Republican Drive to Tilt Courts Against Climate Action Reaches a Crucial Moment

A Supreme Court environmental case being decided this month is the product of a coordinated, multiyear strategy by Republican attorneys general and conservative allies.

By Coral Davenport, The New York Times, June 19, 2022

WASHINGTON — Within days, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision that could severely limit the federal government’s authority to reduce carbon dioxide from power plants — pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.

But it’s only a start.

The case, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, is the product of a coordinated, multiyear strategy by Republican attorneys general, conservative legal activists and their funders, several with ties to the oil and coal industries, to use the judicial system to rewrite environmental law, weakening the executive branch’s ability to tackle global warming.

Coming up through the federal courts are more climate cases, some featuring novel legal arguments, each carefully selected for its potential to block the government’s ability to regulate industries and businesses that produce greenhouse gases.

“The West Virginia vs. E.P.A. case is unusual, but it’s emblematic of the bigger picture. A.G.s are willing to use these unusual strategies more,” said Paul Nolette, a professor of political science at Marquette University who has studied state attorneys general. “And the strategies are becoming more and more sophisticated.”

The plaintiffs want to hem in what they call the administrative state, the E.P.A. and other federal agencies that set rules and regulations that affect the American economy. That should be the role of Congress, which is more accountable to voters, said Jeff Landry, the Louisiana attorney general and one of the leaders of the Republican group bringing the lawsuits.

But Congress has barely addressed the issue of climate change. Instead, for decades it has delegated authority to the agencies because it lacks the expertise possessed by the specialists who write complicated rules and regulations and who can respond quickly to changing science, particularly when Capitol Hill is gridlocked.

West Virginia v. E.P.A., No. 20–1530 on the court docket, is also notable for the tangle of connections between the plaintiffs and the Supreme Court justices who will decide their case. The Republican plaintiffs share many of the same donors behind efforts to nominate and confirm five of the Republicans on the bench — John G. Roberts, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

“It’s a pincer move,” said Lisa Graves, executive director of the progressive watchdog group True North Research and a former senior Justice Department official. “They are teeing up the attorneys to bring the litigation before the same judges that they handpicked.”

The pattern is repeated in other climate cases filed by the Republican attorneys general and now advancing through the lower courts: The plaintiffs are supported by the same network of conservative donors who helped former President Donald J. Trump place more than 200 federal judges, many now in position to rule on the climate cases in the coming year.

At least two of the cases feature an unusual approach that demonstrates the aggressive nature of the legal campaign. In those suits, the plaintiffs are challenging regulations or policies that don’t yet exist. They want to pre-empt efforts by President Biden to deliver on his promise to pivot the country away from fossil fuels, while at the same time aiming to prevent a future president from trying anything similar.

The Stakes for Climate

Victory for the plaintiffs in these cases would mean the federal government could not dramatically restrict tailpipe emissions because of vehicles’ impact on climate, even though transportation is the country’s largest source of greenhouse gases.

The government also would not be able to force electric utilities to replace fossil fuel-fired power plants, the second-largest source of planet warming pollution, with wind and solar power.

And the executive branch could not consider the economic costs of climate change when evaluating whether to approve a new oil pipeline or similar project or environmental rule.

Those limitations on climate action in the United States, which has pumped more planet-warming gases into the atmosphere than any other nation, would quite likely doom the world’s goal of cutting enough emissions to keep the planet from heating up more than an average of 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with the preindustrial age. That is the threshold beyond which scientists say the likelihood of catastrophic hurricanes, drought, heat waves and wildfires significantly increases. The Earth has already warmed an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius.

“If the Supreme Court uses this as an opportunity to really squash E.P.A.’s ability to regulate on climate change, it will seriously impede U.S. progress toward solving the problem,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University.

The ultimate goal of the Republican activists, people involved in the effort say, is to overturn the legal doctrine by which Congress has delegated authority to federal agencies to regulate the environment, health care, workplace safety, telecommunications, the financial sector and more.

Known as “Chevron deference,” after a 1984 Supreme Court ruling, that doctrine holds that courts must defer to reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes by federal agencies on the theory that agencies have more expertise than judges and are more accountable to voters. “Judges are not experts in the field and are not part of either political branch of the government,” Associate Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his opinion for a unanimous court.

But many conservatives say the decision violates the separation of powers by allowing executive branch officials rather than judges to say what the law is. In one of his most famous opinions as an appeals court judge, Associate Justice Gorsuch wrote that Chevron allowed “executive bureaucracies to swallow huge amounts of core judicial and legislative power.”

