The Clean Energy Future Blog

By Coalition for Green Capital

WASHINGTON — Joseph R. Biden Jr. assumed the presidency on Wednesday, bringing an expansive team of climate change experts to staff a White House that is preparing to focus on global warming in a way no other administration has done before.

Mr. Biden enters office with the largest team ever assembled inside the White House to tackle global warming and has installed policy experts at the State Department as well as the National Security Council, the president’s top advisory body for all foreign policy decisions. The Treasury Department, the Transportation Department and the office of Vice President Kamala Harris all will have dedicated climate policy staff, with more hires expected in the coming days throughout the government.

He has vowed to move quickly. In addition to rejoining the Paris Agreement on Wednesday, the new president intends to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline permit in his first hours in office. In the following days, people with knowledge of the team’s plans said, Mr. Biden will issue a series of executive orders that start the process of rolling back some of the Trump administration’s most debated environmental decisions — such as restricting the science that can be used to create new air and water protections — and lay the groundwork for ambitious new policies.

An executive order aimed at re-establishing scientific integrity in federal decision-making is high on the list, after four years of an administration that mocked or belittled the established science of climate change, elevated discredited climate denial studies and sidelined scientists who work on the issue. He also is expected to begin the process of forcing agencies to calculate the costs that carbon dioxide emissions impose upon society. By raising the costs of climate change, the Biden administration hopes to change cost-benefit analyses in a way that makes strong regulatory action more economically appealing and less susceptible to negative court rulings, two people familiar with the plans said.

Even fossil fuel advocates said they have been surprised by the intensity of the Biden team’s focus on climate change.

“I underestimated the level of seriousness that these guys had about this,” said Thomas J. Pyle, the president of the Institute for Energy Research, an organization that supports the expanded use of gas, oil and coal.

“They are devoting a lot of personnel to the issue set, and I think that just emphasizes the level of influence that the greens have on the Democratic Party,” Mr. Pyle said.

As with other policy areas, when it comes to climate policy the incoming president has relied heavily on old hands from the Obama administration.

He selected Gina McCarthy, who led the Environmental Protection Agency in the Obama administration, start up a new White House office on climate policy. Ali Zaidi, a former top energy official in the Obama administration’s White House Office of Management and Budget, will be Ms. McCarthy’s deputy.

Last week Mr. Biden appointed David Hayes, who served as the deputy interior secretary in both the Obama and Clinton administrations, to be a special assistant to the president for climate policy. Former Secretary of State John Kerry will serve as Mr. Biden’s international climate envoy.

In the coming days, two people with knowledge of new hires said, Mr. Biden is expected to announce several additions to Mr. Kerry’s team. They will include Jonathan Pershing, who served as the State Department special envoy for climate change under President Obama; Sue Biniaz, a former top climate lawyer for the State Department across multiple administrations who played a key role in drafting the Paris Agreement; and Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, who served as the deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury Department for energy and environment under Mr. Obama. Rick Duke, who served as a special assistant to Mr. Obama on climate change also is in talks to join Mr. Kerry’s team, the two people confirmed.

But Mr. Biden also has reached into the worlds of clean energy development, the youth climate movement and environmental justice activism for key deputy-level positions.

Cecilia Martinez, a prominent advocate for addressing racial inequality in environmental policies, will serve as senior director for environmental justice at the Council on Environmental Quality. Tarak Shah, a former Energy Department official under Mr. Obama is also expected to be chief of staff to Jennifer Granholm, the nominee to be Energy Secretary.

The mix of expertise was applauded by moderate Democrats as well as the liberal wing of the climate movement, which has been critical of some of the incoming president’s policy positions and personnel choices.

“The picks are genuinely encouraging,” said Evan Weber, political director of the Sunrise Movement, a group that pressed for the Green New Deal, an expansive suite of climate and economic policies that Mr. Biden has not embraced in full.

“These are serious advocates who understand the policy details, who have connections to the climate movement and the environmental justice movement,” Mr. Weber said.

Paul Bledsoe, a former climate adviser in the Clinton White House, said the picks showed the White House was becoming the “domestic nerve center” for climate change in the Biden administration.

Mr. Bledsoe said Mr. Hayes in particular, with whom he worked in the Interior Department in the 1990s, “has an encyclopedic knowledge of the connection between public lands and climate,” and called him “the perfect complement” to Ms. McCarthy, whose expertise is in mitigating emissions through clean air and water laws.

