[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
SOLVING THE CLIMATE CRISIS:
BUILDING A VIBRANT AND
JUST CLEAN ENERGY ENVIRONMENT
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE
CLIMATE CRISIS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
JULY 28, 2020
__________
Serial No. 116-18
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
www.govinfo
Printed for the use of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
41-340 WASHINGTON : 2020
SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE CLIMATE CRISIS
One Hundred Sixteenth Congress
KATHY CASTOR, Florida, Chair
BEN RAY LUJAN, New Mexico GARRET GRAVES, Louisiana,
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon Ranking Member
JULIA BROWNLEY, California MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia
JARED HUFFMAN, California GARY PALMER, Alabama
A. DONALD McEACHIN, Virginia BUDDY CARTER, Georgia
MIKE LEVIN, California CAROL MILLER, West Virginia
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota
JOE NEGUSE, Colorado
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Ana Unruh Cohen, Majority Staff Director
Marty Hall, Minority Staff Director
climatecrisis.house.gov
C O N T E N T S
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STATEMENTS OF MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Page
Hon. Kathy Castor, a Representative in Congress from the State of
Florida, and Chair, Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
Opening Statement............................................ 1
Prepared Statement........................................... 4
Hon. Garret Graves, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Louisiana, and Ranking Member, Select Committee on the
Climate Crisis
Opening Statement............................................ 5
WITNESSES
Ana Baptista, PhD, Assistant Professor of Practice and Associate
Director of the Tishman Environment and Design Center, The New
School, on behalf of New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance
and the Equitable and Just Climate Forum
Oral Statement............................................... 7
Prepared Statement........................................... 9
Jason Walsh, Executive Director, BlueGreen Alliance
Oral Statement................................................. 15
Prepared Statement............................................. 17
Michael Shellenberger, Founder and President, Environmental
Progress
Oral Statement................................................. 22
Prepared Statement............................................. 24
Beth Soholt, Executive Director, Clean Grid Alliance, on behalf
of American Council on Renewable Energy and Americans for a
Clean Energy Grid
Oral Statement............................................... 30
Prepared Statement........................................... 32
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Report, Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2019, submitted for
the record by Ms. Castor....................................... 54
Article, ``Article by Michael Shellenberger mixes accurate and
inaccurate claims in support of a misleading and overly
simplistic argumentation about climate change,'' submitted for
the record by Mr. Casten....................................... 54
Letter from the National Audubon Society, submitted for the
record by Ms. Castor Report, Solving the Climate Crisis: The
Congressional Action Plan for a Clean Energy Economy and a
Healthy, Resilient, and Just America, submitted for the record
by Ms. Castor.................................................. 55
APPENDIX
Questions for the Record from Hon. Kathy Castor to Ana Baptista.. 57
Questions for the Record from Hon. Kathy Castor to Jason Walsh... 61
Questions for the Record from Hon. Garret Graves to Michael
Shellenberger.................................................. 66
Questions for the Record from Hon. Kathy Castor to Beth Soholt... 73
Questions for the Record from Hon. Garret Graves to Beth Soholt.. 78
SOLVING THE CLIMATE CRISIS:
BUILDING A VIBRANT AND
JUST CLEAN ENERGY ECONOMY
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TUESDAY, JULY 28, 2020
House of Representatives,
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 2:02 p.m., via
Webex, Hon. Kathy Castor [chairwoman of the committee]
presiding.
Present: Representatives Castor, Lujan, Bonamici, Brownley,
Huffman, McEachin, Levin, Casten, Graves, Carter, and Miller.
Ms. Castor. The committee will come to order. Good
afternoon, everyone.
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a
recess of the committee at any time.
Welcome to our hearing, entitled ``Solving the Climate
Crisis: Building a Vibrant and Just Clean Energy Economy.''
As a reminder, members participating in this remote hearing
should be visible on camera throughout the hearing. As with in-
person meetings, members control their microphones. Members can
be muted by staff only to avoid inadvertent background noise.
In addition, statements, documents, and motions must be
submitted to the electronic repository at
[email protected].
gov.
Finally, members or witnesses experiencing technical
problems should inform the committee staff immediately.
So thanks again for participating during this somber time,
as our colleague and friend, Representative John Lewis, is
lying in state here in the U.S. Capitol after a lifetime of
standing up for justice for all, even if that meant sitting
down where some would deny him a seat.
His leadership in the civil rights movement was legendary,
but he worked on every issue when there was a need to encourage
Americans and Congress to do more. That included climate change
and environmental justice.
Last year, he said, ``Each and every one of us must cherish
this planet, for it is likely the only home we will ever know.
Combating climate change is not a Democratic or a Republican
issue. It is a question of preserving this little piece of real
estate that we call Earth for generations to come, for
generations yet unborn. Together, we can solve this problem,
but time is of the essence. Congress cannot stand on the
sidelines. We have a moral responsibility to lead, and the time
to act is now.''
So, before I ask the committee to observe a moment of
silence to remember Representative Lewis, I wonder if Ranking
Member Graves has made it over from his meeting so that he can
provide his thoughts or if any of the Republican members would
like to do so instead.
Mr. Graves. Hey, Chair Castor, this is Garret. Thank you
very much for the opportunity for the certainly appropriate
honoring of John Lewis.
It has been an incredible experience to be able to serve
with someone who has played such an amazing role in the Civil
Rights Act. You read about these iconic figures, but to be able
to serve alongside of him has just been an awing experience.
And it was amazing being in the Rotunda yesterday as his
body lied in state. And just seeing all of the incredible
history and little anecdotes and stories that folks have shared
over the past few days in remembering his courageous leadership
and, again, just the progress that he has made in regard to
advancing the civil rights of particularly the African-American
community, it has been amazing.
So I appreciate you raising the issue and certainly giving
a tribute of respect to him.
Ms. Castor. Thank you, Ranking Member Graves.
So, at this time, I would like to ask everyone
participating here to take a moment to remember the life and
legacy of Representative John Lewis.
[Moment of silence.]
Ms. Castor. Thank you all.
I now recognize myself for 5 minutes to give an opening
statement.
Members, America is reeling from a number of interrelated
and severe crises that I believe can be solved through
transformational action and leadership.
First, the coronavirus pandemic, which has tragically taken
the lives of nearly 150,000 Americans, is crying out for a
coordinated plan of action to control the virus and save lives.
It is a sad day for me and Floridians because we set another
record today for the number of deaths reported, 186 Floridians,
the largest one-day increase so far.
The pandemic has also sparked an economic crisis. Millions
of Americans are out of a job as businesses shut down in
response to the health emergency.
And, in the middle of all this, we witnessed the brutal
murder of George Floyd at the hands of police officers in
Minneapolis. It was a tragic reminder that systemic racism
still plagues our communities, and the urgent need for racial
justice.
Plus, the ongoing climate crisis continues to fuel extreme
events like floods, intense storms, and wildfires, and it is
increasing the costs on families and businesses alike.
So Congress must rise to the occasion. We must tackle the
climate crisis while heeding the calls for racial justice,
protecting the health of our families, and helping our
neighbors get back to work. And we can rebuild our economy in a
resilient way that reduces greenhouse gas pollution and
protects the air that we breathe. We have a moral obligation to
solve the climate crisis and build back better for decades to
come.
Solving the climate crisis is hard work, but it is within
our reach. Investing in clean energy gives us an opportunity to
create millions of good-paying jobs, family-sustaining jobs
that will get Americans back to work and strengthen our middle
class. It can also help make communities healthier as we deploy
innovative technologies to reduce pollution. And it can repair
injustices of the past as we commit to invest in Black and
Brown communities disproportionately harmed by the climate
crisis.
Today, we will discuss how to build a vibrant clean energy
economy, one that centers environmental justice at its core. We
will hear about ways to grow our manufacturing base and create
well-paying jobs by modernizing our grid. And we will discuss
initiatives to revive our economy while reducing pollution and
creating more resilient communities.
This is our first hearing since Select Committee Democrats
released our majority staff report, ``Solving the Climate
Crisis,''a comprehensive framework to cut carbon pollution in
line with what science dictates and create the clean energy
economy that we desperately need.
I would like to thank the thousands of stakeholders who
informed our action plan--the scientists, the farmers, young
people, EJ leaders, workers, indigenous people, and our
outstanding professional staff.
According to an independent analysis by Energy Innovation,
our plan would save over 60,000 lives every year by 2050 while
also providing at least $8 trillion in climate and health
benefits alone. It would also create economic opportunity by
investing in America's workers and communities, including
establishing a national economic transition office to help with
the transition to a net-zero emission economy.
I know our Republican colleagues have been reviewing the
majority staff report. I look forward to hearing their
recommendations to help solve the climate crisis. Democrats
have put forward our ideas, and I hope our Republican
colleagues will do the same so the committee can discuss
potential bipartisan recommendations in the coming months,
especially since previous staff attempts to start the
discussions have not progressed.
Workers are at the center of our action plan. Between March
and May, more than 620,000 clean energy workers, nearly a fifth
of the industry's workforce, filed for unemployment. While the
U.S. economy added jobs in June, only about 106,000 of those
jobs were in clean energy, leaving more than a half a million
clean energy workers unemployed.
As you will hear from our witnesses, climate solutions are
economic solutions, and they have helped develop platforms to
put workers and families first, addressing injustices in
vulnerable communities with an eye toward building a recovery
on a stronger and more equitable foundation.
As we rebound from our current crises, let's power
America's recovery through investments in clean energy, energy
efficiency and conservation, and put money back into families'
pockets at a time when they really could use it. We can expand
our manufacturing base and build the technologies the world
will need to solve the climate crisis. We can invest in a 21st-
century infrastructure that can help cut carbon pollution and
withstand climate impacts. And we can create good-paying jobs
that move us towards net-zero emissions by 2050. I know we can
do this.
At this time, I would like to recognize Ranking Member
Graves for an opening statement.
You are recognized for 5 minutes.
[The statement of Ms. Castor follows:]
Opening Statement of Chair Kathy Castor
Hearing on ``Solving the Climate Crisis:
Building a Vibrant and Just Clean Energy Economy''
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
July 28, 2020
As Prepared for Delivery
America is reeling from a number of interrelated and severe crises
that I believe can be solved through transformational action and
leadership. First, the coronavirus pandemic, which has tragically taken
the lives of nearly 150,000 Americans, is crying out for a coordinated
plan of action to control the virus and save lives. (Florida posted 186
deaths today--the largest one-day increase so far.) The pandemic also
sparked an economic crisis, leaving millions of Americans without jobs
as businesses shut down in response to the health emergency. In the
middle of all this, we also witnessed the brutal murder of George Floyd
at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis, which was a tragic
reminder of the systemic racism that still plagues our communities--and
the urgent need for racial justice in the United States. Plus, the
ongoing climate crisis continues to fuel extreme events like floods,
intense storms and wildfires, and increase costs on families and
businesses.
Congress must rise to the occasion. We must heed the calls for
racial justice, protect the health of our families, help our neighbors
get back to work and rebuild our economy in a resilient way that
reduces greenhouse gas pollution and protects the air we breathe. We
have a moral obligation to solve the climate crisis and build back
better for decades to come.
Solving the climate crisis is hard work, but it is within our
reach. And it gives us a chance to build an America that is stronger
and more resilient to these serious challenges. Investing in clean
energy gives us an opportunity to create millions of good-paying,
family sustaining jobs--that will get Americans back to work and
strengthen our middle class. It can also make our communities
healthier, as we deploy innovative technologies that will reduce
pollution. And it can help us repair the injustices of the past--as we
commit to invest in the Black and brown communities disproportionately
harmed by the climate crisis.
Today we'll discuss how to build a vibrant clean energy economy,
one that centers environmental justice at its core. We'll hear about
ways to grow our manufacturing base and create well-paying American
jobs by modernizing our grid. And we'll discuss initiatives to revive
our economy, while reducing pollution and creating more resilient
communities.
This is our first hearing since Select Committee Democrats released
the majority staff report `Solving the Climate Crisis', a comprehensive
framework to cut carbon pollution in line with climate science and
create the clean energy economy that we desperately need. I'd like to
thank the thousands of stakeholders who informed our action plan--
scientists, farmers, entrepreneurs, young people, EJ leaders, workers,
indigenous people and our outstanding professional staff. According to
independent analysis, our plan would save over 60,000 lives every year
by 2050, while also providing at least $8 trillion in climate and
health benefits alone. It would also create economic opportunities by
investing in America's workers and communities, including establishing
a National Economic Transition Office to help with the transition to a
net-zero emission economy.
I know our Republican colleagues have been reviewing the majority
staff recommendations. I look forward to hearing their recommendations
to help solve the climate crisis. Since the Democrats have put forward
ideas, I hope that our Republican colleagues will do the same so we can
discuss potential bipartisan recommendations since previous staff
attempts to start discussions have not progressed.
Workers are at the center of our climate action plan. Between March
and May, more than 620,000 clean energy workers, nearly a fifth of the
industry's workforce, filed for unemployment benefits. As many states
began to reopen, the U.S. economy added jobs in June, but only 106,000
of those jobs were in clean energy, leaving more than half a million
clean energy workers still unemployed.
As you'll hear from our witnesses, climate solutions are economic
solutions. Which is why they've helped develop platforms to put workers
and families first, addressing injustices in vulnerable communities,
with an eye to building a recovery on a stronger and more equitable
foundation.
As you'll hear from our witnesses, climate solutions are economic
solutions. Which is why they've helped develop platforms to put workers
and families first, addressing injustices in vulnerable communities,
with an eye to building a recovery on a stronger and more equitable
foundation.
As we rebound from our current economic crisis, let's power
America's recovery through investments in clean energy, energy
efficiency, and conservation--and put money back into families' pockets
when they need it. We can expand our manufacturing base and build the
technologies the world will need to solve the climate crisis. We can
invest in a 21st century infrastructure that can help cut carbon
pollution and withstand climate impacts. And we can create jobs, jobs,
jobs--good-paying jobs that move us toward net-zero emissions by 2050.
With that, I look forward to hearing from our witnesses.
Mr. Graves. Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, I want to thank
you and the committee for putting this hearing together.
As we have discussed on many occasions, I share a lot of
the same objectives--and I know many members of the committee
do--the same objectives that you communicated just a few
minutes ago, objectives like improving the resilience of our
communities, particularly those coastal communities that you
represent, that we represent. And I also know that Congressman
Buddy Carter has been very vocal about us being more deliberate
in building upon some of the successes we had in 2018, really
extraordinary successes in 2018, in improving the resiliency of
our coastal communities.
We share the objectives of building upon some of the
extraordinary efforts we have had over the past several years
in reducing emissions in the United States, to the point where
we have reduced them more than any other country in the world,
and actually bringing even more science to the table to ensure
that we are building upon the successes and the very tactics
that allowed us to be the global leader in emissions reduction,
rather than shutting that out, and ensuring that economic
science is part of the equation.
You mentioned that the majority staff report would save $8
trillion. And, certainly, we do need to consider cost savings
as part of the overall calculation to inform the decisions that
we make, the recommendations that we make in regard to energy
policy moving forward. But with an estimate that the
implementation report would cost $20 trillion, that doesn't
seem to provide a positive cost-to-benefit ratio.
And, of course, as you mentioned, Congressman John Lewis--
and you mentioned our efforts to try to continue to make
progress and build upon the success of Congressman Lewis in
addressing the inequality issues. We cannot allow there to be a
disproportionate impact on those that are impoverished or those
communities of color, a significant percentage of which I
represent in our south Louisiana district.
The committee report largely reflects a lot of the
recommendations that have been implemented in California, and
California is one of the worst states in the nation in regard
to actually reducing emissions. And, also, there is a lawsuit
by a community of color against the State of California because
of the disproportionate cost imposed on them as a result of
those recommendations. So here you have disproportionate costs
on communities of color and actually one of the worst
performing emissions reduction strategies in the nation.
So I want to say it again: We must, we must, introduce more
science into this equation--that includes environmental
science, of course chemical science, physical science, and
economic science--to make sure that we are employing the best
strategies.
Last thing, Madam Chair, I just want to make note in regard
to your comment about the staff unable to work together to come
up with a report, and all I can derive from that is that
perhaps you were talking about the majority staff unable to
work together, because our staff was not engaged on any type of
bipartisan report.
But, certainly, as I mentioned at the opening, we share a
lot of the same objectives: resiliency of our coastal
communities and other communities, reducing emissions,
conservation of energy, and ensuring that the United States
continues to be a leader but that we don't lead in job losses
and we don't lead in providing jobs to China and other
countries, where employing a lot of the strategies included in
the report would actually achieve those goals, sending jobs to
China and giving leverage to China and other nations as opposed
to the United States.
So, looking forward to working together, and I yield back.
Ms. Castor. All right.
Without objection, members who wish to enter statements
into the record may have 5 business days to do so.
Ms. Castor. Now I want to welcome our witnesses.
First, Dr. Ana Baptista is an assistant professor and the
Associate Director of the Tishman Environment and Design Center
at The New School. She is a member of the board of the New
Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance and a member of the
Equitable and Just Climate Forum.
Mr. Jason Walsh is the Executive Director of the BlueGreen
Alliance. He previously served in the Obama Administration as
the Director of the Office of Strategic Programs at the U.S.
Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and
Renewable Energy and as a Senior Policy Advisor in the White
House for the Domestic Policy Council, where he led the Obama
Administration's efforts to align and scale up Federal
investments in support of workers and communities impacted by
the shift away from coal in the power sector.
Mr. Michael Shellenberger is the Founder and President of
Environmental Progress. He was the co-founder of The
Breakthrough Institute and served as its president until 2015.
Ms. Beth Soholt is the Executive Director of the Clean Grid
Alliance. Ms. Soholt has more than 15 years of experience
working with the electric industry, with a focus on helping
overcome the barriers to bringing wind power to market. She
holds a seat on the Midwest Independent System Operator
Advisory Committee, representing the environmental sector.
Without objection, the witnesses' written statements will
be made part of the record.
With that, Dr. Baptista, you are now recognized to give a
5-minute presentation of your testimony.
STATEMENTS OF ANA BAPTISTA, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
AND ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, TISHMAN ENVIRONMENT AND
DESIGN CENTER, THE NEW SCHOOL; JASON WALSH, EX-
ECUTIVE DIRECTOR, BLUEGREEN ALLIANCE; MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER,
FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRESS; AND BETH SOHOLT,
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CLEAN GRID ALLIANCE
STATEMENT OF ANA BAPTISTA
Dr. Baptista. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Castor, Ranking
Member Graves, and distinguished members of the committee, for
the opportunity to testify before the House Select Committee on
the Climate Crisis.
The ongoing and intersecting public health, economic, and
racial justice crises have put into sharp focus the systemic
changes needed to address longstanding inequalities in our
country. At the same time, we are in a global climate crisis.
Each of these crises disproportionately impacts communities
of color and low-wealth communities around the country. As
policymakers address these multiple intersecting crises, they
must also enact solutions that address them holistically and
are centered in equity and justice.
Events in 2020 have shone a bright light on longstanding
racial disparities that have contributed to disproportionate
health and environmental impacts on communities of color and
low-wealth communities.
A recent Harvard study linked long-term exposure to air
pollution, like particulate matter, to higher death rates from
coronavirus. These findings were supported by the Rhodium
Group, which found that Black, Latino, and indigenous
communities in high-environmental-risk areas experience death
rates from COVID-19
more than four times higher than those in counties with fewer
environmental risks and that these same communities of color
experience higher rates of unemployment and slower economic
rebound.
Systemic racism has contributed to these disparities, and
transformative policies that center justice and equity are
essential to moving forward. Climate policy can and should be
designed in a manner that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and
also other harmful air pollutants while creating long-term
economic sustainability for all communities. But we need an
intentional focus on equity and justice; otherwise, we will
replicate the same disparities in the transition to a
sustainable economy.
The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis majority's
``Climate Crisis Action Plan'' details the processes and
policies that, if enacted, will address these crises and build
a more equitable, just future.
Similarly, the ``Equitable and Just National Climate
Platform'' also identifies the need to advance economic,
racial, environmental, and climate justice as part of a
national climate agenda, and, as a co-author of the platform, I
am pleased to see many of these ideas reflected in the Select
Committee's report.
We need actions that will end environmental racism and the
historic concentration of pollution in environmental justice
communities and that will rebuild the economy so that it works
for all people.
And, meeting the goals and priorities outlined in the plan,
we encourage Congress to support some of the following specific
examples of investments that could have multiple benefits.
For example: investing in equitable and just, collaborative
projects, such as the EPA's Environmental Justice Small Grants
Program.
Expanding environmental investments in vulnerable
communities, such as climate resilient water infrastructure
needed to deliver safe drinking water or prevent climate
related flooding.
Expanding low-income solar access, community solar
initiatives, cooperative nonprofit energy organizations' energy
efficiency programs, all which spur job creation and economic
opportunities in areas that have historically faced barriers.
Making strategic investments in the transportation sector,
such as zero-emission school buses, heavy- and medium-duty
diesel trucks, can have short-term public health benefits in EJ
communities while also supporting economic and climate goals.
Increasing investments for worker training programs, like
the NIEHS's Environmental Career Worker Training Program, which
can provide job and safety training to millions of Americans.
Vastly increasing funding for the Energy Efficiency and
Conservation Block Grants, the Low-Income Home Energy
Assistance Program, Community Development Block Grants, and the
Weatherization Assistance Program. These investments are not
only going to ensure greater climate resiliency but can address
historic inequalities, energy insecurity, and climate change.
We could mobilize new investments in safe and healthy
communities, such as the creation of a national climate bank
that Representative Dingell introduced, and carve out 60
percent of the bank capital for economically disadvantaged
areas and communities of color.
These are just some examples of the kinds of investments we
need in these difficult times. We need strategic investments
that can deliver multiple benefits, particularly to those
communities hardest hit by COVID, racial and economic
inequality, and environmental injustice.
We hope that these recommendations embodied in the
committee's plan will put us on the path to ensuring a healthy
and sustainable future for all Americans.
Thank you.
[The statement of Dr. Baptista follows:]
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
Testimony of Ana Isabel Baptista, PhD
Tishman Environment & Design Center at The New School & the
New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance
Member of the Equitable and Just Climate Forum
July 27, 2020
Thank you for the opportunity to testify before the House Select
Committee on the Climate Crisis. I am an Assistant Professor of
Professional Practice at The New School University where I serve as the
Associate Director of the Tishman Environment and Design Center. I also
serve as a Trustee of the New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance and
as such, serve as a member of the Equitable and Just Climate Forum.
Introduction
The ongoing and intersecting public health, economic, and racial
justice crises our country is in has put into sharp focus the systemic
change needed to address long standing inequities. At the same time,
we're in a climate crisis. Each of these crises disproportionately
impacts Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian Pacific Island and other
communities of color. As policymakers address each crisis, they must
also look at solutions that address them holistically and are centered
in equity and justice.
The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis' majority Climate
Crisis Action Plan\1\ details both processes and policies that, if
enacted, will address these crises and build a more equitable and just
future. The Equitable and Just National Climate Platform\2\ also
identifies the need to advance economic, racial, environmental and
climate justice as part of a national climate agenda, and as a co-
author of the Platform, I am pleased to see our ideas acknowledged in
the Select Committee report.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ https://climatecrisis.house.gov/report
\2\ https://ajustclimate.org/index.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Events in 2020 have shone a bright light on longstanding racial
disparities that have contributed to disproportionate health impacts on
communities of color and low income communities. A Harvard study\3\
released in April linked long-term exposure to air pollution to higher
death rates from coronavirus--demonstrating the devastating health
impacts caused by decades of environmental racism. These findings were
supported by the Rhodium group,\4\ which found that Black, Latino, and
Indigenous communities in high environmental risk areas experience
death rates from COVID-19 more than four times higher than those in
counties with fewer environmental risks (See Appendix). The Rhodium
Group also found that Indigenous, Black, and Latino communities
experienced higher rates of unemployment and a slower economic rebound
than whites.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/air-
pollution-linked-with-higher-covid-19-death-rates/
\4\ https://rhg.com/research/a-just-green-recovery/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Systemic racism has contributed to these disparities, and
transformative, intersectional policy that centers justice and equity
in the solutions are essential going forward. Climate policy can and
should be designed in a manner that reduces greenhouse gas emissions
and other pollution, while creating long-term economic sustainability
for all communities. Without an intentional focus on equity and
justice, we will replicate the same disparities in the transition to an
environmentally sustainable economy.
Equitable and Just National Climate Platform
One year ago, environmental justice organizations from across the
country along with six national environmental groups co-created and co-
signed the Equitable and Just National Climate Platform (Platform). The
Platform identifies the need to advance innovative, equitable policy
solutions to address climate change and environmental justice. Central
to the Platform is the recognition that in order to address the climate
crisis, we must advance policy that addresses climate while advancing
environmental justice, economic, and racial justice.
The Platform details a bold vision of a just, inclusive agenda that
advances ambitious environmental justice and climate policy while
addressing racial and economic justice. As it states, ``Our vision is
that all people and all communities have the right to breathe clean
air, live free of dangerous levels of toxic pollution, access healthy
food, and enjoy the benefits of a prosperous and vibrant clean
economy.''
In order to achieve these goals and vision, the Platform recognizes
the need to mobilize all assets--communities, government, science,
research, business and industry--to develop long-term comprehensive
solutions. These solutions must ``meaningfully involve and value the
voices and positions of environmental justice, frontline and fenceline
communities.'' These strategies must also ``acknowledge and repair the
legacy of environmental harms on communities inflicted by fossil fuel
and other industrial pollution.''
Organizations who co-signed the Platform agreed that in order to
address climate change, we must reduce legacy pollution in a way that
creates jobs and contributes to the health and well-being of all
communities.
Policies in the Platform will contribute both to short-term
economic recovery in response to the pandemic and recession, as well as
long-term economic growth, building towards an inclusive, pollution-
free economy, all while reducing greenhouse gas and other emissions. We
are pleased to see the core premise of the Platform in the Climate
Crisis Action Plan.
HEROES Act and Representative McEachin and Chairman Grijalva's
environmental justice stimulus letter
A number of existing programs, if robustly funded, would contribute
to the just and equitable future envisioned in the Platform. The HEROES
Act, as passed by the House, included funding for programs that will
have both short and long-term economic impacts while reducing emissions
and creating and sustaining jobs. These include nearly $2 billion to
provide potable water to communities affected by the pandemic,
specifically making funds available to assist Tribal and low-income
families with water and wastewater services, in addition to a
moratorium on dangerous water service shut-offs; and $1.5 billion for
the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) to reduce energy
burdens for low income families. The bill also included $50 million for
environmental justice grants to study and address the disproportionate
impacts of coronavirus on environmental justice communities.
Representative McEachin and Chairman Grijalva sent a letter to
House and Senate leadership in March that also identified key short-
term spending that would reduce emissions and improve public health
while also stimulating economic growth. Rhodium's jobs analysis of the
programs outlined in the letter found that if funded, these investments
would create up to 300,000 new jobs per year for five years. For
example, Rhodium estimates that a $30 billion investment in the
Community Development Block Grant program, which provides grants to
states for community development and affordable housing, would create
92,000 jobs per year for five years.
Both the letter and the Climate Crisis Action Plan discussed the
importance of expanding funding for the Weatherization Assistance
Program (WAP). By investing in energy efficiency and home updates,
individuals can lower their energy burdens and reduce electricity
usage. As the Climate Crisis Action Plan notes, ``Investments in
weatherization have economic multiplier effects because workers develop
skills through construction-related jobs that are readily transferable
to other economic sectors'' (p. 166). They both discuss the Low Income
Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), and the essential utility bill
assistance it provides. The Climate Crisis Action Plan also envisions
expanding LIHEAP and using these funds to increase solar access in low
income communities (p. 77, 167). Both also recommend increasing funding
to ``clean up and reuse contaminated properties (brownfields)'' (p.
398).
As Rhodium concluded, ``As Congress turns their attention from
near-term relief to investing in a sustainable economic recovery,
investments in the kinds of programs outlined in the Grijalva-McEachin
letter can both make a meaningful contribution to national job creation
and serve as a down payment on creating a more environmentally just
future.''
Prioritize Climate Action Spending in EJ communities
As the pandemic and economic challenges continue, the health and
economic wellbeing of Indigenous, Black, and Latino communities have
been disproportionately impacted. Rhodium found that ``Between February
and May, the number of Black and Latino people employed in the US fell
by 16% and 18%, respectively, compared to 11% for white people.'' And,
as employment showed beginning signs of recovery in May, the same note
found that Black and Latinx employment did not recover as quickly as
white employment.
With a backdrop of the current economic crisis, these statistics
reveal the devastating effects of environmental racism during a global
pandemic. It is clear that environmental regulation does not equate to
healthy environments for all. As policymakers take action to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions, it is essential for these policies to also
reduce legacy environmental and economic impacts and ensure that
policies do not contribute to further harm placed on these communities.
Criteria and mechanisms to prioritize investment in disproportionately
impacted communities to address these harms should be included in
climate policy. As the Equitable and Just Climate Platform states,
``Strategies to address climate change must not disproportionately
benefit some communities while imposing costs on others. In fact, the
national climate policy agenda should be used to reduce the
disproportionate amount of pollution that is often found in EJ
communities and that is associated with cumulative impacts, public
health risks, and other persistent challenges.'' We strongly recommend
pursuing local economic development and building economic diversity
that will also reduce the vulnerability of overburdened communities to
pollution. Climate action must ``create and support strategies that
shift away from high pollution products and production processes toward
those that are low-emission and sustainable. This also includes
investments in innovative and worker-supported economic organizations
such as cooperatives and other community wealth-building strategies.''
Research investments are also necessary to address equity and
justice in climate policy. As detailed in the Platform, research
focused on environmental justice and climate equity is a critical
component of building a climate-sustainable future that addresses
inequities instead of reinforcing inequities.
How to Invest and Prioritize spending in EJ communities
Underpinning all of these policy proposals, is the necessity of
crafting policy inclusively and ensuring benefits are distributed
equitably. We support the goal of creating an inclusive, just, and
pollution-free energy economy. In the Equitable and Just Climate
Platform, we call for ``investing in the development of innovative
decentralized models of energy provision; community governance and
ownership; incorporation of social and health benefits into energy
systems planning; incentivizing the inclusion of equity into future
energy investment through public programs; and supporting public and
private research and development to include equity considerations in
new technology development.''
One key recommendation made in the Climate Crisis Action Plan is
that ``Congress should direct EPA to create a plan to (1) develop a
methodology to assess the cumulative and disproportionate impacts of
pollution on environmental justice communities, and (2) integrate that
methodology into agency decision-making'' (p. 304). This critical first
step is necessary to ensure that policy to address climate reduces
pollution in overburdened communities.
Both the Platform and the Climate Crisis Action Plan recognize the
importance of environmental justice community participation in
policymaking. The Climate Crisis Action Plan's recommendation to
increase funding for EPA existing programs that provide technical
assistance and build capacity of stakeholders engaged in policy is
equally important. Throughout the Plan, the Committee majority
recommends developing policy in partnership with communities. This
model of policymaking will ensure that community expertise is taken
into account, and that policies are responsive to community priorities.
Creating an equitable, just and climate-sustainable economy will
drive job growth and sustained investments by government as well as
private entities. The Platform details the need for policies to be
shaped by communities and must lead to benefits at the local and
community level. It also recognized the need to realign government
spending in order to accomplish these goals. It envisions working at
multiple levels of government using a variety of policy tools.
Specifically, the Platform favors ``policy tools that help achieve both
local and national emissions reductions of carbon and other forms of
pollution.'' This shift will ``require substantial new forms of capital
investment by both the public and private sectors to build a new
national infrastructure as well as democratic community participation
to help set infrastructure investment priorities.'' Without proper
investment and engagement, we will repeat mistakes of the past.
The Climate Crisis Action Plan recommends significant federal
investments to update infrastructure and housing to reduce emissions
and build climate resilience. It follows with a recommendation to
``direct a significant percentage of this spending to environmental
justice communities and communities most affected by the economic
transition away from fossil fuel consumption'' (p. 304). This
prioritization is necessary and we strongly support this
recommendation.
The Climate Crisis Action Plan includes recommendations of a number
of policies that can meet dual goals of reducing pollution and driving
local economies. One of its building blocks is expanding low-income
solar access and community solar initiatives. The recommendations to
achieve this building block include funding and expanding programs to
bolster solar access. It also encourages creation of a solar workforce
program, with a focus on ``individuals who have historically faced
barriers to employment'' (p. 76-77). The Platform and the Climate
Crisis Action Plan both identify transportation and goods movements as
a key sector where strategic investments can reduce air pollution while
creating jobs. The Climate Crisis Action Plan includes recommendations
like investing in zero emissions school buses (p. 118) and transit
buses (p. 119), increasing electrification infrastructure access (p.
