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Nor will charging infrastructure “bankrupt” the U.S.
Shortly after being fined $350 million (more than $450 million, including interest) over fraudulent business practices and then booed at Sneaker Con, former President Donald Trump traveled to Waterford, Michigan, where he said some incorrect things about electric vehicles.
Even by Trump’s recent standards, Saturday’s Waterford rally was a bit kooky. During his nearly hour-and-a-half-long speech, the former president claimed that his opponents are calling him a whale (“I don’t know if they meant a whale from the standpoint of being a little heavy, or a whale because I got a lot of money”) and, improbably, claimed not to have known what the word “indictment” meant.
There were fewer surprises, however, for those who’ve been following Trump’s spreading of climate misinformation on the campaign trail. The rally included some of Trump’s favorite hits against EVs, including that they supposedly “don’t go far,” that they’ll eliminate American jobs, and that they’ll make for worse tanks if the Army electrifies them. But Trump also added a new claim to his list of complaints: “If we build all the charging booths that are necessary, our country would go bankrupt,” he said. “It would cost like $3 trillion. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Trump has disparaged charging infrastructure before, and while there are valid concerns about the Biden administration’s high-speed electric vehicle push, Trump’s math in Waterford was more than a little off. For one thing, he almost certainly got the “$3 trillion” price tag from the total cost of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which aims to address significantly more than just the country’s EV-charging infrastructure. In fact, BIL earmarks a comparatively small $7.5 billion for the development of 500,000 public charging stations.
But what would it cost to build and operate all the charging booths necessary to meet the current federal target of zero-emission cars making up half of new vehicle sales by 2030?
Others have already crunched the numbers. In a 2022 report, McKinsey & Company estimated that the U.S. will need “1.2 million public EV chargers and 28 million private EV chargers” by 2030 to meet the zero-emission sales goals. Those public chargers would cost about $38 billion, including the hardware, planning, and installation. Wrap in the cost to residences, workplaces, and depots, and the total cost of public and private charging installation approaches $97 billion.
Naturally, there is some disagreement about those numbers. In a separate analysis, AlixPartners, a consulting firm, found that it would take $50 billion to build the charging infrastructure to meet the 2030 zero-emission vehicle goal in the U.S., and $300 billion worldwide.
There are 1,000 billions in a trillion, though, so whatever way you cut it, it certainly would not cost the U.S. “$3 trillion” to build enough charging stations to accommodate zero-emission vehicles. Nor would doing so“bankrupt” America, even if we were allocating vastly more than the current $7.5 billion that is already set aside. By comparison, the annual budget of the U.S. Space Force alone is $30 billion.
Then again — to be fair — maybe there are some other reasons bankruptcy is at the top of Trump’s mind.
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“NOAA Fisheries does not anticipate any death or serious injury to whales from offshore wind related actions.”
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.
The resulting document is more of an overview than an investigation, and its findings are far from the smoking gun Republicans were looking for. Its main message is that the government and developers should do a better job engaging with Tribes and the fishing industry. As for whales, it basically shrugs. “NOAA Fisheries does not anticipate any death or serious injury to whales from offshore wind related actions and has not recorded marine mammal deaths from offshore wind activities,” it says.
But Smith seized on other findings to declare that the report “gives credibility and vindication” to concerns he has raised about offshore wind, pointing specifically to a section about defense and radar systems. The steel in offshore wind turbines has “high electromagnetic reflectivity,” which can disrupt certain radar systems, the report says. In a short paragraph about strategies to mitigate the issue, it notes that the Department of Defense can request that certain areas be excluded from development — which it has already done — or curtail operations as needed.
Smith also highlighted a portion of the report that says “large shipping vessels may have trouble avoiding turbines in the event of a mechanical failure.” Most projects on the East Coast have proposed spacing turbines at least 1 nautical mile apart, but shipping vessels may need up to 2 nautical miles in the event they need to make a sharp turn. The report doesn’t make any specific recommendations, but notes that the BOEM can prohibit construction within a certain distance of shipping lanes and require developers to create a “lighting, marking, and signaling plan” to improve safety.
