The New Climate Law Is Working. Clean Energy Investments Are Soaring.

Op-ed by Brian Deese, The New York Times, May 30, 2023

Deese was the director of the National Economic Council for the first two years of the Biden administration and helped shape the Inflation Reduction Act.

Last summer, in a meeting with business and labor leaders as Congress prepared to vote on the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden argued that it would result in “the largest investment ever in clean energy and American energy security — the largest in our history.” He added, “It will be the largest investment in American manufacturing as well.”

Nine months since that law was passed in Congress, the private sector has mobilized well beyond our initial expectations to generate clean energy, build battery factories and develop other technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The law is doing exactly what it was designed to do: encourage private investment in clean energy. Tax incentives make the investments attractive, but businesses, along with rural cooperatives, nonprofits and others, must judge whether investing their own money in a hydrogen factory or a wind farm will pay off. In the end, the law will be only as successful as their appetite to invest at a scale that will meaningfully reduce emissions warming the planet and increase the nation’s energy security.

Over the past few months, we have begun to see how large that appetite may be. It seems clear already that the law will stimulate significantly more investment in clean energy than was at first thought possible while generating more revenue from high-income taxpayers to reduce the deficit.

But despite all the encouraging signs, still more needs to be done to achieve the nation’s climate goals and energy needs. For instance, the often cumbersome and time-consuming process of siting and building clean energy projects must be streamlined. And Congress needs to take additional steps to reduce emissions from heavy industries like steel, cement and chemicals.

But let’s first see how far the country has come since the I.R.A. became law. Companies have announced at least 31 new battery manufacturing projects in the United States. That is more than in the prior four years combined. The pipeline of battery plants amounts to 1,000 gigawatt-hours per year by 2030 — 18 times the energy storage capacity in 2021, enough to support the manufacture of 10 million to 13 million electric vehicles per year. In energy production, companies have announced 96 gigawatts of new clean power over the past eight months, which is more than the total investment in clean power plants from 2017 to 2021 and enough to power nearly 20 million homes.

Scott Moskowitz, the head of market strategy and public affairs for Qcells North America, which manufactures solar panel components in Georgia, summed up the impact of the law this way: “We will always look at the history of our industry in two eras now that the Inflation Reduction Act has passed” — meaning the before and the after.

“The I.R.A. contains some of the most ambitious clean energy manufacturing incentives enacted anywhere in the world,” Mr. Moskowitz said.

The investment appetite is defying geographic and political boundaries. From Oklahoma and Ohio to North Carolina and Nevada, new investment is breathing economic life into communities that have seen their economies decline. This is in part because the I.R.A. provides an explicit incentive to invest in places with contaminated industrial sites, communities with a significant economic reliance on traditional fossil fuel production or those with shuttered coal mines or coal-fired power plants.

The investment surge has prompted forecasters to significantly update their views on the long-term potential of the law. Analysts at two research organizations, the Brookings Institution and the Rhodium Group, have estimated that over 10 years, private investment could be at least one and a half to three times as much as initial projections. The largest increase is projected to be in industrial and manufacturing activity for hydrogen, carbon capture, energy storage and critical minerals — areas key to long-term energy security.

This overall investment wave has the potential to drive a more rapid and efficient decarbonization of the economy while increasing the supply of clean energy and maintaining the country’s competitive edge of stable, low-cost energy. Rhodium, for example, along with researchers from the University of Chicago, found that I.R.A. energy production tax credits would lower energy costs for consumers and businesses while reducing power sector carbon dioxide emissions at an average cost of $33 to $50 per metric ton — considerably less than recent estimates of the social cost of carbon, the economic damage that would result from emitting additional carbon.

But these early encouraging signs do not guarantee long-term success. The law did not provide all the necessary tools to achieve national goals for expanding our supply of clean energy. Congress and the Biden administration have more work to do.

First, lawmakers must make it easier to build clean energy infrastructure in America. Congress should immediately go beyond the permitting provisions included in the recently announced debt limit compromise bill and pass comprehensive legislation to speed energy development, an idea that has bipartisan support. The administration should use its authority to streamline project timelines. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should more aggressively clear backlogs preventing clean energy projects from connecting to the grid. Policymakers should consider new incentives to expand energy capacity, like conditioning federal assistance to states and localities that reform land-use policies to allow clean energy development.