93, 126), and supporting research and development to drive new
transportation technology (p. 126-127), among others.
In addition to investments informed by communities, as employment
opportunities arise from these investments and new policies, the
Platform recommends that workforce and job training programs be
prioritized ``especially in communities with disproportionately high
underemployed and unemployed populations and in communities that have
been historically reliant on fossil field extraction and energy
production.'' The Climate Crisis Action Plan makes a similar
recommendation. As it says, ``This report makes several recommendations
for new federal investment and incentives for clean and resilient
infrastructure. Congress should direct a significant percentage of this
spending to communities most affected by the economic transition away
from fossil fuel consumption and environmental justice communities.
These communities should receive federal spending and investment first,
most often, and in larger amounts'' (p. 291).
The intersecting crises our nation currently faces are dire--and
the policy solutions to address these crises are interconnected. With
meaningful action to address racial, economic, environmental and
climate justice, Congress can use policy to reduce disparities and
begin to build the just and equitable future envisioned in the Platform
and the Climate Crisis Action Plan.
NO COMMUNITY WILL BE LEFT BEHIND.
All communities have a right to resources to withstand and cope
with unanticipated natural and man-made threats and to live free from
exposure to dangerous toxic pollution. Yet persistent racial and
economic inequalities--and the forces that cause them to have created
disproportionately high public health and environmental risks. Federal
climate policy must address these injustices head-on by developing and
implementing solutions at the scale needed to significantly improve
their public health and quality of life. We need actions that will end
environmental racism and the historic concentration of pollution in
environmental justice communities, and that will rebuild the economy so
that it works for all people and all communities. In meeting the goals
and priorities outlined by the Plan, we encourage Congress to support
the following, in line with the Select Committee's Climate Crisis
Action Plan\5\:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ https://climatecrisis.house.gov/report
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Invest in equitable and just research and innovation. The EPA's
Office of Research and Development provides the scientific and
technical foundation to address our nation's environmental and public
health problems. This environmental research and development
infrastructure must invest and support data collection and tools
development that provides robust, scientific analysis on environmental,
health and socioeconomic conditions that will assess community burden
and vulnerability to pollution.
Invest in equitable and just community collaborative projects. The
EPA can enhance its commitment to addressing community priorities and
needs through investment in collaborative projects that will yield
innovation in program development, and data/information collection.
EPA's Environmental Justice Small Grants (EJSG) Program provides small
grants to communities to address environmental risks associated with
high concentrations of pollution, prepare for climate change effects,
and improve public health. Significantly expanding this EJSG and
similar grants programs will support pioneering community-based
projects that can support and catalyze innovation in the federal
family.
Expand environmental investments in vulnerable communities.
Significant new investment in climate resilient water infrastructure is
needed to address unsafe drinking water and climate-related flooding,
sea level rise, and drought. To ensure that vulnerable communities
receive these investments and technologies, it is imperative to engage
workers and firms from vulnerable communities in the design,
construction, operations and maintenance of these water infrastructure
systems.
Investments in environmental worker training through NIEHS. The
Institute of Environmental Health Science (NIEHS) Environmental Career
Worker Training (ECWTP) provides job and safety training to secure jobs
in environmental restoration, construction, handling hazardous
materials and waste, and emergency response. A 2015 report assessing
the program found that ``an annual federal investment of $3.5 million
in the ECWTP generates a $100 million return'' due to increased wage-
earning potential, tax revenue, and reduced workplace injury and hiring
costs. Increasing this investment to disadvantaged and underrepresented
members of communities of color and low-income communities will
contribute to reduction in economic and employment inequalities.
Vastly increase funding for the Energy Efficiency and Conservation
Block Grant (EECBG) Program, LIHEAP, and WAP. The EECBG program should
prioritize spending in communities left behind by past and ongoing
energy efficiency programs. Expanding LIHEAP and WAP not only prepares
us for the new reality of climate change, it can address historic
investment inequalities.
Mobilize new investment in safe and healthy communities through the
creation of a National Climate Bank. Such investments include clean and
affordable energy and transportation options and climate-ready
infrastructure projects. Consistent with the National Climate Bank Act
introduced by Debbie Dingell (D-MI) in December 2019, the National
Climate Bank should prioritize investments in economically
disadvantaged areas, tribal communities and communities of color.
Specifically, at least 60 percent of the Bank capital should be
invested in tribal communities, low-income communities and communities
of color.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Castor. Thank you very much.
Mr. Walsh, you are recognized for 5 minutes. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF JASON WALSH
Mr. Walsh. Thank you, Chair Castor, Ranking Member Graves,
distinguished members of the committee.
My name is Jason Walsh. I am the Executive Director of the
BlueGreen Alliance, a national partnership of labor unions and
environmental organizations. Thank you for the opportunity to
testify today.
We are convening in the midst of a global pandemic. As
Chair Castor noted, we are approaching 150,000 deaths from
COVID-19 in the U.S., and the 10-week total for unemployment
claims has surpassed 40 million. The pandemic has taken an
enormous toll, and it is nowhere close to done.
At the same time, the pandemic has cast a harsh spotlight
on the parts of our society that already weren't working. We
went into this pandemic with two ongoing and closely related
crises: economic and racial inequality and climate change.
Our nation has been struggling with deep inequality for
decades. As unionization rates have fallen, workers have seen
their pay shrink and bargaining power eroded. The deck has been
stacked even further against people of color, as we are seeing
in the context of COVID-19. Black Americans make up 12.5
percent of the U.S. population but represent 22.4 percent of
COVID deaths.
At the same time, we are facing a climate crisis. Climate
change is a dire and urgent threat, and the longer we delay,
the stronger the action required.
We see these issues as fundamentally linked. That is why,
this past summer, we released with our partners ``Solidarity
for Climate Action,'' a concrete platform to address these
crises simultaneously.
We have seen how dangerous the status quo is. We need to
move urgently towards economic recovery, but we know that
returning to normal is not good enough. We have to do better.
As we think about climate change and economic recovery, we
believe we can accomplish multiple things at the same time. We
can tackle the health and economic crises we are in, invest to
protect and support good jobs that are badly needed, deliver
public health and climate benefits, and create a stronger,
cleaner, and more equitable economy for all. We can achieve
this by investing at scale in solutions that deliver climate
benefits while creating and retaining quality jobs and spurring
economic recovery.
This should start with rebuilding America's infrastructure.
Investing now to repair our failing roads and bridges and water
systems, and to modernize our buildings, electric grid,
transportation systems, will boost our economy and create
millions of jobs, while also reducing pollution and combating
climate change.
At the same time, we must reinvest in strengthening and
transforming U.S. manufacturing to build more of the products,
materials, and technologies of the future here. In line with
achieving net-zero emissions economy-wide by 2050, we have the
opportunity to modernize and transform our industrial base to
make it the cleanest and most advanced in the world.
This industrial transformation can bring dynamic industries
back to communities that have been left behind and secure
domestic supply chains while spurring the creation of a new
generation of good manufacturing jobs.
We also have to ensure that our investment tackles income
inequality and delivers family-sustaining jobs. We have
examples of good union jobs being created in the clean energy
economy: construction workers building wind projects and
retrofitting buildings, auto workers making cleaner cars and
trucks. However, not all the new jobs created or promised in
the clean energy economy are high-quality. There are
differences across sectors when it comes to union density,
wages, and benefits. Therefore, in addition to investments in
infrastructure and manufacturing, we need to link those
investments to strong labor and Buy American standards, and
protect workers' rights to organize across all sectors of the
economy.
Lastly, we must recognize that, even if we are successful
in creating and retaining jobs, communities impacted by the
ongoing energy transition will still be hurt. That is why we
joined with partners and allies from coal communities across
the country to develop the ``National Economic Transition
Platform,'' which outlines a policy framework and priorities to
invest in communities and workers hit hard by the decline of
the coal industry.
Working people should not have to suffer economically due
to the shift to cleaner, cheaper forms of energy. But a
transition that is fair to workers and communities isn't
something that will happen organically. It needs to be a
deliberate choice and baked into our climate solutions.
In conclusion, we believe tackling climate change,
inequality, and economic recovery can go hand-in-hand and
ensure that the U.S. emerges from this crisis stronger and more
globally competitive with a cleaner and more equitable economy.
We appreciate the work of this committee and the ambition
and breadth and detail of the report produced by committee
staff. We look forward to continuing to work with you moving
ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.
[The statement of Mr. Walsh follows:]
WRITTEN TESTIMONY
Jason Walsh
Executive Director, BlueGreen Alliance
Before the 116th United States Congress,
House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
Solving the Climate Crisis:
Building a Vibrant and Just Clean Energy Economy
Tuesday, July 28, 2020
Thank you Chair Castor, Ranking Member Graves, and distinguished
members of the committee. My name is Jason Walsh, and I am the
Executive Director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a national partnership of
labor unions and environmental organizations. On behalf of my
organization, our partners, and the millions of members and supporters
they represent, I want to thank you for convening this hearing on how
we can build a vibrant and just clean economy while solving the climate
crisis.
The BlueGreen Alliance unites America's largest and most
influential labor unions and environmental organizations to solve
today's environmental challenges in ways that create and maintain
quality jobs and build a stronger, fairer economy. Our partnership is
firm in its belief that Americans don't have to choose between a good
job and a clean environment--we can and must have both.
The world's leading scientific organizations have been unambiguous
that climate change is a dire and urgent threat and that the longer we
delay, the stronger the action required. Over the last decade, we have
witnessed the worsening impacts climate change is having on our
communities.
At the same time, our nation is struggling with deep and crippling
economic and racial inequality. According to the Economic Policy
Institute, ``the bottom 90% of the American workforce has seen their
pay shrink radically as a share of total income,'' from 58% in 1979 to
47% in 2015.\i\ That is almost $11,000 per household, or $1.35 trillion
in additional labor income. There is a direct correlation with the
decrease of worker power over this time, as the share of workers in a
union fell from 24% in 1979 to under 11% now.\ii\
The deck has been stacked even further against people of color.
Data point after data point illustrates exactly how unequal our economy
is. For example, regardless of education level, Black workers are far
more likely to be unemployed than white workers.\iii\ In fact,
historically, unemployment rates are twice as high for Black workers.
That disparity carries into the workplace as well, with Black workers
paid on average 73 cents to the dollar compared to white workers.\iv\
The wage gap persists regardless of education, and even with advanced
degrees Black workers make far less than white workers at the same
level. So, it's no surprise that while the poverty rate for white
Americans sits at about 8.1%, for Black households it's 20.7%.\v\
Of course, we are now in the midst of a third devastating and
deadly crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic, which has taken its toll and is
nowhere close to done. America has surpassed 4 million cases and
140,000 deaths due to the coronavirus.\vi\ The ten-week total for
unemployment claims has surpassed 40 million, suggesting about a
quarter of our workforce has lost jobs during the pandemic and
projections suggest that even if we start to recover, the unemployment
rate will still be around 9.3% by the end of the year.\vii\ And months
into this pandemic, workers continue to struggle to stay safe and
healthy on the job, particularly as states begin to reopen parts of the
economy and state and local government budgets are ravaged, and the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Mine Safety and
Health Administration under President Trump have refused to do their
job and issue enforceable emergency standards for workplace safety.
This pandemic has cast a spotlight on and exacerbated all the parts
of our society that already weren't working for the American people.
With unemployment skyrocketing, those still at work being exposed to
unacceptable health risks on the job, and families immediately unable
to pay rent and mortgages, we're vividly seeing the impact of workers
living paycheck to paycheck and diminished workers' rights on the job.
And we're seeing clearly how systemic racism has stacked the deck
against people of color, who, historically and persistently fare worse
in our existing economy, having lower wages, less savings to fall back
on, and significantly higher poverty rates.\viii\ Not only are people
of color more economically vulnerable in this crisis, but
disproportionately their lives are being put at greater risk. For
example, Black Americans represent 22.4% of COVID-19 deaths while
making up just 12.5% of the U.S. population.\ix\ And among those aged
45-54, Black and Hispanic/Latino death rates are at least six times
higher than for whites. While whites comprise 62% of people in the U.S.
in that age group, 1,013 white people have died from COVID-19 (22% of
the total) compared to 1,448 Black people and 1,698 Hispanic/Latino
people.\x\
We've seen clearly just how dangerous the status quo is. We need to
move urgently towards economic recovery. At the same time, we know that
returning to ``normal'' is not good enough. We have to do better.
Last summer, the BlueGreen Alliance alongside our labor and
environmental partners released Solidarity for Climate Action a first
of its kind platform recognizing that the solutions to economic
inequality, racial injustice, and climate change have to be addressed
simultaneously. We have to fight climate change, reduce pollution, and
create and maintain good-paying, union jobs across the nation all at
the same time. With COVID-19 worsening these crises, the vision of
Solidarity for Climate Action is more important now than ever.
We believe our Solidarity for Climate Action Platform and the work
of this committee lay out a roadmap to get us there. We can tackle
climate change in a way that achieves multiple goals at the same time--
we can avoid the worst impacts of climate change, deliver public health
and environmental benefits to communities, create and maintain good,
unions jobs, address economic and racial injustice head on, and create
a cleaner, stronger, and more equitable economy for all.
How do we do this?
Invest in infrastructure and support and retool America's manufacturing
sector
First, we need to invest in common-sense ``win-win'' solutions that
deliver climate benefits while creating and retaining quality jobs and
spurring economic recovery.
We cannot address climate change or build a thriving economy with
derelict infrastructure. We must move forward with an ambitious plan to
rebuild and transform America's infrastructure. Investing now to repair
our failing roads and bridges, water systems, and natural gas
distribution pipelines, as well as to modernize our buildings and
electric grid, transform our transportation systems, and support our
urban and rural communities, will boost our economy and create millions
of jobs, while also reducing pollution and combating climate change--
paving the pathway to a strong and equitable recovery.
BlueGreen Alliance research has found that investing an estimated
$2.2 trillion in key sectors of America's infrastructure to improve
them from a ``D+'' grade overall to a ``B'' grade has the potential to
support or create an additional 14.5 million job-years across the U.S.
economy, add a cumulative $1.66 trillion to Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) over 10 years, and reduce greenhouse gas pollution and boost
climate resilience--versus a business as-usual approach.\xi\
Making these smart investments will also pay dividends for our
environment by reducing air and water pollution and tackling the
emissions driving climate change. Take transit: supporting transit
ridership increases commensurate with population growth could save
nearly 4.4 billion gallons of fuel and avert the carbon dioxide
(CO2) equivalent of 39 million metric tons per year through
2025.\xii\ Currently, transit ridership levels save the equivalent
energy of the gasoline used by more than 7.7 million cars a year--
nearly as many cars as are registered in Florida, the fourth largest
state.\xiii\ Public transit investments can help reduce harmful
emissions, which tend to disproportionately impact communities of color
and low-income communities. At the same time, transit systems support
thousands of high quality jobs directly and provide essential and daily
access to jobs and opportunity for millions. Expanding and modernizing
our transit systems can boost jobs and cut emissions immediately, and
be a key piece of rebuilding clean, livable, equitable, and prosperous
communities.
And the return on investment we see from infrastructure spending is
far greater than other types of potential policy interventions, like
tax cuts for example. Increased federal infrastructure spending has an
output multiplier of 1.57 compared to only 1.03 for an across the board
tax cut, 1.01 for a nonrefundable lump-sum tax rebate, and only 0.32
for cutting the corporate tax rate.\xiv\ The average rate of return
(ROR) on infrastructure investment across dozens of studies examined in
a 2017 report was an impressive 16.7%.\xv\
At the same time, we must reinvest in fortifying and transforming
heavy industry and retooling to build more of the products, materials,
and technologies of the future here. Manufacturing must be an integral
part of any strategy to address the climate emergency. In line with
achieving net zero emissions economy-wide by 2050, we have the
opportunity to modernize and transform our industrial base to make it
the cleanest and most advanced in the world. This industrial
transformation can bring dynamic industries back to communities that
have been left behind by deindustrialization and under-investment and
secure domestic supply chains while spurring the creation of a new
generation of good, safe jobs manufacturing clean technology.
This must begin by ensuring that our climate and clean energy goals
go hand in hand with policies to support and create good union jobs in
the clean economy and secure and bring back manufacturing supply
chains. And it means ensuring that all public investments are coupled
with high labor standards and robust Buy America/n standards to ensure
that these investments support domestic manufacturing. We can also
utilize ``Buy Clean'' and other federal procurement standards that
require the federal government to consider the carbon footprint of
goods they're purchasing, and to prioritize manufacturing firms that
uphold strong labor standards and create good jobs in low-income
communities.
Establishing robust, high-road, domestic production of clean
technology can capture the economic benefits of the clean economy in
the United States. Last month, the BlueGreen Alliance released a
manufacturing platform that lays out a national blueprint for how we do
this.\xvi\
Invest at the scale this crisis demands, and do it right
This should begin with prioritizing equitable rebuilding and
investments in those workers and communities that need it most,
especially low-income communities, communities of color, and
deindustrialized communities. Low income communities and communities of
color are hit the hardest and are less able to deal with the impacts of
both COVID-19 and climate change. For example, these communities are
more likely to be in neighborhoods with more air pollution. A 2019
report found that Black and Hispanic Americans live in neighborhoods
with more pollution but produce less, whereas white communities are
less polluted but white people produce more pollution.\xvii\ The Fourth
National Climate Assessment states that exposure to pollution ``results
in adverse respiratory and cardiovascular effects, including premature
deaths, hospital and emergency room visits, aggravated asthma, and
shortness of breath,''\xviii\ conditions which in turn increase the
risk of COVID-19 infection.
Generations of economic and racial inequality have
disproportionately exposed communities of color to low wages, toxic
pollution, and climate threats. We must inject justice into our
nation's economy by ensuring that solutions support the hardest hit
workers and communities. We must also ensure that our investments
tackle economic inequality and deliver family-sustaining jobs.
Manufacturing, infrastructure, environmental restoration, and clean
energy are significant drivers of job creation and economic growth, but
our investment won't be effective unless we ensure it supports and
creates local jobs with fair wages and benefits and safe working
conditions, creates economic opportunity for all people in the
communities in which they reside, and meets forward-thinking
environmental standards to ensure resiliency.
We have examples of good jobs being created in the clean energy
economy--whether that is the tradespeople that built the Block Island
offshore wind project off the coast of Rhode Island, autoworkers
building cleaner cars and trucks, or high-skilled jobs in energy
efficiency retrofitting. These are all good, union jobs building a
clean energy and climate-resilient economy today.
However, not enough new jobs created or promised in the clean
energy economy are high-quality, family-sustaining jobs. There are
differences across sectors when it comes to union density, wages, and
benefits. In addition, these new jobs are not always in the same
communities that have seen the loss of good-paying, union jobs, and if
there are new clean energy projects, they are often less labor
intensive.
We can't afford to invest in ways that double down on the crises
we're facing and further exacerbate inequality. We have to ensure that
this investment supports and creates good jobs.
That means a commitment to:
Increase union density across the country through strong
support of the right to organize throughout the economy--including in
the clean technology sectors;
Apply mandatory labor standards that include prevailing
wages, safety and health protections, project labor agreements,
community benefit agreements, local hire, and other provisions and
practices that prioritize improving training, working conditions, and
project benefits;
Raise labor standards in the non-construction sectors
through improved wages and benefits and the prioritization of full-time
work that eliminates the misclassification of employees and misuse of
temporary labor;
Invest in training, equipment, preparedness, plan
development, and other tools including through registered
apprenticeship programs to ensure a robust, skilled, and well-prepared
workforce to address extreme weather events and other impacts caused by
climate change; and
Utilize community benefit, workforce, and other similar
agreements that improve access to jobs and career paths, and identify
and implement mechanisms to mitigate and improve local economic and
environmental impacts.
Ensure fairness for workers and communities
We must also recognize that even if we are successful in retaining
jobs while creating new, good jobs, communities impacted by the ongoing
energy transition will still be hurting. Since 2014, U.S. power
generators retired nearly 62,000 MW of coal-fired generation capacity,
13,703 MW, of coal capacity retired in 2019. Another 26,947 MW of
retirements are expected through 2025.\xix\ America is already in the
middle of an energy transition. We need to have a conversation about
getting ahead of this transition, and we need to do this now.
That's why--alongside partners and allies from coal communities
across the country--the BlueGreen Alliance participated in the
development of the National Economic Transition platform.\xx\ The
platform is the product of a year-long collaboration, bringing together
local, tribal, and labor leaders with public, private, and non-profit
partners to develop a policy framework and priorities to invest in
communities and workers hit hard by the decline of the coal industry.
It calls for ``the creation of an inclusive national transition task
force, tasked to create a national action plan, and the development of
a new federal Office of Economic Transition, guided by an advisory
board reflective of affected stakeholder groups and communities'' and
recommends these new entities address economic transition through seven
pillars:\xxi\
1. Invest in local leaders and long-term economic development
planning. Building the capacity of community-based leaders and
organizations provides communities with the resources and incentives to
plan early for and respond to coal facility closures. These investments
ensure communities are prepared for a transition that protects workers
and is responsive to local needs.
2. Expand investments in entrepreneurship and small-businesses in
new sectors to help communities diversify and strengthen their
economies. Investing in small businesses in diverse sectors of the
economy--like health care, renewable energy, sustainable agriculture,
and remote work opportunities--grows not just resilience, but stronger,
healthier communities.
3. Provide bridge support and pathways to quality in-demand,
family-sustaining jobs for workers. By providing a bridge of support
for workers affected by closures, comprehensive workforce development
efforts, and skills training for in-demand jobs, leaders can create a
pathway to effective and equitable access to high-quality jobs in the
public and private sectors.
4. Reclaim and remediate coal sites to create jobs while cleaning
up the environment. Initiatives to reclaim, remediate, and reuse coal
sites and clean up coal ash requires a sizable workforce and
immediately creates jobs for workers while curbing public health and
environmental risks.
5. Improve inadequate physical and social infrastructure.
Investing in critical infrastructure, like improved connectivity,
stimulates economic development and builds community resiliency.
Infrastructure projects create jobs, reduce inequities, and help boost
investment in healthy, livable communities.
6. Address the impact of coal company bankruptcies on workers,
communities, and the environment. Holding companies accountable to
financial regulations and bankruptcy laws when closing operations helps
protect worker pay and benefits, while also ensuring polluted sites are
reclaimed for new development.
7. Coordinate across programs to ensure communities have access to
the resources they need. Launching an interagency grants program helps
ensure affected stakeholders have a voice and empowers local
communities with federal resources.
The state of Colorado has advanced legislation that provides a
model for achieving these goals. It passed landmark legislation, House
Bill 1314, during the 2019 state legislative session. The legislation,
which was envisioned and championed by the BlueGreen Alliance and our
partners, created the first State Office of Just Transition, and
mandated creation of a statewide Just Transition plan for coal workers
and communities. A 19-member advisory board will present their draft
plan on August 1st along with staff of the new office, partners like
the BlueGreen Alliance, and state agencies.
The Colorado Just Transition plan recommends structural
improvements to how the state supports rural communities where coal
mining or power plants are likely to close. Key to Colorado's plan will
be developing worker support programs that assist impacted workers in
transition to new work. The plan will also recommend state policies
that reduce the impact of tax loss on communities, enhance economic
development, develop entrepreneurial talent, dedicate capital to
improve community infrastructure and ensure coal site cleanup, and
secure financing for expanding businesses in coal transition
communities. Several states are watching Colorado's implementation of
House Bill 1314, and considering similar initiatives.
Any plan advanced by forward-looking states will have to be
supported and supplemented by additional Federal resources. Federal
funding, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic stretches already thin
state and local budgets, will be vital to giving coal communities the
resources and tools they need to diversify their economies and support
their workers through transition.
Working people should not have to suffer economically due to the
shift to cleaner, cheaper forms of energy, but a transition that is
fair for workers and communities isn't something that will happen
organically. Prioritizing workers and fossil fuel-impacted communities
needs to be a deliberate choice. A fair and equitable transition and
the creation of good-paying, union jobs need to be baked into our
solutions on climate change.
Rebuild the public sector and provide long term support and protections
for workers to ensure we are prepared for crises
Lastly, we need to rebuild the capacity of the public sector, the
health care system, public health agencies, education, and community-
based services to prepare for and respond to disasters like COVID-19
today, and to keep our communities safe and stable for the future.
Workers and communities cannot deal with crises alone, whether they are
global pandemics or extreme weather events caused by climate change. We
also must rebuild and expand the social safety net--including pensions,
healthcare, and retirement security--and ensure and enforce worker and
community health and safety.
Conclusion
The solutions to the crises we're facing--climate change, and
economic and racial inequality--are as interconnected as their causes
and we are happy to see that many of those solutions are included in
the staff report released by the House Select Committee on the Climate
Crisis. The report is far-reaching and we look forward to working with
you on a climate plan that launches an economic recovery that provides
solutions to create a stronger, cleaner, and more equitable economy
that works for all Americans.
Thank you again for the opportunity to speak today.
i Environmental Policy Institute (EPI), ``What labor
market changes have generated inequality and wage suppression?''
December 12, 2019. Available online:
https://www.epi.org/publication/what-labor-market-changes-have-
generated-inequality-and-wage- suppression-employer-power-is-
significant-but-largely-constant-whereas-workers-power-has- been-
eroded-by-policy-actions/
ii Ibid.
iii EPI, ``Black workers face two of the most lethal
preexisting conditions for coronavirus--racism and economic
inequality.'' June 1, 2020. Available online:
https://www.epi.org/publication/black-workers-covid/
iv Ibid.
v Ibid.
vi Google News, COVID-19 Dashboard. 2020, Available
online:
https://news.google.com/covid19/map?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
vii Washington Post, ``Federal Reserve predicts slow
recovery with unemployment at 9.3 percent by end of 2020.'' June 10,
2020. Available online:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/10/fed-forecasts-
economy/
viii EPI, ``Black workers face two of the most lethal
preexisting conditions for coronavirus--racism and economic
inequality.'' June 1, 2020. Available online:
https://www.epi.org/publication/black-workers-covid/
ix Ibid.
x Brookings, ``Race gaps in COVID-19 deaths are even
bigger than they appear.'' June 16, 2020. Available online: https://
www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/06/16/race-gaps-in-covid-19-
deaths-are-even-bigger-than-they-appear/
xi BlueGreen Alliance, Making the Grade 2.0 Investing in
America's Infrastructure to Create High-Quality Jobs and Protect the
Environment. 2017. Available online:
https://www.bluegreenalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/
MakingTheGrade-2.pdf
xii Ibid.
xiii Ibid.
xiv EPI, The potential macroeconomic benefits from
increasing infrastructure investment. July 18, 2017. Available online:
https://www.epi.org/publication/the-potential-macroeconomic-benefits-
from-increasing-infrastructure-investment/
xv Ibid.
xvi BlueGreen Alliance, Manufacturing Agenda: A National
Blueprint for Clean Technology Manufacturing Leadership and Industrial
Transformation. June 2020. Available online: https://
www.bluegreenalliance.org/resources/manufacturing-agenda-a-national-
blueprint-for-clean-
technology-manufacturing-leadership-and-industrial-transformation/
xvii Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Inequity in consumption of goods and services adds to racial-ethnic
disparities in air pollution exposure March 2019. Avail-
able online: https://www.pnas.org/content/116/13/
6001#:∼:text=The%20total%20disparity%20 is
%20caused,pollution%20inequity%20has%20remained%20high.
xviii U.S. Global Change Research Program, Fourth
National Climate Assessment, Chapter 13: Air Quality. November 2018.
Available online: https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/chapter/13/
xix S&P Global Market Intelligence, ``US power
generators set for another big year in coal plant closures in 2020.''
January 13, 2020. Available online:
https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-
news-headlines/us-power- generators-set-for-another-big-year-in-coal-
plant-closures-in-2020-56496107
xx Just Transition Fund. National Economic Transition
Platform. June 2020. Available online: https://
nationaleconomictransition.org/
xxi Ibid.
Ms. Castor. Thank you, Mr. Walsh.
Mr. Shellenberger, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER
Mr. Shellenberger. Thank you, Chairperson Castor, Ranking
Member Graves, and members of the committee.
During the first decade of this century, I advocated a very
similar suite of policies on renewables, transmission lines,
energy efficiency, mass trans, electric vehicles that are
currently being proposed by the Democrats' proposed climate
plan, and they failed to create the new manufacturing capacity,
the radical decarbonization, the good jobs with high pay, or
higher economic growth.
A former Obama Administration economist at the University
of Chicago found last year that consumers in states with
renewable-energy mandates paid $125 billion more for
electricity in the 7 years after their passage than they would
have otherwise.
Renewables contributed to electricity prices rising six
times more in California than in the rest of the United States
since 2011. And we have seen renewables have that same impact
around the world. They caused electricity prices to rise 50
percent in Germany since 2007.
And the problem underlying it all is physics. Solar and
wind make electricity expensive because they are unreliable,
they require 100-percent backup, and they are energy-dilute,
requiring extensive land, transmission lines, and mining.
Opposition to wind and solar projects has grown so much
that even renewable energy advocates today admit that the
environmental impact of renewables is the greatest obstacle to
their deployment. Solar and wind farms around the world
require, on average, 300 to 400 times more land than a natural
gas or a nuclear plant to provide the same quantity of energy,
albeit unreliably.
The renewable energy industry claims technical innovations
will improve solar and wind, but nothing can change the low
power density of sunlight and wind. Even a 10-percent
improvement in the efficiency of solar panels would only reduce
the staggering amount of land required to produce the same
amount of energy, from 400 times more to 360 times more.
The dilute nature of sunlight and wind means that solar and
wind projects require large amounts of land that come within
significant environmental impacts. The respected energy scholar
Vaclav Smil estimates that achieving 100 percent renewables
would require dedicating 25 to 50 percent of all the land in
the United States to energy production, up from a half a
percent. Vaclav Smil, by the way, is referred to by Bill Gates
as the person whose books he most looks forward to reading.
So this raises significant environmental justice concerns.
It is notable that the advocacy for industrial wind comes from
mostly affluent people who live on the coasts, not near wind
turbines. Communities most able to resist industrial wind
projects, such as people on Cape Cod or people in places like
Marin County of California or northern California, are able to
resist wind energy projects and seek to place them in poorer
communities in the Midwest.
A report released earlier this month documented 200 cases
of renewable energy companies and their proxies violating human
rights around the world, including through murder, dangerous
working conditions, and theft.
And yet, in the plan, House Democrats propose as a high
priority the creation of a super grid consisting of
transmission lines like the one proposed for the largely
pristine Sandhills of Nebraska, which would have a 3.5-mile
buffer and cross 600 individual wetlands. It is notable that
the single greatest threat to whooping cranes is considered
transmission lines, and the leading opponent of that project is
from the Oglala Sioux Tribe.
I think we have misdescribed climate change as a crisis or
an emergency. I say this as an environmental activist for 30
years, as a climate activist for 20 years. No credible
scientific body has ever claimed that climate change threatens
the collapse of civilization, much less the extinction of the
human species.
There is a lot of good news we should pay attention to here
and build upon. Deaths from natural disasters have declined 90
percent over 100 years. We produce 25 percent more food than we
consume today, and most experts believe that, as we continue to
expand fertilizer, irrigation, and modern agriculture to poor
countries, those food surpluses will rise.
All else being equal, it would be best to have no change to
global temperature, but, obviously, not all else is equal.
Those big gains in resilience are a consequence of the
availability of cheap energy.
So the good news is that carbon emissions have been
declining in the United States for a decade and a half. They
peaked in Britain, France, and Germany in the mid-1970s.
Economic growth brings significant reductions of carbon
emissions. I would question why, if we think that solar and
wind are so cheap, they would require $2 trillion in subsidies
to be scaled up.
I think a more significant challenge for this committee to
consider is the decline of nuclear energy. Only nuclear has
proven capable of replacing fossil fuels on a one-to-one basis,
and yet the American nuclear industry is in decline. And while
there are some interesting initiatives aimed at reviving it, we
do not have a national nuclear strategy to compete with the
Russians and Chinese.
Every time a nation does a nuclear power project, it is an
extension of soft power. They are basically going into the
sphere of influence of that country. And as we have all kind of
witnessed in horror how the Chinese Government is engaged in a
genocide against its ethnic Muslim minority, I think the United
States needs to step up its game and be competitive with the
Russians and Chinese in building new power plants abroad. And
that is going to require building more nuclear power plants at
home.
So I will just end by urging the committee to consider the
need for a green nuclear deal so that we can achieve both
environmental, climate, and also our national security
objectives at the same time.
Thank you very much.
[The statement of Mr. Shellenberger follows:]
Testimony of Michael D. Shellenberger,
Founder and President, Environmental Progress
For the House Select Committee On the Climate Crisis
July 28, 2020
Good morning Chairperson Castor, Ranking Member Graves, and members
of the committee.
