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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.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

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

Interior Department Targets Wind Developers Using Bird Protection Law

A new letter sent Friday asks for reams of documentation on developers’ compliance with the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.

An eagle clutching a wind turbine.
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The Fish and Wildlife Service is sending letters to wind developers across the U.S. asking for volumes of records about eagle deaths, indicating an imminent crackdown on wind farms in the name of bird protection laws.

The Service on Friday sent developers a request for records related to their permits under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, which compels companies to obtain permission for “incidental take,” i.e. the documented disturbance of eagle species protected under the statute, whether said disturbance happens by accident or by happenstance due to the migration of the species. Developers who received the letter — a copy of which was reviewed by Heatmap — must provide a laundry list of documents to the Service within 30 days, including “information collected on each dead or injured eagle discovered.” The Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Solar for All May Be on the Chopping Block After All

The $7 billion program had been the only part of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund not targeted for elimination by the Trump administration.

The EPA blocking solar power.
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The Environmental Protection Agency plans to cancel grants awarded from the $7 billion Solar for All program, the final surviving grants from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, by the end of this week, The New York Times is reporting. Two sources also told the same to Heatmap.

Solar for All awarded funds to 60 nonprofits, tribes, state energy offices, and municipalities to deliver the benefits of solar energy — namely, utility bill savings — to low-income communities. Some of the programs are focused on rooftop solar, while others are building community solar, which enable residents that don’t own their homes to access cheaper power.

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Grassley Holds Up Trump Treasury Nominees to Protect Renewables Development

Along with Senator John Curtis of Utah, the Iowa senator is aiming to preserve the definition of “begin construction” as it applies to tax credits.

John Curtis and Charles Grassley.
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Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley wants “begin construction” to mean what it means.

To that end, Grassley has placed a “hold” on three nominees to the Treasury Department, the agency tasked with writing the rules and guidance for implementing the tax provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, many of which depend on that all-important definition.

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