Working with Ms. McCarthy and Mr. Hayes in the White House Office of Climate Policy will be Sonia Aggarwal, who co-founded the San Francisco-based energy and environmental policy firm Energy Innovation. There, Ms. Aggarwal helped develop a model called the Energy Policy Simulator to help policymakers drill down on specific clean energy policies and measure in real time the costs and emissions impacts of various plans. She will serve as senior adviser for climate policy and innovation.

One of Ms. Aggarwal’s areas of expertise is the development of a clean energy standard — that is, the percentage of non-fossil fuel sources that utilities must reach in their power generation and sales. By setting a standard without a source-by-source prescription, the policy is supposed to allow businesses and utilities to determine the most efficient way of meeting the targets. With the Senate now controlled by Democrats, even with a razor thin margin, the possibility of passing such a mandate could be within reach.

Maggie Thomas, who served in climate adviser roles in the presidential campaigns of Governor Jay Inslee of Washington and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, will serve as Ms. McCarthy’s chief of staff.

Jahi Wise, who was a policy director for the Coalition for Green Capital, a nonprofit group that works to drive investment in clean energy, will be a senior adviser for climate policy and finance.

The expansive White House team, which is not subject to Senate confirmation, has provoked consternation among Republicans. Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, who will be the top Republican on the Senate Energy Committee, said he believed increased energy innovation and “not the appointment of countless unchecked czars” would be best for both the economy and the environment.

James P. Pfiffner, an emeritus professor of public policy at George Mason University and an expert on the presidency, noted that presidents have increasingly centralized control in the White House by creating special positions around policies of high importance, with mixed results.

A new White House climate office staffed with at least five people is a lot, he said, and a White House “czar” like Ms. McCarthy would have her challenges.

“White House staffers do not have the authority to make decisions on spending or personnel,” he said. “Certainly, they can be powerful, but only to the extent that their policy area is of primary importance to the president.”

By Coalition for Green Capital

WASHINGTON – Coalition for Green Capital today celebrated the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as President and Vice President and welcomed their focus on winning the battle against climate change and achieving full employment by fall 2022.

As Senator, Harris cosponsored the National Climate Bank Act, and President Biden in July endorsed “innovative financing mechanisms that leverage private sector dollars to maximize investment in the clean energy revolution.” CGC supports the Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator, a bill passed twice by the House of Representatives in 2020.

“At a moment when we face tremendous challenges as a country, we’re proud to congratulate President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris” said Reed Hundt, founder and CEO of the Coalition for Green Capital. “Throughout the campaign, President Biden and Vice-President Harris made clear that they are committed to tackling climate change, creating good jobs and building a country that prioritizes equity and justice.”

“A clean energy accelerator is the kind of tool that has strong support from the Biden White House and from members of congress on both sides of the aisle,” said Jeffrey Schub, executive director of the Coalition for Green Capital. “We’re excited to continue our work to unleash the power of a nationwide green bank to create jobs and combat climate change.”

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About the Coalition for Green Capital
Coalition for Green Capital is a  501c3 nonprofit determined to halt climate change and further the transition from carbon to clean power as the platform for the American and global economies by advocating for, creating and implementing green bank finance institutions.

By Coalition for Green Capital

Currently serves as policy director at CGC as it works to establish a Clean Energy Accelerator 

Will work with Gina McCarthy 

WASHINGTON—The Coalition for Green Capital’s Jahi Wise will head to the Biden White House to serve as a senior adviser for climate policy and finance in the administration’s Office of Domestic Climate Policy. He currently serves as CGC’s policy director and has been an integral part of the effort to create a national Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator, based on the proven green bank model. Learn more about the Accelerator.   

“There is no time to waste in the country’s fight against climate change and restoring the economy. Jahi’s policy savvy will help the Biden Administration accelerate its efforts to create jobs of the future that tackle climate change,” CGC CEO Reed Hundt said. “Jahi will make sure that communities that have been left behind and hardest hit by climate change are thought of first as the Biden Administration looks to build back a better and cleaner country.”

“Jahi has been critical to the significant progress we made in 2020 toward establishing a national Clean Energy Accelerator to create clean energy jobs. He has made sure that it will benefit individuals and communities hardest hit by climate change,” CGC Executive Director Jeff Schub said.  “We will miss Jahi at CGC but know that the impact he will have at the White House will benefit the country and left behind communities immensely.” 

