E&E News Amplifies SEEC Institute Summit Discussions

Coverage in E&E News amplified conversations at the SEEC Institute Solutions Summit on the critical importance of stakeholder collaboration in advancing clean energy policy. Read an excerpt below and the full article here.

“The climate law’s staying power was a topic of discussion at the inaugural Climate Solutions Summit earlier this week hosted by the SEEC Institute, the newly formed foundation established to complement the work of the 100-member House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC).

There, John Podesta, President Joe Biden’s senior climate adviser overseeing Inflation Reduction Act implementation, recalled receiving a visit from Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma.

Stitt had “just landed a big solar manufacturing deal” in his state,” Podesta said, and wanted to know what he could do to win back a battery plant that had just moved to Canada.

“You see that in South Carolina,” he continued. “You see that in Georgia … both in the solar supply chain as well as electric vehicles, electric buses — I don’t think those politicians are going to want to turn their backs on their constituents, the jobs they bring, the strength it brings to their economy.”

Podesta acknowledged that while Republicans would likely “go in and attack certain parts of what we passed and what we worked on together … I think for the most part these are pretty sticky investments, and I think they’re going to go forward.”

But SEEC Co-Chair Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) underscored that it would be necessary for Democrats and their allies in the environmental advocacy community to acknowledge the risks to the Inflation Reduction Act and come up with a plan of attack.

“If there’s anything I hear routinely, and especially over the last six months, it has been, ‘There’s so much good in the IRA. Make certain it stays there,’” Tonko said. “How do we come up with the effort to save what’s in the IRA?””