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As Utility Bills Rise, Low-Income Americans Struggle for Access to Clean Energy

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The Biden administration has deployed various programs to try to increase access to clean energy. But systems that could help lower bills are still out of reach for many low-income households.Cindy Camp is one of many Americans facing rising utility costs. Ms. Camp, who lives in Baltimore with three family members, said her gas and electric bills kept “going up and up” — reaching as high as $900 a month. Her family has tried to use less hot water by doing fewer loads of laundry, and she now eats more fast food to save on grocery bills.Ms. Camp would like to save money on energy bills by transitioning to more energy-efficient appliances like a heat pump and solar panels. But she simply cannot afford it.“It’s a struggle for me to even maintain food,” Ms. Camp said.Power bills have been rising nationwide, and in Baltimore, electricity rates have increased almost 30 percent over the last decade, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While clean energy systems and more efficient appliances could help low-income households mitigate some of those increases, many face barriers trying to gain access to those products.Low-income households have been slower to adopt clean energy because they often lack sufficient savings or have low credit scores, which can impede their ability to finance projects. Some have also found it difficult to navigate federal and state programs that would make installations more affordable, and many are renters who cannot make upgrades themselves.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    At COP28, More Than 20 Nations Pledge to Triple Nuclear Capacity

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    The group, including Britain, France and the United States, said the agreement was critical to meeting nations’ climate commitments.The United States and 21 other countries pledged on Saturday at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050, saying the revival of nuclear power was critical for cutting carbon emissions to near zero in the coming decades.Proponents of nuclear energy, which supplies 18 percent of electricity in the United States, say it is a clean, safe and reliable complement to wind and solar energy. But a significant hurdle is funding.Last month, a developer of small nuclear reactors in Idaho said it was canceling a project that had been expected to be part of a new wave of power plants. The cost of building the reactors had risen to $9.3 billion from $5.3 billion because of increasing interest rates and inflation.Britain, Canada, France, Ghana, South Korea, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates were among the 22 countries that signed the declaration to triple capacity from 2020 levels.Tripling nuclear energy capacity by 2050, which would also help Europe reduce its dependence on Russia oil and gas, would require significant investment. In advanced economies, which have nearly 70 percent of global nuclear capacity, investments has stalled as construction costs have soared, projects have run over budget and faced delays. On top of cost, another hurdle to expanding nuclear capacity is that plants are slower to build than many other forms of power.Addressing the issue of financing, John Kerry, President Biden’s climate envoy, said that there were “trillions of dollars” available that could be used for investment in nuclear. “We are not making the argument to anybody that this is absolutely going to be the sweeping alternative to every other energy source — no, that’s not what brings us here,” he said. But, he added, the science has shown that “you can’t get to net-zero 2050 without some nuclear.”Nuclear power does not emit carbon, and an International Energy Agency report last year that said nuclear was crucial to helping to reduce carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement goals outlined in 2015. President Emmanuel Macron of France said nuclear energy, including small modular reactors, was an “indispensable solution” to efforts to curb climate change. France, Europe’s biggest producer of nuclear power, gets about 70 percent of its own electricity from nuclear stations.Mr. Macron and other leaders, including Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson of Sweden, called on the World Bank and international financial institutions to help finance nuclear projects. Mr. Kristersson said that governments must “assume a role in sharing the financial risks to strengthen the conditions and provide additional incentives for investments in nuclear energy.”While world leaders on Saturday called nuclear the most effective alternative to fossil fuels, some climate activists said nuclear energy was not a panacea.David Tong, a researcher at Oil Change International, said the pledge was divorced from the reality of nuclear energy — that it was too costly and too slow. “It’s a self-serving political pledge that doesn’t reflect the role that nuclear is likely to play in the energy transition, which is menial,” he said. “There is very small growth in nuclear — certainly nothing like tripling.” He said he rejected the stance that there was no pathway to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, a goal set in the Paris Agreement to avoid the worst effects of global warming, without nuclear. Masayoshi Iyoda, an activist from Japan with 350.org, an international climate action campaign, cited the nuclear disaster at Fukushima in 2011 and said that nuclear power was a dangerous distraction from decarbonization goals. “It is simply too costly, too risky, too undemocratic, and too time-consuming,” he said in a statement.“We already have cheaper, safer, democratic, and faster solutions to the climate crisis, and they are renewable energy and energy efficiency,” Mr. Iyoda said.All but four of the 31 reactors that have begun construction since 2017 were designed by Russia or China, with China poised to become the leading nuclear power producer by 2030, the International Energy Agency said. This year, Germany shut its last three nuclear plants.Nuclear capacity rose in the 1980s, particularly in Europe and North America, but dropped sharply over the subsequent years after accidents at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986. New technology and tighter regulations have been put in place since then. Americans are conflicted about nuclear power, but a growing number favor expansion compared with a few years ago, according to a Pew Research Center study published in August. More

