Fighting to save all the people

PRESENTED BY SEWER MUTANTS

At a White House meeting with Joe Biden yesterday, utility executives pledged to lobby hard for tax breaks for their industry. Before its death, Build Back Better included $320 billion in clean-energy and electric-vehicle credits as part of comprehensive Green New Deal-style social-infrastructure legislation. But now that it’s dead, corporate executives are ready to focus on getting only the tax incentives for their industry passed, while of course trying to make them more generous and less rigorous on climate. A lot of environmental organizations would like something passed as well.

These Woods Are Dark and Deep: Molly Taft takes a deep dive into Deep Green Resistance’s deep hatred of trans women, following up the frontline reports from E&E News’ Jael Holzman. Holzman tells Taft:

WINTER OLYMPICS BREAK: ALPINE SKIING

In a major win for climate hawks, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has approved Xcel Energy’s bright green future resource plan, which retires coal, rejects new gas plants, and adds 2.5 gigawatts of new solar by 2030. Bank.green is building a list of banks that refuse to do business with the fossil fuel industry.

I guess it’s good that the army believes global warming is real.

Ben Furnas, the former Director of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Climate and Sustainability, has been named the first executive director of Cornell University’s new climate initiative The 2030 Project. Madison Freeman is moving from the cleantech investment firm Energy Impact Partners to the White House, becoming climate envoy John Kerry’s senior advisor on clean energy and innovation. And environmental economist Helen Mountford recently became the president and CEO of the ClimateWorks Foundation, moving from the World Resources Institute.

The Department of Energy has shuffled around its org chart to support new and increased initiatives in the bipartisan infrastructure bill, establishing the office of the Under Secretary for Infrastructure to handle weatherization assistance, the Better Grid initiative, and supply chains. And they’re still hiring for the Clean Energy Corps.

Do you have Super Bowl fever? Or is it only a freakish, fossil-fueled heat wave bringing 90-degree weather to Los Angeles?

Hearings on the Hill:

• 10 AM: Senate Energy and Natural Resources
  "Clean" Hydrogen

—@climatebrad

Subscribe to Hill Heat

Climate science, policy, politics, and action