The constitutional dispute is not necessarily political, because Chevron deference applies to agency actions in both Republican and Democratic administrations. But conservative hostility to the doctrine may be partly rooted in distrust of entrenched bureaucracies and certain kinds of expertise.

The month after Mr. Trump took office, his chief strategist at the time, Stephen K. Bannon, summed up one of their top objectives as the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”

Chevron deference has long been a target of conservatives, according to Michael McKenna, a Republican energy lobbyist who worked in the Trump White House. “The originalist crew has been steadily moving toward significantly rewriting Chevron for years,” he wrote in an email. “They are about to be rewarded with a substantial and material victory.”

Filling the Bench

The roots of that victory were planted in 2015, when Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, became the Senate majority leader and led his party in a sustained campaign to deny President Barack Obama the opportunity to appoint federal judges.

He refused to confirm nominees, waiting for a Republican administration to fill the courts with judges who shared his belief in minimal government regulation. He was also motivated by the dying coal industry in Kentucky, which could be wiped out by new E.P.A. rules aimed at slowing pollution from fossil fuels.

“Fighting the E.P.A. is ‘Mom and apple pie’ in Kentucky,” said Neil Chatterjee, Mr. McConnell’s former energy policy aide.

Mr. McConnell’s effort ensured that Mr. Trump inherited not just an open Supreme Court seat but 107 additional judicial vacancies.

Then in stepped Leonard A. Leo.

At the time, Mr. Leo was executive vice president of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group that helped secure the appointments of Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Alito to the Supreme Court and that has served as the ideological and tactical engine behind efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Some of the many donors to the Federalist Society include Koch Industries, which has fought climate action; the Sarah Scaife Foundation, created by the heirs to the Mellon oil, aluminum and banking fortune; and Chevron, the oil giant and plaintiff in the case that created Chevron deference.

Mr. Leo worked with Donald F. McGahn II, Mr. Trump’s White House counsel and another longtime Federalist Society member, to vet and recommend judicial candidates to the president.

Mr. McGahn was forthright about his criteria. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2018, Mr. McGahn was asked about the White House focus on undoing Chevron. “Well, it’s not a coincidence,” he said. “It’s part of a larger, larger plan, I suppose.”

“There is a coherent plan here where, actually, the judicial selection and the deregulatory efforts are really the flip side of the same coin,” Mr. McGahn added.

Mr. Leo also helped steer the Judicial Crisis Network, a nonprofit advocacy group that ran campaigns to help Associate Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett reach the Supreme Court, and to install dozens of other like-minded judges on lower courts.

In total, Mr. Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices, 54 appeals court judges, and 174 district court judges. By comparison, Mr. Biden has, to date, appointed 68 federal judges.

Tangled Connections

In 2020, Mr. Leo stepped down as head of the Federalist Society to run CRC Advisors, a right-wing political strategy firm. In that role, he has operated at the center of a constellation of advocacy groups and undisclosed donors that share a similar goal: Use the courts to advance conservative and libertarian causes.

One of CRC Advisors’ biggest clients is the Republican Attorneys General Association. Another is the Concord Fund, the advocacy group that is the latest incarnation of the Judicial Crisis Network. The fund is also the largest financial backer, by far, of the Republican Attorneys General Association.

Since 2014, the Judicial Crisis Network, now the Concord Fund, has poured more than $17 million into the campaigns of the Republican attorneys general. In the current electoral cycle, the Concord Fund has contributed $3.5 million, several times more than the next biggest donor, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with $800,000.

The identities of the fund’s donors are hidden from the public; the fund is not legally required to disclose them.

Relationships between untraceable money, politicians and the judiciary are not unusual. Like its Republican counterpart, the Democratic Attorneys General Association is a political action committee that raises money to help members win elections. The attorneys general in both parties pursue cases that are aligned with the interests of their donors and constituencies. During the Trump administration, Democratic attorneys general repeatedly, and often successfully, fought dozens of Mr. Trump’s policies, particularly his weakening of environmental rules.

But legal experts say that the Republican attorneys general and their allies have taken such strategies to a new level, in their funding and their tactics.

“They’ve created out of whole cloth a new approach to litigating environmental regulations, and they’ve found sympathetic judges,” said Richard Revesz, a professor of environmental law at New York University.

Mr. Leo and Mr. McGahn and did not respond to requests for interviews. Mr. McConnell declined an interview request.

Neomi Rao, 49, is typical of the judges given lifetime appointments by Mr. Trump with support from Mr. Leo and his network. Following discussions with Mr. McGahn, Ms. Rao was nominated in 2018 to replace Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit after he was elevated to the Supreme Court.

