This is the twenty-fourth in our series, "The ABCs of the AJP."

In 2020 alone, the United States suffered 22 separate extreme weather and climate-related disasters that each caused at least $1 billion in damages, for a total of more than $100 billion in losses.  That staggering statistic is not an anomaly, as climate change continues to result in more and more extreme weather events every year.  For example, the Texas freeze that rocked the state earlier this year and killed more than one hundred people, also shut down the state's significant petrochemical industry, disrupting supply chains nationwide, and caused an estimated $80 billion to $130 billion in direct and indirect economic losses.数以百计的死亡者为 < a hrefss/www.npr.org/2021/07/climbs-in-crips-northWest/

Given the escalating human and economic costs of extreme weather events, it is no surprise that the Biden Administration's American Jobs Plan (AJP) prioritizes climate resiliency, a topic which has also been covered in a prior blog post.  Significantly, the AJP pledges that: "Every dollar spent on rebuilding our infrastructure during the Biden administration will be used to prevent, reduce, and withstand the impacts of the climate crisis."  The AJP also proposes to spend $50 billion on investments to specifically improve the resiliency of the nation's infrastructure, highlighting the importance of protecting critical infrastructure and services, defending vulnerable communities, and "[m]aximiz[ing] the resilience of land and water resources to protect communities and the environment."

As for protecting vulnerable communities, the AJP points out that "[p]eople of color and low-income people are more likely to live in areas most vulnerable to flooding and other climate change-related weather events" and "[t]hey also are less likely to have the funds to prepare for and recover from extreme weather events."  To improve resiliency for those communities most vulnerable "physically and financially to climate-driven disasters", the AJP proposes increased investments through existing programs, such as FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program and HUD's Community Development Block Grant program, new initiatives at the Department of Transportation, as well as "a bipartisan tax credit to provide incentives to low- and middle-income families and to small businesses to invest in disaster resilience, and transition and relocation assistance to support community-led transitions for the most vulnerable tribal communities."

Separately, the AJP would provide $500 million in grants and loan funds to renovate tens of thousands of multifamily homes to make them more resilient to extreme weather events.

Finally, the AJP proposes investing in nature-based resiliency, such as by restoring "our lands, forests, wetlands, watersheds, and coastal and ocean resources", as a means of wildfire and drought mitigation, among other goals.  The Administration also suggests that such restoration and resilience project funds would follow the guidelines of the proposed Outdoor Restoration Force Act (S.近些年来,人们更加关注自然基础建设的潜在利益,值得注意的是,美国土木工程师学会首次使用s/informstructioncard.org/solups/reslience/历经数年研究分析 来自世界各地的专家 今年夏美Army Corps of Engineers is set to release first-of-their-kind guidelines for nature-based resilience projects.

Beyond the AJP, protecting against extreme weather has been a priority of the Biden Administration from the beginning.  A few days into his presidency, President Biden signed a sweeping climate Executive Order which, among other things, directed federal agencies to develop climate resiliency plans.  More recently, on May 24, 2021, the Administration announced a plan to invest $1 billion in protecting communities through FEMA's Pre-Disaster Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program.  As with other actions taken by the Administration, this increased investment "seeks to categorically shift the federal focus from reactive disaster spending and toward research-supported, proactive investment in community resilience so that when the next hurricane, flood, or wildfire comes, communities are better prepared."  Along with the increased funding, the Administration also announced plans to develop and launch "a new NASA mission concept for an Earth System Observatory" to better forecast and monitor natural disasters.

At this point, it is unclear whether or how Congress will act to implement the Biden Administration's proposals to protect against extreme weather.  However, there are some signs of bipartisan interest in such legislation.  For example, after the Texas freeze in early 2021, a bipartisan group of members of the Texas congressional delegation introduced the Power On Act (S.1432 帮助保护电网基础设施不受极端天气影响。此外,2019年,参议院环境与公共工程委员会一致通过了2019年美国交通基础设施法(sgp/crs/misc/IF11300.pdf>$100dm/a问题很可能成为双党优先处理点,特别是当德克萨斯冻结事件在全国各地变得司空见惯时。 双党重心对极端天气事件进行保护后,所有美国人和企业都应从更多保护中受益,避免事件造成的损害、损失、中断和人类代价。

As discussed on our previous post on grid modernization, new transmission lines must be installed to allow high-capacity, long-distance power transmission, so that renewable energy can be efficiently transmitted from remote areas where it is plentiful to more densely populated locations where it is needed.

Here, we explore how the AJP's aim of securing investment for development of transmission infrastructure may advance a number of additional objectives:

• It can help bridge the physical and jurisdictional lines drawn between the Nation's regional power markets.
• It can improve the resiliency of the grid to the reliability threats posed by increasingly extreme weather events.
• And it can help stitch together the historical opposition between environmental and labor interests.

Power Lines, Political Lines, and Linkages

The contiguous U.S.eia.gov/todayinEnergy/detail.php?id=27152基本分离网格连接点很少,只能互传递小量能量The boundaries at which the grids abut (and minimally connect) are known as "seams."

