IMF spring meetings came to a close on Saturday without any firm plans for mobilizing the funds needed to help developing countries fight climate change – certainly nothing close to the $2.4 trillion that is needed per year to help poorer nations in their energy transitions. The week wasn’t a complete bust. France, Kenya, and Barbados launched a taskforce to explore more creative ways to fill the gap in climate finance, including “taxes on wealthy people, plane tickets, financial transactions, shipping fuel, fossil fuel production, and fossil fuel firms’ windfall profits,” Climate Home News reported. Finance ministers from Brazil and France are pushing for a 2% annual wealth tax on billionaires to help alleviate problems like global hunger and climate change. And 11 rich countries (including the U.S.) pledged a total of $11 billion to boost the World Bank’s lending power.

    5. VW plant in Tennessee votes to join UAW

    A majority of Volkswagen workers at a Tennessee plant voted over the weekend to join the United Auto Workers union. The Chattanooga factory is the first auto plant in the South to unionize, but the UAW hopes it won’t be the last. A Mercedes plant in Alabama is set to vote on UAW membership next month, and the union wants to see more plants unionize over the next two years. Anti-union sentiment runs deep in southern auto plants, but non-union workers typically have lower wages and fewer job protections than unionized workers, so a series of UAW victories could change a lot of lives. It could also be a “shot in the arm” for the union’s campaign to unionize Tesla.

    THE KICKER

    Roughly a third of U.S. adults are interested in cutting back on their meat consumption, according to the nonprofit Food for Climate League.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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