The D.C. Circuit Court is considered the second-most powerful court in the country because it hears challenges to federal environmental, health, and safety regulations.

Ms. Rao had never served as a judge and had never tried a case. But she had impeccable conservative credentials and a dislike of government regulation.

A member of the Federalist Society since 1996, Ms. Rao had clerked for Associate Justice Clarence Thomas and worked in the George W. Bush administration. She taught at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School and founded the Center for the Study of the Administrative State, which gathers critics of federal regulation. She told Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, that she had consulted with Mr. Leo before founding the center and later met with representatives of the Koch Foundation.

In 2017, she was tapped by Mr. Trump to run the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an obscure but powerful office through which proposed federal regulations must pass. From that perch, she oversaw an aggressive regulatory rollback, including the weakening or elimination of more than 100 environmental rules.

Ms. Rao’s office sometimes pushed the Trump team to go even further. When Mr. Trump's first E.P.A. chief proposed to weaken regulation of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that leaks from oil and gas wells, Ms. Rao’s office suggested loosening the rule even further, allowing more pollution into the atmosphere.

At least two climate cases are pending before the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which has eight judges appointed by Democratic presidents, nine judges chosen by Republicans, including three Trump appointees, and one vacancy.

Another Trump appointee on that bench is Justin Walker, a former protégé of Mr. McConnell’s and a fellow Kentuckian who wrote a 2021 dissenting opinion in the West Virginia v. E.P.A. case in which he argued that the agency lacked the authority to regulate pollution that causes climate change.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has seven judges appointed by Democratic presidents and 19 chosen by Republicans, including six Trump appointees. It’s where the Republican attorneys general have filed a challenge to the government’s ability to consider the economic cost of climate change when making environmental decisions.

On that bench is Andrew Oldham, a Trump pick who was once deputy attorney general of Texas. In that role, he worked on the West Virginia vs. E.P.A. climate case, and said in a 2016 speech that climate regulation and the E.P.A. itself are “just utterly and fundamentally illegitimate.”

To the same panel, Mr. Trump appointed Don Willett, a former fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative research organization that has received substantial funding from Charles and David Koch and aims to “explain the forgotten moral case for fossil fuels” by arguing that they shield the poor from higher energy costs.

Judges Rao, Walker, Oldham and Willett did not respond to requests for interviews.

A New Legal Approach

Of the 27 Republican attorneys general, a core group from fossil fuel states is leading the coordinated legal challenges: Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia, Daniel Cameron of Kentucky, Todd Rokita of Indiana, Ken Paxton of Texas and Mr. Landry from Louisiana.

They meet regularly among themselves and with the oil, gas and coal industries, Mr. Landry said in an interview. “It would be great if we could see an overturning of Chevron,” he said.

The West Virginia case is largely concerned with a line of attack related to Chevron, also rooted in arguments about the separation of powers, which holds that Congress should use plain and direct language if it is to authorize sweeping actions by administrative agencies that could transform the economy.

“What we’re looking to do is to make sure that the right people under our constitutional system make the correct decisions,” Mr. Morrisey, who argued the West Virginia v. E.P.A. case before the Supreme Court, said during a public appearance in Washington in February. “These agencies, these federal agencies, don’t have the ability to act solely on their own without getting a clear statement from Congress. Delegation matters.”

Lined up behind the West Virginia power plant suit is another case in the D.C. Circuit Court brought by 15 attorneys general challenging a 2021 federal rule designed to cut auto pollution by compelling automakers to sell more electric vehicles.

Mr. Paxton of Texas calls the auto pollution rule a “war against fossil fuels” that will harm “the livelihoods of hard-working Texans.”

Should that challenge succeed, more than a dozen Democratic-governed states are expected to impose tougher state-level auto pollution standards. But the Republican attorneys general have already filed a suit in the D.C. Circuit court seeking to block states’ authority to do that.

Another case pending in two different circuit courts challenges the way the federal government calculates the real-life cost of climate change. If the attorneys general succeed in blocking the use of that metric, they could strip the federal government of its legal defense for almost any future climate policy.

That case has been filed by 10 attorneys general in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The same case has been filed by 13 attorneys general in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, North and South Dakota and Minnesota.

“The A.G.s have a big advantage here, where they can forum-shop and choose the most favorable venues for their litigation,” Mr. Nolette said. “And they can break up into a multistate coalition, to do more arguments in front of more judges. That increases their odds for success.”

While no single case is aimed at overturning Chevron, a string of victories would essentially hollow it out.

