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UPDATE: By a vote of 69 to 30, the US Senate on 10 August
passed the $1.2-trillion infrastructure plan, HR 3684, which will now move to
the House of Representatives.
"Today, the Senate takes a decades-overdue step to
revitalize America's infrastructure and give our workers, our
businesses, our economy, the tools to succeed in the 21st Century,"
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat-New York, said from the
Senate floor prior to the vote.
Less than a fortnight earlier, 17 Republicans joined the
50-member Democrat caucus in the US Senate on 28 July to vote 67-32
to limit debate on the infrastructure legislation, shortly after 10
Republican and Democrat lawmakers brokered a deal following weeks
of negotiation on its substance and related funding.
The bipartisan US infrastructure bill containing $73 billion for
modernizing the nation's grid could prove to be a boon for offshore
wind as well as utility-scale wind projects, according to IHS
Markit analysts.
The "Investing in a New Vision for the Environment and Surface
Transportation in America Act,'' or the ''INVEST in America Act,''
would inject $500 billion in new funding. The investments include
creating a national network of electrical vehicle (EV) charging
stations, purchasing zero-emissions buses, and shoring up its
roads, bridges, and transit as well as water and wastewater
infrastructure including ports against the vagaries of climate
change.
President Joe Biden has called the bipartisan infrastructure
bill "the most significant long-term investment in our
infrastructure and competitiveness in nearly a century," while
ruing that neither side got all it sought.
During a 10 August conversation on Biden's Build Back Better
economic agenda with nonprofit EarthDay.Org, US Environmental
Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan described the
bipartisan infrastructure legislation as "game changing for all
Americans, and all working families."
"It makes historic investments in our manufacturing capacity,
our workforce, our infrastructure, and it tackles the climate
crisis by making the largest investments in clean energy
transmission and EV infrastructure in history," Regan said, noting
that many of the climate impacts disproportionately affect
communities of color and low-income families.
Granholm for her part pointed out that the global clean energy
market is projected to reach at a minimum $23 trillion by the end
of this decade.
"If we act, the US acts, to corner the market, we will be
creating millions of good paying jobs while deploying clean energy
solutions in every pocket of the country," Granholm said.
Wind wins
Utility-scale and offshore wind farms as well as battery
manufacturers are likely to see more immediate benefits from the
bill's passage because electricity infrastructure upgrades will
enable easier integration of intermittent renewable generation into
the grid, Conway Irwin, IHS Markit's cleantech research director,
and Peter Gardett, the company's cleantech and climate executive
director, wrote in a 30 July note.
The bill also directs the creation of a Grid Development
Authority to oversee grid upgrades.
Improving the grid is clearly a bipartisan issue, as it has been
mentioned by many members of Congress in hearings in the last few
months.
"In May, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation's
summer reliability assessment confirmed what California grid
operators were also reporting that the state remained at risk of
energy emergencies during normal summer demand, and high risk if
weather events cause above-normal demand across the West," said
Representative Cathy McMorris Rogers, Republican-Washington, at a
House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on 28 July.
"Texas and Louisiana, the upper Midwest, and New England are all
at risk if a major weather event drives up power demand, according
to the report," she continued. "What will happen if current
unreliability trends continue?"
A more reliable and expanded grid could also be a "powerful
engine" behind increased capital spending towards major projects
designed to bring wind power from large farms in rural areas or
offshore as they match with grid capacity and interlinks to load
centers, Irwin and Gardett wrote.
Also benefiting from the bill's emphasis on electrification
including the sizeable investment in public transit and EV
infrastructure would be clean-tech entrepreneurs who are looking to
invest in battery storage
The bill also includes what the Carbon Capture Coalition called
"groundbreaking" provisions to help finance the buildout of CO2
transport and storage infrastructure, as well as funding support
for commercial-scale demonstrations and studies for carbon capture,
direct air capture, and carbon utilization technologies. For the
first time, this bill would establish regional hydrogen and direct
air capture hubs, according to the coalition, which represents 80
organizations and companies that back GHG capture and storage
projects.
The bill includes funding for the following key items:
$73 billion for clean energy transmission including lines to
accommodate renewables, research and development into advanced
transmission and distribution technologies, smart grid, and
demonstration projects into nuclear, carbon capture. and
hydrogen.
$7.5 billion for a national EV-charging network.
$5 billion to acquire zero-emission buses and low-emissions
buses and another $2.5 billion for low-emissions ferries.
More than $50 billion for shoring up resiliency against extreme
events like droughts, floods, and wildfires that are affecting
various parts of the country.
$21 billion for environmental remediation, including capping
orphaned natural gas wells and reclaiming land around abandoned
mines.
The EV infrastructure spending and EV credits dovetail nicely
with Biden's challenge to automakers
on 5 August to produce half of their new light-duty vehicles as EVs
by 2030. Having a nationwide, reliable, and fast charging network
is considered critical to building consumer acceptance for EVs.
When the 28 July agreement was announced, Biden acknowledged
that "neither side got everything they wanted in this deal."
For instance, the bill excluded the $20 billion that Biden had
sought in his American Jobs Plan to set up a national
infrastructure bank, which banks and equity funds were eagerly
anticipating,
"Designed to leverage federal dollars through public-private
partnership models, the bank would potentially generate extensive
business for lenders and investors able to take on riskier projects
with implicit federal backing on their first tranche of potential
losses," Irwin and Gardett wrote.
The bank proposal, however, fell apart on opposition to labor
standard requirements legislators wanted to add for federal-backed
projects.
Speaking after the bill passed the Senate, Edison Electric
Institute President Tom Kuhn tied the bill to EVs. "This
legislation also would provide a good down payment on the electric
vehicle charging infrastructure and low/no-emission buses that we
need to accelerate the electrification of the transportation
sector, which currently is the largest source of carbon emissions
in the US economy," he said in a press statement.
The legislation authorizes myriad studies including, having the
Government Accountability Office report on the avoided impacts on
property and life through the use of model, consensus-based codes,
standards, and provisions that support resilience to climate risks
and impacts, including flooding, wildfires, hurricanes, heat waves,
droughts, rises in sea level, and extreme weather.
Next steps
Biden maintained the bill's provisions would be paid without
raising 1 cent on people making below $400,000 per year. That
means, "no gas tax increase and no fee on electric vehicles," he
added.
In an accompanying factsheet, the White House further
elaborated, saying the bill's prodigious spending would be met
through a combination of redirecting unspent emergency relief
funds, targeted corporate user fees, strengthening tax enforcement
when it comes to crypto currencies, and other bipartisan measures
as well as revenue generated from higher economic growth as a
result of the investments in infrastructure.
For now, Schumer is determined to not only get the
infrastructure bill passed, but also the $3.5 trillion budget
reconciliation resolution that lays out spending priorities for the
fiscal year.
In his opening floor remarks 29 July, Schumer made it clear that
it has been his goal to pass both the $1 trillion bipartisan
infrastructure bill and the budget resolution for mostly climate
innovation initiatives contained in the American Jobs Plan.
"Because of the vote last night, the Senate is now moving
forward with the bipartisan infrastructure bill and both elements
of the two-track strategy before we adjourn for August recess,"
Schumer said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican-Kentucky,
though supportive of the infrastructure bill was dismissive of the
$3.5 trillion budget resolution bill. Calling it "a mess" that
contains "big chunks of the Green New Deal," McConnell warned that
it would lead to painful inflation.
If they pass the Senate, both bills would head over to the US
House of Representatives where Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
Democrat-California, has indicated her support. However, Pelosi has
been adamant that she will support both bills as a package, not
just the bipartisan infrastructure bill.