Second, lawmakers should continue to encourage efficient, low-carbon investments. For example, Congress could develop an industrial competitiveness program for heavy industries like cement, steel and chemicals that includes an emissions-based border adjustment fee on imported industrial goods from countries with less ambitious emissions controls. This would bolster the I.R.A.’s incentives, increase the competitiveness of American industries and address China’s nonmarket practices in these areas, such as flooding the market with products at far below their fair value.

Third, we need to work with allies across developed and emerging markets to build a cooperative international framework around the I.R.A.’s investment incentives. Our allies have little to fear and much to gain from working with the United States to expand incentives domestically to deploy clean energy technology because it must be deployed everywhere, and the I.R.A. incentives will drive down the global cost of energy technologies. The administration has already forged agreements to harmonize these incentives with the European Union, Japan and Canada but will need to use all levers of its foreign policy to secure cooperative arrangements to build resilient energy supply chains, particularly for critical minerals.

Fourth, policymakers and the public need better tools to close the gap between splashy corporate clean energy announcements and speculative long-term projections to understand where investments are being made and what they are achieving.

Finally, policymakers should remain vigilant about budgetary effects. The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the private sector’s enthusiasm for the I.R.A.’s clean energy incentives could increase the cost to the federal budget by about $200 billion over 10 years.

But that is only part of the overall calculation. The I.R.A. is about more than just clean energy. It also includes corporate tax increases and reductions in prescription drug spending by Medicare. That’s why the I.R.A. overall is still projected to reduce the deficit over 10 years, with the reduction growing to $50 billion a year by 2032.

Recent academic research has shown that the long-term deficit reduction could be much greater than these estimates anticipate, with the I.R.A.’s innovative investments in technology and audit capacity generating about $500 billion and potentially much more over the next decade. While it is a mistake to undercut those investments, the savings are achievable even with the rescissions to Internal Revenue Service funding included in the debt limit compromises.

If we build on the I.R.A.’s investment-driven model, the optimistic outcome of more clean energy, more economic potential and a stronger fiscal future is within reach.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/30/opinion/climate-clean-energy-investment.html

'More likely than not' world will soon see 1.5C of warming - WMO

By Gloria Dickie, Reuters, May 17, 2023

LONDON, May 17 (Reuters) - For the first time ever, global temperatures are now more likely than not to breach 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming within the next five years, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Wednesday.

This does not mean the world would cross the long-term warming threshold of 1.5C above preindustrial levels set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

But a year of warming at 1.5C could offer a glimpse of what crossing that longer term threshold, based on the 30-year global average, would be like.

With a 66% chance of temporarily reaching 1.5C by 2027, "it's the first time in history that it's more likely than not that we will exceed 1.5C," said Adam Scaife, head of long-range prediction at Britain's Met Office Hadley Centre, who worked on the WMO's latest Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update.

Last year's report put the odds at about 50-50.

Even temporarily reaching 1.5C is "an indication that as we start having these years with 1.5C happening more and more often, than we are getting closer to having the actual long-term climate be on that threshold," said Leon Hermanson, also of the Met Office Hadley Centre.

It also means the world has failed to make sufficient progress on slashing climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

Partially responsible for boosting the chance of soon hitting 1.5C is an El Niño weather pattern expected to develop in the coming months. During El Niño, warmer waters in the tropical Pacific heat the atmosphere above, lifting global temperatures.

The El Niño "will combine with human-induced climate change to push global temperatures into uncharted territory", said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas in a press statement.

A mid-year switch to El Niño is worrying scientists across the world. The weather phenomenon, while distinct from climate change, is likely to boost extremes and bring warmer weather to North America and drought to South America, with the Amazon at greater risk of bad fires.

The likelihood of temporarily exceeding 1.5C has increased over time. Scientists had estimated just a 10% chance of hitting 1.5C between 2017 and 2021, for example.

Unlike the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's climate projections, which are based on future greenhouse gas emissions, the WMO update provides more of a prediction-based long-range weather forecast.