My name is Michael Shellenberger, and I am Founder and President of
Environmental Progress, an independent and nonprofit research
organization.\1\ I am an invited expert reviewer of the next assessment
report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a
regular contributor to the New York Times, Washington Post, Forbes, and
other publications, and a Time Magazine ``Hero of the Environment.''
\2\ In the early 2000s I advocated for the predecessor to the Green New
Deal, the New Apollo Project, which President Barack Obama implemented
as his $90 billion green stimulus. I am honored to address the
Committee.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Environmental Progress is an independent non-profit research
organization funded by charitable philanthropies and individuals with
no financial interest in our findings. We disclose our donors on our
website: http://environmentalprogress.org/mission.
\2\ Michael Shellenberger, ``Founder and President,'' Environmental
Progress, 2020, accessed December 8, 2020, http://
environmentalprogress.org/founder-president.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
i. the high cost of renewables
House Democrats propose spending hundreds of billions of public and
ratepayer money on renewable energy, new transmission lines, energy
efficiency, mass transit, electric vehicles, carbon capture and
storage, and advanced nuclear energy. They argue that these federal
investments will result in millions of good jobs with high pay, and
also pay for themselves through higher economic growth.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Majority Staff Report, ``Solving the Climate Crisis,'' June
2020, https://
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
climatecrisis.house.gov/sites/climatecrisis.house.gov/files/
Climate%20Crisis%20Action%20Plan.pdf.
But similar programs over the last decade did not result in the
benefits being promised. During the first decade of this century I
advocated a suite of policies nearly identical to the ones currently
being proposed and watched them fail to create a new manufacturing
capacity, good jobs with high pay, or higher economic growth. Rather,
they resulted in low-wage service sector jobs, greater dependence on
imported Chinese technologies, and higher energy costs. And they
resulted in higher electricity prices and the net transfer of wealth
from lower to upper income citizens.
A former Obama administration economist at the University of
Chicago found last year that consumers in states with renewable energy
mandates paid $125 billion more for electricity in the seven years
after passage than they would have otherwise.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Michael Greenstone and Ishan Nath, ``Do Renewable Portfolio
Standards Deliver?'' Energy Policy Institute at the University of
Chicago 62 (May 2019): 1-45, https://epic.uchicago.edu/wp-content/
uploads/2019/07/Do-Renewable-Portfolio-Standards-Deliver.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Renewables contributed to electricity prices rising six times more
in California than in the rest of the US since 2011, the state's
``take-off'' year for rapid growth in wind and solar, a price rise that
occurred despite the state's reliance during the same years on
persistently-low-priced natural gas.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ ``California,'' Environmental Progress, accessed July 25, 2020,
https://environmentalprogress.org/california. Calculations based on
data from ``Electricity Data Browser: Retail Sales of Electricity
Annual,'' United States Energy Information Administration, accessed
January 10, 2020, https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Renewables have the same impact everywhere in the world. They have
caused electricity prices to rise 50 percent in Germany since 2007, the
first year it got more than 10 percent of its power from subsidized
wind, solar, and biomass. By 2019, German household electricity prices
were 45 percent higher than the European average.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Eurostat, ``Electricity prices for household consumers--bi-
annual data (from 2007 onwards)'' December 1, 2019, accessed January
20, 2020, https://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/
show.do?dataset=nrg_pc_204&lang=en.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Despite investing nearly a half-trillion dollars, Germany still
generated just 42 percent of its electricity from non-hydro renewables
last year, as compared to the 72 percent France generated from
nuclear.\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Germany spent 32 billion euros on renewables subsidy every year
between 2014 and 2018, or about one percent of its GDP a year, which if
adjusted for economy size would be like
the United States spending $200 billion annually but only increasing
its share of electricity
from solar and wind by 11 percentage points. German spending from Frank
Dohmen, ``German Failure on the road to a renewable future,'' Spiegel,
May 13, 2019, https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-
failure-on-the-road-to-a-renewable-future-a-1266586.html; Conversions
made using OECD data for Purchasing Power Parity. Increase in German
wind and solar percentages from ``Annual Electricity Generation in
Germany,'' Fraunhofer ISE, January 10, 2020, accessed January 10, 2020,
https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
If Germany didn't count emissions-producing and land-intensive
fuels like biomass and biofuels as renewable, which most environmental
groups, even Greenpeace, believe it shouldn't, the share of its
electricity from non-emitting, non-hydro renewables is just 34
percent.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ ``Annual Electricity Generation in Germany,'' Fraunhofer ISE,
January 10, 2020, accessed January 10, 2020, https://www.energy-
charts.de/energy.htm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Solar and wind make electricity more expensive because they are
unreliable, requiring 100 percent backup, and energy-dilute, requiring
extensive land, transmission lines, and mining. Solar and wind
developers do not pay for the costs they create but rather pass them on
to electricity consumers and other producers.\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ Steven M. Grodsky, ``Reduced ecosystem services of desert
plants from ground-mounted solar energy development,'' Nature, July 20,
2020.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ten years ago, growing opposition by conservationists, community
groups, and environmental justice activists to industrial wind and
solar projects led me to rethink my support for renewables. Today,
opposition to wind and solar projects has grown so much that even
renewable energy advocates today admit that the environmental impact of
renewables is the greatest obstacle to their deployment.\10\ Consider
the following recent events:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ Oliver Milman, ``Biden plots $2tn green revolution but faces
wind and solar backlash,'' Guardian, July 25, 2020.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In June, environmentalists in Hawaii urged the state's
Supreme Court to overturn a decision by the state to approve an
industrial wind project that threatened seven endangered native bird
species; \11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ The birds are the nene, pueo, a'o, koloa maoli, ae'o, 'alae
ke'oke'o, and 'alae 'ula. ``Hawaii Supreme Court asked to block opening
of controversial wind project,'' KHON2 News, June 17, 2020, https://
www.khon2.com.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
One week later, a federal judge blocked a transmission
line, called the R-Line, proposed to be built straight through whooping
crane habitat in Nebraska. Transmission lines are the number one cause
of mortality among whooping cranes. Industrial wind developers need the
transmission line to expand their turbines across the fragile Sand
Hills ecosystem; \12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ Thomas V. Stehn, ``Whooping Crane Collisions with Power Lines:
an issue paper,'' Geography, 2008.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In May of this year, Ohio regulators demanded wildlife
protections for endangered migratory bird species, including the
Kirtland's warbler, for an industrial wind project proposed for Lake
Erie. Such protections, which stop blades from spinning when birds are
in the area, undermine the already poor economics of wind energy, and
may ultimately kill the project. The lake is a critical habitat for
birds migrating between their nesting grounds in Canada to South
America for the winter; \13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ Karl-Erik Stromsta, ```This Could Be the Final Nail in Coffin'
for Icebreaker Offshore Wind Project,'' Green Tech Media, May 22, 2020,
https://www.greentechmedia.com.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last December, environmentalists on California's northern
coast successfully blocked industrial wind turbines that they said
would have killed an endangered sea bird, the marbled murrelet, which
nests in nearby ancient redwood trees; \14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ ``Board of Supes Sinks Terra-Gen Wind Farm on 4-1 Vote,
Following Days of Hearings,'' Lost Coast Outpost, December 17, 2019,
https://lostcoastoutpost.com.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
And just yesterday, environmental and community groups
from around the world announced the formation of the Energy and
Wildlife Coalition, to support, organize, and make more effective
opposition to industrial renewable energy projects in the US and around
the world.\15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ Energy and Wildlife Coalition, https://www.energywildlife.org.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
By occupying large areas of migratory habitat, wind turbines have
also emerged as one of the greatest threats to large, threatened, and
high-conservation-value birds. Solar and wind farms around the world
require at least 300-400 times more land on average than a natural gas
or nuclear plant to produce the same quantity of energy, albeit
unreliably.
The rapidly spinning blades of wind turbines act like an apex
predator that big birds never evolved to deal with. The wind industry
claims that house cats kill more birds than wind turbines. But cats
mainly kill small, common birds like sparrows, robins, and jays,
whereas wind turbines kill big, threatened, slow-to-reproduce species
like hawks, eagles, owls, and condors.
And because big birds have much lower reproductive rates than small
birds, their deaths have a far greater impact on the overall population
of the species. For example, golden eagles will have just one or two
chicks in a brood, and usually less than once a year, whereas a
songbird like a robin could have up to two broods of three to seven
chicks each year.
The renewable industry claims technical innovations will improve
solar and wind, but nothing can change the lower power density of
sunlight and wind. Even a 10 percent improvement in the efficiency of
solar panels would only slightly reduce the staggering amount of land
required to produce the same amount of energy: from 400 times more land
than nuclear to 360 times more. And over the last decade, the
technology used in the vast majority of installed solar panels has only
become 2-3 percent more efficient.\16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ National Renewable Energy Laboratory, ``Best Research-Cell
Efficiency,'' accessed July 27, 2020, https://www.nrel.gov/pv/cell-
efficiency.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The problem with renewables is physical. The dilute nature of
sunlight means that solar projects require large amounts of land and
thus come with significant environmental impacts. This is true even for
the world's sunniest places. California's most famous solar farm,
Ivanpah, requires 450 times more land than its last operating nuclear
plant, Diablo Canyon.\17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ ``California,'' Environmental Progress, accessed 25 July 2020,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://environmentalprogress.org/california.
These quantities are supported by the best available scholarship.
Vaclav Smil, a widely-respected energy scholar, has shown that it would
take 25-50 percent of all land in the US to go 100 percent renewable.
Today, the US uses just 0.5 percent of its land for energy.\18\ In
2009, Cambridge physicist David MacKay showed that providing energy to
the UK with 100 percent renewables would require a greater area than
the landmass of the entire country.\19\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\ Vaclav Smil, Power Density, MIT Press, 2016.
\19\ David MacKay, Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, UIT
Cambridge, Ltd., 2009.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The expansion of industrial renewables raises environmental justice
concerns. It is notable that the advocacy for industrial wind energy
comes from people who don't live near the turbines, which are almost
invariably loud and disturb the peace and quiet. Those communities that
have proven most able to resist the introduction of a wind farm tend to
be more affluent. In 2017, the upper-class residents of Cape Cod, for
example, defeated an effort by a wind developer to build a 130-turbine
farm, despite the developer having spent $100 million on the project.
There is something called the ``Starbucks Rule'' for siting
industrial wind projects. Wind developers ``plot where Starbucks are in
the general area and then make sure their project is at least thirty
miles away. Any closer and there'd be too many NIMBYs who'd object to
having their views spoiled by a cluster of 265-foot-tall wind towers,''
reported Business Week.\20\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\20\ John Laumer, ``US Wind Industry Follows ``Starbucks Rule'' for
Turbine Siting,'' Treehugger, October 15, 2009, https://
www.treehugger.com.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Renewable energy projects raise serious environmental justice
issues. The state legislator in Nebraska seeking to protect the
Sandhills, a traditionally sacred area, from industrial wind and its
required transmission line, is a citizen of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. A
report released earlier this month documents nearly 200 cases of
renewable energy companies and their proxies allegedly violating human
rights around the world, including through murder, dangerous working
conditions, and theft. And in Hawaii, Tevita O. Ka'ili, a Hawaiian
professor of cultural anthropology, testified that ``Killing these manu
[birds] would deprive current and future generations of a necessary
part of their natural environment and, for native Hawaiians, a vital
resource for traditional and customary practices.'' \21\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\21\ ``Renewable Energy and Human Rights Benchmark,'' Business and
Human Rights Resource
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Centre, https://www.business-humanrights.org/sites/default/files/
Renewable%20Energy%20Benchmark% 20Key%20Findings%20Report.pdf ``Hawaii
Supreme Court asked to block opening of controversial wind project,''
KHON2 News, June 17, 2020, https://www.khon2.com.
And yet, in their plan, House Democrats identify as a high priority
the creation of a ``supergrid'' consisting of transmission lines like
the one proposed for the largely pristine Sand Hills of Nebraska, which
would have a 3.5 mile buffer and cross 600 individual wetlands.\22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\22\ Majority Staff Report, ``Solving the Climate Crisis,'' June
2020, https://
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
climatecrisis.house.gov/sites/climatecrisis.house.gov/files/
Climate%20Crisis%20Action%20Plan.pdf.
Despite their substantial negative environmental impact, the
federal government has repeatedly given the wind industry special
rights. The federal government rarely stops wind projects or requires
changes in wind turbine locations or operations. Wind developers are
allowed to self-report violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the
Endangered Species Act, and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.
Only Hawaii requires bird and bat mortality data to be gathered by an
independent third party and to be made available to the public on
request.\23\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\23\ Michael Shellenberger, Apocalypse Never, HarperCollins, 2020,
194; Michael Hutchins, ``To Protect Birds from Wind Turbines, Look to
Hawai'i's Approach,'' American Bird Conservancy, June 21, 2016,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://abcbirds.org/to-protect-birds-and-bats-from-wind-turbines-
adopt-hawaiis-approach.
These special rights include the right to kill endangered species.
In 2013, the Obama administration gave the wind industry permission to
kill condors, an endangered species. No other industry is allowed to
kill condors.\24\ Recently, the ``US Fish and Wildlife Service has
encouraged wind developers to avoid prosecution for killing eagles,''
reported the New York Times, ``by applying for licenses to cover the
number of birds who might be struck by wind turbines.'' \25\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\24\ Louis Sahagun, ``Companies won't face charges in condor
deaths,'' Los Angeles Times, May 10, 2013.
\25\ Joseph Goldstein, ``A Climate Conundrum: the Wind Farm vs. the
Eagle's Nest,'' New York Times, June 25, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the rare circumstances when governments require the wind
industry to mitigate its impact, such as by setting aside land
elsewhere, there is often little to no enforcement, scientists say. In
other circumstances, wind developers do not follow through on their
promises and in some cases lie. Apex Clean Energy, based in Virginia,
claimed on its 2017 application to the New York Electric Generation
Siting Board that there were no known bald eagle nests where it planned
to build. But, later, Apex flew a helicopter over an eagle's nest,
destroying it.\26\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\26\ Michael Shellenberger, Apocalypse Never, HarperCollins, 2020,
194; Clifford P. Schneider, pro se, ``Motion for Dismissal for Fraud
upon the Siting Board,'' Application of Galloo Island Wind LLC for a
Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need Pursuant to
Article 10 to Construct a Wind Energy Project, Case No. 15-F-0327,
September 13, 2018, 2; Joseph Goldstein, ``A Climate Conundrum: the
Wind Farm vs. the Eagle's Nest,'' New York Times, June 25, 2019,
https://www.nytimes.com.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Curtailment, the intentional halting of turbine blades, can reduce
the killing of birds, bats, and insects, but few wind farm developers
are willing to curtail because it means losing money. A US National
Renewable Energy Laboratory study found that curtailment levels are
lower than 5 percent of the total wind energy generation. And
curtailment often isn't enough to stop the killings. ``In fact, red-
tailed hawk fatalities peaked at the 50 percent of turbines that never
operated during the three years of monitoring,'' reported a scientist.
He calls the most-studied wind farm in California, Altamont Pass, a
``population sink for golden eagles as well as burrowing owls.'' \27\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\27\ Michael Shellenberger, Apocalypse Never, HarperCollins, 2020,
195; Shawn Smallwood, ``Estimating Wind Turbine-Caused Bird
Mortality,'' Journal of Wildlife Management 71, no. 8 (2007): 2781-91,
doi:10.2193/2007-006.
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ii. good news on climate change
Many defend the high environmental and economic cost of renewables
by claiming that they are necessary to address the existential threat
of climate change. But no credible scientific body has ever claimed
that climate change threatens the collapse of civilization, much less
the extinction of the human species, which is what ``existential''
threat means. And yet policymakers, scientists, and journalists make
these claims, which have contributed to rising levels of anxiety and
depression, including among adolescents.\28\
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\28\ Michael Shellenberger, Apocalypse Never, HarperCollins, 2020,
269; Rachel N. Lipari and Eunice Park-Lee, Key Substance Use and Mental
Health Indicators in the United States: Results from the 2018 National
Survey on Drug Use and Health, Substance Abuse and Mental Health
Services Administration, US Department of Health and Human Services,
2019; ``Adolescent Mental Health in the European Union,'' World Health
Organization Regional Office for Europe, Copenhagen, Denmark.
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In reality there is a growing amount of good news about climate
change. Deaths from natural disasters have declined over 90 percent
over the last 100 years, and neither the IPCC nor any other reputable
scientific body predicts that trend will reverse itself. We produce 25
percent more food than we consume and experts agree surpluses will
continue to rise so long as poor nations gain access to fertilizer,
irrigation, roads, and other key elements of modern agriculture.\29\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\29\ Michael Shellenberger, Apocalypse Never, HarperCollins, 2020,
91; FAO, The future of food and agriculture--Alternative pathways to
2050 (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,
2018), 76-77.
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All else being equal, it would be best for global temperatures to
remain stable. We should not want them to either rise or decline. The
reason is because we have built civilization and protected natural
areas based on current temperatures. But all else isn't equal. The
cause of climate change is energy consumption, and energy consumption
has been a critical part of rising resilience to disasters, greater
food production, and the protection of the natural environment. As
such, there has long been a debate over how much more we should pay for
energy to reduce climate change.
The good news is that recent and historical events show that
economic growth can actually lower carbon emissions. Carbon emissions
have been declining in the US for nearly a decade and a half thanks to
the cheap natural gas, which made electricity cheaper than it otherwise
would have been. In fact, experts have long recognized that while the
early stages of a nation's industrialization can increase air
pollution, later stages can lower it through cleaner-burning coal,
natural gas, and nuclear energy. Those technologies and others allowed
conventional air pollutants to peak in developed nations the 1960s and
1970s. Among some nations, including Britain, France, and Germany, even
carbon emissions peaked in the mid-1970s.\30\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\30\ Michael Shellenberger, Apocalypse Never, HarperCollins, 2020,
26.
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A new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts
carbon emissions in 2040 to be lower than in almost all of the IPCC
scenarios.\31\ Part of the reason for lower anticipated future
emissions and warming is the far greater abundance, and lower prices,
of natural gas, which produces half the carbon emissions of coal.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\31\ ``World Energy Outlook 2019'' (Paris: International Energy
Agency, 2019), https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2019.
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It is thus misleading to describe climate change as either a
``crisis'' or ``emergency.'' When the US and Soviet Union nearly went
to nuclear war over Cuba; when there was nearly a run on the banks in
2008; when the coronavirus forced radical action to prevent millions of
deaths earlier this year; each of those events, I believe, can be
fairly described as crisis, a time of intense danger, or an emergency,
which is not just serious but also unexpected. Climate change is real
and we should continue reducing emissions through the use of natural
gas and nuclear. But it is neither a crisis nor an emergency.
Nor is climate change one of our most important environmental
problems. The continued use of wood as fuel by two billion people; air
pollution that shortens the lives of roughly seven million people per
year; the decline of wild animal populations; and the loss of habitat
for endangered species, are all more important and urgent environmental
problems than climate change.
I fear climate change has become a distraction from far more
significant problems including the hollowing out of the middle-class by
globalization and automation; our overdependence on China for
pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, drones, and other manufactured
products; the lack of sufficient housing in our major coastal cities;
the intertwined drug addiction and mental health crises which increased
annual overdose deaths from 17,000 to 70,000 since 2000; the extreme
political polarization tearing our nation apart; and the active
destruction of the US nuclear industry.
iii. why nuclear energy is more important than climate change
Anyone genuinely concerned about climate change, air pollution, or
the impact of renewables on wildlife should advocate nuclear energy.
Only nuclear can substitute for fossil fuels while maintaining and
increasing levels of energy consumption required for universal human
prosperity. Nuclear-heavy French electricity produces one-tenth the
carbon emissions as renewables-heavy German electricity at nearly half
the price. Nuclear is not only the safest way to make electricity, it
has actually saved two million lives, according to the best available
research. And nuclear requires less than one percent of the land
required by solar and wind projects.\32\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\32\ A selection of the literature on public health benefits of
nuclear energy, and the consequences of its closure: Anil Markandya and
Paul Wilkinson, ``Electricity Generation and Health,'' Lancet 370, no.
9591 (September 2007): 979-990, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-
6736(07)61253-7; Anthony J. McMichael, Rosalie E. Woodruff, and Simon
Hales, ``Climate change and human health: present and future risks,''
Lancet 367, no. 9513 (March 2006): 859-869, https://doi.org/10.1016/
S0140-6736(06)68079-3; ``Ambient Air Pollution: a global assessment of
exposure and burden of disease,'' World Health Organization, 2016,
https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/250141; ``Nuclear Waste State-
of-the-Art Report 2016: Risks, uncertainties and future challenges,''
Swedish National Council for Nuclear Waste, 2016, https://
www.government.se/49bbd2/contentassets/
ecdecd2ee26c498c95aaea073d6bc095/sou-
2016_16_eng_webb.pdf; Pushker Kharecha and James
E. Hansen, ``Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from
Historical and Projected Nuclear Power,'' Environmental Science and
Technology 47, no. 9 (March 2013): 4889-4895, https://doi.org/10.1021/
es3051197; Edson R. Severnini, ``Impacts of nuclear plant shutdown on
coal-fired power generation and infant health in the Tennessee Valley
in the 1980s,'' Nature Energy 2 (April 2017), doi:10.1038/
nenergy.2017.51.
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The US has for much of the past 60 years been the global leader in
the development and building of nuclear plants around the world. In
1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his famous ``atoms for
peace'' speech at the United Nations where he pledged that the US would
help nations use nuclear energy to lift themselves out of poverty.
Today, nine out of every ten gigawatts of global nuclear capacity today
is descended from designs invented and commercialized by the United
States. American nuclear reactor designs today operate in leading
nuclear countries like China, France, South Korea, Japan, and the
United Kingdom. American reactors operated in the US are the best in
the world, operating 93 percent of the time.
Because of the inherently dual military-civilian nature of nuclear
energy, Congress and most presidential administrations have long viewed
America's nuclear power plants, and our involvement in the nuclear
energy programs of other nations, as top national security priorities.
Thanks to American leadership, nuclear energy has proven to be the
safest and cleanest way to make electricity. And, for 75 years, nuclear
energy has been used solely for peaceful purposes.
But now, the US is building just one nuclear plant at home and none
abroad, allowing China and Russia to dominate the market for nuclear
power plant construction. Nations seeking nuclear energy today include
Argentina, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, the Czech
Republic, Egypt, Finland, Ghana, Hungary, India, Jordan, Kazakhstan,
Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, South
Africa, Sudan, Turkey, the UAE, the UK, Uzbekistan, and Zambia, among
others.
In the seven months that have passed since the last time I
testified before Congress, China has stepped up its genocide of its
Muslim minority and Russia has modified its constitution to allow its
president to serve for decades longer. I greatly admire the Russian and
Chinese nuclear energy programs, and indeed believe they represent the
standard against which the US must compete. But their rejection of
liberal democracy and human rights are profoundly troubling for the
future of nuclear energy and the world.
Nations that decide to work with China and Russia rather than the
United States or other liberal Western democracy will effectively
become part of their sphere of influence. Nuclear power plants are
enormous construction projects, and thus marry large construction
firms, financial institutions, and governments, in the way that only
large projects can do.
But beyond those economic ties are national security ones. The line
between soft power and hard power runs through nuclear energy. The
creation of a scientific and technical workforce capable of creating
nuclear energy brings nations closer to being able to one day create
nuclear weapons. It is thus logical that nations gain a national
security benefit simply from having nuclear plants.\33\ If nations are
in partnership with Russia or China in building nuclear plants, they
could one day be in partnership with those countries in other ways.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\33\ Matthew Fuhrmann et al, ``Almost Nuclear: Introducing the
Nuclear Latency Dataset,'' Conflict Management and Peace Science,
January 8, 2015.
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For the US to compete in building nuclear plants abroad we must
build them at home. While the nuclear industry deserves great credit
for the continuous improvement of power plant safety and efficiency,
many utility executives are either resigned to the technology's decline
or engaged in wishful thinking about inventing new families of reactor
technology.
The reason nations and utilities opt for large light-water reactors
is because they produce the cheapest electricity. What makes nuclear
cheaper are larger reactors, since they do not require correspondingly
larger workforces, and extensive experience building and operating
them. But even if nations were to eventually opt for smaller reactors,
they would likely purchase them from the nations that offer the most
favorable financial terms while having the most experience building
reactors, which today are China and Russia.
If the US were to decide to compete with China and Russia, it
should consider deepening partnerships with other members of the
Western Alliance, and ending imports of uranium from Russia. It might
have made sense 20 years ago for the US to ensure the stability of the
Russian nuclear industry through purchases of its uranium. But with
Russia out-competing the US on new nuclear plant construction, and
engaging in cyber attacks on our electrical grid, it is not clear how
it any longer makes sense for the U.S. to import uranium from Russia. I
thus applaud steps by the Department of Energy to end reliance on
imported Russian uranium.\34\
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\34\ John Funk, ``DOE targets end to US reliance on Russian nuclear
fuel, revived domestic capability,'' Utility Dive, July 20, 2020.
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Given all of that, I would like to pose three questions. First, is
it in the interest of American taxpayers to subsidize US electric
utilities to operate nuclear plants in the absence of any commitment to
build new ones? Second, does Congress believe the US can compete with
China and Russia while shutting down half to two-thirds of its nuclear
plants? Third, is Congress really comfortable standing by and watching
dozens of nations partner with China and Russia to expand their use of
nuclear technology over the next century?
If the answer to the latter question is yes, Congress should inform
the American people that it has decided to cede America's historic role
as creator, promotor, and steward of the world's most sensitive dual-
use technology to our main geopolitical rivals.
In the face of nuclear energy's leadership vacuum in the U.S., I
urge Congress to consider creating a Green Nuclear Deal as a revision
to the Atomic Energy Act that would restore America's nuclear
leadership at a global level. The goal should be nuclear energy
dominance. The U.S. government should encourage the building of large,
standardized nuclear plants at home, and export its natural gas abroad.
Doing this would require identifying a national champion company to
compete with the state-owned companies of Russia and China, and the
president working to sell U.S. nuclear plants abroad, just as the
leaders of China and Russia do.
In the 1950s, members of Congress who understood the sensitive and
special nature of the technology urged the White House to make
America's dominance of nuclear energy a top national security priority.
I hope all of you would consider doing so again today.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify. I look forward to
your questions.
Ms. Castor. Ms. Soholt, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF BETH SOHOLT
Ms. Soholt. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman Castor, Ranking
Member Graves, and distinguished committee members.
My name is Beth Soholt, and I am the Executive Director of
the Clean Grid Alliance. I am here today to offer some thoughts
from America's heartland, the renewable-energy stronghold of
the country, where we are seeing renewable energy deployed
cost-effectively and reliably.
I am here testifying today in support of the Macro Grid
Initiative. MGI is a national effort led by the American
Council on Renewable Energy and Americans for a Clean Energy
Grid, in partnership with organizations including the American
Wind Energy Association and the Solar Energy Industries
Association.
The Macro Grid Initiative advocates expanding and upgrading
the nation's transmission network to deliver job growth and
economic development, a cleaner environment, and lower cost for
consumers.
The pursuit of a macro grid, an interregionally connected
backbone for the nation's transmission grid, is essential for
the United States to achieve its climate goals and charge up
the economy.
Over the last 20 years, I have seen firsthand the multiple
benefits new grid infrastructure brings to a region.
Communities that host renewable projects receive new and needed
revenue; engineers, electricians, and local labor folks are put
to work in good-paying jobs; customers get clean, affordable
power; and electric utilities get investment opportunities.
So let's talk about the Macro Grid. The Macro Grid vision
includes expanding the interregional high-voltage transmission
system, tightening up the seams that exist between the various
transmission operators, and adding a network of high-voltage
direct current lines that could deliver significant carbon
reduction.
A Macro Grid enables carbon emissions reductions of nearly
80 percent while saving consumers up to $47 billion annually
and returning more than $2.50 for every dollar invested.
Most importantly, the Macro Grid vision builds upon the
success that we have seen expanding and updating the grid in
certain regions of the country. But the Macro Grid vision will
require a modernized policy and regulatory environment to
recognize the substantial nationwide benefits of new regional
and interregional transmission.
So what are the benefits to expanding the high-voltage
transmission system?
First, job creation. Constructing transmission lines brings
a lot of good-paying jobs. Transmission is generally built
using organized labor, project labor agreements, and prevailing
wage standards. I have an example in my testimony of the jobs,
both direct, indirect, and induced, that would be created from
a substantial build-out of 100 gigawatts' worth of
transmission. But these jobs are in addition to the jobs that
are created from wind and solar project development,
manufacturing wind turbines and component parts, and supply
chain jobs.
Second, economic growth and development. Constructing new
transmission lines provides an economic engine for the nation's
economy. There is an example of Midwest utilities working
together through the CapX2020 initiative. The major build-out
of 5 new transmission lines, 800 miles of new transmission, was
a $2 billion project that resulted in $4 billion worth of
economic impact in the region, $150 million paid in State and
Federal taxes, 8,000 jobs at the peak of construction, and
returned $1.93 worth of benefit to electric utility customers
for every dollar invested. So, you see, developing transmission
is truly an economic engine that drives business here in the
United States.
Finally, I want to talk about competitiveness. Mr.
Shellenberger mentioned China and other countries. In the
United States, and around the world, manufacturers and energy-
intensive technology industries, such as data centers, can
locate their operations anywhere. What they are asking for is
low-cost, carbon free electricity. A number of utilities have
put in place ambitious carbon reduction goals. Renewable energy
with transmission enables the demands of these corporate energy
users and utilities to be met.
In addition, the U.S. is competing globally with countries
like China. China has recently jumped past the American grid
build-out success with their own much higher voltage DC
superhighway.
And so, as the committee and your colleagues craft
legislation, I urge you to make electric grid infrastructure
policies a bipartisan priority.
I commend the Select Committee's majority report for its
recommendations to create a national policy on transmission,
encourage FERC to develop an infrastructure strategy, improve
transmission planning, and remove barriers to transmission
permitting.
As I have seen firsthand in my work in the Midwest,
transmission enables electric utilities, businesses, customers,
workers, communities, and the environment to not only survive
but thrive. Most importantly, building a Macro Grid can help
the nation address the climate crisis and bring the multiple
benefits I have outlined in my testimony.
Thank you, and I look forward to questions.
[The statement of Ms. Soholt follows:]
A Macro Grid Vision to Achieve the Nation's
Climate Goals and ``Charge Up'' the Economy
Beth Soholt, Executive Director, Clean Grid Alliance (CGA)
For CGA, the American Council on Renewable Energy,
and Americans for a Clean Energy Grid
Testimony to the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
July 28, 2020
Good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity to testify on this
extremely important topic. I am honored to appear before the Select
Committee to bring thoughts and ideas from the Midwest--America's
renewable energy heartland.
My name is Beth Soholt. I'm the Executive Director of the Clean
Grid Alliance, and I am testifying today in support of the Macro Grid
Initiative (MGI), a national effort led by the American Council on
Renewable Energy and Americans for a Clean Energy Grid committed to
expanding and upgrading the nation's transmission network to deliver
job growth and economic development, a cleaner environment, and lower
costs for consumers.
The pursuit and achievement of a Macro Grid--an interregionally
connected backbone for the nation's transmission grid--is essential for
the United States to achieve its climate goals and ``charge up'' the
economy. A Macro Grid can deliver renewable energy from the resource to
load, enhance grid resiliency, and dramatically reduce carbon emissions
by spurring a large amount of renewable energy development.
Over the last 20 years, I have seen firsthand the multiple benefits
new grid infrastructure--like high voltage transmission lines--brings
to a region rich in renewable energy resources. Communities that host
wind and solar farms receive new and needed revenue in their counties
and townships; engineers, electricians, and local labor folks are put
to work in good-paying jobs; customers get clean, affordable power in
their homes, businesses, farms and factories; and electric utility
companies have infrastructure investment opportunities and a variety of
renewable energy projects to choose from.
I will cover three points in my testimony and take them in order:
1. The Macro Grid vision
2. Benefits of an expanded, upgraded transmission system
3. How Congress can advance policies for grid infrastructure to
meet climate goals and stimulate the economy
First, the Macro Grid vision.\1\ The Macro Grid endeavors to take
advantage of the vast renewable energy resources across the country and
deliver the clean energy to locations where it is needed.
