Climate 411

How our clean energy laws can support a fair transition for workers and communities

By Derek Walker / Bio / Published: May 1, 2023

Our country is going to rapidly deploy and manufacture clean energy technologies to a scale never seen before, thanks in large part to historic laws passed by the Biden-Harris administration and Congress.

This shift is already unleashing new jobs and economic opportunities around the country, but many communities reliant on fossil fuel production – coal, oil and gas – are rightfully concerned about how it will affect their lives and their futures.

Last month, the Biden-Harris administration announced a sweeping set of new investments under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act aimed at revitalizing communities dependent on coal and fossil fuels. It’s a recognition that the clean energy transition cannot succeed unless it’s fair and equitable.

For over 150 years, coal and other fossil fuel workers have worked to power our economy. As natural gas and clean energy outcompeted coal in the last decade, hundreds of coal plants and mines across the country have shuttered, while the communities that depended on them have often been left behind – facing job loss, with funding for schools and roads running dry, and a legacy of local pollution to reckon with.

Recognizing the challenges facing fossil fuel communities in transition, the administration responded with a “whole-of-government” approach, bringing 12 different agencies together through the Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization. In the past two years, the group has driven $14 billion in targeted investment to these communities.

The latest set of actions takes that support to new levels, not just by dollar amount, but in how it deploys a suite of different policies to help make communities whole – from job and benefits programs for individual workers to large-scale economic development that can sustain communities. While more support will be needed, this kind of comprehensive approach has been recommended by many groups, including joint research from EDF and Resources for the Future, as well as by the BlueGreen Alliance and Just Transition Fund.

Here’s a quick look at how some of these new investments take aim at critical challenges facing energy communities, and what needs to happen next:

Posted in Cars and Pollution, Cities and states, Economics, Energy, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Health, Innovation, Jobs, News, Policy / Comments are closed

These key policies in Biden’s infrastructure plan can deliver big wins on jobs and climate

By Derek Walker / Bio / Published: April 1, 2021

This blog was co-authored with Danielle Arostegui, Senior Analyst, U.S. Climate.

This week, President Biden unveiled a far-reaching infrastructure package to build back the economy in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, while protecting existing and future generations from the most severe consequences of climate change and addressing historic inequities in access to clean air and water.

This is the kind of strong leadership we need on the economy and on climate.

The American Jobs Plan is packed full of promising investments that can generate millions of new, good-paying union jobs, revitalize our nation’s aging infrastructure, lessen economic and environmental inequalities and drive progress on our urgent climate goals. In fact, the plan declares “every dollar spent on rebuilding our infrastructure during the Biden administration will be used to prevent, reduce, and withstand the impacts of the climate crisis.”

While Biden’s plan has no shortage of important policies with massive potential to lift up communities from coast to coast—including policies that deliver clean drinking water, quality housing, broadband internet, and more—the proposals aimed at transforming America’s power and transportation sectors are particularly critical for their ability to simultaneously combat climate change while creating a stronger, more equitable clean economy.

Posted in Green Jobs, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Jobs / Comments are closed

Creating opportunity for fossil fuel workers and communities: Lessons for a fair energy transition

By Derek Walker / Bio / Published: March 25, 2021

In this culminating report, EDF and Resources for the Future condense lessons across four previous reports that can inform federal policy for supporting U.S. fossil fuel workers and communities in the shift to a clean economy. Wesley Look, Daniel Raimi, Molly Robertson, and Dan Propp of RFF and Jake Higdon of EDF contributed to the report described in this blog post.

The White House is making much-needed moves to take on the climate crisis and shift our economy toward a cleaner future. The majority of Americans are eager for this change and the clean energy and manufacturing jobs that go with it, but there are important questions about how to help fossil fuel workers and communities through this transition.

Many coal communities around the country have been on the frontlines of the energy transition, watching once bustling Main Streets grow quiet as people and businesses leave town along with the coal industry. As renewable energy and natural gas costs have fallen and outcompeted coal over the last decade, workers and communities dependent on coal have been left with few job prospects to support their families and significantly less revenue to keep towns running. The pandemic brought these issues to the fore not only for coal communities, but for oil and gas employment, which fell by more than 100,000 jobs last year.

To deliver on its campaign promise to support workers who have powered America for decades, the Biden-Harris administration must seize this moment to lift up and transform the local and regional economies across the U.S. that have long relied on fossil fuel production. The administration’s new interagency working group to facilitate investment in power plant and coal communities is a big step in the right direction, but much more policy support will be needed.

Posted in Energy, Jobs / Comments are closed

How the Biden-Harris administration can restore and strengthen U.S. climate leadership

By Derek Walker / Bio / Published: December 21, 2020

After winning on the strongest climate platform of any major party presidential nominee in history, the Biden-Harris administration has a mandate to confront the existential crisis of climate change. This blog series will explore what it will take to restore and strengthen climate leadership both across the country and on the global stage.

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI

The leaders that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have selected for key positions send a clear, encouraging and necessary signal that climate action will be an embedded priority across the administration. This is promising news, as the mandate to address the climate crisis demands a “whole-of-government” approach that can improve public health and create jobs in communities from coast-to-coast, and launch a new era of consequential climate diplomacy with partners around the world.

A recent UN report underscores there is not a moment to lose: The world is on a dangerous path, heading toward a temperature rise in excess of 3°C this century. This projection comes as Americans have increasingly experienced the rising costs of climate change this year — from a record hurricane season in the Atlantic to wildfires that ravaged the West at an unprecedented scale.

