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Los Angeles Spreads the EV Wealth Around

Officials announce higher rebates and new fast chargers in underserved areas of the city.

Los Angeles.
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Los Angeles officials on Thursday announced a plan to make the clean energy transition cheaper for low-income residents, The New York Times reports. “Working families in our city need to be assured that our city’s clean energy future won’t leave them trapped in the past,” Mayor Karen Bass said. “Many working families — some working two to three jobs to make ends meet — won’t buy or lease EVs if they don’t have access to convenient, timesaving, cost-saving places to charge them.”

The move comes in response to a study, also released Thursday by a coalition of city, state, and national groups, showing that most of the money for Los Angeles’ green incentives has so far flowed to its wealthier residents. From 1999 to 2022, for instance, just 38% of the $340 million invested in residential solar panels went to disadvantaged communities. And of the $5 million in electric vehicle rebates given from 2013 to 2021, just 23% went to underserved communities. The new plan will offer qualified buyers $4,000 toward the purchase of used EVs, up from $2,500, and install fast chargers in areas that have so far received little attention from private industry. The arrival of cheaper EVs next year should also help.

Los Angeles isn’t alone in tackling the issue of an equitable energy transition. Michigan recently proposed a suite of ambitious climate laws, one of which would establish a Just Transition Office to help workers hurt by decarbonization. New York State’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, passed in 2019, requires that 35% to 40% of “benefits from investments in clean energy and energy efficiency programs” go to disadvantaged communities. Even earlier, Minneapolis designated an area in its economically troubled north as The Northside Green Zone, which involves “a plan of action to improve environmental and population health, and social, economic and environmental justice.”

Such efforts will be crucial in the coming years, as financially strapped homeowners grapple with the high up-front costs of the clean-energy conversion, experts told the Times. “In order to reach a 100% clean energy transition you really need to bring everyone along,” said Kate Anderson, of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, one of the authors of the study. “It’s going to depend on everyone making changes in their households. The affordability piece is a huge challenge.”

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Sparks

Trump Says He’s Going to Slap a Huge Tariff on Copper

“I believe the tariff on copper — we’re going to make it 50%.”

Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

President Trump announced Tuesday during a cabinet meeting that he plans to impose a hefty tax on U.S. copper imports.

“I believe the tariff on copper — we’re going to make it 50%,” he told reporters.

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Sparks

Trump Will ‘Deal’ with Wind and Solar Tax Credits in Megabill, GOP Congressman Says

“We had enough assurance that the president was going to deal with them.”

Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

A member of the House Freedom Caucus said Wednesday that he voted to advance President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” after receiving assurances that Trump would “deal” with the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy tax credits – raising the specter that Trump could try to go further than the megabill to stop usage of the credits.

Representative Ralph Norman, a Republican of North Carolina, said that while IRA tax credits were once a sticking point for him, after meeting with Trump “we had enough assurance that the president was going to deal with them in his own way,” he told Eric Garcia, the Washington bureau chief of The Independent. Norman specifically cited tax credits for wind and solar energy projects, which the Senate version would phase out more slowly than House Republicans had wanted.

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Sparks

Majority of North Carolina Voters Want to Keep the IRA, Poll Finds

The state’s senior senator, Thom Tillis, has been vocal about the need to maintain clean energy tax credits.

A North Carolina sign and solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The majority of voters in North Carolina want Congress to leave the Inflation Reduction Act well enough alone, a new poll from Data for Progress finds.

The survey, which asked North Carolina voters specifically about the clean energy and climate provisions in the bill, presented respondents with a choice between two statements: “The IRA should be repealed by Congress” and “The IRA should be kept in place by Congress.” (“Don’t know” was also an option.)

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