Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Here are a few energy-related things you should know about the final defense bill:
🏭 1. CHIPS NEPA futures: The bill dropped a provision written by Sens. Mark Kelly and Ted Cruz that would have sped up environmental permitting for semiconductor projects funded under the CHIPS and Science Act.
- House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman had opposed its inclusion because he thinks Congress should enact broader permitting changes, rather than making special exemptions.
- "If you really want to address Chinese supply chains, you need to do something for your mining, and for chip manufacturing, and for all the other things," he told reporters Wednesday.
⛏️ 2. Mineral extravaganza: The NDAA's got a provision to support the purchasing of domestic "critical minerals" (a long list of materials including aluminum, cobalt, copper and lithium).
- And it would require a report from the Pentagon on foreign sourcing of those minerals.
🤫 3. Disclosure notice: The bill would effectively block the Biden administration from requiring defense contractors to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions or climate-related financial risks.
✈️ 4. GREET go away: The conference report doesn't include language that was in both the House and Senate versions on how the government should measure air travel emissions.
- Ag legislators want the government to use a model favorable to biofuels, known as GREET, as we explained earlier this year.
