No one could predict what President Donald Trump would do in the last days of December 2020, and stunned onlookers could only wait and hope.
One lobbyist recalled how he didn’t dare to bring up the elephant in the room as Trump debated signing the $900 billion COVID recovery stimulus bill into law.
“We didn’t want to give him any excuse not to sign it,” the lobbyist said.
They hoped Trump wouldn’t notice a provision hidden deep within the hundreds of pages of legislative text — one that would soon send a select group of stocks soaring to cap a banner year.
The elephant in the room was, of course, the term “climate change.”
Clean energy activists and lobbyists — including Stephen Yurek, a lobbyist for the coolant industry — were afraid to point out that the bill contained a historic stimulus that would advance clean energy in the United States.
They worried that Trump — who had publicly scorned clean energy — would reflexively veto any bill he saw as advancing “the Green New Deal” or any other part of Biden’s agenda.
Even so, for a while, the bill’s passage seemed to be in grave doubt. Trump publicly called it “a disgrace.”
He said the unemployment benefits were too meager. But he never condemned — or likely even noticed — the massive goodies for clean energy tucked away inside the mammoth bill.
And Dec. 28, 2020, the strategic silence from lobbyists, activists, and lawmakers finally paid off… Trump signed the law sending $35 billion in tax credits and subsidies toward clean energy.
But the bill did much more than that. It committed to phasing out hydrofluorocarbons, a greenhouse gas many times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Shockingly, this standard meant Trump was allowing the United States to fulfill a Barack Obama-era treaty on phasing out hydrofluorocarbons — the very treaty he had renounced upon taking office.
Rolling Stone called the law “a huge win for the planet.” Michael Brune, executive director of the environmentalist group Sierra Club, called it “a light in the darkness.” Another environmental advocate called it “perhaps the most significant climate legislation Congress has ever passed.”
And clean energy stocks celebrated accordingly. Electric vehicle stocks like Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) and Nikola Corp. (NASDAQ: NKLA) jumped 33% and 56%, respectively, over the following month. The fuel-cell firm Plug Power Inc. (NASDAQ: PLUG) rose 117%. The First Trust NASDAQ Clean Edge Green Energy Exchange-Traded Fund, which contains a basket of clean energy stocks across various sectors, rose 23.96% for the month.
But clean energy stocks are facing an even bigger catalyst today. In August, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law — and with it, $369 billion in spending to advance clean energy in America.
If the $35 billion Trump showered on renewables in 2020 could help some clean energy stocks double in a month’s time, what will $369 billion do for the sector as officials begin to implement it?
One of the biggest opportunities in clean energy today is in electric vehicle (EV) stocks. Biden’s infrastructure law is already spending $7.5 billion to create America’s first-ever national network of electric vehicle charging stations. This network will make it easier to take long trips, either through rural or urban America, without needing to worry about running out of charge before finding an EV charging station — making so-called “range anxiety” a thing of the past.
The law also awards a $7,500 tax credit to Americans who buy EVs, with only a few conditions. One of them is that car companies can only extend this credit to the first 200,000 sales — meaning that big names like Tesla and General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) are now ineligible.
But for the electric vehicle startups Benzinga is following, it’s a different story. Eli Electric Vehicles is preparing to ramp up production of its micro-electric vehicles — smaller, efficiency-minded EVs designed to help people travel in urban, crowded environments with minimum hassle.
As the Biden administration shoots for its target of EVs representing 50% of all car sales by 2030, companies like Eli Electric are ones to watch as a $369 billion tailwind powers renewable energy stocks.
Don’t miss real-time alerts on your stocks – join Benzinga Pro for free! Try the tool that will help you invest smarter, faster, and better.
© 2022 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Herschel Walker, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate from Georgia, doesn’t seem to know what a lot of things are. He claimed to not know women he allegedly dated, impregnated, and pressured to have abortions. He straight-up told voters he’s “not that smart.” And now, the candidate says he has no idea what a pronoun is—a thing most of us learned roughly in second grade.
Justice Gorsuch slammed Colorado for forcing a Christian baker to undergo a “reeducation program” after he refused to to create a cake celebrating a same-sex marriage.
