August 2, 2021
Washington, DC — Following the introduction of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act Carroll Muffett, President and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) issued the following statement:
“The Infrastructure bill offers minimal support to accelerate the renewable energy transition while squandering tens of billions on carbon capture, fossil hydrogen, and other subsidies designed to prop up a failing industry and entrench the fossil economy for decades to come. It calls on US states to compound these subsidies by giving carbon capture projects a minimum ten-year holiday from state taxes. It proposes to weaken critical environmental review processes, putting frontline communities — disproportionality communities of color — at even greater risk. And it wastes limited public dollars exploring long-debunked denialist claims about the life-cycle impacts of electric cars. With members of the Exxon 11 making up fully a third of the bill’s co-authors, the result is deeply disappointing but hardly surprising.
“As a corporate giveaway, the energy provisions in the Infrastructure bill are a massive success. As a response to the climate emergency, they are a dismal failure.”
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Note to Editors:
In an undercover video released in July by the Greenpeace UK, former Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy identified 11 United States Senators the company considered crucial to its lobbying efforts on climate change. Three of the Senators named by McCoy — Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and Jon Tester — are named co-authors on the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Media contact: Cate Bonacini, +1-202-742-5847, press(at)ciel.org
(Published on August 2, 2021)