Equilibrium/Sustainability — Biden green investment tool excludes race

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The Biden administration has excluded race from its rubric of factors that determine which neighborhoods are “environmental justice communities,” raising divides among climate justice advocates.

“Race is a factor, but race isn’t the only factor” in terms of marginalization, Catherine Coleman Flowers, a member of the advisory council that helped create the Biden rule, told The Associated Press.

She said that including race would make the rule more likely to be struck down by the Supreme Court, adding, “Being marginalized in others ways is a factor.”

White House Council on Environmental Quality chair Brenda Mallory defended the “race-neutral criteria” earlier this week, telling The New York Times that officials wanted to “set up a framework and a tool that will survive.”

But other advocates have pushed back. Sacoby Wilson, an associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, described the choice as “a political decision,” according to the AP. Robert Bullard, an urban planning professor at Texas Southern University, called the move “a major disappointment.”

“It’s a major flaw in trying to identify those communities that have been hit hardest by pollution,” Bullard, who also serves as a member of the White House advisory council, told the AP.

Today we’ll turn to Florida, where activists and advocates are squaring off with lawmakers over an attempt to cut rooftop solar paybacks. Then we’ll look at a recent ruling that liberal scholars say is hamstringing President Biden’s climate agenda.

For Equilibrium, we are Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin. Please send tips or comments to Saul at selbein@digital-stage.thehill.com or Sharon at sudasin@digital-stage.thehill.com. Follow us on Twitter: @saul_elbein and @sharonudasin.  

Let’s get to it. 

 

Florida solar advocates sound alarm over bills 

A Republican-backed proposal to slash rooftop solar subsidies is advancing through Florida’s legislature, deepening divides between solar industry supporters and the Sunshine State’s largest utility.   

The proposal involves two companion bills, SB 1024 and HB 741, that would mandate changes to Florida’s “net metering” system: reductions to paybacks that rooftop solar customers receive for excess power they generate and the possibility of grid connection fees.

Opposing viewpoints: The lawmakers behind the bills argue that such changes would ensure that Floridians who cannot afford solar are not shouldering high electricity costs on behalf of wealthier neighbors. But their opponents say that such action would torpedo statewide solar adoption.   

“It would definitely put a huge, not just chilling effect, on jobs, but really a loss of jobs and careers and businesses,” Ben Millar, CEO of Tampa-based Sun Harvest Energy, told Equilibrium.

Where do the bills stand now? The Senate version was initially on schedule at Tuesday’s Rules Committee — the last stop before the Senate floor — but was scrapped from the agenda prior to the session.   

“The bill was removed at the request of the sponsor who needed additional time as she continues to work with the House sponsor,” a Rules Committee spokesperson told Equilibrium, referring to state Sen. Jennifer Bradley (R) and state Rep. Lawrence McClure (R).   

The House bill, meanwhile, is in the State Administration & Technology Appropriations Subcommittee and never appeared on this week’s agenda. Florida’s 2022 regular legislative session ends on March 11.  

A familiar fight? Another solar squabble has been rattling California, where that state’s Public Utility Commission has proposed both reducing paybacks and charging a fee, as we previously reported. 

But the Florida fight is occurring at the legislative level, and only following Senate and House approval would the bills task Florida’s Public Service Commission with making reforms.    

What’s in the bills? The bills would require the commission to propose a revised net metering rule on or before Jan. 1, 2023, ensuring that rooftop customers “pay the full cost of electric service” and that “all energy delivered by the public utility is purchased at the public utility’s applicable retail rate,” according to the text of the Senate bill.   

The adjustments would occur gradually, with credit dropping to 75 percent of the utility’s retail rate — today’s payback amount — in 2024 and 2025. It would fall to 50 percent of the rate in 2026 and 2027. By 2028, the rate would match the utility’s full “avoided costs,” or the costs a utility avoids in not needing to generate that power. 

 

ACTIVISTS ACCUSE UTILITY OF LOBBYING PUSH

Both activists and solar industry backers claim that the Sunshine State’s largest utility, Florida Power & Light (FPL), pushed for the proposed legislation.  

Internal emails obtained by a Miami Herald-Floodlight investigation in December showed that an FPL lobbyist had sent the bill’s text to Bradley’s staff a month before she introduced an almost identical bill. While FPL’s parent company, NextEra, allegedly contributed $10,000 to Bradley’s campaign in the interim, Bradley told the reporters that the donation was unrelated.

Bradley did not respond to Equilibrium’s repeated requests for comment.  

What about the utility? FPL spokesperson Chris McGrath told Equilibrium in a statement that since 2020, the company has “been engaged in constructive dialogue with numerous lawmakers regarding this important issue.”   

“We provided our recommendation for a fair and equitable way to modernize Florida’s net metering rules,” the statement said, noting that it is up to lawmakers to “decide the exact language that will be included in a bill that they choose to sponsor.”  

McGrath said he could not discuss specific donations, but explained that “like most Americans and all companies, Florida Power & Light Company participates in the political process.” 

Jobs on the line: Millar, who launched Sun Harvest Energy just a few months ago, said he believes that the legislation could jeopardize businesses, recalling a similar situation in Nevada in which “thousands of jobs were lost almost immediately.”   

