thiggins.bsky.social
Energy & Environment at the Center for American Progress and @CAPAction.
Adjunct at Georgetown's McCourt School of Public Policy.
Alumnus of Senator Feinstein, Department of Energy.
Personal account.
262 posts
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Their "big beautiful bill" is an ugly attempt to prop up the profits of the fossil fuel industry at the cost of hundreds of thousands of American jobs, higher energy costs for households, deadly pollution, and a crushing reversal of investment in domestic manufacturing.
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Their "Big Beautiful Bill" is an ugly attempt to prop up the profits of the fossil fuel industry at the cost of hundreds of thousands of American jobs, higher energy costs for households, deadly pollution, and a crushing reversal of investment in domestic manufacturing.
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This is bad energy and climate policy and it puts all industries in a position of uncertainty about whether federal government actions will stand.
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Business certainty depends on the rule of law. Senate Republicans should not replace 'faithful execution of the law' with 'the political caprice of a slim majority in Congress.'
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SO: This could put every executive action at risk of purely political decision-making without any court review. Construction permits. Pharmaceutical approvals. IRS adjudications of how much tax you owe. Every type of federal decision will become unreliable.
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BUT: If they do this, a future Congress could use the same tool to go after any executive action of the last 30 years that they don't like. And this tool is non-justiciable, meaning courts are banned from intervening, no matter how many other laws it might run roughshod over.
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WHY: Making it illegal for states to have laws about electric vehicles will mean people spend more money on maintenance (good for auto dealer repair shops) and gasoline (good for the oil industry) -- part of a package that will cost us all up to 37 cents per gallon.
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HOW: Since they don't have 60 votes to amend the Clean Air Act outright, they're looking to use the CRA (a tool for overturning recent rules with just 51 votes) against something that is neither recent nor a rule.
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WHAT: They want to overturn the California Waiver, a part of the Clean Air Act that allows states to opt into stronger pollution protections.
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We got a look at the details of the energy system modelling from the excellent @rhg.com, and you can see what we found here, with an explanation of how it all fits together.
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How soon before the administration adds to its demands that Harvard should rip up not only the constitution but also its authentic copy of the Magna Carta?
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Big if true: no more climate change.
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Great illustration of what's on the line, based on Rhodium's modeling
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This is all in Section 41007 of the House Republicans’ proposal for the energy title of their reconciliation bill, which Energy and Commerce released last night and is to markup tomorrow.
10/10
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A silver lining: it seems Republican staffers and corporate lobbyists are still being paid to think (albeit ineptly) about what happens when this administration someday loses power. At least we’re not yet at the stage where they assume one-party rule in defiance of courts forever. Phew?
9/10
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Where does the money come from? Congress appropriates $10 million to start, then companies pay in, and the fund earns 5% interest annually. If this passes, the next Congress should rescind whatever amounts remain in this slush fund right away.
8/10
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It also creates what economists call a moral hazard. A company favored by the administration can act in contempt of the law and without proper financial planning in the full expectation that the Secretary of Energy will make them whole.
7/10
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What’s to stop a company from plowing ahead with construction in bad faith, buying some “de-risking” protection only when they’re about to lose a court case? As long as the Secretary of Energy is on their side, they can make back all of their money and more. This is an invitation to corruption.
6/10
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Maybe a judge finds the project’s permits were unlawful, or the permits are being violated. It could be that a federal agency issues a regulation or grants a permit to a competitor. If this renders the project economically unviable, it triggers a payout.
5/10
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From now on, if the government “renders the project unviable”, the Secretary of Energy can pay the company any amount of money – as little as zero, or as much as their entire planned capital expenditures – even if they haven’t even made those expenditures yet. Huge corruption opportunity.
4/10
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If the Trump administration (lawfully or unlawfully!) grants construction permits, and the company begins construction and then pays 5 percent of the total capital costs upfront and another 1.5 percent annually, the project gets this special “de-risking” protection.
3/10
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Say a company is looking to build a new fossil fuel or nuclear power project that takes at least $30 million in capital. It could be a new offshore oil rig, pipeline, refinery, coal mine, or power plant. But not offshore wind or solar, batteries or transmission – those aren’t eligible.
2/10
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That will be a Ways and Means committee decision, which we should see later today. This text from last night was just the Energy and Commerce committee's draft.
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We'll have to stay tuned. Those tax incentives are marked up by the Ways and Means committee, instead. Their proposal may become available later today, and is set to be marked up also on Tuesday. It will become part of the same bill.
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That will become part of the same bill, but is marked up by the Ways and Means committee, instead. Their proposal may become available later today, and is set to be marked up also on Tuesday.
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At the same time as they make cuts to Medicaid, House Republicans are going to leave people sicker by canceling programs that clean up our air, water, and land.
So they can offer tax giveaways to the rich, and prop up the profits of the fossil fuel industry. It's sick.
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They're planning to vote this all through the Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday, in a bill that also cuts medicaid. Details here: docs.house.gov/Committee/Ca...
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They're also proposing pay-for-play permitting deals for fossil fuel pipelines, an insurance policy for fossil fuel pipelines that might get blocked in the future, an end to the fuel economy standards starting Model Year 2027, preemption of state and local pipeline siting, and more.