5 Wins for Clean Energy Innovation in Biden’s Budget
Originally published on the NRDC Expert Blog.
The Biden administration’s 2022 budget released on Friday includes major funding increases for important Department of Energy (DOE) programs to drive clean energy innovation, address the climate crisis, and build a strong and equitable economy. These funding increases complement the investments proposed in the President’s American Jobs Plan (AJP). Now it’s up to Congress to pass AJP and write a government funding bill that reflects the President’s proposals.
Below are five components of the budget that would accelerate clean energy innovation and redirect DOE programs toward our greatest challenges and opportunities.
1. Historic Funding Increases for Clean Energy
The budget includes $4.7 billion in regular-year funding for DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), a $2 billion (or 65%) increase from 2021. EERE houses the agency’s efforts focused on heavy industry, building decarbonization, clean transportation technologies, and renewable power. These programs are underfunded relative to the need for investment and the opportunity to build out domestic clean energy industries. The administration’s budget would give these programs a much-needed funding boost.
The budget also ramps up funding for other clean energy programs at DOE and establishes a new Advanced Research Projects Agency — Climate with initial funding of $500 million, of which $200 million is at DOE.
2. Demonstrations & Deployment to Round Out the Innovation Portfolio
The budget emphasizes funding for demonstration projects and deployment of climate solutions, a welcome pivot from the Trump DOE’s narrow focus on early-stage research and development. The new Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, funded at $400 million, fills a critical gap in DOE’s efforts to commercialize newer, better clean energy technologies, reduce costs, and address barriers to widespread deployment. The $300 million for Build Back Better Challenge grants will help bring the benefits of clean energy to more communities. And the focus throughout the budget on research, development, demonstrations, and deployment will better equip DOE to accelerate clean energy innovation at the scale necessary.
3. Bringing Clean Energy to More Communities
DOE should play a critical role ensuring that more communities see the benefits of technologies like renewable energy, energy efficiency, and electric vehicles. Strong community engagement practices and funding for clean energy projects to benefit low-income, pollution-burdened, and energy transition communities and communities of color can help DOE meet these goals.
The budget includes several new programs to bring clean energy to more communities. For example, it proposes to prioritize the new Build Back Better Challenge grants for marginalized, overburdened, and energy transition communities. It also appears to expand the Weatherization Assistance Program — one of the only existing efforts focused on low-income communities — to enable more households to access funding for cost- and energy-saving retrofits, though the details on the expanded program are not yet clear.
The budget also indicates that EERE’s goal is to accelerate a just, equitable clean energy transition. This explicit focus, while just a start, is an important shift. Historically, EERE and most other offices at DOE have not been designed to support equity and environmental and energy justice.
4. Procurement and Funding to Decarbonize Heavy Industry
Technologies to clean up industrial facilities like steel mills and cement plants are critical to addressing the climate crisis. But these sectors have long been a major gap in DOE innovation efforts. The budget acknowledges that decarbonizing heavy industry should be a focus for both EERE and the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. This focus is a great first step toward building out a strong federal industrial sector program. As Congress turns the President’s proposals into a detailed appropriations bill, we hope to see large funding increases for the Advanced Manufacturing Office, funding for large-scale demonstrations at industrial facilities, and support for DOE to expand its heavy industry efforts to include electrification, hydrogen, circular economy measures, novel processes, and carbon capture and storage.
The budget also includes more details on the industrial-sector decarbonization efforts proposed in the American Jobs Plan, including, notably, funding to procure low-carbon materials. The federal government is a top purchaser of industrial products like steel and cement for the construction of roads, bridges, buildings and other projects. Government procurement is thus a critical lever in creating early markets and sustained demand for cleaner materials, alongside direct investments to help ensure U.S. industry is making the cleanest products on the market.
To better leverage procurement to drive innovation, the federal government should support efforts to create a reporting system that helps manufacturers account for all the carbon associated with producing a range of industrial products, and require that all construction projects receiving federal funds take climate pollution and labor protection into account when awarding contracts. We urge Congress to include funding in the FY22 budget for the federal government to support these priorities. Doing so will ensure we capture the significant emissions reduction opportunities associated with switching to lower-carbon materials in projects funded by the American Jobs Plan.
5. Support for State, Local, and Tribal Governments
Action from states and municipal governments is critical to meeting our climate goals; increasing clean energy; and driving adoption of innovative technologies, policies, and business models. Federal funding is necessary to support states and cities in these endeavors, but current programs lack the budget to meaningfully support them.
The budget proposes several new programs to support states and cities, including Build Back Better Challenge grants for states and a new Local Government Energy Program. The success of these programs will depend on the details, but it is promising to see new efforts to support states and cities in the budget. Moreover, these programs build on the block grant funding proposed in the American Jobs Plan to provide an influx of support for states to advance clean energy, building electrification, and efficiency.