Ongoing research from the Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) suggests that fortifying these seams would provide substantial economic and environmental benefits, making it possible, for example, for solar power from the desert southwest to meet peak electricity demand in the northeast and then support similar demand peaks at later times in the west.

While NREL has yet to finalize its seams study, reportedly due to the prior administration's efforts to downplay those benefits, other studies have similarly projected tremendous return on investments in grid integration and improved power transmission.

• According to one such study, integrating the Nation's grids and installing high-voltage direct-current (DC) transmission lines – which can transmit energy over long distances more effectively than the alternating current (AC) lines that dominate the current grid – has the potential to save consumers over $47 billion annually.

In spite of the obvious benefits associated with a better-connected grid, overcoming the physical and jurisdictional boundaries separating the three interconnections will not be easy.

In particular, Texas has historically preserved its independence from oversight of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) by not significantly participating in interstate energy transmission.

That independence may be increasingly difficult to defend, however, in the aftermath of the failure of much of the Texas grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) during this past February's extreme winter storm.

• Cities like El Paso, which are not part of ERCOT, fared relatively well, because they were able to receive power from neighboring balancing authorities and power markets.
• But the major metropolitan areas of Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth suffered catastrophic power losses because they were limited to the supply within ERCOT, which was designed to meet peak demand on a hot summer's day and could not keep up with the unprecedented winter demand.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the AJP's argument in favor of spending billions of dollars to improve our Nation's transmission infrastructure leads with a description of the Texas outages and prior research indicating that weather-related power outages cost the U.S.最大达每年700亿美元经济量。

This is the tenth in our series on "The ABCs of the AJP."

Jobs, unsurprisingly, are at the heart of the Biden Administration's ambitious, multi-trillion dollar infrastructure plan.  After all, the plan also goes by the name The American Jobs Plan ("AJP").  Each of the sweeping goals of the AJP—from addressing climate change, to developing a resilient electricity grid, to competing with China over clean energy supply chains—promises to create thousands of new jobs.

These jobs fall into multiple categories, including, but not limited to:

• Repairing bridges and highways, upgrading ports, airports, and transit. The Biden Administration wants to invest hundreds of billions of dollars on transportation infrastructure and resilience.  This includes thousands of individual projects, and, as discussed in a recent blog post, a significant portion of this investment will be aimed at redressing inequities created by past investments in transportation infrastructure.
• Electric vehicles and related supply chains. The Administration has announced plans to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into the domestic electric vehicle market, including investing in manufacturing at various stages of the supply chain.  The AJP also signals the Administration's plan to leverage the federal government's procurement power to give this manufacturing—and other types of manufacturing—a head start to competing on the global scale.
• Updating and expanding our electricity grid. To develop a more affordable, reliable, and resilient electricity grid, the Administration is calling for the creation of additional generation facilities and transmission lines.  The Administration views a transition to renewable sources of energy as a way to both create jobs and advance environmental justice concerns.  To this end, the Administration wants to accelerate investment in distributed energy resources in historically neglected neighborhoods, and create fifteen "decarbonized hydrogen demonstration projects in distressed communities."
• Updating other utility networks. The AJP will also expand broadband transmission to rural communities, and update water systems throughout the country to ensure universal access to clean water.  Regarding clean water efforts, the Administration is prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the removal of lead pipes and on investment in new drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater systems.元老院同政府联动hrefss/www.congress.gov/bill/gress/senate-bill/914exts/bill/a一年之久 数十万个工作丢失 行业行政局认为对更清洁、更具弹性经济至关重要 。最新消息可再生能源(下降6%)网格现代化和电池存储量(下降7%) 清洁车辆制造量增长(增长3%)
  Now,2020年后退并实现AJP对地平线的允诺,这些行业预期增长量将超过这些就业机会损失的补偿量。
  One
• s/mjbradley.com/sites/default/files/EDF_EV_Market_Report_Series_202020_Update.pdf'>sreport 估计电动车辆行业2019-a数雇用近130 000人部分估计这些数字会急剧增加,因为政府支持家电车行业。
• ahrfss/acc/report-transmission-itc-bell-decate-650000-jobs-spur-153b-in-Investment/''sreport 预测会增加650 000个新工作,因为我们利用投资税抵充来改造传输网格。
• Recently, the National Solar Jobs Census released its annual report, which explains that the industry anticipates 400,000 solar jobs by 2030, and will need over 900,000 employees by 2035 to meet the Administration's emissions target.

It figures to be more difficult to measure progress against one of the Administration's other promises: that these new jobs will be "good jobs."

One possible metric is wages.  Those who have begun analyzing the quality of the types of promised jobs appear to be optimistic on this front:

• In April, the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution released its report, Advancing Inclusion Through Clean Energy Jobs.发现清洁能源雇员(广义定义)比全国所有工人挣得更高更公平的工资。
• 补充报告发现清洁能源工作通常很少有正式教育需求Indeed, the report found that roughly 50 percent of clean energy employees have a high school diploma yet earn higher wages than similarly-educated peers in other industries.

