ESG & Industry Updates

This past Friday, November 5^th, the House passed a $1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure bill after weeks of legislative infighting, primarily between progressive Democratic members and their more centrist colleagues, in addition to the given squabbling across party lines. 

The Biden Administration has announced new methane regulations from the COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland this week. Estimates are that the new regulations will affect  up to 75% of the methane emissions in the United States. Regulations will apply largely to the Oil & Gas industry, specifically addressing “flaring” (purposeful venting) during production and leaks across the system infrastructure.

Methane is responsible for up to 30% of global warming, according to the UN Environment Program, and is estimated to be 25 times more potent than Carbon Dioxide. In recent years this had led to more focus on methane (versus Carbon) emissions, as because of the potency, decreases in methane are much more likely to have a faster and more meaningful impact on slowing Climate Change.

The race is on among tech companies to be the first to perfect and roll out fully autonomous trucks. In 2016, Uber premiered the Otto - the first autonomous truck to complete a commercial shipment without a driver - it delivered beer after a 120 mile trek through Colorado. (We wrote an article on that at the time, for an Otto refresher you can find that here: Uber's Otto Delivers on Driverless Tech)

We're going to go millennial this month and talk about the ongoing controversy regarding bitcoin  - not the part you're thinking about, (to the moon!) -  but the controversy regarding the Carbon Footprint of digital currency, and what is seen as its "excessive" energy consumption. 

The Biden Administration's 1 trillion dollar Infrastructure Package, the "Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act" passed the Senate on Tuesday, with a voting margin of 69-30, meaning the passage was far more bipartisan than we are used to seeing as of late.

Events of the past year/18 months have highlighted in the mainstream a problem that has been plaguing the Transportation Industry for well over a decade - namely, the growing driver shortage.  This has been a particularly tough issue in the fuel side of the transportation sector, as the safety and licensing endorsements (like hazmat) are substantially more stringent than some other portions of the commercial driving arena. 

The Biden Administation has the ambitious goal of bringing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind online by 2030, and 1.4 of those gigawatts are slated to come from the New England coast. 

Maine lawmakers have been pushing for the state to create the first statewide, publicly owned utility in the US. The legislation proposed in June would have created the entity (Pine Tree Power) as a nonprofit utility that would use issued bonds to purchase the asset holdings of the current suppliers (Central Maine Power & Versant). The bill passed the House but stalled in the Senate, ultimately being defeated by one vote on questions raised about how the utility would cover the shortfall in property tax revenue that would arise from the exit of the current utilities. The shortfall was estimated at $90 million dollars, which is normally paid out to cities and towns.

This Wednesday, the Biden Administration unveiled a 2 trillion dollar transportation, infrastructure and economic recovery package. The goal of the bill is to create jobs, fix/upgrade US infrastructure, and combat climate change as the country attempts to recover from the COVID induced economic slump.

Friday, March 23rd, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed into law Senate Bill 9 "An Act Creating a Next Generation Roadmap for Massachusetts Climate Change Policy" that includes provisions described as "some of the most aggressive greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets in the country"