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“High-paying jobs”? “Good for our economy”? “Powering our future”? Totally cool.
Earlier this month, an odd little ad began appearing on TVs in Michigan. On first watch, it plays like any other political advertisement you’d see on television this time of year. In it, Michigan governor and Biden surrogate Gretchen Whitmer touts the high-paying electric vehicle manufacturing jobs that the Democratic administration has brought to her state. Watch the spot a few times, though, and it soon becomes clear what it’s missing.
Climate change.
The 30-second ad by Evergreen Action, an advocacy group linked to Washington Governor Jay Inslee, promotes “electric cars that power our economy and our future,” “training Michigan workers for high-paying jobs,” and policies that are “good for our economy.” This is all clearly referencing programs in the Inflation Reduction Act, arguably the most significant piece of climate legislation ever enacted in the United States, and yet the spot doesn’t once mention the one big upside all these upsides have in common. According to new polling that Third Way, a center-left think tank, shared exclusively with Heatmap News, that’s a good thing.
“Climate, as a message, is not going to drive turnout,” Emily Becker, the deputy director of communications for Third Way’s climate and energy team, told me.
While most Americans believe the planet is warming due to human activity and overwhelmingly want the government to do something about it, “climate change” — at least in those words — is almost never their most important issue. According to prior polling by Third Way and confirmed in issue polls run by firms like Pew, voters who say the economy is their No. 1 priority make up a plurality of the electorate, while “climate-first” voters represent a much smaller (and typically, whiter, older, and wealthier) subsection.
The new poll, conducted in mid-May and released on Monday, was done in partnership with Impact Research, a progressive polling firm that also works directly with Biden. What Third Way wanted was a better understanding of when and where climate becomes a make-or-break issue. The results show that just over half of Americans (54%) would back a candidate who views clean energy as a priority. When presented with the hypothetical of picking between a candidate who wants immediate climate action and one who “feels we must address inflation before combating climate change,” the numbers dip; just 40% of respondents said they’d vote for the former candidate, and 47% picked the inflation-busting latter.
Of course, this is a made-up scenario. For one thing, the clean energy build-out is inflation-busting, and lest we forget, the 2024 election is between a candidate who passed the most substantial climate legislation in U.S. history and one who still claims climate change is a hoax. But inflation is the heavy-weight issue in America right now. “People are going to prioritize anything that impacts them personally,” Anat Shenker-Osorio, a strategic communications consultant and the host of the podcast Words to Win By, told me.
Shenker-Osorio said she interprets the candidate question as a victory for climate advocates. Sure, when forced to make a binary, zero-sum choice between climate and inflation, the respondents to this poll chose the latter — but only by 7 points, and with a margin of error of 3.1. Climate advocates have done an “extraordinary job to bring voters into a place where they’re only 7 points underwater on this make-believe question, where somehow tackling corporate price gouging and raising people’s wages can’t be done if we are also tackling climate change,” Shenker-Osorio told me.
Shenker-Osorio did agree, however, that the word “climate” needs to be used carefully, at risk of confusing or alienating voters. “I’m not arguing that the winner here is to say ‘climate change’ over and over and over again,” she said. “I also don’t use that in my messaging. It’s way too abstract.” Shenker-Osorio pointed to phrases like “damage to our climate” instead, and stressed to me that it is important for Democratic candidates and their surrogates to “present a positive vision, which is: the clean energy future is ours for the taking.”
Becker, of Third Way, acknowledged that the question presented a blatantly artificial scenario, but argued that “using measures that can be imperfect can still be revelatory in terms of how individuals think about this issue.” For example, while emissions reduction is an obvious upside of clean energy — it’s literally emphasized in the name! — the polling confirmed that centering discussions of things like solar power and EVs on the high-paying jobs and cost-saving upsides was more productive than opining about saving the planet.
Finding the right balance might not seem too hard, but when you have a 30-second ad spot running in living rooms across Michigan, every single word needs to be high impact. And manufacturing electric cars because they “power our economy and our future?” That’s an upside everyone can agree on.
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The Trump administration just approved a transmission project designed to serve a solar farm in California.
The Trump administration just did something surprising: It paved the way for a transmission line to a solar energy project.
On Friday, the Bureau of Land Management approved the Gen-Tie transmission line and associated facilities for the Sapphire Solar project, a solar farm sited on private lands in Riverside County, California, that will provide an estimated 117 megawatts to the Southern California Public Power Authority.
It is the first sign so far that some renewable energy requiring federal lands may be allowed to develop during the next four years, and is an about-face from the first weeks of Trump’s presidency.
BLM notably said the solar project’s transmission line will help “Unleash American Energy” (the bureau’s capitalization, not mine). And it said the move “aligns with” Trump’s executive order declaring a national energy emergency — which discussed only fossil fuels, nuclear, and hydropower — because it was “supporting the integrity of the electric grid while creating jobs and economic prosperity for Americans.”
“The Bureau of Land Management supports American Energy Dominance that prioritizes needs of American families and businesses,” BLM California State Director Joe Stout said in a statement provided via press release.
