Thread by @SeanCasten

For today's thread: the Grid Energy Storage Act that I introduced and the BEST Act introduced by @RepBillFoster which were combined to provide over $1 billion for energy storage in the Omnibus:

https://twitter.com/SeanCasten/status/1343729817414467584

1/ First, a bit of nerdy but really relevant background. Looking through @EIAgov data a few years ago, I noticed that falling coal MWh were just about exactly offset by rising (cleaner) combined cycle gas MWh, but in the midwest CO2 emissions from power gen were slightly rising.

2/ The rise was just about exactly matched by increased MWh from comparatively inefficient simple cycle gas turbine power plants. This was driven substantially, if paradoxically by the success of renewable energy.

3/ As large volumes of intermittent (e.g., wind and solar) renewables came on line that exceeded the ability of a given region of the grid to export/import to balance, inefficient quick-ramping gas-fired power plants were coming on line to load-balance.

4/ e.g., running at half load so they could quickly ramp up or down in response to surges up or down of renewable capacity.

5/ That's a solvable problem, either through increased transmission capacity or properly sited energy storage that can absorb & release that intermittent energy. Local NIMBY issues make transmission siting hard (but I have some thoughts on that for the 117th Congress...)

6/ That led to HR 2909, The Promoting Grid Storage Act, which quickly got bipartisan and bicameral support: congress.gov/bill/116th-con…

7/ In parallel, my friend @RepBillFoster had introduced the Battery Energy Storage Technology (BEST) Act to accelerate R&D into advanced energy storage technology which had similar cross-aisle and cross-Capitol support. congress.gov/bill/116th-con…

8/ Those two energy storage titles were combined into Section 3201 of the Omnibus spending bill (page 995)

9/ Over the next 5 years, these two bills will inject a little over $1 billion into the economy, split 50/50 between R&D and deployment to help bolster our electric grid, lower CO2 emissions and facilitate further deployment of renewable energy.

10/ A final post-script. My friend Katie McGinty (former head of CEQ) told me when I first considered running for Congress that "if you know what you want to do in this life, there is no better job than being a member of Congress" because of the size of the levers you can pull.

11/ Over 16 years as an entrepreneur in the energy industry, I built 80+ clean energy projects and deployed a little over $200M. To put $1.5B into clean energy at the end of my first term in Congress is proof of Katie's point.

12/ And yes, that's $500M more than is listed above. Thread on the other $500M tomorrow. /fin