The White House quietly released a report with a striking conclusion during the news dead zone right before the July Fourth weekend: It’s not a horrible idea to research ways to block the sun’s rays from further heating the planet.

But that doesn’t mean President Joe Biden’s team is ready to push it as a solution to climate change.

Congress had mandated the report — a fact the White House made sure to emphasize in the title, text and accompanying statement. Still, by offering cautious support to geoengineering research, the report could bring efforts once confined to the realm of science fiction into mainstream debate, writes Corbin Hiar.

Limiting how much sunlight hits the Earth is a potentially effective way to combat global warming. But the side effects could be disastrous, some scientists say, and the idea has generated fierce backlash from all corners of the political and scientific worlds.

How it works

One approach outlined in the 44-page White House document is to increase the number of aerosol particles in the atmosphere that reflect light away from the planet. Other methods entail increasing cloud cover over oceans to stop the sun from warming them and reducing the amount of high-flying clouds, which trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere.

But each plausible way to cool the planet comes with serious risks, the report says. Modifying sunlight could alter global weather patterns, disrupt food supplies and affect human health and biodiversity, to say nothing of the geopolitics of coordinating a global agreement on deployment. And if the intervention was ever halted, it could lead to abrupt and extreme warming.

A tepid approach

The White House declined to comment to Corbin on the record. But it made abundantly clear in a statement accompanying the report that “there are no plans underway to establish a comprehensive research program focused on solar radiation modification.”

Still, the very existence of a White House report on such a divisive issue is remarkable, experts told Corbin. The document emphasized the importance of comparing the risks associated with solar radiation modification with the present dangers of an increasingly hotter planet — opening the door to more study.

It also comes as European policymakers are signaling an openness to discussing whether and how humanity could limit heating from the sun.

It’s Wednesday — thank you for tuning in to POLITICO’s Power Switch. I’m your host, Arianna Skibell. Power Switch is brought to you by the journalists behind E&E News and POLITICO Energy. Send your tips, comments, questions to [email protected]

Today in POLITICO Energy’s podcast: Gloria Gonzalez breaks down the plan to pull Puerto Rico’s government-owned utility out of bankruptcy and why it has led to protests.

President Joe Biden is putting longtime Democratic adviser Gene Sperling in charge of helping smooth the upcoming labor contract talks between the auto workers’ union and Big Three automakers, Zack Colman, Tanya Snyder and Holly Otterbein wrote in a scoop.

Biden has touted his federal investments in clean energy and climate technologies as key for growing the economy “from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down” — a plan the White House calls “Bidenomics.” But the United Auto Workers has been openly skeptical about the White House’s push for electric vehicles.

In tapping Sperling, Biden is putting an economic power player and longtime manufacturing advocate in a position to win over union members and potentially shore up support for the president’s reelection campaign in Michigan.

SCOTUS fallout
In the past year, the Supreme Court has overturned 50 years of abortion rights and wiped out national protections for wetlands — and it appears the nation’s highest bench is just getting started, writes Pamela King.

Experts say the trend indicates a court willing to revisit long-standing precedent.

Pipeline safety crackdown?
Fines for oil spills and other pipeline accidents are surging under the Biden administration, but industry critics and supporters aren’t sure if the trend will last, writes Mike Sorgahan.

Pipeline safety has taken on a higher profile in recent years, both in terms of protecting vulnerable communities and trying to prevent methane leaks that exacerbate climate change.

Biden’s hydrogen bombshell
European leaders have devoted tens of billions of dollars toward encouraging production of clean-burning hydrogen, which advocates say will create jobs and help fight climate change, write Gabriel Gavin and Ben Lefebvre.

But Biden’s clean energy subsidies just prompted one Norwegian manufacturer to choose Michigan, not Europe, as the site of a nearly $500 million hydrogen factory. And other European-based companies are being tempted to follow suit.

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Climate change is intensifying rainstorms throughout much of the world, yet scientists haven’t been able to show that some events were influenced by warming because they lack the data.

Western states are looking to heat from the Earth’s crust as an alternative to fossil fuel power — but they say the federal government needs to help make that a reality.

The Energy Department is moving forward on a new $1 billion demand-side support mechanism for clean hydrogen as part of a program established under the bipartisan infrastructure law.

That’s it for today, folks! Thanks for reading.