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    Senate Proposal Ends Tax Cuts for Clean Energy, Disappointing Climate Advocates

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    A Senate tax package softens some blows imposed on renewables by a House version of the bill. But it still terminates many credits for clean power.Climate advocates, Democrats, and even some House Republicans who last month had supported a tax package that gutted federal support for clean energy were hoping the Senate would make fixes to protect energy manufacturing and jobs.But on Monday, Senate Republicans disappointed them, proposing to quickly end most tax breaks for wind and solar power, electric vehicles and other clean energy.Draft legislation released by the Senate Finance Committee would terminate or scale back most of the major tax incentives for clean energy contained in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the Biden administration’s signature climate law.The plan would eliminate within six months a $7,500 consumer tax credit for purchases of electric vehicles as well as home energy rebates for things like electric heat pumps and induction stoves. A tax credit for homeowners who install solar panels on rooftops would end within 180 days. A subsidy for making hydrogen fuels would expire this year.Federal tax credits for wind and solar power, which have been in place for decades but were made more lucrative under the Inflation Reduction Act, would be rapidly phased out. Wind and solar companies could qualify for the full tax break only if they began construction in the next six months. They would receive 60 percent of the tax break if they began construction in 2026, and 20 percent of the tax credit if they began construction in 2027. Projects built after that would get nothing.That’s a slightly longer runway for renewable energy than is in the House version of the bill, which would have ended those tax breaks almost immediately.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As Energy Costs Surge, Eastern Governors Blame a Grid Manager

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      For decades, a little-known nonprofit organization has played a central role in keeping the lights on for 65 million people in the Eastern United States.Even some governors and lawmakers acknowledge that they were not fully aware of how much influence the organization, PJM, has on the cost and reliability of energy in 13 states. The electrical grid it manages is the largest in the United States.But now some elected leaders have concluded that decisions made by PJM are one of the main reasons utility bills have soared in recent years. They said the organization had been slow to add new solar, wind and battery projects that could help lower the cost of electricity. And they say the grid manager is paying existing power plants too much to supply electricity to their states.Some governors have been so incensed that they have sued PJM, drafted or signed laws to force changes at the organization, or threatened to pull their states out of the regional electric grid.The Democratic governors of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania sharply criticized the organization in recent interviews with The New York Times and in written statements. And the Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, called on the organization to fire its chief executive in a letter obtained by The Times.“PJM has lost the plot,” Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said in an interview. In another interview, Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland said about PJM, “I am angry.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Indiana Evangelicals Are Focusing on Creation Care With Environmental Work

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      The solar panels on the churches were inspired by Scripture.So were the LED lights throughout the buildings, the electric-vehicle charging stations, the native pollinator gardens and organic food plots, the composting, the focus on consuming less and reusing more.The evangelical Christians behind these efforts in Indiana say that by taking on this planet-healing work, they are following the biblical mandate to care for God’s creation.50 States, 50 Fixes is a series about local solutions to environmental problems. More to come this year.“It’s a quiet movement,” said the Rev. Jeremy Summers, director of church and community engagement for the Evangelical Environmental Network, a nonprofit group with projects nationwide.In Central Indiana, a patchwork of evangelical churches and universities has been sharing ideas and lessons on how to expand these efforts, broadly known as creation care. Some have partnered on an Earth Day-like celebration they named Indy Creation Fest.Tell Us About Solutions Where You Live More

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      The Vicious Cycle of Extreme Heat Leading to More Fossil Fuel Use

