You’re out of free articles.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Sign In or Create an Account.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Welcome to Heatmap
Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here .
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Subscribe to get unlimited Access
Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Create Your Account
Please Enter Your Password
Forgot your password?
Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:
Republicans seem intent on making the Inflation Reduction Act an electoral issue.
If Republicans repeal parts of a climate law that nobody knew about, did they ever exist?
On Thursday, the Republican-controlled House passed the “Lower Energy Costs Act,” which would not only accelerate fossil fuel projects but also take a blade to a few key provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act. As legislation, the Republican bill is “dead on arrival” in the Senate and stands almost no chance of being passed into law. But it should still be a wakeup call that America’s historic piece of climate legislation isn’t entirely safe.
The stakes are amplified by the fact that while the Inflation Reduction Act is fairly popular on the surface, the public is still pretty clueless about it.
In December, the Yale Program on Climate Communications found that when people were provided with a brief description of the new law, about two in three registered voters, or 68%, said they supported it. That included 66% of those who identified as “liberal” or “moderate” Republicans. But the same poll found that 57% of voters hadn’t heard much about the legislation. That still seems to be the case, as the Heatmap Climate Poll, conducted in February by Benenson Strategy Group, found that some 63% of Americans have heard “not much” or “nothing” about what is contained in the Inflation Reduction Act. I can also personally confirm that no one seems to know what the hell it is by the blank stares I receive whenever people ask me what I’ve been writing about recently.
Though Biden‘s stance on climate policy was a major draw for votersduring the election, 53% of Democrats and 73% of independents reported not hearing much about his signature climate package, per the Heatmap poll.
Provisions like the electric vehicle tax credit, which has been grabbing headlines for months, are somehow failing to appear on many people’s radar. Even 62% of people who said they "wanted to drive an electric vehicle in the future" also reported that they didn't know much about the IRA, and 45% of all respondents reported they weren't aware of the tax credit until taking Heatmap's survey.
It’s not exactly a surprise that people don’t know the ins and outs of a 700-plus page mega-bill that went by several different names over the course of more than a year of grueling, will-they-or-won’t-they-pass it negotiations. The fact that the biggest climate and clean energy package in history is called “The Inflation Reduction Act” doesn’t help, either.
It’s clear that once people learn about what’s in it, those provisions will be popular, said Jamal Raad, co-founder and senior advisor for Evergreen Action, a climate policy advocacy group. Indeed, the Yale survey found that when asked if they support government subsidies for renewable energy, electric vehicles, and home energy efficiency, most Americans said yes. “The challenge of the movement and the administration and others is to tell the story of the clean energy future we’re building. The polling suggests that that work still lies ahead of us,” said Raad.
To be clear, the Republican bill doesn’t entirely repeal the Inflation Reduction Act. It would eliminate a fee on methane emissions and a $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, much of which is dedicated to spurring renewable energy projects in low-income communities. A section titled “Homeowner Energy Freedom” contains provisions that would cut rebates and contractor training for installing energy efficient, electric appliances like heat pumps and induction stoves.
There was already a question about whether some of these programs would actually reach the public, as they rely on states to apply for the funding and distribute it. “There’s a risk of Republican governors deciding they’re not going to take advantage of projects or programs,” said Josh Freed, who leads the climate and energy program at the center-left think tank Third Way. He said it was a problem that advocates like himself need to think through. “How do we communicate to voters that the decisions that governors are making are literally hurting their pockets?”
It also won’t help that navigating the web of tax credits and rebates has already been a challenge for consumers. On Friday, the Treasury Department unveiled new rules for the electric vehicle tax credit that will probably dramatically scale back which models qualify, at least in the short term. Some homeowners eager to take advantage of rebates to replace their boilers and water heaters with electric versions have come up against skeptical contractors who barely understand how the rebates work themselves.
Still, Raad thinks the public will begin to feel the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act soon enough, due to the nature of some of the other provisions, like federal tax credits for wind and solar farms and domestic manufacturing. “You will see major investment in rural and Republican areas just due to the nature of where clean energy is. So the tax credits are a pretty decent check on these funds being distributed pretty much across the country,” he said.
At least so far, those tax credits don’t appear to be on Republicans’ short list to nix. To Raad, the House energy package that passed this week was more about appealing to Republican donors in the fossil fuel industry, who want support for more drilling, than riling up the conservative base. But some members of Congress have indicated it’s just the beginning of a push for full repeal.
“They’re gonna have to try to point to some things that they’re doing to govern, and energy seems to be one of those things that they have enough agreement on that they can actually introduce legislation,” said Freed. “Whether there's a broader appeal to the public than Republican primary voters is a very big question. But I think they’re gonna keep going after it.”
