Sinema’s Income Tax Stance Has Democrats Looking Anew at a Carbon Tax

With Arizona’s iconoclastic senator cool to increased tax rates, the Senate Finance Committee is drafting a carbon dioxide fee to fund a budget bill.

By Jonathan Weisman & Coral Davenport, The New York Times, Sept. 24, 2021

WASHINGTON — Opposition from a single moderate Democrat to corporate and income tax rate increases has revived efforts in the Senate to draft a tax on carbon dioxide pollution as a way to pay for the Democrats’ proposed $3.5 billion budget bill.

Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has not advocated a carbon tax, which President Biden and other key Democrats have shied away from as a huge political risk. But her resistance to tax rate increases to pay for the Democrats’ ambitious social policy and climate legislation has set off a scramble for alternatives — at the very least to show her how difficult it would be to assemble a package without those rate hikes.

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, confirmed that the Senate majority leader had asked him to craft legislation that would put a price on carbon emissions but to ensure that the policy would respect Mr. Biden’s pledge not to raise taxes on families earning less than $400,000.

That could be done with some kind of rebate or “carbon dividend” during what Mr. Wyden called a “transition” from fossil fuel-powered cars and trucks to zero emission electric vehicles, and from coal- and natural gas-fired electric power plants to renewable energy. Also under consideration: Exempting gasoline from the levy.

“We’ve got a lot of members who care very deeply about this,” Mr. Wyden said, citing Senators Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico.

But other senators and Senate aides have confirmed the driver at the moment is Ms. Sinema, the iconoclastic Arizonan whose inscrutable policy positions in an evenly divided Senate can wreak havoc on Democratic plans. She has already said she cannot back a budget plan that spends $3.5 trillion, though she has not said what price tag she can support. Now her position on taxation has Democrats scrambling.

In an interview with The Arizona Republic published on Thursday evening, Ms. Sinema said that climate change was a major concern that drives her approach to the spending bill.

“In Arizona, we’re all too familiar with the impacts of a changing climate … from increasing wildfires to the severe droughts, to shrinking water levels at Lake Mead, damage to critical infrastructure — these are all the things that we’re dealing with in Arizona every day,” she said. “We know that a changing climate costs Arizonans. And right now, we have the opportunity to pass smart policies to address it — looking forward to that.”

Economists have said for decades that a carbon tax, which would make the use of heavily polluting fuels more expensive, is the most effective way to shift the economy away from fossil fuels toward wind, solar and nuclear power, which do not produce the emissions that are heating the planet.

“A price on carbon, such as a carbon tax, provides the economic incentive for the quickest, cheapest and most comprehensive emission reductions across the entire economy,” said Richard Newell, president of Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan energy and environment research organization.

House and Senate leaders and tax writing chairmen agreed that the budget legislation would largely be funded by returning the top income tax rate to 39.6 percent, from the 37 percent level to which President Donald J. Trump lowered it in 2017. They also agree that the corporate income tax rate should rise from 21 percent, also set in 2017.

But, Democrats confirm, at least for the moment, Ms. Sinema is opposing both moves, potentially blowing a significant hole in the finances of a bill to combat climate change, make permanent a generous per-child tax credit, extend prekindergarten and community college to almost all Americans and subsidize child care, among hundreds of other matters.

“Nearly every day for weeks, Kyrsten has been engaged in direct, good-faith discussions with her Senate colleagues, and President Biden and his team,” John LaBombard, her spokesman, said. “Given the size and scope of the proposal — and the lack of detailed legislative language, or even consensus between the Senate and House around several provisions — we are not offering detailed comments on any one proposed piece of the package while those discussions are ongoing.”

Democrats such as Mr. Schatz and Mr. Whitehouse have long promoted a carbon tax, and it has some Republican support. But when a bipartisan group of senators tried to suggest it could pay for a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, the White House balked, fearing that it would harm the middle class.

Politically, the prospect of enacting a carbon tax remains dicey, Mr. Wyden said. Even if middle-class and low-income families are held harmless with rebates, the fear of higher prices for electricity and some goods has sunk other efforts, notably those pushed by Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, a Democrat.

“We feel very strongly about honoring the president’s pledge to not take steps in excess of $400,000 and I personally have studied what happened in Washington State, one of the bluest states in the country where Jay Inslee tried repeatedly to get a carbon fee or price, and it went down, largely because voters, dealing with transition in the economy, didn’t feel it would make them whole,” Mr. Wyden said. “In other words, they thought that they would be facing costs that were impossible for their family to handle.”