Sally Katzen, co-director of the Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic at New York University School of Law, said that a Supreme Court victory this month for the Republican attorneys general and their allies would just be a taste of what’s to come.

“The Federalist Society has put a lot of time and energy into this, and a lot of intellectual power,” said Ms. Katzen, former head of the White House office of regulatory affairs in the Clinton administration. “All that effort has paid off. But I don’t think this is the culmination of their agenda. I think it’s just the beginning.”

Kitty Bennett and Adam Liptak contributed reporting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/19/climate/supreme-court-climate-epa.html?searchResultPosition=1

Biden Administration to Cut Costs for Wind and Solar Energy Projects

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said the government would sharply reduce the fees it charges to companies that operate on public lands.

By Lisa Friedman, The New York Times, June 1, 2022

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration said on Wednesday it would cut in half the amount it charges companies to build wind and solar projects on federal lands, a move designed to encourage development of renewable energy.

“Clean energy projects on public lands have an important role to play in reducing our nation’s greenhouse gas emissions and lowering costs for families,” Deb Haaland, the interior secretary, said in a statement.

Wind and solar developers have long said that lease rates and fees for projects on federal lands were too high to attract investors. The new policy would cut those costs by about 50 percent, administration officials said.

Representative Mike Levin, Democrat of California, who has sponsored legislation to expedite renewable energy development, applauded the move. “As Americans continue to face worsening effects of the climate crisis and rising energy bills, it’s paramount that we strengthen our clean energy independence to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lower energy costs,” he said in a statement.

Ms. Haaland made the announcement during a trip to Las Vegas, where she hosted a renewable energy round-table with business groups. The federal Bureau of Land Management also announced that it would strengthen its ability to handle a growing number of applications by wind, solar and geothermal developers by creating five new offices across the West to review proposed projects.

The decision comes as the Biden administration also seeks to raise the royalty fees it charges oil and gas companies to drill on federal land and in federal waters. Last month, the administration canceled three oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska, prompting Republican lawmakers to criticize the new renewable energy policies as harmful to energy producing states.

“Here is Biden‘s energy policy: wind, solar and wishful thinking,” Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, said on Wednesday on the Senate floor. “It’s just not realistic and, among other things, it is hurting our country. It is hurting my people in Louisiana desperately.”

President Biden has pledged to cut greenhouse gases generated by the United States roughly in half by 2030. Legislation to accomplish that is frozen on Capitol Hill.

As a result, the administration is focused on more limited executive actions that could spur clean energy and reduce the use of oil, gas and coal — the burning of which produces the carbon dioxide and other gases that are dangerously heating the planet.

Last year, for example, the administration gave a green light to two major solar projects on federal lands in California that it said would generate about 1,000 megawatts, enough electricity to power about 132,000 homes.

In a report to Congress in April, the Interior Department said it was on track to approve 48 wind, solar and geothermal energy projects with the capacity to produce an estimated 31,827 megawatts of electricity, enough to power roughly 9.5 million homes, by the end of the fiscal 2025 budget cycle.

The reduction in fees and rental rates comes at a challenging time for the solar industry. A Commerce Department investigation into whether Chinese companies are circumventing U.S. tariffs by moving components for solar panels through four Southeast Asian countries has held up hundreds of new solar projects across the country.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/01/climate/biden-solar-wind-fees-cut.html?campaign_id=54&emc=edit_clim_20220603&instance_id=63084&nl=climate-forward&regi_id=66704053&segment_id=94109&te=1&user_id=97eb24ff9121d1a70f01fac05f86ea1b

Ford may have just changed our electric-vehicle future

Column by David Von Drehle, The Washington Post, May 17, 2022

Progress happens slowly, then suddenly. You see a guy on the street ostentatiously conducting a telephone call with a cellular phone the size of a brick pressed to his ear. Not much later, phones are palm-size and everywhere. Then your phone is a computer and camera and stereo and atlas and game console — so on and so forth rolled into one — and you cannot imagine life without it.

Thus it is with electric vehicles. In 1997, the first commercially successful hybrid, the Toyota Prius, entered the market in Japan. It solved the pesky problem of battery life by adding a small gasoline booster engine and an ingenious self-charging system that harnessed the energy of braking the car.

Engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning conceived of an all-electric luxury sedan and persuaded a team of investors led by Elon Musk to bankroll a start-up they called Tesla Motors in 2003. With the help of generous federal subsidies, their sleek machines became a status symbol in the United States and China.

