All Roads To West Virginia. The White House is working with Senator Manchin to drive a bipartisan option for the infrastructure bill which is currently gapped by some $700billion between the two sides. To get the reach to the other side of the aisle, Biden’s team is working with Senator Capito from WV and her group of Senators to find ways to make the bill approvable from their perspective. The two sides are talking and while there is public disagreement about where things stand, both Capito and Buttigieg seem to be indicating optimistic potential to find a road forward.
The Undertones. West Virginia needs the economic uplift that the infrastructure bill provides. In a world where coal has been driven out by capitalism, West Virginia is ready, willing and able to provide the support America needs for physical infrastructure and adopting climate change solutions. I note that the state legislature in WV recently approved solar leases and while WV is very red, it is also very unionized for labor and overlaps with the goals of the infrastructure bill. There are also billions in allocations for coal mine decommissioning and local infrastructure work that Manchin and Capito would like to bring home.
Taxes. You haven’t head a lot about the infrastructure bill adding to the deficit. Infrastructure spending is very popular on both sides of the electorate and Biden had proposed a $2.2trillion bill that was fully funded by recouping half of the tax cuts passed in the previous administration. The GOP is going to trade the tax rate increases for a smaller infrastructure bill using deficit spending instead of increasing the tax rate and nobody wants the public to really know that everyone in DC loves deficit spending when it creates revenue for every congressional district in America.
A Map Of Need. The NYT has a nice visualization of where in America we need to built more solar and wind. You’ll see that the map has pockets of resource that then rely on transmission to spread the electrons to the demand pockets which are not always overlapping with the resources.
- Reuters: ‘Real compromise’ on U.S. infrastructure bill possible – Republican senator
- Politico: Buttigieg: Americans can’t wait for ‘dorm room debate’ over infrastructure
- New York Times: Where Wind and Solar Power Need to Grow for America to Meet Its Goals
- Utility Dive: Republicans include $4B for EVs in 2nd counteroffer to Biden infrastructure plan
- New York Times: A Look at What’s Inside Biden’s $6 Trillion Budget Request
- Axios: The role of EVs in the climate fight
- PV-Tech: Canadian Solar launches US$150 million fundraise to support battery storage growth
- Energy Storage News: Around 200GW of energy storage in US interconnection queues at end of 2020
- Canary Media: Why rooftop solar and home batteries make a clean grid vastly more affordable
Opinion
Best, Yann