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This seems highly specific.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak may be rolling back the United Kingdom’s plans to phase out the sale of gas-powered cars and space heaters, but England is forging ahead with sweeping bans on single-use plastic. Starting October 1, it will be illegal for businesses in England to distribute non-reusable plastic plates, bowls, or cutlery. Certain types of styrofoam cups and food containers are also banned. Also, inexplicably, balloon sticks.
WTF is a balloon stick? This is the question I had when I received a press release this morning from Business Waste UK, a commercial waste hauling company, which informed me that eight out of 10 party shops “can't get down with the idea” of banning plastic balloon sticks, according to its research. I am not a parent, and I haven’t been a balloon-impressed child for quite some time, so excuse me if I’m terribly out of the loop on this. But apparently many party retailers sell plastic rods that attach to the knot of a balloon, so the balloon looks like it’s floating even if it’s not filled with helium.
That actually sounds pretty clutch. I recently learned, while reporting on the potential discovery of a room temperature superconductor, that helium is a finite resource, and we’re running out of it. Liquid helium is essential to cooling down the very hot superconductors inside MRI machines, and doctors are worried about a global shortage. Not to be a party pooper, but it seems more criminal to be filling balloons with helium than levitating them on plastic sticks.
I mean, ideally we don’t do either, and that might be the direction the balloon industry is going in anyway, at least in the U.K. Helen Garrett, the owner of the party supply company Creative Decorations, wrote in a blog post in 2020 that she has changed all of her plastic balloon sticks to paper balloon holders. Business Waste UK cites the post as an example that “alternatives are already hitting the market,” meaning there’s no need for a ban.
What’s especially mysterious is that in May, a U.K. committee that assesses the quality of evidence and analysis used to inform government regulations, published a mixed report on the proposal to ban plastic balloon sticks. While the committee deemed the rule “fit for purpose,” it also questioned the underlying need to prohibit balloon sticks, writing that the government’s impact assessment “fails to make a clear case for what the precise problem to be addressed is in relation to plastic balloon sticks specifically.”
I couldn't find the impact assessment referenced online, but I did find this 2018 assessment commissioned by the U.K. government which concluded that “the case for banning plastic balloon sticks appears tenuous.” The report found that they are a comparably small volume product next to plastic plates or cutlery, and there’s little evidence they’re a significant source of litter.
The ban is part of a broader pledge by the U.K. government, made back in 2018, to “eliminate all avoidable plastic waste by 2042.” It’s not like balloon sticks are the first to go. Retailers have already been forced to charge customers for single-use plastic bags since 2015, a policy that has reportedly led to a 98% drop in use in England. The U.K has also cleansed many of its products of microbeads and banned plastic straws, stirrers, and plastic-stemmed cotton swabs. Apparently cotton swab sticks were one of the top 10 types of plastic found littered on beaches, but after the ban in 2020, they dropped lower on the list.
Plastic takes hundreds of years to break down, is harmful to species “across all levels of biology,” and is also a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Balloon sticks certainly sound like an “avoidable” form of plastic waste, or at the very least, a dispensable one. But I do wonder why they’ve been singled out. I mean, what about those little plastic pull tabs that come on milk cartons? Or those plastic circles inside water bottle caps? Or, as Business Waste UK points out, what about the millions of crisp packets thrown away every day, “creating as many items of waste in 24 hours as balloon sticks do in 365 days.”
What about balloons themselves?
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A new letter sent Friday asks for reams of documentation on developers’ compliance with the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.
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.
These letters represent the rapid execution of an announcement made just a week ago by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who released a memo directing department staff to increase enforcement of the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act “to ensure that our national bird is not sacrificed for unreliable wind facilities.” The memo stated that all permitted wind facilities would receive records requests related to the eagle law by August 11 — so, based on what we’ve now seen and confirmed, they’re definitely doing that.
There’s cause for wind developers, renewables advocates, and climate activists to be alarmed here given the expanding horizon of enforcement of wildlife statutes, which have become a weapon for the administration against zero-carbon energy generation.