Previously, Wise was General Counsel and Head of New Markets Strategy for BlocPower, an energy technology company that finances deep electrification projects in small to mid-sized buildings and an attorney. Prior to BlocPower, Wise was an associate in the Energy and Infrastructure Projects practice at Skadden Arps and a community organizer with the Industrial Areas Foundation in Washington, D.C. 

Wise received his JD from Yale Law School and his MBA from Yale School of Management, where he focused his studies on community economic development and clean energy finance. Jahi received his BA in Political Science and Economics from Morehouse College. He is a member of the District of Columbia bar and the Maryland bar.

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By Coalition for Green Capital

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jan. 14, 2021
press@coalitionforgreencapital.com

2 Independent Reports Point to the Economic Recovery, Job Creation & Deep Decarbonization Potential of Clean Energy Accelerator

 

WASHINGTON—Two independent reports released today by the Analysis Group and The Brattle Group found that a national Clean Energy Accelerator would have an outsized impact helping the United States recover from the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and also speed up the country’s deep decarbonization and Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) efforts.

The report by experts at the Analysis Group focuses on the near-term economic and ESG benefits created by the Accelerator’s investments in deploying clean energy technologies and sustainable infrastructure. The report by experts at The Brattle Group looks at the long-term decarbonization impact of the Accelerator.

“The Accelerator fits the economic-stimulus profile of being targeted, timely, temporary, and transformative, while also being opportunistic, simple, and strategically focused on the prize,” Analysis Group authors Susan Tierney and Paul Hibbard wrote.

“The Accelerator is expected to be a powerful mechanism for gaining several kinds of complementary benefits, in economic recovery, decarbonization, social justice, and market enhancement,” Brattle Group authors Frank Graves, Bob Mudge, Roger Lueken and Tess Counts wrote. “We have much in the way of highly effective clean energy technologies today, but we need to deploy them more quickly to obtain the near-term and long-term benefits of accelerated decarbonization.”

Both reports evaluate specific projects and barriers to private investment in clean energy technologies and sustainable infrastructure that will be addressed by the Accelerator. The Brattle Group’s paper identifies specific barriers to private investment that halt the rapid and widespread adoption of clean energy technologies and sustainable infrastructure, as well as tools the Accelerator will use to overcome those barriers. 

Key points from the report:

• The Accelerator would have a timely impact and would get money rapidly into the economy by supporting private investment in commercially ready clean energy technologies and sustainable infrastructure.
• With interest rates currently so low, the federal government can afford to support an aggressive infusion of economic recovery resources into clean energy technologies and sustainable infrastructure.
• The Accelerator would provide near-term employment and economic stimulus, as well as an equitable transition to a low-carbon economy.
• The Accelerator is uniquely able to “invest federal dollars to stimulate the economy while also addressing racial injustice, public health, and the climate crisis.”
• The urgency of decarbonizing requires the deployment of commercially ready or near commercially ready technologies and sustainable infrastructure not solely support for R&D on innovative clean energy technologies.
• Many clean energy technologies and sustainable infrastructure that are commercially ready for deployment that have a positive expected net present value but are not always being actively deployed and/or are well below the pace and level of adoption that is needed for material decarbonization and ESG efforts.

The reports lay out examples of how the Accelerator would achieve economic recovery, job creation and decarbonization and ESG goals, including: retrofitting and modernizing homes and communities where low and moderate income households live; funding “smart surface” infrastructure deployments to reduce urban heat islands, lower energy bills, mitigate heat-related public health impacts, and reduce emissions of GHGs and other pollutants that create adverse public health impacts; and financing the electrification of municipal bus fleets. 

Read the Analysis Group report and summary; read the Brattle Group report and summary. 

At the federal level, the U.S. twice passed funding for a Clean Energy Accelerator that would help achieve the decarbonization and ESG goals discussed above while also helping to create and fund state and local green banks like the one outlined in today’s reports. President-elect Joe Biden included the Accelerator in his climate plan and Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris backed the Senate effort.

Green banks currently exist in over 14 cities and states across the country and have supported nearly $4 billion in investment in clean energy projects in their states and local communities, and much of this investment has been targeted toward low- and moderate-income households and communities. View a list of projects that have been supported by already existing state and local green banks.

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By Jeffrey Schub

The massive, consolidated bill Congress passed before the new year has a wide range of COVID-19 relief and energy provisions. Included inside is the Energy Act of 2020, authorizing $35 billion of new funds for energy programs, reforming the DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) loan guarantee programs under Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and extending tax credits that the federal government awards to equity investors in and owners of certain kinds of renewable energy projects. This collective set of policies, combined with critical new limitations on the emission of HFCs, is being hailed by some as the most significant energy or climate bill ever passed by Congress.

