If a battery factory gets built in a critical swing state, will voters notice?
That’s the question at the heart of the story I wrote about a battery plant that took over a previously vacant factory outside Pittsburgh.
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As we wrote back in May, when a team of E&E News and POLITICO reporters took an in-depth look at the impact of Biden’s climate policies, the clean energy revolution envisioned by the Biden administration is only now starting to take root. Whether voters see enough benefits to reward Harris and down-ballot Democrats for that approach in November remains to be seen.
That is especially true in western Pennsylvania, a swing region in a swing state, where the natural gas industry has emerged as a driving economic force in recent decades. Local unions, for instance, are talking less about battery manufacturing and more about a controversial project at the Pittsburgh airport that would turn methane leaked from coal mines into hydrogen for sustainable aviation fuel. That project would also benefit from tax-credits under the Inflation Reduction Act.