The WMO also found a 98% chance that one of the next five years will be the hottest on record, surpassing 2016 which saw a global temperature impacted by about 1.3C (2.3F) of warming.

"This report must be a rallying cry to intensify global efforts to tackle the climate crisis," said Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace UK.

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/more-likely-than-not-world-will-soon-see-15c-warming-wmo-2023-05-17/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=Daily-Briefing&utm_term=051723

A Greenland glacier’s rapid melting may signal faster sea level rise

By Chris Mooney, The Washington Post, May 8, 2023

Scientists studying one of Greenland’s largest glaciers say it is melting far faster than expected in its most vulnerable region, a worrying sign that glaciers perched in the ocean could contribute to sea level rise more quickly than currently forecast.

The scientists fear the phenomenon observed at Petermann Glacier could be happening to other glaciers in both Greenland and Antarctica, possibly leading to faster, more dramatic levels of sea level rise worldwide — “potentially double” what is currently expected from glaciers, according to a study published Monday.

Using satellite measurements of its surface, researchers found that Petermann has been bouncing up and down, dramatically shifting its seafloor moorings in response to the tides. All this movement has carved a large cavern at the base of the glacier and allowed warm water to regularly stretch beneath it. As the glacier lifts and migrates, the water can rush in for over a mile, thinning the ice by as much a 250 feet a year in some places.

“You have this constant flushing of seawater going many kilometers below the glacier and melting the ice,” said Eric Rignot, one of the study’s authors and a glaciologist at the University of California at Irvine and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.

“We think that could change sea level projections quite a bit,” he said. The study was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Petermann Glacier is, in the context of climate change, the next big thing that our greenhouse gas emissions may break. The vast glacier, some 10 miles wide, is one of several major outlets for ice to escape from Greenland’s interior into the ocean. In total, the massive region of ice queued up behind Petermann could, if it all melted, raise global sea levels by over 1 foot.

Petermann has not changed as much as some other Greenland glaciers, likely in part because it is so far north. But it has seen important shifts.

Petermann lost two massive chunks of ice from its floating ice shelf in 2010 and 2012, causing the shelf to lose roughly a third of its area. It has not since recovered.

The glacier has also started to move backward, as the central region of its grounding line — where it sits on the floor of the deep fjord — retreated more than 2 miles inland toward Greenland’s interior. This has occurred in response to a warming of the water in the fjord in front of the glacier. The warming only amounts to a fraction of a degree, according to Rignot, but the water is now slightly above zero degrees Celsius (32 Fahrenheit). But it is more than warm enough to melt ice, especially at the depths and pressures seen at the grounding line.

At the same time, the ice has begun to flow outward more rapidly, meaning that Petermann has swung from a more or less stable state to losing a few billion tons of ice to the ocean each year. It’s not that much compared with a few other major glaciers in Antarctica or Greenland, but it could be only the beginning.

All of this likely reflects changes at the grounding line, which is extremely difficult to observe. But satellites can detect both changes in the surface height of the glacier, which can be used to infer to what is going on beneath, and how glaciers respond to cycles in the tides.

This is what the new research captures at Petermann — showing that the tidal cycles have very large implications for the glacier’s melting. The satellites showed that there is no real grounding “line” — rather, there is a vast zone, over a mile in length, over which the glacier moves back and forward along the seafloor. This movement accelerates melting as it allows seawater to mix in close to and even beneath the glacier.

The research also found that a large cavity — 650 feet in height — has now been hollowed out in the center of the grounding line. It is nearly 8 square miles in area, and in this region, the ocean can enter and cause melting even without help from the tides that move and lift up the glacier.

All of this, according to the researchers, has a very large implication — we may need to adjust our current models to take into account rapid melting at the bobbing grounding lines of large glaciers. And this, in turn, could cause sea level rise projections from these behemoths to “potentially double,” the study suggests.

“Probably a lot of other glaciers are in that situation, with tidal flushing,” Rignot said. He believes that Petermann is, overall, a good analogue for what may also be happening in Antarctica, where there is far more ice at stake than in Greenland.

The research was conducted by scientists at the three U.S. institutions — the University of California at Irvine, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, and the University of Houston — in collaboration with international colleagues at institutions in China, Finland, Germany and Italy.