Depending on how it is structured, a tax on carbon pollution could be the single most powerful policy enacted by the United States to tackle climate change.

A recent analysis by Mr. Newell’s staff found that a tax on American carbon dioxide pollution that started at $15 per ton and escalated to $50 per ton by 2030 would cut domestic carbon emissions by about 44 percent from 2005 levels — getting the Biden administration most of the way to its ambitious goal of reducing greenhouse gases by 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. It also found that such a program could actually lead to lower, not higher, electricity bills.

A carbon tax could also solve another worrisome problem for Democrats: Under the rules of the Senate, only legislation that strictly qualifies as budget policy may be included in the bill, which is being moved through Congress under a fast-track process known as reconciliation.

A pollution tax would easily pass that test. An analysis by the Senate Finance Committee found that a carbon tax could raise $500 billion, although under the program envisioned by Democratic leaders, a chunk of that money would be returned to individuals in the form of rebates.

As she has done for weeks, Ms. Sinema refused to comment on continuing negotiations. When one senator asked what revenue measures she would accept, he said he came away believing she could go along with a tax on carbon emissions and a tax on goods from countries that were not clamping down on climate change.

The latter tax, which is backed by Mr. Wyden, would be designed to ensure that other countries with lax environmental rules would not be able to sell their goods at a lower price to American consumers and reap a competitive advantage. Under the rules of the World Trade Organization, it could be difficult for the United States to impose such an import tax — essentially, a tariff on goods from heavily polluting countries — unless its own industries are also subject to one.

Mr. Wyden’s staff members, who are now writing that language, are considering a domestic carbon tax that could start at $15 to $18 per ton, and that would increase over time, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak on the record. The tax would be applied directly to coal mining companies, large natural gas processing plants and oil refiners, based on the emissions associated with their products, with one exception: Oil refiners would very likely be charged for producing diesel fuel and petrochemicals, but not gasoline — a way to try to prevent cost increases from hitting most American drivers at the pump.

But even if they can win Ms. Sinema over to the plan, others may not agree. Democrats still feel the sting of former President Barack Obama’s failed effort to pass a climate change bill that would have forced polluters to pay a fee for their fossil fuel emissions. After the House passed it in 2009, Republicans campaigned against it as an “energy tax.” The bill failed in the Senate and contributed to Democrats’ loss of the House in 2010.

Climate activists are trying to make the case to Ms. Sinema that times, and climate politics, have changed. “I can tell you that our volunteers have placed 1,444 calls and emails to Arizona Senate and House offices in the last few months,” wrote Steve Valk, a spokesman for the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, which wants a price placed on carbon pollution.

A crucial test of whether Ms. Sinema would support a carbon tax would be its effects on Arizona’s economy. Her state has suffered record droughts, which scientists say have been worsened by climate change — and is home to a growing solar power industry.

Robert Aiken, the vice president of federal affairs at Pinnacle West Capital, a Phoenix-based company that owns the largest electric utility in Arizona, said that he spoke on n Thursday with a staff member from an Arizona congressional office about a possible carbon tax provision in the budget bill.

“We were just asked about it from Capitol Hill an hour ago, for the first time,” he said on Thursday afternoon. He said that the company couldn’t yet say whether it would support the legislation until it had closely analyzed the details.

“But there’s no question we are decarbonizing in Arizona,” he said. “We’re headed in that direction. We are at the forefront of decarbonization.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/us/politics/carbon-tax-democrats.html

Democrats Rethink Climate Measures, Consider Carbon Tax

By Andrew Duehren, The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 16, 2021

WASHINGTON—Democrats are taking a fresh look at their proposals for reducing carbon emissions in their $3.5 trillion spending package, hoping to win over moderate party members who raised concerns about elements of the plan.

Democrats have laid out a variety of provisions aimed at combating climate change in the wide-ranging proposal, including tax credits for purchasing electric vehicles, a program to push utilities to produce more clean electricity and a fee on methane emissions. Now, in an effort to unite the party, lawmakers are considering changes and eyeing alternative options, including a carbon tax.