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    Biden’s Climate Law Is Reshaping Private Investment in the United States

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    Lucrative tax incentives have fueled a surge in solar panels but failed to boost wind power, data from a new project show.Private investment in clean energy projects like solar panels, hydrogen power and electric vehicles surged after President Biden signed an expansive climate bill into law last year, a development that shows how tax incentives and federal subsidies have helped reshape some consumer and corporate spending in the United States.New data being released on Wednesday suggest the climate law and other parts of Mr. Biden’s economic agenda have helped speed the development of automotive supply chains in the American Southwest, buttressing traditional auto manufacturing centers in the industrial Midwest and the Southeast. The 2022 law, which passed with only Democratic support, aided factory investment in conservative bastions like Tennessee and the swing states of Michigan and Nevada. The law also helped underwrite a spending spree on electric cars and home solar panels in California, Arizona and Florida.The data show that in the year since the climate law passed, spending on clean-energy technologies accounted for 4 percent of the nation’s total investment in structures, equipment and durable consumer goods — more than double the share from four years ago.The law so far has failed to supercharge a key industry in the transition from fossil fuels that Mr. Biden is trying to accelerate: wind power. Domestic investment in wind production declined over the past year, despite the climate law’s hefty incentives for producers. And so far the law has not changed the trajectory of consumer spending on some energy-saving technologies like highly efficient heat pumps.But the report, which drills down to the state level, provides the first detailed look at how Mr. Biden’s industrial policies are affecting clean energy investment decisions in the private sector.The data come from the Clean Investment Monitor, a new initiative from the Rhodium Group, a consulting firm; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. Its findings go beyond simpler estimates, from the White House and elsewhere, providing the most comprehensive look yet at the effects of Mr. Biden’s economic agenda on America’s emerging clean-energy economy.The researchers spearheading the first cut of the data include Trevor Houser, a former Obama administration official, who is a partner at Rhodium; and Brian Deese, a former director of Mr. Biden’s National Economic Council, who is an innovation fellow at M.I.T.The climate bill President Biden signed into law last year includes a wide range of lucrative incentives to encourage domestic manufacturing and speed the nation’s transition away from fossil fuels. Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe Inflation Reduction Act, which Mr. Biden signed into law in August 2022, includes a wide range of lucrative incentives to encourage domestic manufacturing and speed the nation’s transition away from fossil fuels. That includes expanded tax breaks for advanced battery production, solar-panel installation, electric vehicle purchases and other initiatives. Many of those tax breaks are effectively unlimited, meaning they could eventually cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars — or even top $1 trillion — if they succeed at driving enough new investment.Biden administration officials have tried to quantify the effects of that law, along with bipartisan legislation on infrastructure and semiconductors signed by the president earlier in his term, by tallying up corporate announcements of new spending linked to the legislation. A White House website estimates that companies have so far announced $511 billion in commitments for new spending linked to those laws, including $240 billion for electric vehicles and clean energy technology.The Rhodium and M.I.T. analysis draws on data from federal agencies, trade groups, corporate announcements and securities filings, news reports and other sources to try to construct a real-time estimate of how much investment has already been made in the emissions-reducing technologies targeted by Mr. Biden’s agenda. For comparison purposes, its data stretch back to 2018, under President Donald J. Trump.The numbers show that actual — not announced — business and consumer investment in clean-energy technologies hit $213 billion in the second half of 2022 and first half of 2023, after Mr. Biden signed the climate law. That was up from $155 billion the previous year and $81 billion in the first year of the data, under Mr. Trump.Trends in the data suggest that the impact of Mr. Biden’s agenda on clean-energy investment has varied depending on the existing economics of each targeted technology.Mr. Biden’s biggest successes have come in spurring increased investment in American manufacturing, and in catalyzing investment in technologies that remain relatively new in the marketplace.Fueled partly by foreign investment, like in battery plants in Georgia, actual investment in clean-energy manufacturing more than doubled over the last year from the previous year, the data show, totaling $39 billion. Such investment was almost nonexistent in 2018.The bulk of that spending was focused on the electric-vehicle supply chain, including in the new Southwest cluster of activity across California, Nevada and Arizona. The Inflation Reduction Act includes multiple tax breaks for such investment, with domestic-content requirements meant to encourage production of critical minerals, batteries and automotive assembly in the United States.The big winners in manufacturing investment, though, as a share of states’ economies, remain traditional auto states: Tennessee, Kentucky, Michigan and South Carolina.Mr. Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law targets the clean-energy economy, including spending to build out more charging stations for electric vehicles.Gabby Jones for The New York TimesThe climate law also appears to have supercharged investment in so-called green hydrogen, which splits water atoms to create an industrial fuel. The same is true of carbon management — which seeks to capture and store greenhouse gas emissions from existing energy plants or pull carbon out of the atmosphere. All those technologies struggled to gain traction in the United States before the law showered them with tax breaks.Hydrogen and much of the carbon-capture investment is concentrated along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, a region filled with incumbent fossil fuel companies that have begun to branch into those technologies. Another cluster of carbon-capture investment is concentrated in Midwestern states like Illinois and Iowa, where companies that produce corn ethanol and other biofuels are beginning to spend on efforts to sequester their emissions.The incentives for those technologies in the Inflation Reduction Act, along with other support in the bipartisan infrastructure law, “fundamentally change the economics of those two technologies, making them broadly cost-competitive for the first time,” Mr. Houser said in an interview.Other incentives have not yet budged the economics of critical technologies, most notably wind power, which boomed in recent years but is now facing global setbacks as projects become increasingly expensive to finance.Wind investment was lower in the first half of this year than at any point since the database was started.In the United States, wind projects are struggling to navigate government processes for permitting, transmission and locating projects, including opposition from some state and local lawmakers. Solar projects and related investment in storage for solar power, Mr. Houser noted, can be built closer to power consumers and have fewer hurdles to clear, and investment in them grew by 50 percent in the second quarter of 2023 from a year earlier.Some consumer markets have yet to be swayed by the promise of tax breaks for new energy technologies. Americans have not increased their spending on heat pumps, even though the law covers up to $2,000 toward the purchase of a new one. And over the last year, the states with the highest spending as a share of their economy on heat pumps are all concentrated in the Southeast — where, Mr. Houser said, consumers are more likely to already own such pumps, and to be in need of a new one. More

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    Progressive Lawmakers to Unveil Legislation on Energy and Public Housing

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    The proposal, billed as the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, offers a clear policy marker for liberals as Democrats seek to influence President Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan.WASHINGTON — Top liberal lawmakers are set to unveil legislation on Monday that would modernize the public housing system and start a transition to renewable energy, offering a clear policy marker for progressives as Democrats haggle over the details of President Biden’s infrastructure plan and how to push it through Congress.The introduction of the legislation, led by Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, is the first of multiple proposals from progressive lawmakers as they seek to influence a $2.3 trillion infrastructure overhaul to address climate change and economic inequities.Their proposal comes as Mr. Biden and his allies are navigating congressional crosscurrents that include the larger policy demands of a Democratic caucus that has little room for disagreement and Republicans who say they want to compromise, but have largely panned a plan paid for by tax increases. While the president has outlined the broad contours of his proposal, it is up to lawmakers to reach agreement on the final provisions and details of the legislation.Some lawmakers are floating the prospect of downsizing Mr. Biden’s legislative plan to win the 10 Republican votes needed to overcome the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate, amid a flurry of lobbying from rank-and-file members. Progressive Democrats like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Mr. Sanders are instead doubling down on their call for a larger package than the president proposed and pushing to shape what could be one of the largest investments of federal dollars in a generation.The progressives’ legislation, billed as the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, is a prong of the broader climate platform that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and others have long championed to help the United States wean itself from fossil fuels. It would repeal limitations on the construction of public housing and create grant programs to ensure improvements that not only address unsafe and aging housing, but reduce carbon emissions.“We’re here to make sure the Democratic Party upholds its values and keeps its promises, and to also push and expand the scope and the ambition of the Democratic Party,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview. She and other liberal lawmakers are expected to reintroduce additional parts of the Green New Deal this week.Filling sand bags to protect public housing before a hurricane in Lumberton, N.C., in 2019. Republicans have seized on the climate and housing provisions in President Biden’s infrastructure plan as overreach.