Several scientists not affiliated with the study reached by The Washington Post were impressed by the new measurements, but not entirely convinced about their implications.

“The melt rates reported are very large, much larger than anything we suspected in this region,” said Hélène Seroussi, a glaciologist at Dartmouth College who uses models to study glaciers and sea level rise.

However, Seroussi said, the models that researchers use to project sea level rise — complex suites of equations that are used to predict how glaciers all over the world will respond to warmer oceans and air — would not immediately change based on the results of the current study.

“We are many years away from implementing these processes correctly in numerical models,” Seroussi said. “It is important to understand that there are always long delays between the discovery of a new process and its inclusion in numerical models as these processes need to be perfectly understood from a physical point of view,” requiring more research.

In particular, Seroussi said, the process in question is generally not included because the scale over which it operates is not fully understood. Until that happens, some models could show too much ice loss because of it, simply because they represent the process as playing out over too large of a region.

Andreas Muenchow, a scientist at the University of Delaware who studies Petermann Glacier, also had some cautionary notes.

“I very much like the idea of a ‘tidal heart beat’ of the glacier’s grounding zone, the glacier flapping up with warm water intruding during the incoming tide and flapping down with colder water exiting during the outgoing tide,” Muenchow said.

However, he noted that “the very high melt rates are real, but they are estimated over very small areas.”

“My main takeaway is that models need to be improved,” Muenchow concluded. “The study provides a sharper focus for what processes we need to study near floating glaciers in Greenland or Antarctica, if we want to project rising sea level into the future using models.”

Overall the new study again underscores that we don’t really know how quickly one of the largest consequences of climate change — sea level rise from the melting ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica — will occur. We’re still finding out new details — and new reasons to think that it could be faster than expected.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/05/08/sea-level-rise-greenland-glacier-melt/

We Desperately Need a New Power Grid. Here’s How to Make It Happen.

Editorial, The New York Times, May 4, 2023

To tap the potential of renewable energy, the United States needs to dramatically expand the electric grid between places with abundant wind and sunshine and places where people live and work. And it needs to happen fast. The government and the private sector are investing heavily in a historic shift to electric-powered vehicles, heating systems and factories, including hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending approved last year as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. But without new power lines, much of that electricity will continue to be generated by burning carbon. Unless the United States rapidly accelerates the construction of power lines, researchers at Princeton University estimate that 80 percent of the potential environmental benefits of electrification will be squandered.

The United States needs 47,300 gigawatt-miles of new power lines by 2035, which would expand the current grid by 57 percent, the Energy Department reported in February. A 2021 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine arrived at a similar figure. To hit that target, the United States needs to double the pace of power line construction.

The current power grid was constructed over more than a century. Building what amounts to a new power grid on a similar scale in a small fraction of that time is a daunting challenge. It will require tens of billions of dollars in financing, vast quantities of steel and aluminum and thousands of specialized workers. But building is the easy part. What makes the target virtually impossible to hit is the byzantine approval process that typically includes separate reviews by every municipality and state through which a power line will pass, as well as a host of federal agencies.

In 2005, for instance, the largest power company in Arizona proposed to build a transmission line to carry electricity to its customers from a new wind farm in Wyoming. Last month, after 18 years of legal battles and hearings and revisions, the TransWest Express project was finally approved. It still won’t be completed until 2028 at the earliest, though.

The most important change necessary to overhaul the permitting process is to put a single federal agency in charge of major transmission projects. Congress has empowered the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to approve major natural gas pipelines, which helped to expedite construction during the fracking boom. It ought to be at least as easy to build renewable energy projects.

To achieve that goal, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, and Representative Mike Quigley, Democrat of Illinois, have proposed legislation that would endow the F.E.R.C. with the power to approve the routes of major electric transmission lines that pass through multiple states, replicating the power the agency already has over pipelines. Streamlining regulation to accelerate renewable energy development is a plan that both parties can embrace.

This federal pre-emption of state and local authorities would only apply to major projects of national importance, like the Grain Belt Express, a proposed power line stretching from Kansas to Indiana that has been pursuing state approvals for more than a decade, or the SunZia project between New Mexico and Arizona, which has been on the drawing board since 2006. Under the proposed legislation, state and local governments still would retain oversight of the small projects that make up more than 90 percent of all transmission projects.

