In an effort to provide coal, oil and gas workers with clean energy jobs, the Biden administration announced a series of new initiatives and projects targeting fossil fuel-producing communities Tuesday.
“We share a belief, which is that the workers who powered the last century of industry and innovation can power the next one,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said on a press briefing call with reporters Monday. “They have the infrastructure, they have the expertise, they got the vision, they have the can-do attitude.”
Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed last year, the Department of Energy will allocate $450 million to repurpose current and former mine lands “which expose local populations to harmful pollutants and contaminate the air, land, and water quality,” the White House said in a memo.
The administration estimates there are 17,750 mine land sites across 1.5 million acres in the country. They estimate the new initiative could generate enough clean energy to power 30 million homes through solar power, hydropower, nuclear power plants, and plants with carbon capture technology, among other clean energy methods.
The University of North Dakota and West Virginia University will also receive $16 million total to study designs for a first-of-its-kind refinery that will aim to “extract critical minerals from coal mine waste streams,” Granholm said.
Those rare earth minerals can be used to produce materials needed for solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles “while cleaning up polluted land and water and creating good paying jobs for local workers,” the energy secretary added. While the goal is to reduce mine waste and clean up mining locations, another benefit for the administration is to increase domestic production so as not to rely on other nations, including China.
The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service will also issue guidance Tuesday to help clean energy project developers use billions in funding on top of existing tax credits passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, passed last year.
“This bonus is available to developers for projects in historical energy communities, particularly areas with closed coal mines or coal-fired power plants,” said Wally Adeyemo, the Treasury Department’s deputy secretary. “The bonus is also available to areas that have significant employment or local tax revenues from fossil fuels and higher than average unemployment.”
Projects seeking the full tax credit will be required to employ and train a certain number of apprentices and pay workers the prevailing wage in their respective regions, which is calculated by the Department of Labor after surveying worker salaries in nearby areas.
“In a community with a closed coal mine, a developer could get a 10% bonus on top of a 30% [tax credit] for building a new wind farm,” Adeyemo explained as an example of how the bonuses will work.
The administration will also launch a mapping tool that will identify fossil-fuel producing areas that may be eligible for the clean energy project bonuses.
The White House also previewed a new initiative involving 11 federal agencies that will work together to ensure resources are getting to energy-producing communities as quickly and efficiently as possible.
In a report that will be released Tuesday, the administration will highlight $14.1 billion in federal dollars that has gone to energy communities through President Joe Biden’s first two years in office. The report will also detail the $7.4 billion in energy investments made by the private sector during the president’s time in office.
As budget negotiations have stalled, House Republicans — who have yet to release a budget proposal of their own to counter Biden’s — voted to undo much of Biden’s climate change agenda. Last week, they sent a bill to the Senate with the goal of lowering consumer energy costs by increasing domestic production of oil, gas and coal and the mining of minerals needed for battery technologies.
Biden has threatened to veto the bill and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said the bill is “dead on arrival” in his chamber.
One member of Biden’s party, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., took aim at the president’s clean energy initiatives in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week, claiming the focus on clean energy over fossil fuel production threatened the United States’ energy security and would increase the deficit.
On the call Monday, Adeyemo argued the funding of clean energy projects actually creates a more secure energy future for the country because it will reduce dependence on fossil fuels which “are quite volatile in terms of the price.” Events abroad, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Saudi Arabia-led Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries deciding to cut production, can increase oil prices domestically, impacting home heating costs and prices at the gas pump.
“It also was fully paid for, so it will actually end up reducing the deficit,” said John Podesta, a senior advisor to Biden on clean energy policy. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office determined the Inflation Reduction Act will reduce the country’s deficit by $90 billion over ten years ahead of the law’s passage last year.