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesTo qualify for the grants, recipients would have to adhere to strong labor standards, such as protection of collective bargaining and use of American manufacturing and products. The legislation would also fund tenant protection vouchers for displaced residents and create apprenticeship programs for residents.When Mr. Biden outlined his proposal last month, he called for more than $40 billion to improve public housing infrastructure. At an event in New York on Sunday, a group of lawmakers from the state, including Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, pushed for at least double that figure.“Public housing has been neglected, left to get worse, and we’re not going to stand for it anymore,” Mr. Schumer said. The president’s plan, he added, was “a good start, but it ain’t enough.”Mr. Sanders, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and allies envision the proposal costing between $119 billion and $172 billion over 10 years to meet the needs of their constituents, according to an estimate provided to The New York Times. It aims to create thousands of maintenance and construction jobs.“Probably our best bet would be one bill — and it should be a large bill,” Mr. Sanders said in an interview. “I think it’s just easier and more efficient for us to work as hard as we can in a comprehensive broad infrastructure plan, which includes human infrastructure as well as physical infrastruture.”Republicans, who have sought to weaponize the Green New Deal in recent years as egregious federal overreach that would harm the economy, have already seized on the climate and housing provisions in Mr. Biden’s plan as far beyond the traditional definition of infrastructure. Mr. Biden is also preparing a second proposal that would focus even more on projects outside what Republicans call “real” infrastructure and could bring the total cost to $4 trillion.“Republicans are not going to partner with Democrats on the Green New Deal or on raising taxes to pay for it,” Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming, said at a news conference last month. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, has repeatedly warned that the infrastructure plan is “a Trojan horse” for liberal priorities, while Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican, declared last week that “it’s a lot of Green New Deal” that would lead voters to turn away from Democrats.“I think the expansive definition of infrastructure that we see in this sort of ‘Green New Deal wish list’ is called into question,” Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, said on “Fox News” last week. “I don’t think that the American people, when they think of infrastructure, are thinking of home health aides and other things that are included in this bill.”In acknowledgment of both Republican resistance to Mr. Biden’s plan and the lure of bipartisan legislation, some lawmakers have raised the possibility of first passing a smaller bill that addresses roads, bridges and broadband with Republican votes before Democrats use the fast-track budget reconciliation process to bypass the filibuster and unilaterally push the remainder of the legislative proposals through both chambers.“I think that if we come together in a bipartisan way to pass that $800 billion hard infrastructure bill that you were talking about, that I’ve been urging, then we show our people that we can solve their problems,” Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, said on “Fox News Sunday.” While the progressives’ proposal is largely unchanged from its original iteration in 2019, the political landscape is vastly different, with Democrats in control of Washington. Mr. Sanders now oversees the Senate Budget Committee, and a historic investment of federal funds to counter the economic and health effects of the coronavirus pandemic has some lawmakers and voters more open to substantial spending.“The time has now caught up to the legislation, and I’m really thrilled about that,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. “You have a respiratory pandemic that’s layered on communities that are suffering from childhood asthma, that are already dealing with lung issues, that have pre-existing hypertension, which are all indicated by factors of environmental injustice.”Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives have championed a broader climate platform.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesThe Congressional Progressive Caucus, in an outline of five priorities for the final infrastructure product, singled out key elements of the housing legislation, including the energy efficiency standards. But with slim margins in both chambers and a huge lobbying campaign underway to ensure pet policies and provisions are included, it is unclear how Democrats would work this proposal in and whether every member of the caucus would sign on.Mr. Sanders acknowledged that the path forward for his proposal — and a number of other liberal priorities — could be difficult even with Democrats in control. He and other members of his party are exploring using budget reconciliation to pass elements of Mr. Biden’s legislative agenda, including his infrastructure plan. But without Republican votes, every Senate Democrat would need to remain united behind the entire package.“That is not easy stuff,” Mr. Sanders said. “People have different perspectives, people come from very different types of states, different politics, and that’s going to be a very difficult job for both the House and the Senate.” More

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    The Business Rules the Trump Administration Is Racing to Finish