As important and laudable as these measures are, they mostly add up to a continuation of the status quo when it comes to federal support for clean energy. The spending is directed to research, development and demonstration of a range of innovative, pre-commercial technologies, including advanced nuclear and carbon capture. Reforms to the much maligned and largely dormant Title XVII loan guarantee programs double down on its focus on innovative, pre-commercial technologies. And the tax credit extensions merely press the repeat button on the cycle of tax extenders that has played on loop for over a decade.

What is missing are policies that address all three of the core components of President-Elect Biden’s climate platform:  economic revitalization, deployment and justice.

Nearly 20M Americans are still collecting unemployment benefits. How many jobs will be created through new R&D spending? How much of the $35 billion in new DOE funds for innovative technologies goes to the widespread deployment of commercially ready clean energy technologies that must begin immediately to meet President-Elect Biden’s goals of 100% decarbonization of the power sector by 2035 and economy-wide net zero carbon emissions by 2050? And how much of the new funding can and will be used for targeted investment in underserved communities that suffer disproportionate effects from climate change? The answer to all three questions is the same – none.

That means the incoming Biden Administration has its work cut out for it if it wants to meet its climate and economic commitments. The new funds for innovative clean energy technologies and the reforms to the Title XVII loan guarantee programs may or may not help in meeting these commitments, and whatever help they may provide will be small and not immediate relative to the overall need for large-scale and rapid decarbonization, which will require $2 trillion in combined private and public investment.  Because this $35 billion in new funding cannot meaningfully help the Biden Administration begin to meet its decarbonization goals, it means the Biden Administration will need to seek much larger appropriations for investments in clean energy technologies, likely an amount of at least several hundred billions of dollars to meet its stated goals.

What else is needed to meet Biden’s Climate Goals
The Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator (The Accelerator) is the flexible, purpose-built, independent and non-partisan non-profit that the Biden Administration needs to make meaningful progress towards its climate and economic objectives. With a $100B up-front capitalization from Congress, the Accelerator will create 4M jobs within four years. It is heavily deployment-focused, investing across sectors to specifically achieve deep market penetration. And, because it is an independent non-profit, it is uniquely capable of targeting its investment, directly and through state green bank partners, into disadvantaged communities.

In fact, 40% of investment will be required to flow to those communities to deliver jobs, savings, cleaner air, and new businesses. And because that $100B will create nearly half a trillion in total investment due to private sector-leverage, the policy has incredible bang-for-the buck when it comes to meeting the Biden Administration’s $2T investment target.

Here are specific examples of what the Accelerator will do:

• Investments in grid modernization and resilience are desperately needed to enable an electricity system with variable, distributed resources, storage and vehicle-to-grid power flows. And that grid must be able to withstand the growing impacts of climate change. No funding was provided in the Energy Act of 2020 to support such investments. And utilities can no longer be relied upon to be the sole drivers of this investment. In 2018, regulators approved only $2 billion of the $14 billion in grid modernization investments requested by utilities. Utilities are in a bind – they know that these investments are essential to the future of their businesses AND to meeting their social obligation of providing reliable service. But regulators won’t allow them to rate base the investments seen as slightly beyond what is immediately justified. This gap is precisely what the Accelerator will address through investments in transmission and grid resilience measures.
• Any pathway to broad and rapid decarbonization requires rapid electrification of both transportation and building energy use. Electrify America found that households across the country will save money by converting their home and vehicle energy use to electricity, and that the only barrier is the trillions of dollars of upfront capital needed, which is then repaid over time. There is a small pot of money available for R&D related to electric vehicles in the Energy Act of 2020l, but nothing for deployment, nothing for charging infrastructure, and nothing at all for electrification. This is a second area that Accelerator will focus on and invest in. The Accelerator will help create the hundreds of new businesses necessary to serve this market.
• And last but not least, there is no funding at all in the Energy Act of 2020 to support low and moderate-income, disadvantaged or communities of color, or to support a just transition for communities directly harmed by the transition. In fact, if anything the bill doubles down on the existing inequalities with the extension of the investment tax credit. The Accelerator is required to invest 40% of its capital in these communities. This means it will provide capital to start new businesses to serve those communities. It will provide a combination of grants and low cost financing to electrify low and moderate-income households first, not last, in this country. It will help communities prepare for the impacts of climate change with smart surfaces and distributed micro-grids (combining distributed generation with storage). None of this is possible under existing programs or through the Energy Act.

