Story at a glance
- U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said she believes tax credits for renewable energy infrastructure will pass Congress before November’s midterm elections.
- The tax credits would go towards installing clean energy infrastructure like solar panels.
- The proposed tax credits were part of President Biden’s major budget bill which lost support from Sen. Joe Manchin in December.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said Thursday she is “optimistic” that Congress will be able to pass aspects of the Biden administration’s Build Back Better program, specifically tax credits for installing clean energy infrastructure, before November’s midterm elections.
Democrats are currently working to rally support for a trimmed down budget bill as part of a reconciliation effort after Sen. Joe Manchin did not vote for the almost $2 trillion package, which passed in the House.
During The Hill’s “The Sustainability Imperative: Cleaner, Sustainable Energy of Tomorrow” virtual event Granholm told Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack she believes that part of Build Back Better will be adopted due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
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“We do not want to be under the thumb of petro-dictators,” Granholm said. “We want to transition to be energy independent.”
“Democrats have certainly been in favor of that but Republicans have also said we want an ‘all of the above’ strategy,” Granholm told Cusack.
Part of that “all of the above” strategy was addressed in the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which passed last summer, Granholm added, which included subsidies for decarbonizing fossil fuels, which some environmental activists argue is just a way to mask the release of greenhouse gases.
President Biden banned all imports of Russian oil into the United States in March, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine. The U.S. imports a small share of its oil from there and in 2021 Russian oil made up 8 percent of the country’s total oil imports, according to the Energy Information Administration.
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