In its pursuit of a U.S. clean energy transition, the Biden administration has placed a high priority on equity and environmental justice to ensure that every household and community benefits from a decarbonized grid.

The Department of Energy is pursuing this goal on federal level with its new Inclusive Transmission Planning project, which will provide technical assistance to grid planners seeking to integrate equity and community input into their projects upfront, rather than as an add-on, NetZero Insider’s K Kaufmann reports. 

In Massachusetts, programs aimed at incentivizing storage are lagging on equity, according to a new study, NetZero New England correspondent Jon Lamson writes. Two of the programs have no incentives targeting low-income customers, and one that does is seeing minimal response from EJ communities. 

In both cases, at least part of the answer is designing programs based on early, intensive community engagement. 

Lamson also reports on efforts by Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey to move ahead with clean energy siting and permitting changes via special provisions in a supplementary budget bill. Healey is focusing on basic permitting reforms with bipartisan support to avoid the conflicts that sunk those efforts during the legislature’s regular session. 

Meanwhile, James Downing has been following the story on the RTOs that continue to lobby EPA for changes to its rules requiring existing coal plants to either retrofit with carbon capture by 2032 or shut down by 2039. As part of an appeal effort, ERCOT, MISO, PJM and SPP recently filed a joint brief arguing for “safety valve” provisions to prevent premature closures of coal plants that could affect system reliability. 

In our curated content, Inside Climate News exposes how Republican efforts to politicize environmental, social and governance efforts among top U.S. investment banks have resulted in some of them withdrawing from Climate Action 100+, an international group of investors seeking to push large corporate emitters to cut their greenhouse gases. 

The New York Times has reports on how emissions are affecting homeowners and buyers in California and New York. On the West Coast, insurers have abandoned homeowners in the San Bernardino mountains, which have been hit repeatedly by wildfires and blizzards, while in New York City, finding an affordable home often means buying in a flood zone where buyers must consider the cost of expensive repairs after a flood. 

Two months out from COP29 in Azerbaijan, Mukhtar Babayev, the host country’s minister of ecology and natural resources, made headlines this week with a proposal for 14 initiatives aimed at raising global climate action while avoiding the usual conflicts that inevitably water down final agreements at the annual conference. As reported by Renewable Matter, Babayev is calling for a global commitment to increase the deployment of energy storage six-fold over 2022 levels by 2030 and finance 80 million kilometers ― that’s 49.7 million miles ― of grid upgrades and additions by 2040. 

But global commitments, however ambitious, are only as effective as the countries that implement them, and according to The New York Times, despite President Joe Biden’s leadership on a global drive to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030, those “super pollutant” emissions are increasing across the U.S. because of its booming oil and gas industry. 

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