"Most of the funding, $621 million, will go toward 36 projects aimed at bolstering the resilience of existing infrastructure through things like improving draining, moving roadways, and lifting up bridges.
An additional $119 million will go toward protecting, strengthening, or removing at-risk coastal infrastructure like highways."
"President Joe Biden celebrates Earth Day by announcing $7 billion in grants for #ResidentialSolar projects that will power nearly a million low-income households.
Residential #solar is difficult to access for lower-income Americans because of its high upfront cost and because less affluent people tend to rent their homes or live in apartment buildings.
Biden's goal: to direct 40% of federal clean energy investment benefits to disadvantaged communities."
Consumers can access up to $14,000 or more per household. Many will likely be able to start accessing rebates within months.
The rebates aim to partially or fully offset costs for efficiency projects like installing electric heat pumps, insulation, electrical panels and Energy Star-rated appliances."
Biden did a lot for the climate, much of it unsung.
"Few Americans say they've heard a lot about what the administration has done on #ClimateChange. That extends to those in the president's own party and to those who rate the issue of climate change as very important. Half of them have heard little or nothing at all about what the administration has done."
"The money for the solar panels will flow through Environmental Protection Agency's Solar for All grant competition, which was part of Biden's landmark climate change law dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act. The law is expected to create 200,000 jobs and save households in the program about $400 a year, the White House said."
Americans want climate action at the government level. That action has started under Biden. But:
"Half of Americans have heard not much or nothing about what the Biden administration has done about #ClimateChange. Only 14% say they've heard a lot."
"[Green banks] use that money to invest in new solar farms, decarbonize homes and apartment buildings, and make communities more resilient to extreme weather and other climate impacts. The returns from those projects will then go back to the coalition and allow them to fund more projects over time. If successful, that will keep the $20 billion cycling in the economy long after other IRA funding has dried up.
Many of the projects funded over the past month work this way"
“With the industrial decarbonization program” — a $10 billion set of awards to more than 130 companies, funded with $6 billion of IRA money — “the number that DOE is touting isn’t $6 billion. It’s $20 billion, because all the projects require cost sharing.”
“The industrial decarbonization programs are first-of-a-kind inroads into a sector that has traditionally been called hard to abate.”
"The most high-profile rule issued Thursday is the greenhouse gas restriction, which applies to both existing #coal plants and newly constructed #NaturalGas plants.
Under the rule, these power plants are expected to have to capture 90 percent of their carbon dioxide #emissions."
Coal plants: by 2032, gas plants: by 2035.
They have a decade to develop carbon capture as real, cheap, and at scale, or it's the end of coal and gas power plants.
"West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has already vowed to challenge the Biden rule in court and predicted he’d score a repeat victory against what he called an “out-of-control agency.”
But legal observers say the new rule’s focus on facility-level carbon emissions may save the regulation from the pitfalls the Clean Power Plan encountered in the 2022 case."
The #Biden administration issued new minimum #EnergyStandards for homes built with federal dollars.
A bundle of #BuildingCodes that set efficiency targets for insulation,windows, HVAC and other systems, the updated energy standards apply only to new #AffordableHousing construction built with federal financing or funding.
All told, the average annual savings work out to $963 per household."
#WhatBidedDid here for lower income families is significant: Affordable housing is not really affordable if it needs lots of energy and money to heat and cool.
Building thermally resilient housing costs builders more, so they have to be mandated to do it. These standards do just that.
"In one of its biggest steps yet to keep #FossilFuels in the ground, the Biden administration announced Thursday that it will end new coal leasing in the #PowderRiverBasin, which produces nearly half the coal in the United States.
The bureau determined that no future coal leasing should happen in the basin, and it estimated that coal mining in the #Wyoming portion of the region would end by 2041."
"At least 305 major #CleanEnergy projects have been announced in 40 states and Puerto Rico since the IRA passed, Timberlake said, totalling more than $123 billion in capital investments. The Midwest, he added, has received about a quarter of those funds."
@CelloMomOnCars It boggles my mind that the US is torn down the middle trying to decide if it'll elect a competent President, who understands and works to resolve actual issues the US is facing or an incompetent malicious criminal President. Did I mention, fraudster, sexual assaulter, smelly narcissist who can hardly read, is in the pocket of Russia, lead a violent insurrection and cheats at golf? You go USA! See if you can summon the moral clarity to decide.
The corporate media has got very good at generating clicks, which generate revenue. Which it has achieved by giving up on providing the news we need. They're still mostly covering this year's elections as if it were a normal election year. History will not be kind to them.
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