Wyatt Sassman

Trump Will Slow, but May Not Stop, the Rise of Electric Vehicles

“Six of the ten most American-made cars are electric”

#greensky #energysky

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/b...

Conservative Activists Join a New Assault on Vineyard Wind And more of the week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.

Scoop: Conservative activists have petitioned the Trump administration to take away the permits for *an operating offshore wind project* — Vineyard Wind — after the admin expressed openness to undoing previous approvals for such projects

heatmap.news/plus/the-fig...

Australia’s surge in household battery installations is ‘off the charts’ as government subsidy program powers up At current rate, households could have 10,000MW installed in five years – half the nation’s total coal power capacity, expert says

Many awesome things about this Australian program leading to “off the charts” installation of home batteries that reduce pollution, increase reliance, and save people money.

But my favorite is that it’s just called the “Cheaper Home Batteries Program”

🔌💡

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

CALL FOR PAPERS! 🪩🎉🎊🪩🎉🎊🪩🎉🎊 It's out and full of information. Check it out! Get in touch with questions!
lawandpoliticaleconomy.org

Defunct oil wells are a national problem. Finding them is the first step There could be about a million 'orphan' oil and gas wells across the U.S. As they age, they can leak greenhouse gases or unhealthy chemicals.

There could be about a million 'orphan' oil and gas wells across the U.S. As they age, they can leak greenhouse gases or unhealthy chemicals.

Navigating OBBBA: phaseouts, prohibited foreign entity rules, and other new rules This post builds on the briefs we published on June 20 (the House draft) and June 30 (the Senate draft) and describes the energy credit provisions as enacted in the final version of the recently-enact...

Here's an awesome guide to navigating the changes in federal clean energy tax cuts after passage of the Republicans' budget bill, from the NYU Tax Law Center:
taxlawcenter.org/blog/navigat... 🔌💡

The Abundance agenda provides a permission structure that fossil fuels exploit.

Here, a federal project to "ramp up the amount of waxy crude oil that producers can transport out of the Uinta Basin by 80,000 barrels per day" approved "after a 16-day review with no public input process."

BRICS are greening. Our report is out
netzeropolicylab.com/brics-going-...
-New wave of pro-active green industrial policies to develop potential
-Surge of major green industrial assets & electricity shift
-study cases of co-development of green industries within BRICS
bsky.app/profile/70sb...

Vermont Law and Graduate School Vermont Law and Graduate School is one of the top five environmental law schools in the U.S. and is nationally renowned in restorative justice, climate change law, criminal law, and clinical education...

Beyond thrilled to welcome @jmijin.bsky.social and @madisoncondon.bsky.social to Vermont Law and Graduate School as Distinguished Summer Scholars this week! So honored to have these brilliant climate thinkers here for a couple weeks to engage with our community. Catch their upcoming lectures here:

Very exciting new research by @kristinnmar.bsky.social and Gastil. Once again demonstrating the epistemic importance of the minipublic.

EU vs. US Courts Face Off on Free Speech A landmark anti-SLAPP case underway in the EU could result in a European court verdict declaring Energy Transfer’s suit against Greenpeace legal harassment even as the company seeks to collect a $666 ...

A fascinating test case for the European Union’s new anti-SLAPP law protecting free speech got underway today, with Greenpeace International suing Dakota Access Pipeline owner Energy Transfer, @jindia.bsky.social has the story for @drilledmedia.bsky.social drilled.media/news/EU-SLAPP

Great write up, thank you Justin!

“There isn’t going to be a gas fired generator any time soon,” Tillis said. “You can’t get that online and the same time that [renewable] pipeline’s going down.”

First time GOP opposition over this made public in Senate debate on the reconciliation bill.

How the Senate GOP’s New Tax on Renewables Could ‘Kill’ the Industry As bad as previous drafts of the reconciliation bill have been, this one is worse.

Republicans are now suddenly planning to TAX renewable energy, transforming the repeal of the IRA from a challenge to a full-blown crisis for American solar and wind.

I spent the last 24 hours putting this story together to explain why.

Please share! This is really important!!!

@heatmap.news

Colorado oil regulators accuse Chevron of rule violations in Weld County well 'blowout' | Colorado Newsline Some residents of tiny Galeton remain displaced from their homes nearly three months after the Bishop well pad incident.

Colorado regulators on Thursday launched an enforcement action against oil giant Chevron for an April well “blowout” that caused evacuations and closures in a community in eastern Weld County.
By @chasewoodruff.bsky.social

New paper! A Blockchain for Coal Ash aims to describe a system where we are actually tracking coal ash - and transparently recording where it ends up. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

🎉🎉🎉

🔌💡

Thanks for highlighting, can’t wait to read it!

“When analyzing a transition plan, we must ask:

“Is it really a transition? Does it have a plan to phase out fossil fuels? If not, then it’s not a transition, let alone a just one.”

@jmijin.bsky.social at amazing @cplusc.bsky.social book talk at @cornellilr.bsky.social’s Climate Jobs Institute.