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\1\ https://acore.org/macro-grid-initiative/
?mc_cid=f0936965a0&mc_eid=%5BUNIQID%5D
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Macro Grid vision includes expanding interregional high voltage
transmission, tightening up the ``seams'' that exist between the
various transmission operators, and adding a network of High Voltage
Direct Current (HVDC) lines that could deliver significant carbon
emissions reductions. A Macro Grid enables carbon emissions reductions
of nearly 80 \2\ percent while saving consumers up to $47 billion
annually\3\ and returning more than $2.50 for every dollar invested.\4\
The Macro Grid vision builds upon the success we have had expanding and
updating the grid in certain US regions including MISO,\5\ \6\ SPP,\7\
CAISO, and ERCOT.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ MacDonald, Clack, et al. Future cost-competitive electricity
systems and their impact on US CO2 emissions, https://www.nature.com/
articles/nclimate2921
\3\ MacDonald, Clack, et al. Future cost-competitive electricity
systems and their impact on US CO2 emissions, https://www.nature.com/
articles/nclimate2921
\4\ National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Interconnection Seam
Study, https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/seams.html
\5\ https://
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cdn.misoenergy.org/
2011%20MVP%20Portfolio%20Analysis%20Full%20Report117059.pdf
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\6\ https://
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cdn.misoenergy.org/
2011%20MVP%20Portfolio%20Detailed%20Business%20Case117056.pdf
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\7\ https://www.spp.org/engineering/transmission-planning/priority-
projects/
\8\ http://www.ettexas.com/Projects/TexasCrez
\9\ https://gridstrategiesllc.com/2020/07/27/transmission-and-jobs/
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Achieving the Macro Grid vision will require a modernized policy
and regulatory environment at the federal, regional, and state levels
that recognizes the substantial nationwide benefits of new regional and
interregional transmission. We urge the Select Committee to make
achieving the Macro Grid vision a priority as you craft climate change
and stimulus legislation.
Second, what are the benefits to expanding the high voltage
transmission system? In addition to spurring robust renewable energy
development that would yield significant carbon reductions, there are
major economic benefits to grid expansion.
Job Creation--Constructing transmission lines creates a lot of
good paying jobs. Transmission is generally built using organized
labor, Project Labor Agreements and prevailing wage standards. As an
example, to build 100 GW worth of transmission delivery capacity, about
$75 billion in transmission infrastructure would be needed. That would
create around 600,000 direct jobs and 1.5 million direct, indirect and
induced jobs.\9\ These jobs are in addition to jobs created from wind
and solar project development, manufacturing wind turbines and
component parts, and supply chain for wind and solar projects.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ https://gridstrategiesllc.com/2020/07/27/transmission-and-jobs/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Economic Growth and Development--Constructing new transmission
lines provides an economic engine for the nation's economy. For
example, the 11 Midwestern electric utilities that were part of the
CapX2020 \10\ initiative built 5 major 345kV transmission lines located
in North and South Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin with the last line
just finished a few years ago. Altogether, the 800 miles of new
transmission was a $2 billion project that resulted in $4 billion of
economic impact in the region, $150 million paid in state and federal
taxes, 8,000 jobs at the peak of construction, and returned $1.93 worth
of benefit to electric utility customers for every dollar invested.\11\
Developing transmission is truly an economic engine that drives
business here in the United States.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ http://www.capx2020.com/
\11\ http://www.capx2020.com/Gallery/movies/economic-benefits.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Competitiveness--Manufacturers and energy-intensive technology
industries such as data centers can locate their operations anywhere in
the world. The technology firms have been telling utilities and
policymakers across the Midwest that they want a low-cost, carbon-free
electricity supply. Responding to their customers and state policy, a
number of utilities have put in place ambitious 80 to 100 percent de-
carbonization goals. Renewable energy with transmission enables the
demands of these corporate energy users and utilities to be met. In
addition, the U.S. is competing globally with countries who have also
figured out that building big infrastructure to tap domestic resources
is a path to economic growth and security. China, for example, recently
jumped past the American grid buildout successes with their own much
higher voltage DC superhighways connecting their resource areas to
major population centers.
Finally, as this Committee and your colleagues discuss and debate
upcoming legislation, I urge you to make electric grid infrastructure
policies a bipartisan priority. In that regard, I commend the Select
Committee Majority Report for its recommendations to create a national
policy on transmission and an ``American Supergrid,'' encourage FERC to
develop an infrastructure strategy and improve regional and
interregional planning, remove barriers to transmission development in
the current state-by-state permitting regime, support federal financial
resources to help right-size lines for the long term, and provide DOE
funding and technical assistance for transmission planning.
As I've seen firsthand in my work in the Midwest, transmission
enables electric utilities, businesses, manufacturers, residential
customers, workers, rural and urban communities and the environment to
not only survive but thrive. Most importantly, building a Macro Grid
can help the nation address the climate crisis AND bring the multiple
benefits I've outlined in my testimony.
Thank you and I look forward to answering any questions you may
have.
Ms. Castor. As a reminder to all of the members and to
witnesses, please keep your video cameras on. If your camera is
not on at the time we come to you, we will have to skip over
you in the order of questions.
So I will recognize myself for 5 minutes.
I think American families and businesses are eager to move
to the clean energy economy. And the ``Solving the Climate
Crisis'' majority staff report calls for achieving a net-zero
electricity grid by no later than 2040. To achieve that, we are
going to need to rapidly deploy more renewables. We are going
to have to modernize the grid and expand transmission capacity
to get more renewables to the market. Fortunately, as Ms.
Soholt testified, transmission construction creates a lot of
good-paying, union jobs.
Ms. Soholt, why is a Macro Grid, as you call it, a better
approach for renewables and clean-energy deployment than the
way we move electricity now?
Ms. Soholt. Thank you, Chairwoman Castor, for the first
question.
We have a lot of work to do to modernize our electricity
grid. And so achieving the Macro Grid vision will not only
enable the benefits that I talked about, but it really enables
the good resources to be able to get to the load. It is as
simple as that. We need to connect the high wind and solar
resource areas to the large load centers that need the power.
And so we have reform of the way we go about paying for,
planning, permitting infrastructure to be able to achieve the
timeframes that the committee report talks about. So 2040 is an
aggressive goal, given that there is so much work to be done.
And so the Macro Grid provides a vision and the implementation
of achieving that vision.
Ms. Castor. And, Mr. Walsh, what is going to be key to
having the workers to build this Macro Grid?
I know in your testimony you state, we must reinvest in
fortifying and transforming heavy industry and retooling to
build more of the products, materials, and technologies of the
future here and that manufacturing must be an integral part of
any strategy.
So why is that? Talk to us about what you see in the Macro
Grid, the types of jobs that will be available, and what else
in innovative, clean technologies for American workers.
Mr. Walsh. Thank you, Chair Castor, for the question.
I mean, first, let's start by just recognizing the
industrial sector represents a pretty significant source of
U.S. emissions. And, actually, if you distribute electricity to
its economic end use, the industrial sector is the largest
source of emissions in the United States. And it is also the
fastest growing over time, both domestically and globally. So,
from a climate perspective, we have to focus on how we reduce
emissions from this sector.
At the same time, these industries are essential to produce
the materials and components for the Macro Grid and other
technologies for our infrastructure, and they are absolutely
essential for producing the goods that constitute modern life.
They are enormously important economically. Manufacturing
directly employs about 1 in 11 American workers, and
contributes $2 trillion a year to the gross domestic product.
This is also an issue of global economic competitiveness,
as you have touched on. Global investments in clean energy,
transportation infrastructure technologies, are forecast to
reach into the tens of trillions of dollars over the next three
decades, representing both a powerful opportunity for job
creation and economic growth. It is also a serious risk if
American workers and companies get left behind.
So the bottom line, from our perspective, is, prioritizing
investments in U.S. manufacturing will not only reduce
greenhouse-gas emissions, but it will also create and retain
good jobs, for two primary reasons.
One, a significant proportion of emission reductions can be
realized simply by reducing energy waste, which saves money
that manufacturers can otherwise use for workforce and capital
investments and which also supports jobs through the
installation of energy efficiency technologies.
And, second, the U.S. manufacturers' ability to produce
clean technologies and to use cleaner products and processes
will make them more competitive in a global economy in which
market demand is shifting inexorably in that direction.
And it is our sense that if we manufacture clean products
and manufacture all products cleaner, we position U.S.
manufacturers to be in the pole position for the most important
economic development race globally over the next few decades.
I will make one more point, which is that, when we reduce
the industrial sector greenhouse-gas emissions, we can also
reduce other sources of pollution that disproportionately
impact fenceline communities. So a clean manufacturing agenda
will also directly combat environmental injustice.
Ms. Castor. Thank you, Mr. Walsh.
Next, Ranking Member Graves, you are recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. Graves. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I appreciate all of your testimony and consider it helpful.
Mr. Shellenberger, you, I believe, are in California. The
model that the committee report is based upon largely appears
to be the California model.
I mentioned in my opening statement that the State of
California, I believe, is the 44th greatest emissions-reducing
state, or near the bottom. And yet I know, for example, the gas
prices are 52 percent higher this month in California than they
are in Louisiana. I know that their electricity costs are more
than double the cost that we pay in my home state. And, for the
record, I think I paid $1.52 a gallon when I gassed up a few
weeks ago, and so very, very low gas prices.
If you were in charge, you are a dictator, you are in
charge of putting forth, proffering an energy strategy, an
emissions reduction strategy, what do you think is missing or
how would you do things differently based upon more science and
your experience with different technologies, again, if you were
in charge, with an energy policy that achieved emissions
reductions?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yeah, I live in California, and our
electricity prices rose six times more than in the rest of the
United States since 2011 because of the expansion of renewables
and transmission lines. Between 2011 and 2018, our industrial
electricity prices rose 32 percent.
So I share Mr. Walsh's view that America needs a new
industrial capacity, but we are not going to be able to compete
with China or our rival with expensive energy. And as a
reminder, that is what killed cap and trade in 2010 in the
Senate, was concern from Midwest Democrats that higher
electricity prices would undermine global competitiveness. Of
course it would.
California is not even a leader on climate change. Our
carbon emissions rose 3.5 percent between 2011 and 2016 even as
they declined 5 percent in the rest of the United States. So
the pure reason is because we are doing what Germany has done.
We are shutting down our nuclear plants, scaling up renewables.
If you want just two real world comparisons, Germany spends
almost----
Mr. Graves. I can't see the time.
Mr. Shellenberger [continuing]. As much for electricity as
France, and its electricity is 10 times more carbon-intensive.
So, I mean, this is not that complicated. If you want to
replace fossil fuels, you need to replace them with a reliable
source of electricity. The only scalable form of zero-carbon
electricity is nuclear power, and it is being killed off mostly
in Democratic States. They are just shutting down Indian Point
in New York--a perfectly fine, safe, wonderful nuclear plant in
New York. We are shutting down Diablo Canyon in California.
I appreciate the efforts to do R&D on nuclear, but the
Chinese and Russians are selling nuclear to literally two or
three dozen countries around the world. Every country that
worked with China and Russia will be in China and Russia's
sphere of influence. The United States is hoping to leapfrog to
some radically different nuclear technology, but China and
Russia are helping those countries build the equivalent of
large, light-water reactors that we are building in Georgia.
So what I would do is I would say, look, we need to compete
properly. That means that we need to compete with Chinese and
Russian state-owned nuclear companies. We need a national
champion. We do it differently in the United States; we have
private companies. That would probably be something like
Bechtel, which is involved in building two nuclear reactors in
Georgia. After those workers get done building those two
reactors, they could move up the road to South Carolina,
complete construction of two reactors there in summer.
And then, after that, we have construction crews--I mean,
anybody that is apocalyptic about climate change should view
the construction managers and workers at the Georgian nuclear
plants as a national treasure, as an international treasure.
Because it is these men and women who have the experience
building our most complex form of energy and have the
experience to compete with experienced Russian and Chinese
crews all over the world.
This should be a serious national priority. I think we are
just sleepwalking into a disastrous situation where our
economic rivals, but also our global security rivals, are
pursuing nuclear aggressively while we are withdrawing from it,
not just globally but also domestically.
And then I would just say one final thing, Congressman, is
that, clearly, the winning combination for energy dominance is
to do what the Russians and the United Arab Emirates are
planning on doing, which is to build nuclear plants to replace
natural gas and fossil fuel usage at home, and then you export
your natural gas abroad. That gives additional geopolitical
power and significant revenue for American businesses and
workers.
Mr. Graves. And reduces global emissions.
Mr. Shellenberger. And significantly reduces global
emissions. I mean, the great news is that there is so much
abundant natural gas there is no reason that we are going to
need to see any significant increase in coal burning over the
next century.
Mr. Graves. Thank you.
And a last quick question--thank you very much, Mr.
Shellenberger--for Mr. Walsh. I, too, share a lot of the
objectives that Mr. Walsh communicated. But, in looking at the
strategy--Mr. Walsh, you largely represent labor.
Number one, the Biden climate plan, which largely reflects
the one the committee put forth, it didn't include any labor
representatives, any business representatives in the team that
was devising that plan, putting it together.
Secondly, right now, we are 100--I want to remind folks--if
you can go on mute, that would be great. I want to remind
folks, in China, we are dependent upon China for 17 critical
minerals today. Eighty percent of the rare earths we are
dependent upon China for.
Do you believe that labor should have been represented on
the Biden task force?
And, number two, do you believe that we should increase our
domestic production of these critical and rare earths here in
the United States to ensure that we are creating jobs right
here in America?
Mr. Walsh. Thank you for the two-part question,
Representative Graves. Let me attempt to address the first one,
and hopefully I will have time for the second.
So I believe you are referring to the Biden Unity Task
Force. I am trying to remember now who was on that task force,
but, if I remember correctly, a task force that includes
Representative McEachin, Chair Castor, Representative Lamb of
Pennsylvania, and Representative Ocasio-Cortez represents a
pretty good diversity of viewpoints within the Democratic
Party.
I think that the breadth of perspective is reflected in
their recommendations, which, again, I am trying to remember
off the top of my head, but they include protecting clean air
and clean water in our public lands, strengthening
environmental justice, rebuilding our infrastructure,
dramatically expanding clean-energy deployment, ensuring job
quality in clean energy sectors. These are broadly popular
positions with the American public, and not just----
Mr. Graves. Sure. And just to clarify the record, there
were four environmentalists that were on the task force in
addition to folks you mentioned, yet no labor or business
representatives. But please continue.
Mr. Walsh [continuing]. With----
Ms. Castor. The time has expired. But it gives me an
opportunity to thank Ranking Member Graves for his concern over
the Democratic platform. We usually don't talk politics on
these calls. But don't worry. Yesterday, the platform committee
passed the platform, and it was rife with labor
representatives. I will send you over the list.
And this also gives me an opportunity--I was going to hold
this unanimous consent request until later, but I think it is
important to do now to make sure it is on the record, in
response to claims that renewables increase energy costs.
The International Renewable Energy Agency recently reported
that electricity costs from renewables, such as solar and wind,
have decreased dramatically over the last decade, resulting in
renewable power generation technologies becoming the least cost
new technology, new capacity options in almost every part of
the world.
Moreover, on average, building new solar voltaic and on-
shore wind power costs less than operating many existing coal
plants.
So, without objection, I would like to enter into the
record the IRENA report titled ``Renewable Power Generation
Costs in 2019.''
Mr. Graves. Madam Chair, reserving the right to object, as
I recall, at our last hearing, there was an objection on our
unanimous consent requests in order to review those documents.
And so I would like to allow the minority the same right for
these documents, if you don't mind.
And if those are the most cost-competitive, then perhaps we
could remove the PTC and ITC.
Ms. Castor. I think it would be very helpful if you would
read the report.
So, at this time, I will recognize Mr. Lujan for 5 minutes.
Mr. Lujan. Thank you so much, Madam Chair.
Mr. Walsh, do Americans have to choose between creating
good jobs and protecting the environment?
Mr. Walsh. Thank you for the question, Congressman Lujan.
No, they do not. That is, in fact, a false choice. We can
and we must have both.
There are numerous instances in the committee's report that
I think show this powerfully. I think it is particularly
interesting to look at some of the job creation estimates
associated with reaching a 90-percent or 100-percent carbon-
free grid by 2040, right, where we look at job estimates that
are in the neighborhood of half a million annually. Those are
significant.
We also have to pay attention to job quality. We have to
protect the rights of workers to organize. We need to include
very clear prevailing wage and Buy America standards. We don't
do that well enough to date, and we need to do it better,
particularly in our use of tax credit policy.
But we can most certainly create good jobs, sustain good
jobs, and protect our climate and create a living environment
for everybody.
Mr. Lujan. Mr. Walsh, can you share some examples of good,
union jobs in the clean energy sector?
Mr. Walsh. Well, there are many. One of my favorite
examples is the offshore wind farm, the first grid-connected
offshore wind farm in the country, off of the State of Rhode
Island, at Block Island. That was a very small wind farm; it is
now producing 50 megawatts. But it created jobs for 300
building trade workers across 10 different local unions under a
project labor agreement.
Keep in mind, that is a very small project, whereas we now
have states up and down the mid-Atlantic and northeastern coast
that have teed up commitments for 20 gigawatts of offshore
wind. The job creation estimates of that on an annual basis
range anywhere from 122,000 to a little over 200,000 jobs per
year.
Mr. Lujan. Appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Walsh.
Dr. Baptista, I am one of the co-authors of the Clean
Energy Standard Act. I was proud to partner with my colleagues
in the House and with United States Senator Tina Smith. We know
that a nationwide clean electricity standard also means less
air pollution and healthier communities and longer lives.
Dr. Baptista, what can America do to ensure that
underserved frontline communities, who we know are suffering
from air pollution, benefit from a nationwide clean energy
standard?
Dr. Baptista. Thank you, Representative Lujan.
I believe that when we shift to clean energy sources, like
wind and solar, in our energy production, we also have the very
immediate benefits of reducing co-pollutants, those pollutants
like particulate matter that have health harming impacts in
near-adjacent communities to these energy-producing facilities.
And when we look across the country, we know that much of
the infrastructure, the current infrastructure, fossil fuel
infrastructure in the country resides in communities of color
and low-wealth communities, who are impacted not only by the
global greenhouse gases that come from traditional fossil fuel
energy production but the co-pollutants that have immediate
health impacts on those communities.
And so, when we talk about a national clean energy standard
and the shifting of our energy production to cleaner sources,
like wind and solar, what we see is a concomitant reduction in
air pollutants that harm people today. So this is very, very
important that we insist on the driving down not only of
CO2 but of these co-pollutants that have health
impacts on local communities.
And, furthermore, we know that, as we shift to renewable
energy sources, there are also opportunities created in
communities of color and low-income communities that have
historically not had the same opportunities for employment in
these traditional industries. And new opportunities can open up
for both economic development and an improvement in air quality
and public health for communities that have been hard-hit by
economic and environmental harms in the past.
Mr. Lujan. Thank you, Dr. Baptista.
Madam Chair, as the clock winds down here, it is good to
hear the ranking member's support for union jobs across the
country.
I look forward to partnering with you, Mr. Graves, and
seeing what pro-union legislation we can work on together.
My father, my late father, was a union ironworker. My
brother is IBEW; my grandfather, a union carpenter. So it is
good to see that we can find some bipartisan support there,
Madam Chair, and do look forward to working with all my
colleagues as we move forward.
Thank you to all the panelists.
Mr. Graves. Absolutely.
Ms. Castor. Thank you, Mr. Lujan.
And, Mr. Carter, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Carter. Well, thank you, Madam Chair.
And, Mr. Lujan, thank you very much for that. My father was
a union paper maker. So it is not something that is unique to
just Democrats; it is also something that Republicans enjoy as
well.
Madam Chair and members of the panel, it seems that we have
been focusing a lot on the economics of this and the economics
of the clean energy. And I am a little bit confused here when I
hear the chairlady mention that renewable energy is so much
cheaper than traditional energy and then I hear the ranking
member cite examples of how much more expensive in California
the petroleum is, how much more expensive the energy is, and
the two of them just don't seem to jive. So I am a little bit
confused there.
But I do want to mention that the majority staff's report
that came out, it is obvious it would make it even more
expensive and difficult in the U.S. to be competitive with
energy prices than it would elsewhere. And that means that more
jobs would go to China and that means that more jobs would go
to areas that are not as environmentally conscious as we are
here in the U.S.
In fact, it is estimated that, within the next decade, 90
percent of all the emissions will come from outside the U.S.
And one of the ways that the majority staff's report suggests
that we should counter that is with the carbon tax that
advocates for border adjustment mechanisms, such as the carbon
tax, so that we can level the playing field.
I wanted to ask you, Mr. Shellenberger, do you think that
that is really an effective way to encourage other nations to
reduce their emissions?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yeah, thank you. And I also would like
to address that, because there is--first of all, if solar and
wind are cheaper than existing energy sources, why would they
need subsidies? Why would they need to be mandated? I think
that somebody needs to address that issue. In other words, why
would we spend $2 trillion on solar and wind, and the
transmission lines, if they are already cheaper than existing
energy sources?
The second issue is that they are not. And so what they are
measuring is, if you take a solar panel, buy a solar panel from
China and you measure the cost of that electricity at that
moment, yes, it is cheaper than the existing grid, but that
solar panel doesn't provide reliable electricity.
And so the economic and environmental costs of industrial
solar and wind projects are externalized, first, onto the
natural environment--you are talking 300 to 400 times more
land--second, onto ratepayers, who have to pay to have other
power plants operating or some other kind of way to store that
electricity so you can have reliable electricity.
That is the mechanism that the University of Chicago and
other analysts have all identified as why renewables-heavy
states and countries, like California and Germany, have much
more expensive electricity.
On the issue of the carbon tax, you know, I personally
would have no problem with a very low price on carbon, you
know, somewhere between $1 and $5 per ton, if that money were
used to benefit something positive. Because, you know, it is
not a bad thing to tax bads and invest in goods. But that is
not going to drive energy transitions.
What drives energy transitions, whether from wood to coal
or wood to hydroelectricity or coal to natural gas, is the same
thing that drove the energy transition from coal to natural gas
in the United States, which is that the cost of natural gas
came down because we opened up shales for fracking and so
natural gas became cheaper than coal. That is the mechanism. We
didn't subsidize natural gas into becoming cheaper than coal.
We also didn't tax coal to becoming much more expensive than
natural gas.
So I don't think we need to be super rigid about it. I
mean, if there were some broader compromise where there was
some price on carbon that benefited positive things, great. But
I think it is silly to imagine that making fossil fuels
slightly more expensive is going to somehow make the difference
between it and significantly cleaner sources of energy.
Mr. Carter. Good.
Mr. Shellenberger. If you want a national nuclear program,
we need a national nuclear program, full stop. If we want to
transition from coal to natural gas, we need to make natural
gas cheaper.
Mr. Carter. I want to jump on that. I have just a few
seconds left. But you mentioned the nuclear plants, and you
mentioned in Georgia. It is right above my district in Georgia.
And my question is, what is the biggest hurdle to nuclear
energy in America? Why is it that even environmentalists are
opposed to nuclear energy, when we know that it is green, we
know that it is one of the cleanest forms of energy out there?
Mr. Shellenberger. Well, I think one of the big reasons is
because, if you do a lot of nuclear power, you don't need any
renewables. I mean, France shows that you can do 75 percent
nuclear of your electricity grid. Like I said, France's
electricity is 10 times less carbon intensive than Germany's,
and they spend a little bit more than half as much for their
electricity. These are two real world cases that last over
decades.
So, if you are absolutely in love with renewables and you
think they are a way to harmonize human civilization with the
natural world, which they are not, then nuclear is a threat to
that vision. If you are trying to get control over the energy
economy, nuclear is a threat to that vision.
There are still lingering concerns about nuclear weapons,
but the fact of the matter is, the United States already has
nuclear capability. It is not like it is going to change that.
So there is also--in my book, ``Apocalypse Never,'' I
describe the history of how the Democrats have opposed nuclear
power for a long time for, I think, reasons that don't have
much to do with the environment at all.
Mr. Carter. Okay.
I am out of time. Thank you for your indulgence, Madam
Chair. Thank you, and I yield back.
Ms. Castor. Well, thank you, Mr. Carter.
And two things that the gentleman from Georgia forgot: one,
all the timber in your state and all of the solar energy as
well.
Ms. Bonamici, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you so much, Madam Chair.
And thank you to all of our witnesses today.
We are in an unprecedented moment in our nation's history.
With coronavirus cases surging and unemployment rates climbing,
our communities are having these long overdue conversations
about systemic racism. But even in this moment in history when
our communities are struggling and we have inequities that are
exacerbated and highlighted, the climate crisis is continuing,
and we cannot and must not wait any longer to take action.
And I am proud of this bold, science-based, comprehensive
climate action plan. Building a resilient, clean energy economy
using our climate action framework is going to boost our
economic recovery at a time when we desperately need it but
also allow us to begin to repair the legacy of environmental
racism and pollution that has disproportionately burdened low-
income communities and communities of color for decades.
And I want to start with Mr. Walsh. We really appreciated
the BlueGreen Alliance's engagement in drafting the climate
action plan and your work to highlight the economic
opportunities of addressing the climate crisis.
So, as a leader on the Education and Labor Committee and
the granddaughter of a coal miner, I know that how we
transition to a clean energy economy and support workers is as
important as the transition itself. So I am working on the
recommendation that we have that you mentioned in your
testimony, to create a national economic transition office. I
am working on that as a stand-alone bill.
So I want to ask, what are the most effective strategies to
help workers prepare for those future transformations and avoid
displacement? And how could a centralized office better help
displaced or dislocated workers access the targeted support
services and resources they need?
Mr. Walsh. Thank you for the question, Congresswoman. It
acknowledges that America is already in the middle of an energy
transition, right? And we need to have a conversation and we
need to enact policies that get ahead of this transition, and
we need to do it now.
I mentioned in my testimony the ``National Economic
Transition Platform,'' which outlines a set of policy
recommendations focused on communities and workers hit hard by
the decline of the coal industry, where that transition is most
impactful at this point.
One of the key ideas put forward in that platform, as you
mentioned, is the need for a new Federal office that would
align, scale up, and target Federal resources for affected
workers and communities and coordinate across different
agencies within the Federal Government, particularly agencies
that are focused on economic and workforce development.
We think creating an office of economic transition--call it
what you want--is really key. In addition to synchronizing and
aligning efforts across the Federal Government, it can also
leverage new public- and private-sector investments.
And we also think this is an office that should be guided
by an advisory board that is reflective of affected stakeholder
groups and communities, including labor and local leaders.
The recommendations to create----
Ms. Bonamici. Absolutely.
Mr. Walsh [continuing]. To create that kind of office are--
we also have six other recommendations, and I am happy to share
those with you when we have more time.
Ms. Bonamici. Terrific. Thank you so much.
And, Dr. Baptista, I appreciate in your testimony you
noted, ``Without an intentional focus on equity and justice, we
will replicate the same disparities.''
So, throughout our conversations with the Affiliated Tribes
of Northwest Indians and the National Congress of American
Indians, we identified exclusionary provisions in Federal
funding programs for Tribal nations. So the climate action plan
will remedy those gaps and also better acknowledge traditional
lands and waters that Tribes access under their treaty rights,
and which the Federal Government's historical injustices and
failure to honor those rights--we need to address those as
well.
So how have historical failures to invest in environmental
justice communities and other underserved populations, how have
they exacerbated inequities? And how can Congress better
incorporate the principles of the ``Equitable and Just National
Climate Platform'' in making future funding decisions?
Dr. Baptista. Thank you, Congresswoman, for the question.
I think it is really critical that we center equity and
justice. The ``National Equitable and Just Climate Platform''
tries to really drive home this point, that we can't continue
to reproduce the same status quo policies that often leave out
communities of color and historically disenfranchised
communities that have not have the same access to employment
opportunities and different economic development scenarios.
So we want to ensure that, as we move to a renewable
economy, as we move to greener and healthier forms of
manufacturing and production, that the communities that have
been the sacrifice zones and have had to live with the harms of
environmental pollution start to reap some of those benefits.
And how do we do that? One of the key ways that we do that
is early consultation and input from environmental justice
stakeholders on the ground that know these issues very well.
There are fenceline and frontline communities around the
country who have deep knowledge in these areas. And also by
ensuring that we have explicit targets for employment in low-
and moderate-income communities and people of color
communities.
Ms. Bonamici. Perfect. Thank you so much.
And I yield back. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Castor. Thank you.
Mrs. Miller, good to see you. You are recognized for 5
minutes.
Mrs. Miller. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I don't think that there is any doubt that my State of West
Virginia has taken the brunt of bad policy, unfunded mandates,
and the Democrat regulatory agenda, which is evidenced by the
impact on jobs in our coal communities.
We have been fortunate, as jobs related to natural gas have
increased in my state. Not only has natural gas provided new
and high-paying jobs to Appalachia, it is a vital resource to
our energy security, our national security, and to reducing
global emissions.
Dr. Baptista, Ms. Soholt, and Mr. Walsh, thank you all for
being here today. I am glad that we have experts here before
us.
Do you all know how many cubic meters of natural gas the EU
consumes each year? The answer is 457.2 billion cubic meters.
Of the natural gas that Europe consumes, do you know what
percentage of it comes from Russia? The percentage is 38.8
percent.
Does anyone know what total global carbon emissions were in
2018? Thirty-three-point-three gigatons, or 33 billion metric
tons.
Now, if we can help our EU allies switch from dirty and
dangerous Russian natural gas to cleaner and more secure
American natural gas, global emissions could fall by more than
62 million metric tons a year.
Given the United States emitted 5.28 billion metric tons of
carbon a year, we could effectively offset U.S. carbon
emissions by 1.2 percent. This may not sound like a whole lot,
but it would be like bringing down carbon emissions by almost
50 percent in each and every one of our congressional
districts.
Just last week, I introduced a bill, the ESCAPE Act, or the
Energy Security Cooperation with Allied Partners in Europe Act,
and it is designed to reduce the influence of Vladimir Putin on
our allies by promoting U.S. energy exports to Europe.
Even if you don't care about our national interests, if you
care about climate change, you should join me on this bill, as
Russian natural gas exports to Europe have a lifecycle emission
profile of at least 40-percent higher than U.S. LNG. If my
colleagues believe the climate crisis to be urgent and dire,
then I hope they will support my bill, which will have a
massive and immediate positive impact on global carbon
emissions.
I yield back.
Ms. Castor. Thank you, Mrs. Miller.
Next, Rep. McEachin, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. McEachin. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for
bringing today's hearing together.
And to our distinguished panelists, we thank you for your
time and your expertise.
Dr. Baptista, thank you for your very kind written
testimony where you mentioned the work of Chairman Grijalva and
myself. That was very kind of you. It has been a pleasure
working with him as well as many incredible leaders, including
the members of the ``Equitable and Just National Climate
Platform,'' to advance priorities that reduce emissions,
improve public health, and stimulate economic growth.
Jason Walsh, it is very good to see you. I have had the
privilege of working with you over the past few years on
policies to address our climate crisis in a way that creates
and maintains high-quality jobs and ensures a just and
equitable transition for communities.
As I have said many times before, nothing is more important
than speeding our transition to a cleaner, more sustainable
economy. It is the only way to deliver an equitable, healthy
future. Building a clean economy will enhance economic
opportunity, creating well-paying, family-sustaining jobs for
those who need them most. And by reducing climate change
pollution, it will improve public health. Additionally, it will
give us the opportunity to address longstanding wrongs, to
correct decades old environmental injustices that are still
hurting communities today.
The Federal Government has a critical role to play in this
fight, and it is essential that we advance carefully
constructed policies that address these longstanding injustices
and meet the challenge of our climate crisis.
Dr. Baptista, to that end, as we continue our transition to
a clean energy economy, how can the Federal Government ensure
that environmental justice communities shape investments in
their communities? How can investments be made in partnership
with EJ communities while reducing emissions and stimulating
economic growth?
Dr. Baptista. Thank you, Representative McEachin. And thank
you so much for your leadership on environmental justice
issues.
We know how to do this. We know who the environmental
justice communities are across the country. There are
community-based organizations and nonprofits around the country
who know their communities well and can participate as key
stakeholders as we develop these programs in renewable energy
and energy efficiency.
We know that there are certain investments in energy
efficiency and renewable energy that can create local jobs, but
we need input early and often from those local stakeholders,
local municipalities, and NGOs that can help guide that work
and also direct the investment to ensure that there is greater
access to those who have been disenfranchised and have barriers
to employment.
So we need to follow the model that the ``Equitable and
Just Climate National Platform'' set for us, which is a good
collaboration on the development of those policies and in
setting targets for local hiring and local investments to go to
communities that need it most.
Mr. McEachin. Thank you.
Madam Chair, just so you know--staff can help me out--I
don't see the clock on my screen. I don't know if it is
something I am doing or not, but I don't want to run over my
time accidentally.
Ms. Castor. You have a minute and a half.
Mr. McEachin. Thank you.
Doctor, what lessons have you learned throughout your work
that can and should be applied to climate policy development at
the Federal level?
Dr. Baptista. I mean, I think that I am going to reiterate
what I said in my comments, which is that equity and racial
justice does not happen by coincidence. It has to be an
intentional thing that we build into all of our national
climate and energy policies.