The budget also includes funding increases to support tribal nations to advance clean energy. Households on tribal lands lack access to electricity at extremely high rates and often face high costs to connect to the electricity grid. The budget proposes a six-fold increase in funding for the Office of Indian Energy (a $100 million increase) to support American Indian and Alaskan Native nations, including to help address energy access and energy poverty.
Federal clean energy programs have already helped foster a revolution in technologies like solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicle batteries. Now, we have an opportunity to accelerate clean energy innovation to improve, demonstrate, and deploy the technologies and strategies we need to combat the climate crisis. With the right funding and policies, we can do so in a way that creates strong economic growth rooted in the industries of the future, addresses inequalities in our energy and economic systems, and cuts pollution in places that have borne the brunt of it in the past. President Biden’s energy budget is a major step toward realizing these goals, and Congress should pass a government funding bill that incorporates these proposals and brings the benefits of clean energy to communities across the country.
Global mining and construction equipment giant Liebherr recently rolled out its first-ever battery electric crawler excavator, setting a new standard in heavy earth-moving equipment capabilities with low noise levels and zero local emissions.
Liebherr has made headlines in the sustainability space with its massive electric haul trucks and stupefyingly quick 6MW cryo-cooled DC fast chargers, but its conventional mid-sized equipment lines haven’t electrified as quickly, leaning instead on hydrogen combustion and fuel cell efforts. That seems to be changing, however, with the launch of the 20-ton R 920 G8-E – the brand’s first-ever factory fresh HDEV.
The company’s official copy is characteristically low-key, with an emphasis on the facts and features instead of hype:
The new model completes the product range of Liebherr crawler excavators produced in Colmar (France). It is particularly quiet and emission-free. It generates the same output as a diesel machine in the same category and is particularly suitable for building sites that require low noise levels and avoiding exhaust gas emissions, such as in cities or underground operating locations.
Despite the lack of excitement in the release copy, there is a lot of excitement about the R 920 G8-E’s innovative new control cab philosophy.
Liebherr INTUSI controls
Dubbed INTUSI (for INTuitive USer Interface), the system integrates intelligent control logic with advanced machine learning capabilities to give operators a highly customizable interface that can follow them from asset to asset, from wheel loader to excavator to haul truck, dramatically flattening the learning curve for operators on a given job site.
Liebherr says INTUSI improves both operational efficiency and user comfort on Liebherr job sites through the integration of a number of new features. From the press release:
- Haptic feedback – vibrations alert the operator to critical conditions—such as reaching dynamic device limits—enhancing situational awareness and speeding up reaction times.
- Optical feedback – integrated RGB LEDs on the joystick provide real-time visual cues about device status and servo control, ensuring clear communication without distraction.
- Functional safety – control elements with status LEDs allow safe operation of critical functions—without requiring two-handed input—streamlining workflow while maintaining safety standards.
- Hand detection – capacitive proximity sensor detects the operator’s hand automatically, enabling seamless activation of controls only when needed.
- Display navigation – a mini-joystick embedded in the handle allows for quick and efficient navigation of the display interface, reducing the need to reach for external controls.
- Ergonomics – multi-stage handle height adjustment ensures optimal comfort and usability, adapting to different operator preferences and working conditions
In addition to the INTUSI-powered custom cockpit, the new Liebherr R 920 G8-E electric excavator ships with your choice of either a 188 or 282 kWh high capacity li-ion battery, which is capable of 150 kW DC fast charging. Fast enough, in other words, to power up the machine during shift changes, if needed.
Electrek’s Take
If the notion of a battery electric Liebherr excavator seems familiar, that’s because it should – the company first converted one of its ultramassive R9400 mining excavators last year, as a proof of concept co-developed with global mining giants Fortescue as they invest in new technology to decarbonize their mines.
Since then, Fortescue has used the machine to move millions of tons of dirt, and has ordered several more. And, because everything from excavators to loaders to heavy trucks are built to be powertrain agnostic, and manufacturers will often offer the same basic vehicle with Cummins, Detroit Diesel, or Volvo power, so there’s a degree of openness baked into those systems already. Liebherr is just taking that to the next level by installing an electric drive motor in place of an internal combustion engine, and I expect this excavator will be the first of many such machines from the brand.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Liebherr.
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Rivian has posted a job listing for a steering engineer, specifically mentioning work on a future steer-by-wire system for the company.
Steer-by-wire is an automotive concept that has been around for a long time, but hasn’t yet reached mass adoption. The idea is to replace (or supplement) mechanical linkages between the steering wheel and the wheels with electronic actuators instead.
There are a number of potential benefits to this, like allowing more customizability or adaptability to a steering system, reducing mechanical complexity, or adding speed-sensitive variable steering ratios.