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      A new report illustrates a concerning dynamic: Record heat last year pushed countries to use more planet-warming fossil fuels to cool things down.Last year was the hottest on record, and global average temperatures passed the benchmark of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial times for the first time. Simultaneously, the growth rate of the world’s energy demand rose sharply, nearly doubling over the previous 10-year average.As it turns out, the record heat and rapidly rising energy demand were closely connected, according to findings from a new report from the International Energy Agency.That’s because hotter weather led to increased use of cooling technologies like air-conditioning. Electricity-hungry appliances put a strain on the grid, and many utilities met the added demand by burning coal and natural gas.All of this had the makings of a troubling feedback loop: A hotter world required more energy to cool down homes and offices, and what was readily available was fossil-fuel energy, which led to more planet-warming emissions. This dynamic is exactly what many countries are hoping to halt through the development of renewable energy and the construction of nuclear power plants.Put another way, the I.E.A. estimated that if 2024’s extreme weather hadn’t happened — that is, if weather was exactly the same in 2024 as in 2023 — the global increase in carbon emissions for the year would have been cut in half.It’s not all bad news: Increasingly, the global economy is growing faster than carbon emissions. “If we want to find the silver lining, we see that there is a continuous decoupling of economic growth from emissions growth,” said Fatih Birol, the executive director of the agency.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Climate United Sues E.P.A. Over Frozen $20 Billion

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      In a lawsuit, Climate United claims the E.P.A. is illegally withholding funds that have become a target of the Trump administration.A multibillion dollar dispute between the Environmental Protection Agency and several nonprofit organizations escalated on Saturday when one group sued the E.P.A. and Citibank, seeking access to grant money that has been frozen under President Trump.Climate United, a nonprofit organization, claimed that the E.P.A. and Citibank have illegally withheld a nearly $7 billion award announced last April. Citibank has housed the funds as part of a green financing program to finance projects that address climate change.The funds are part of a larger pot of money, $20 billion, that have been swept up in controversy after Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, called the green financing program a “scheme” that was “purposely designed to obligate all of the money in a rush job with reduced oversight.”Now, some of the nonprofits say, their bank accounts are frozen and that they are struggling to pay staff.Climate United had planned to loan the money to developers across the country in support of solar power, electric trucks, and energy-efficient affordable housing projects, and said the freeze has meant small businesses and developers are unable to draw down funds they were promised.“We’re not trying to make a political statement here,” said Beth Bafford, chief executive of Climate United. “This is about math for homeowners, for truck drivers, for public schools — we know that accessing clean energy saves them money that they can use on far more important things.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nuclear Power Was Once Shunned at Climate Talks. Now, It’s a Rising Star.

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      Growing worldwide energy demand and other factors have shifted the calculus, but hurdles still lie ahead.For years at global climate summits, nuclear energy was seen by many as part of the problem, not part of the solution.Sama Bilbao y Leon has been attending the annual United Nations climate change talks since 1999, when she was a student of nuclear engineering. And for most of that time, she said, people didn’t want to discuss nuclear power at all.“We had antinuclear groups saying, ‘What are you doing here? Leave!’” she said.These days, it’s a very different story.At last year’s climate conference in the United Arab Emirates, 22 countries pledged, for the first time, to triple the world’s use of nuclear power by midcentury to help curb global warming. At this year’s summit in Azerbaijan, six more countries signed the pledge.“It’s a whole different dynamic today,” said Dr. Bilbao y Leon, who now leads the World Nuclear Association, an industry trade group. “A lot more people are open to talking about nuclear power as a solution.”The list of countries pledging to build new nuclear reactors, which can generate electricity without emitting any planet-warming greenhouse gases, includes longtime users of the technology like Canada, France, South Korea and the United States. But it also includes countries that don’t currently have any nuclear capacity, like Kenya, Mongolia and Nigeria.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.N. Report on Climate Goals Says Countries Have Made No Progress

