Hi John,

We’re back this week to remind you that we’re still moving full speed ahead to enact bold and pragmatic climate and energy policy to help us reach our net-zero carbon emissions goals.

The Colonial Pipeline cyberattack and subsequent gas shortages remind us that now is the time to make big investments in our energy infrastructure if we want to secure our clean energy future. That includes building a safe and secure electric grid that can reliably deliver clean energy in every region of the country.

 NEWS ON NUCLEAR

The bad news: Last week, the final nuclear reactor at Indian Point Energy Center shut down. The 2.1 gigawatts of power that the last reactors generated for New York City will be temporarily replaced by natural gas as New York works to meet its goal of 70% renewables by 2030. The final two reactors at Indian Point, which were in operation for nearly 45 years, met a quarter of New York City’s energy demand with carbon-free power. The closure leaves just 93 U.S. reactors left.
 
The good news: In the same week, the Surry Power Station near Newport News, VA, received approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to run safely into the early 2050s. The White House also indicated it will support including a production tax credit in the upcoming infrastructure bill.
 
We need to keep existing nuclear reactors online to have any chance of reaching our net-zero carbon emissions goals. Our research from 2018 found that losing 20% of nuclear plants would setback clean energy growth by 4.5 years; losing 55% of the fleet would set us back 11 years. To meet net-zero, we need to add a lot more clean electricity to the grid, and shutting down existing nuclear plants only makes meeting the challenge more difficult.
 
The writing is on the wall: We need to save existing nuclear generators, and we’re thrilled the Biden-Harris Administration thinks so, too.

 BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION APPROVES FIRST MAJOR OFFSHORE WIND FARM IN U.S.

The Department of the Interior approved the country’s first large-scale offshore wind farm, a project that is estimated to produce 800 megawatts of electricity and power 400,000 homes. Vineyard Wind, which has faced a long and cumbersome uphill battle, plans to build 84 wind turbines off the coast of Massachusetts, creating about 3,600 American jobs. The project experienced over 10 years of setbacks and delays, including concerted efforts by the Trump Administration to cancel the project’s permitting process. 
 
This news follows President Biden's commitment in March to produce 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy in the United States by 2030, an undertaking that the Administration estimates will yield $12 million in annual capital investments and support over 75,000 American jobs.

 EXPLAIN IT TO ME

We’re working with the team at Our Daily Planet to break down complex topics in climate and energy.
 
Last month, our Policy Advisor John Milko worked with Our Daily Planet to explain what we mean by “clean energy jobs” and show how many such jobs we can expect to create.
 
John discusses modeling from our Decarb America Research Initiative, which found that a $754 billion investment in innovation, transportation, and clean energy infrastructure would create one million jobs annually through 2026. He also breaks down the difference between the direct, indirect, and induced jobs these investments will produce:

• Direct jobs are new jobs created by policies and new investments. In the example of building out train infrastructure, direct jobs are those held by workers who lay the tracks for new trains and build new train cars.
• Indirect jobs are created in adjacent supply chains. In the transit example, these are jobs in manufacturing the steel to lay the tracks or the train parts.
• Induced jobs are captured by increased economic activity because of investment, such as jobs running a new restaurant that opens along a new train route.

We often hear the unit of measurement “metric ton” used when referring to carbon emissions, but what does that translate to in real life? We worked with Our Daily Planet to produce a helpful visualization that demonstrates what one metric ton of CO2 actually looks like as it is emitted, avoided, or sequestered.