We need to intentionally carve out opportunities for
improving the quality of life and reducing legacy pollution in
communities, but also for ensuring access to the benefits of a
transition to a cleaner economy.
And so, without that intentional and explicit commitment to
racial justice and equity in our national energy policies, they
will not, you know, happen by chance. So I would recommend that
we all focus our energies on equitable and just outcomes in
these policies.
Mr. McEachin. Thank you, ma'am.
And, Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time, if
any.
Ms. Castor. Thank you, Rep. McEachin.
Next, we will go to Rep. Palmer, if he can turn on his
video.
If not, we will go ahead to Mr. Levin.
All right, let's go to Mr. Levin.
And for those of you--to see the clock, I believe you need
to be in grid view. So, if you see that icon and hover over it,
it will give you an option for--I think it is the four dots
grid view. If you click that, you will be able to see the
clock.
So, Mr. Levin, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Levin. Well, thank you very much, Chair Castor, for
your great leadership and for this discussion today.
Before I begin, I would just like to remind my friend Mr.
Graves, who took it upon himself to criticize California, that,
according to the EIA, my home state has the second lowest per
capita carbon dioxide emissions in the nation, only behind New
York.
And I am very proud of that and the leadership that we have
shown, that you can put in place strong policies to protect the
environment and build the clean energy jobs of the future at
the same time.
And I would remind my friend Mr. Graves that his home State
of Louisiana has the fifth highest per capita CO2
emissions in the nation.
Mr. Graves. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. Levin. So I hope we can agree that growing clean-energy
jobs is really more important than ever, since unemployment----
Mr. Graves. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. Levin [continuing]. Has skyrocketed due do COVID.
With that, I will turn to some questions.
Ms. Soholt, I have introduced bipartisan legislation called
PLREDA, the Public Land Renewable Energy Development Act, which
sets up a smart-from-the-start planning framework for renewable
energy generation on our public lands.
This approach is better for developers and better for
consumers, ultimately helps facilitate more renewable energy
projects. And the Natural Resources Committee has unanimously
approved the bill, and I hope will it be considered soon on the
House floor.
Ms. Soholt, do you think this sort of smart-from-the-start
approach is effective for transmission as well? And if so, how
should it be implemented?
Ms. Soholt. Thank you, Representative, for the question.
First, if I may answer just briefly my fellow panelist, Mr.
Shellenberger, and talk about unsubsidized cost of wind and
solar compared to other fields.
Lazard does a report every year. And wind and solar,
unsubsidized, no ITC/PTC, are the cheapest forms of new
generation. That report is available every year. So it does not
comport with what we are hearing from Mr. Shellenberger today.
As far as being unreliable, the Southwest Power Pool has
had over 70 percent of their energy delivered to customers from
wind just this summer. And so the fact that wind and solar are
not reliable is not true.
As far as the land use goes, I think what Mr.
Shellenberger's oversized land estimates account for is that he
is looking at the entire footprint of a wind farm, for example.
A wind turbine takes up very little land, maybe a quarter of an
acre, and you can farm or graze right up to the base of that
turbine. And so the estimates about land use Mr. Shellenberger
is talking about are far exaggerated.
So, Representative Levin, thank you for your question.
We have seen in the Midwest that utilities who are out
talking to communities, Tribal lands representatives--we don't
have a lot of Federal land in the Midwest, I will have to
admit. That is more in other areas of the country. But I think
what we have learned is that fighting large infrastructure, no
matter what, is a complicated and time-consuming process.
Anything that we can do at the beginning of the process to
have a conversation about how to prudently site, whether it is
a transmission line or new power generation, new renewable
generation, is time well spent.
Mr. Levin. Thank you for that.
Mr. Walsh, as I am sure you know, the Trump EPA is rolling
back the light-duty vehicle greenhouse gas emission standard
set by the last administration. This will cost consumers at
least $175 billion more at the pump and result in the emission
of an additional 867 million metric tons of carbon pollution at
least.
Our report recommends we ratchet these standards back up as
well as set standards for clean medium- and heavy-duty trucks.
And, in your testimony, you mentioned that building cleaner
cars and trucks is an important part of the clean energy
economy that creates good jobs.
What are the jobs impacts of rolling back the light-duty
vehicle standards? And can you talk a bit more about the jobs
and environmental potential of clean trucks?
Mr. Walsh. Yes. And I will try to be brief. I know we are
running out of time.
The rollback of the fuel economy and greenhouse gas
emissions standards by the Trump administration was a job
killer. By the Administration's own estimates, we will lose
tens of thousands of jobs that we otherwise would have had in
automotive supply chains, building hybrids, building advanced
fuel economy technologies both across light-duty vehicles and
medium-duty vehicles as well.
So it is a step back, which is why it was opposed by such a
broad cross-section of stakeholders, including labor unions.
Mr. Levin. Thank you.
I am out of time, but I appreciate all your testimony and
your being with us.
Thank you, Chair Castor. I yield back.
Ms. Castor. Thank you, Mr. Levin.
Mr. Casten, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Casten. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I have to tell you, I am a little frustrated here. We have
had 18 months of pretty good, pretty bipartisan hearings, with
a recognition that climate is an emergency and we need to deal
with facts. My colleagues across the aisle are just making
stuff up today. You have a witness who is making stuff up.
I would like to introduce--with unanimous consent, would
ask to introduce into the record an article from
climatefeedback.org entitled ``Article By Michael Shellenberger
Mixes Accurate and Inaccurate Claims in Support of a Misleading
and Overly Simplistic Argumentation About Climate Change.''
Ms. Castor. Without----
Mr. Graves. Madam Chair, I am going to reserve the right to
object.
Ms. Castor [continuing]. All right.
Mr. Casten. Garret, do me a favor----
Ms. Castor. Please have your--Mr. Casten, please have your
staff submit the document to our repository. Thank you.
Mr. Casten [continuing]. We will do.
And, Ranking Member Graves, if you don't like the document,
please read it. Read it, and then come to my office, and let's
talk.
Mr. Graves. Happy to do it. Thank you.
Mr. Casten. These are scientists refuting almost everything
that Mr. Shellenberger has said. It is from an article that he
wrote on June 28 of this year substantially consistent with his
testimony.
We do not have time on this committee to make things up. I
have spent 20 years in the clean energy industry, and Mr.
Shellenberger doesn't understand energy markets either.
Mr. Shellenberger, I am not going to ask you questions,
because it would be a waste of my time.
I am going to ask questions, though, of Ms. Soholt, because
you have a lot of experience in the Midwest System Operator.
I am looking right now at the MISO spot price of power, and
it says that, at the Illinois hub, the price of power is about
$28 a megawatt hour. As I understand it right, and I would ask
you to confirm, that means that any generator who has a
marginal operating cost below that level is going to operate.
Is that about right, Ms. Soholt?
Ms. Soholt. Yes, that is true.
Mr. Casten. Okay. So help me understand, what is the
marginal operating cost of a solar panel that is deciding
whether to dispatch into that market?
Ms. Soholt. I would not know that off the top of my head,
but I would be glad to get you that information.
Mr. Casten. Well, does it take any fuel to burn a solar
panel, to----
Ms. Soholt. It does not.
Mr. Casten [continuing]. Run a solar panel?
Ms. Soholt. It does not.
Mr. Casten. Do you typically hire an operator, if you put a
solar panel on your roof, to run it that you have to pay a
salary to?
Ms. Soholt. No.
Mr. Casten. So it is darn close to zero, sounds like.
How about a wind turbine? Does a wind turbine have a high
margin--I am not talking about the cost of capital. A wind
turbine, does that have a very high marginal operating cost?
Ms. Soholt. No, Representative. Last time I checked, wind
and sun are free.
Mr. Casten. Okay.
How about a nuclear plant? What is the marginal operating
cost of a nuclear plant?
Ms. Soholt. It would have a higher cost than $28.
Mr. Casten. Would it be lower than a coal plant or higher
than a coal plant?
Ms. Soholt. Well, that is a rather complicated answer,
because a nuke in MISO would probably be a must-run facility.
Nuke plants do not ramp well up and down, and so they need to
basically run flat out. And so I don't think they would be on
the margin. Coal and gas are going to be more on the margin.
But they would have substantially higher operating costs than
wind or solar.
Mr. Casten. Fair point.
And does MISO provide any guarantee of capital recovery? If
you build a plant, are you guaranteed to earn your target
return on capital, or do you just make a marginal dollar, not
every hour?
Ms. Soholt. MISO has nothing to do with cost recovery.
Mr. Casten. Okay.
And the reason I ask those questions is because, when we
passed the Energy Policy Act in 1992 and FERC Order 888, we
created MISO, we created PJM, we created all these power
markets, and we started dispatching assets based on the lowest
marginal power supply.
Ms. Soholt. Right.
Mr. Casten. Since that time, the nuclear fleet went from 60
to 90 percent capacity factor. We built 200,000 megawatts of
combined cycle that was almost twice the efficiency of the
existing gas fleet. We built about 50,000 megawatts of
renewables.
Now, for context, there is about 1,000 gigawatts on the
grid. So 5 percent of the grid now is renewables, 20 percent is
combined cycle.
The price of power since that period has fallen by over 6
percent, and the CO2 emissions per megawatt hour
have fallen by over 26 percent.
For people to sit here on this committee and say the
deployment of clean energy is driving up the cost of power are
living in fantasy land. Just imagine what we could do if we
didn't spend our time putting denialists and deniers before us.
We have the opportunity to act. We have the opportunity to
lower power prices. We have the opportunity to make the world
cleaner. We have the opportunity to create good construction
jobs. For goodness sake, let's do it.
Ms. Soholt. And, Representative, if I could just add one
final thought. You know, the wholesale power prices in MISO
have gone down dramatically in the last 10 years, and MISO has
over 20,000 megawatts of wind and solar online currently today.
Utilities are purchasing wind and solar because they are
economic, reliable resources, and they know how to run the grid
with that robust amount of renewables on the grid.
Mr. Casten. Thank you.
Thank you. I yield back.
Ms. Castor. Thank you, Mr. Casten.
Mr. Huffman, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Huffman. Well, thank you, Madam Chair.
And I want to share the frustration that we heard from my
colleague, Sean Casten. I had hoped for a productive
conversation about climate solutions and the great economic
upside of pursuing this clean energy future, and, instead, our
friends across the aisle called someone who is not a scientist,
not an economist. He is a guy with an anthropology degree that
holds himself out as an expert on a whole bunch of subjects,
but he has really not.
And for those of us that know his shtick, as I do, sadly,
from years of experiencing it, you know that he has spent his
career creating, publicizing, and monetizing a totally fake
narrative that he is some sort of a fallen angel from high
levels of the environmental community, but he has seen the
light, and he is now speaking truth to environmental power by
attacking renewables and climate leadership from the
environmental community.
It is complete bunk. And all of us were cheapened a little
bit, a few moments ago, when he actually gave the title of his
book that he is out promoting. And that is really what this is
all about. It is what it is always about. We shouldn't be
talking about pimping one's book under the guise of
congressional testimony.
In any event, I am glad that the article is now going to be
in the record from climatefeedback.org. Anyone that has
questions about this really should read it, because you have
six real scientists that take to task and dismantle all of the
tropes that you heard in Mr. Shellenberger's testimony today,
all of the tropes in the new book that he is hocking around the
country. So have a good look at that.
And the fact that they have dismantled and debunked these
things means that I don't have to. So I can bring my time to
bear on a more productive conversation with the witnesses here
who want to help us solve the climate crisis.
And, Ms. Soholt, I want to ask you about that, because we
continually hear from critics that renewables are unreliable,
that it is not always sunny, not always windy. But we are
making incredible progress at bringing online far more
renewables than just a few years ago people said you could do.
In fact, I just checked my phone, and today, right now, on a
peak summer day, California is running 50-percent renewables
right now. That is way beyond anything that I was told as a
State legislature less than a decade ago that we could achieve.
Talk about the way building out a nationwide and
interconnected transmission system is helping us advance
renewables far beyond all these limitations that we are always
being warned about.
Ms. Soholt. Thank you, Representative Huffman, for the
question.
So, yes, I think that our utilities--I would call them
out--they have done a fantastic job of bringing renewable
energy online and operating the grid reliably. They have seen
that economic benefit to customers over the long term of adding
renewables. And I am speaking from my experience in the
Midwest, where we have an increasing amount of renewables on
the system.
The reason we need to work on the Macro Grid vision is
because we need to be able to move resources from where they
are located to where they can be used. That is not a new
phenomenon for the grid. It is just that we need to move the
location specific resources to where they can be used.
But the grid does many more things than just facilitate
interconnection of renewables. So we are going to get extra
benefits of grid reliability. We are going to get the extra
benefits of reducing prices by lowering congestion costs. We
are going to get the additional benefit of communities getting
taxes paid by the utilities and all the jobs and economic
development that come along with the Macro Grid.
And so, you know, I think what I have endeavored to show in
my testimony is that we have a three-fer here--at least a
twofer, maybe a three-fer. We have, you know, a better
environment through developing and dispatching renewable
resources. We have job creation through both the grid and
renewables. And we will be able to compete with China on that
vision that they are on right now with having a very
competitive U.S. through clean, low-cost, renewable
electricity.
But we need to work on the pieces, not only the
infrastructure but the approval processes, the construction of
lines. We need to tackle all of the pieces in order to have the
benefits that flow from the Macro Grid.
Mr. Huffman. If I could sneak a few more seconds in, Ms.
Soholt, you have talked about the Macro Grid, but we are also
using the built environment to generate a lot of renewables
these days. And so the scare tactics we have heard about the
amount of land you would need hypothetically for wind and
solar, we have an awful lot of built environment that can be
generating clean energy in a way that coexists beautifully with
other uses.
Could you speak to that?
Ms. Soholt. Yes. Thank you, Representative. I will be
brief.
So I think you are talking about building efficiency and
transportation challenges that we can tackle with electric
vehicles to bring down emission rates. There are great promise
in all of those things, so, absolutely, couldn't agree more.
Mr. Huffman. And photovoltaic solar generation on top of
buildings and parking lots, et cetera.
Ms. Soholt. Absolutely.
Mr. Huffman. So thank you very much.
I yield back.
Ms. Castor. Thank you.
Representative Brownley, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Brownley. Thank you, Madam Chair.
And I, too, want to thank the panel for being here and
sharing your expertise and doing the work that you do every
single day to save our planet. So we appreciate it very, very
much.
Ms. Soholt, again, on the grid and expansion of the grid--
and you mentioned that China is going ahead. China gets to do
whatever they want to do because they are a communist country,
and they don't, you know, have environmental impact studies, et
cetera, that they have to really sort of deal with.
And I know one of your recommendations in terms of
expanding the grid is about, you know, removing transmission
barriers. So, you know, we had a whole hearing on this 6, 8
months or so ago. And, you know, just tell me how you remove
transmission barriers in our country.
I just think that, you know, as we have tried to expand the
grid and connect East and West, you know, it is a process that
takes forever, and, in many cases, the end result is that it
doesn't happen. So if you could enlighten me.
Ms. Soholt. Sure. Thank you, Representative Brownley, for
the question. So we need to do a couple things.
We need some additional good direction from the Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission on transmission planning across
the seams. We have a big challenge right now with connecting
the various power pools together to be able to plan and permit
and build transmission across those seams. And the real benefit
of doing that is that we are going to be able to deliver
savings and cost-effective clean energy for customers. So it is
all about the customer savings as well as the environment, and
as well as the other benefits that flow. So we need additional
direction from FERC on planning.
We may need some help from Congress on siting transmission.
I think that utilities and States have done a lot to try to
address siting issues. Utilities are really getting out early
and often to talk to communities about why additional power
lines are needed. We are trying to be very judicious about the
type of lines that are constructed, using our grid the best we
can before we build new, and then using very little new right-
of-way, if possible.
So there are different levels of things, but--so I would
say, in the planning process, there are barriers that we have
to remove. In the permitting process, we have challenges. And,
you know, Congress needs to work with the states to really
understand how we can tackle some of the siting and routing
issues. And then, you know, we are going to have to figure out
cost delegation policy among the beneficiaries of transmission.
So it is a challenging dilemma to solve, but the benefits
are simply so great from building the Macro Grid.
Ms. Brownley. Yeah. Yeah.
So I understand the siting challenges. Give me an example
of what some of the planning barriers are with regards to FERC.
What do you mean by that?
Ms. Soholt. Boy, we are going into the weeds here,
Representative.
So, when we have two regions who are trying to look at what
should be constructed across what we call a seam, they would
each do an individual study. And what we need to be able to
have them do is both use the same inputs----
Ms. Brownley. Yeah.
Ms. Soholt [continuing]. So that they can come up with the
same solutions and work on that together.
That doesn't always happen. And so we need some reform to
allow the two power pools to work together more effectively.
But the proof is really in, are we getting anything built
across those seams? And, so far, we are not seeing very much
progress.
Ms. Brownley. Thank you. Thank you very much.
My time is about to run out, but, Dr. Baptista, I wanted to
ask you, you know, as we attempt to try to turn our report
recommendations into actual legislation, are there policy tools
that are better, I guess, at prioritizing the needs of
environmental justice communities than others?
Dr. Baptista. Well, I think, in terms of tools, much of
what we looked at in the national climate platform looked at,
you know, where are the existing programs that actually have
done this work well in terms of environmental justice?
And, for example, the U.S. EPA's EJ Small Grants Program,
the Weatherization Assistance Program, you know, some of the
job training programs that I mentioned, those are programs that
have effectively reached environmental justice communities and
have been able to collaborate with those stakeholders on the
ground and create jobs and also return benefits to those
communities through collaborative processes, not just
investments.
So I would suggest that we look at some of those existing
policies and programs and look for not only expanding those but
to model and replicate in other energy and climate policies
that the plan puts forward.
Ms. Brownley. Thank you very much.
And I apologize for going over my time, Madam Chairwoman,
but I yield back.
Ms. Castor. Well, thank you, Rep. Brownley.
And I would like to thank all the witnesses for joining us
today.
And now we are going to return to a few housekeeping
matters.
Rep. Graves, you had two--you had reserved the right to
object on two previous UC requests. One is the IRENA report on
the cost of renewables, and the second is on Rep. Casten's
Climate Feedback article. Are you going to maintain your
objections on those?
Mr. Graves. Could you remind me, Madam Chair, on the
objection you had on our documents, were those included in the
record of the hearing, in the last hearing we had?
Ms. Castor. Yes, they were.
Mr. Graves. Okay. In that case, then that is fine. And I
will review the document that Mr. Casten mentioned.
Ms. Castor. Great.
So, without objection, those two previous documents are
admitted under unanimous consent.
[The information follows:]
Submission for the Record
Representative Kathy Castor
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
July 28, 2020
ATT ACHMENT: IRENA (2020), Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2019,
International Renewable Energy Agency, Abu Dhabi.
The report is retained in the committee files and available at:
https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/
2020/Jun/IRENA
_Power_Generation_Costs_2019.pdf
Submission for the Record
Representative Sean Casten
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
July 28, 2020
ATT ACHMENT: Swain, D., Ceballos, G., Francis, J., Emanuel, K., Sriver,
R., Doerr, S., and Hausfather, Z. (N. Forrester, Ed.). ``Article by
Michael Shellenberger mixes accurate and inaccurate claims in support
of a misleading and overly simplistic argumentation about climate
change,'' Climate Feedback, 2020,
July 13.
The article is retained in the committee files and available at:
https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/article-by-michael-
shellenberger-mixes-
accurate-and-inaccurate-claims-in-support-of-a-misleading-and-
overly-simplistic-
argumentation-about-climate-change/
Ms. Castor. I would also like to ask unanimous consent to
include in the hearing record a letter from the National
Audubon Society that clarifies that wind turbines are not the
greatest threat that birds face today. Actually, the letter
says: ``In short, wind turbines are not the greatest threat to
birds today. Climate change is. Audubon's research has shown
that two-thirds of North American bird species are at risk of
extinction from global temperature rise.''
Mr. Graves. Madam Chair, reserving the right to object, is
this the letter that states that there are half a million
eagles and hawks that are killed as a result of wind energy and
that----
Ms. Castor. This is the July 27 letter that is in the
portal.
Mr. Graves [continuing]. Okay. Thank you. I lift my
objection.
Ms. Castor. Thank you.
So, without objection, the Audubon Society letter is
entered into the record.
[The information follows:]
Submission for the Record
Representative Kathy Castor
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
July 28, 2020
The Honorable Kathy Castor
Chair, House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
H2-359 Ford Building
Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable Garret Graves
Ranking Member, House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
H2-359 Ford Building
Washington, DC 20515
July 27, 2020
Re: Setting the Record Straight on Wind Power and Birds
Dear Chair Castor and Ranking Member Graves:
On behalf of the National Audubon Society and its more than 1.7
million members, I would like to address some of the
mischaracterizations around wind power that one of your witnesses has
previously raised, and is likely to raise again in today's hearing on
``Solving the Climate Crisis: Building a Vibrant and Just Clean Energy
Economy.'' In short, wind turbines are not the greatest threat birds
face today; climate change is. Audubon's research\1\ has shown that
two-thirds of North American bird species are at risk of extinction
from global temperature rise. To stave off the worst impacts of climate
change, and to protect the ecosystems birds depend on, we need to take
advantage of all forms of clean, cost-effective, renewable energy,
including onshore and offshore wind power. Transforming the energy
sector to 100 percent clean energy--part of our goal to reach net-zero
emissions economy-wide by 2050--necessitates widespread deployment of
industrial scale wind, solar, geothermal, storage, and the transmission
needed to bring that energy to market. Audubon's policy is to work with
the industry, agencies, our partners, and our chapter network to
achieve that goal.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ https://www.audubon.org/climate/survivalbydegrees
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
All forms of energy--including wind power--have direct and indirect
impacts on birds. While wind energy helps birds on a global scale by
curbing climate change, wind power facilities can harm birds through
direct collisions with turbines and other associated structures,
including power lines. But it's important to put the risks posed by
wind turbines in perspective. An estimated 140,000 to 500,000 bird
deaths occur per year due to turbine collisions, which is substantial,
but significantly less than deaths caused by oil pits and
communications towers.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ https://www.fws.gov/birds/bird-enthusiasts/threats-to-birds.php
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beyond direct collisions, wind power facilities can also affect
birds by degrading or destroying habitat, causing disturbance and
displacement, and disrupting important ecological links. Placing wind
projects in the path of migratory routes makes this problem worse. It
is possible to mitigate this problem, however, by consulting with
wildlife experts and ecological data to design projects that minimize
these impacts. Wind power is critical to reducing greenhouse gas
emissions and other forms of air pollution from fossil fuels--pollution
that disproportionately affects low-income communities and communities
of color.\3\ Any level-headed analysis of wind power must look at the
whole picture, which is why Audubon strongly supports wind energy that
is sited and operated properly to avoid, minimize, and mitigate
effectively for the impacts on birds, other wildlife, and the places
they need now and in the future.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ https://www.naacp.org/climate-justice-resources/fumes-across-
fence-line/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Audubon's role is to make sure that key species and high
conservation areas for birds are protected as much as possible and in
accordance with federal law. To that end, rather than knee-jerk
opposition to building new wind farms, we encourage and support the
deployment of additional wind energy that takes the following common-
sense and statutorily required precautions to minimize or avoid harm to
birds and other wildlife:
Proper siting and operation of wind farms and equipment,
including transmission lines,\4\ that follow federal\5\ and state
guidelines
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ https://www.audubon.org/news/transmission-lines-and-birds
\5\ https://www.fws.gov/ecological-services/es-library/pdfs/
WEG_final.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Development of new technologies\6\ that help minimize
harm to birds and other wildlife
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ https://www.audubon.org/magazine/spring-2018/how-new-
technology-making-wind-farms-safer-birds
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Consultation with wildlife experts, including Audubon
staff and chapters, to help inform ecological studies and siting
decisions,\7\ and to support efforts to improve wind siting and
technological solutions to reduce harm to birds
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ https://www.nwf.org/-/media/Documents/PDFs/NWF-Reports/2019/
Responsible-Wind-Power-Wildlife.ashx
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Strong enforcement of existing laws that protect
wildlife, including the Endangered Species Act, the Bald and Golden
Eagle Protection Act, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ https://www.audubon.org/news/more-500-organizations-all-50-
states-urge-congress-defend-bird-protection-law
This last point is critical, as we cannot protect birds and their
habitats if we don't enforce the laws we have put in place to do just
that. The MBTA is credited with saving many iconic species from
extinction, and today, the MBTA protects most of the country's native
bird species--including songbirds, shorebirds, raptors, wading birds,
and more--from unauthorized taking or killing. Unfortunately, the
Administration's legal opinion and proposed rule that interprets the
MBTA to only apply to purposeful take has put at risk the significant
progress that stakeholders have made in advancing bird conservation
related to incidental taking.
Under the Act's authority, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and
many industries have come to agreement on simple measures that protect
birds, including the Land-Based Wind Energy Guidelines. We appreciate
that the recent report from members of this Committee has recommended
the passage of the Migratory Bird Protection Act to help ensure that
there continues to be incentives to develop and implement these best
practices, and at the same time, create additional legal certainty.
To ensure we continue to make every effort to mitigate the impact
to birds of wind turbines--indeed, the impacts from all forms of
infrastructure--we must follow the letter and the spirit of laws like
the MBTA, along with other bedrock environmental laws such as the
Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Protection Act.
Weakening safeguards and limiting opportunity for public comment on
major infrastructure projects will ultimately lead to worse outcomes
not just for birds, but for the wind energy industry as well.
On behalf of the National Audubon Society, I want to thank you and
your staff for holding this hearing, and for all the important work
that the Select Committee has done to date. Audubon is ready to work
with this Committee and others to find common ground on clean energy
and environmental protection, to help protect birds and the places they
need, today and tomorrow.
Sincerely,
Sarah Greenberger
Senior Vice President, Conservation Policy
National Audubon Society
Ms. Castor. And, finally, we have heard a great deal about
the recommendations in the ``Solving the Climate Crisis''
majority staff report today. I have submitted the link to the
report to our repository, and I ask unanimous consent to
include it in today's hearing record.
Without objection, it will be inserted.
[The information follows:]
Submission for the Record
Representative Kathy Castor
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
July 28, 2020
ATT ACHMENT: (June 2020), Solving the Climate Crisis: The Congressional
Action Plan for a Clean Energy Economy and a Healthy, Resilient, and
Just America, House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis Majority
Staff, Washington, DC.
The report is retained in the committee files and available at:
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/CN/CN00/CPRT-116-CN00-D001.pdf
Ms. Castor. So thank you all very much. It is good to see
everybody. I wish we could do this in person. I look forward to
our next hearing. Thank you so much.
We are adjourned.
Mr. Graves. Madam Chair.
Ms. Castor. Mr. Graves.
Mr. Graves. Parliamentary inquiry. I believe that Mr.
Huffman, Mr. Casten, and Mr. Levin all effectively accused us
of not telling the truth. Further, he dragged one of the
witnesses through the mud.
Ms. Castor. And what is----
Mr. Graves. I would just like to ask----
Ms. Castor [continuing]. Your parliamentary inquiry?
Mr. Graves [continuing]. Would it be appropriate to ask
unanimous consent for the witness who got dragged through the
mud to be able to respond to the allegations that were made
against him?
Mr. Huffman. He can do that on his book tour.
Ms. Castor. He is free to do that in the public square of
ideas.
So thank you all very much. We are adjourned.
Mr. Graves. That is entirely inappropriate.
[Whereupon, at 3:49 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
United States House of Representatives
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
Hearing on July 28, 2020
``Solving the Climate Crisis:
Building a Vibrant and Just Clean Energy Economy''
Questions for the Record
Dr. Ana Baptista
Assistant Professor of Professional Practice and
Associate Director of the Tishman Environment and Design Center
The New School
On Behalf of New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance
and the Equitable and Just Climate Forum
the honorable kathy castor
1. Communities across the nation face the compound crises of
reduced revenues, increased costs, and aging infrastructure that can
exacerbate public health threats. In your testimony, you call for
increased investment in climate resilient water infrastructure to
address unsafe drinking water and climate-related flooding, sea level
rise, and drought. What steps should the federal government take to
ensure that federal infrastructure programs identify the needs of
vulnerable communities and engage workers, firms, and community
organizations in infrastructure planning, siting and design? How can
Congress ensure that federal disaster recovery projects in vulnerable
communities engage local workers and firms to build back better?
In order to ensure that federal government actions are responsive
to community needs, robust stakeholder engagement processes are
essential. Processes to gather input on needs of vulnerable communities
should include multiple opportunities and methods through which to
gather critical information. Local knowledge should be incorporated
into planning, siting and design of federal infrastructure programs and
disaster recovery projects.
The unequal impacts of climate change have been long understudied
and it is imperative that this is remedied. As the federal government
designs research projects related to disaster recovery and
infrastructure programs, these projects must also collect equity data
and incorporate this analysis into planning, siting and design.
One way that the unequal impacts of climate change can be addressed
is to ensure that workers from the most impacted communities have
access to the employment opportunities from disaster recovery and
infrastructure programs. We also know that in a transition to a cleaner
economy more jobs can be generated that provide opportunities for
communities. The Clean Energy Future report found that ``clean energy''
jobs require more workers in sectors such as energy efficiency
programs, renewable energy production, and auto manufacturing (making
electric cars). Net job gains increase over time, starting at a little
under 200,000 per year in 2016-2020, and rising to 800,000 per year in
2046-2050. The report can be found on the Reference Page of the Clean
Energy Future report. These projected renewable energy and energy
efficiency jobs' increases do not ensure that the economic benefits
will go to vulnerable communities. Therefore, it is important for
Congress to include policies that directly target benefits for these
impacted communities.
In order to engage local workers and build back better in
vulnerable communities, Congress can include provisions to employ local
workers using guidelines that can be embedded or given preference in
programs which receive federal funding such as: community benefits
agreements, first source hiring guidelines living wage, paid sick days,
preferences for Minority-Owned Business Enterprises and Women-Owned
Business Enterprises (MBE/WBE) and Ban the Box.
The federal government should also ensure that local community-
based organizations, faith based and civic groups are able to access
disaster relief funds, job training and placement opportunities that
can best connect residents in underserved communities with jobs in
rebuilding infrastructure and much needed disaster recovery services.
The Illinois Future Energy Jobs Act\1\ (FEJA) is a good model for ways
to ensure that the local community is integrated throughout the
development of the policy, from drafting to implementation.
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\1\ https://ilcleanjobs.org/who-we-are/energy-jobs-act/
2. In your testimony, you call for mobilization of new investment
in safe and healthy communities through the creation of a National
Climate Bank, with at least 60 percent of the Bank capital to be
invested in tribal communities, low-income communities, and communities
of color. What additional metrics and criteria should Congress consider
as conditions for eligibility or prioritization of investments to
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ensure just, sustainable, and resilient infrastructure investments?
To design a National Climate Bank that will deliver real benefits
to low income communities, tribal communities and communities of color,
the Bank must have criteria to support projects that are community-
driven and reflect the needs of the community. In addition, the Bank
must have criteria to ensure that project developers work with local
officials and community leaders to design and implement strategies to
reduce the risk of long-time residents being displaced from their
communities as neighborhood improvements drive up rents. These
strategies could include an expansion of affordable housing; more
inclusionary zoning that breaks down long-standing structural barriers
and allows for greater housing density; community land trusts to
support locally owned housing and business assets; and job training
programs to support access to good careers and jobs.
Specifically, the Bank should include the following project
criteria to meet social, environmental, and economic measures:
Lower energy use and costs for residents
Reduce local air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions
Reduce public health risks or damages from more intense
heat waves, hurricanes, flooding, other extreme weather events, and sea
level rise for residents and businesses
Address the needs of the community
Support socio-economic mobility, equitable economic
opportunities and affordable access to good jobs, schools, child care,
and community services for low-income households, communities of color,
tribal communities, women, and/or the disabled
Create good jobs with fair wages and support the local
economy
Reduce the risks that low-income residents are displaced
from their communities by climate change threats and neighborhood
improvements that drive up rents
For more information on suggested project criteria and other design
recommendations for the National Climate Bank, please see the following
reports on the reference page; Florida Future Fund, Building Resilient
Infrastructure and Communities Across Florida, tate Future Funds:
Jumpstarting Investments in Low-Carbon And Resilient Energy and
Transportation Infrastructure, Three Bold Actions Congress Should Take
to Equitably Address Weather and Climate Disasters.
3. One of the hearing witnesses, Michael Shellenberger, testified
that nuclear power is ``the safest way to make electricity.'' Can you
comment on some of the environmental justice concerns around nuclear
power in the United States, including the history of uranium mining?