Criticism from Democrats has focused on the clean electricity performance program, a centerpiece of the package’s climate provisions. House Democrats unveiled a $150 billion plan that would provide grants to utilities that increase the amount of clean electricity by at least 4% each year, while penalizing utilities that don’t meet that standard.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), who represents a top coal-producing state and is the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has lambasted the proposal. He argued that market forces are already moving electricity suppliers away from fossil fuels.

“Why should we be paying utilities to do what they’re already doing? We’re transitioning,” Mr. Manchin said.

Mr. Manchin’s concerns have pushed other Democrats to review the design of the program. Sen. Tina Smith (D., Minn.), who has led efforts to craft the clean electricity performance program in the Senate, said she is in talks with Mr. Manchin, with an aim toward broadening the program to better incorporate carbon-capture technology. Sufficient carbon-capture technology, which involves pulling emissions out of the air, could allow states with large fossil-fuel industries—like West Virginia—to rely on the same energy mix and avoid penalties for utilities.

“If you take energy, and you make it clean through carbon capture, then that counts as clean, I think, in my book and in Sen. Manchin’s book,” she said.

Mr. Manchin isn’t alone in his criticism of the plan. Some Democrats questioned whether the plan would disadvantage states that have already transitioned away from fossil fuels, while other colleagues echoed Mr. Manchin’s concerns about supplanting market forces.

“The transition away from coal is already happening, market forces and consumer demand are bringing more solar and wind resources online daily,” said Rep. Tom O’Halleran (D., Ariz.). “We don’t need blunt penalties that are impossible for energy producers to avoid.”

Republicans have railed against the climate efforts as well as the rest of the $3.5 trillion plan. Democrats are using a procedure called reconciliation, which requires just a simple majority in the Senate rather than the 60 votes required of most bills, to try to advance the package without GOP votes. Doing so will require achieving unanimous Democratic support in the 50-50 Senate, along with near unanimity in the House, while also complying with a series of special parliamentary rules associated with reconciliation.

Democrats crafted the clean electricity payment program, an adaptation of a clean electricity standard, in an effort to comply with reconciliation’s rules, though that push could still ultimately come up short, if the Senate parliamentarian finds it inconsistent with the chamber’s standards.

As talks continue on the clean electricity effort, Senate Democrats have reviewed with fresh interest an alternative for cutting emissions: a carbon tax, according to a Senate Democratic aide. Senate Democrats and staff are discussing a carbon tax that would charge between $10 and $20 per ton of carbon emissions, a lower price than that of some other public proposals, and exempt gasoline, according to the aide.

Depending on the specifics of the tax, it could raise more than $500 billion, and Democrats are discussing whether those funds would be put toward covering the cost of the $3.5 trillion bill or as rebates for consumers, the aide said. Because it is a tax, a carbon price would likely fit within reconciliation’s mandate that measures deal directly with the budget.

Revenue-raising options circulated this month among Senate Finance Committee Democratic staff included a carbon price, laying out the possibility of charging $15 per ton of carbon emissions from fossil fuels, a tax per ton of carbon emissions from industrial emitters and a per-barrel tax on crude oil.

The emerging carbon tax proposal could face some of the same political headwinds as the clean electricity program has from moderate Democrats. The aide said conversations with White House officials about the idea have focused on how to craft the tax so it is consistent with President Biden’s pledge to not raise taxes on people making less than $400,000.

Carbon pricing has lost its luster among some Democrats and climate activists after the failure of the 2009 cap-and-trade effort, which sought to require companies to buy permits to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. But others view a carbon tax as the best tool for reducing emissions.

“I continue to maintain that a technology-neutral, economywide price on carbon is a more efficient and effective way to incentivize the movement away from fuels that drive climate change,” said Rep. Scott Peters (D., Calif.).

Including large-scale efforts on climate change in the package is a priority for progressive Democrats, who have advocated for the bill to be as large and ambitious as possible. Some progressives have also demanded that the bill scale back tax subsidies for fossil-fuel companies, a measure that lawmakers didn’t include in the House Ways and Means Committee’s tax plans.

“It’s got to remain the biggest climate change legislation ever passed, by a mile, and there’s a number of different provisions in there. You can get into which ones will stay and go, but a lot of it has to stay,” said Rep. Andy Levin (D., Mich.).

Some moderate Democrats have also singled out climate change as a priority, suggesting that having spending in the bill fully financed with tax increases and new savings doesn’t apply to spending related to climate change.