Katie Chiles Ottenweller, southeast director for the advocacy organization Vote Solar, said that if the bill passes, solar energy will lose its growing popularity in the working class and become “just for rich people.”   

Last words: “It just won’t be accessible anymore,” Chiles Ottenweller added. “It’ll wipe out the leasing market.”   

To read the full story, please click here. 

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Federal ruling threatens Biden climate action  

Liberal groups and legal scholars are up in arms over a recent ruling they say has impeded the Biden administration’s climate goals.

First steps: Last week, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled against the executive branch’s ability to use an Obama-era number for “the social cost” of greenhouse gasses, which attempts to calculate the total damage done by every ton of emitted carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane.
 
In that ruling, Judge James Cain, a Trump appointee, found that the government’s use of the Obama-era metric constituted an unfair damage to the 14 Republican-led oil states whose attorneys general had sued the government. 
 
The ruling struck many as highly unusual: “I don’t mean to be uncharitable, but it was like watching a toddler play with matches,” Lisa Heinzerling, a Georgetown environmental law professor and a lead author of the key Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. EPA, told Equilibrium.  

Heinzerling argued that the Biden number — $52 as the internal price for how much “cost” society bears from every ton of emitted greenhouse gases — is one that courts generally wouldn’t touch.

Critics noted that plaintiffs usually can’t sue over internal agency policies until the agency releases them in the form of an official rule — something that hasn’t happened in this case.

“When a rule is final, that’s when you could say, ‘Well, there’s all these problems with this rule,” but this rule hasn’t yet been released,” James Goodwin of the Center for Progressive Reform told Equilibrium. 

CRITICS SEE BROADER TREND

Liberal scholars and advocates are raising concerns over what they view as a broader trend: Judges taking unprecedented steps to control the federal government’s ability to make decisions on health, social welfare and environmental protection.  

The legal doctrine: In last week’s ruling, Cain used an idea called “major questions” as a springboard to control an agency’s internal decision making. The “major questions” philosophy holds that on a loose set of big policy questions, agencies can’t act without explicit Congressional authority.

Objections based on this philosophy were at the center of last year’s partial Supreme Court reversal of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium. They also came up in last month’s Supreme Court reversal of an internal Occupational Safety and Health Administration policy requiring employees to be vaccinated.  

Major questions objections are also at the root of upcoming challenges to the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions and dumping into U.S. creeks — even though, as with the social cost of carbon, the Biden administration hasn’t actually published a rule yet. 

‘Judicial activism?’: To the conservative attorneys general who tried the case, this is a necessary slap-down of an executive overreach. 

“Biden’s executive order was an attempt by the government to take over and tax the people based on winners and losers chosen by the government,” said Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry (R) in a statement. 

To progressives, the overreach is on the other side.

The social cost of carbon ruling is “a massive overreach and judicial activism from the bench, and it’s just deeply flawed on its own terms and an incoherent argument,” Amit Narang, an expert on the federal regulatory process at left-leaning Public Citizen, told Equilibrium.  

Why does this ruling matter? Experts told Equilibrium that with Congress deadlocked by the filibuster rule — which effectively prevents bills to move through an evenly split Senate — the ruling likely aimed to chill the ability of the administration to address the country’s largest problems.  

Last words: “It’s kind of perverse because it’s really on the big questions, that agencies will feel scared” of a major questions challenge, Heinzerling said.   

“And yet, those questions — because they’re questions about our biggest problems — are where you might want an agency to act kind of creatively, and forcefully. And those are the very cases where this principle will make them think twice,” she added. 

 

Follow-up Friday 

 A look at issues from this week.

Chinese government decries US seizure of Afghan central bank reserves 

• Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Wenbin decried the U.S.’s move to seize Afghan Central Bank reserves held in the Federal Reserve in New York, declaring that “the U.S. willfully disposes of assets that belong to the Afghan people” and calling their behavior “the conduct of bandits.”

NYC Mayor Adams considers cutting compost from budget 

• Littered microplastics can increase the toxicity of other pollutants. Keeping with the theme of trash disposal, New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) has proposed halting the reintroduction of curbside compost pickup, which his predecessor Bill de Blasio (D) had paused at the start of the pandemic, in an effort to save $18.2 million, The New York Times reported. 

Nissan to invest $500M in new EV models at Mississippi plant 

• A partnership among Redwood Materials, Ford and Volvo would provide an end-of-life solution for electric vehicle (EV) batteries. The same day that partnership was announced, Nissan Motor Co. revealed that the company would be manufacturing two new all-electric vehicle models in Mississippi beginning in 2025, in a $500 million investment, The Associated Press reported. 

 

ICYMI

Actors Jane Fonda, Rosario Dawson, Leonardo DiCaprio and a host of other celebrities are calling for the passage of New York legislation that would hold the fashion industry to rigorous sustainability standards.

Fonda described the current situation in a statement on Friday as “untenable,” adding that “the industry faces no regulations and is free to exploit the least protected regions of the world.” To read the full story, please click here. 

 

Please visit The Hill’s sustainability section online for the web version of this newsletter and more stories. We’ll see you on Monday.  

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