-October 20, 2021 at 3:03 PM Pacific Time

US Senator Joe Manchin III (D-WV) opposed the clean energy plan of his own party. Since no Republican will support the infrastructure bill that includes the plan, Manchin has disproportionate power to implement the US decarbonization plan to slow global warming and achieve the Paris agreement goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050. Why does he oppose it? The Charleston Gazette email elaborated on this yesterday.

The $150 billion clean power plan is a carrot and stick approach. It will reward utilities that switch from burning fossil fuels to clean energy, and punish those that don't.

Sam Runyon, a spokesperson for Manchin, wrote in an email to the New York Times:

Senator Manchin clearly expressed his concern about using taxpayer money to pay private companies to do what they are already doing. He continues to support efforts to combat climate change while protecting America’s energy independence and ensuring our energy reliability.

The reason Manchin passed his spokesperson was absurd. Most U.S. utility companies have done little to transition to clean energy. They need carrots and sticks. In January of this year, Electrek reported:

Sierra Club analysts reviewed the plans of 79 operating companies owned by 50 parent companies and scored each utility company based on its plans to phase out coal by 2030, stop building new natural gas plants, and actively build new clean energy.

Sierra Club then provides a map of the United States so you can understand who succeeded and who failed, and provides a search function to find your utilities.

spoiler! D and F grades are much more than A or B grades.

Read more: What is your utility company doing (or not) adopting clean energy?

So what is going on with Manchin? As his West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) said, is he concerned that the plan “is designed to eventually eliminate coal and natural gas from our Say it is absolutely devastating"?

Yes, the plan aims to eliminate coal and natural gas. But I really don't think this is because Manchin is mainly worried about unemployment. As I wrote in April:

Yesterday, I saw Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Cecil Roberts, chairman of the American Federation of Miners, the largest coal union in the United States, discussing Appalachia’s possible transition from coal to renewable energy with the National Press Club. (You can watch the full discussion here.) This is an important and interesting conversation. With the decline of the coal industry, coal workers are right to be concerned about future jobs and training, but I have not heard that Manchin has any specific roadmap for coal.

Of course, Manchin among all people-the chairman of the U.S. Energy and Natural Resources Commission-should be able to speak clearly and comprehensively about the use of renewable energy and job creation, rather than vaguely repeating himself about the possibility of carbon capture and storage. . Even Roberts called on the federal government to support the manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels in Appalachia, and clarified a plan in the union's new report (although it still relies heavily on coal).

Everyone knows—even Roberts—that coal is breathing. Even Roberts is willing to transition to clean energy work! Voters in West Virginia support many provisions in the "Rebuild Better" plan, including clean energy.

Read more: Jim Cramer of Chevron and ExxonMobil refused: "I ran out of fossil fuels. They did it...this is the other side of Tesla"

What is the real reason why Manchin does not support clean energy?

Manchin never even received large amounts of funding from fossil fuel companies in West Virginia. They own him.

The Charleston Gazette email concluded:

According to the senator’s newly filed documents, employees and political action committees of out-of-state oil and gas companies-most of which are located in Texas-dwarf the contributions of individuals and political action committees in the state [West Virginia] Multiple quarterly campaign financial reports.

You can read the complete list of examples reported by Mike Tony, the energy and environment reporter of the Bulletin, but here are a few prominent examples:

The Senate Campaign Committee's Manchin of West Virginia reported that donations received during the quarter were slightly less than $1.6 million and cash on hand was $5.38 million.

More than a quarter of the roughly 1.6 million US dollars came from the oil and gas industry. More than $30,000 comes from the Personal and Political Action Committee in West Virginia.

According to his financial disclosures in the U.S. Senate, Manchin has earned $4.35 million since 2012 from his shares in Enersystems Inc., a Fairmont coal brokerage company he founded in 1988. He denied that his vested coal interests influenced his policy making influencing the coal industry. But he refused to divest his holdings, saying that his ownership was held in a blind trust, thus avoiding conflicts of interest.

Therefore, in only a quarter of the time, fossil fuels are worth 400,000 U.S. dollars. Guess who is the biggest beneficiary of oil and gas, mining and coal funding, not only in the Senate, but in the entire Congress? Manchin. (He ranks second in public utilities.)

I was very angry about this, and not just a little scared. I don't want to be too dramatic, but it's not good.

Let's go a little deeper (no pun intended): We are in a global climate emergency. China may be the largest polluter, but the United States is the second largest polluter. Every person in the US emits twice as much carbon as every person in China. In addition, the United States emits more carbon than any other country-so this is a problem that the United States needs to solve.

When Biden was elected, he immediately signed an executive order to have the US rejoin the Paris Agreement. He emphasized the importance of decarbonization and made a plan. He vowed that the United States will reduce its emissions to 50% of 2005 levels by 2030.

I hope that these declarations will bring hope to those of us who know that the future of mankind is still pending. The infrastructure bill took my breath away. I can't even watch the negotiation process.

The Biden Clean Energy Program is the foundation of the program. The whole world, not just the United States, needs it. We can't wait any longer.

Just a few weeks before the COP26 summit in Glasgow, the plan was about to be undermined by a man.

One person's greed will hurt 7.75 billion people in the world. This is not an exaggeration: the respected medical journal The Lancet states that “climate change is the greatest global health threat facing the world in the 21st century.”

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Michelle Lewis is the writer and editor of Electrek and the editor of DroneDJ, 9to5Mac and 9to5Google. She lives in St. Petersburg, Florida. She has previously worked for Fast Company, The Guardian, News Deeply, Time and other companies. Leave a message for Michelle on Twitter or via michelle@9to5mac.com. Check out her personal blog.

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