But the breakthrough moment — the event that turns gradual change into a seismic shift — might only now be at hand. Ford Motor Co., one of the oldest names in the transportation business, is coming out with an all-electric pickup truck. After nibbling at the edges of America’s car culture, the electric revolution is going after the main course.

Catherine Rampell: Why Ford’s F-150 Lightning could elevate green energy from the culture wars

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of Ford’s F-series trucks, most notably the F-150. Despite a hiccup in manufacturing last year caused by a pandemic-related shortage in microchips, the trucks finished 2021 as the best-selling vehicles in the United States for the 45th year in a row. It’s a streak that’s older than “Star Wars.”

The nation’s passion for pickup trucks doesn’t stop there. The second-best seller in 2021 was the Ram pickup, and third-best was the Chevy Silverado. Americans need pickup trucks for work, they want pickup trucks for play, and they love pickup trucks enough to define themselves based on their preferred brand. On the flat, straight highways of middle America, you’ll often see a Chevy go by with a sticker in the window portraying a cartoon scamp tinkling on a Ford logo — or vice versa. Talk about brand loyalty.

Ford has been working its way toward this moment for years. Indeed, the company can make a reasonable case for itself as the inventor — certainly the popularizer — of the pickup. Company founder Henry Ford’s world-changing Model T, introduced in 1908 and beloved for nearly two decades, was offered in a number of configurations, including one with the back seat removed from the chassis and replaced with a box for hauling stuff. The purpose-built Ford pickup arrived in 1917, and the F-series made its debut in 1948. The superstar F-150 hit the market in 1975 and sprinted to the head of the pack in sales.

As a first step toward an electric truck, Ford switched from steel to aluminum for the bodies of the F-series in 2015, shaving hundreds of pounds from the vehicles’ weight — but opening the company to derision from competitors. One rival filmed a TV ad in which an F-150 was showered with heavy blocks; not surprisingly, the truck suffered some dings. Yet F-series sales were undamaged. Last year, Ford pickup sales outpaced those of No. 2 Ram by more than 25 percent.

Megan McArdle: I used to be an electric car skeptic. I’ve changed my mind — but I still didn’t buy one.

Can Ford do for powertrains what it did for truck bodies? Initial reviews of the electric pickup — the F-150 Lightning — are beyond positive. “You are about to read a rave review,” the Wall Street Journal’s influential auto writer Dan Neil warned his audience. “The Lightning represents an American manufacturing triumph, a brand resurrection, a win for working people, a vehicle segment stepping out of the darkness into the light.”

Neil detailed the truck’s huge towing capacity, expanded storage space and ability to function as a rolling power plant. “Finally,” he wrote, “an EV that isn’t a soft-handed, overpriced toy for white-collar commuters.” YouTube is filling rapidly with reports of the truck’s prowess, on-road and off-.

Ushering America’s most popular vehicles into the electric age makes credible the projection by Bloomberg New Energy Finance that more than half of new car and truck sales will be all-electric by 2040. It also promises to escalate the global competition for battery components and puts added pressure on U.S. researchers and manufacturers to create a robust and innovative American battery industry.

As a sign of progress toward a cleaner future, this is the equivalent of a brass band leading a parade. Borrowing the words of country music’s Kip Moore, there’s somethin’ ’bout a truck that speaks powerfully to the hearts of ordinary Americans. That force is about to make a sudden shift from gas-guzzling problem to hopeful solution.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/17/ford-f150-electric-pickup-transforms-american-car-culture/

The Tesla Effect: Snowmobiles, Boats and Mowers Go Electric

They’re quieter and better for the climate. But snow and water create new technological challenges for designers.

By Jack Ewing, The New York Times, May 16, 2022

STOWE, Vt. — Snowmobiles are part of the winter soundtrack in this part of Vermont, at their worst shattering the stillness of the forest like motorcycles on skis. But the motorized sleds bouncing along a wooded mountain trail in February were silent except for the whoosh of metal runners on snow.

The machines, made by a start-up Canadian company, Taiga, were battery-powered — the first electric snowmobiles to be sold widely — and symbols of how conveyances of all kinds are migrating to emission-free propulsion. Taiga is also offering battery-powered personal watercraft, another form of recreation where the gasoline version is regarded in some circles as a scourge.

While electric cars get most of the attention, electric lawn mowers, boats, bicycles, scooters and all-terrain vehicles are proliferating. In some categories, battery-powered machines are gaining market share faster than electric cars are conquering the auto world. Start-up companies are wooing investors by claiming to be the Teslas of the boating, cycling, or lawn and garden industry.

