Axios Generate

June 25, 2021
It's Friday! Today's Smart Brevity count is 1,292 words, 4.8 minutes.
📊 Data point of the day: 109°F, the forecast high temperature in Portland, Oregon, on Sunday, which would break the city's all-time record of 107°F.
🎶 Jay-Z's debut album "Reasonable Doubt" turns 25 today and provides today's virtuoso intro tune...
1 big thing: The fraught and delicate Beltway climate path
Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios
Capitol Hill infrastructure negotiations have taken on a complexity that matches their planetary and political stakes, Ben writes.
Driving the news: President Biden and a bipartisan Senate group yesterday unveiled the bare bones of an eight-year, $1.2 trillion infrastructure package that includes energy and transit provisions.
- But its fate is tethered to a larger package, with bigger climate investments, that Democrats hope to write and move under the filibuster-proof reconciliation process.
- "If this is the only thing that comes to me, I’m not signing it. It’s in tandem,” Biden said of the bipartisan plan.
- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi similarly said the House would only act on it if Senate Democrats can move a reconciliation plan.
Why it matters: Fraught and intricate two-track negotiations will be needed to achieve anything close to the hundreds of billions of climate-related investments — and separate additional tax incentives — Biden first pitched in March.
The big picture: The bipartisan outline, per a White House summary, includes:
- $73 billion for grid-related measures that would provide the "single largest investment in clean energy transmission in American history."
- $15 billion for electric vehicle initiatives — including charging and bus electrification — and $49 billion for public transit.
- $47 billion for "resiliency." That's vague but the White House calls it the largest investment in physical and natural resilience ever.
But, but, but: It omits massive chunks of Biden's and other Democrats' proposals, such as a "clean energy standard," Biden's $174 billion vehicle electrification goal, major spending on new efficient homes and more.
- "Climate leaders in Congress should reject this deal unless it’s accompanied by a reconciliation bill with bold climate investments," Evergreen Action executive director Jamal Raad said.
- Progressive lawmakers like Sen. Ed Markey have rallied around the "no climate, no deal" slogan.
- But the challenge for Democrats is that reconciliation also needs to corral moderates while satisfying progressives demanding unprecedented climate investments.
What we're watching: What exactly the White House and Democrats want in energy portions of the reconciliation plans that would also have provisions on child care and other "family infrastructure."
- For instance, Biden yesterday discussed $300 billion in tax incentives. He didn't get specific.
- The White House has previously proposed new tax credits for transmission, extended renewable power credits and expanded EV purchase incentives.
2. Infrastructure talks face hurdles
A note from Capital Alpha Partners' James Lucier lays out the many hurdles for the bipartisan and Democrats-only efforts.
The big picture: One question, he notes, is whether Democrats can even agree among themselves on a top-line budget resolution that enables the subsequent reconciliation effort.
"We don’t think the House and Senate can pass the $6 trillion outline that Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders...has been floating," he notes.
And with respect to the bipartisan infrastructure framework, "Republican Senators are not going to be interested in a deal that assumes the rest of the president’s agenda moves on budget reconciliation."
Go deeper: Infrastructure's remaining potholes
3. Dangerous heat wave begins in Pacific Northwest
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
An "unprecedented" heat wave will bring scorching high temperatures to the Pacific Northwest — a region where many residents lack central air conditioning, Andrew writes.
Why it matters: The heat wave will shatter monthly and all-time temperature records. Some records could break the old milestones by several degrees.
- Such warmth can lead to heat-related illness and death, particularly when overnight temperatures don't provide relief. In many locations, both daily high and overnight low temperatures will set records.
- Wildfire risks will soar, as will power demand.
Driving the news: The pieces to the historic event are already moving into place, with a record-strong high-pressure area or "heat dome" building in intensity.
- This heat dome will park itself across the Northwest for days, pumping dry, downsloping winds from east to west across a vast expanse of real estate.
- For many of interior Washington, Idaho and Oregon, the extreme heat could last well into next week. Temperatures of 45°F above average for this time of year will also extend north into much of British Columbia.
The big picture: Heat waves like this are one of the clearest manifestations of human-caused global warming.
- Recent studies have shown that certain extreme heat events could not have occurred without the added boost from human-caused warming.
By the numbers: In Seattle, the National Weather Service predicts a high of 101°F on Sunday and 104°F on Monday. This would be a new all-time high-temperature record for the city.
- Portland, Oregon, is forecast to reach the low triple-digits on Saturday through at least Monday, breaking records.
- The heat will be most intense in inland areas of Washington and Oregon, where temperatures could soar to 115°F.
Bonus: Scorching forecast for Portland, Oregon


Portland is one of the biggest cities that stands to see some of the most intense heat, with multiple longstanding records likely to fall.
Why it matters: Not only will daytime highs eclipse never-before-seen levels, but so too could overnight minimum temperatures.
This boosts health risks because very warm overnight lows prevent people without air conditioning from chances to cool down.
4. The climate risk of China's auto sales
New research adds to the pile of reasons slashing China's carbon emissions will be so difficult, Ben writes.
Driving the news: China's car sales per unit of income growth appear higher than previously believed, scholars with the think tank Resources for the Future and the University of Maryland found.
The big picture: Their working paper looks at city-level car sales and income data from 2005-2017.
- "We find that a 1 percent increase in income causes total new vehicle sales to increase by 2.5 percent," it states.
- They note that "recent forecasts of new vehicle sales underpredict the effect of rising income on emissions by roughly 26 percent."
Why it matters: China is by far the world's largest carbon emitter. Chinese leaders have pledged peak emissions before 2030 and to be "carbon neutrality" by 2060, but the pathway there remains vague.
The bottom line: The findings' implication for future oil consumption "implies that China will need to adopt more aggressive climate policies to meet its [emissions] targets," it states.
5. EV charging providers to allow roaming across their networks
Illustration: AĂŻda Amer/Axios
The next step in getting more people to use electric vehicles is to make it easier to charge them anywhere — and a new partnership between EV charging companies will allow roaming access across their networks, Axios' Joann Muller reports.
Why it matters: Your phone works on any mobile network, no matter which provider you use. And you can use any bank's ATM machine. Now the same will be true of EV charging.
The state of play: Right now most EV drivers can only charge at stations where they've set up accounts. That means carrying a wallet full of swipe cards, fobs, or phone apps for different networks along their travel routes.
- The big exception is Tesla. Since 2012, all Tesla owners have to do is drive in, plug in to charge, and any billing happens on the back end.
- The catch: Tesla's network is proprietary, so owners of other EVs can't use it.
Now the rest of the industry is catching up. The new roaming partnership includes Greenlots, ChargePoint, EV Connect and FLO and covers 54,000 chargers in the U.S. and Canada.
Other partners are expected to join later, including EVGo.
6. Policy notes: Oil sands, solar imports, farms
Enbridge Line 3: "The Biden administration has defended a contentious pipeline project that would carry hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil through Minnesota’s delicate watersheds, urging in a court brief that a challenge brought by local tribes and environmental groups be thrown out." (New York Times)
China: "A U.S. ban on some solar materials made in the Xinjiang region is unlikely to have a major impact on Chinese polysilicon manufacturers, analysts said, although that could change if other countries follow Washington." (Bloomberg)
Legislation: "The Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill on Thursday to help shore up private agriculture and forestry carbon markets. The vote was 92-8." (Politico)
Sign up for Axios Generate

Untangle the energy industry’s biggest news stories