“The provisions in the bill that increase deficits should be offset, with the possible exception of measures to combat climate change,” Reps. Stephanie Murphy (D., Fla.) and Henry Cuellar (D., Texas) wrote to House leadership this month.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-rethink-climate-measures-consider-carbon-tax-11631800800?mod=hp_lead_pos10

A carbon tax is key to addressing the climate crisis — and carbon dividends could get Congress to support one

Providing carbon dividends to every resident transforms the cod liver oil of a new tax into a milkshake that most Americans would happily consume for years to come.

Op-ed by James Hansen and Jonathan Marshall, The Boston Globe, Sept. 8, 2021

As severe storms ravage the country from Louisiana to Massachusetts and wildfires consume forests and homes in the West, Congress must not fail to include in the pending budget reconciliation bill comprehensive steps to curb the climate crisis that threatens us all with even worse calamities.

However, President Biden’s ambitious goal of slashing greenhouse gas emissions 50 percent by 2030 cannot be achieved by piecemeal subsidies to promote cleaner energy — electric cars and the like ― as long as dirty fossil fuels enjoy subsidies estimated by the International Monetary Fund at more than $600 billion annually.

The vast bulk of those subsidies represent the unpriced cost to humans of burning fossil fuels: climate disruption and the health effects of air pollution. Any serious climate program must eliminate them without causing economic havoc.
Fortunately, several such programs are immediately at hand. Three pending climate bills would achieve Biden’s bold climate targets, satisfy budget reconciliation criteria, and meet the all-important political criterion of achieving public support.
The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (H.R. 2307), America’s Clean Future Fund Act (S. 685), and the Save Our Future Act (S.2085), all share two key provisions: a predictably rising fee on polluting fossil fuels and a partial or full return of revenue to every American.

Their first feature is the most familiar. An unprecedented 3,623 US economists from across the political spectrum, including 28 Nobel laureates, have declared that “a carbon tax offers the most cost-effective lever to reduce carbon emissions at the scale and speed that is necessary.”

The second feature of these bills, known as the “dividend,” is the key to helping members of Congress protect their constituents’ physical and economic well-being without being branded “pro-tax” by opponents.

As Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has argued, “the most politically viable way” to build support for a tax on carbon polluters is by earmarking the revenues to make most American voters better off right away — even before its climate benefits start to show. Providing “carbon dividends” to every resident transforms the cod liver oil of a new tax into a milkshake that most Americans would happily consume for years to come.

Analyses by the US Treasury, Columbia University, and other research centers agree that returning carbon tax revenues in the form of equal dividends to every individual provides net financial benefits to roughly two-thirds of Americans, while still motivating them to reduce their carbon footprint. These benefits supplement the huge but less immediately tangible benefits from mitigating climate disruption and deadly air pollution.

This approach appeals to many conservatives as well as progressives.

Two dozen Utah Republican politicians recently stated, “We support a carbon dividends approach that puts a fee on carbon emissions and returns all the money to the American people in dividend checks. This approach does not require heavy-handed government oversight. The fee gives the markets an incentive to move to cleaner technologies, while the dividend protects families from the effect of higher energy prices. Most families should come out financially ahead, and they will be rewarded for reducing emissions however they choose.”

Economist James Boyce, author of “Economics for People and the Planet,” has made the progressive case that “carbon dividends would help to mitigate the problem of wide and rising income inequality. At the same time, universal dividends can help to foster an ethic of shared interests and shared responsibilities in an era when divisiveness is emerging as a peril to pluralist societies.”

Dividends from a $50-per-ton carbon tax would raise the net income of the bottom tenth of income earners by nearly 9 percent, according to a US Treasury study. Smaller gains would accrue to middle-income households. Most Black, Latino, and Asian American families would also benefit.

Most voters already grasp these benefits. US opinion polls consistently show support from 60 to 70 percent of voters for a tax on fossil fuel companies coupled with carbon dividends.

Few climate policies would be so effective as economy-wide carbon fees. Few if any climate policies would so immediately improve the welfare of ordinary Americans and win political support as carbon dividends. Carbon fees and dividends should be a central part of any climate policy in the upcoming reconciliation bill.

James Hansen is director of the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions at Columbia University Earth Institute. Jonathan Marshall is former economics editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and cofounder of the Economics Policy Network of Citizens Climate Lobby.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/09/08/opinion/carbon-tax-is-key-addressing-climate-crisis-carbon-dividends-could-get-congress-support-one/?et_rid=1745350245&s_campaign=todaysheadlines:newsletter

Biden Opens New Federal Office for Climate Change, Health and Equity

The office will be the first government effort to focus specifically on the public health dangers of global warming.