The environmental benefits are potentially significant. Unlike cars and trucks, outboard motors or lawn mowers do not usually have catalytic converters to reduce harmful emissions. They are noisy, and they often use lower-quality fuel. A gasoline lawn mower generates as much pollution in an hour as a 300-mile car trip, according to the California Air Resources Board.

California has passed legislation to ban gasoline-powered mowers beginning in 2024, and all new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. But sales of electric alternatives are growing even without a push from government.

One of the first customers for Taiga snowmobiles was Taos Ski Valley in New Mexico, which markets itself as an environmentally conscious ski resort. The Taos ski patrol and trail maintenance workers will use the electric snowmobiles for tasks like transporting injured skiers or servicing snow-making equipment, said David Norden, the chief executive of Taos Ski Valley. When skiing resumes this year, Taos also plans to deploy an electric snow-grooming machine made by Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug, a German firm.

Even if the electric snowmobiles, which start at $17,500, are more expensive than gasoline counterparts, which can be had for less than $10,000, the resort will save money on fuel and maintenance, Mr. Norden said.

“You do the cost-benefit analysis, you’re probably close to break even,” he said. “These are not only decisions for the environment but also good decisions for our bottom line.”

But sometimes people are converting to electrical power because it offers practical advantages.

Buyers of electric lawn and garden equipment polled by the Freedonia Group, a research firm, cited noise reduction, low maintenance costs and no need to store cans of gasoline in the garage as their most important priorities. Often electric leaf blowers or string trimmers are cheaper and lighter than gasoline versions.

The lawn and garden industry has gone electric faster than the car industry. In 2020, electric mowers, leaf blowers and other equipment accounted for 17 percent of the market in the United States, according to Freedonia. That’s more than three times the share of electric vehicles in the U.S. car market.

Many people are hesitant to buy an electric car because they worry about running out of power far from a charger. Range anxiety is not a concern in the backyard.

“You’re not worried about taking a road trip in a lawn mower,” said Jennifer Mapes-Christ, manager of commercial and consumer products research at Freedonia.

But electrifying boats and other vehicles often presents technological challenges. Electrical energy works for smaller watercraft or boats that do not travel very far. It’s the only option on the hundreds of lakes where conventional outboard motors are banned because of noise or pollution.

Because water creates so much resistance, however, big power boats require amounts of continuous power that are beyond what batteries available today can provide. (Sailboats, of course, have operated on wind power for thousands of years.)

Batteries are “part of the answer to the future but not necessarily the complete answer,” said David Foulkes, the chief executive of Brunswick, which makes Mercury marine engines.

Still, Mercury has unveiled a prototype electric outboard motor and is watching the shift to electrification carefully.

“We intend to be a leader in this space,” said Mr. Foulkes, who drives a battery-powered Porsche. “Even if the market is small at the moment, we want to be there and see what the market does.”

Some engineers are taking advantage of the shift to electrification to rethink design. A racing series known as E1, which plans to begin staging events close to shore off Miami and other cities next year, will use battery-powered boats equipped with hydrofoils that lift the hulls above the water, greatly reducing resistance.

“We have to change the paradigm,” said Rodi Basso, the chief executive of E1. “This is what Tesla has done.”

Just as Tesla has upended the auto industry, start-up firms are challenging companies that have long dominated their markets. Flux Marine is one of several companies trying to adapt electrical power for watercraft. With the help of $15 million in venture capital, it plans to begin selling electric outboard motors made at a plant in Bristol, R.I., this summer.

Ben Sorkin, the chief executive of Flux Marine, who was a summer intern at Tesla, conceded that battery power was not practical for large offshore fishing boats and the like. “Given what’s available right now, electric propulsion is a niche market,” Mr. Sorkin said.

But he said the market would expand as batteries improved and became practical for bigger and bigger motors. Flux Marine’s biggest motor is rated at 70 horsepower, and the numbers will continue to rise, Mr. Sorkin said.

“Every five or so years, the sweet spot shifts up,” he said.

Major manufacturers of boats, snowmobiles and mowers have been slow to go electric. John Deere, the largest manufacturer of self-propelled mowers, does not offer battery-powered alternatives but plans to discuss its electrification strategy with investors at an event May 25-26.

The recent history of the auto industry could serve as a warning to the established companies. Just as slow-moving car companies initially ceded territory to Tesla and are trying to catch up, new companies like Taiga are exploiting wide-open markets.

Samuel Bruneau, Taiga’s chief executive, said electrifying snowmobiles was a challenge because the batteries and motors needed to cope with extreme temperatures and bumpy terrain.

