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Good morning and happy Friday,
It’s officially summer, and much of the U.S. is sweltering under a massive heat wave this week, leading to greater use of natural gas-fired generation. Although clean sources of power generation have climbed 7.6% since 2023, natural gas is likely to remain the largest single fuel source in the U.S. and to be deployed even more as demand for “power-hungry air conditioners” rises during the hottest months.
Mississippi had a huge week, as its first utility-scale wind farm, AES’s 184 MW Delta Wind project, officially commenced operations, and its largest utility-scale solar project, Apex Energy’s 396 MW Soul City Solar, won county approval.
Meanwhile the “multiyear campaign” against ESG investing is “losing momentum,” thanks in part to evidence that the restrictions cost taxpayers money. A new analysis says that in 2024, state lawmakers have considered 161 anti-ESG bills and resolutions, although only six have become law. Last year, 23 anti-ESG laws were enacted.
And the Biden administration has sworn in the first members of the American Climate Corps. Modeled after former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, the program expects to place 9,000 young people into
green energy and conservation jobs by the end of the month, and to ultimately hire 20,000 people for the program’s first year.
Read on for more.
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PLA Station
Dispatch readers know well that the IRA is a massive jobs creator, with announced investments accounting for a projected 270,000 new jobs, and another 1.5 million jobs expected to be created over the next ten years. This week, Treasury and the IRS announced the upcoming publication of final rules on the prevailing wage and registered apprenticeship (PWA) requirements in the IRA:
The short version is that if clean energy projects supported by most of the IRA’s clean energy tax incentives pay prevailing wages to laborers and mechanics and hire registered apprentices, they can claim an increased credit equal to five times the base incentive. This interactive map is designed to help workers, unions and the public learn more about the jobs being created nationwide by more than 1,000 planned clean energy projects.
Project labor agreements (PLAs) offer a strategy to achieve compliance with the PWA requirements; Treasury has published an article on PLAs, and the Department of Labor has also provided guidance.
The IRS is in charge of enforcing the PWA requirements for increased credits and has released “an overview of the new rules, frequently asked questions, and a fact sheet that includes information for how to alert the IRS of suspected tax violations related to the PWA increase.”
⚡️ The Takeaway
A “palpable incentive.” The president of North America's Building Trades Unions, a labor organization, welcomed the new rules, saying they would help ensure “middle class, family-sustaining wages and with good health care and post-retirement benefits” for industry workers. While noting that the fossil fuel industry has paid “top wages and fringe benefits” for the last 100 years, he said this “has not been the case” “in the renewable industries that have burgeoned over the last several decades."
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Dollars for Durability
The clean energy and climate advocacy space is pretty crowded, with a diverse array of groups jostling to promote their messages and secure funding. Most of these organizations are left leaning, and they get the lion’s share of philanthropic donations. But a recent analysis shows a subset of “eco-right” groups also receive support. Here’s how things tally up:
The analysis from POLITICO’s E&E News looked at spending from large donors such as the MacArthur Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and Bill Gates’
Breakthrough Energy, all of which are active in “climate philanthropy.”
While the bulk of contributions from these organizations and others like them go to “Democratic-aligned green groups,” they’re also supporting conservative green groups that, in many cases, “eschew policies like regulation and big spending to fight climate change,” although they do at least “reject the denial of climate science.”
These donors seem to share an “analytical, technology-driven, pragmatic” approach to tackling the challenge of climate change, and a recognition that “durable climate policy requires bipartisan support.”
⚡️ The Takeaway
Green for green. Among the donor and their conservative recipients, there’s an agreement that the search for climate solutions depends on developing new technologies. Breakthough is noted as being somewhat unique in that “its sole focus is climate change;” its primary funder, Gates, believes that innovation “is the most important factor to decarbonizing electricity, agriculture, transportation and other major greenhouse gas-emitting sources around the world.”
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Something for Nothing
A Swedish “deep tech” startup has developed carbon fibers that can double as battery electrodes, making it possible for aircraft, EVs, wind turbines and solar panels to store energy in their structures.
The CEO of Sinonus, the company behind the technology, is focused on using wind turbine blades to store excess energy for times when the wind isn’t blowing, and thinks this could be particularly beneficial for offshore wind turbines, helping them to deliver a “more stable and optimised price point output” and boosting return on investment. The same would hold true for solar farms. Since the
energy storage is built in, it basically provides “something for nothing.”
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The key advantage of this innovation is the ability to store energy without adding weight. Indeed, in the case of transport applications, “reducing weight reduces the power required to move the vehicle, extending the driving range per battery charge” – potentially by as much as 70% for EVs. What’s more, “the lower energy density of structural batteries would make them safer than standard batteries, especially as they would also not contain any volatile substances.”
That said, the CEO acknowledges that “Storing electrical energy in carbon fibre may perhaps not become as efficient as traditional batteries. But since our carbon fibre solution also has a structural load-bearing capability, very large gains can be made at a system level.”
All of which brings us to today’s word of the day: “Häftigt!” is Swedish for ”Cool!”
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