The current approval process — or more accurately, the current jumble of approval processes — is a mess created by decades of well-intentioned efforts to prevent corporations from running roughshod over the interests of individuals, communities and the environment. Safeguarding those interests is important, but granting a veto to every community through which power lines may pass comes at the expense of other communities, and it causes other kinds of environmental damage.

Shifting decision-making from state and local governments to the federal government would create a single, national forum in which policymakers can weigh the costs and benefits of power projects. The federal government — the mechanism Americans have created to act in the interest of people in America as a whole — is where those decisions should be made.

The nation’s environmental laws, especially the National Environmental Policy Act, arose from a sensible desire to ensure that big projects didn’t cause big environmental problems. But members of both parties agree that over time the requirements imposed by the law, which requires careful examination of the impact of major projects, have become unnecessarily cumbersome. One recent analysis calculated that it takes the government a median period of 3.5 years to review renewable energy projects.

The competing environmental priorities of developing renewable energy and protecting existing ecosystems can be better balanced by imposing strict time limits on environmental reviews while also increasing funding to ensure regulators have the capacity to meet those deadlines. Congress also could expedite consideration of inevitable legal challenges by adopting a proposal recently highlighted by the Brookings Institution to send challenges to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Instead of waiting for companies to propose projects, the Energy Department also can accelerate construction — and focus private investment — by identifying where power lines should go and beginning the approval process before companies apply. The Inflation Reduction Act strengthened the federal government’s authority to engage in this kind of planning, but states have resisted federal encroachment on their authority and the Biden administration has declined to force the issue, emphasizing its desire to work with states.

In January, the administration celebrated a small victory, sending Vice President Kamala Harris to Arizona for the groundbreaking on the Ten West Link power line project between Arizona and California, which was first proposed in 2015. But far too many projects remain in limbo, in part because states and communities along power line routes have little incentive to quickly approve projects intended to deliver electricity somewhere else.

The nation’s transmission lines also are broken up into regional grids that operate like jealous petty potentates, resisting stronger links that would allow renewable energy to flow across regional boundaries. In the Midwest, where the Energy Department says the need for new power lines is greatest, the list of projects in limbo includes the SOO Green Line, proposed in 2012, which would carry electricity from Iowa to the outskirts of Chicago underground, alongside railroad tracks. The line would connect a grid called MISO, which covers part of the Plains region, with a grid called PJM, which serves parts of the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic and has opposed the project.

This Balkanization of the electric grid keeps costs unnecessarily high and makes it harder for utilities to meet surges in demand. In February 2021, more than 100 people froze to death in Texas, in part because the local grid operator, the Electric Reliability Organization of Texas, had limited capacity to draw power from neighboring grids. Congress can encourage a greater spirit of cooperation and help to combat climate change by mandating a minimum transfer capacity for each grid.

Congress and the Biden administration have taken a series of promising steps toward ending the nation’s dependence on carbon. But the absence of a plan to build a new electric grid is a critical hole in that emerging strategy. Without decisive action, they will waste a precious chance to limit climate change.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/04/opinion/nepa-permitting-reform.html

World’s First Carbon Import Tax Approved by EU Lawmakers

Vote caps nearly two years of negotiations on first-of-a-kind legislation

By Matthew Dalton and Amrith Ramkumar, The Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2023

The European Union’s parliament approved legislation to tax imports based on the greenhouse gases emitted to make them, clearing the final hurdle before the plan becomes law and enshrines climate regulation in the rules of global trade for the first time.

Tuesday’s vote caps nearly two years of negotiations on the import tax, which aims to push economies around the world to put a price on carbon-dioxide emissions while shielding the EU’s manufacturers from countries that aren’t regulating emissions as strictly, or at all. The tax gives credit to countries that put a price on carbon, allowing importers of goods from those countries to deduct payments made for overseas emissions from the amount owed at the EU’s borders.

The tax has raised concerns in the U.S., where companies worry the plan would erect a web of red tape for companies seeking to export to Europe. It has also drawn criticism from China and parts of the developing world, where manufacturers tend to emit more carbon dioxide than their competitors in Europe and rely more on coal-fired electricity. 