“No one was coming into that space, because it would require new technology,” he said. “That is the opportunity we saw.”

Competition is coming. BRP, a company based in Quebec that makes Ski-Doo snowmobiles as well as all-terrain vehicles and motorboats, has said it will offer electric versions of all its products by 2026. The company also plans to enter the motorcycle market with a line of electric two-wheelers in 2024.

“There is a trend out there driven by the automobile,” said José Boisjoli, the chief executive of BRP, which is the largest snowmobile maker. “We can’t ignore it.”

But he said the transition would happen more slowly in recreation. For one thing, the markets are much smaller, making it harder to achieve the cost savings that come with mass production. Fewer than 135,000 snowmobiles were sold worldwide in 2021, compared with roughly 60 million cars.

And snowmobiles and powerboats don’t receive the government subsidies or tax breaks that can cut thousands of dollars off the price of an electric car. Charging is also an issue in the woods. Taiga has installed charging stations alongside a popular snowmobile trail network in Quebec, and plans more.

But snowmobilers who venture deep into the wilderness will still prefer gasoline, Mr. Boisjoli said. “The combustion engine will be present in snowmobiles for a long time,” he said.

Dominic Jacangelo, executive director of the New York State Snowmobile Association, agreed that long-distance snowmobilers, who can easily travel more than 100 miles a day, would be skeptical.

Still, Mr. Jacangelo said he was eager to try out a Taiga. “In terms of performance, you’ve got a sled that will keep up with anything else out there on the market,” he said.

Because electric snowmobiles are quieter, they could help reduce friction between snowmobilers and people who consider the machines an affront to nature. That would open up more terrain for snowmobiles.

“Certainly,” Mr. Jacangelo said, “an electric sled is going to change a lot of environmentalists’ view of snowmobiling.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/15/business/electric-snowmobiles-boats-mowers.html

Investors using muscle on climate change

By Kia Kokalitcheva, Axios Pro Rata, May 7, 2022

A billionaire tech entrepreneur recently acquired a sizable stake in a public company it wants to push in a different direction — but it’s not Elon Musk and Twitter.

This week, Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes revealed an 11% stake in Australian energy company AGL Energy, in a bid to lessen its reliance on coal.

Why it matters: More than ever before, shareholders are tapping into their powers to influence companies on climate and sustainability.

The big picture: It’s not just activist investors like Cannon-Brookes — mainstream shareholders are also increasingly pushing companies on these issues.

• Investors have filed a record 215 climate-related shareholder resolutions this year, per data from Ceres, a sustainable investment advocacy group.

• Even major investment management companies like BlackRock and Vanguard are backing more climate-related proposals than they have previously.

• And stakeholders are getting more aggressive: For example, a year ago, Exxon shareholders defied management and installed two climate-conscious members on its board.

What they’re saying: “It’s a systemic risk, which means that you can’t deal with just one company — you gotta take it with all the companies across the portfolio,” Rev. Kirsten Spalding, senior director of Ceres' investor network, tells Axios.

• “They also recognize that it’s a governance issue… we’re seeing a look at whether boards are taking it seriously, not just management,” she adds.

Between the lines: Shareholders are also now asking for concrete progress reports, not just for information disclosures, says Spalding.

• She attributed the shift to climate science, as major organizations make more urgent appeals to drastically curb carbon emissions.

The intrigue: In addition to asking for concrete progress reports and transition plans, European shareholders are now even voting against those plans, simply because they're not good enough, says Spalding.

What's next: The pressure goes both ways. Investors will also be under pressure to show plans to transition away from fossil fuels, and they know it.

• In a recent BCG survey of 250 institutional investors, 57% said they feel pressure to divest from fossil fuels, 65% said they feel pressure to reduce those fuels' weighting in their portfolios, and 75% said they feel pressure to invest in "green" funds and companies.

The bottom line: With new regulations poised to help standardize climate-related disclosures, shareholders will be even better equipped to compare companies and push laggards to catch up.

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-pro-rata-193773ba-37b6-4b98-ba69-43be74da9f5d.html

EXPLAINER: Can climate change be solved by pricing carbon?

By Matthew Brown, The Associated Press, April 22, 2022

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — As climate change bakes the planet, dozens of nations and many local governments are putting a price tag on greenhouse gas emissions that are increasing flooding, droughts and other costly catastrophes.

Pennsylvania on Saturday becomes the first major fossil fuel-producing state in the U.S. to adopt a carbon pricing policy to address climate change. It joins 11 states where coal, oil and natural gas power plants must buy credits for every ton of carbon dioxide they emit.

