ESG & Industry Updates

Over 70% of the American West, Southwest and Northern Plains has been categorized as a D3 (severe) drought or higher since June. In October, the US Bureau of Reclamation issued its 5 year projections for the Colorado River, which serves 40 million people in the American West. Projections help management consultants better plan for future demands and determine allocations appropriately based on the data.

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'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.

New England has some of the highest utility rates in the country, and a fuel-constrained infrastructure. Now the area is again looking at potentially losing two major energy sources simultaneously. 

Energy Infrastructure is one of the topics essentially absent from the Congressional agenda at the moment, with the exception of continuing efforts to pass a Keystone XL bill. As you recall, the last bill successfully passed the House and Senate, only to be vetoed by President. It ultimately died in the Senate where it lacked the votes to override said veto. 

Today, the bill to approve the construction of the the Keystone XL pipeline hits the Senate, after the House approved Cassidy's legislation by 252-161 on Friday. 

Tuesday the House passed bipartisan legislation to speed up the approval process for cross-border energy projects (ie Keystone XL), despite a promised veto from President Obama.  The bill is known as the “North American Energy Infrastructure Act”, featuring 12 Republican and 8 Democratic co-sponsors. If it passed the Senate, it would establish by law that projects be granted or denied approval within 120 days of the Environmental Impact Study, and more significantly, it would remove the need for Presidential Approval.

Technically the bill doesn’t apply to Keystone XL, because the applications and environmental impact studies are already completed for that proposed project. However, that’s obviously the most glaring example of the need to speed up the process, and probably the impetus for the bill’s submission in the first place. In theory, TransCanada could resubmit their application and be subject to the speedier process. (A motion to prevent TransCanada from resubmitting should the bill pass was handily shut down by a wide margin.)