Governments and lawmakers in other countries are already under pressure to follow suit. The U.K. is debating whether to introduce a carbon border tax, while Democrats in Congress proposed legislation to create one. Bipartisan support for the idea is growing in the U.S., said Kevin Dempsey, president of the American Iron and Steel Institute, which represents companies such as Nucor Corp. and ArcelorMittal SA.

“The U.S. and the EU have a lot in common,” said Mr. Dempsey. “The threat that we both face is steel coming from other parts of the world, China and Asia, that have much higher carbon intensity.”

Tuesday’s news prompted fresh calls in the U.S. for a similar tax. Producers of many different commodities argue it is difficult to compete with cheap, imported products that carry higher environmental footprints. Mike Ireland, president and CEO of the Portland Cement Association, said the U.S. having a similar levy would protect domestic producers.

The White House has urged the EU to give U.S. exporters credit for U.S. climate-change regulations, which don’t set a price on carbon but instead provide incentives for clean energy. But EU officials rebuffed those arguments, saying only exporters in countries that put an explicit price on carbon dioxide can enjoy a deduction from the border tax.

The EU’s legislation will at first cover imports of iron, steel, aluminum, cement, fertilizer, electricity and hydrogen. Companies will have to begin reporting the emissions of their imported goods starting in October, including the indirect emissions released by the electricity generation that powers overseas factories.

Importers will have to begin paying the tax in 2026. That date coincides with the phasing out of free allowances given to Europe’s manufacturers under the bloc’s emissions trading system. Legislation also approved Tuesday sets a schedule for completely phasing out free allowances between 2026 and 2034. 

During that period, importers will only pay for the share of emissions that European manufacturers aren’t getting free. That measure is intended to treat domestic and overseas manufacturers equally, key for Europe’s arguments that its border tax doesn’t violate World Trade Organization rules that limit discrimination against foreign firms.

The price per ton of carbon-dioxide emissions for imports will be the same as the price for the EU’s emissions trading system, which covers power plants and manufacturers in most sectors. The price for an EU carbon allowance is around 90 euros a metric ton, equivalent to $98.37, and has risen significantly since the EU proposed to tighten its climate regulations in 2021.

The legislation requires importers to be authorized by European governments and included in a centralized EU registry. Companies face the complex task of determining the greenhouse gases that have been emitted to make the goods they import.

Christopher Glen, director of advocacy and public relations at the Fertilizer Institute, said the new tax could affect regional pricing and availability of notoriously volatile commodities. “This is something that seems to move us in the wrong direction,” he said.

Sara Nordin, a partner at law firm White & Case LLP focused on international trade and EU trade compliance, said businesses are starting to ask how they might be affected. Exporters in the U.S. and elsewhere will likely have to provide emissions and other data so their customers can pay the tax. 

“I don’t think you can escape the impact this is going to have,” she said. “You’ll have to spend some money and effort to figure out what you have to do as a company.”

The legislation empowers the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, to accredit companies to verify the emissions of overseas manufacturers. EU officials have said they want to foster an industry of consultants with the expertise to conduct these reviews for the continent’s importers. Among other tasks, the consultants will be hired to audit the emissions from individual factories in Europe’s trading partners around the world.

Before the war in Ukraine, Russia was the European trading partner that was expected to be hardest hit by the border tax. It exported large quantities of steel, fertilizer and aluminum to the bloc. But EU sanctions imposed because of Russia’s invasion have slashed Europe’s imports of these goods from Russia.

China is now likely to be most affected by the border tax. As of 2019, it exported around €6.5 billion goods covered by the border tax to the EU, or less than 2% of total exports to the EU.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/worlds-first-carbon-tax-approved-by-eu-lawmakers-752ed823

Fast EV Chargers to Nearly Double on U.S. Highways Under Expansion Plan

Italy’s Enel expects to add at least two million chargers, including home systems, in North America by the end of the decade

By Jennifer Hiller, The Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2023

Italian energy giant Enel SpA said it would nearly double the amount of electric-vehicle fast chargers in the U.S. by 2030, potentially giving a critical boost to Biden administration efforts to switch more drivers to greener cars.