President Joe Biden is attempting a less direct approach — known as the social cost of carbon — that calculates future climate damages to justify tougher restrictions on polluting industries. Republicans say that could crush many businesses. They want the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the administration after lower courts in Louisiana and Missouri split on the issue.

Governments elsewhere have moved more aggressively. Canada, for example, imposes fuel charges on individuals and also makes big polluters pay for emissions. It’s one of 27 nations with some kind of carbon tax, according to The World Bank.

The varied strategies come as scientists warn climate change is accelerating — and all can help reduce emissions. But experts say U.S. efforts have been hobbled by its fractured approach.

“Part of the reason you need all of these things to work in tandem is we do not have a federal climate policy,” said Seth Blumsack, director of the Center for Energy Law and Policy at Penn State University. “We have social cost of carbon used in regulatory decisions but not (a carbon price) that is faced by the market.”

SO WHAT’S THE PRICE TAG?

It varies. A lot.

The Biden administration’s social cost estimate is about $51, meaning every ton of carbon dioxide spewed from a power plant or tail pipe today is projected to contribute to $51 in economic damages in coming years. The state of New York has its own social cost of carbon, updated in 2020 to $125 a ton to account for economic trends.

By contrast, emissions were most recently valued at $13.50 per ton at auction under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the Northeast, which Pennsylvania is joining. A similar “cap and trade” emissions program is in place in California, and one is due to go into effect in Washington state in 2023.

Canada’s carbon taxes include a minimum fuel charge for individuals equivalent to about $40 per ton.

WHY THE BIG DIFFERENCES?

The social cost of carbon attempts to capture the value of all climate damage, centuries into the future. Carbon pricing reflects how much companies are willing to pay today for a limited amount of emission credits offered at auction.

In other words, the social cost of carbon guides policy, while carbon pricing represents policy in practice.

“You’re trying to get the price to reflect the true cost to society,” said economist Matthew Kotchen, a former U.S. Treasury Department official now at Yale University. “A more stringent policy would have a higher carbon price. A more lax policy would give you a lower carbon price.”

In the most efficient world, economists say the two figures would line up, meaning there would be agreement about what climate change damages will cost and the policies used to address them.

IS ANY OF THIS WORKING?

Emissions from northeastern states would have been about 24% higher if the carbon pricing consortium hadn’t been in place, according to researchers from Duke University and the Colorado School of Mines.

The carbon auctions also have brought in almost $5 billion that can be used to reduce household energy cost increases and promote renewable energy.

The consortium began in 2009 — the year of a failed push in Congress to establish a nationwide cap and trade program. The bipartisan proposal died amid arguments over cost and whether climate change was even occurring.

Following lawsuits from environmentalists, President Barack Obama’s administration crafted the social cost of carbon and began including future damage estimates in cost-benefit analyses for new regulations. It was used under Obama more than 80 times, including for tightened vehicle emissions standards and regulations aimed at shuttering coal plants.

President Donald Trump moved to roll back many of the Obama-era rules — and to help justify the changes, the Republican administration cut the social cost of carbon from about $50 per ton to $7 or less. The lower number included only domestic climate impacts and not global damages.

“On its face that might sound okay, but when you think about it, global harms from climate change have implications in the U.S. in terms of the global financial system,” said Romany Webb, a climate change law expert at Columbia Law School.

WHAT’S NEXT?

On the day Biden took office, he set up an interagency group that revived the Obama estimate and promised a revised figure incorporating previously overlooked consequences of climate change. Many economists expect the revised figure to be higher, perhaps more than double the current $51.

Without a nationwide cap and trade program, environmentalists and some economists want the government to be more aggressive in using the social cost of carbon to overhaul government energy policy.

Under Biden, the U.S. Interior Department for the first time is applying climate damage considerations to oil and gas sales on public lands and waters. An upcoming lease sale in Wyoming, for example, could result in future emissions of 34 million tons (31 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide. That’s equivalent to more than $1.5 billion in future damages.

But the agency still plans to sell the leases because officials said there were no “established thresholds” to evaluate whether the increased emissions were acceptable, or not.

The expansion of carbon pricing into Pennsylvania remains tenuous. A legal challenge is pending and the state’s term-limited Democratic governor could soon be replaced by a successor who opposes the state’s participation.

“While pricing carbon would be the gold standard, it seems politically difficult to actually get there,” said Brian Prest with Resources for the Future, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization.

https://apnews.com/article/climate-biden-business-billings-environment-0835d2e4f113ad1c2c26747c69d9e6bf