Houston Chronicle discussed clean energy provisions in Senate budget reconciliation, quoting AEE's Harry Godfrey on the industrial policy impact. Read snippets below and the full article here.
For more than a decade, the United States has relied on cheap technology from abroad to fuel its shift towards clean energy. Now President Joe Biden and Democrats are looking to bring that practice to an end, as they seek to pass sweeping new climate legislation deterring clean energy developers from using foreign-made technology.
The Democrat’s more than 700-page energy and health care bill, called the Inflation Reduction Act and introduced last week by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., would spend almost $370 billion to expand tax credits and payments for wind and solar power, electric vehicles and carbon capture, but to qualify for the full benefit of those policies those industries would be required to use substantial amounts of American-made technology.
Democrats have championed such an approach for years. With this legislation they are undertaking, “one if not the most significant industrial policies of this era,” said Harry Godfrey, managing director at the trade group Advanced Energy Economy, a trade group representing clean energy and technology companies including NRG and Microsoft.
“We are late to the game in industrial policy, but we have realized the economic and national security risks of not doing it,” Godfrey said. “It’s the opportunity to start turning the ship.”
Read the full article here.