Public Policy

Rhodium Group has a new report out, Taking Stock 2024: US Energy and Emissions Outlook. Consistent with other analyses, they anticipate that US climate pollution will reach 32–43% below 2005 levels by 2030 based on current policies. Rhodium concludes:

“Developers face challenges with long interconnection queues, increasing local opposition to installations, onerous siting and permitting processes, lack of sufficient transmission capacity, continued supply chain constraints, and inflation … [rapid clean energy deployment] will not happen without additional policy action to overcome the non-cost barriers facing clean electricity deployment today, such as siting and permitting, interconnection, and supply chain challenges.”

After more than a year of negotiations, Congress approved the ADVANCE Act (Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy) yesterday, and sent it to President Biden for signature. 

The bill will give the Nuclear Regulatory Commission more flexibility to hire the staff it needs for a vastly increased pace of license applications. It will reduce fees for some applicants, require more timely processing of applications, facilitate licensing at retiring coal plants, and require work by the NRC to facilitate the export of advanced reactor technology.

When the Inflation Reduction Act was becoming law in 2022, some of the country’s leading energy researchers predicted a cut of 37 percent to 42 percent by 2030 compared to the level in 2005, in line with the Biden administration’s stated goal of reducing emissions by 40 percent by 2030. So how are things going 18 months after President Biden signed the IRA? And why?

Unlike his 2015 environmental encyclical, Laudato Si’, in which he scolded climate “deniers” and called for an “ecological conversion” among the faithful, the new document seeks to influence the next U.N. Climate Change Conference

It specifically calls on the United States and other wealthy countries to do more to help poor nations, which have contributed least to the climate crisis, before the COP28 talks in Dubai next month.

.Editor’s Note: One of our Members of Congress  found this document, derived from an analysis from the Biden administration in August 2022, helpful. The Inflation Reduction Act Delivers Affordable Clean Energy for Nevada The Inflation…

This rural, wind-swept basin, close to high-voltage transmission corridors, is well-situated for installing a massive wind farm to feed the nation’s growing need for renewable power. But this stretch of sagebrush country in southern Idaho is also the site of one of the darkest chapters of America’s past.

The Federal Trade Commission is soliciting public comments on its “Green Guides,” which seek to prevent companies from making deceptive environmental claims. If adopted, corporations could be barred from making misleading claims about everything from carbon offsets to composting — or risk fighting legal battles and paying steep fines.

Thousands of flat, federally owned acres filled with creosote bush provide a migratory pathway for desert bighorn sheep. All of that could soon change, with Hidden Valley sold off and opened for development under a bill set to be reintroduced to Congress this year. Growth around Las Vegas has long relied on one thing: public lands. The …

More than 190 countries have reached a landmark deal for protecting the biodiversity of the world’s oceans, agreeing for the first time on a common framework for establishing new protected areas in international waters. The treaty, whose text was finalized Saturday night by diplomats at the U.N. headquarters after […]