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A handful of bills have been introduced that seek to adapt to more frequent heat waves.
What are we going to do about the heat? As devastatingly hot as this summer has been — and it has broken records and likely killed thousands of Americans — next summer will almost certainly be worse. Will Congress act?
New federal legislation to attack the root of the problem by reducing carbon emissions isn’t on the table, thanks to Republican control of the House. But that doesn’t mean there’s zero chance of any kind of heat legislation emerging this year. Republicans have proven open to funding ideas like better hurricane forecasting, the streamlining of flood insurance claims, and more seawalls — all things that get lumped into the category of adaptation to extreme weather or resilience. Could something similar be possible for heat?
A handful of bills have been introduced — almost all by Democrats — that seek to adapt to heat in one way or another. Because adapting to hotter temperatures isn’t as simple as erecting new levies, all the legislation seeks in one way or another to ensure everyone has access to a cooler environment. That might mean giving people money to keep their air conditioners running, funding cooling centers, or building shade outside.
Here are the bills, from most reactive to most proactive:
1. The Extreme Heat Emergency Act:This bill would put heat waves on FEMA’s list of major disaster qualifying events — making funds available for cooling centers and additional personnel. Representative Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona, introduced the bill alongside Representatives Mark Amodei, a Republican from Nevada, and Sylvia Garcia, a Democrat from Texas..
It might have a better chance with Republicans than its counterparts because FEMA is familiar, says Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina and the executive director of RepublicEn, a project of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University that seeks to use “conservative principles” to solve climate change. The agency “butters the bread in conservative districts” in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida when disaster strikes, Inglis explained.
The problem is that FEMA funding only arrives after a disaster has already taken place. Alex Flint, executive director of the right-leaning climate think tank Alliance for Market Solutions, referred to FEMA funding and emergency supplemental bills as “old tools.”
“We will see the need to address higher temperatures in the defense bill, transportation bill, farm bill,” he said. “But policymakers are only just starting to grapple with the near-term effects of this long-term crisis.”
“Things can get more expensive after the fact,” Amy Bailey, director of climate resilience and sustainability at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, told me.
2. The Heating and Cooling Relief Act: This bill, introduced by Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey and New York Representative Jamaal Bowman, both Democrats, would inject tens of billions of dollars into the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps low-income families pay their utility bills. The bill would also increase funding for cooling assistance — but it also hasn’t attracted a single Republican cosponsor, consistent with the party’s wariness about extending government assistance to low-income Americans.
3. The SHADE Act: This bill would do what its name implies and fund the creation of shade to attack urban heat islands, especially in areas that are low-income or have historically experienced discrimination. The bill has attracted 55 cosponsors — all Democrats.
4. The Preventing HEAT Illness and Death Act:Of the options, this bill is the most wide-reaching. It calls for a study that would identify the gaps in what we know about extreme heat as well as the public facilities (read: schools and prisons) without air conditioning. It would also offer $100 million in financial assistance to communities that want to adapt to extreme heat — installing cool roofs, creating more urban forestry, or making a grid more resilient, as well as training on risk communications — with the condition that 40% of its funding goes towards communities that are low-income or have environmental justice concerns. And it also calls for similar interagency communication on extreme heat that already exists for hurricanes and floods.
“It’s a perfectly reasonable bill that’s aimed towards saving lives on the ground,” said Alice Nam, press secretary for Representative. Marilyn Strickland, a Democrat from Washington state and one of the bill’s House sponsors. “It doesn’t propose a one-size fits all solution.”
“We need the federal government to respond with the urgency these climate and public health crises demand,” sponsor Senator Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, wrote in a statement to Heatmap.
And interagency communication, Bailey added, would be an “incredible benefit” — helping communities access resources faster. Extreme climate events that cost more than $1 billion, she noted, happened on average every 18 days in 2022, so speed is key.
Markey introduced the same bill in 2021, which advanced out of the Senate Commerce Committee in a bipartisan vote. This year’s version doesn’t have a single Republican co-sponsor in the House — though its authors are actively looking for them, Nam said.
“It’s really hard to tell what is too big of a pill for Republicans to swallow,” she said.
Last Congress, the bill was introduced into the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Science, Space and Technology Committee — meaning that this time, either Representative Frank Lucas, Republican of Oklahoma, or Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican of Washington state, would need to hear the bill, and Republicans on either of those committees would need to vote in its favor.
Inglis noted that Republicans would likely take issue with the fact that the bill relies on a comparatively narrow set of funds and grants, in addition to the possibility that it could add regulations to plans to adapt to heat. “Conservatives are right to say we don’t need a U.S. Department of Trees for cities,” Inglis said, noting that Republican members would likely prefer for cities to lead the charge themselves — though he added that that still often requires federal block grants.
But eventually, Flint said, Republicans — even in the House — will come around to the idea that the government should spend money to fund adaptation to climate change.
“Voters of all political persuasions are going to be impacted by fires, flooding, hurricanes, and politicians will have to respond,” he noted. “The climate doesn’t care about people’s politics and will change the lives of Republicans and Democrats alike.”
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A conversation with VDE Americas CEO Brian Grenko.
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.
Hiya Brian. So why’d you get into the hail issue?
Obviously solar panels are made with glass that can allow the sunlight to come through. People have to remember that when you install a project, you’re financing it for 35 to 40 years. While the odds of you getting significant hail in California or Arizona are low, it happens a lot throughout the country. And if you think about some of these large projects, they may be in the middle of nowhere, but they are taking hundreds if not thousands of acres of land in some cases. So the chances of them encountering large hail over that lifespan is pretty significant.