The Heatmap Climate Poll of 1,000 American adults was conducted via online panels by Benenson Strategy Group from Feb. 15 to 20, 2023. The survey included interviews with Americans in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.02 percentage points. You can read more about the topline results here.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
The Loan Programs Office is good for more than just nuclear funding.
That China has a whip hand over the rare earths mining and refining industry is one of the few things Washington can agree on.
That’s why Alex Jacquez, who worked on industrial policy for Joe Biden’s National Economic Council, found it “astounding”when he read in the Washington Post this week that the White House was trying to figure out on the fly what to do about China restricting exports of rare earth metals in response to President Trump’s massive tariffs on the country’s imports.
Rare earth metals have a wide variety of applications, including for magnets in medical technology, defense, and energy productssuch as wind turbines and electric motors.
Jacquez told me there has been “years of work, including by the first Trump administration, that has pointed to this exact case as the worst-case scenario that could happen in an escalation with China.” It stands to reason, then, that experienced policymakers in the Trump administration might have been mindful of forestalling this when developing their tariff plan. But apparently not.
“The lines of attack here are numerous,” Jacquez said. “The fact that the National Economic Council and others are apparently just thinking about this for the first time is pretty shocking.”
And that’s not the only thing the Trump administration is doing that could hamper American access to rare earths and critical minerals.
Though China still effectively controls the global pipeline for most critical minerals (a broader category that includes rare earths as well as more commonly known metals and minerals such as lithium and cobalt), the U.S. has been at work for at least the past five years developing its own domestic supply chain. Much of that work has fallen to the Department of Energy, whose Loan Programs Office has funded mining and processing facilities, and whose Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains hasfunded and overseen demonstration projects for rare earths and critical minerals mining and refining.
The LPO is in line for dramatic cuts, as Heatmap has reported. So, too, are other departments working on rare earths, including the Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains. In its zeal to slash the federal government, the Trump administration may have to start from scratch in its efforts to build up a rare earths supply chain.
The Department of Energy did not reply to a request for comment.
This vulnerability to China has been well known in Washington for years, including by the first Trump administration.
“Our dependence on one country, the People's Republic of China (China), for multiple critical minerals is particularly concerning,” then-President Trump said in a 2020 executive order declaring a “national emergency” to deal with “our Nation's undue reliance on critical minerals.” At around the same time, the Loan Programs Office issued guidance “stating a preference for projects related to critical mineral” for applicants for the office’s funding, noting that “80 percent of its rare earth elements directly from China.” Using the Defense Production Act, the Trump administration also issued a grant to the company operating America's sole rare earth mine, MP Materials, to help fund a processing facility at the site of its California mine.
The Biden administration’s work on rare earths and critical minerals was almost entirely consistent with its predecessor’s, just at a greater scale and more focused on energy. About a month after taking office, President Bidenissued an executive order calling for, among other things, a Defense Department report “identifying risks in the supply chain for critical minerals and other identified strategic materials, including rare earth elements.”
Then as part of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, the Biden administration increased funding for LPO, which supported a number of critical minerals projects. It also funneled more money into MP Materials — including a $35 million contract from the Department of Defense in 2022 for the California project. In 2024, it awarded the company a competitive tax credit worth $58.5 million to help finance construction of its neodymium-iron-boron magnet factory in Texas. That facilitybegan commercial operation earlier this year.
The finished magnets will be bought by General Motors for its electric vehicles. But even operating at full capacity, it won’t be able to do much to replace China’s production. The MP Metals facility is projected to produce 1,000 tons of the magnets per year.China produced 138,000 tons of NdFeB magnets in 2018.
The Trump administration is not averse to direct financial support for mining and minerals projects, but they seem to want to do it a different way. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has proposed using a sovereign wealth fund to invest in critical mineral mines. There is one big problem with that plan, however: the U.S. doesn’t have one (for the moment, at least).
“LPO can invest in mining projects now,” Jacquez told me. “Cutting 60% of their staff and the experts who work on this is not going to give certainty to the business community if they’re looking to invest in a mine that needs some government backstop.”
And while the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act remains very much in doubt, the subsidies it provided for electric vehicles, solar, and wind, along with domestic content requirements have been a major source of demand for critical minerals mining and refining projects in the United States.
“It’s not something we’re going to solve overnight,” Jacquez said. “But in the midst of a maximalist trade with China, it is something we will have to deal with on an overnight basis, unless and until there’s some kind of de-escalation or agreement.”
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.