The August 4 memo directed the Service to refer “violations” of the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act to the agency solicitor’s office, with potential further referral to the Justice Department for criminal or civil charges. Violating this particular law can result in a fine of at least $100,000 per infraction, a year in prison, or both, and penalties increase if a company, organization, or individual breaks the law more than once. It’s worth noting at this point that according to FWS’s data, oil pits historically kill far more birds per year than wind turbines.
In a statement to Heatmap News, the American Clean Power Association defended the existing federal framework around protecting eagles from wind turbines, noted the nation’s bald eagle population has risen significantly overall in the past two decades, and claimed golden eagle populations are “stable, at the same time wind energy has been growing.”
“This is clear evidence that strong protections and reasonable permitting rules work. Wind and eagles are successfully co-existing,” ACP spokesperson Jason Ryan said.
The $7 billion program had been the only part of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund not targeted for elimination by the Trump administration.
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.
The EPA is drafting termination letters to all 60 grantees, the Times reported. An EPA spokesperson equivocated in response to emailed questions from Heatmap about the fate of the program. “With the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, EPA is working to ensure Congressional intent is fully implemented in accordance with the law,” the person said.
Although Solar for All was one of the programs affected by the Trump administration’s initial freeze on Inflation Reduction Act funding, EPA had resumed processing payments for recipients after a federal judge placed an injunction on the pause. But in mid-March, the EPA Office of the Inspector General announced its intent to audit Solar for All. The results of that audit have not yet been published.
The Solar for All grants are a subset of the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, most of which had been designated to set up a series of green lending programs. In March, Administrator Lee Zeldin accused the program of fraud, waste, and abuse — the so-called “gold bar” scandal — and attempted to claw back all $20 billion. Recipients of that funding are fighting the termination in an ongoing court case.
State attorneys generals are likely to challenge the Solar for All terminations in court, should they go through, a source familiar with the state programs told me.
All $7 billion under the program has been obligated to grantees, but the money is not yet fully out the door, as recipients must request reimbursements from the EPA as they spend down their grants. Very little has been spent so far, as many grantees opted to use the first year of the five-year program as a planning period.
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.
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.
Grassley and other Republican senators had negotiated a “glidepath for the orderly phaseout” of tax credits for renewables, the senator in a statement announcing the hold, giving developers until July 2026 to start construction on projects (or complete the projects and have them operating by the end of 2027) to qualify for tax credits.
Days after signing the law, however, President Trump signed an executive order calling for new guidance on what exactly starting construction means. The title of that order, “Ending Market Distorting Subsidies for Unreliable, Foreign Controlled Energy Sources,” has generated understandable concern within the renewables industry that, as part of a deal to get conservative House members to support the bill, the Treasury Department will write new guidance making it much more difficult for wind and solar projects to qualify for tax credits.
“What it means for a project to ‘begin construction'’ has been well established by Treasury guidance for more than a decade,” Grassley said. Under these longstanding definitions, “beginning construction” can mean undertaking “physical work of a significant nature,” which can include or buying certain long-lead equipment or components like transformers. Another way to qualify for the credits is to spend 5% of the total cost of the project.
A more restrictive interpretation of “begin construction,” however, could turn the tax credit language into a dead letter, especially when combined with the rest of the administration’s full-spectrum legal assault on renewable energy.
Grassley said that new guidance is expected within two weeks, and that “until I can be certain that such rules and regulations adhere to the law and congressional intent, I intend to continue to object to the consideration of these Treasury nominees.”Grassley has a long history with production tax credits for wind energy, playing a pivotal role in their extension in 2015. “As the father of the first wind energy tax credit in 1992, I can say that the tax credit was never meant to be permanent,” Grassley said at the time. “The five-year extension for wind energy brings about the best possible long-term outcome that provides certainty, predictability and a responsible phase-down of a tax incentive for a renewable energy source.”
Almost 60% of Iowa’s electricity is generated by wind turbines, the highest proportion of any state, according to Energy Information Administration data.
Utah Senator John Curtis has joined Grassley in placing a hold on nominees, delaying their vote before the whole Senate, according to Politico’s Joshua Siegel. Grassley and Curtis, alongside Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, were unable to get a meeting with the Treasury Department to discuss the guidance, Siegel reported.