New Weekly Update from the Northeast-Midwest Institute (February 22)

W E E K L Y U P D A T E February 22, 2021

In this Week's Issue:

U.S. House Committee Approves Coronavirus Recovery Budget Resolution

U.S. House Subcommittee on Energy Examines a Clean Energy Future

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U.S. House Committee Approves Coronavirus Recovery Budget Resolution For State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds

The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform has voted out of committee the budget resolution approving coronavirus state and local fiscal recovery funds. The bill, Title V of the $1.9 trillion budget reconciliation resolution, provides $350 billion in federal funds to state and local governments as part of the coronavirus recovery package.

This is part of the overall proposed $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill which is being prepared in parts by nine authorizing committees in the House. The overall bill will be assembled by the House Budget Committee into a 2021 budget reconciliation bill which in turn will go to the floor of the House either later this week or next week. The process also is in progress in the U.S. Senate.

The action comes after months of debate over whether the federal government should assist state and local governments which have seen their tax and fee revenues drop and/or their spending increase as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The committee released an overview of the resolution, which can be accessed here:

To see the estimated allocation of these funds state by state, go here.

To read a recent blog post on this topic by NEMWI Senior Fellow Thomas Cochran, who early in the COVID-19 economic crisis wrote on the urgent need for federal aid to state and local governments, go here:

U.S. House Subcommittee on Energy Examines a Clean Energy Future for the U. S. Amid Devastating Winter Storms in the South

The Subcommittee on Energy of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing last week to discuss how Congress can act quickly to address climate change impacts in the wake of deadly winter storms in Texas and other Southern states. The House Subcommittee on Energy's remote hearing on Thursday, February 18, at 11:30 a.m. (EST) was titled "A Smarter Investment: Pathways to a Clean Energy Future."

Millions of Americans continue to face a severe weather crisis in the South, and the impacts of the severe weather likely will continue for months. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which operates the electrical grid in Texas, was forced to take roughly 34,000 megawatts of electricity offline due to extreme weather conditions.

Witnesses at the hearing highlighted the importance of an affordable and fair clean energy transition while considering grid reliability issues in Texas. Chairman Frank Pallone (D, NJ-6) stressed his concern over Republican and Conservative media outlets using this energy crisis as an "anti-renewables campaign." Pallone stated that the power outages were not a failure of any single energy generation technology, but what failed was "a sector that didn't consider fully our changing climate and the extreme weather that comes with it."

Among the witnesses at the hearing was Craig Gordon, Senior Vice President of Government Affairs for Invenergy, who highlighted that the system failures in Texas were due to the energy market not being designed to sustain extremely cold temperatures. Gordon noted that all energy operations have been disrupted due to the winter storms, and with Texas being isolated from the nation's power grids, "available generation elsewhere cannot be imported to address the shortfall."

The Subcommittee also examined key components of a report released on February 2, 2021 by The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that contains policy recommendations to put the United States on a 30-year path to net-zero carbon emissions. Dr. Stephen Pacala, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, noted that while many new quality jobs will be created in the clean energy sector, fossil fuel jobs will see a decline. Chairman Pallone, recognizing Covid-19 related job loss, noted that the budget reconciliation instructions marked up by the full Committee earlier this month include additional funding for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

A recording of the Subcommittee on Energy hearing on "A Smarter Investment: Pathways to a Clean Energy Future" is available here.

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