Smith recently joined anti-offshore wind activists calling on the government to halt work on Empire Wind 1, an offshore wind farm off the coast of New York and New Jersey developed by Equinor that started construction this month. In a letter to Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, he wrote that the environmental review process under the Biden administration “was completely inadequate,” and that the Empire Wind project could thus be “catastrophic.”
The GAO report finds little fault in the previous administration’s environmental review process. It does, however, identify “gaps in Interior’s oversight of development.” For example, the BOEM has been inconsistent in the way it consults with Tribes to identify areas for wind development, as well as in how it considers or addresses the concerns Tribes raise. Part of the problem, per the report, is that Tribes have limited capacity to review documents and engage with the agency, and that government grants meant to address this gap are inaccessible because they require the Tribes to cover some of the costs. The report also finds that while the agency has taken steps to incorporate the fishing industry’s concerns into developing new lease areas, it hasn’t adequately communicated those steps to the industry. In addition, while the agency has called for a compensation mechanism to reimburse fishing companies for losses related to offshore wind, it has not yet established one.
The five recommendations the GAO makes in light of its findings are all related to boosting agency capacity for engagement and information sharing. Far from building up the office, however, the Trump administration has laid off more than 2,000 interior department employees, including eight of the roughly 80 staffers who worked on planning and permitting offshore wind.
Smith is taking the report’s findings — including a note that there are still unknowns about offshore wind’s impacts — as proof that development should be shut down. “Ocean wind energy development is an egregiously flawed and dangerous initiative and must be stopped,” he said in a press release Monday.
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.
If you missed this special section, you can check it out here.
And thank you, as always, for reading us and making our work possible.
Nico
Founder & Editor in chief
The administration is doubling down on an April 20 end date for the traffic control program.
Congestion pricing has only been in effect in New York City for three months, but its rollout has been nearly as turbulent as the 18-year battle to implement it in the first place.
Trump’s Department of Transportation escalated its threat this week to retaliate against New York if the state’s Metropolitan Transit Authority, or MTA, does not shut down the tolling program by April 20.
The federal agency reposted a CBS New York story on social media that purported it had agreed to allow congestion pricing to remain in place through October, calling the story “a complete lie.”
“Make no mistake — the Trump Administration and USDOT will not hesitate to use every tool at our disposal in response to non-compliance later this month,” the agency said in the post.
The post did not say what those tools might be, but a previous post from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on March 20 made a veiled threat to withhold funding from the state if it did not shut down the tolling program. “The billions of dollars the federal government sends to New York are not a blank check,” he said.
Duffy notified the MTA on February 19 that he was rescinding federal approval of its congestion pricing program, which charges a $9 fee for drivers who enter New York City’s central business district. The toll had only just gone into effect in early January, but there was already evidence that it was reducing traffic. The MTA immediately filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York challenging Duffy’s actions.
The CBS New York story reported on a joint letter that the MTA and USDOT submitted to the presiding judge mapping out a timeline for the case to proceed. The MTA agreed to file an amended complaint by April 18, and the DOT agreed to respond to it by May 27. Following that, the timeline allows for the back-and-forth over evidence leading up to a ruling to potentially stretch until late October. Both parties called for the judge to reach a decision based on written arguments, without a formal trial.
Despite agreeing to this timeline for the case — the whole point of which is to determine the legality of DOT’s order to terminate congestion pricing — the DOT maintains that New York City must stop charging drivers by April 20.
The MTA refuses to do so. “Congestion pricing is in effect,” Regina Kaplan, the attorney for the MTA, said during a pretrial conference call on Wednesday. “We believe it's working, and as we stated in our complaints, we don't intend to turn it off unless there's an order from your honor that we need to do so.”
In response, Dominika Tarczynska, from the U.S. attorney’s office, told the judge that Duffy is “still evaluating what DOT’s options are if New York City does not comply, and there has been no final decision as to, what, if anything will occur on April 20.”