Trump is yet again running around his mouth about things that will only benefit his corrupt agenda. This time, he’s commenting on the Constitution. The remarks were courtesy of his “Truth Social” media platform that were posted on Saturday.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) was a part of Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker’s final campaign push on Sunday afternoon, two days before the runoff vote between him and sitting Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock (D). While Walker himself had a number of odd things to say over the weekend, it looks like fake folksy Kennedy was intent on adding his voice to the bizarre chorus.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has now entered its 10th month, and as the weather drops below freezing, the invasion enters a new phase. Here are the latest developments.
Kari Lake promises to keep fighting the election in court. Lawyers that might help her would be wise to consider what a federal judge just did.
Indians form the world’s largest diaspora group at around 18 million. That has led to India receiving ever-increasing remittances over the years.
A former Miami congressman who signed a $50 million consulting contract with Venezuela’s socialist government was arrested Monday on charges of money laundering and representing a foreign government without registering.
An author went viral on Twitter after expressing how "embarrassed" she felt that only two people showed up at her book signing over the weekend.
Three women's basketball teams have withdrawn from a Las Vegas tournament as part of continuing fallout from a similar event at a Strip resort over Thanksgiving weekend where safety concerns were raised. Dayton, Purdue and Texas A&M are out of the Las Vegas Holiday Hoops Classic at South Point Arena.
Former President Trump’s weekend call to terminate parts of the U.S. Constitution in order to overturn the 2020 election results was met with derision and opposition by Senate Republicans on Monday. “I think it’s ridiculous talk,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), a newly minted member of GOP leadership. “To besmirch our dedication to the Constitution…
(Reuters) -The orchestrator of gunfire attacks on power stations in North Carolina that left nearly an entire county without electricity for a second straight day knew "exactly" how to disable the stations, sheriff Ronnie Fields said on Monday. Fields' comments came as North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper warned of a "new level of threat" posed by the incident and called for hardening of critical infrastructure including the power grid. “Protecting critical infrastructure like our power system must be a top priority,” said Cooper, a Democrat, in a press briefing on Monday.
Sergei Karpukhin/ReutersTwo explosions at major Russian military bases, including the Dyagilevo base near Ryazan just 150 miles from Moscow, mean the war in Ukraine has come right to Vladimir Putin’s doorstep. The explosions—which were unmanned drone strikes, a senior Ukrainian official told The New York Times—suggest Ukraine wanted to strike fear right in the heart of Russia.The second explosion struck the Engels-2 base, from which Tu-95 bombers have been pummeling Ukraine’s infrastructure over
President Biden said Monday the White House is “confident” his order to “forgive” up to $10,000 in federal student debt for those making under $125,000 annually will be upheld despite several legal challenges.
Nearly a year and a half ago, when Ashley Solis, a massage therapist, filed the first claim against Deshaun Watson in March 2021, part of me thought he would never return to the field, and rightfully so. Now, more than two dozen civil lawsuits later, I can’t believe I ever thought he wouldn’t.
TikTokers are calling Kate a modern-day "Mommie Dearest."
An obscure and arcane economic indicator suggests that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell was wrong when he said at his Nov. 30 news conference that “There is a path to a soft, a softish landing” for the U.S. economy. A recession has occurred each time over the past four decades in which this divergence even approached its current level. To measure this divergence, this indicator focuses on the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) and the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Survey (UMI).
Japan lays claim to the Russian-held southern Kuril islands, which Tokyo calls the Northern Territories, a territorial row that dates to the end of World War Two, when Soviet troops seized them from Japan. The Russian Bastion systems, which have missiles with a flight range of up to 500 km (310 miles), were deployed on the island of Paramushir, the Russian defence ministry said on Monday.
The state of Georgia has 10 historically Black colleges. Seven of those schools are private, meaning they don’t get the majority of their funding from state government and they aren’t under the supervision of the University of Georgia system.
As a businessman and president, Donald Trump faced a litany of lawsuits and criminal investigations yet emerged from the legal scrutiny time and again with his public and political standing largely intact. The sense of vulnerability has been heightened in recent weeks not only by the Justice Department's appointment of a special counsel with a reputation for aggressiveness but also by the removal of a Trump-requested independent arbiter in the case and by judges' unequivocal rejection of his lawyers' arguments. It's impossible to predict how much longer the investigation will last or whether the Justice Department will take the unprecedented step of indicting a former president and current candidate.