WASHINGTON, May 23, 2023 — As historic federal investments in infrastructure, manufacturing and clean energy begin to take effect, House lawmakers on Tuesday clashed over the best response to shared concerns about competition with China and the instability of domestic electricity sector supply chains.

Tuesday’s hearing, convened by the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, came just one day after the Department of Energy announced that it would no longer be awarding a $200 million grant to Texas-based battery company Microvast, following intense scrutiny from Republican lawmakers over the company’s ties to China.

Subcommittee Chair Morgan Griffith, R-Va., praised the decision but expressed continued skepticism about the department’s vetting processes — emphasizing the absence of Office of Manufacturing Director David Howell, who declined an invitation to testify.

By failing to appear at the hearing, “the Department of Energy not only refused to provide transparency to this committee, but they’re refusing to be transparent to the American people, who deserve every assurance that their tax dollars are not being funneled to China,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., chair of the full Energy and Commerce Committee.

But Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., argued that the award reversal was proof that the department “is taking its stewardship of taxpayer money very seriously.”

Pallone also blamed the Republican majority for Howell’s absence, claiming that the hearing had originally been planned for June and that department officials were working to coordinate the schedule “when all of sudden the date changed earlier this month to today.”

The proposed Microvast award would have been part of a $2.8 billion investment in battery manufacturing funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, intended to accelerate and strengthen a domestic supply chain. The United States currently accounts for just 10 percent of global electric vehicle production and 7 percent of battery production capacity.

By contrast, China produces three-quarters of all lithium-ion batteries and is home to the majority of production and processing capacity for several key battery components. China was responsible for half of the growth of the electric vehicle market in 2021, according to a recent International Energy Agency report.

While the Biden administration has taken steps to bolster U.S. manufacturing through the IIJA and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Republicans have broadly criticized this approach — particularly the IRA’s focus on clean energy.

Because of the current manufacturing imbalance, the administration’s emphasis on electric vehicles will largely benefit China rather than the U.S., argued Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate and Environment.

“Heavily subsidizing renewable energy and shoveling money in the form of financial awards out the door is not the solution,” McMorris Rodgers said. “These policies undermine our energy security and financially burden Americans already struggling with high cost of living — and would leave us even more reliant on China.”

However, a study commissioned by Third Way and Breakthrough Energy indicated that these pieces of legislation, alongside the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, are “fostering investments in and a reshoring of the clean energy supply chain and the associated manufacturing base,” said Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, senior resident fellow for the climate and energy program at Third Way.

Hughes-Cromwick urged lawmakers to allow time for supply chain restructuring, saying that policy stability over multiple years is crucial to allow companies to make sustainable adjustments.

In order to achieve domestic clean energy goals, Congress should first modernize permitting, said Jeremy Harrell, chief strategy officer at ClearPath.

“The single largest mover of private sector investment is regulatory certainty,” Harrell claimed. “Never has the phrase ‘time is money’ been more appropriate — developers can only build new energy infrastructure as fast as federal, state and local governments can permit them, and right now that’s not fast enough.”

Learn more about clean energy infrastructure and the U.S.-China tech race at Broadband Breakfast’s Made in America Summit on June 27.

WASHINGTON, September 16, 2015 – A movement to make cities “smart” by using the power of broadband and information technology processing power is reaching critical mass, with the White House on Monday announcing a comprehensive initiative to support municipal efforts.

Coinciding with the Smart Cities Week conference here this week, the White House released a 4,000-word summary of more than $160 million in federal research investments, leveraging more than 25 technology collaborations with local communities.

The goal of these efforts? Tackling such key challenges, in the words of the White House, as “reducing traffic congestion, fighting crime, fostering economic growth, managing the effects of a changing climate, and improving the delivery of city services.”

“Advances in science and technology have the potential to accelerate these efforts,” read the White House statement. “An emerging community of civic leaders, data scientists, technologists, and companies are joining forces to build ‘Smart Cities’ – communities that are building an infrastructure to continuously improve the collection, aggregation, and use of data to improve the life of their residents – by harnessing the growing data revolution, low-cost sensors, and research collaborations, and doing so securely to protect safety and privacy.”

The launch of White House Smart Cities Initiative

None of these Smart City innovations would be possible without the connectivity enabled by fiber-optic networks. These new opportunities for city services may prove to be the most effective driver of Gigabit Networks. As I wrote in an article last December on “The Year of Community and Municipal Gigabit Broadband,” this is “a world in which cities and municipalities are playing the leadership role.”

The White House Weighs In

Among the most significant facets of the administration’s announcement include:

• More than $45 million in grants and investment for Smart City research and infrastructure by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

• Nearly $70 million in new spending for technologies to promote solutions in public safety, energy, climate preparedness, transportation and health by federal agencies.
• More than 20 cities participating in multi-party efforts “that will help city leaders effectively collaboration with universities and industry.”

In a separate statement on the White House web site, Dan Correa, administration senior adviser for innovation policy, wrote:

By coordinating adjacent traffic signals to optimize local traffic throughput, a pilot project in Pittsburgh has reduced commuting travel times by more than 25 percent, on average. In Louisville, the city is using data gathered from sensor-equipped asthma inhalers to understand the connection between asthma “hotspots” and air quality levels and other environmental factors in order to inform policymaking and community-level interventions.

One new aspect of the Obama Administration’s Smart Cities Initiative will be a focus on creating new technological test beds for “Internet of Things” applications.

Another will  be collaboration with the civic tech movement, the “growing community of individuals, entrepreneurs, and nonprofits interested in harnessing [information technology] to tackle local problems and work directly with city governments.”

In a manner similar to the way open source technology allows new innovators to build upon others’ software, this “open data” movement allows entities outside of government to make use of government data streams in real time.

