“It truly is hard to arrive at a top line for this, because it depends on assumptions about what the market is going to do,” said Derrick Flakoll, U.S. policy analyst at research firm BloombergNEF.
However, Jackson Ewing, director of energy and climate policy at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute of Energy, Environment and Sustainability, says the legislation’s climate benefits likely outweigh its costs.
“On balance, it’s likely to be positive, in particular, because the bottlenecks facing renewable energy and transmission are so pronounced in slowing down what would otherwise be a much more rapid expansion,” he added.
Both sides of the debate agree that provisions meant to bolster electric transmission and renewables, like those that give federal energy regulators greater authority to approve new power lines, will help mitigate climate change.
But, the extent to which its pro-fossil provisions will increase emissions is up for debate.
“If you had a different administration in place in January, they might be able to do a lot of the stuff … on their own, executive action-wise,” John Larsen, partner at the research firm Rhodium Group, said of the pro-fossil provisions.
Raúl García, vice president of policy and legislation at Earthjustice, who opposes the bill, also raised concerns about the potential climate impacts of provisions that put restrictions on lawsuits against potentially polluting projects.
If the bill were to pass, he said, “all the projects that are being stopped by a legitimate legal claim in court because the agency did not follow a proper process [are] suddenly greenlighted and shielded from judicial review.”
Read more at TheHill.com.