Nuclear energy is fading in importance globally. The peak in
nuclear power's share of global electricity generation was 17.5 percent
in 1996. Since then, this fraction has steadily declined reaching 10.1
percent in 2018 and the downward trend is expected to continue. The
most important reason for the decline is that nuclear plants are no
longer financially viable. In the last decade, it has become clear that
not just constructing new reactors, but just operating one has ceased
to make economic sense. This is because alternatives to nuclear energy,
in particular renewable sources of electricity like wind and solar
energy, have become drastically cheaper. It is for this reason that
many utilities in the United States have required government subsidies
to keep operating. Nuclear plants have a long track record of proving
more expensive than initially projected. New nuclear reactor designs
too are likely to be much more expensive in reality than what studies
project. What are called Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) start off with
an economic disadvantage because they lose out on economies of scale.
SMR proponents hope that this can be compensated through mass
manufacture and learning, but even under optimistic assumptions about
the rates of learning, hundreds if not thousands of SMRs would have to
be constructed before they break even in costs with large reactors,
which are themselves not economical.
These economic challenges add to other well-known problems
associated with nuclear energy, in particular, the absence of any
demonstrated solutions to managing radioactive waste in the long run
and the potential for catastrophic accidents. No reactor design is
immune to these problems. Efforts to ameliorate one of these problems
typically makes other problems worse. Finally, inasmuch as intermittent
renewables such as solar photovoltaics and wind turbines are becoming a
more important part of the electricity supply, technologies like
nuclear power that are best suited for baseload power are going to
become more redundant. Instead, the need is for flexible sources of
power and storage capacity. For all these reasons, and more, it does
not make sense to embark on nuclear energy.
The legacy of nuclear power plants in the United States also speaks
to environmental injustice; from sourcing of the uranium, to siting of
the plant, to disposal of the waste. Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) and the
subsequent toxic nuclear waste cause ``transgenerational justice issues
of unprecedented duration in comparison to any other industry'' (Dean
Kyne and Bob Bolin 2016 p.1). Indigenous communities have borne the
brunt of nuclear power's infrastructure in the form of the uranium
mining, nuclear test sites and the disposal of nuclear waste which have
left a legacy of pollution and public health harm in these
environmental justice communities.
Please see the Reference Page for additional information.
4. How can Congress best solicit the input and feedback from
environmental justice communities on climate and clean energy policy?
What would the ideal stakeholder engagement process look like during
the development of legislation?
Having a variety of opportunities for stakeholder engagement is
important to solicit input and feedback from environmental justice
communities. These opportunities should include systems to support
stakeholder engagement in places where there is little to no
technology. Opportunities for verbal and written feedback, as well as a
variety of public meeting times during and outside of business hours
are helpful. Information should also be provided in language accessible
to the communities of interest and sufficient time should be allocated
for public comments and feedback. Processes like those used to elicit
input for the House Select Committee's majority staff report and
Congressman McEachin and Chairman Grijalva's EJ For All Act are both
great examples of how to engage stakeholders in legislative processes.
These processes were interactive, took on multiple forms, were
conducted with enough early consultation to allow for productive and
meaningful discussions and included the feedback given from
stakeholders into the policy design. Often stakeholders are only given
an opportunity for feedback when a draft is completed, but having a
more interactive process, with early consultation and a wide breadth of
input supports a wider stakeholder engagement and ultimately a stronger
policy.
Please see the Reference Page for additional information for the
benefits of participatory policy making.
references
1. Engage Workers, and Ensure that Vulnerable Communities Benefit
CBAs: Definitions, Values, and Legal Enforceability, by Julian
Gross, The Partnership for Working Families, January 2008, available
at: https://www.forworkingfamilies.org/resources/publications/cbas-
definitions-values-and-legal-enforceability
Clean Energy Future, Introduction and conclusion are by Labor
Network for Sustainabil-
ity; the body of the report is by Synapse Energy Economics, 2015,
available at: https://www.labor4sustainability.org/wp-content/uploads/
2015/10/cleanenergy_10212015_main.pdf
Delivering Community Benefits Through Economic Development: A Guide
for Elected and Appointed Officials, by Benjamin S. Beach, The
Partnership for Working Families, December 2014, available at: https://
www.forworkingfamilies.org/resources/publications/cba-elected-officials
Future Energy Jobs Act, available at https://
www.futureenergyjobsact.com/about
Illinois energy bill: After race to the finish, what does it all
mean?, by Kari Lydersen, Energy News Network, December 2016, available
at: https://energynews.us/2016/12/08/midwest/illinois-energy-bill-
after-race-to-the-finish-what-does-it-all-mean/
2. National Climate Bank
Florida Future Fund, Building Resilient Infrastructure and
Communities Across Florida, by Cathleen Kelly, Miranda Peterson,
Guillermo Ortiz, and Yoca Arditi-Rocha, the Center for American
Progress and the CLEO Institute, September 8, 2018, available at:
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/reports/2018/09/05/
457440/florida-future-fund/
State Future Funds: Jumpstarting Investments in Low-Carbon And
Resilient Energy and Transportation Infrastructure, by Cathleen Kelly,
the Center for American Progress, June 2015, available at:
https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/
StateFutureFunds-report6.22.pdf
Three Bold Actions Congress Should Take to Equitably Address
Weather and Climate Disasters, by Guillermo Ortiz and Cathleen Kelly,
the Center for American Progress, January 30, 2020, available at:
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2020/01/30/479843/3-
bold-actions-congress-take-equitably-address-weather-climate-disasters
3. Risks from Nuclear Energy
Eyes Wide Shut: Problems with the Utah Associated Municipal Power
Systems Proposal to Construct NuScale Small Modular Nuclear Reactors,
by M. V. Ramana, Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, September
2020, available at https://
d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/oregonpsrorg/pages/1625/attachments/
original/1598897964/Eyes
WideShutReport_Final-30August2020.pdf?1598897964
Emerging Environmental Justice Issues in Nuclear Power and
Radioactive Contamination, by Dean Kyne and Bob Bolin, 2016, Int. J.
Environ. Res. Public Health, 13(7), available at: https://www.mdpi.com/
1660-4601/13/7/700/htm
Environmental Justice and American Indian Tribal Sovereignty: Case
Study of a Land-Use Conflict in Skull Valley, Utah, by Noriko Ishiyama,
February 2003, available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/
10.1111/1467-8330.00305
For The Navajo Nation, Uranium Mining's Deadly Legacy Lingers, by
Laurel Morales, April 2016, National Public Radio, available at:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/04/10/473547227/for-the-
navajo-nation-uranium-minings-deadly-legacy-lingers
From wasteland to waste site: the role of discourse in nuclear
power's environmental injustices, by Danielle Endres, 2009, Vol. 14
Issue 10, p917-937, available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/
10.1080/13549830903244409
The Courage to Challenge the Nuclear World Order, by M. V. Ramana
and Zia Mian, Economic and Political Weekly, December 2017, available
at https://www.epw.in/journal/2017/48/commentary/courage-challenge-
nuclear-world-order.html
Technical and social problems of nuclear waste, by M. V.
RamanaWIREs Energy and Environment, 2018, available at https://
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/wene.289
Yellow Dirt: A Poisoned Land and the Betrayal of the Navajos Judy
Pasternak, 2011 by Free Press, Simon & Schuster, Inc; Reviewed by Kelly
Ann Nestor, Villanova University, Book Review is available at: https://
www.igi-global.com/
pdf.aspx?tid%3D179906%26ptid%3D132248%26ctid%3D17%26t%3Dyellow+
dirt%3A+a+poisoned+land+and+the+betrayal+of+the+navajos%26isxn%3D9781466
694071
4. Community Engagement and Participatory Policy
Citizens, Experts, and the Environment: The Politics of Local
Knowledge, Frank Fischer, 2000,Durham, North Carolina: Duke University
Press.
Defining Environmental Justice: Theories, Movements, and Nature,
David, Schlosberg, 2007, New York: Oxford University Press. p.69
Achieving Justice Through Public Participation: Measuring the
Effectiveness of New York's Enhanced Public Participation Plan for
Environmental Justice Communities, by Alma Lowry, 2013, available at:
https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/
viewcontent.cgi?article=1181&context=socsci_etd
Questions for the Record
Mr. Jason Walsh
Executive Director
BlueGreen Alliance
the honorable kathy castor
1. Building thriving communities and a just, clean energy economy
will be accelerated through leadership at the state, regional, and
federal levels. In your testimony, you highlighted the potential for
progress in the State of Colorado through passage of H.B. 1314 and
implementation of the Colorado Just Transition plan. How can Congress
incentivize other states to show similar leadership and ensure that
states and communities have a strong federal partner in their planning
and investments to diversify their economies, advance community
resilience, and support workers through transition?
The state of Colorado has advanced legislation that provides a
model for achieving these goals. It passed landmark legislation, House
Bill 1314, during the 2019 legislative session. The legislation, which
was envisioned and championed by the BlueGreen Alliance and our
partners, created the first State Office of Just Transition, and
mandated creation of a statewide Just Transition plan for coal workers
and communities.
The Colorado Just Transition plan recommends structural
improvements to how the state supports rural communities where coal
mining or power plants are likely to close. Key to Colorado's plan will
be developing worker support programs that assist impacted workers in
transition to new work. Several states are watching Colorado's
implementation of HB 1314, and considering similar initiatives, but any
plan advanced by forward-looking states will have to be supported and
supplemented by additional Federal resources. Federal funding,
especially as the COVID-19 pandemic stretches already thin state and
local budgets, will be vital to giving coal communities the resources
and tools they need to diversify their economies and support their
workers through transition.
America is in the middle of an energy transition. We need to have a
conversation about getting ahead of this transition, and we need to do
this now. That's why--alongside partners and allies from coal
communities across the country--the BlueGreen Alliance participated in
the development of the National Economic Transition platform, which
outlines a policy framework and priorities to invest in communities and
workers hit hard by the decline of the coal industry.
One of the key ideas put forward in this platform is the need for a
new federal transition program that would target and expand resources
for affected communities and workers and coordinate across sectors and
agencies. We think creating an Office of Economic Transition is key
here--to help synchronize ongoing efforts across the federal government
and leverage new public and private sector investments. We think this
office should be guided by an advisory board reflective of affected
stakeholder groups and communities, including labor and local leaders.
The platform puts forward seven pillars that are critical to this
effort:
1. Investing in local leaders and long-term economic development
planning.
2. Expand investments in entrepreneurship and small-businesses
in new sectors to help communities diversify and strengthen their
economies.
3. Providing a bridge of support and pathways to quality in-
demand, family-sustaining jobs for workers, including paid training,
guaranteed pensions, relocation assistance, healthcare support, a
bridge of wage differential and replacement, and ensuring miners
suffering from black lung disease receive the benefits to which they
are entitled.
4. Reclaiming and remediating coal sites to create jobs while
cleaning up the environment.
5. Improving inadequate physical and social infrastructure.
6. Addressing the impact of coal company bankruptcies on
workers, communities, and the environment. And
7. Coordinating across programs to ensure communities have
access to the resources they need. Launching an interagency grants
program helps ensure affected stakeholders have a voice and empowers
local communities with federal resources.
More detailed information about how to ensure a just transition for
communities can be found in the National Economic Transition Platform.
2. The Select Committee Democrats' majority report calls for
developing a national strategy for securing critical minerals in the
clean energy and electric vehicle supply chain in an environmentally
and socially responsible way. Your coalition of environmental and labor
groups has been grappling with this question. What does the BlueGreen
Alliance propose to secure the critical materials necessary for a clean
economy?
Numerous metals and minerals are essential components in the
transition to a low-carbon and clean energy future. A May 2020 World
Bank report found that production of minerals such as lithium and
cobalt may need to increase by nearly 500% by 2050 to meet the growing
demand for clean energy technologies. The same report estimates that
over 3 billion tons of minerals and metals will be needed for energy
storage and solar/wind power generation.\1\ The U.S. currently lacks a
secure domestic supply of many of these critical materials, as well as
a strategy to responsibly mine these materials domestically. To secure
critical materials necessary for a clean economy, and to do so in a way
that is environmentally, economically, and socially responsible, the
BlueGreen Alliance has proposed the following necessary steps:
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\1\ http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/961711588875536384/Minerals-
for-Climate-Action-The- Mineral-Intensity-of-the-Clean-Energy-
Transition.pdf
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Develop a comprehensive national critical minerals
strategy guided by a commitment to environmentally, economically, and
socially responsible production, reclamation and recycling domestically
and worldwide by:
Identifying R&D for recycling and replacements of
critical minerals, as well as chemistry, fundamental material science,
and applied R&D for processing and manufacturing of critical minerals.
Design this R&D strategy in coordination with
existing efforts by the Critical Materials Institute (CMI), DOE Office
of Science, NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, NIST, DoD,
EPA, and National Laboratories.
Develop a federal program within CMI that supports
the private sector in demonstration, evaluation, testing, and
certification of substitution or alternative materials.
Develop a roadmap that identifies key R&D needs and
coordinates on-going activities for source diversification, and more
efficient use and recycling.
Complete technical and economic feasibility studies
of the production of critical minerals and related materials from
secondary/unconventional sources.
Establish new public-private partnerships and
leverage existing partnerships to address underlying scientific and
early-stage applied research.
Ensure funding for hard rock mining reclamation.
Incentivize and enhance use of responsibly produced
critical minerals and metals by
Utilizing trade, procurement and other measures to
enhance domestic and international supply chain accountability.
Set and raise minimum environmental and labor
standards for critical minerals mining.
Develop and adopt a certification process that
address supply chain accountability and corporate, environmental and
social responsibility.
Ensure U.S. strategic energy, materials and
technology stockpiles are domestically or responsibly sourced.
Jump-start domestic projects to recycle key strategic
materials and reduce reliance on these materials in clean technology
production in conjunction with deployment of innovative circular
economy processes and products.
Investment to spur full-scale domestic projects to
responsibly reuse and recycle strategic minerals and materials as one
of several priorities for an industrial bank or revolving loan fund.
Provide and enhance funding through existing loan,
grant, tax, and other clean energy investment incentives for deployment
of responsible recycling, and expand or create a new clean technology
tax credit for responsible critical materials recycling and
reclamation.
Create a critical materials recycling insurance or
investment guarantee program.
More detailed information on the BlueGreen Alliance's
recommendations to responsibly mine, reclaim, and recycle critical
materials can be found in our Manufacturing Agenda.
3. The BlueGreen Alliance's Manufacturing Agenda calls for
investing ``at scale'' in a new generation of American manufacturing.
What are the key components of that investment?
Worldwide, nations and regions are rushing to capture the economic
gains from rapidly growing demand for clean technology. Even as the
U.S. joins other nations in deploying clean technology, our ability to
manufacture these technologies is not keeping pace, as we are dependent
on other nations for critical subcomponents or technology. Failure to
build the next generation of clean technology here in the U.S.
threatens future jobs and the economy.
We must make a significant national investment now to jumpstart
domestic clean technology manufacturing, secure critical supply chains
in the U.S., transform energy--intensive manufacturing in line with
achieving net-zero emissions economy-wide by mid-century, and ensure a
new generation of clean and safe industrial development in America. We
propose the following steps necessary to invest at scale in American
manufacturing:
Establish and capitalize a major new industrial
transformation bank and/or revolving loan fund to support key domestic
clean technology manufacturing priorities and large-scale industrial
transformation and emissions reduction.
Make an increased, sustained, and coordinated
investment in three critical areas:
Domestic clean technology supply chains. Convert,
retool, or establish clean technology manufacturing facilities in the
United States, sufficient to recapture leadership in critical clean
energy, transportation, infrastructure, efficiency, and climate
resilience technology and advanced materials production.
Industrial transformation. Modernize and cut
emissions from domestic energy-intensive manufacturing, including
implementing innovative and efficient processes across heavy industry
and materials production.
Responsible mining. Establish environmentally,
economically and socially responsible production, recycling, and
reclamation of minerals and materials critical to the clean economy.
Invest in, expand, and refocus existing DOE energy
and manufacturing loan programs to establish and strengthen domestic
clean technology manufacturing and supply chains, and to deploy first-
in-class, innovative, and large-scale industrial efficiency and
emissions reduction projects.
Fund and prioritize manufacturing conversion grants
to secure and transition existing facilities to manufacture emerging
clean technology, and to establish and grow domestic clean technology
supply chains.
Enhance tax credits/grants in lieu of credits
available to promote domestic clean technology manufacturing and supply
chains.
Enhance tax credits available to spur industrial
emissions reductions.
Spur far broader adoption of established efficiency
technologies, CHP and WHP systems through tax incentives and grants in
conjunction with enhanced technical and deployment assistance.
In addition, we need to:
Greatly increase U.S. funding for research,
development, and demonstration (RD&D)--as well as for deployment, as
discussed in Pillar 1--to levels commensurate with competitor nations
and to meet ambitious clean technology leadership and industrial
transformation objectives.
Establish a new DOE Office of Industrial
Transformation charged with leading and coordinating DOE's efforts on
industrial innovation and competitiveness consistent with the goal of
achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions economy-wide by 2050.
Execute a robust industrial transformation program,
including technology development, demonstration, and deployment.
Coordinate, fund, and execute a program to develop
robust and comprehensive supply chains for critical clean technologies
in the United States within ten years.
Establish a permanent jobs, labor, and energy
workforce program modeled on the Energy Jobs Strategy Council in the
office of the Secretary of Energy, working in collaboration with DOL
and DOT, and with the Office of Economic Impact, Diversity, and
Employment, that specifically targets the labor and workforce needs in
a transition to a clean energy, technology, and net-zero GHG economy.
Enhance public benefit from publicly funded research
and innovation, and
Ensure domestic clean economy manufacturing
objectives are elevated as a primary focus of a proposed National
Institute of Manufacturing. In the event that all U.S. efforts related
to manufacturing across government agencies are coordinated through a
new National Institute of Manufacturing, a primary objective of the
Institute should be positioning U.S. manufacturing and workers to lead
in the global transition to a clean and net-zero carbon economy.
More detailed information on the BlueGreen Alliance's
recommendations to invest at scale to transform American manufacturing
can be found in our Manufacturing Agenda.
4. How can Congress ensure that taxpayer-funded R&D leads to a more
robust manufacturing sector and clean energy supply chain in the United
States?
In the global race to lead in the next generation of clean
technology, the U.S. is under-investing in innovation--from basic
research through translation of innovation into domestic production of
innovative technology. We know that investing in R&D works--U.S.
government investments in innovation have launched technological
transformations that led the world and underpinned prosperity and
growth.
In order to ensure that taxpayer-funded R&D leads to a more robust
manufacturing sector and clean energy supply chain, the BlueGreen
Alliance recommends:
Funding and focusing R&D to ensure U.S. innovation is
translated into domestic manufacturing and supply chains; Enhance
demonstration and technical assistance; sustain successful clean energy
and technology programs--from basic research, to commercialization
partnerships, to manufacturing and deployment support--and put an
enhanced focus on emerging low-and zero-carbon technologies and
processes, and on labor and community-friendly innovation
Enhance demonstration and technical assistance.
Sustain successful clean energy and technology
programs, from basic research, to commercialization partnerships, to
manufacturing and deployment support, and
Putting an enhanced focus on emerging low-and zero-
carbon technologies and processes, and on labor and community-friendly
innovation.
In addition, innovating to transform U.S. industry should include:
Establishing a new Office of Industrial
Transformation at DOE to lead and coordinate DOE's efforts on
industrial innovation and competitiveness consistent with the goal of
achieving net-zero ghg emissions economy-wide by 2050.
Executing a robust industrial transformation program,
including technology development, demonstration, and deployment in
fuel, feedstock and infrastructure innovation, and circular economy
processes and materials redesign.
Coordinating, funding, and executing a program to
develop robust and comprehensive supply chains for critical clean
technologies in the U.S. within 10 years.
Establishing a permanent jobs, labor, and energy
workforce program modeled on the Energy Jobs Strategy Council in office
of the Secretary of Energy to target the labor and workforce needs in a
transition to a clean energy economy.
Enhancing public benefit from publicly funded
research and innovation, and
Ensuring domestic clean economy manufacturing
objectives are elevated as a primary focus of a proposed National
Institute of Manufacturing.
We must also ensure that R&D investments are translated into good,
family-sustaining manufacturing jobs. We can do this by updating and
enhancing long-standing Buy America/nand other procurement standards--
and ensuring labor and domestic content standards apply to all major
public investments in clean technology deployment. These provisions can
play a critical role not only in strengthening domestic manufacturing
and jobs in emerging technology, but in building public support and
momentum for the clean economy.
More detailed information on the BlueGreen Alliance's
recommendations to ensure R&D is translated into a more robust American
manufacturing sector and clean energy supply chain can be found in our
Manufacturing Agenda.
5. How can the federal government use procurement to support a
strong, clean, fair manufacturing economy across the United States?
Public procurement can play a crucial role in creating demand and a
robust market for clean and advanced technology in America, in spurring
domestic manufacturing of that technology, and in setting a high
standard for the jobs and community benefits our public investments
support. They also play an important role in spurring near-term demand
for clean technologies and low-carbon products, and sustaining
strategic investments in U.S. manufacturing even when economic times
are tough or in the face of other market uncertainty. In order to use
procurement to support a clean, fair, and strong manufacturing economy
in the U.S., we need to:
Utilize direct federal--and state and municipal--
procurement to spur demand for clean, fair, safe, and domestically
manufactured clean technology, including for example, boosting
government purchases of clean vehicle fleets and net zero building
technology, innovative community resilience and disaster response
technology, and innovative domestic energy and grid technology
adoption--all in conjunction with domestic content requirements.
Review U.S. strategic energy, materials, and
technology stockpiles and, if necessary, reform them to ensure they
support the need for rapid clean energy technology deployment and
domestic manufacturing development, and industrial emissions reduction.
Improve and extend Buy America/n and ensure its
effective application to manufactured goods, clean technologies, and
materials.
Utilize soundly crafted Buy Clean procurement
policies to incentivize and reward clean, low carbon production of
energy intensive materials.
Utilize ``Fair and Responsible'' procurement
approaches to enhance labor standards, workers' rights, career
pathways, equity, and community benefits--and ensure their
applicability to manufacturing and manufacturing supply chain.
Ensure all major public spending on clean technology
deployment--such as tax incentives, loans, grants, and bonds--also
support high labor standards and domestic manufacturing throughout the
supply chain.
Develop and enact the globally leading energy,
emissions, and pollution standards necessary to drive demand for clean
technology production in the United States. Strong domestic energy and
emissions standards and a proactive manufacturing agenda go hand in
hand to support and sustain manufacturing and manufacturing jobs in the
United States.
Updating and enhancing long-standing Buy America/n and other
procurement standards--and ensuring labor and domestic content
standards apply to all major public investments in clean technology
deployment--can play a critical role not only in strengthening domestic
manufacturing and jobs in emerging technology, but in building public
support and momentum for the clean economy.
In addition, we recommend instituting Buy Clean procurement
standards to ensure that federal spending is directed towards the
cleanest, lowest-carbon products. Buy Clean standards promote spending
taxpayer dollars on infrastructure supplies and materials that are
manufactured in a cleaner, more efficient, and climate friendly
manner--rewarding companies that are doing things the right way and
putting a break on leakage and offshoring of emissions and jobs across
the supply chain.
More detailed information on the BlueGreen Alliance's
recommendations to utilize procurement to spur demand and support a
strong, clean, and fair manufacturing economy can be found in our
Manufacturing Agenda.
references
BlueGreen Alliance. Manufacturing Agenda: A National Blueprint for
Clean Technology Manufacturing and Leadership and Industrial
Transformation. June 2020. Available at: http://
www.bluegreenalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/
2020_BGA_Manufacturing_Agenda-vFINAL.pdf
Just Transition Fund. National Economic Transition Platform. 2020.
Available at: https://nationaleconomictransition.org/
Questions for the Record
Mr. Michael Shellenberger
Founder and President
Environmental Progress
the honorable garret graves
1. At the hearing, you were accused of ``making stuff up'' and not
having expertise on climate and energy policy. Unfortunately, you were
not given the opportunity to respond to those attacks. For the record,
would you like to respond to those accusations and to any others that
were lodged against you during the hearing?
Shortly after giving expert testimony to the committee, I had the
startling experience of being attacked by Representatives Sean Casten
of Illinois and Jared Huffman of California who used the whole of their
allotted time to claim that I am not a real environmentalist, that I am
not a qualified expert, and that I am motivated by money.
Had I been given a chance to respond, I would have noted that I
have been a climate activist for 20 years and an energy expert for 15
years. In the early 2000s I co-created and advocated for the
predecessor to the Green New Deal, the New Apollo Project, which
President Barack Obama implemented as his $90 billion green stimulus.
My new book, Apocalypse Never, has received strong praise from
leading environmental scientists and scholars, including the father of
modern climate science, Tom Wigley, who said, ``This may be the most
important book on the environment ever written.'' And in early 2020,
the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change invited me
to serve as an expert reviewer.
Finally, I would have noted, I have always been financially
independent of industry interests and disclose my donors on my
organization's web site.
But I wasn't given the chance to say any of that. After Casten and
Huffman lied about me, Rep. Garret Graves asked the committee's
chairperson, Rep. Kathy Castor of Florida, to let me respond. She
refused and abruptly ended the hearing.
2. Ms. Beth Soholt, Executive Director of the Clean Grid Alliance,
disagreed with your testimony on the competitiveness of wind and solar
energy. Specifically, she claimed that unsubsidized wind and solar are
the cheapest and most reliable forms of energy. Would you like to
respond?
Renewable energy advocates propose spending hundreds of billions of
public and ratepayer money on renewable energy, new transmission lines,
energy efficiency, mass transit, electric vehicles, carbon capture and
storage, and advanced nuclear energy. They argue that these federal
investments will result in millions of good jobs with high pay, and
also pay for themselves through higher economic growth.\1\
But similar programs over the last decade did not result in the
benefits being promised. During the first decade of this century I
advocated a suite of policies nearly identical to the ones currently
being proposed and watched them fail to create a new manufacturing
capacity, good jobs with high pay, or higher economic growth.
Rather, they resulted in low-wage service sector jobs, greater
dependence on imported Chinese technologies, and higher energy costs.
And they resulted in higher electricity prices and the net transfer of
wealth from lower to upper income citizens.
A former Obama administration economist at the University of
Chicago found last year that consumers in states with renewable energy
mandates paid $125 billion more for electricity in the seven years
after passage than they would have otherwise.\2\
Renewables contributed to electricity prices rising six times more
in California than in the rest of the US since 2011, the state's
``take-off'' year for rapid growth in wind and solar, a price rise that
occurred despite the state's reliance during the same years on
persistently-low-priced natural gas.\3\
Renewables have the same impact everywhere in the world. They have
caused electricity prices to rise 50 percent in Germany since 2007, the
first year it got more than 10 percent of its power from subsidized
wind, solar, and biomass. By 2019, German household electricity prices
were 45 percent higher than the European average.\4\
Despite investing nearly a half-trillion dollars, Germany still
generated just 42 percent of its electricity from non-hydro renewables
last year, as compared to the 72 percent France generated from
nuclear.\5\ If Germany didn't count emissions-producing and land-
intensive fuels like biomass and biofuels as renewable, which most
environmental groups, even Greenpeace, believe it shouldn't, the share
of its electricity from non-emitting, non-hydro renewables is just 34
percent.\6\
Solar and wind make electricity more expensive because they are
unreliable, requiring 100 percent backup, and energy-dilute, requiring
extensive land, transmission lines, and mining. Solar and wind
developers do not pay for the costs they create but rather pass them on
to electricity consumers and other producers.\7\
Interest in massively subsidizing renewables comes at a time when
industrial renewable energy projects are being blocked around the
world, as even their boosters now admit. ``Biden plots $2tn green
revolution but faces wind and solar backlash,'' read recent Guardian
headline. ``New York's bold green plans hit opposition,'' reported
Financial Times on September 1, 2020.
Ask yourself why, if renewables are cheaper than existing grid
electricity, do solar and wind developers require $2 trillion from
American taxpayers in the form of subsidies?
And why, if renewables are so cheap, do they make electricity so
expensive?
Clean Grid Alliance, for the record, is an industrial wind-energy
funded organization with a direct financial interest in promoting the
continued subsidization of wind energy.
3. Many of the policies contained in the Biden proposal and the
majority staff report of the committee closely mirror the approach in
California--both in targets and in scope.
Can you tell us a little bit about your experience in California about
the impacts of the state's climate policies on jobs, access to jobs,
housing cost and costs--particularly on those who can least afford it--
and communities of color?
Renewable energy advocates are basing their climate agenda on what
California, my home state, did, but our electricity rates since 2011
rose six times more than they did in the rest of the US, thanks mainly
to the deployment of renewables and the infrastructure they require,
such as transmission lines. And now, California's big bet on
renewables, and shunning of natural gas and nuclear, is directly
responsible for the state's electricity shortages.
The immediate cause of California's blackouts is a mismatch between
electricity supply and demand. Higher temperatures have led to greater
demand for air conditioning. And California has less electricity,
including from wind energy, available.
The underlying reason blackouts are occurring is because California
lacks reliable, in-state supply. And the reason for that is California
has been closing both natural gas and nuclear power plants.
``People wonder how we made it through the heat wave of 2006,''
said California's electricity grid manager, Caliso's Steven Berberich.
``The answer is that there was a lot more generating capacity in 2006
than in 2020. . . . We had San Onofre [nuclear plant] of 2,200 MW, and
a number of other plants, totalling thousands of MW not there today.''
\8\
Despite these capacity shortfalls, the state is moving ahead with
plans to remove 2,200-MW of reliable electricity from the grid. That's
the amount of power produced by Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant,
which will be closed in stages in 2024 and 2025.
Renewables advocates have long pointed to batteries as the way to
integrate unreliable renewables onto the grid. Yes, renewables are
unreliable, they admit. But if we can store energy collected during
periods of peak capacity, we can parcel it out during periods of peak
demand.
However, batteries are simply not up to the task. One of the
largest lithium battery storage centers in the world is in Escondido,
California. It can only store enough power to service 24,000 of
California's 13,000,000 households.
And it can only do so for four hours. If demand surges for the
better part of a day, the system will fail. Indeed, for renewables to
work, batteries would need to be able to store the power for weeks and
perhaps even months.
``Batteries don't generate any power,'' said Berberich. ``And
during extended cloud cover over solar fields, we will be in load
shedding. We have told the Commissioners again and that solar will need
to be overbuilt to serve load and charge batteries at same time.''
People don't sit idly by when electrical systems fail or when
reliability flags. Instead, businesses and individuals reach for tried
and true methods of powering their day-to-day lives.
4. Last month Mary Nichols, the head of the California agency
tasked with climate policies tweeted out:
``I can't breathe'' speaks to police violence, but it also
applies to the struggle for clean air. Environmental racism is just one
form of racism. It's all toxic. Government needs to clean it up in
words and deed. We who do climate and environmental policy can and must
do more.''
She quickly deleted that text, but The Two Hundred tweeted in
response:
``She wants to cry out ``environmental racism'' when the Enviro
ideas SHE pushes as President of (CARB) leave the most marginalized
communities in California to foot the bill AND pushes low-income
families out of their neighborhoods'' They go on to say ``that is why
we filed a lawsuit against her racist policies.''
What do you think will be the impact of nationalizing California
climate policies on jobs throughout the country, particularly the
impact on low income folks and communities of color?
Poor people and people of color are disproportionately impacted by
climate policies that restrict energy consumption.
In May, a California civil rights coalition filed a lawsuit against
the state to prevent implementation of climate law aimed at reducing
driving. The coalition calculates that the proposed law will increase
the cost of a home by anywhere from $40,000 to $400,000.
``Latino, African American, and Asian American families,'' the
coalition wrote in a letter to the governor, ``are disproportionately
victimized by the confluence of massively destructive state, regional
and local housing policy choices.'' \9\
Consider what happened after California closed the San Onofre
nuclear plant in 2013. Both carbon emissions and air pollution spiked.
And air pollution disproportionately harms poor people. This is
especially true in Los Angeles, where poor people of color have borne
the brunt of increased pollution.
From 2011 to 2018, California's industrial electricity prices rose
32 percent, while the average price in the other 49 states fell one
percent. The good manufacturing jobs in renewables are mostly in China,
which makes most of the world's solar panels, including America's,
while the US is stuck with temporary low-wage service jobs installing
solar panels and wind turbines, and doing energy efficiency retrofits.
Now, faced with the electricity supply crisis, Gov. Newsom has
suspended air-pollution regulations, which may increase the use of
diesel generators, and worsen air pollution in the inner-city.
Advocates for renewables claim that solar and wind projects were
somehow part of the battle for environmental justice. In reality, solar
and wind projects are imposed on poorer communities and successfully
resisted by wealthier ones.
In fact, a major new report found nearly 200 cases of human rights
violations when renewable energy projects were imposed on poor
communities. In Hawaii and Nebraska, indigenous leaders are resisting
wind energy projects that threaten native bird species, including the
nene and whooping crane, whose number one cause of mortality is
transmission lines.
