INFRASTRUCTURE: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says he expects the chamber to vote Saturday on a $1 trillion infrastructure package that includes $150 billion for clean energy and climate. (Guardian, PBS)
ALSO: Climate groups say the legislation and Biden’s agenda overall is tainted by oil and gas interests, and that the bill’s funding for carbon capture and hydrogen amounts to “doubling down on support for climate polluters.” (Bloomberg)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
• President Biden’s new national goal that 50% of new car sales by 2030 be electric vehicles depends on voluntary buy-in from automakers, who have signaled a need for new policies and incentives. (E&E News)
• The White House’s electric vehicle plan is expected to benefit Tesla, but Elon Musk was not invited to the president’s executive order signing, apparently because the company’s workplaces are non-union. (New York Times, Bloomberg)
• Sales of hybrid cars are growing fast — a trend experts say is promising for an eventual shift to fully electric vehicles. (Washington Post)
• The reaction from Iowa to President Biden’s new goal of seeing that half of all new vehicles are electric by 2030: What about biofuels? (Iowa Capital Dispatch)
OIL & GAS:
• Oil and gas companies are abandoning aging infrastructure along the Gulf Coast, blocking access to sand that states need to rebuild coastlines against the threat of rising seas. (Washington Post)
• Wild rice is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the White Earth Band of Ojibwe against the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources that seeks to block the Line 3 pipeline using the novel “rights of nature” theory. (Star Tribune)
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: Black communities in an Alabama Superfund site fight to have it added to a registry of the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites. (Inside Climate News)
WIND: A Colorado ranching family, with backing from a Biden administration agency, are standing in the way of plans to build the country’s largest wind farm more than a decade after the project was first proposed. (Los Angeles Times)
GRID:
• Unrelenting heat is testing the electric grid in much of the country with people cranking up air conditioners as fire and drought disrupt generation. (E&E News)
• Air conditioning is essential for those suffering from dangerous heat, but it’s also making the problem worse by warming the atmosphere. (NBC News)
HYDROPOWER: For the first time since it was built in 1967, the water level in California’s Oroville Dam drops so low that it can’t produce power amid historic drought. (Mercury News)
CLIMATE: California, New York and Texas will receive the largest shares — a total of $1.5 billion — of federal funding for climate resiliency projects. (E&E News)
UTILITIES: Analysis shows Southern Company’s ability to meet President Joe Biden’s carbon reduction goals likely depends on substantially growing its renewables and completing the long-delayed nuclear expansion of Plant Vogtle. (S&P Global)
COAL: A Wisconsin student union is among the surprising reuses of decommissioned coal plants as the country moves toward cleaner energy. (Bloomberg)
LABOR: AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, a lifelong labor champion who led coal miners through major strikes, dies at 72. (E&E News)
COMMENTARY:
• President Biden is correct that electric vehicles are the future, but that future needs to arrive much sooner than the president and automakers are planning, an editorial board writes. (Los Angeles Times)
• U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland advocates for federal investment to restore abandoned coal mines and oil and gas wells in West Virginia. (Charleston Gazette-Mail)
• With much of the West facing wildfires and massive drought, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown argues it’s “past time to act on climate change.” (Salt Lake Tribune)