In the News
Nine Democrats urged the Federal Housing Finance Agency on Thursday to require new homes with mortgages backed by government-sponsored enterprises to meet newly-finalized energy efficiency codes from the Housing and Urban Development and Agriculture Departments.
Some of Capitol Hill's most prominent environmental champions are calling for congressional leaders to pack the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill with provisions that would support energy efficiency and climate resilience.
Democrats and Republicans in Congress pushed polar opposites to the Biden administration for how to manage national forests: curtail logging in mature and old forests or quit trying to rein in the practice.
The competing messages came in letters from lawmakers to the Department of Agriculture, which is moving toward new protections for old-growth areas in the national forest system but leaving largely unanswered what to do with "mature" forests that could age into old growth in the decades ahead.
House Republicans narrowly passed a slate of bills March 20-22 showcasing the party's energy priorities and favoring US oil and gas production ahead of the 2024 elections but unlikely to be enacted in the 118th Congress.
The votes were part of what Republicans dubbed "Energy Week" and advanced measures to roll back the US Environmental Protection Agency's Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and scrap the EPA's new fee on oil and gas methane emissions. Another measure would also streamline water crossing permits for oil and gas pipelines and other linear infrastructure.
The federal government will require some of the largest publicly traded companies to disclose their levels of greenhouse gas emissions under a new rule from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The SEC voted 3-2 on Wednesday to require large companies to tell investors about greenhouse gas emissions directly caused by their business if that information would be likely to influence someone’s decision on whether to invest.
Hey, hey, everybody. This is Volts for February 14, 2024, Valentine's Day— happy Valentine's Day, everyone — "The Democrats' new consensus bill would supercharge transmission." I'm your host, David Roberts. When permitting reform came up toward the end of the last session of Congress, was a bit of a dumpster fire. Sen. Joe Manchin’s permitting compromise— which would have boosted clean energy and fossil fuel projects alike— sparked intense opposition among both progressives and Republican senators and ended up dying an unceremonious death.
Four members of the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC) Climate Jobs Task Force are leading members in calling on the Department of Energy’s (DOE) 21st Century Energy Workforce Advisory Board.
A wind and power transmission project, called the largest of its kind in the country, has raised $11 billion in financing, kicking off a year when many utilities are expected to step up much needed spending on the power grid.
Pattern Energy Group has started construction on its SunZia project, a wind farm in central New Mexico, where more than 900 wind turbines will generate over 3,000 megawatts of clean energy. A 550-mile transmission line will bring the power to some three million people in Arizona and California.
She said it. “The immediate economic incentives on the farm just don’t always align with making the right decisions for the climate. That is a textbook case for government intervention.” – New York farmer Ariana Taylor-Stanley, telling members of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition that she knew planting trees on her farm would help sequester carbon, but she couldn’t afford it without USDA conservation assistance.
It’s hard to solve a challenge as sprawling and complex as doubling or tripling the scale of the transmission grids across the U.S. in a little over a decade. But the country’s climate and clean energy goals depend on it.