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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 Timesreports. “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 Tries to Kill New York’s Empire Wind Project

For the first time, his administration targets an offshore wind project already under construction.

Wind turbines.
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The Trump administration will try to stop work on Empire Wind, an offshore wind project by Equinor south of Long Island that was going through active construction, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum posted to X on Wednesday.

Burgum announced that he directed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to “halt all construction activities on the Empire Wind Project until further review of information that suggests the Biden administration rushed through its approval without sufficient analysis.”

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Sparks

Republicans Asked For an Offshore Wind Exposé. They Got a Letdown Instead.

“NOAA Fisheries does not anticipate any death or serious injury to whales from offshore wind related actions.”

Offshore wind.
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A group of Republican lawmakers were hoping a new report released Monday would give them fresh ammunition in their fight against offshore wind development. Instead, they got … pretty much nothing. But they’re milking it anyway.

The report in question originated with a spate of whale deaths in early 2023. Though the deaths had no known connection to the nascent industry, they fueled a GOP campaign to shut down the renewable energy revolution that was taking place up and down the East Coast. New Jersey Congressman Chris Smith joined with three of his colleagues to solicit the Government Accountability Office to launch an investigation into the impacts of offshore wind on the environment, maritime safety, military operations, commercial fishing, and other concerns.

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Sparks

Heatmap Wins a National Magazine Award

We have some exciting news to share.

A bottle of champagne.
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I wanted to update you on some very exciting news — our Decarbonize Your Life section just won the National Magazine Award for Service Journalism. It’s a huge honor for a publication that just turned two years old last month and a testament to the outstanding journalism our small but mighty newsroom does every day guiding our readers through the great energy transition.

A huge shout out, in particular, to our deputy editor Jillian Goodman for making the section so smart and helpful, to Robinson Meyer for dreaming up the idea, and to all the writers — Jeva, Katie, Emily, Charu, Taylor, and Andrew — who reported so insightfully for it. Tackling a complex but consequential subject like how to make better personal decisions around climate changewas a massive undertaking, but a labor of love.

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