This historic election made it clear that Americans want leadership that can tackle the biggest challenges of our time: the COVID-19 pandemic, economic recovery, racial justice and climate change. The new administration can achieve the most transformative progress by championing solutions that address the interconnectedness of these urgent priorities. Ambitious climate solutions are particularly well-suited to also help deliver on critical promises to jumpstart the economy and advance equity and justice. But how exactly should the new administration and new Congress get started? Action in three key areas will be critical to restoring and strengthening climate leadership.

Posted in Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Jobs, Policy / Read 3 Responses

New research series: Ensuring fairness for workers and communities in the transition to a clean economy

By Derek Walker / Bio / Published: August 4, 2020

EDF and Resources for the Future (RFF) partner on a new research series to inform policymaking on fairness for fossil fuel workers and communities in transition.

Coal burning plant in Conesville, Ohio.

The shockwaves from the COVID-19 pandemic continue to reverberate across the United States, with tens of millions unemployed and workers in every sector in need of support. The energy sector is reeling from the impact — especially the many workers and communities living in coal-dominated regions already grappling with job loss.

In Northeast Wyoming, the Powder River Basin region experienced the largest round of coal mine layoffs in years. In West Virginia, Longview Power — cited as the most efficient coal-fired power plant in the country — filed for bankruptcy. And in Somerset County, Pennsylvania a local coal mine went “indefinitely idle” and laid off 100 workers. These are just a few examples from this spring that reveal how the steep drop in energy demand, largely a result of shutdowns to contain the spread of COVID-19, exacerbated loss in the coal industry. But they don’t capture the whole story.

The loss of these coal jobs will cause a ripple effect beyond the workers: these families will see a drop in income, making it harder to make ends meet, and may also lose health care and other critical benefits. Surrounding businesses — from restaurants to gas stations — will see a drop in customers and the communities and towns dependent on taxes from the coal industry for building roads and schools face an uncertain future too.

But well before the coronavirus outbreak, coal-dependent regions were already facing chronic job loss, public health crises, and other hardships. The rise of cheaper energy alternatives, including the dramatically improving costs of wind and solar power, has been steadily moving the needle toward a low-carbon economy in the US.

For years, many coal communities anticipated the gradual decline in jobs and revenue; few were prepared for the free fall from coronavirus.

Posted in Energy, Green Jobs, Jobs, News / Comments are closed

New study: America’s biggest carbon market delivers for economy and climate

By Derek Walker / Bio / Published: January 16, 2015

Source: Flickr/Chris Goldberg

Would you believe there’s a state that cut pollution and cleaned up its air, while creating jobs and sustaining economic growth?

And where economic incentives, rather than costly regulations, are stimulating innovation and investment?

California passed the earliest, most comprehensive law to set a cap on carbon pollution, along with numerous other complementary policies to help the state transition to a low-carbon, clean-energy economy.

The results are now coming in and the present – and future – looks bright.

Two years after it was fully implemented, California’s cap-and-trade program is thriving, a new report [PDF] from Environmental Defense Fund shows.

The program is now ramping up as the state economy is growing, paving the way for California to pass even stronger climate policies. Perhaps most important, it’s laying the groundwork for other states and nations to move forward with similar steps.

The four top findings from our report:

1. California’s cap is driving down greenhouse gas pollution while allowing the economy to grow.

The state has been able to grow its economy significantly while keeping greenhouse gas pollution from rising, too.

Emissions capped under the program decreased by almost 4 percent during the first year of the program. What’s more, California’s ambitious climate change and clean energy policies have created a thriving economy that is growing faster than the overall national economy and attracting considerable amounts of investment.

Since 2006, California has received more clean-tech venture capital investment than all other states combined and leads the rest of the nation in clean-tech patent registration.

2. California has built a robust carbon market that is getting progressively stronger.

Companies can purchase allowances through quarterly auctions or on the secondary market. The results of nine successful auctions to date reflect a healthy level of interest for carbon allowances and confidence among companies in the long-term health of the program.

In addition, California successfully linked its program with Quebec’s over the past year, proving that motivated governments can work effectively together and do more in partnership than they can alone.

This outcome may inspire similar linkages around the world.

3. Companies are taking the program seriously.

Every single company regulated by California’s carbon cap acquired enough allowances to meet their first compliance deadline.

This proves, in a strong way, that companies are incorporating the price on carbon into their business models and actively planning how they will comply with the regulation.

4. Success begets confidence and commitment in climate policies.

During the 2013-2014 California legislative session, several bills designed to strengthen the cap-and-trade program passed, while measures that would have harmed or derailed the program all failed to move forward.

Gov. Jerry Brown and other state government leaders have called for more ambitious goals to be set beyond the current 2020 goal.

California’s success creates momentum for national and global climate action, offering lessons and insights to other states and nations all over the world that are weighing similar actions to help avert the worst effects of climate change.

In fact, cities, states, and regions are at the front lines of developing effective solutions chart the path for climate progress on a much bigger scale.

Cap-and-trade is not the only answer to climate change.

But the results from California’s program show that with a long-term vision and strong leadership – along with effective collaboration between government, businesses and communities, stakeholders – it’s one of the strongest answers we’ve got.

This post originally appeared on EDF Voices.

Posted in Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Policy / Comments are closed