In August Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, a landmark climate and clean energy bill. Six months later, we’re asking: where are we now?
Read MoreOn 27 July, Senators Manchin and Schumer announced a deal on the successor to the Build Back Better Act, which is expected to pass in the Senate on Saturday (6 August 2022) and the House the following Friday. This new legislation, called the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, includes US$370 billion in programs and tax credits to boost renewable energy production in the United States.
That said, page 644 of the draft includes language that ties federal solar, wind and offshore wind development to federal lease sales for oil and gas.
The Details
The section of the bill titled “Ensuring Energy Security” prohibits the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from issuing rights-of-way (ROW) for wind or solar development on federal land unless an onshore oil and gas lease sale has occurred within 120 days before the wind or solar lease issuance. In addition, these wind and solar ROWs would not be allowed unless, in the previous year, BLM completed onshore oil and gas lease sales covering 2,000,000 acres or 50% of the acreage in which interested parties have expressed interest, whichever is lower. (Note: Wind and solar projects that impact federal land are authorized by ROWs.)
Offshore wind (OSW) is similarly impacted by this provision, as it prohibits the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) from issuing an OSW lease unless an oil and gas offshore lease sale of at least 60 million acres is held during the year before the OSW lease issuance.
The Impact
This section of the agreement is intended to force the Biden Administration to restart the regularly scheduled oil and gas lease sales that it has been cancelling since 2021, while at the same time allowing the Biden Administration to conduct fewer annual oil and gas lease sales than currently required.
The Mineral Leasing Act requires four onshore oil and gas leases per year; the language in this bill requires three onshore oil and gas leases per year, as a prerequisite to solar and wind development on federal land. BOEM offshore oil and gas five-year leasing programs require two offshore oil and gas lease sales in most years; this bill requires one sale per year, in order to allow solar and wind development on federal land.
Furthermore, the acreage requirements for oil and gas sales outlined in the bill are in line with previous sales. And for the onshore oil and gas lease sales, just in case BLM falls shore of the 2,000,000 acre requirement, they can sell leases for 50% of the acreage that parties are interested in.
The Compromise
This Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is a compromise forged by Senate Democrats with the slimmest of majorities. The Ensuring Energy Security section is Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Joe Manchin’s way of requiring an all of the above energy policy for the country.
The U.S. Energy Storage Association (ESA), the national trade association for the American energy storage industry, will recognize K&L Gates with the Brad Roberts Outstanding Industry Achievement Award at the 2020 ESA Annual Awards taking place during the association’s virtual conference next week.
The award recognizes K&L Gates for “its tremendous contributions that have advanced the industry forward including nurturing early storage developers, hosting an annual conference, and developing the widely circulated Energy Storage Handbook.” The ESA determines this award by surveying its members and past award recipients each year to identify a member organization that has made significant contributions in the storage industry.
Read more about the award in the ESA press release.
Join us on June 30, 2020 at 4:30pm EDT for a webinar on the Post-COVID-19 Outlook for renewable energy.
Emerging from the first wave of the COVID-19 crisis, the renewables industry has experienced many positive and negative effects, from enormous job loss to valuable cost reductions, innovation in project development, and an uptick in storage contracts. However, there is still significant uncertainty about what a second wave of lock-downs may bring as well as the effect of the macroeconomic climate on investor appetite.
Our expert panel will share with you what they expect to see in the development and power markets worldwide as well as the hot new trends they see as helping the industry emerge from the COVID-19 crisis stronger and more resilient than ever.
Moderator:
Speakers:
For more information and to register, please click here.
Join us on Wednesday, June 10, 2020, for a CLE presentation on “COVID-19: Perspectives for the “Next New Normal” for Renewable and Utility Companies.”
Companies are seeing unprecedented legal and business impacts due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These impacts are bringing about changes in strategy and how many companies approach their day-to-day business operations to adapt to this new business environment. This one-hour session will involve a presentation by the following K&L Gates attorneys sharing their perspectives on what to consider during the “next new normal.”
Moderator:
Panelists:
This presentation will include the evolving legal and business impacts of COVID-19 in connection with:
This webinar will contain a chat feature in which you can submit questions so that we may tailor this presentation to address your concerns.
To register, please click here.