If Enel follows through on the plan, which it announced on Thursday, it would add 10,000 public fast chargers, considered one of the key pieces necessary for wider adoption of electric vehicles. Enel said it expects to apply for U.S. government subsidies that have been offered to companies willing to build the necessary infrastructure.

The Biden administration this week proposed new, tougher tailpipe emissions restrictions intended to accelerate the switch to EVs and reduce U.S. dependence on fossil fuels that generate greenhouse gases. New standards for light-duty vehicles would apply to the 2027 to 2032 model years.

Mr. Biden’s EV ambitions will hinge in large part on the availability of public places to plug in and repower cars reliably, a network that largely doesn’t exist. Building it won’t be easy.

While the government is pouring billions of dollars into developing a national highway charging network, many companies aren’t sure how they will make money off the nascent business. Fast charging requires expensive utility infrastructure and projects often encounter supply chain hang ups and long wait times to connect to the grid.

Because of that, fast charging providers must try to time a Goldilocks build-out, not so early that equipment goes unused, or too late to frustrate or dissuade drivers in search of a charge.

“The goal is to build a network that meets the demands and expectations of the public, that when they pull up to a charger it will work as intended,” said Albert Gore, executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association, a trade group that supports EV adoption.

Enel said Thursday it expects to add at least two million chargers overall this decade in North America. Most of that new gear would come from selling at-home chargers that repower an EV battery over several hours, the most common way to charge, though its plans for building public fast chargers would make it one of the largest operators in that market.

Chris Baker, head of charging subsidiary Enel X Way North America, said that government incentives and an uptick in EV adoption further convinced the company that it was time to enter the public charging market.

“We can come in and make a big commitment and take a long-term view on it,” Mr. Baker said. “It’s an infrastructure play.” He didn’t disclose the size of the investment.

At-home charging is the cheapest way to fuel but it takes time, while fast chargers can repower a car battery in about 30 minutes. Prices vary depending on EV efficiency and the electricity market, but a fast charge can cost around $13 for a midsize car to travel 100 miles.

The U.S. has around 11,500 fast-charging ports now that are open to any kind of vehicle, while EV market leader Tesla Inc. has a network for its own drivers with about 18,700, according to government data.

The business model for fast charging has been troubled because there aren’t enough EVs in most places yet for charging to turn a profit. Yet EV advocates say many drivers will only be comfortable purchasing vehicles if rapid charging is widely available.

Utility companies and gas stations have been arguing across several states about who will own and operate EV chargers. The expensive utility bills that can result from delivering quick jolts of power have been a particular point of contention. Meanwhile, the young companies that provide charging gear and services have struggled with equipment on the fritz, vandalism and driver payment systems, a frequent source of failure.

Government funding is intended to ease the growing pains and jump-start the nascent industry.

Enel’s fast-charging build-out would focus on the U.S., where the government has put billions on the table to try to create a national highway network of the equipment to ease “range anxiety,” the stress that drivers have about running out of juice on longer road trips.

The Biden administration has started giving states $7.5 billion over several years to fund charging build-outs, money included in the $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed by Congress in 2021. State transportation departments will be among the key gatekeepers of the federal infrastructure dollars. Recent technical guidelines outline made-in-America provisions for the equipment. Tax credits for installing EV chargers also were approved as part of last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.

Enel would be in line to qualify for government funding along with charging providers such as Electrify America LLC, EVgo Inc., ChargePoint Holdings Inc., Blink Charging Co. and Canada’s FLO network. Companies planning fast-charging networks range from car-rental company Hertz Global Holdings Inc., partnering with BP PLC, to roadside truck stops TravelCenters of America Inc. and Pilot Co., to Walmart, which said this month that it plans to build its own EV fast-charging network at Walmart and Sam’s Club locations.

Until now, Enel’s charging business has been focused on selling at-home and private commercial equipment in North America, though it has a large public charging network in Europe. Much of its work in Mexico is focused on fleet charging. Enel North America, another subsidiary, is also a large developer of renewable energy and battery projects in the U.S. and is making a massive push into solar-panel manufacturing.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/italian-company-plans-10-000-fast-chargers-across-u-s-to-meet-ev-demand-959fd135?mod=hp_lista_pos2