Investment beginning as soon as possible through the Accelerator is how the Biden Administration can achieve its climate and economic commitments. There are more than two dozen specific investment examples, showing precisely how and where the Accelerator will invest to crowd-in private capital investment or otherwise make investments that provide large-scale climate, public health or economic benefits to communities that are economically disadvantaged or at the front-line of the transition from dirty to clean energy (e.g., communities dependent on coal-fired generation for jobs and local tax revenues) . Not one of these investment or programmatic structures can be implemented with an existing federal clean energy program.

Permanent Limitations of the LPO
There is new hope that the Title XVII loan guarantee programs can be revived to play a similar role with regards to innovative, pre-commercial technologies (e.g., advanced batteries, advanced vehicle manufacturing, electrification of industrial combustion processes, CCS, small modular nuclear generation). And there are genuinely worthy and important reforms to the Title XVII loan guarantee programs included in the Energy Act of 2020, including the removal or reduction of some of the applicant fees and moving the obligation of an applicant to pay for DOE’s costs to process an application to financial close. But make no mistake – there is nothing in the Energy Act, Title XVII and DOE’s regulations and practice thereunder that indicates the Title XVII loan guarantee programs can do much, if any, of what the Accelerator is designed to do.

The Title XVII loan guarantee programs are not sitting on $40 billion of cash, as has been reported. DOE has $40 billion in loan guarantee authority, which either Congress will have to appropriate additional funds or a borrower will have to pay in credit subsidy cost to unlock. Only 10% of that loan guarantee authority is for the deployment of renewable energy system and energy efficiency measures – the rest is for nuclear power, advanced fossil fuels and advanced vehicle manufacturing.

The Title XVII loan guarantee programs are limited to providing loan guarantees for pre-commercial technologies – i.e. they cannot be used to spur the broad and rapid deployment of proven commercial technologies. These programs have never provided a loan guarantee for distributed generation or microgrids. DOE has no legal ability to use these programs to direct its financing support to targeted communities. And it hasn’t provided a loan guarantee for a renewable energy project in almost a decade (and the last project approved for a loan guarantee was in 2016 for a CCS project, and this project has yet to reach financial close).

Let’s hope the Title XVII loan guarantee programs can be fixed to do what they are meant to do – spur the development of innovative, pre-commercial technologies. But let’s also hope the new administration does not put misplaced or oversized confidence in the ability of these programs to help meet its climate goals.

There is much that is right and necessary with more federal funding support for basic clean energy R&D and financing support for innovative, pre-commercial clean energy technologies. And there is much that is right and necessary with trying to make the Title XVII loan guarantee programs more accessible and customer-friendly. But we cannot pretend and would be greatly mistaken to presume that these types of policies and programs will actually create the just and rapid clean energy transformation that President-Elect Biden was elected to undertake.

For that, the new administration needs the Accelerator.

By Coalition for Green Capital

Maine’s ambitious plan for transitioning to a clean-energy economy can’t happen without lots of money, funding that’s in short supply during a state budget crunch and pandemic-caused economic downturn.

Some lawmakers and business people say a proposed new source of capital could help: a state-chartered “green bank.”

Green bank advocates met Monday for a Zoom webinar sponsored by the Coalition for Green Capital, a nonprofit that seeks to drive investment in clean energy.

Speakers on the call included Henry Beck, Maine’s state treasurer, who said his office receives calls from investors and rating agencies asking about the state’s commitment to fighting climate change. Also present was Catherine Culley, who builds energy-efficient homes and is a principal at Redfern Properties in Portland, as well as David Gibson, a solar design specialist at ReVision Energy, and Rep. Stanley Paige Zeigler, D-Montville, who has proposed legislation around a clean energy fund.

Green banks leverage public funds to attract private investment. They typically help raise money to combat the impacts of climate change, with measures such as building resilient roads and bridges, making homes more energy efficient and less dependent on fossil fuels, and subsidizing electric transportation.

There are 15 green banks in the country today that have steered more than $5 billion into clean energy projects since 2010, when Connecticut created the first one. Efforts to establish a green bank using state bonds haven’t gained traction in the Maine Legislature, although a new bill is being readied for the upcoming session.

Read the full story.