Additionally, the White House said, the government plans to use other federal agency research — from sensor networks to broadband infrastructure — in its Smart City efforts, and to pursue international collaboration, particularly research aimed at climate and resource demand.

The agency also announced the release of a new framework for coordinating actions by a range of federal agencies, and a science and technologies priorities memo that will impact the administration’s pending 2017 budget proposal.

Actions by Cities and the Private Sector

In addition to White House and federal agency developments, more than 20 city-university collaborations are taking part in what is being called the MetroLab Network.

These collaborations include:

•        Atlanta, with Georgia State University and Georgia Tech

•        Boston, with Boston Area Research Initiative

•        Chicago, with the University of Chicago

•        Cuyahoga County, with Case Western University

•        Dallas, with Texas Research Alliance

•        Detroit, with Wayne State University

•        Houston, with Rice University

•        Madison, with University of Wisconsin-Madison

•        Memphis, with University of Memphis

•        Minneapolis & St. Paul, with University of Minnesota

•        Montgomery County, with University of Maryland and Universities at Shady Grove

•        New York City, with New York University

•        Philadelphia, with Drexel University and University of Pennsylvania

•        Pittsburgh, with Carnegie Mellon University

•        Portland, with Portland State University

•        Providence, with Brown University, College Unbound, and Rhode Island School of Design

•        San Diego, with University of California San Diego

•        San Jose, with San Jose State University

•        Seattle, with University of Washington

•        South Bend, with University of Notre Dame

•        Washington, DC, with Howard University, Georgetown University, and George Washington University

And among the more than 60 Smart City pilots taking place over the next year include:

• City Digital, a Chicago-based consortium, focusing on urban infrastructure challenges

• Dallas Innovation Alliance effort to enhance infrastructure, mobility and connected living

• An IBM deployment of a Smarter Cities Challenge team in Detroit for cost-efficient removal and recycling of debris from abandoned and neglected properties
• The National League of Cities and 25 local government and the 2015 winners of its Multi-City Innovation Campaign: The Bluelight mobile 911 application, and Ride, a collaborative tool for analyzing bicycling data.

• New York City’s new neighborhood innovation labs that will leverage Mayor Bill DeBlasio’s efforts to expand a free public WiFi network throughout the city.

Drew Clark is the Chairman of the Broadband Breakfast Club. He tracks the development of Gigabit Networks, broadband usage, the universal service fund and wireless policy @BroadbandCensus. He is also Of Counsel with the firm of Best Best & Krieger LLP, with offices in California and Washington, DC. He works with cities, special districts and private companies on planning, financing and coordinating efforts of the many partners necessary to construct broadband infrastructure and deploy “Smart City” applications. You can find him on LinkedIN, Google+ and Twitter. The articles and posts on BroadbandBreakfast.com and affiliated social media are not legal advice or legal services, do not constitute the creation of an attorney-client privilege, and represent the views of their respective authors.

Editor’s Note: We received this announcement on Wednesday afternoon about the very exciting Global City Teams Challenge, which has been supported by US Ignite:

The Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC) was successfully launched by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and US Ignite with a kick-off event at NIST on September 29-30. At this two day event, we had more than 350 on-site and remote attendees who came together to present project ideas and form Action Clusters on cyber-physical systems (CPS) and Internet of Things (IoT) for smart cities around the world. As of today, we have over 25 Action Clusters formed in energy, transportation, healthcare, disaster response, and many other sectors, working to demonstrate the deployments of scalable, replicable, and interoperable smart city solutions by June 2015. A current list of Action Clusters can be found at globalcityteams.org.

We are excited to announce that the National Science Foundation (NSF), one of the primary partners in the Challenge, has released an invitation to GCTC participants to submit proposals for up to $300,000 in funding. Detailed information about NSF’s Early-Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) proposals to support GCTC participants can be found here: http://1.usa.gov/1Eu2jwN

The deadline for submission of EAGERs is January 15, 2015, but earlier submissions are encouraged, and decisions will be made on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Additionally, NSF released a solicitation that makes available up to $4 million for the development of next-generation Internet applications. Many projects being pursued by GCTC participants are aligned with the NSF’s solicitation, as it identifies national priorities including clean energy, transportation, health information technology, public safety/emergency preparedness, cyberlearning, and/or advanced manufacturing.

More detailed information can be found here: NSF 15-508. Application for this solicitation are also due January 15.

Of course, if you have not yet connected your CPS project or your next-generation network/IoT project with the Global City Teams Challenge, it is not too late!

LEARN MORE ABOUT NSF FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES:

US Ignite will host a webinar on Monday. November 17th at 3pm (US-Eastern) that will provide insights into the application process and outline the benefits of being a GCTC participant.

Date: Monday, November 17, 2014
Time: 3:00PM Eastern
Log-in Information:
https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/765269669
Via Phone: Dial +1 (872) 240-3212
Access Code: 765-269-669

CONNECT YOUR PROJECT TO THE GLOBAL CITY TEAMS CHALLENGE:

• Sign-up on US Ignite’s Collaborative Community Exchange (CCX) on behalf of your organization
• Explore our existing Action Clusters on US Ignite’s Collaborative Community Exchange (CCX) and join one by reaching out to the project contact
• Add your Action Cluster idea, and highlight the type of partners that will strengthen your project
• Contact the organizers of the Challenge to discuss the steps to register your Action Cluster to GCTC.

We are very excited at the progress all the teams are making so far, and would love to see more Action Clusters stand up around the world. Please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any questions. We are here to help make your GCTC project a great success.

Thank you for your continued interest in the Global City Teams Challenge.

Joe Kochan
US Ignite