Despite these promising figures, some are concerned that the transition away from fossil fuels concentrates job losses in certain communities, while opportunity remains concentrated elsewhere.  Although the Brookings Institution report concludes that clean energy jobs compare favorably to average jobs nationwide, the numbers are not as rosy when clean energy jobs are compared to the fossil fuel jobs they figure to replace.  This disparity is also noted in a recent report from Environmental Entrepreneurs, Clean Jobs America 2021, which explains that "wages in clean energy as a whole are lower than fossil fuels."

Another important consideration is that many of the hotspots for clean energy jobs are in states and communities with relatively high average wages, relatively high costs of living, and a relatively low concentration of the types of jobs that will be rendered obsolete as our economy moves towards zero emissions.  To this point, on April 19, 2021, the United Mine Workers of America ("UMWA") released its report, Preserving Coal Country, which voiced concerns about the number of coal jobs—and jobs in related and unrelated industries—that Appalachia has lost and will continue lose as our energy grid moves away from coal.  UMWA noted the need for a plan to support the people and towns that are being left behind.

This objective – often referred to as "just transition" – is relevant not only in the US, but has been broadly embraced as part of international efforts to address climate change, including in the Paris Agreement resulting from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's ("UNFCCC") Conference of the Parties ("COP") 21 in 2015, the Solidarity and Just Transition Silesia Declaration adopted at the COP 24 in Katowice, Poland in 2018, and as a major component of the European Green Deal.

The Administration appears sensitive to the need to assure a just transition for communities in Appalachia and elsewhere that depend on coal jobs, particularly given the even divide in the Senate and the need to either obtain bipartisan support or at least maintain the entire Democratic caucus to advance the President's infrastructure and clean energy goals.总统提名和参院一致 Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, §218.  Not long after UMWA released its report, the Interagency Working Group ("IWG") released its own report, focusing on job creation and workforce development in communities with the highest concentration of direct-coal-sector jobs.

The IWG identifies almost $38 billion in "existing federal funding that could be accessed by Energy Communities for infrastructure, environmental remediation, union job creation, and community revitalization efforts."  It also focuses on the job creation and environmental justice potential of environmental remediation projects in "fenceline" communities located near energy or industrial facilities, which are among the most polluted communities in the country and are often communities of color.  This includes remediation of abandoned mine lands, orphaned oil and gas wells, and brownfields in communities with closed or abandoned power stations or mining sites.

The IWG also emphasizes the amount of federal money available for carbon capture and storage projects at existing power plants and industrial facilities, as well as funding to extract critical minerals from coal waste streams for use in the manufacturing of batteries and other components of electric vehicles.  This would help advance the Administration's goal of developing a domestic supply chain for electric vehicles, while also creating job opportunities for coal miners and others in energy communities affected by the transition away from coal.

Whether these investments will be enough to gain support of key members of Congress remains unclear.  Given how closely divided both chambers are, however, it seems self-evident that any infrastructure package that advances with some of the AJP's key clean energy elements intact – either as a result of bipartisan negotiation or through reconciliation – will undoubtedly include targeted investments for those communities most likely to be impacted by decreasing reliance upon coal and other fossil fuels.

This is the fourth in our series on "The ABCs of the AJP."

The White House's recent announcement of the American Jobs Plan (AJP) highlights the establishment of a "$27 billion Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator to mobilize private investment into distributed energy resources."  While distributed energy resources (DERs) are only mentioned once in the announcement, they figure to play an important role in the Administration's overall goals.

Compared to traditional large-scale electricity generators, DERs are a collection of smaller, decentralized generators.  They typically harness cleaner sources of energy, including renewables such as solar, wind, and geothermal, and are located closer to the energy users, reducing the need for long-range transmission.

By promising diverse localized production and a higher percentage of renewable energy in our grid, DERs figure to be a useful tool to achieve several of the Administration's goals, including: reducing economy-wide greenhouse gas pollution!and resiliency—not dependent upon just one energy source or provider, our grid will be less vulnerable to widespread outages.  DERs have been an increasing focus of attention in California, since public-safety power-shutoffs have caused multi-day shutoffs for thousands of customers due to wind-precipitated events that pose a risk of wildfires.

The AJP explains that investment in DERs will come from an "Accelerator."  The specifics of the Accelerator will be determined by Congress, where relevant bills have been introduced in both the House and the Senate.  Specifics aside, the Accelerator will be an independent public or not-for-profit financial organization that will invest in clean energy.  By focusing on renewable energy and energy efficiency, this entity would accelerate investment in a clean energy economy.

Both the House and Senate bills embrace the Administration's goal of using this Accelerator to advance environmental justice goals: "These investments have a particular focus on disadvantaged communities that have not yet benefited from clean energy investments."  To this end, both bills make clear that not less than 40% of the total money invested would be directed towards disadvantaged communities that figure to be especially hard hit by climate change.  See H.R.806, §1627(b)!S.283, §5245H(b).