5. You're an activist for civil nuclear power--not only because of
its air quality and greenhouse gas emissions benefits, but because of
the national security benefits to the United States of having a robust
fleet of reactors.
Do you believe that the nuclear-related package in the majority staff
would help or harm the U.S. civil nuclear program? And in general, what
would be the impact on greenhouse gas emissions?
The Green New Deal proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and
others last year called for the closure of US nuclear power plants. The
written statement distributed by the office of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez said,
``the plan is to transition off of nuclear.''\10\
And yet study after study finds that closing nuclear plants
increases air pollution and harms public health.
A 2017 study in Nature Energy found that the temporary closure of
two nuclear plants led directly to lower birth weights, a key indicator
of poor health outcomes later in life.\11\ The study found that
reduction in birth weight as small as 5.4 percent can result in a lower
intelligence quotient and lower income, as well as higher rates of
illness, stunted growth, and neurodevelopmental problems.\12\
In response to the Fukushima nuclear accident, the Japanese
government shut down its nuclear plants and replaced them with fossil
fuels. As a result, the cost of electricity went up, resulting in the
deaths of a minimum of 1,280 people from the cold between 2011 and
2014.\13\ In addition, scientists estimate that Japan's nuclear plant
closures resulted in more than four thousand (avoidable) air pollution
deaths per year.\14\
Unreliable electricity from solar and wind energies has been unable
to compensate for the loss of reliable, near-zero pollution nuclear
energy. A 2016 study found that the electricity lost from the closure
of the San Onofre nuclear plant was mostly replaced by burning natural
gas, which increased air pollution in southern California and raised
the costs of generating electricity from natural gas by $350
million.\15\
In 2005, Vermont legislators promised to reduce emissions 25
percent below 1990 levels by 2012, but instead the state's emissions
rose 16.3 percent, over twice as much as national emissions rose during
the same period, in part due to the closure of the state's sole nuclear
plant under pressure from climate activists, and in part due to the
inability of unreliable solar and wind to replace lost nuclear energy
electrical generation.\16\
New York State is in the process of closing Indian Point nuclear
power plant and replacing it with fossil fuels. Under pressure from
elected leaders, Indian Point's operator closed one of its two reactors
in April of this year, and intends to close the other one in April
2021. In May, a few weeks after calling for a phase-out of nuclear
energy, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez said she wanted to leave ``the door open on
nuclear,'' \17\ but five months later called for closing Indian Point
nuclear plant.\18\ Environmental and climate justice advocates are
protesting its closure.\19\ They point to a Harvard University study,
which found that higher air pollution results in higher coronavirus
death rates.\20\
The US could lose half to two-thirds of its nuclear energy over the
next decade. By 2025, the US will close twelve reactors, which
constitute 10.5 gigawatts of low-carbon power.\21\ This should be
extremely troubling for anyone who cares about air pollution and
climate change. Deep decarbonization of US energy supply will require
receiving 100 percent of electricity from zero-emissions sources as
well as replacing all natural gas and petroleum used in transportation,
cooking, and heating, which constitute roughly two-thirds of total
primary energy. The cheapest and fastest way to achieve this
decarbonization is to add nuclear reactors at existing nuclear power
plants. Closing those plants will foreclose that future option.
Recently, in a major blow to the US nuclear-energy industry, China
is reportedly helping Saudi Arabia create a facility to produce uranium
``yellowcake'' from uranium ore. The deal is further evidence that
America's anti-nuclear energy policies are pushing US allies into the
arms of our illiberal and undemocratic rivals.
Nations that partner with Russia or China to build nuclear plants
are effectively absorbed into their sphere of influence. The line
between soft power and hard power runs through nuclear energy. On the
one side is cheap and clean electricity. On the other, a stepping stone
to a weapons program.
Some nuclear-industry officials hope that the US will, in the
future, ``leapfrog'' over China and Russia with smaller ``modular''
reactor designs, micro-reactors, and radical new reactor-coolant
combinations such as those being pursued by Bill Gates. But China and
Russia are already far ahead on building and selling small, modular and
radical designs, as well as the standard water-cooled ones most nations
have chosen since the 1950s.
The China-Saudi deal should serve as a wake-up call to Congress and
the national-security and nonproliferation community. It's time for the
United States to realign its policies with the NPT and take action to
compete with the Chinese and Russians.
Nations looking to build nuclear plants will choose partners with
experience building them. To compete, the US must make global nuclear-
energy superiority a national security goal. This starts with either
designating a new ``national champion'' nuclear building firm or
creating a state-owned nuclear company capable of competing with
Russian and Chinese firms.
As part of this effort, Congress should make sure all of today's
reactors, including recently shuttered ones, stay open for at least 80
years. It should also consider amending the Atomic Energy Act to let
the US help nations develop uranium-enrichment facilities, just as
China and Russia do now.
Nuclear power plants, which can operate for 80 years or longer,
require high-wage, high-skilled, and permanent jobs for multiple
generations, and yet Democratic policymakers are seeking to shut down
nuclear power plants in the U.S.
Congress and the White House must act thoughtfully and
deliberately--but also decisively-- before it's too late.
6. Why do you think many climate activists oppose fossil fuel
technology innovation when it comes to solving the problem of climate
change?
It is sometimes claimed that environmental or climate policies are
required for lower pollution, but recent events show that not to be the
case. US electricity sector emissions decreased 34 percent from 2005 to
2019, including an astonishing 10 percent in 2019, which is the largest
year-on-year decline in history.\22\ By contrast, the Obama
administration's proposed carbon regulation of the power sector, the
``Clean Power Plan,'' proposed emissions reductions of 32 percent-- by
2030.\23\ Thanks in large measure to natural gas replacing coal, the
International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts carbon emissions in 2040 to
be lower than in almost all of the IPCC scenarios.\24\
Carbon emissions are thus following the same trajectory as other
air pollutants. As a result of cleaner-burning coal, the transition to
natural gas, cleaner vehicles, and other technological changes,
developed nations have seen major improvements in air quality. Between
1980 and 2018, US carbon monoxide levels decreased by 83 percent, lead
by 99 percent, nitrogen dioxide by 61 percent, ozone by 31 percent, and
sulfur dioxide by 91 percent. While death rates from air pollution can
rise with industrialization, they decline with higher incomes, better
access to health care, and reductions in air pollution.\25\
The dominant form of climate policy in international bodies and
among nations around the world emerged from 1960s-era environmental
policies aimed at constraining food and energy supplies. These policies
are correctly referred to as Malthusian in that they stem from the
fears, first articulated by the British economist Thomas Malthus in
1798, that humans are at constant risk of running out of food. Real
world experience has repeatedly disproven Malthusianism. If it hadn't,
there wouldn't be nearly eight billion of us. Worse, Malthusian ideas
have been used to justify unethical policies that worsen socioeconomic
inequality by making food and energy more expensive, including closing
down nuclear plants.\26\
Policymakers should explicitly reject policies that significantly
raise food and energy prices, directly or indirectly. Republicans and
Democrats alike should affirm their commitment to human flourishing and
prosperity, both of which depend on cheap food and energy, which depend
on the rising productivity of inputs to agriculture and electricity
generation, including labor, land, and capital.
The large reductions in air pollution, including carbon emissions,
in recent decades came overwhelmingly from making natural gas cheap,
not from making fossil fuels more expensive. Short-term and focused
subsidies and mandates may help accelerate technological innovation.
But the main focus must be on making the new energy source affordable.
7. In the past, you've talked about the success of the United
States in reducing emissions. In absolute terms since 2005, we've
reduced emissions more than the next twelve reducing emissions
countries combined. You credit the vast amount of emissions reduced to
our use of nuclear and natural gas. In fact, you've said that natural
gas reduced emissions 11 times more than solar energy and 50 percent
more than wind energy in the United States.
Do you think the current thinking in the Democratic party and their
opposition to fracking make sense as an economics job and a global
climate mitigation strategy?
For nearly a decade, climate activists have claimed that natural
gas is worse for the climate than coal,\27\ And yet, on virtually every
metric, natural gas is cleaner than coal. Natural gas emits 17 to 40
times less sulfur dioxide, a fraction of the nitrous oxide that coal
emits, and almost no mercury.\28\ Natural gas is one-eighth as deadly
as coal, counting both accidents and air pollution.\29\ And burning gas
rather than coal for electricity requires 25 to 50 percent less
water.\30\
The technological revolution allowing for firms to extract far more
natural gas from shale and the ocean floor is the main reason that U.S.
carbon emissions from energy declined 13 percent between 2005 and 2018,
and a big part of the reason why global temperatures are unlikely to
rise more than 3 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels.\31\
Anti-natural gas activists make their claims that coal is better
than natural gas by using an inappropriately short timeframe for global
warming of just twenty years. The United States government and most
experts agree that the appropriate timeframe to use is one hundred
years. Their timeframe thus exaggerates the impact of natural gas as a
heat-trapping gas.\32\
Despite a nearly 40 percent increase in natural gas production
since 1990, the EPA reported a 20 percent decrease in methane emissions
in 2013, in part because of improved gaskets, monitoring, and
maintenance.\33\ No matter how much methane leaks, natural gas will
still have half the impact of energy on global warming by 2100 as
compared to if the same energy were coming from coal.\34\
Natural gas fracking resulted in the decline 62 percent decline in
the mountaintop mining for coal between 2008 and 2014.\35\ Where
fracking for natural gas cracks shale below the Earth's surface,
imposing very small impacts aboveground, coal mining devastates
mountain ecosystems. More than 500 mountains, covering more than one
million acres, have been destroyed in central and southern Appalachia
by mountaintop removal.\36\
When mining companies demolish mountains with explosives to harvest
coal, they dump millions of tons of crushed rock into nearby valleys,
destroying forests and headway streams. Exposed rock leeches heavy
metals and other toxins, which hurt wildlife, insects, and humans. Dust
that blows into the air from such operations can harm miners and people
who live in nearby communities.\37\
No energy transition occurs without human and environmental
impacts. Fracking brings pipelines, rigs, and trucks, which can disrupt
peaceful landscapes that people rightly care about. Frackers have
created small earthquakes and improperly disposed of fracking
wastewater. These problems are serious and should be addressed, but
they are nowhere as bad as coal mining, which has in many ways become
worse throughout the decades, not better, culminating in mountaintop
removal and the destruction of river ecosystems.\38\
What explains the lower environmental impact of natural gas
fracking as compared to coal mining is power density. A natural gas
field in the Netherlands is three times more power-dense than the
world's most productive coal mines.\39\
Today, many if not most scientists and environmentalists support
natural gas as a substitute for coal. ``People are placing too much
emphasis on methane,'' climate scientist Raymond Pierrehumbert told The
Washington Post. ``People should prove that we can actually get the
CO2 emissions down first, before worrying about whether we
are doing enough to get methane emissions down.''\40\
Pollution regulations helped make coal plants more expensive to
build and operate. But what mattered most was the creation of a more
power-dense, abundant, and cheaper alternative.
8. An article published March 19, 2019, by the Institute for En-
ergy Research (https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/the-grid/
wind-
generation-fails-in-midwest-due-to-weather-events-polar-vortex-and-el-
nino/) analyzed the performance of wind generation during acute weather
events and included the following statement,
``During the polar vortex, wind turbines shut off when
temperatures dipped below minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit. There has been
little focus on developing wind turbines to operate below minus 20
degrees Fahrenheit because at these temperatures, there is not much
wind blowing. The economics of producing wind energy in such extreme
conditions would not justify the additional cost, according to wind
experts.''
How did renewables perform (what percent of capacity was dispatched)
during the polar vortex of 2014 and the polar vortex of 2019 in the
regions impacted by each polar vortex?
When people's health and safety depended on power during the polar
vortex, what were the best performing sources of energy?
The consulting firm Wood Mackenzie evaluated the polar vortex that
occurred between January 27 to February 2, 2019 and concluded that,
even with solar and wind scaled-up to produce the total equivalent
quantity of electricity as the grid produces now, millions of people
would have remained without power for several in freezing temperatures.
``Any mix of wind and solar to serve load would require long-duration
storage or optimization of multiple 'stages' of shorter duration,`` it
found.\41\
By contrast, nuclear power plants performed exceedingly well during
the polar vortexes. Wood Mackenzie found that ``existing nuclear
reduces the magnitude of hourly generation imbalances.'' During the
polar vortex, nuclear plants ran with very high ``up-time,'' with just
one re-fueling outage.
It is notable that nuclear plants out-perform renewables in
situations of high-heat as well. For example, Washington State's
Columbia Generating station, a nuclear plant, is under a ``no-touch''
order to generate power during the West's current heat wave.\42\
references
\1\ Majority Staff Report, ``Solving the Climate Crisis,'' June
2020, https://climatecrisis. house.gov/sites/climatecrisis.house.gov /
files/Climate%20Crisis%20Action%20Plan.pdf
\2\ Michael Greenstone and Ishan Nath, ``Do Renewable Portfolio
Standards Deliver?'' Energy Policy Institute at the University of
Chicago 62 (May 2019): 1-45, https://epic.uchicago.edu/wp-content/
uploads/2019/07/Do-Renewable-Portfolio-Standards-Deliver.pdf.
\3\ ``California,'' Environmental Progress, accessed July 25, 2020,
https://environmental progress.org /california. Calculations based on
data from ``Electricity Data Browser: Retail Sales of Electricity
Annual,'' United States Energy Information Administration, accessed
January 10, 2020, https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser.
\4\ Eurostat, ``Electricity prices for household consumers--bi-
annual data (from 2007 onwards)'' December 1, 2019, accessed January
20, 2020, https://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/
show.do?dataset=nrg_pc_204&lang=en.
\5\ Germany spent 32 billion euros on renewables subsidy every year
between 2014 and 2018, or about one percent of its GDP a year, which if
adjusted for economy size would be like
the United States spending $200 billion annually but only increasing
its share of electricity
from solar and wind by 11 percentage points. German spending from Frank
Dohmen, ``German Failure on the road to a renewable future,'' Spiegel,
May 13, 2019, https://www.spiegel.de/ international/germany/german-
failure-on-the-road-to-a-renewable-future-a-1266586.html; Conversions
made using OECD data for Purchasing Power Parity.
Increase in German wind and solar percentages from ``Annual
Electricity Generation in Germany,'' Fraunhofer ISE, January 10, 2020,
accessed January 10, 2020, https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm.
\6\ ``Annual Electricity Generation in Germany,'' Fraunhofer ISE,
January 10, 2020, accessed January 10, 2020, https://www.energy-
charts.de/energy.htm.
\7\ Steven M. Grodsky, ``Reduced ecosystem services of desert
plants from ground-mounted solar energy development,'' Nature, July 20,
2020.
\8\ Michael Shellenberger, ``Democrats Say California is a model
for climate action but its blackouts say otherwise,'' Forbes, August
17, 2020.
\9\ Jim Jakobs, ``Latest State `Green' Edict Discriminates Against
Minorities: Lawsuit,'' GV Wire, May 7, 2020.
\10\ ``Green New Deal FAQ,'' February 7, 2020, accessed August 3,
2020, https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=5729035-Green-
New-Deal-FAQ.
\11\ E. Severnini, ``Impacts of nuclear plant shutdown on coal-
fired power generation and infant health in the Tennessee Valley in the
1980s,'' Nature Energy, 2017; Michael Shellenberger, ``Nuclear Power:
Unexpected Health Benefits,'' Nature Energy, 2017.
\12\ S.E. Black, et al, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 122,
2007, p. 409-439. M. Hack, Future Child, No. 5, 1995, p. 176-196.
\13\ Matthew J. Neidell, Shinsuke Uchida, and Marcella Veronesi,
``Be Cautious with the Precautionary Principle: Evidence from Fukushima
Daiichi Nuclear Accident'' (Working Paper 26395, National Bureau for
Economic Research (NBER), Cambridge, MA, October 2019), https://
doi.org/10.3386/w26395.
\14\ David E. Weinstein and Molly K. Schnell, ``Evaluating the
Economic Response to Japan's Earthquake'' (Working Paper 301, Center on
Japanese Economy and Business, Columbia University, New York, May
2012), https://gsb.columbia.edu/cjeb/research.
\15\ Lucas Davis et al., ``Market impacts of a nuclear power plant
closure,'' American Economic Journal, Applied Economics, 2016, p. 92-
122.
\16\ Department of the Environment, Vermont, ``Greenhouse Gas
Emissions Inventory Update: 1990-2015. EPA, ``Sources of Greenhouse Gas
Emissions,'' 2020, https://dec.vermont.gov/sites/dec/files/aqc/climate-
change/documents/_Vermont_Greenhouse_Gas_Emissions_Inventory_Update
_1990-2015.pdf.
\17\ Jacqueline Toth, ``Ocasio-Cortez: Green New Deal `Leaves the
Door Open' on Nuclear,'' Morning Consult, May 6, 2019.
\18\ ``AOC on Nuclear Power: `Indian Point Should Have Been
Shutdown a Long Time Ago,' '' October 3, 2019, https://grabien.com/
story.php?id=254389.
\19\ ``Governor Cuomo, a pandemic is the wrong time to shutter
Indian Point,'' Climate Coalition, http://climatecoalition.org/dear-
governor-cuomo.
\20\ Xiao Wu et al., ``Exposure to air Exposure to air pollution
and COVID-19 mortality in the United States: A nationwide cross-
sectional study,'' Harvard University, April 24, 2020, https://
projects.iq.harvard.edu/covid-pm.
\21\ U.S. Energy Information Administration, ``Despite closures,
U.S. nuclear electricity generation in 2018 surpassed its previous
peak,'' March 21, 2019.
\22\ Trevor Houser and Hannah Pitt, ``Preliminary US Emissions
Estimates for 2019,'' Rhodium Group, January 7, 2020. https://rhg.com/
research/preliminary-us-emissions-2019/
\23\ Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), ``Fact Sheet: Overview
of the Clean Power Plan,'' EPA, August 3, 2015. https://
archive.epa.gov/epa/cleanpowerplan/fact-sheet-overview-clean-power-
plan.html
\24\ ``World Energy Outlook 2019'' (Paris: International Energy
Agency, 2019), https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2019.
\25\ United States Environmental Protection Agency, ``Air Quality--
National Summary,'' 2020, https://www.epa.gov.
\26\ Michael Shellenberger, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental
Alarmism Hurts Us All, HarperCollins, 2020, p. 222-249.
\27\ Bill McKibben, ``Bad News for Obama: Fracking May Be Worse
Than Coal,'' Mother Jones, September 8, 2014, https://
www.motherjones.com; Bill McKibben, ``The Literal Gaslighting That
Helps America Avoid Acting on the Climate Crisis,'' New Yorker, October
9, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com; Bill McKibben, ``The Literal
Gaslighting That Keeps America From Acting on Climate Change,'' New
Yorker, October 9, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/.
\28\ Paulina Jaramillo, ``Landfill-Gas-to-Energy Projects: Analysis
of Net Private and Social Benefits,'' Environmental Science and
Technology 39, no. 19 (2005): 7365-7373, https://doi.org/10.1021/
es050633j.
\29\ Anil Markandya and Paul Wilkinson, ``Electricity Generation
and Health,'' The Lancet 370 (2007), 979-990, https://doi.org/10.1016/
S0140-6736(07)61253-7.
\30\ Bridget R. Scanlon, Robert C. Reedy, Ian Duncan, William F.
Mullican, and Michael Young, ``Controls on water use for thermoelectric
generation: Case study Texas, US,'' Environmental Science & Technology
47 (2013): 11326-11334, https://doi.org/10.1021/es4029183.
\31\ BP Energy Economics, ``BP Statistical Review of World Energy
2019, 68th Edition,'' BP, June 2019, accessed January 16, 2020, https:/
/www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/
energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2019-full-
report.pdf; Perry Lindstrom, ``Carbon dioxide emissions from the US
power sector have declined 28% since 2005,'' EIA, October 29, 2018,
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37392.
\32\ Sophie Dejonckheere, Mari Aftret Mørtvedt, and Eilif
Ursin Reed, ``Methane: A climate blind spot?,'' Center for
International Climate Research [CICERO], March 25, 2019, accessed
January 4, 2020, https://www.cicero.oslo.no/en/posts/klima/methane-a-
climate-blind-spot; Zeke Hausfather, ``Bounding the climate viability
of natural gas as a bridge fuel to displace coal,'' Energy Policy 86
(November 2015): 286-294, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2015.07.012;
Adam Voiland, ``Methane Matters,'' National Air and Space Association,
https://earthobservatory. nasa.gov/features/MethaneMatter; Gunnar Mhyre
et al., ``Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing,''
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, http://
www.climatechange2013.org/ images/report/
WG1AR5_Chapter08_FINAL.pdf.
Most of the methane molecules that leak into the atmosphere today
won't be there in ten years. By contrast, most carbon dioxide will
remain in the atmosphere for centuries. As a result, even if methane
were leaking at a higher rate than the US EPA estimates, as some claim
it is, its impact on global warming would still be relatively small
compared to the benefits of reduced carbon emissions compared to coal.
\33\ Kevin Begos, ``EPA methane report further divides fracking
camps,'' Yahoo! News, April 28, 2013, https://news.yahoo.com.
\34\ Zeke Hausfather, ``Methane matters, but doesn't eliminate
gains from emissions reductions,'' The Breakthrough Institute, October
14, 2019, https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/howarth-natural-
gas. Using the EPA's numbers, the leaked methane lowers the amount of
carbon emissions reduced between 2005 and 2018 from 13 percent to 12
percent. Using larger methane leak numbers lowers the reductions from
13 percent to 10 percent, at most.
\35\ JenAlyse Arena, ``Coal production using mountaintop removal
mining decreases by 62% since 2008,'' US Energy Information
Association, July 7, 2015, https://www.eia.gov/todayin energy/
detail.php?id=21952.
\36\ Appalachian Voices, ``Ecological Impacts of Mountaintop
Removal,'' accessed January 16, 2020, http://appvoices.org/end-
mountaintop-removal/ecology.
\37\ Editorial Board, ``The dirty effects of mountaintop removal
mining,'' Washington Post, October 21, 2014, https://
www.washingtonpost.com.
\38\ Richard Schiffman, ``A Troubling Look at the Human Toll of
Mountaintop Removal Mining,'' Yale E360, November 21, 2017, https://
e360.yale.edu/features/a-troubling-look-at-the-human-toll-of-
mountaintop-removal-mining.
\39\ Vaclav Smil, Power Density (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2016),
104, 112, 125, 126, 197. On average oil power densities are far less.
Iraq's oil fields have a power density of only 5,000 W/m\2\. But that
is still twice as high as Australia's coal mines. As always there is a
large range, with some petroleum fields producing as little as 100 W/
m\2\. A typical natural gas well in Alberta, Canada has a power density
of 2,300 W/m\2\ while the Netherlands' gas fields have a power density
of 16,000 W/m\2\. A Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) terminal has a power
density of 4,600 W/m\2\ while a regasification terminal has a power
density of an astonishing 60,000 W/m\2\.
\40\ Chris Mooney, ``Why we're still so incredibly confused about
methane's role in global warming,'' Washington Post, May 2, 2016,
https://www.washingtonpost.com.
\41\ Wood Mackenzie, ``Performance Review: Nuclear, fossil fuels,
and renewables during the 2019 polar vortex,'' February 7, 2019.
\42\ Annette Cary, ``Northwest heat wave puts nuclear power plant
near Tri-Cities under `no touch' order,'' Tri-City Herald, September 4,
2020.
Questions for the Record
Ms. Beth Soholt
Executive Director
Clean Grid Alliance
the honorable kathy castor
1. As the United States moves toward a national, interconnected
grid, what can the federal government and industry do to ensure that
new transmission lines do not cause unintended environmental harm?
A more nationally interconnected Macro Grid has multiple
environmental benefits, starting with the connection of abundant, zero-
emissions wind and solar resources in remote rural areas to population
centers with high electricity demand. A nationwide, high-voltage direct
current (HVDC) network, optimized for the nation's best wind and solar
resources, could deliver 80% carbon emission reductions from the grid
by 2030.\1\ Furthermore, the decarbonization of our power sector
enabled by expanded and enhanced transmission would greatly reduce co-
pollutants like small particulate matter that lead to an estimated
21,000 deaths per year.\2\
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\1\ MacDonald, Clack Et Al., ``Future Cost-Competitive Electricity
Systems and Their Impact on U.S. CO2 Emissions,'' January
25, 2016, https://www.vibrantcleanenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/
09/Future_cost-competitive_electricity_syst.pdf.
\2\ Penn, Arunachalam Et Al., ``Estimating State-Specific
Contributions to PM2.5- and O3-Related Health Burden from Residential
Combustion and Electricity Generating Unit Emissions in the United
States'', March 2017, https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/pdf/10.1289/EHP550.
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We expect a very high percentage of future transmission expansion
to utilize existing rights-of-way of various types. There are utility
rights-of-way all over the country, which in many cases have old lines
that are ready to be replaced. With new technology, including HVDC
lines, far more power can be delivered over rights-of-way than in the
past.
A critical point about transmission is that, at larger scales, less
right-of-way is needed for a given amount of energy delivery.
Therefore, it is important to plan ahead of time to build at the size
that will be needed over the long term in order to reduce the amount of
right-of-way needed.
Occasionally, new rights-of-way are needed. When new rights-of-way
are required, local, state, and sometimes federal permitting processes
require environmental review prior to being granted permits. The
reviews are often very thorough. For example, in New York, Title 16,
Part 86 of the New York Compilation of Codes, Rules, and Regulations
outlines the several requirements for an interstate transmission line.
An application is required to ``submit detailed maps...[that] shall
include'' the location of a right-of-way and possible damage to the
environment as well as historical areas.\3\ Further, the applicant must
``submit a statement explaining what consideration, if any, was given
to: (1) any alternative route; (2) the expansion of any existing right-
of-way...[and] (3) any alternate method which would fulfill the energy
requirements with comparable costs'' where the applicant may compare
the benefits and drawbacks of the alternative.\4\ When lines cross
federal lands, Environmental Impact Statements are required prior to
federal agency permitting. Of course, it is also the case that multiple
agency processes without clear accountability can lead to delays, so
efforts such as the FAST Act approach to rationalize the process can
speed lengthy approval requirements while protecting the environment.
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\3\ N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. tit. 16, Sec. 86.3 (1970).
\4\ N.Y. Comp. Codes. R. & Regs. tit. 16, Sec. 86.4 (1970).
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It is beneficial to proactively plan transmission to take renewable
resource and sensitive habitat into account. For example, ``Smart from
the Start'' transmission planning efforts in the west have engaged
wildlife and lands experts along with renewable energy and transmission
developers to identify corridors.
Better coordinated interregional and interstate planning can ensure
we have the grid we need to power a clean and thriving economy, while
minimizing cost and environmental impact. For example, as states seek
to develop offshore wind, coordinated planning to create an offshore
grid that collects electricity generated from multiple wind projects,
along with a plan to upgrade onshore transmission, can lower overall
costs for customers, and prevent major additional work on land. Fewer
cables could also minimize impacts on traditional maritime interests,
including shipping and fishing.\5\
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\5\ Maldonado, Samantha and French, Marie J., ``Offshore Grid
Planning in the Wind,'' August 2020, https://www.politico.com/states/
new-york/newsletters/weekly-new-york-new-jersey-energy/2020/08/24/
offshore-wind-transmission-planning-338452.
2. How can Congress support or require more efficient use of
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existing transmission infrastructure?
Newly available grid-enhancing technologies such as dynamic line
ratings, power flow control systems, storage-as-transmission, and
topology optimization can reduce congestion and resource curtailment,
raising the efficiency of existing transmission infrastructure. Many
regions of the country are currently working to understand and
incorporate the benefits of these technologies in RTO/ISO tariffs. The
Energy Policy Act of 2005 directs FERC to incentivize the deployment
and use of efficiency-improving transmission technologies for the
benefit of electricity consumers. Unfortunately, FERC's recent Notice
of Proposed Rulemaking on transmission incentive policy limits the
ability of the aforementioned, lower-cost grid-enhancing technologies
to actually receive these incentives. FERC's proposal is based on a
return-on-equity approach, which awards utilities greater incentives
for the deployment of more expensive projects, such as power lines.
Under the proposal, for example, a 100 basis point incentive on $1
million of equity invested yields only $50,000 in additional
earnings.\6\ It is hard to imagine senior utility management even
having a meeting to discuss an action that could achieve only a $50,000
contribution to the bottom line, especially when 100 basis points on a
$100 million transmission line with potentially similar system benefits
would yield $5,000,000 in additional earnings. Congress should consider
directing FERC to avoid using an incentive awards methodology that
preferences high-cost projects, although new transmission will be
needed in many parts of the country.
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\6\ Assuming 50% debt, tax of 27%, debt interest of 5%, target base
ROE of 10%, O&M rate of 3% and discount rate of 7%.
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A major opportunity for efficient use of our limited rights of way
is replacing aging assets with higher capacity lines so that we make
maximum use of corridors. New transmission line conductor technologies
are available that increase resilience and energy delivery capability
over these paths.
Additionally, expanded wholesale energy markets can help better
utilize existing transmission infrastructure by ensuring that
generators are dispatched over the broadest area in the least-cost
manner. A shared sense of Congress that wholesale energy market growth
is beneficial may help encourage utilities and states to consider
joining these markets.
Finally, transmission upgrades can vastly improve the efficiency of
the entire electric system. This is because line losses increase
significantly when power lines operate close to their maximum capacity,
and the lines are hot. The Southwest Power Pool calculated that its
transmission upgrades are saving consumers around $100 million from
reduced transmission losses,\7\ while the Midwest ISO estimates line
loss savings of $200 million to $1 billion dollars in net present value
due to upgrades.\8\
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\7\ Southwest Power Pool, ``The Value of Transmission,''
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https://www.spp.org/documents/35297/
the%20value%20of%20transmission%20report.pdf
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\8\ Midwest Independent System Operator, ``MISO Value
Proposition,''
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https://www.misoenergy.org/about/miso-strategy-and-value-proposition/
miso-value-proposition/
3. How can increasing transmission development at the ``seams''
between regions save consumers money and expedite renewable energy
deployment?
Transmission that can stitch together the ``seams'' between regions
could save consumers up to $47 billion annually\9\ and return more than
$2.50 for every dollar invested.\10\
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\9\ MacDonald, Clack Et Al., ``Future Cost-Competitive Electricity
Systems and Their Impact on U.S. CO2 Emissions,'' January
25, 2016,
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https://www.vibrantcleanenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/
Future_cost-competitive_electricity_syst.pdf.
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\10\ National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Interconnections Seam
Study,
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https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/seams.html.
While 15 states between the Rockies and the Mississippi River
account for 88 percent of the nation's wind technical potential and 56
percent of solar technical potential, this region is home to only 30
percent of expected 2050 electricity demand.\11\ Connecting centers of
high renewable resources to high electric demand would expedite
development of those resources and save consumers money.
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\11\ Wind Solar Alliance, ``Transmission Upgrades & Expansion: Keys
to Meeting Large Customer Demand for Renewable Energy,'' January 2018,
https://acore.org/transmission-upgrades-expansion-keys-to-meeting-
large-customer-demand-for-renewable-energy/.
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Access to electricity over a large region allows locations with
rich wind and solar resources to supply cheap power to distant markets.
The key enabling technology for delivering these multiple benefits is a
well-planned network of high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) transmission
lines.
Currently, a lack of transmission is greatly constraining
development of both wind and solar resources, as evidenced by
interconnection queue backlogs. Access to consumers is paramount for
zero-marginal-cost, location-constrained resources like wind and solar.
At the end of 2017, over 188 GW of proposed solar projects and 180 GW
of proposed wind projects were waiting in queues to connect to the grid
after having applied for interconnection.\12\ Historically, the vast
majority of queue projects have failed to proceed to development, in
many cases because of the costs and delays associated with
interconnecting to the grid.
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\12\ American Wind Energy Association, ``Grid Vision: The Electric
Highway to a 21st Century Economy,'' May 2019, https://
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
www.awea.org/Awea/media/Resources/Publications%20and%20Reports/
White%20Papers/Grid-Vision-The-Electric-Highway-to-a-21st-Century-
Economy.pdf.
Finally, expanding access across the seams will help consumers by
making the wholesale power markets more competitive, while promoting
renewable development through expanded market opportunities. Consumers
will also benefit from the improved reliability and resilience that
comes from interregional transmission.
4. Although renewable energy costs have fallen significantly, why
does the renewable energy sector need continued federal support as the
country confronts the climate crisis?
The COVID-19 pandemic has had multiple adverse impacts on the
renewable energy sector. Supply chain disruptions, construction and
permitting delays, and a constrained tax equity market have all hit the
renewable industry hard. Over 14% of renewable energy workers have lost
their jobs since March.\13\ Additionally, BloombergNEF is now
projecting a $23 billion tax equity shortfall impacting more than 30
gigawatts of renewable projects over the next 18 months.\14\
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\13\ American Council on Renewable Energy, ``Recovery Stalls as Few
Clean Energy Employees Return to Work in July,'' August 12, 2020,
https://acore.org/recovery-stalls-as-few-clean-energy-employees-return-
to-work-in-july/.
