WALZ PRAISED BY CLIMATE GROUPS: Vice President Kamala Harris ’s selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her running mate drew praise from green groups, who cited his record on clean power, electric vehicles, and more.
“Tim Walz has made Minnesota a national climate leader,” Manish Bapna , president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, said in a statement, ABC News reported .
Of particular note, Walz signed legislation last year requiring 100% of electricity to be from carbon-free resources by 2040. He also has signed comprehensive permitting reform, legislation boosting electric vehicles, and a ban on PFAS in consumer products.
Walz has received some flak from environmentalists for approving an oil pipeline, and he has avoided getting into the legal fights over the mining projects in the state, including the Twins Metals mine, according to S&P Global.
As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Walz was a member of the bipartisan Energy Working Group and amassed a relatively centrist record. He did vote , though, for the 2009 Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill.
“In his time serving in Congress and as Governor, he has worked to protect clean air and water, grow our clean energy economy, and see to it that we do all we can to avoid the very worst of the climate crisis,” Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous said in a statement.
The opposition: GOP energy strategist Mike McKenna told Bloomberg that Walz’s record of promoting renewable energy would put him at odds with voters who favor an all-of-the-above energy strategy. Walz “is selling product that nobody in Pennsylvania is going to want to buy,” he said.
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RECESSION FEARS DRAG DOWN OIL DESPITE MIDEAST TENSIONS: Oil prices held near the lowest levels of the year today, despite rising fears of escalating conflict between Israel and Iran.
“It’s quite striking that the oil market so far is not pre-emptively pricing in the risk of what seems to be a very imminent conflict,” Daniel Yergin , vice chairman of S&P Global, said on CNBC this morning.
Brent crude prices held steady above $76. West Texas Intermediate hovered near $73.
Oil prices fell Friday after the monthly jobs report showed employment growth slowing and the unemployment rate rising fast enough to trigger a key recession indicator. Markets generally sold off as investors digested the possibility that the U.S. may be on a path to a downturn.
The fear of a recession and a slowdown in demand for gas and oil outweighed the news that Iran is believed to be preparing an attack on Israel in retaliation for the assassination last week of a senior Hamas official in Tehran.
BIROL SHRUGS OFF CRITICISM OF OIL FORECASTS: International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol dismissed criticism from oil industry figures and Republican politicians in quotes to the Financial Times, which ran a lengthy profile of him and his agency’s warnings that the world has to switch from fossil fuels to clean energy.
“Sometimes I take it personally, but I try to put it into context,” he says. “We have, I believe, beautiful goals to reach and to get there you have to get some bruises.”
Birol and the IEA have faced criticism from OPEC for their forecasts that the world will reach peak oil in the next five years. OPEC, in contrast, has projected that oil demand will grow indefinitely.
IEA’s forecasts have got it in trouble with Republicans, who could look to cut funding or oust Birol if Donald Trump is reelected.
“The next president should work . . . to end this progressive echo chamber and return the IEA to its original, non-partisan mandate of promoting energy security,” said Carla Sands of the America First Policy Institute. Read more here .
ICYMI – BIDEN ADMINISTRATION AWARDS $2.2B IN GRANTS FOR GRID IMPROVEMENT: The Department of Energy announced awards of $2.2 billion in grants from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for eight projects across 18 states to improve power grids, Canary Media reports .
The grants are meant to be matched by nearly $10 billion from the private sector and local governments, and will enable the connection of 13 gigawatts of clean energy to grids, including 4.8 GW of offshore wind, according to the DOE.
Among the projects: The North Plains Connector Interregional Innovation project is set to receive $700 million to build high-voltage direct current interconnections across Montana and North Dakota.
“The consortium’s core project, the North Plains Connector , would be the first HVDC line to connect the power grid managed by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council, which covers much of the Intermountain West, with the transmission networks of Midwest grid operators Midcontinent Independent System Operator and Southwest Power Pool, which connect to the broader Eastern U.S. grid…. The North Plains Connector would allow the Western and Eastern U.S. grids to share 14 times more electricity than they do today and enable about 3 gigawatts of new generation capacity to be built in the wind-rich states it crosses,” Canary Media reports.
Another $390 million in grants was awarded to the Power Up New England project, managed by the states of Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont, to develop onshore facilities to connect high-voltage underwater cables carrying power from offshore wind farms. Read more here .
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