Welcome to your Friday Rundown for the week ending Nov. 3. We’ll always keep eyes and ears open for inquiries at info@clearpathaction.org.
THE BETTER BATTERY
ClearPath Founder Jay Faison this fall took a trip out to the Pacific Northwest National Lab, home of the invention of a better battery known as the third-generation flow battery. Why do we even need a new kind of battery?
With better batteries, wind and solar power could begin to turn on and turn off at least some of the time. This would partially address a variability problem that could increase when solar and wind generate a larger share of our annual power.
But Jay explains how a better battery – one that is big enough to store power from day to night and cheap enough to make a profit – could be a big missing piece in making renewable power more reliable.
The Senate Thursday by voice vote confirmed Kevin McIntyre to be the next chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and Rich Glick to be a Democratic commissioner. The move means all of FERC’s five seats will now be filled. President Trump is expected to officially designate McIntyre to be chair, a role that has been filled on an acting basis by former senior Senate GOP energy aide Neil Chatterjee since August.
The move comes as a pivotal time as the commission considers measures that could better value nuclear power’s role in a reliable and affordable U.S. power grid.
Senators also by voice vote Thursday confirmed Paul Dabbar and Mark Menezes to be Department of Energy undersecretaries of science and energy, respectively, as well as Steven Winberg to be the department’s assistant secretary for fossil energy.
CLEARPATH EVENT: THE U.S.-CHINA CLEAN ENERGY RACE
ClearPath is sponsoring an event at 11:30 Monday morning (Nov. 6) at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center on how China is dominating the clean energy innovation race and what steps the U.S. can take to reclaim its global leadership. The event will feature remarks from Rep. Ryan Costello and a panel of experts moderated by Axios energy reporter Amy Harder.
The panelists: Christopher Guith, Senior Vice President for Policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute; Shannon Angielski, Executive Director of the Carbon Utilization Research Council; David Blee, Executive Director of the Nuclear Infrastructure Council; and Varun Sivaram, Philip D. Reed Fellow for Science and Technology at the Council on Foreign Relations.
A bill from Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers that aims to speed up licensing and relicensing of the roughly 400 clean hydropower projects that will be up for relicensing by 2030 is expected to hit the House floor next week. The bill would expedite licensing for projects representing 18,000 megawatts of capacity. Her bill would also clear the way for additions to domestic hydropower capacity, including generation to non-powered dams and closed-loop pumped storage. ClearPath strongly endorses the legislation, which the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved in June.
RELATED READ: FERC has a new review out this week uncovering several regulations that place a burden on hydropower licensing. UTILITY DIVE
ADVANCED NUCLEAR CREDIT INCLUDED IN TAX REFORM
A House GOP tax reform plan included a modification to the 45J tax credit for production from advanced nuclear power facilities that is vital to the expansion of the U.S. fleet. It at least largely mirrors a bipartisan bill from Reps. Tom Rice and Earl Blumenauer lawmakers approved by voice vote in Junemodifying the credit to allow more time for the nation’s new reactors under construction to utilize the credit and allow transferability of the credit to other partners of the utilities.
But the House package leaves out bipartisan efforts to expand and extend the Section 45Q incentivethat is part of a multi-pronged financing effort for carbon capture projects. These incentives have the potential to dramatically boost commercial carbon capture deployment in the U.S., which can lead to significant increases in enhanced oil recovery and other economic benefits. Rep. Mike Conaway is leading a bipartisan bill with about 30 cosponsors. A Senate version led by Heidi Heitkamp and Shelley Moore Capito has earned backing from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Lisa Murkowski and Environment and Public Works Chairman John Barrasso.
ClearPath joined major coal and oil producers, labor unions and advocates – including Occidental Petroleum, Peabody Energy, Cloud Peak Energy, United Mine Workers and the Carbon Utilization Research Council – in sending a letter to Senate Finance Committee leaders asking them to include the 45Q extension and fix in their upcoming tax reform plan.
Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said the department is looking to cut the price of nuclear power. DOE wants to “drive down the steep cost of building nuclear reactors, costs that at least partly reflect the war against nuclear energy,” Brouillette told the American Nuclear Society as reported by POLITICO Pro. “Nuclear power needs to be revived, and not reviled in America.”
Rachel Slaybaugh, program director at ARPA-E and a nuclear engineering professor at the University of California Berkeley, has a great webinar explaining the opportunities available as part of the Department of Energy’s Oct. 20 announcement of up to $20 millionfor a new ARPA-E program called Modeling-Enhanced Innovations Trailblazing Nuclear Energy Reinvigoration (MEITNER). The program would effectively expand the agency’s highly-successful venture capitalist strategy to advanced nuclear. CHECK OUT RACHEL’S VIDEO
Kudos to our friends at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions for a new and awesome-looking website: www.c2es.org
SPEED READ
Connecticut Governor Signs Bill Backing Nuclear Plant CTPOST