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      An annual assessment by the world body tracks the gulf between what countries have vowed to do and what they’ve actually achieved.One year after world leaders made a landmark promise to move away from fossil fuels, countries have essentially made no progress in cutting emissions and tackling global warming, according to a United Nations report issued on Thursday.Global greenhouse gas emissions soared to a record 57 gigatons last year and are not on track to decline much, if at all, this decade, the report found. Collectively, nations have been so slow to curtail their use of oil, gas and coal that it now looks unlikely that countries will be able to limit global warming to the levels they agreed to under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.“Another year passed without action means we’re worse off,” said Anne Olhoff, a climate policy expert based in Denmark and a co-author of the assessment, known as the Emissions Gap Report.The report comes a month before diplomats from around the world are scheduled to meet in Baku, Azerbaijan, for annual United Nations climate talks, where countries will discuss how they might step up efforts to address global warming.Lately, those efforts have faced huge obstacles.Even though renewable energy sources like wind and solar are growing rapidly around the world, demand for electricity has been rising even faster, which means countries are still burning more fossil fuels each year. Geopolitical conflicts, from the U.S.-China rivalry to war in places like Ukraine and Gaza, have made international cooperation on climate change harder. And rich countries have failed to keep their financial promises to help poor countries shift away from oil, gas and coal.At last year’s climate talks in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, representatives from nearly every nation approved a pact that called for “transitioning away from fossil fuels” and accelerating climate action this decade. But the agreement was vague on how to do so and on which countries should do what, and so far there has been little follow-through.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As Texas Power Grid Faces New Strains, Renewables Help Meet Demand

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      Texas, the biggest oil-producing state, has turned to solar power and battery storage to see it through extreme weather. But with demand rising, much more power will be needed.During the scorching summer of 2023, the Texas energy grid wobbled as surging demand for electricity threatened to exceed supply. Several times, officials called on residents to conserve energy to avoid a grid failure.This year it turned out much better — thanks in large part to more renewable energy.The electrical grid in Texas has breezed through a summer in which, despite milder temperatures, the state again reached record levels of energy demand. It did so largely thanks to the substantial expansion of new solar farms.And the grid held strong even during the critical early evening hours — when the sun goes down and the nighttime winds have yet to pick up — with the help of an even newer source of energy in Texas and around the country: batteries.The federal government expects the amount of battery storage capacity across the country, almost nonexistent five years ago, to nearly double by the end of the year. Texas, which has already surpassed California in the amount of power coming from large-scale solar farms, was expected to gain on its West Coast rival in battery storage as well.The swift growth of battery storage as a source of power for the electric grid, along with the continued expansion of large-scale solar farms, could not have come at a better time. Texas, like many other states, is facing a surge in its power needs from data centers, new manufacturing plants, cryptocurrency mines, growing residential demand and increasingly intense summer heat. Officials estimate that Texas, already the nation’s largest electricity consumer, could roughly double its demand in just a few years.“Every state is going to go through this. Texas just happens to be the farthest along because we are growing our energy usage first,” said Michael Lee, the chief executive of Octopus Energy U.S., a subsidiary of the British electricity provider. “We’re seeing this in every other state, and all over the world.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Adds Tariffs to Shield Struggling Solar Industry

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      American solar manufacturers are pushing for further protections for their new factories against cheaply priced imports from China.Tariffs aimed at protecting America’s solar industry from foreign competition snapped back into place on Thursday, ending a two-year pause that President Biden approved as part of his effort to jump-start solar adoption in the U.S.The tariffs, which will apply to certain solar products made by Chinese companies in Southeast Asia, kicked in at a moment of growing global concern about a surge of cheap Chinese solar products that are undercutting U.S. and European manufacturers.The Biden administration has been trying to build up America’s solar industry by offering tax credits, and companies have announced more than 30 new U.S. manufacturing investments in the past year. But U.S. solar companies say they are still struggling to survive as competitors in China and Southeast Asia flood the global market with solar panels that are being sold at prices far below what American firms need to charge to stay in business.That has forced President Biden to make an uncomfortable choice: Continue welcoming inexpensive imports that are helping the United States transition away from fossil fuels, or block them to protect new U.S. solar factories that are benefiting from taxpayer money.The tariffs that take effect Thursday encapsulated that dilemma. The levies, which apply to certain solar products coming to the United States from Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam, were approved two years ago, after U.S. officials ruled that some Chinese firms were trying to dodge preexisting American tariffs on China by routing solar panels through other countries. The exact tariff rate depends on the company but could be more than 250 percent.The Chinese firms had set up factories in Southeast Asia, but Commerce Department officials said that some were not doing substantial manufacturing there. Rather, they were using sites in those countries to make minor changes to Chinese-made solar products, and then shipping them to the United States tariff-free, the ruling decided.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More