Another executive order Trump issued on his first day back in office paused solar and wind project permitting for at least 60 days, leading to a halt on government activities required to construct and operate renewable energy projects. It’s unclear whether these actions to move Sapphire’s transmission line through agency review means the federal permitting pipes are finally unstuck for the solar industry, or if this is an exception to the rule — especially because the pause Trump ordered has yet to hit the expiration date he set on the calendar.
For those keeping score, that’s three more than wanted to preserve them last year.
Those who drew hope from the letter 18 House Republicans sent to Speaker Mike Johnson last August calling for the preservation of energy tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act must be jubilant this morning. On Sunday, 21 House Republicans sent a similar letter to House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith. Those with sharp eyes will have noticed: That’s three more people than signed the letter last time, indicating that this is a coalition with teeth.
As Heatmap reported in the aftermath of November’s election, four of the original signatories were out of a job as of January, meaning that the new letter features a total of seven new recruits. So who are they?
The new letter is different from the old one in a few key ways. First, it mentions neither the Inflation Reduction Act nor its slightly older cousin, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, by name. Instead, it emphasizes “the importance of prioritizing energy affordability for American families and keeping on our current path to energy dominance amid efforts to repeal or reform current energy tax credits.” The letter also advocates for an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy development that has long been popular among conservatives but has seemed to fall out of vogue under Trump 2.0.
Lastly, while the new letter repeats the previous version’s emphasis on policy stability for businesses, it adds a new plea on behalf of ratepayers. “As our conference works to make energy prices more affordable, tax reforms that would raise energy costs for hard working Americans would be contrary to this goal,” it reads. “Further, affordable and abundant energy will be critical as the President works to onshore domestic manufacturing, supply chains, and good paying jobs, particularly in Republican run states due to their business-friendly environments. Pro-energy growth policies will directly support these objectives.”
As my colleagues Robinson Meyer and Emily Pontecorvo have written, tariffs on Canadian fuel would raise energy prices in markets across the U.S. That includes some particularly swingy states, e.g. Michigan, which perhaps explains Rep. James’ seeming about-face.
Republicans’ House majority currently stands at all of four votes, so although 21 members might not be huge on the scale of the full House, they still represent a significant problem for Speaker Johnson.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Rep. James did not unseat Democrat Carl Marlinga in 2022 as the district had been newly created following the 2020 census.
Three companies are joining forces to add at least a gigawatt of new generation by 2029. The question is whether they can actually do it.
Two of the biggest electricity markets in the country — the 13-state PJM Interconnection, which spans the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, and ERCOT, which covers nearly all of Texas — want more natural gas. Both are projecting immense increases in electricity demand thanks to data centers and electrification. And both have had bouts of market weirdness and dysfunction, with ERCOT experiencing spiky prices and even blackouts during extreme weather and PJM making enormous payouts largely to gas and coal operators to lock in their “capacity,” i.e. their ability to provide power when most needed.
Now a trio of companies, including the independent power producer NRG, the turbine manufacturer GE Vernova, and a subsidiary of the construction firm Kiewit Corporation, are teaming up with a plan to bring gas-powered plants to PJM and ERCOT, the companies announced today.
The three companies said that the new joint venture “will work to advance four projects totaling over 5 gigawatts” of natural gas combined cycle plants to the two power markets, with over a gigawatt coming by 2029. The companies said that they could eventually build 10 to 15 gigawatts “and expand to other areas across the U.S.”
So far, PJM and Texas’ call for new gas has been more widely heard than answered. The power producer Calpine said last year that it would look into developing more gas in PJM, but actual investment announcements have been scarce, although at least one gas plant scheduled to close has said it would stay open.
So far, across the country, planned new additions to the grid are still overwhelmingly solar and battery storage, according to the Energy Information Administration, whose data shows some 63 gigawatts of planned capacity scheduled to be added this year, with more than half being solar and over 80% being storage.
Texas established a fund in 2023 to provide low-cost loans to new gas plants, but has had trouble finding viable projects. Engie pulled an 885 megawatt project from the program earlier this week, citing “equipment procurement constraints” and delays.
But PJM is working actively with a friendly administration in Washington to bring more natural gas to its grid. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently blessed a PJM plan to accelerate interconnection approvals for large generators — largely natural gas — so that it can bring them online more quickly.
But many developers and large power consumers are less than optimistic about the ability to bring new natural gas onto the grid at a pace that will keep up with demand growth, and are instead looking at “behind-the-meter” approaches to meet rising energy needs, especially from data centers. The asset manager Fortress said earlier this year that it had acquired 850 megawatts of generation capacity from APR Energy and formed a new company, fittingly named New APR Energy, which said this week that it was “deploying four mobile gas turbines providing 100MW+ of dedicated behind-the-meter power to a major U.S.-based AI hyperscaler.”
And all gas developers, whether they’re building on the grid or behind-the-meter, have to get their hands on turbines, which are in short supply. The NRG consortium called this out specifically, noting that it had secured the rights to two 7HA gas turbines by 2029. These kinds of announcements of agreements for specific turbines have become standard for companies showing their seriousness about gas development. When Chevron announced a joint venture with GE Vernova for co-located gas plants for data centers, it also noted that it had a reservation agreement for seven 7HA turbines. But until these turbines are made and installed, these announcements may all just be spin.