United States Dramatically Boosts Climate Spending
Will Electrification Win Out Over the Petroleum Economy?
CLIMATE SPENDING
Between November 2021 and August 2022 the US government enacted three major laws that collectively raise climate spending to unprecedented levels. You wouldn’t guess these laws concerned the climate from their titles:
- Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act
- Chips And Science Act
- Inflation Reduction Act
But collectively it is estimated that they will raise climate spending by the US government to $80 billion per year through 2029. In order of price tag, the major new initiatives include:
- $67 billion – Climate, zero carbon, and advance manufacturing research. This spending focuses on long term measures.
- $65 billion – Transmission line upgrades for resiliency and support of mass electrification of transportation and manufacturing.
- $55 billion – Clean drinking water projects.
- $50 billion – Projects to provide resiliency against climate disasters.
- $21 billion – Environmental remediation.
- $7.5 billion – Creation of an EV charging network.
- $7.5 billion – Purchases of electric buses and ferries.
- $5.8 billion – Conversion of major manufacturers to electrification and green hydrogen.
The spending comes in the form of grants, loans, and tax credits. Further infrastructure spending on airports, ports, roads, bridges, public transport, and transport safety could arguably be counted toward climate mitigation.
ELECTRIFICATION STRATEGY
A big thrust of these new laws is to electrify the infrastructure of the United States: firstly in transportation and manufacturing and probably later in home and commercial heating and cooling. The theory behind electrification is that power can be generated at a central hub, pollution can be controlled at that production hub through various technologies, and at the distributed points of usage the various vehicles, machines, and appliances will not be putting out pollutants.
One of the biggest spending items in the climate package is upgrading of the national electrical grid to make it resilient. Thousands of miles of power lines are expected to be replaced. Much of the grid is over 25 years old and is vulnerable to extreme weather events. Resiliency upgrades are required to support a future of renewable energy projects connecting to the electrical grid and a potential tripling of needed transmission capacity by 2050. The waiting time to connect new renewable projects to the grid has already become unacceptable in 2022. A wide variety of resiliency upgrades are possible, depending on local conditions:
- Improvements that avoid outages and the $70 billion per year in economic damage outages cause.
- Streamlined permitting through advanced planning with stakeholders: states, tribes, and utilities.
- Smart grid technologies that allow small scale producers to connect as well as homeowners selling back unused solar power.
- Micro grids which manage, isolate, and protect a neighborhood or business park.
- Selective burying of transmission lines to protect against wind and weather. You can’t bury an entire system due to cost, extra heat that causes power loss, and difficulty of servicing.
- Replacing aged wooden poles with steel, concrete, or fiberglass.
- Greater transmission ties between regions would aid in response to demand and weather events.
- Integration of small scale renewable electricity generation projects that shorten the distance power is transmitted and leakage of power along that route.
MISCELLANEOUS INITIATIVES
These are massive laws and brought together a lot of pet projects by a variety of politicians. Some miscellaneous funding included in these laws include:
- The US Postal Service, which is in a constant financial crisis, was criticized recently for deciding to replace its aging fleet of delivery trucks with new gasoline powered vehicles. Management said that it could not afford the acquisition, infrastructure, and maintenance costs of an electric fleet. That money was provided in the new laws. Private fleet owners, however, do not enjoy patronage of the same government sugar daddy.
- Senator Manchin of West Virginia ensured that easier approval of federal oil and gas leasing was enacted. Climate activists agonize over the inclusion of this provision in a climate law. But Manchin’s single vote was essential.
- Tax credits were made available to protect the nuclear industry and to research advanced nuclear technology.
- Agricultural spending was boosted to support “climate-smart” farming and ranching.
- Money was provided to reduce wildfires and maintain forests as carbon-sequestering assets.
VEGAS RENEWABLE DIESEL HAS A SURPRISE
Tim Wetzel states that: “We need to resolve the political war that is tearing our country apart. No matter your belief about climate change, we need to stop polluting. We need to protect the Earth we rely on for our sustenance. While the regular people suffer, the billionaires invest in space travel to get away. This madness has to end.”
“The government, unfortunately, is very poor at picking winners in a Capitalist society. Biodiesel is one example. Billions were poured into subsidizing biodiesel manufacturing and fuel. In the end, the greenhouse gas reduction was overblown or nonexistent, these businesses were unprofitable even with subsidies, and hundreds of biodiesel plants shut down. The government is repeating this mistake with renewable diesel and electric vehicles. So called “renewable” diesel is made from food crops that could be feeding humans and animals. Diversion of food crops to fuel contributes to food price inflation and third world hunger. We will never be able to bring enough new land into production to replace our reliance on petroleum. Electric vehicles have many unsolved problems: environmental impacts from battery production and disposal, limited real world performance on the road, and fire safety problems.”
“No oil company ever asked for a subsidy to build a gas station! We must reformulate our fuels. There should be one grade of fuel at the gas station: emission free with all NOx, dioxides, and other harmful chemicals eliminated. This form of energy would avoid polluting our air, water, or land; which is a claim you can’t make for electric vehicles.”
“Let me introduce UC2. UC2 is the first fully compliant ASTM D975 diesel, which is completely emission and NOx free. We have reformulated the diesel fuel being refined now. This is the cleanest, most efficient diesel on Earth. This is the best formula to use and our gasoline will be that way as well soon. It will be available in our pumps. I hold the answer to clean fuel for our present and future.”
Vegas Renewable Diesel has a surprise for politicians, regulators, and climate activists. VRD’s recent introduction of emission free diesel gives new life to the petroleum industry and takes the controversy out of the energy industry. If use of petroleum for transportation and heating no longer pollutes, what would be the point of regulating against it? Clean burning diesel could also be used to run generators that feed into smart grid systems to help meet peak demand periods.
Learn more about VRD’s technology at:
