Well, who deserves it more?

From NOTUS, a publication I hadn’t heard of before today. Looks interesting.

Some of the wealthiest coastal cities and towns in the United States — with sizable tax bases, good schools and robust job opportunities — are getting a special tax incentive intended for communities left behind.

The federal government is currently labeling cities like Alexandria, Virginia, Greenwich, Connecticut, and Cape Cod, Massachusetts, as “energy communities” — areas considered to be struggling from the move away from coal and other fossil fuels to clean sources of energy.

“Energy communities” qualify for an extra incentive for clean energy development, a bonus provided by the Inflation Reduction Act intended to ensure that the places most hurt by the decline in fossil fuels are given the most help in the clean energy transition.

Before the Inflation Reduction Act, there were no “place-based” federal policies devoted to ensuring these gutted communities had a chance at new and diversified economies, said Brian Anderson, the director of the Biden administration’s interagency working group for energy communities.

Making wealthy communities eligible for these financial incentives is not a mistake in the federal government’s implementation of the policy — but it is perhaps an error by design, policy experts say.

“It really does seem like they just designed it in a way that very poorly targets fossil fuel communities,” said Noah Kaufman, now a climate economist at Columbia University who served in both the Biden and Obama administrations. “These regions need targeted support, but the support is a mile wide and an inch deep.”

About half of the country, geographically, qualifies for the IRA’s energy community tax credit bonus. If the wealthiest communities in the country are pulling from a pot of money meant to even the playing field during a clean energy transition, then the policy is not working — and runs the risk of wasting taxpayer dollars, he said.

Who can forget the trauma when the Tod’s Point coal mine failed, throwing thousands of Sound Beach residents out of work?

“The Biden administration has explicitly stated that it will prioritize places left behind by the fall of the mining industry in the United States, pledging repeatedly to target those communities. Biden has pitched himself as different from previous presidents specifically for this reason. Many Senate Democrats voted for the IRA because of these provisions.”

…

In California alone, the list of projects that could potentially qualify for additional “energy community” incentives based on location includes a $26 million hydrogen project in Santa Barbara and $5 million battery projects in Imperial Beach and La Mesa. (These examples are based on comparisons of the DOE’s energy community bonus mapping tool and the Clean Investment Monitor mapping tool.)

“It’s just a complete waste of taxpayer money at that point,” Raimi said.

….

And maybe Riverside could apply for designation as an Opportunity Zone”, too; is Freddie looking into this?

Democrats and Biden are not the first to try place-based policies. Former President Donald Trump’s administration pushed for “opportunity zones,” which created tax incentives intended to spur investment in low-income areas.