Trump can’t cool Republicans’ ardor for this climate tech

With help from Alex Nieves, Wes Venteicher and Camille von Kaenel

DREAMS OF DAC: Former President Donald Trump may want to overturn President Joe Biden’s signature climate laws, but one climate technology has the potential to throw up a roadblock.

A Wyoming Republican was on hand last week at the unveiling of a direct air capture demonstration unit in Long Beach alongside California Air Resources Board officials, making the case for carbon-sucking climate tech.

“It keeps the industries that we love and know alive,” said state Rep. J.T. Larson, who represents the southwest region of Wyoming where Los Angeles startup CarbonCapture Inc. hopes to inject 5 million tons of carbon extracted from the air annually by 2030. “People are more willing to purchase our coal or natural gas if there’s carbon sequestration initiatives that are in place for those different types of power”

Direct air capture is still a nascent field, with only one commercial-scale plant operating in the U.S. (Heirloom Carbon Technology’s small plant in Tracy, which opened in November). But Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law are poised to pour billions into it, both in the form of tax credits as well as grants from the Department of Energy. Two large-scale DOE funded hubs on the Gulf Coast are scheduled to come online in the next three years.

CarbonCapture plans to monetize Project Bison, as the Wyoming installation is called, by selling its emissions reductions to climate-minded tech companies and other businesses. The company also has plans to build a manufacturing facility in Arizona next year to mass-produce the carbon-sucking units, alongside a commercial-scale plant which will be eligible for IRA tax credits. And they’ve partnered with Aera Energy in Kern County on a feasibility study to capture and sequester carbon under its oil fields.

All that will take time: Project Bison, which was set to come online in 2023, is running behind schedule. But company executives aren’t worried about running into Trump 2.0, despite the former president’s rants against both laws and some of their prime industry beneficiaries.

“Where we see who’s really leaning into the space and who’s really looking to build carbon management businesses, it’s largely energy companies, and it’s largely projects that are focused in red states,” said CarbonCapture CEO Adrian Corless. “I think that reality is making this particular carbon management piece of legislation — not untouchable, but I think very stable.”

The technology still has some political and policy hoops to jump through within California, with environmental groups on the left objecting to the potential for it to distract from actual reductions in industrial emissions and the conventional pollutants that accompany them. A bill by state Sen. Josh Becker to set carbon-removal targets was scheduled for a hearing in the Assembly Natural Resources Committee today but got delayed to next week.

CARB Executive Officer Steve Cliff pointed to the fact that the state’s 2045 plan to get to carbon neutrality envisions a role for direct air capture. “Technologies such as this are really critical to achieving our climate objectives,” he said.

Larson, for his part, didn’t mention climate change explicitly. He focused more on the economics: The project might buy energy from local utilities or sell credits to Wyoming power plants looking to sell into markets like California’s.

Bridging the gap was newly appointed CarbonCapture board member and former FERC Chair Neil Chatterjee, who noted that Trump had signed legislation supporting direct air capture.

“I’m a Republican from Kentucky who worked for [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell and was appointed chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by Donald Trump,” he said. “But I made very clear, from the moment that I had a platform of my own, that I believed that climate change was real. That man had a significant impact. That we urgently needed to mitigate emissions.” — BB

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KEEP WAITING: Senate Pro Tem Mike McGuire dashed climate bond backers’ hopes Monday that lawmakers will finalize bond deals by their original June deadline.

The Senate leader said in a statement to POLITICO that the Legislature has until July 3 to place bonds on the November ballot — not June 27, as lawmakers had been shooting for under state rules that require legislative initiatives to be signed by the governor at least 131 days before an election.

“We’ve been working like hell on the issue of bonds, and we’re in the home stretch,” McGuire said. “We do have a little bit of wiggle room — bond measures can be added to the November ballot until July 3. We are working with the Secretary of State and Legislative Counsel to ensure we meet the July 3 deadline.”

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber’s office confirmed in a statement that lawmakers can waive that portion of state election code. But July 3 is the drop dead day to submit a measure for inclusion in the information guide given to voters, SoS said. — AN

BUDGET BOUNTY: Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers reached a deal on most of the budget over the weekend. Here’s where they landed on wildlife crossings, bike lanes, Diablo Canyon and more:

MUCH ADO: Lawmakers and Newsom agreed to walk back their proposed cuts to the Habitat Conservation Fund, which bolsters projects like the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing over Highway 101 in Los Angeles. The budget deal that dropped this weekend reverses the Legislature’s earlier elimination of $45 million for the fund this year; it also rejects an early sunset date Newsom had proposed. — CvK

START WALKING: The governor and lawmakers also reached a truce in their fight over whether to use highway funding to backfill a portion of $600 million in cuts to grants that support walking and biking infrastructure. The budget restores half of the $200 million cut for 2024-25 and $100 million out of $300 slashed in 2025-26. The remaining $400 million in cuts are still on the books, but those reductions will have to be approved by lawmakers in future years before they kick in. — AN

NO LOVE FOR THE CEC: The budget agreement drops a request from Newsom’s administration to extend a helping hand to the California Energy Commission, which funds most of its operations from a tiny tax on energy usage. The administration had asked the Legislature to approve a small increase to the tax, which amounts to $2 per year for the average customer, and to start imposing it on the energy rooftop solar owners generate for themselves, which is now exempt. The popularity of rooftop solar has eaten into the CEC’s budget, putting it at risk of insolvency by the 2027-2028 fiscal year without a change, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. — WV

A LOAN AFTER ALL: California will make good on its agreement from two years ago to loan Pacific Gas and Electric $1.4 billion to keep Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in operation until 2030. The Legislature’s initial budget proposal withheld a $400 million portion of the loan that PG&E is set to receive this year, and lawmakers have raised questions about the terms of the loan after finding out this year that the federal government wouldn’t repay all of it. — WV

THANKS, CALIFORNIA: A U.K.-based company that makes tires it says are more environmentally friendly announced plans today to build an American manufacturing facility, and is thanking California for helping it make that decision.

ENSO, which produces tires for electric vehicles that it claims last 35 percent longer than standard tires and create less toxic particulate matter, said it’s looking at Colorado, Nevada, Texas and Georgia as potential locations for its $500 million plant. But it pointed to California’s electric vehicle regulations as spurring a growing market and said the state’s tire efficiency standards “will soon change the US tire industry.”

“The U.S., particularly California, has a significant EV consumer base and is leading efforts to regulate tire efficiency and emissions, making the U.S. the ideal market for ENSO,” the company said in a statement.

Tiny particles, known as PM 2.5, produced as tires wear can increase risk of heart attacks and worsen conditions like asthma and heart disease. Electric vehicles are typically heavier than their gas-powered counterparts, creating more particulate matter. — AN

— A fire in a South Korean lithium battery plant on Monday killed 22 workers.

— The Biden administration’s 25 percent tariff on e-bikes will hurt sales — and climate goals, warns UC Berkeley energy policy veteran Andrew Campbell.

— Heirloom is moving its piece of the Louisiana DAC hub inland and building a second facility.