Although there are also disadvantages, like a reduction in steering feel (although, since most cars are moving to electronic power steering, that was already gone anyway).
But few cars have implemented steer-by-wire systems, or at least not fully committed to them, given that mechanical steering racks are a relatively solved problem and the general inertia of the car industry which would rather stick with a solution they know than switch to something better (haven’t we here, at this EV publication, heard *that* one before…). There’s also the matter of regulations, which have often been written to require mechanical steering systems, and may need updating to allow for steer by wire.
But, steer by wire made it into mass production with the release of the Tesla Cybertruck. This was big news when Tesla committed to this – at the time, it was the only thing on the road to exclusively use a steer by wire system, though there are other cars with partial steer by wire (for example, mechanical front wheel steering, and steer by wire rear-wheel steering).
But it seems to have opened the floodgates, as a number of other companies are working on or have since released steer by wire systems (Lexus, for example).
And now, it looks like Rivian is one of those companies – though we don’t know if it’s for the front or rear.
The company posted a job listing for “Sr. Staff Technical Program Manager, Steering Actuator System,” based at its Irvine, CA headquarters (spotted by Rivianforums). This wouldn’t be so exceptional, except that the job posting also specifically points out that “you’ll have full cradle-to-grave ownership of the SBW subsystem.”
So – we know they’re working on steer by wire, to some extent.
But a few other EVs, particularly large EVs like the Rivian R1 platform is, use steer by wire just for the rear wheels – for example the Hummer EV and Rolls-Royce Spectre. These systems are particularly helpful for giant vehicles, because it allows them to be more nimble and make turns that otherwise would require a lot more… negotiation in a giant land yacht.
So it’s possible that Rivian is only working on rear wheel steer by wire here, but we’d like to think there’s a chance it’s working on steer by wire for the full vehicle.
We also don’t know if this would show up on all of Rivian’s vehicles, or only on certain models – the R2 and R3 are in development, and the R1 just got a big refresh. But, perhaps even more interestingly (and very speculatively), VW has invested heavily in Rivian for technology help, so we wonder if we might end up seeing this in VW group vehicles, or Scout vehicles eventually…
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Hyundai’s electric sports car just got a whole lot cheaper. The 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 N now costs $150 less per month to lease after another unexpected price cut.
How much is it to lease the 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 N?
The new and improved 2025 IONIQ 5 is coming off its best US sales month yet in July, but that isn’t stopping Hyundai from wanting more.
After Hyundai cut lease prices on all trims last month to as low as $179 per month, it’s now offering even more savings.
The 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 N is now listed for lease at just $549 per month. The offer is for 36 months, with $3,999 due at signing. At an effective monthly rate of $660, Hyundai’s EV is $150 cheaper a month than it was in July.
Hyundai is currently offering some of the best deals on electric cars, with the 2025 IONIQ 5 SE Standard Range listed for lease at just $179 per month.
The Standard Range model has a driving range of 245 miles. If you’re looking for more, the Extended
Range SE, with a range of 318 miles, is available to lease from $199 per month.
You can even lease the rugged new XRT trim right now for under $300 a month. All deals are for 24 months with $3,999 due at signing and end on September 2
| 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 Trim | EV Powertrain | Driving Range (miles) | Starting Price* | Monthly lease price July 2025 |
| IONIQ 5 SE RWD Standard Range | 168-horsepower rear motor | 245 | $42,500 | $179 |
| IONIQ 5 SE RWD | 225-horsepower rear motor | 318 | $46,550 | $199 |
| IONIQ 5 SEL RWD | 225-horsepower rear motor | 318 | $49,500 | $209 |
| IONIQ 5 Limited RWD | 225-horsepower rear motor | 318 | $54,200 | $309 |
| IONIQ 5 SE Dual Motor AWD | 320-horsepower dual motor | 290 | $50,050 | $249 |
| IONIQ 5 SEL Dual Motor AWD | 320-horsepower dual motor | 290 | $53,000 | $259 |
| IONIQ 5 XRT Dual Motor AWD | 320 horsepower dual motor | 259 | $55,400 | $359 |
| IONIQ 5 Limited Dual Motor AWD | 320-horsepower dual motor | 269 | $58,100 | $299 |
| IONIQ 5 N Dual Motor AWD | Up to 601-horsepower dual motor |
221 | $66,200 | $549 |
With the $7,500 EV tax set to expire at the end of September, Hyundai is offering savings across its entire electric car lineup.
Even Hyundai’s new three-row electric SUV is surprisingly affordable. The 2026 INIQ 9 is listed with monthly lease prices as low as $419 per month.
Looking to test drive one out for yourself? We can help you get started. You can use our link to find deals on the 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 at a dealer near you (trusted affiliate link).
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