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The stories we’ve been covering in NetZero Insider show that small towns can make big news, starting with Carrboro, N.C., which has filed suit against Duke Energy alleging its inaction and deception on climate change has cost the municipality millions, our James Downing reports.
Similarly, dozens of disadvantaged and environmental justice communities across the country have been developing their own climate action plans, helped by the Department of Energy’s Community Local Energy Action Program, John Cropley writes.
Jon Lamson covered the New England Energy Summit, where Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey called for cross-state collaboration on procuring clean energy and transmission and said the region would continue to move on its decarbonization efforts, which would not be derailed by the incoming Trump administration.
Similarly, White House Senior Adviser John Podesta opened the Department of Energy’s Deploy 2024 Conference in D.C. with a call to action to the private sector to continue its support for clean energy, K Kaufmann reports. Podesta challenged clean tech investors to do more and do it faster.
Moving to our curated content, The Wall Street Journal notes that President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act may run into solid opposition from Republican lawmakers whose districts have benefited from millions of IRA grants and loans and the jobs those federal dollars have created.
But, The New York Times reports, Trump will have enormous power over large swathes of U.S. energy, climate and environmental policies, such as pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement again, opening public lands to private mining and drilling, and cutting staff at the EPA and moving the agency out of D.C.
The other big news on the federal beat was the Treasury Department’s long-awaited release of final rules on the Section 48, technology-neutral clean energy investment tax credit. Pv Magazine provides an overview of some of the core changes in the rules from Treasury’s previous proposed rules, such as extending the credit for co-located storage and for hydrogen storage facilities even if they are not currently storing hydrogen.
As Washington prepares for Trump, increasing attention will be focused on state- and local-level climate and energy policies. For example, an op-ed in the Virginia Mercury looks at the “climate denialism” implicit in the state’s plan for an ever increasing fleet of megawatt-guzzling hyperscale data centers while attempting to reach 100% clean energy by 2050.
Trellis (formerly GreenBiz) has a thoughtful piece on overcoming the misinformation driving resistance to renewable energy projects in rural communities by focusing on how revenue from these projects can actually help support family farms and communities, while also providing energy reliability to local residents.
Speaking of rural communities, Osceola, Ark., is getting 105 MW of solar paired with 160 MWh of energy storage to provide power to a new scrap metal recycling steel rebar mill, according to Renewables Now.
Meanwhile, Maine has become the latest New England state to sue fossil fuel companies ― Exxon, Shell, Chevron, BP and Sunoco ― and the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s main trade organization, for allegedly deceiving its residents about the role of their fossil fuel products in causing climate change, according to a write-up in pv Magazine. At this point, New Hampshire is the only state in the region that has not filed a similar suit.
Read on for this week’s Intelligence Report:
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