In February, 7-year-old Dolma Naadhun was crossing the intersection of Newtown Road and 45th Street in Astoria with her mother and sister when the driver of a 2021 Ford Explorer blew through a stop sign, striking and killing Dolma. One month later, New York City Department of Transportation commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez visited the crash site with other officials, met with community members demanding a traffic signal be installed, and promised to make changes to the street - including "daylighting" the intersection using curb extensions and plastic bollards. State assemblymember Zohran Mamdani also visited the scene that day and realized that something else needed to change. "When you take a step back and think about traffic violence in New York City," he said, "you start to understand that this is a systemic issue that is incentivized by the policies that we have in place with regard to the design of our streets and what kind of vehicles we allow to be on our roads." Whether a driver runs a stop sign or a red light, statistically, certain cars - namely, bigger SUVs and trucks - are more likely to kill a 7-year-old. This is why Mamdani is co- introducing legislation for a weight-based vehicle-registration fee intended to discourage people from purchasing heavier vehicles. "The car industry is pushing the sale of heavier and larger vehicles," he says. "The state has to make it clear that these types of vehicles come with a certain kind of cost."

soar above adult shoulders. But there may be another way to disincentivize the purchases of such vehicles, says Edwards. "One other potential idea would be for someone, maybe a city's DOT, to start keeping a list of the different makes and models of vehicles that are killing pedestrians and cyclists, or kids specifically, and post that publicly," he says. "That could bring awareness to which cars are more dangerous and also potentially affect insurance rates, which would possibly convince people not to buy certain cars." There's a bit of accountability in New York's bill, which would require the State DOT to track all fatal crashes by vehicle weight. But the other encouraging aspect of the proposal is that the collected fees stay local, by county, and, after the annual dedications to highway, bridge, and transit trust funds are met, a full 75 percent of the funds raised will go toward safety improvements like bike lanes, bollards, road diets, pedestrianization of streets, and raised crosswalks. This means the neighborhoods most impacted by large vehicles are likely to see the biggest changes. And that might be the most important part of the legislation, says Mamdani. "This is an initiative to make our streets safer for our children," he says. "And we are making sure a significant portion of this funding goes toward creating the very streetscapes that we know will save their lives."

Two years ago I interviewed a 31-year-old NY state assemblymember about a 7-year-old girl killed by an SUV driver in his district. I hung up the phone, astonished that I'd talked to a legislator who so thoughtfully articulated what actually needs to change on our streets.

He'll make a great mayor

The Trump Solar Farm Slowdown Permitting delays and missed deadlines are bedeviling solar developers and activist groups alike. What’s going on?

ICYMI, Trump's Bureau of Land Management is delaying solar farms, leaving projects in a "state of quiet stasis" baffling to both solar developers and opponents.

@jael.bsky.social has the full story, feat. @bitterwaterblue.bsky.social of @biologicaldiversity.org.

One thing I’ll be reading closely for is whether we should also be thinking about political-economic justifications for community benefits — such as democratizing control over electricity production — and whether than impacts the study’s analysis.

But that’s for after family vacation!

Screenshot of text from the article: Do the parties in question—the community members or the community as a whole—possess a special moral obligation that they are being influenced to ignore or violate? It is plausible to think that they do. In a democracy, citizens are morally obliged to take their civic obligations seriously [36]. Alongside activities such as voting, being informed and thinking conscientiously [37], pp. 86–87, and as part of their civic obligations of political participation [38], citizens should try to make judicious decisions about local issues, including major industrial developments, weighing up the public goods and costs they involve. They should then act on the basis of these judgments as they undertake civic activities like voting, protesting, writing submissions and deliberating publicly with other citizens. They may also have an informal role as custodians or stewards of their locale, its environment and its traditions—caring for their community, its culture and values, and the ecology it shares with other living creatures [39,40].

I’ve only been able to skim it, but I appreciate that the study appears to take seriously communities’ civic obligations around development and role as stewards of their environment.

Benefits or bribes? Ethical concerns with the potential corruption of civic obligations through community benefits schemes for wind farms Community benefit schemes have become a common feature of new energy industries, and are especially prevalent in renewable energy developments like wi…

New study normatively evaluating community benefits—how should we approach community benefits to avoid ethical problems?

#greensky #energysky

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Could this city be the model for how to tackle the housing crisis and climate change? Vienna has a way to make affordable housing and combat climate change all at the same time. Now U.S. cities want in, and they're building their own green housing.

Vienna is the global capital of social housing, and is regularly ranked as the world's most livable city.

Our new report, featured in this @npr.org exclusive, explores Vienna’s green social housing—home to the majority of its renters—and how it can work here.

www.npr.org/2025/06/15/n...

Awesome! Thanks for this and I’m excited to listen!

Another interesting finding was the importance of connecting participation to clear outcomes

Report also emphasized importance of local governments structuring and supporting community leadership

Report from 21 workshops in four EU locations on how to “co-create community visions for desirable energy futures.”

Among others, report makes findings consistent with literature on importance of early inclusion and building trust.

#greensky #energysky

sharedgreendeal.eu/sites/defaul...