Global Courant 2023-04-11 14:00:16
A green energy company with close ties to the White House was one of the very first companies to take advantage of tax breaks in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Democrats’ flagship climate package.
Form Energy — a Massachusetts-based company that has developed a utility-scale iron-air battery system — announced in December, just four months after Congress passed and the president signed the IRA into law, that it would invest up to $760 million to build a . plant in Weirton, West Virginia. The plant is one of the first clean energy projects to directly benefit the IRA and is being touted by the White House.
“These investments create high-paying jobs, including unionized jobs and jobs that do not require a four-year degree in industries that will bolster U.S. competitiveness, rebuild infrastructure, strengthen supply chains and help build a clean energy economy.” , the statement said. a White House fact sheet in March highlighting private sector investment in West Virginia, including that from Form Energy.
Congress largely approved the IRA along party lines in August 2022. The legislation, billed by Democrats as a crowning achievement of the Biden administration, passed the Senate primarily thanks to the support of Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
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President Biden wants to give Senator Joe Manchin, DW.Va., the pen he used to sign the Inflation Reduction Act at the White House on Aug. 16. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“West Virginia continues to be a leader in energy innovation, and the high-paying jobs and new economic opportunities that this brings are exactly what I had in mind when negotiating the Inflation Reduction Act,” Manchin said on Dec. 22 , the day of the announcement.
Form Energy, meanwhile, raised $450 million in private funding, thanks in large part to the IRA’s tax credits, Form Energy CEO Mateo Jaramillo told The Wall Street Journal last year, adding that the legislation “gives everyone a lot more confidence.” A major investor in the battery manufacturer is Breakthrough Energy, billionaire Bill Gates’ green energy investment company.
The IRA, including one a whopping $369 billion in climate investments, provides tax relief for clean energy plants built on former sites of polluting energy facilities and for battery storage projects such as the one proposed by Form Energy. The company’s factory will be built on the site of a decommissioned steel mill.
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“After a year-long nationwide selection process that began with the identification of more than 500 candidate sites in 16 states, it became abundantly clear that Weirton, West Virginia – a historic riverside steel community with a rich heritage and know-how – to make great things out of iron – is the ideal location for our first commercial battery production plant,” Jaramillo said in a statement at the time.
President Biden has aggressively pushed clean energy as part of his climate agenda. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
However, on Nov. 9, just over a month before the announcement, Jaramillo visited the White House for a face-to-face meeting with Kristina Costa, the deputy director of the White House Office of Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation, visitor logs showed. Costa was hired for the position by White House clean energy czar John Podesta, whom President Biden chose in early September to oversee the IRA’s deployment.
In addition to Jaramillo, Nidhi Thakar, Form Energy’s vice president of policy and regulation; Michael Carr, a partner at green energy lobbying and consulting firm Boundary Stone; and Yogin Kothari, a senior vice president at Boundary Stone, also attended the meeting.
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Form Energy paid Carr and Kothari $200,000 last year to lobby for the company’s policy priorities, according to federal lobbying disclosures.
And Thakar previously served as co-chair of Clean Energy for Biden, an organization created to help President Biden get elected in 2020, according to archived copies of the group’s website that have since been sanitized. In August 2021, Thakar and Podesta were also named to the board of directors of Clean Energy for America, a group “committed to advancing an equitable and inclusive clean energy economy”.
Thakar and Jaramillo also attended the IRA signing ceremony at the White House on September 13. Also, Thakar attended the White House Diwali reception on October 24.
Deputy Director Kristina Costa of the White House Office of Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation speaks at a panel in 2019. Costa met with Form Energy executives and lobbyists in November. (C-SPAN 2/video screenshot)
However, a White House spokesman said the Biden administration was not involved in Form Energy’s selection process for its West Virginia plant.
“The White House was not involved in this decision and did not encourage site selection,” White House spokesman Michael Kikukawa told Fox News Digital. “This was an independent decision by a private company based on its own location process and investment requirements.”
“We are proud that the President’s Investing in America agenda – including the Inflation Reduction Act – is unleashing private sector investment in communities across the country,” added Kikukawa.
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Kikukawa also noted that Form Energy was not the first company to announce a project enabled by the Inflation Reduction Act.
White House climate czar John Podesta speaks at an electrification summit at the White House on Dec. 14. Podesta served on the board of directors of Clean Energy for America with Form Energy Vice President Nidhi Thakar. (White House/video screenshot)
“The White House was in no way involved in Form’s location decision,” Form Energy spokesperson Sarah Bray told Fox News Digital. “We conducted an extensive site selection process for the location of our first large-scale battery manufacturing facility, and Weirton, West Virginia came back as the clear choice for the many reasons stated.”
“Both Senator Manchin and Senator Capito are in favor of moving our battery plant to the state of West Virginia; when fully operational it will employ 750 people with an average salary of at least $63,000 a year,” she said.
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Bray added that Thakar’s role at Clean Energy for Biden predated her job at Form Energy and that her role at Clean Energy for America is served in a “personal capacity outside of her position at Form Energy.” Bray also said that the meeting in November at the White House between Thakar, Jaramillo, Carr, Kothari and Costa was broadly about Form Energy’s technology development.
A Manchin spokesperson said the West Virginia legislature was excited to celebrate the battery factory last year but did not comment on its involvement in the project.
“Senator Manchin never misses an opportunity to highlight the abundant resources and resilient workforce that West Virginia provides to potential companies,” Sam Runyon, a Manchin spokesperson, told Fox News Digital. “Form Energy is no exception and he is delighted that they have decided to expand their footprint in Weirton.”
And Mitch Carmichael, the secretary of West Virginia’s Department of Economic Development, said the state was working to attract Form Energy’s investment, but the state was not coordinating with the White House.
“I am personally very happy with this deal,” Carmichael said in an interview. “I had to go through this a million different ways to get this transaction done. So we’re very happy with it. But we haven’t contacted the White House at all.”