We partnered with one of the country’s foremost experts on hail and developed a really interesting technology that can digest radar data and tell folks if they’re developing a project what the [likelihood] will be if there’s significant hail.
Solar panels can withstand one-inch hail – a golfball size – but once you get over two inches, that’s when hail starts breaking solar panels. So it’s important to understand, first and foremost, if you’re developing a project, you need to know the frequency of those events. Once you know that, you need to start thinking about how to design a system to mitigate that risk.
The government agencies that look over land use, how do they handle this particular issue? Are there regulations in place to deal with hail risk?
The regulatory aspects still to consider are about land use. There are authorities with jurisdiction at the federal, state, and local level. Usually, it starts with the local level and with a use permit – a conditional use permit. The developer goes in front of the township or the city or the county, whoever has jurisdiction of wherever the property is going to go. That’s where it gets political.
To answer your question about hail, I don’t know if any of the [authority having jurisdictions] really care about hail. There are folks out there that don’t like solar because it’s an eyesore. I respect that – I don’t agree with that, per se, but I understand and appreciate it. There’s folks with an agenda that just don’t want solar.
So okay, how can developers approach hail risk in a way that makes communities more comfortable?
The bad news is that solar panels use a lot of glass. They take up a lot of land. If you have hail dropping from the sky, that’s a risk.
The good news is that you can design a system to be resilient to that. Even in places like Texas, where you get large hail, preparing can mean the difference between a project that is destroyed and a project that isn’t. We did a case study about a project in the East Texas area called Fighting Jays that had catastrophic damage. We’re very familiar with the area, we work with a lot of clients, and we found three other projects within a five-mile radius that all had minimal damage. That simple decision [to be ready for when storms hit] can make the complete difference.
And more of the week’s big fights around renewable energy.
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.
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.
3. Garrett County, Maryland – Fight readers tell me they’d like to hear a piece of good news for once, so here’s this: A 300-megawatt solar project proposed by REV Solar in rural Maryland appears to be moving forward without a hitch.
4. Stark County, Ohio – The Ohio Public Siting Board rejected Samsung C&T’s Stark Solar project, citing “consistent opposition to the project from each of the local government entities and their impacted constituents.”
5. Ingham County, Michigan – GOP lawmakers in the Michigan State Capitol are advancing legislation to undo the state’s permitting primacy law, which allows developers to evade municipalities that deny projects on unreasonable grounds. It’s unlikely the legislation will become law.
6. Churchill County, Nevada – Commissioners have upheld the special use permit for the Redwood Materials battery storage project we told you about last week.
Long Islanders, meanwhile, are showing up in support of offshore wind, and more in this week’s edition of The Fight.
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.
But something else is now on the rise: Counties are passing anti-renewables moratoria and ordinances restricting solar and wind energy development. We analyzed Heatmap Pro data on local laws and found a rise in local restrictions starting in 2021, leading to nearly 20 of the state’s 99 counties – about one fifth – having some form of restrictive ordinance on solar, wind or battery storage.
What is sparking this hostility? Some of it might be counties following the partisan trend, as renewable energy has struggled in hyper-conservative spots in the U.S. But it may also have to do with an outsized focus on land use rights and energy development that emerged from the conflict over carbon pipelines, which has intensified opposition to any usage of eminent domain for energy development.
The central node of this tension is the Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 pipeline. As we explained in a previous edition of The Fight, the carbon transportation network would cross five states, and has galvanized rural opposition against it. Last November, I predicted the Summit pipeline would have an easier time under Trump because of his circle’s support for oil and gas, as well as the placement of former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum as interior secretary, as Burgum was a major Summit supporter.
Admittedly, this prediction has turned out to be incorrect – but it had nothing to do with Trump. Instead, Summit is now stalled because grassroots opposition to the pipeline quickly mobilized to pressure regulators in states the pipeline is proposed to traverse. They’re aiming to deny the company permits and lobbying state legislatures to pass bills banning the use of eminent domain for carbon pipelines. One of those states is South Dakota, where the governor last month signed an eminent domain ban for CO2 pipelines. On Thursday, South Dakota regulators denied key permits for the pipeline for the third time in a row.
Another place where the Summit opposition is working furiously: Iowa, where opposition to the CO2 pipeline network is so intense that it became an issue in the 2020 presidential primary. Regulators in the state have been more willing to greenlight permits for the project, but grassroots activists have pressured many counties into some form of opposition.
The same counties with CO2 pipeline moratoria have enacted bans or land use restrictions on developing various forms of renewables, too. Like Kossuth County, which passed a resolution decrying the use of eminent domain to construct the Summit pipeline – and then three months later enacted a moratorium on utility-scale solar.
I asked Jessica Manzour, a conservation program associate with Sierra Club fighting the Summit pipeline, about this phenomenon earlier this week. She told me that some counties are opposing CO2 pipelines and then suddenly tacking on or pivoting to renewables next. In other cases, counties with a burgeoning opposition to renewables take up the pipeline cause, too. In either case, this general frustration with energy companies developing large plots of land is kicking up dust in places that previously may have had a much lower opposition risk.
“We painted a roadmap with this Summit fight,” said Jess Manzour, a campaigner with Sierra Club involved in organizing opposition to the pipeline at the grassroots level, who said zealous anti-renewables activists and officials are in some cases lumping these items together under a broad umbrella. ”I don’t know if it’s the people pushing for these ordinances, rather than people taking advantage of the situation.”