June 2025 – Page 4 – This is Not Cool

To Save US Economy, Senate Must Act on Clean Energy Incentives

Above, Billionaire tech Bros on the “All in” podcast discuss China’s breakneck pace in the energy transition, and the reality of what our energy options are at the moment.
TLDR – solar, wind and batteries are the only options available right now if we even want to maintain status quo, much less compete for leadership.

Wall Street Journal:

Democrats and clean energy advocates are ratcheting up pressure on a handful of Republican senators to salvage billions of dollars in projects, ahead of an expected vote next week on President Trump’s megabill that targets critical subsidies for elimination.

How fast to wind down clean-energy credits is one of several contentious pieces of the tax-and-spending legislation, along with reductions in Medicaid spending, that Republican party leaders need to iron out quickly to hit a July 4 deadline for delivering the bill to Trump’s desk. While some Republicans are trying to protect funding for projects in their states, other GOP lawmakers see the subsidies as a ripe target for savings, as the party moves to extend and expand Trump’s tax cuts.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who backs the subsidies and is up for re-election next year in closely divided North Carolina, said the Senate language released Monday “moved substantially” in the right direction from an earlier House version, and that he is still in negotiations with colleagues.

Banks, Insurance Giants Financing Their own Demise

Good analogy to start off this piece.
Above, Fed Chair Jerome Powell tells Minnesota Senator Tina Smith “..fast forward 10 or 15 years, there will be areas of the country where you can’t get a mortgage, there won’t be ATMS..” due to climate risks.

Mark Gongloff in Bloomberg:

If you come home early from vacation and find robbers ransacking your house, you could call the police and try to stop the crime. But the true alpha move would be to help the robbers load your valuables onto the truck and then tell them which of your neighbors are also on vacation in exchange for a cut of the profits.

Banks are choosing the alpha option, basically abetting theft from themselves by backing new projects to extract and burn fossil fuels, thus stoking the planetary heating that stunts economic growth and their own insurance and mortgage businesses. Of course, these financial companies do get a cut of the short-term profits from this environmental sabotage. And by abandoning the pretense of siding with the climate, they avoid political blowback from a US government that has declared war on it. But the long-term result will be a global economy trillions of dollars poorer and far less stable, impoverishing just about everyone, including the banks.

Ford CEO on EVs and EREVS. “Lots of Work to Do.”

Ford CEO on EV progress.
Work continues. Farley feels Plug-in Hybrids are the mainstream, with EREVs coming soon, which is a technology I was not sufficiently aware of.

Google says:

An EREV, or Extended-Range Electric Vehicle, is a type of car that combines an electric motor with a petrol or diesel engine. This hybrid vehicle is designed to provide longer driving ranges compared to traditional electric cars.

The Chevy Volt was not exactly an EREV, since technically the ICE had a drive connection to the wheels.

Rain Forecast was Wrong. Therefore, There is No Climate Change

President of the US repeats one of 1992’s most brain dead climate denial crocks.

Below, measured global temperature in red, climate model projections – range in blue, mean in heavy black line.

FEMA Cuts Rip Red State’s Readiness

We told ya.
Hell, THEY told ya.

Project 2025 at work in your community.

Politico:

The nation’s top emergency response agency has repeatedly warned that it will run out of money to respond to natural disasters by August.

So some emergency managers found it jarring when White House budget chief Russ Vought insisted that the federal disaster fund is “flush” through September, writes Thomas Frank. They began asking: Is Vought misinformed — or is the administration planning to keep the money pot full by slashing aid to states as the Atlantic hurricane season revs up?

President Donald Trump has long promised to reduce the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s aid to states, putting pressure on governors to handle ballooning disaster costs as climate change intensifies storms, floods and wildfires.

Music Break: Bee Eaters – Creek’s All Muddy

Ignore lame graphic. This is the reel deal.

BiPartisan Senators : Tax Bill Will Explode Deficits, Collapse US Grid, and Stifle Economy

(Also, destroy a livable planet, but we don’t do science any more, do we? —
pays to know your audience)

Above, Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) was asked today about the effects of the giant tax package currently making its way through the Republican lead US Senate.
Mr Schatz is one of a growing chorus of voices warning that pulling the rug out from clean energy development will leave the US with virtually no options to meet growing demand in the near term future.
This week, 4 Republican Senators wrote to Majority Leader John Thune to express a very similar message.

Senators Murkowski (R-Alaska), Tillis (R-North Carolina),Curtis (R-Utah), and Moran (R-Kansas):

The United States produces some of the cleanest and most efficient energy in the world, and an all-of-the-above approach—including support for traditional and renewable energy sources—has long been a hallmark of our energy strategy. To that end, many American companies have made substantial investments in domestic energy production and infrastructure based on the current energy tax framework. A wholesale repeal, or the termination of certain individual credits, would create uncertainty, jeopardizing capital allocation, long-term project planning, and job creation in the energy sector and across our broader economy.

Given rising energy demand, it is imperative that any modifications to the tax code avoid worsening the economic pressures that American households and businesses already face. For energy credits that provide a direct passthrough benefit to ratepayers, repeals would translate into immediate utility bill increases, placing additional strain on hardworking Americans.

EV Charging Getting Easier – Thank Markets, not MAGA

Mike Buza and his Chevy Equinox, which he recently drove to Middle-of-Nowhere in Michigan’s UP for a camping trip – no problem

Trump and his Oil Oligarch donors are doing their damndest to kill EVs, and the US Auto industry in the process. One hope for change is that free market players are getting into the EV charger game and improving access and service across the country.

New York Times:

Automakers and charging companies are building new stations and updating their cars to allow drivers to more easily and quickly recharge their vehicles. They are also outfitting charging stations with more amenities like food and bathrooms while making the devices more reliable. And because chargers are only as fast as the cars they connect with, automakers are designing new cars to absorb electricity at Usain Bolt-level speeds. In addition, many automakers have cut deals with Tesla allowing owners of other cars access to the company’s fast-charging network, the largest in the country and widely considered the most reliable.

There is early evidence that efforts to improve electric vehicle charging are paying off.

In recent years, J.D. Power surveys showed that about 20 percent of attempts to charge electric vehicles at all public stations ended in failure because of faulty chargers, long lines or payment glitches. But in the first three months of 2025, overall failure rates fell to 16 percent, the biggest improvement since the surveys began in 2021.

Batteries Making Grid More Resilient

Utility Dive:

There were 30 weather-related events in the United States and Canada that caused more than $1 billion in damages last year, but “none resulted in operator-initiated load shed, unlike previous events of a similar scale,” the North American Electric Reliability Corp. said Thursday in its annual State of Reliability report.
On whole, the bulk power system “remained reliable but challenged by adverse weather conditions and transitions in resource mix and usage,” according to the report. “Today’s transmission system is demonstrably more reliable and resilient with the severity and duration of outages declining,” the reliability watchdog said.
The North American grid is challenged by the proliferation of large loads, such as data centers, and the operating profile of inverter-based resources, NERC said. But “reliability improvements were observed in areas with high concentrations of battery energy storage systems,” also known as BESS.

NERC’s report also highlights the potential for batteries to make the grid more reliable. Utility-scale battery storage in the United States is poised to more than double over the next two years and will close out 2026 at nearly 65 GW, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in its Short Term Energy Outlook published Tuesday.

Senate Choosing Oligarchs and Oil over Their Children

Federal Deficit graphed against Presidential Administration. Notice anything?

Future historians will not be kind to the Republican Party.

New York Times:

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.