By Lisa Friedman, The New York Times, Aug. 30, 2021

WASHINGTON — Amid deadly heat waves and new evidence showing that wildfire smoke may contribute to premature births, the Biden administration is creating a new federal office to address the health consequences of climate change and their disproportionate effects on poor communities.

The Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, which the administration announced on Monday, will be the first federal program aimed specifically at understanding how planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels also affect human health. It will fall under the Department of Health and Human Services.

It’s an area that medical experts have urged the government to take more seriously, and public health leaders said the new office was long overdue.

“The health of the American people is falling through the cracks because there hasn’t been a targeted focus on climate risk,” said Aaron Bernstein, interim director of the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “This is the opportunity to plug that hole.”

In 2009, scientists warned in the medical journal The Lancet that global warming would harm crop yields, cause tropical diseases to show up in new parts of the world and lead to water shortages. In 2020, the journal said those threats no longer belonged to the distant future.

“Climate change is fundamentally a health threat,” said Gina McCarthy, the White House national climate change adviser. She said part of the mission of the office would be to encourage doctors to talk to their patients about protecting themselves from things like heat waves, wildfire smoke and other air pollution.

In particular, experts said, more needs to be done to understand how extreme weather affects older people as well as communities of color, where families are more likely to live in areas hardest hit by disasters.

“There’s a saying that if white people catch a cold, Black people catch pneumonia,” said Beverly Malone, chief executive of the National League for Nursing. “Health equity has a lot to do with where you live, and we have understood the linkage.”

President Biden has requested $3 million to fund the climate office next year, a sum that still requires congressional approval. Those setting up the office have been brought in from other agencies drawing on existing funds. John Balbus, the senior adviser to the director of the National Institutes of Health on climate change, will serve as interim director.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/climate/biden-climate-change-health-equity.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosgenerate&stream=top

We could cut carbon emissions tomorrow — if we really wanted to

Column by Fareed Zakaria, The Washington Post, Aug. 12, 2021

To understand the tension in the United States’ energy policy, consider the events of this week. On Monday, the United Nations released a new report warning that climate change is coming faster than predicted and that the world is losing time to act. President Biden tweeted in response, “We can’t wait to tackle the climate crisis.” Two days later, his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, urged Saudi Arabia and other major oil producers to increase production of petroleum beyond the agreed-upon targets. Biden backed him up. The Financial Times wrote this headline: “Biden to OPEC: Drill, baby, drill.”

America’s energy policy reflects one of the oldest attitudes in human history. As Saint Augustine once prayed to God, “Make me chaste and celibate — but not yet.”

The White House this week illustrated the central reason U.S. energy policy is failing. It promises that we can get to a carbon-free future without imposing real costs on the American people, and without having to make some very difficult trade-offs.

Let’s start by recognizing some basic facts. In 1990, fossil fuels made up about 85 percent of U.S. energy consumption. That number today? Around 80 percent. And according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2050, under current policy, that percentage will have dropped to about 75 percent.

The reasons for this are not simply that oil companies are influential. Fossil fuels are amazingly abundant and versatile. They are powerful and portable, providing energy whenever and wherever it’s needed. That is why we use fossil fuels to run our cars, power our factories, cook our food and heat our homes. Plus, we use them to make everything from plastics to textiles to aspirin.

This is not an argument to do nothing. On the contrary, it’s an argument to do much more. The only rational way to lower the use of fossil fuels in all of these varied applications is to make them all more expensive. That means a carbon tax, so that everything that emits greenhouse gases becomes more expensive and everything that is clean becomes more affordable.

But that’s not enough. We keep proclaiming lofty climate goals and yet never meet them. In 2015, President Barack Obama announced targets for reducing U.S. emissions by 2025. Many regarded those goals as not nearly ambitious enough. Thanks to President Donald Trump, we are not on track to achieve them. Now Biden has set even more ambitious goals.

The biggest problem in U.S. energy policy is climate denialism from the right. But on the left, there is another potent danger: magical thinking. Too many believe we can lower emissions with no hard choices.

