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WHAT MANCHIN’S LATEST STANCE SAYS ABOUT DEMOCRATIC AGENDA: Breaking through the quiet of a congressional recess period, key vote Sen. Joe Manchin has come out against a proposal within President Joe Biden‘s Build Back Better agenda to fund an additional $4,500 tax credit for those who buy a union-built, made-in-America electric vehicle.
Manchin, who has been almost single-handedly responsible for whittling down Biden’s climate spending bill, was speaking to reporters at an event in West Virginia hosted by Toyota, a foreign nonunion automaker that has called the extra credit “blatantly biased.”
But Democratic proponents of giving U.S. automakers and their workers an inside track at dominating the burgeoning EV market are not going down without a fight.
The White House this morning in a press release circulated a AP story with the headline, “Biden bill includes boost for union-made electric vehicles,” promoting the credit, which would add to a $7,500 incentive for all EVs in the Democratic bill.
To underscore the point, the White House announced that Biden will tour a General Motors electric vehicle assembly plant in Detroit next Wednesday. GM’s plant, of course, is unionized and one of just a few in the U.S. that assembles electric vehicles.
A conflict in Democratic agenda: The dispute shows how Democrats will have to make choices as the House and Senate finalize their reconciliation spending bill. They are seeking to accomplish the twin goals of boosting deployment of clean energy and electric vehicles while also building up U.S. manufacturing of new technologies to create a strong domestic workforce.
Past iterations of clean energy tax credits have focused on deployment first, and been agnostic of where a given technology is produced, said Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners. That formula has worked to spur more wind and solar on the grid.
“The goal was to green the energy mix. It worked,” Book told Josh.
But now, Biden and Democrats are pursuing an overhaul of Congress’ methods for doling out clean energy tax credits, basing the value of many of the incentives on whether projects are made in America by union workers.
Attaching strings to a tax subsidy-driven push for more clean energy and EVs by favoring domestic sourcing could slow deployment, a potential problem Josh has written about.
Labor ‘front and center’: Despite that concern, Biden is unlikely to back down.
In August, the Big 3 U.S. automakers and union leaders flanked Biden during a White House event in which he announced a new EV sales target and unveiled stricter standards for fuel-efficiency and tailpipe emissions for cars and light trucks. At that event, Biden warned about the risk of ceding the electric vehicle market to China and assured union leaders that transitioning to EVs — which require fewer workers to make — will provide job opportunities.
“The White House and its allies have put labor issues front and center,” Book said. “So whatever the economic and climate imperatives might be, the political imperative is to keep labor on its side.”
Now to be sure, Manchin is not pushing back on the boost for U.S.-made EVs because he’s worried it will slow deployment (he framed it as an example of picking winners and losers in a competitive marketplace).
Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, a main sponsor of the provision, called out Manchin for inconsistency, noting that she previously worked with Manchin to protect pensions for members of the United Mine Workers of America union.
“Some argued his bill was unfair and was picking winners and losers,” Stabenow noted. “This issue is no different. Standing up for hard-working Americans is always the right thing to do.”
We’ll see who blinks first.
Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers Josh Siegel (@SiegelScribe) and Jeremy Beaman (@jeremywbeaman). Email [email protected] or [email protected] for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.
FOSSIL FUEL LANGUAGE SURVIVES COP26 AGREEMENT — FOR NOW: As tradition dictates, negotiations over an agreement to come out of the U.N. climate summit are expected to go down to the wire on what’s supposed to the last day of COP26 in Glasgow.
The latest draft of the political document, called the cover decision, is slightly watered down from an initial proposal circulated this week.
The text still calls for a phase-out of fossil fuels subsidies and coal, but in a weakened state. It now seeks the end of “unabated” coal power, meaning without carbon capture, and of “inefficient” subsidies for fossil fuels. But it’s surprising to see that language on fossil fuels survive into the last day, given the Paris agreement made no mention of the need to limit consumption of coal, oil, and gas despite their responsibility for warming the planet. Countries like China and Saudi Arabia are expected to keep pushing for its removal.
The new text also recalls the failure of wealthy countries to fulfill their finance pledges to developing nations “with deep regret” and calls on developed countries to fully deliver on the goal of $100 billion in annual financial assistance through 2025.
‘BEYOND OIL AND GAS ALLIANCE’ LAUNCHES AT COP: A group of governments led by Costa Rica and Denmark launched the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance yesterday in Glasgow, aimed at phasing out oil and gas production and keeping fossil fuel resources in the ground.
In joining the alliance, which includes Ireland, France, and the state of California, members determined “to set an end date for their oil and gas exploration and extraction and curtail new licensing.”
TOYOTA: DEVELOPING WORLD NOT READY FOR ELECTRIC-VEHICLES-ONLY BY 2040: A spokesperson for the Japanese automaker said that in many countries across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, an “environment suitable for promoting full zero-emission transport has not yet been established,” the Washington Examiner’s Christopher Hutton reports.
Toyota was notably absent from a declaration that a mix of governments and other automobile manufacturers signed on Wednesday, committing them to a target of all new car and van sales being zero-emissions vehicles by 2035 for “leading markets” and 2040 for the rest.
Volkswagen also declined to agree to the declaration, while majors Ford Motor Company, General Motors, and Volvo did sign on.
ANTI-FOSSIL CAMPAIGN TARGETS US AMONG THE ‘FOSSIL FUELLED 5’: Organizers behind the “Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty,” a campaign to secure wider commitment among governments and companies to end fossil fuel use, are targeting five major economies for supporting fossil fuel investment despite the IEA calling for an immediate end to oil and gas exploration.
A new report details more than $150 billion worth of public support for fossil fuels among the “Fossil Fuelled 5” — the U.S., U.K., Norway, Australia, and Canada — since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
“There’s an alarming gap between what wealthy nations are saying and what they are doing,” said Freddie Daley, the report’s lead author, adding that “they seem to be quite content to make pledges and promises with one hand, while expanding and subsidising fossil fuel production to the tune of billions on the other.”
POLL: REPUBLICAN WORRY ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE DOWN: More congressional Republicans have publicly acknowledged climate change and its causes in recent years, with the Senate GOP’s global emissions plan being a case in point. But a new poll signals that concern about climate change within the party’s rank-and-file has decreased.
The share of Republicans agreeing with the notion that climate change poses a “serious problem” for the United States has fallen by about 10 percentage points since 2014, per a new joint Washington Post-ABC poll.
Some 39% of Republicans currently believe climate change to be a serious problem, whereas the number stood at about 49% seven years ago.
PLUS…A BOOST FOR NUCLEAR: The bipartisan infrastructure bill, which is set to be signed into law on Monday, devotes about $8.5 billion to fund advanced reactor development and support the nation’s economically compromised plants. A rare blend of analysts and elected officials across party lines have recognized nuclear power both as integral to maintaining a reliable grid and cutting carbon emissions, as Jeremy reports for our latest magazine issue.
The Rundown
Bloomberg EU’s climate chief signals natural gas will be included in green transition
Reuters China wields political might to cool coal prices, but winter looms
Wall Street Journal South Africa can’t afford to quit coal. Will rich countries pay for the transition?
New York Times Calls for climate reparations reach boiling point in Glasgow talks
Calendar
TUESDAY | NOV. 16
10:30 a.m. Rayburn 2123 The House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a joint subcommittee hearing entitled “Securing America’s Future: Supply Chain Solutions for a Clean Energy Economy.”
THURSDAY | NOV. 18
10:00 a.m. House Natural Resources Committee Republicans will host a forum entitled “Supporting African Communities: Highlighting International Conservation Efforts Worldwide.”
