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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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    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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    Politics

    AM Briefing: Let the Vote-a-Rama Begin

    On taxing renewables, climate finance, and Europe’s heat wave

    Where Things Stand with the GOP’s Megabill
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Current conditions: Parts of Northern California are under red flag warnings as warm air meets whipping winds • China’s southwestern Guizhou province is flooded for the second time in a week • A potential bomb cyclone is taking aim at Australia’s east coast.

    THE TOP FIVE

    1. The Senate GOP’s new tax on renewables could kill the industry

    Late on Friday Senate Republicans added a new tax on solar and wind projects to the budget reconciliation megabill that sent many in the industry into full-blown crisis mode. The proposal would levy a first-of-its-kind penalty on all solar and wind projects tied to the quantity of materials they source from companies with ties to China or other countries designated as adversaries by the U.S. government. “Taken together with other factors both in the bill and not, including permitting timelines and Trump’s tariffs, this tax could indefinitely undermine renewables development in America,” wrote Heatmap’s Jael Holzman. Here are a few reactions from politicians and industry insiders:

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    Politics

    How the Senate GOP’s New Tax on Renewables Could ‘Kill’ the Industry

    As bad as previous drafts of the reconciliation bill have been, this one is worse.

    The Capitol and John Thune.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Senate Republicans are in the final stages of passing their budget reconciliation megabill — which suddenly includes a new tax on solar and wind projects that has sent many in the industry into full-blown crisis mode.

    The proposed tax was tucked inside the latest text of the Senate reconciliation bill, released late Friday night, and would levy a first-of-its-kind penalty on all solar and wind projects tied to the quantity of materials they source from companies with ties to China or other countries designated as adversaries by the U.S. government. Industry representatives are still processing the legislative language, but some fear it would kick in for certain developers as soon as the date of its enactment. Taken together with other factors both in the bill and not, including permitting timelines and Trump’s tariffs, this tax could indefinitely undermine renewables development in America.

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    Green