Please join K&L Gates’ Elizabeth Crouse on the Energy Storage Association’s upcoming webinar, Energy Storage, Trade and China, on Thursday, May 21 from 12:00 PM – 1:00 CDT.
This webinar will explore the key trade and national security policies that currently impact the ESS market in the U.S. and assess their potential impacts on future deployments, including:
• How might regulatory developments under the Executive Order impact storage?
• What might the future hold for tariffs?
• How do these processes play out in an election year?
For more information and to register, please click here.
Author: Elizabeth Crouse
This afternoon, the Office of Legislative Affairs at the Department of Treasury, issued a letter to Charles Grassley, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, indicating that Treasury intends to issue administrative relief to the solar and wind industries regarding certain investment tax credit (“ITC”) and production tax credit (“PTC”) deadlines. Although the letter does not provide any details as to the nature of this relief, Chairman Grassley’s April 23, 2020 letter to Treasury requested that the four-year safe harbor for the continuous construction and continuous efforts test for the PTC and ITC be extended to a five-year safe harbor period.
Chairman Grassley did not request administrative relief concerning the impact of COVID-19 related measures taken by manufacturers and shipping companies on a customer’s “reasonable expectation” that materials purchased in 2019 would be delivered within 3.5 months after payment. This latter provision is important for purposes for establishing beginning of construction of solar projects in 2019.
K&L Gates is pleased to congratulate our partner Teresa A. Hill on being named to the National Law Journal’s “Energy & Environmental Trailblazers.” The National Law Journal recognized lawyers across the country that have moved the needle in the energy or environmental space through devising new strategies, pioneering technological advancements, litigating landmark cases, and other innovative initiatives.
Teresa was honored for her work in the cutting edge area of corporate energy sourcing, which helps corporate customers develop and implement sustainability and carbon reduction goals through their energy strategy.
In addition to her work spearheading the K&L Gates Corporate Energy Sourcing Initiative, Teresa focuses her practice in the areas of energy and infrastructure projects and transactions with an emphasis on on wind, solar, biomass, geothermal and hydroelectric power.
Expedited permitting and environmental review for complex infrastructure projects may soon be a reality. Buried at the end of its most recent transportation reauthorization package (the “FAST Act” or “Act”) is a significant new initiative intended to fundamentally change the way that federal agencies evaluate environmental impacts from, and issue permits for, construction of large infrastructure projects. [1]
National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) review and environmental permitting for complex infrastructure projects can be costly and protracted. For instance, a U.S. Government Accountability Office Report stated that the average completion time for an Environmental Impact Statement (“EIS”) in 2012 was 4.6 years. [2] Between 2003 and 2012, the Department of Energy paid contractors an average fee of $6.6 million, and as much as $85 million, to prepare EISs. [3] The cost to prepare an EIS is often borne by project sponsors. Some transportation and water resources projects currently benefit from expedited permitting and environmental review procedures, [4] but the FAST Act is the first time that Congress has attempted to coordinate NEPA review across federal agencies and industry sectors.
In March 2014, the German government presented the details of its plans for changes in the country’s renewable energy support scheme. The planned legislation (the “Draft”), which passed the cabinet on 8 April 2014, seeks to curb the increase of energy costs and to promote a stronger market integration of renewable energy production.
Under the Renewable Energies Act (“EEG”), renewable energy producers are entitled to fixed feed-in tariffs and to priority feed-in into the grids. The spread between the market price and the feed-in tariff is levied to electricity consumers by a renewable energy surcharge (“EEG Surcharge”) whereby energy-intensive industries benefit from a reduction.
Under the EEG support scheme, renewable energy sources have experienced a boom in Germany, now serving as a source for about 25 % of the country’s electricity consumption – four times as much as a decade ago. In turn, the system has increasingly been put under political pressure as energy costs (especially for households) continue to increase. In addition, the support scheme is held to produce a paradox effect: whereas consumer prices increase due to the EEG Surcharge that levies the feed-in tariffs, wholesale electricity prices plunge because the rapidly growing renewables are flooding the market. The effect of this price development is tangible: Germany’s second largest utility, RWE AG from Essen, whose core business is electricity delivery, has announced a net loss for the year 2013 of 2.8 billion Euros. It was RWE’s first loss-making year since the end of the Second World War. Read More
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