\14\ Bloomberg, ``Covid Created a U.S. Clean Energy Shortfall of
Up to $23 Billion,'' July 15, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/
articles/2020-07-15/covid-likely-created-23-billion-shortfall-for-u-s-
clean-energy/.
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In order to get these hard-working Americans back on the job
building America's clean energy future, the renewable sector needs
commonsense emergency relief in the form of 1) temporary refundability
for renewable credits to facilitate their continued monetization in an
increasingly constrained tax equity market, and 2) delaying the
scheduled phasedown of the PTC and the ITC in recognition of COVID-19's
nationwide impact on renewable development this year. Enacting these
two commonsense emergency relief measures into law would stem ongoing
job losses in every state and enable the renewable industry to help
power the nation's economic recovery.
As we look past the current downturn and towards a more sustainable
economic recovery, there is a suite of complementary climate policies
that Congress can consider to accelerate the deployment of emissions-
free, renewable power: 1) a federal high-penetration renewable energy
standard (RES) or clean energy standard (CES) to provide long-term
market certainty and catalyze renewable energy investment and
deployment; 2) a technology-neutral tax credit for zero- or low-carbon
electricity generation to attract capital and lower the delivered cost
of clean energy to consumers; 3) effective carbon pricing to
internalize the cost of carbon pollution across all sectors of the
economy; and 4) building a 21\st\ century Macro Grid to deliver our
nation's abundant renewable resources from where they are produced to
where they are ultimately consumed.\15\
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\15\ American Council on Renewable Energy, ``Advancing America's
Climate Leadership,'' January 9, 2020, https://acore.org/advancing-
americas-climate-leadership/.
5. How can adding clean energy to the electric generating mix
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increase electric system reliability and resilience?
A diverse mix of resources is key to electric reliability and
resilience. Clean energy provides an abundant source of domestic power
that can be rapidly deployed and available even during extreme weather
conditions. With zero reliance on global fuel supply, renewable energy
sources are not subject to the vagaries of the global marketplace or
unexpected changes to fuel availability. Renewable energy can even
enhance power reliability under extreme weather conditions, not
requiring fuel supplies that may be disrupted and bouncing back quickly
from interruptions.
Moreover, as previously described, expanding and upgrading the
transmission system with a 21\st\ century Macro Grid would lower
consumer costs and help prevent outages, thereby enhancing reliability
and resilience.
Notably, the Department of Defense is increasingly relying on
renewable energy and energy storage to improve its energy security,
enhance readiness and ensure reliable and resilient power for critical
domestic functions and forward operations. For example, the Fort Carson
solar-plus-energy storage project supplies around-the-clock energy
resilience to the 4th Infantry Division, the 10th Special Forces Group
and 3,400 military family residences. By shifting energy between times
of high and low demand, this system also saves taxpayers $500,000 per
year on the installation's utility bill.\16\
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\16\ Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, ``Defense
Spotlight: Fort Carson Optimizes Energy Storage,'' April 2020, https://
www.citizensfor.com/defense-spotlight-fort-carson-optimizes- energy-
storage/.
6. During the 2014 Polar Vortex and other severe winters, how did
the cold weather affect on-site fuel for fossil-fueled power plants
fare? How can electric utilities and regional organizations ensure the
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reliability and resilience of the grid in extreme temperatures?
According to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation
(NERC), fossil fuel facilities relying on natural gas and coal are
susceptible to damages due to low temperatures, such as frozen coal
stockpiles and disrupted natural gas pipelines, and are thus the
largest sources of cold weather-related power outages.\17\ According to
NERC, coal and gas generators made up 81% of power outages during the
2014 Polar Vortex.\18\ During the 2019 Polar Vortex in the Midwest,
there was a fire in a gas plant in Michigan that forced it to shut
down, along with gas delivery issues.
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\17\ Bade, Gavin, ``Polar Vortex set to test Midwest grids amid
FERC resilience debate,'' UtilityDive, January 30, 2019, https://
www.utilitydive.com/news/polar-vortex-set-to-test-midwest-grids-amid-
ferc-resilience-debate/547231/.
\18\ Ibid.
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Last month, CAISO CEO Steve Berberich attributed California's
rolling blackouts partially to a power plant that ``tripped'' in the
high heat,\19\ likely a natural gas plant that tripped offline during
the heatwave,\20\ as natural gas plants often struggle in extreme
temperatures, further illustrating the importance of a diverse, fuel-
free resource mix.
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\19\ Kahn, Debra and Bermel, Colby, ``California has first rolling
blackouts in 19 years--and everyone faces blame,'' Politico, August 18,
2020,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/08/18/california-
has-first-rolling-blackouts-in-19-years-and-everyone-faces-blame-
1309757.
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\20\ Gilbert, Alex and Bazilian, Moran, ``California power outages
underscore challenge of maintaining reliability during climate change,
the energy transition,'' UtilityDive,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/california-power-outages-underscore-
challenge-of-maintaining-reliability-du/583727/.
In FERC's resilience proceeding, grid operators were
clear about the benefits of transmission for system
resilience:
NYISO said ``. . . resiliency is closely linked to the
importance of maintaining and expanding interregional interconnections,
the building out of a robust transmission system. . . .''\21\
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\21\ NYISO filing in FERC Docket No. AD18-7, p. 4.
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PJM said ``Robust long-term planning, including
developing and incorporating resilience criteria into the RTEP, can
also help to protect the transmission system from threats to
resilience.'' \22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\22\ PJM filing in FERC Docket No. AD18-7, p. 49-50.
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SPP said ``The transmission infrastructure requirements
that are identified through the ITP process are intended to ensure that
low cost generation is available to load, but the requirements also
support resilience in that needs are identified beyond shorter term
reliability needs. For example, the ITP identified the need for a
number of 345 kV transmission lines connecting the panhandle of Texas
to Oklahoma. These lines were identified as being economically
beneficial for bringing low-cost, renewable energy to market, but their
construction has also supported resilience by creating and
strengthening alternate paths within SPP.'' \23\
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\23\ SPP filing in FERC Docket No. AD18-7, p. 8.
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As previously discussed, expanding transmission would increase
reliability by enabling access to power in unaffected regions. In
addition, modernizing the transmission system can also play a
significant role in ensuring grid reliability and resilience in extreme
temperatures and weather events. A smarter grid can respond to
disruption by re-routing power or re-shaping load using demand
response. These improvements include integrating storage and
distributed energy technologies in wholesale power markets, using smart
meters to detect grid outages, and expanding the nation's high-voltage
transmission network to connect centers of supply with areas of demand.
the honorable garret graves
1. You stated that unsubsidized wind and solar (no ITC/PTC) are the
cheapest forms of new energy. That is good news for the environment and
for the taxpayers who have been subsidizing wind and solar either
through tax credits, mandates or other market preferences. If, in fact,
wind and solar are the cheapest forms of new energy, then the subsidies
and mandates that have supported wind and solar are no longer necessary
as market distortions (e.g.,, subsidies/mandates) are only necessary in
those cases when the source is unable to compete without them.
a. As a member of the MISO Advisory Committee can you identify
any federal and/or state subsidies (tax credits/incentives, mandates or
other preferences) for wind and solar in the MISO market that are no
longer necessary in order for new wind and solar to successfully
compete in the market?
Policies in support of clean, low-cost, and reliable wind and solar
deployment create numerous environmental, consumer and economic
benefits, including over 350,000 jobs around the country.\24\ For
example, renewable energy standards help drive deployment of pollution-
free renewable power by providing the long-term market certainty needed
to catalyze investment in our communities. Policymakers have different
preferences about how fast they would like to reduce emissions.
Incentives can speed up deployment of clean energy beyond what the
market would do on its own, and counteract the incentives that still
exist for conventional, polluting resources.
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\24\ NASEO and EFI, ``2020 U.S. Energy and Employment Report,''
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https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a98cf80ec4eb7c5cd928c61/t/
5ee78423c6fcc20e01b83896/1592230956175/USEER+2020+0615.pdf, p. 40.
b. When you made the statement that renewables are the
cheapest form of energy, did your analysis include the cost of new
transmission to move wind/solar generated power from the source to the
consumer?
When building new generation facilities, developers are responsible
for connecting their plants to the nearest utility grid.
Interconnection often requires construction of radial lines or other
equipment such as substations. FERC Order 2003 stipulates that a
generator seeking interconnection is responsible for the cost of all
facilities, equipment, and all other transmission improvements between
the point of interconnection and a public utility's system.\25\
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\25\ Norton Rose Fulbright, ``Network Upgrades Controversy,''
October 2003,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://www.projectfinance.law/publications/network-upgrades-
controversy.
Despite additional expenses associated with transmission upgrades
needed to access remote resources, renewables still remain cost-
competitive. A February 2020 report on the estimated levelized cost of
electricity (LCOE) for new generation resources entering service in
2022 found that new wind and solar facilities would be substantially
cheaper than fossil fuel units. When accounting for the levelized cost
of new transmission, the LCOE of wind and solar were $27.71 and $28.88
per MWh, respectively, compared to $33.53 and $64.19 per MWh for
combined cycle and combustion plants.\26\
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\26\ Energy Information Administration, ``Levelized Cost and
Levelized Avoided Cost of New Generation Resources in the Annual Energy
Outlook 2020,''
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https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf.
Additionally, investment in large interregional transmission
buildout to optimize the grid as a whole has broad economic benefits.
In fact, efficiencies and access to cheap renewables facilitated by a
nationwide power system would save U.S. consumers an estimated $47.2
billion annually.\27\ The National Renewable Energy Laboratory also
finds that stitching together the nation's electrical grid through a
nationwide HDVC network would provide ratepayers $2.50 in benefits for
each dollar invested.\28\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\27\ MacDonald, Clack Et Al., ``Future Cost-Competitive Electricity
Systems and Their Impact on U.S. CO2 Emissions,'' January
25, 2016, https://
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
www.vibrantcleanenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Future_cost-
competitive_electricity_syst.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\28\ National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Interconnections Seam
Study,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/seams.html.
Finally, the package of transmission lines in the MISO Multi-Value
Portfolio (MVP) approved by the MISO Board of Directors in 2011 provide
reliability benefits, relieve congestion, create a well-functioning
energy marketplace and deliver energy from renewable resources that
benefit customers. In short, investing in transmission provides
multiple benefits.
c. With regard to transmission costs associated with
renewables that are a large distance from the consumer, what are your
thoughts on cost allocation for those transmission projects?
Under FERC rules and court directives, costs should be allocated to
those who benefit. Typically, there is some form of cost-sharing across
different entities. Cost allocation policies should recognize the full
regional benefits of significant interregional transmission, including
reliability, effects on delivered energy costs, and access to low-cost
resources. Many RTOs are currently discussing additional benefit
metrics in the transmission planning process to recognize the full
plethora of benefits transmission provides. The requisite portion of
those costs should be allocated to reflect regional benefits to all
beneficiaries in the region, regardless of their utility's or
customers' contractual status with the new project. The number of
benefits that accrue to customers from a robust transmission grid, or
the harm that comes from the lack of one, can simply not be overstated.
2. In his discussion with you, Mr. Casten noted that there are very
few jobs associated with operating a wind and solar plant and because
of that, operating costs were low.
a. Do you agree with Mr. Casten that operational wind and
solar generation provide few jobs?
According to the 2020 U.S. Energy and Employment Report (USEER),
solar and wind operations rank first and second, respectively, for
employment in the U.S. electric power generation sector, each exceeding
that of all other generator types.\29\ Solar and wind plants employ
over 350,000 Americans across the nation.\30\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\29\ NASEO and EFI, 2020 U.S. Energy and Employment Report,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a98cf80ec4eb7c5cd928c61/t/
5ee78423c6fcc20e01b83896/1592230956175/USEER+2020+0615.pdf, p. 40.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\30\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is no direct relationship between operating costs and total
job growth in the solar and wind sectors. The growth of employment in
the solar and wind sectors has been increasing even though O&M costs in
both sectors have been decreasing. Solar and wind employment in the
electric power generation sector increased by 2.4% and 3.2%,\31\
respectively, in 2019 and was expected to continue to grow by 7% and 4%
in 2020 prior to the pandemic.\32\ According to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS) Occupational Outlook Handbook, solar panel installers
and wind turbine service technicians are expected to be the fastest
growing jobs from 2018-2028.\33\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\31\ Ibid.
\32\ Ibid, pp.58-61.
\33\ U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, ``Fastest Growing
Occupations, Occupational Outlook Handbook,'' https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
fastest-growing.htm, accessed August 24, 2020.
b. On average, how many employees, union and otherwise, are
required to operate a fully constructed and functioning wind or solar
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
powered generation unit in MISO?
Jobs in the renewable sector span across the manufacturing,
construction, wholesale trade, professional and business services,
utility, and other industries. The utility-scale solar sector has high
labor productivity with decreasing transaction costs per unit of
capacity deployed.\34\ The MISO region employs about three\35\ solar
O&M jobs\36\ per MW\37\ of front-of-meter solar capacity. According to
the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a utility-scale wind farm
requires about five to seven workers to maintain every 100 MW of a wind
project with a lifecycle of 25 years.\38\ Lower operational costs for
renewable facilities translate to lower costs for ratepayers, compared
to more employment-intensive or higher-risk generation technologies,
like nuclear power.\39\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\34\ The Solar Foundation, ``Solar Jobs Census 2019,'' https://
www.solarstates.org/#states/solar-jobs/2019.
\35\ The Solar Foundation, ``Solar Jobs Census 2019,'' https://
www.solarstates.org/#states/solar-jobs/2019, accessed August 24, 2020,
and Clean Energy Canada, ``Clean energy opportunities are spread across
the country,''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://canwea.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Postcard_Opportunities-
spread-across-the-country_20190521.jpg, accessed August 24, 2020.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\36\ Number of jobs calculated by aggregating MISO state job
numbers using The Solar Foundation State Map and Canadian Wind Energy's
Manitoba webpage.
\37\ MISO, ``Planning Year 2020-2021 Wind & Solar Capacity
Credit,'' https://
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
cdn.misoenergy.org/
2020%20Wind%20&%20Solar%20Capacity%20Credit%20Report408144.pdf, p. 3,
accessed August 24, 2020.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\38\ Keyser, David, Tegen, Suzanne, The Wind Energy Workforce in
the United States: Training, Hiring, and Future Needs, NREL, available
at https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/73908.pdf, p. 5, accessed August
24, 2020.
\39\ Davis, Lucas, ``The High Cost of Nuclear Jobs,'' The Energy
Institute at Haas, March 2020, https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2020/
03/09/the-high-cost-of-nuclear-jobs/.
i. On average, how many employees, union and otherwise,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
work at a nuclear plant in MISO?
According to the Nuclear Energy Agency, each nuclear unit employs
400 to 700 direct workers.\40\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\40\ NEA and IAEA, ``Measuring Employment Generated by the Nuclear
Power Sector,'' https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2018/7204-employment-
nps.pdf, p. 30, accessed August 24, 2020.
c. If wind and solar replaced all the nuclear plants in MISO,
what would be the net impact on direct daily operating jobs at the
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
generation unit (per your discussion with Mr. Casten)?
As noted above, operating nuclear power plants are more labor- and
thus more cost-intensive than renewable energy facilities. However,
replacing nuclear power plants with wind and solar facilities would
result in new jobs outside of power plant operation in construction,
wholesale trade, professional and business services and other
industries.
i. If wind and solar replaced all the nuclear plants in
MISO, what would be the net impact on emissions (including required
back up power for renewables to ensure reliability)?
Because both renewable and nuclear energy generation yield zero
emissions, there would be no difference in emissions. However, nuclear
energy generation produces harmful, radioactive waste which requires
extensive government regulation--a cost and environmental burden that
is eliminated with the shift to renewable energy.
Renewables do not need to be paired with non-renewable or
``backup'' sources of energy to replace nuclear facilities and/or be
integrated into the grid. Energy storage technology, demand response,
large regional power markets, and a robust transmission network can
ensure that electrons flow across the country at all hours of the day
and night. Due to cost reductions, renewables have been steadily
replacing other generation over the past few years\41\ with a 19% share
of total electricity generation in 2019, which is roughly equivalent to
today's share of nuclear generation.\42\ EIA's Annual Energy Outlook
forecasts that solar PV will be less costly than natural gas to replace
retiring coal and nuclear plants in the Southeast and Mid-Continent
regions, where solar generation is growing.\43\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\41\ Energy Information Administration, ``Renewable energy
explained,''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/renewable-sources/, accessed August
24, 2020.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\42\ Energy Information Administration, ``Annual Energy Outlook
2020: Electricity,'' https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/
AEO2020%20Electricity.pdf, p. 2, accessed August 24, 2020.
\43\ Ibid, p. 20.
3. In the hearing, you stated that renewables are not only the
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
cheapest form of energy, but also the most reliable.
a. Can you provide any facts or data that show wind and
solar being more reliable than other competing forms of energy?
Reliability is a system concept. A reliable system includes a
diverse portfolio of resources that together meet load at all times. A
high renewable energy portfolio can be part of a low-cost, low- carbon,
reliable power system.
As the share of wind and solar power in the U.S. electricity mix
has grown over time, official metrics indicate that system reliability
has been stable or improved. According to a 2019 report to Congress,
wind and solar power increased from 1% of generation in 2008 to 8% in
2018, while during the same period 9 of the 13 metrics the North
American Electric Reliability Corporation uses to assess reliability
were stable or improved.\44\ In fact, wind and solar have increasingly
provided the majority of generation in different regions without
impacting reliability. At certain points in 2019, wind sources supplied
56% of electricity demand in ERCOT and 67.3% of demand in SPP, while
solar supplied 59% of demand in CAISO--with bulk power system
reliability being maintained during each of these periods.\45\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\44\ Congressional Research Service, ``Maintaining Electric
Reliability with Wind and Solar Sources: Background and Issues for
Congress,'' June 10, 2019,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45764.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\45\ Ibid.
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In addition to providing low-cost, pollution-free energy,
renewables also deliver a suite of grid reliability services to help
keep the lights on during disturbances, including ride-through
capability, voltage and reactive power control, and flexibility,
frequency regulation, and primary frequency response.\46\ Wind and
solar can also improve power system resilience during extreme weather
conditions. Wind's reliability was demonstrated during the 2014 Polar
Vortex event, when turbines continued to turn even when freezing
temperatures disrupted natural gas pipelines and froze coal piles,
rendering many thermal plants inoperable. According to NERC, coal and
gas generators made up 81% of power outages during the event.\47\ Wind
and solar also remain resilient during heat waves, occurrences that
will only increase in frequency due to a changing climate. As described
above, CAISO CEO Steve Berberich attributed California's rolling
blackouts in part to a power plant that ``tripped`` in the high
heat,\48\ likely a natural gas plant that shut down during the
heatwave,\49\ as natural gas plants often struggle in extreme
temperatures.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\46\ American Wind Energy Association, ``Renewables on the grid:
Market-based solutions
support reliability,'' https://www.aweablog.org/renewables-grid-market-
based-solutions-support- reliability/.
\47\ Bade, Gavin, ``Polar Vortex set to test Midwest grids amid
FERC resilience debate,'' UtilityDive, January 30, 2019, https://
www.utilitydive.com/news/polar-vortex-set-to-test-midwest-grids-amid-
ferc-resilience-debate/547231/.
\48\ Kahn, Debra and Bermel, Colby, ``California has first rolling
blackouts in 19 years--and everyone faces blame,'' Politico, August 18,
2020,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/08/18/california-
has-first-rolling-blackouts-in-19-years-and-everyone-faces-blame-
1309757.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\49\ Gilbert, Alex and Bazilian, Moran, ``California power outages
underscore challenge of maintaining reliability during climate change,
the energy transition,'' UtilityDive,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/california-power-outages-underscore-
challenge-of-maintaining-reliability-du/583727/.
b. If MISO were to build wind and solar capacity equal to
capacity needs and resource adequacy in MISO, how much back up natural
gas generation would need to be on-line in order to ensure around the
clock reliability?
If entities built wind and solar capacity equal to capacity needs
and resource adequacy in MISO, then, by definition, no backup would be
needed. As noted above, renewables do not necessarily need to be paired
with non-renewable or ``backup'' sources of energy. Energy storage
technology, demand response and a robust transmission network can
ensure that electrons flow across the country at all hours of the day
and night. A very low-carbon portfolio can also be achieved with
natural gas included in the resource mix.
4. Capacity factor is a measurement for an energy sources'
reliability. According to the chart below (published by the Department
of Energy based on EIA data), wind and solar are the least reliable
forms of energy (https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-
capacity). Do you disagree with EIA capacity factor data?
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Respectfully, capacity factor is not a measurement of an energy
source's reliability. A capacity factor is a ratio of energy output
relative to maximum potential output over a period of time. For
example, a car with a top speed of 90 mph that typically cruises on the
highway at a speed of 65 mph and only reaches 90 mph one day a month
could be said to have a capacity factor of only 3%. This does not mean
the car is unreliable. In fact, a typical wind turbine generates
electricity 90% of the time.\50\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\50\ American Wind Energy Association, ``Basics of Wind Energy,''
https://www.awea.org/wind-101/basics-of-wind-energy/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Additionally, the capacity factors listed in the chart are an
aggregate of all wind and solar projects. As the technologies continue
to improve, so do their capacity factors. For example, according to
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, ``the average 2019 capacity
factor among [wind] projects built from 2014 through 2018 was 41%,
compared to an average of 31% among projects built from 2004 to 2012
and 25% among projects built from 1998 to 2001.''\51\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\51\ Lawrence Berkley National Lab, ``Wind Technologies Market
Report,''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://emp.lbl.gov/wind-technologies-market-report/.
Finally, most new utility-scale renewable development is not of
single-resource projects, but rather hybrid multi-generator or
generator-plus-energy storage projects that combine the unique benefits
of multiple technologies to achieve reliability and economic gains
rarely before seen in power generation.\52\ The capacity factors of
hybrid resources are absent from the EIA data presented here, but they
are by definition higher than any single-resource renewable generator.
A hybrid resource that includes energy storage can shift the electrons
generated by a variable power resource from times of surplus to times
of need. A hybrid resource with more than one generator can ensure that
it is always producing power from the most available, least costly fuel
of the day, be that sunlight, wind or water.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\52\ American Council on Renewable Energy, ``Multi-Resource
`Hybrid' Power Plants are the Present and Future of Energy
Generation,'' August 19, 2020, https://acore.org/multi-resource-
hybrid-power-plants-are-the-present-and-future-of-energy-generation/.
5. According to the MISO MTEP18 report (https://cdn.misoenergy.org/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
MTEP18%20Book%202%20Resource%20Adequacy 264875.pdf)
``MISO's ongoing goal is to support the achievement of
Resource Adequacy_to ensure enough capacity is available to
meet the needs of all consumers in the MISO footprint during
all time frames and at just, reasonable rates.''
Resource Adequacy credits in MISO are determined by Module E-
1 tariffs in MISO. This tariff determines the ability of the
source to provide resource adequacy support in MISO. According
to the MISO report titled ``Planning Year 2020-2021 Wind and
Solar Capacity Credit'' published in December 2019 (https://
cdn.misoenergy.org/2020%20
Wind%20&%20Solar%20Capacity%20Credit%20Report408144.pdf), the
system wide capacity credit for wind during the planning year
is 16.6 percent. Can you explain how MISO calculated the 16.6
percent capacity credit and what it means in terms of winds
capability to meet MISO resource adequacy?
This NREL fact sheet\53\ describes the terms. MISO and other
operators use Effective Load Carrying Capability to determine capacity
value. NERC has defined ELCC in this document.\54\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\53\ https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/57582.pdf
\54\ https://www.nerc.com/files/ivgtf1-2.pdf
6. According to a recent MISO report, MISO has an installed wind
capacity of 20,452MW, yet August 5, 2020 at 2:30pm CST--wind was
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
providing only 3,891 MWs of power to the MISO grid.
a. Why is over 80% of the wind capacity in MISO not
providing power to customers?
Very high penetrations of renewable energy are part of any low-
cost, low-carbon, reliable portfolio. Natural gas, coal, nuclear,
renewable, and all resources have planned and forced outages, and
exogenous factors that affect their availability. That does not mean
that any single resource or type of resource is available at all times,
which is why all systems utilize diverse portfolios. States and grid
operators need to assemble portfolios that work together to meet load
at all times.
b. Is that normal for the majority of wind capacity in MISO
not to be delivering power at any single point in time in the summer?
Very high penetrations of renewable energy are part of any low
cost, low carbon, reliable portfolio. Natural gas, coal, nuclear,
renewable, and all resources have planned and forced outages, and
exogenous factors that affect their availability. That does not mean
that any single resource or type of resource is available at all times
which is why all systems utilize diverse portfolios. States and grid
operators need to assemble portfolios that work together to meet load
at all times.
7. At 2:30pm CST on August 5, 2020, the LMP in MISO was
approximately $25.00. If according to the conversation between you and
Mr. Casten the marginal cost of wind was $0 and therefore wind would be
dispatching at any price over zero, can you explain why over 80% of the
wind in MISO is not dispatching when the market was paying $25.00?
Because of the free market, suppliers are not required to sell at
any given price. Marginal cost therefore refers to the cost of the
supplier to dispatch electricity, not the price at which the supplier
must sell electricity. When wind dispatches at prices above $0, it
earns a profit due to its zero-marginal cost.
Additionally, LMP refers to locational marginal price, a construct
that exists because transmission constraints preclude the formation of
any single market price for electricity in MISO at any given time.
Prices vary across localized nodes, called LMPs. An expanded and
updated transmission system would go a long way towards reducing this
price variability and deliver the cleanest, lowest-cost power to
consumers.
8. An article published March 19, 2019, by the Institute for Energy
Research (https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/the-grid/wind-
generation-fails-in-midwest-due-to-weather-events-polar-vortex-and-el-
nino/) analyzed the performance of wind generation during acute weather
events and included the following statement,
``During the polar vortex, wind turbines shut off when
temperatures dipped below minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit. There has been
little focus on developing wind turbines to operate below minus 20
degrees Fahrenheit because at these temperatures, there is not much
wind blowing. The economics of producing wind energy in such extreme
conditions would not justify the additional cost, according to wind
experts.''
a. How did renewables perform (what percent of capacity was
dispatched) during the polar vortex of 2014 and the polar vortex of
2019 in the regions impacted by each polar vortex?
In January 2014, freezing temperatures descended upon the Midwest
and Eastern regions of the United States, setting a winter peak demand
record in MISO, SPP, ERCOT, PJM, and NYISO, along with most of the
utilities in the Southeast.\55\ During this event, cold temperatures
disrupted natural gas pipelines and froze coal piles and mechanical
components at generators, rendering many inoperable.\56\ Fortunately,
wind energy output was well above expectations for its contribution
during the peak demand period, helping to keep the lights on for
millions of customers.\57\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\55\ Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, ``Recent Weather Impacts
on the Bulk Power System'', January 16, 2014.
\56\ Bade, Gavin, ``Polar Vortex set to test Midwest grids amid
FERC resilience debate,'' Utility Dive, January 30, 2019, https://
www.utilitydive.com/news/polar-vortex-set-to-test-midwest-grids-amid-
ferc-resilience-debate/547231/.
\57\ Goggin, Michael, ``Renewables on the grid: Market-based
solutions support reliability,'' July 19, 2017, https://
www.aweablog.org/renewables-grid-market-based-solutions-support-
reliability/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
For example, in an assessment of operational events and market
performance, PJM highlighted that wind generation performed well above
its capacity for the duration of the event, and performed at nearly 70%
of its maximum capacity on January 6th.\58\ Additionally, also on
January 6, 2014, the Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD) met record
winter electricity demand as wind provided about 13% of the utility's
electricity. NPPD explained that ``Nebraskans benefit from NPPD's
diverse portfolio of generating resources. Using a combination of fuels
means we deliver electricity using the lowest cost resources while
maintaining high reliability for our customers.'' During the Polar
Vortex, the utility also noted that ``NPPD did not operate its natural
gas generation because the fuel costs were up more than 300 percent
over typical prices.'' \59\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\58\ PJM, ``Operational Events and Market Impacts January 2014 Cold
Weather.'' May 9, 2014,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://pjm.com/-/media/library/reports-notices/weather-related/
20140509-presentation-of-january-2014-cold-weather-events.ashx?la=en.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\59\ Nebraska Public Power District, ``Nebraska Customers Set
Winter Peak,'' accessed January 2015, http://www.nppd.com/2014/
nebraska-customers-set-time-winter-peak-nppd/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
During the 2019 Polar Vortex, freezing temperatures also impacted
much of the Midwest and Eastern U.S. During the event, wind energy
output was again consistently well above the level planned for by MISO
and PJM during the period of highest electricity demand on January 30-
31. Wind output was even higher on the evening of January 29 when the
Midwest experienced very high demand.\60\ This was in part driven by an
intrusion of fast-moving, dense air which proportionally increased wind
turbine output.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\60\ Goggin, Michael, ``How transmission helped keep the lights on
during the Polar Vortex,'' February 14, 2019, https://www.aweablog.org/
transmission-helped-keep-lights-polar-vortex/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wind energy worked especially well during the 2019 Polar Vortex, as
wind output in MISO and PJM consistently outperformed grid operators'
expectations as seen through the figure below.\61\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\61\ American Wind Energy Association, ``How transmission helped
keep the lights on during the Polar Vortex,'' February 14, 2019,
https://www.aweablog.org/transmission-helped-keep-lights-polar-vortex/.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
During the 2019 Polar Vortex, Michigan utility DTE noted that its
277 wind turbines performed at full capacity for nearly the whole
week.\62\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\62\ DTE Energy, ``DTE's wind fleet weathers cold temperatures,''
February 1, 2019, https://empoweringmichigan.com/dtes-wind-fleet-
weathers-cold-temperatures/.
b. When people's health and safety depended on power during
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
the polar vortex, what were the best performing sources of energy?
Coal and natural gas constituted the greatest proportion of forced
outages in MISO from 2014 to 2019, the period of the two most recent
polar vortices. By comparison, while wind plants in MISO experienced 4
GW of shutoffs, this figure pales in comparison to the nearly 14 GW of
coal and natural gas facilities driven offline during the 2019 Polar
Vortex.\63\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\63\ MISO, ``MISO January 30-31 Maximum Generation Event
Overview,'' February 27, 2019, available at HYPERLINK
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://cdn.misoenergy.org/
20190227%20RSC%20Item%2004%20Jan%2030%2031%20Max%20Gen%20Event322139.pdf
, p. 5, accessed August 24, 2020.
9. As renewable penetration increases, should we put in place
requirements that ensure an ``American Made'' supply chain across the
spectrum from extraction to assembly?
According to the Department of Energy, domestically manufactured
content for recently installed wind projects in the U.S. was over 90%
for nacelle assembly, between 75 and 90% for towers, and between 50%
and 70% for blades and hubs.\64\ Additionally, 95% of the wind power
capacity installed in the U.S. last year was built by wind turbine
manufacturers with at least one American manufacturing facility.\65\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\64\ Department of Energy, ``2018 Wind Technologies Market
Report,'' 2018,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://emp.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/
wtmr_final_for_posting_8-9-19.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\65\ American Wind Energy Association, ``Wind Powers America Annual
Report 2019,'' April 2020, https://www.awea.org/resources/publications-
and-reports/market-reports/2019-u-s-wind- industry-market-reports.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Although U.S. global market share for solar technology has declined
in recent years, domestic solar photovoltaic manufacturing has
expanded. An August 2017 International Trade Commission report found
that, between 2012 and 2016, production capacity of U.S. PV module
manufacturers rose 34%, and domestic production expanded by 24%.\66\
Furthermore, a 2019 National Renewable Energy Laboratory report on U.S.
infrastructure availability for PV manufacturing found that this growth
in domestic demand could represent a significant catalyst for growth in
upstream industries. The NREL report noted that the U.S. has
significant steel and aluminum production capacity that could be
utilized for manufacturing extruding racking and module frames, and
further production capacity that could be adapted and scaled for other
important components such as inverters, encapsulants, flat glass, and
Tedlar.\67\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\66\ Congressional Research Service, ``Domestic Solar Manufacturing
and New U.S. Tariffs,'' February 2018, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/
IF10819.pdf.
\67\ Smith, Brittany L., and Robert Margolis, ``Expanding the
Photovoltaic Supply Chain in the United States: Opportunities and
Challenges,'' National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 2019, https://
www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/73363.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today's renewable energy supply chain is a testament to the
strength and diversity of American manufacturing, which plays a central
role in the nation's renewable energy success story.