1. Jeremy testifies before House Natural Resources on permitting
ClearPath Chief Strategy Officer Jeremy Harrell testified before the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations this week in a hearing titled, "The Biden Administration’s Executive Overreach and its Impact on American Energy Independence."
Jeremy’s testimony focused on three pillars of reform that must be expanded upon to unlock our energy future – restoring predictability to the permitting system; providing more streamlined litigation; and improving coordination between federal, state and local governments.
- Watch Jeremy’s opening statement here.
- Read Jeremy’s testimony here.
What’s clear: Republican and Democratic policymakers have never been more closely aligned on the need for permitting reform. Whether the motivation is climate, economic growth, or energy security, it is well past time to fix what is broken.
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2. Bipartisan Senate CDR bill will accelerate technology commercialization
ClearPath Action endorsed the Carbon Removal and Emissions Storage Technologies (CREST) Act of 2023, reintroduced this week by Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA).
- This legislation will authorize research, development, and deployment (RD&D) of innovative carbon dioxide removal and sequestration technologies crucial to meeting America’s emissions reduction goals.
What’s clear: "Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is one of the most promising clean technologies for removing carbon already in our atmosphere and affordably reducing emissions across the global economy,” said ClearPath Action CEO Rich Powell.
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3. Emissions know no borders
The dual imperatives of addressing energy security and climate change are inherently international. U.S. emissions are a smaller part of the global total and improving trade and export policy will help deploy more American-made clean energy technology abroad.
- The U.S. is roughly produces 11% of global emissions, and
- Our efforts at home will not be enough to solve global energy and climate challenges.
What’s clear: No country will use a single clean power technology solely – every country will need to find the right mix given their national circumstances, geography, resource endowments, and pre-existing industry.
Plug in: Our Senior Director of International Policy wrote a blog titled, “ Sharpen U.S. Clean Energy Trade & Financing,” which highlights some policy opportunities to reach our future clean energy and climate ambitions.
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4. Oxy breaks ground on world’s largest DAC plant
- The project estimates removing 500,000 metric tons of carbon annually, and
- Has the potential to increase capacity to 1 million tons per year in the future.
- Some carbon will be stored underground, and the rest used to create products.
What’s clear: The private sector investments in DAC have exploded in recent years as a promising technology to remove carbon dioxide emissions that are already in the atmosphere.
Plug in: ClearPath has a five minute educational video that goes deeper into how the technology works.
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5. The world wants new nuclear – 5:1
A new, multinational report out this week shows tremendous public support for using advanced nuclear energy. The survey of more than 13,000 respondents across eight countries — the US, UK, France, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Japan, and South Korea — showed strong support, with an average of five supporters for every opponent.
Key findings from the poll include:
- There is strong support for advanced nuclear in every country tested
- Environmental group members are strong supporters of advanced nuclear
- Support for advanced nuclear is bipartisan and comes from almost all parties
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6. Microsoft looks to procure fusion electricity
Private U.S. nuclear fusion company, Helion Energy, announced that it will provide Microsoft with electricity in about five years, the first such deal for fusion power.
Helion’s 50 megawatts plant, which can power about 50,000 U.S. homes on a typical day, is targeted to be online by 2028.
What’s clear: Fusion may be closer than we think. Innovative fusion companies are looking to commercialize their technologies rapidly.
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7. ICYMI
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