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionLatest UpdatesHouse Moves to Remove TrumpHow Impeachment Might WorkBiden Focuses on CrisesCabinet PicksAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Business Rules the Trump Administration Is Racing to FinishFrom tariffs and trade to the status of Uber drivers, regulators are trying to install new rules or reduce regulations before President-elect Joe Biden takes over.President Trump is rushing to put into effect new economic regulations and executive orders before his term comes to a close.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesJan. 11, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETIn the remaining days of his administration, President Trump is rushing to put into effect a raft of new regulations and executive orders that are intended to put his stamp on business, trade and the economy.Previous presidents in their final term have used the period between the election and the inauguration to take last-minute actions to extend and seal their agendas. Some of the changes are clearly aimed at making it harder, at least for a time, for the next administration to pursue its goals.Of course, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. could issue new executive orders to overturn Mr. Trump’s. And Democrats in Congress, who will control the House and the Senate, could use the Congressional Review Act to quickly reverse regulatory actions from as far back as late August.Here are some of the things that Mr. Trump and his appointees have done or are trying to do before Mr. Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20. — Peter EavisProhibiting Chinese apps and other products. Mr. Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday banning transactions with eight Chinese software applications, including Alipay. It was the latest escalation of the president’s economic war with China. Details and the start of the ban will fall to Mr. Biden, who could decide not to follow through on the idea. Separately, the Trump administration has also banned the import of some cotton from the Xinjiang region, where China has detained vast numbers of people who are members of ethnic minorities and forced them to work in fields and factories. In another move, the administration prohibited several Chinese companies, including the chip maker SMIC and the drone maker DJI, from buying American products. The administration is weighing further restrictions on China in its final days, including adding Alibaba and Tencent to a list of companies with ties to the Chinese military, a designation that would prevent Americans from investing in those businesses. — Ana SwansonDefining gig workers as contractors. The Labor Department on Wednesday released the final version of a rule that could classify millions of workers in industries like construction, cleaning and the gig economy as contractors rather than employees, another step toward endorsing the business practices of companies like Uber and Lyft. — Noam ScheiberTrimming social media’s legal shield. The Trump administration recently filed a petition asking the Federal Communications Commission to narrow its interpretation of a powerful legal shield for social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube. If the commission doesn’t act before Inauguration Day, the matter will land in the desk of whomever Mr. Biden picks to lead the agency. — David McCabeTaking the tech giants to court. The Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust suit against Facebook in December, two months after the Justice Department sued Google. Mr. Biden’s appointees will have to decide how best to move forward with the cases. — David McCabeAdding new cryptocurrency disclosure requirements. The Treasury Department late last month proposed new reporting requirements that it said were intended to prevent money laundering for certain cryptocurrency transactions. It gave only 15 days — over the holidays — for public comment. Lawmakers and digital currency enthusiasts wrote to the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, to protest and won a short extension. But opponents of the proposed rule say the process and substance are flawed, arguing that the requirement would hinder innovation, and are likely to challenge it in court. — Ephrat LivniLimiting banks on social and environmental issues. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is rushing a proposed rule that would ban banks from not lending to certain kinds of businesses, like those in the fossil fuel industry, on environmental or social grounds. The regulator unveiled the proposal on Nov. 20 and limited the time it would accept comments to six weeks despite the interruptions of the holidays. — Emily FlitterOverhauling rules on banks and underserved communities. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is also proposing new guidelines on how banks can measure their activities to get credit for fulfilling their obligations under the Community Reinvestment Act, an anti-redlining law that forces them to do business in poor and minority communities. The agency rewrote some of the rules in May, but other regulators — the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — did not sign on. — Emily FlitterInsuring “hot money” deposits. On Dec. 15, the F.D.I.C. expanded the eligibility of brokered deposits for insurance coverage. These deposits are infusions of cash into a bank in exchange for a high interest rate, but are known as “hot money” because the clients can move the deposits from bank to bank for higher returns. Critics say the change could put the insurance fund at risk. F.D.I.C. officials said the new rule was needed to “modernize” the brokered deposits system. — Emily FlitterNarrowing regulatory authority over airlines. The Department of Transportation in December authorized a rule, sought by airlines and travel agents, that limits the department’s authority over the industry by defining what constitutes an unfair and deceptive practice. Consumer groups widely opposed the rule. Airlines argued that the rule would limit regulatory overreach. And the department said the definitions it used were in line with its past practice. — Niraj ChokshiRolling back a light bulb rule. The Department of Energy has moved to block a rule that would phase out incandescent light bulbs, which people and businesses have increasingly been replacing with much more efficient LED and compact fluorescent bulbs. The energy secretary, Dan Brouillette, a former auto industry lobbyist, said in December that the Trump administration did not want to limit consumer choice. The rule had been slated to go into effect on Jan. 1 and was required by a law passed in 2007. — Ivan PennAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More