The University of California at Berkeley released a report last year that says we could feasibly get to a 90 percent clean electricity grid by 2035, reducing coal consumption to zero and natural gas by 70 percent. But note — that wildly optimistic scenario is based on the assumption that the United States would quickly and massively upgrade its power grid to become smart and responsive, build new transmission lines, expand storage dramatically, and change the way power systems operate across the 50 states. In reality, just building a single new transmission line has often proved an impossible task. One recent effort to build lines from renewable energy projects to population centers collapsed after 10 years of battles over permits. There is another continuing battle over a line to bring Canadian hydropower into New England.

We should continue to subsidize renewables. We should fund new technologies — from hydrogen fuel to electricity storage — that, in a decade or two, might prove extremely effective substitutes for fossil fuels. There are ways to expedite upgrading the grid. But meanwhile, we need to reduce emissions sharply, and now. Here’s what we could do right away.

First, stop retiring nuclear power plants and start building new ones. Nuclear power is a zero-emissions fuel that is always on.

Second, we need to get coal — the dirtiest fuel — from 20 percent of our electricity supply down to zero. Where possible, we should replace it with wind, solar or biomass. But the easiest, quickest way will often be to use natural gas, which still produces half the carbon emissions. We should also get the developing world to stop building coal-fired plants, many of them Chinese-sponsored, and instead help them build power plants to run on U.S. natural gas.

Third, electric cars have come of age and can replace internal combustion vehicles, and we should speed this transition by building out thousands of charging stations.

Fourth, industry releases about a quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and is hard to decarbonize. (Very high heat is often needed, and some chemical processes unavoidably release carbon dioxide.) So we should require the use of currently available carbon-capture technologies, including a massive expansion of the oldest one we know of: trees.

Yes, I know there are problems with all of these approaches, but there are problems with every solution. (Producing solar energy on an industrial scale requires massive use of plastics, i.e. petrochemicals, as well as the mining of many raw materials, including scarce minerals.) But the actions I describe here would all cut emissions tomorrow. Not 10 years from now, and not after development and research. Tomorrow.

So the question really is this: Do we want to cut carbon emissions tomorrow?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/12/we-could-cut-carbon-emissions-tomorrow-if-we-really-wanted/

Exclusive: Strange bedfellows come together on EV charging

By Andrew Freedman, Axios, August 11, 2021

A new initiative from a diverse array of groups from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to the Edison Electric Institute and major automaker trade organizations is launching Wednesday.

What to watch: Its goal is to mobilize private capital and forge public-private partnerships to rapidly accelerate the deployment of electric vehicle charging stations and related infrastructure nationwide.

Why it matters: The group, known as the National EV Charging Initiative, counts among its members electrical workers who will help supply and install the infrastructure to power EVs as well as advocates who are focused on addressing racial, economic and environmental inequities.

Between the lines: The 24 signatories of the MOU include some strange bedfellows, including unions, electrical utilities and environmental groups that have sparred in the past over other issues.

• They include the Alliance for Transportation Electrification, which counts GM, Ford and Honda among its members.

• Also part of the new push is the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which has on its membership roster BMW, Ford, Mazda, Nissan and Toyota, and the nonprofit group Veloz, which brings in PG&E, Uber and Lyft.

• There's also The Coalition for Green Capital, Ceres, CALSTART, the California Electric Transportation Coalition, Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and Green Latinos, among other signatories.

How it works: The MOU acknowledges "the need for collaboration between policymakers at all levels of government, fleet owners, organized labor, electric utilities, and financiers in order to build out EV charging infrastructure."

• According to Colleen Quinn, the founder and partner of eMobility Advisors, a public affairs firm that is spearheading the initiative on behalf of NRDC, the U.S. needs to mobilize both public and private funding to get to President Biden's goal of having 50% of vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2030 be electric vehicles.

• The bipartisan infrastructure plan that passed the Senate on Tuesday includes $7.5 billion to fund the construction of EV charging stations.

What they're saying: "We're bringing the entire utility industry together, so you've got the manufacturing of the vehicles, you've also got, you know, basically the new, the new fueling providers, which is in the utility industry," Quinn told Axios.

Of note: The initiative has an environmental justice component, with member groups dedicated to bringing EV charging to areas that are more affected by pollution and to people who "spend a disproportionate share of their income on vehicle fuel and maintenance."

Yes, but: It's unclear how much money NRDC and other member groups will direct toward this effort to lobby federal and state governments, which will help determine whether this is successful.