Hey, Any Good Environmental News Lately? There IS?

Thanks Joe Biden.

Wood duck at Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge. US Fish and Wildlife Service photo by Tom Koerner

The presidential election has turned into a contest between a capable, smart woman who emphasizes what Americans can achieve when they work together for the common good, and a sundowning old racist creep who would be pathetic if he weren’t so dangerously close to returning to power.

In case you’re wondering what the difference looks like, compare the hate and division the old racist creep is spreading with some recent announcements from President Joe Biden’s administration, nearly all of them about programs funded by one or another of Biden’s big legislative packages. Just a little reminder of why elections matter, and of the legacy that Kamala Harris is committed to building on. For, y’know, the people.

Postal Service’s First Electric Whaletrucks Hit The Road

After a lot of anticipation, the Postal Service is actually putting its new delivery vans into service — no more need to rely on computer renderings in articles about them! — and here is a nifty Heatmap article about just what a revolution that’s going to be. Not only are the Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDV) funny-looking, they also should, by the time they’re fully deployed later this decade, make a measurable dent in the federal government’s total greenhouse emissions. It’s not just that the USPS fleet is huge, it’s also because the existing mail trucks, most built in the late 1980s, are just horrible gas hogs, and postal carriers hate them because they’re cramped and have no air conditioning.

The NGDV comes in both gas-powered and electric versions; thanks to a funding boost from Congress in the Inflation Reduction Act, 75 percent of the new fleet will be electric, with the remaining trucks still powered by gas and deployed on routes where an EV’s range (with 2024 battery tech at least) might be a problem.

In the Heatmap piece, Paul Waldman argues that the NGDV — and its goofy, attention-getting looks — will boost EV adoption not so much because people will love the design, but because, along with Amazon’s electric Rivian vans, they’ll be ubiquitous by the end of the decade, making EVs just a normal part of communities’ everyday scenery. [Heatmap / AP]

Rural Broadband Rolling Out, Too

Hey, we missed this! When Joe Biden went to Wisconsin last week to announce a new tranche of funding to help rural electric co-ops adopt clean energy, he also called attention to his administration’s funding for rural high-speed internet service, which he noted had brought broadband to 72,000 Wisconsin homes and small businesses since the initiative was included in 2021’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. He compared both programs to the Rural Electrification program in the New Deal, noting that “affordable high-speed internet is just as essential today as electricity was a century ago.” He also argued that the IRA and BIL are contributing to “the great American comeback story” as rural communities become part of the energy transition that’s revitalizing American manufacturing. [PBS Wisconsin]

In a related development yesterday, the office of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis announced that with $826.5 million in funding from the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, Colorado will be among the first states to offer grants to connect rural Coloradans to affordable broadband. Nerds rule. [Office of Gov. Jared Polis]

Nice Time Grab Bag!

For the sake of seeing what else the IRA and other Biden initiatives are getting up to, we did some intensive research that consisted of checking out the “newsroom” pages of the Department of Energy and the Department of the Interior, where we found a whole bunch of neat stuff to remind you that government can do some pretty terrific things.

Energy first: The Energy Department is doing neat stuff through its Loan Program Office, which predates the IRA but got a huge infusion of funding from the law. Friday, the LPO announced a $72.8 million loan guarantee to finance a solar microgrid with long-duration battery backup on tribal lands in California. When completed, the 15-megawatt solar system and 70-megawatt battery storage system will sell power to a range of commercial businesses on tribal lands. [Energy Department]

The Energy Department also announced Thursday $40 million in new funding to advance the domestic solar photovoltaic supply chain, with some $19 million going to grants aimed at increasing solar cells’ lifespan and making the things more recyclable when they’re worn out. Another $21 million will go to winners of the seventh round of a competition called the American-Made Solar Prize, aimed at creating innovative solar stuff and getting more solar energy more equitably to more people, more or less. We dunno about the details; it’s the weekend and it sounds neat and we need all that!

Over at Interior, a whole bunch of neat investments in the environment, for which we will rapidly deploy some Axios Bullet Points.

• More than $157 million in new funding for conservation or restoration of wetland habitat for migratory birds in 17 states. Guess birds ARE real after all, and we’re protecting where they live.

• $236 million from the the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for wildland fire resistance and recovery, bringing the total of BIL funding for wildfire prevention and management to $1.1 billion since the law passed in 2021

• $43.5 million in BIL funding for water storage in the West, where whiskey is for drinkin’ and water is for fightin’! (Despite the alleged Old West origins of that phrase, it appears to have been coined in the 1980s to sound old-fashioned-y.) BIL has so far funded $4.2 billion in rural water projects, and that’s separate from other funding for replacing old lead pipes across the nation.

• OK, not funding and only a litte Biden, but it’s an environmental win: Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced last week that the Apache Trout, Arizona’s state fish, has recovered well enough to be removed from the Endangered Species List. That’s after more than 50 years of recovery efforts — and yes, $5.1 billion from Biden’s Investing In America Agenda, too.

In conclusion, we are such nerds and we love it when government does good things!

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Joe Biden Keeps Doing Clean Energy To Rural America As If It Had Abundant Wind, Sun.

US Postal Service To Go Electric, Like Dylan At Newport

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