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PLAYING DEFENSE: House Republican leaders released an agenda this morning to “secure cleaner American energy.” The proposal is mostly a mix of previously released legislation.
The proposal from Republicans of the Energy and Commerce Committee suggests the GOP believes it can retake the House in 2022 by adopting a defensive posture against Democratic energy and climate policies.
It pales in scope to a package unveiled this month by Democratic leaders of the Energy and Commerce Committee, called the CLEAN Future Act, that would establish requirements for the power sector to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2035 and set an interim target for the U.S. to cut its overall emissions in half by 2030.
In a statement, the committee’s top Republican Cathy McMorris Rodgers and other GOP members said their agenda would compete against “Green New Deal-style regulations and job-crushing actions like canceling the Keystone XL pipeline.”
What’s in the plan: It includes a package of bills focused on promoting innovation in hydropower, nuclear, clean coal, and natural gas. It also emphasizes boosting production of critical minerals that are used to develop clean energy technologies such as solar panels and electric vehicles.
One of the bills would require the Energy Department to carry out a program to reduce methane emissions from flaring and venting natural gas. Another would promote the development of carbon capture and hydrogen technologies through the DOE loan program that the Biden administration wants to unleash. Other bills would further streamline the permitting process for new small nuclear reactors and “remove regulatory barriers” to approving pipelines, LNG export terminals, and transmission lines.
McMorris Rodgers is set to discuss the plan during a virtual chat this afternoon hosted by an oil and gas industry trade group, the American Exploration and Production Council.
Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers Josh Siegel (@SiegelScribe) and Abby Smith (@AbbySmithDC). Email [email protected] or [email protected] for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.
JOCKEYING OVER BIDEN LEASING PAUSE INTENSIFIES: The Interior Department’s announcement last week that it is planning to propose updates to the federal oil and gas program by early summer has provoked jockeying among the fossil fuel industry, politicians, and environmental groups as President Biden decides whether to turn the pause into a ban, Josh reports for a story posted this past weekend.
“The sky is wide open for a variety of outcomes,” said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, the executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center. “A big part of that is whether or not the public lands oil and gas program will be wound down through a managed process or whether the program will simply be reformed.”
Key Democratic lawmakers and governors from oil and gas states want reform, and not a ban. But some liberals are holding the president to his campaign promise.
“Granting new leases and opening up new areas is irreconcilable with a clean energy future,” Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman of California, a member of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, told Josh.
But the momentum is leaning towards reform, not a ban: Biden allies such as New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, have begun to forcefully speak out.
House Democrats, meanwhile, have floated a bevy of potential reforms that could go “hand in hand” with the Biden’s administration’s proposals, says Mary Greene, public lands attorney at the National Wildlife Federation.
Greene said the president does not have the legal authority to ban new oil and gas leases, a reality likely not lost on the administration, which has repeatedly emphasized the pause won’t be permanent.
What to expect: At the very least, Biden won’t revert to prior leasing practices that Democrats and environmentalists say are too deferential to the fossil fuel industry and not fiscally prudent.
RELATED…HAALAND VOTE TONIGHT: The Senate will finally vote on Deb Haaland to be Interior secretary shortly after 5:30 p.m. tonight, with her confirmation appearing certain after Republicans tried in vain to block her because of her past stance on opposing fossil fuel development. Haaland would oversee the future of the oil and gas leasing program, although much of the heavy lifting started before she got there, with the administration embedding climate policy experts in the White House. Haaland stressed during her confirmation the pause won’t be permanent, while reiterating her interest in resetting how public lands are used to focus more on renewable energy development and conservation.
CANADA VS US POSTURING ON CRITICAL MINERALS AND CLIMATE: Canada is linking its production of critical minerals such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, and rare earth elements directly with its plans to green its economy and slash carbon emissions.
The posturing is much more direct than the U.S., where politicians on both sides of the aisle have raised alarm about securing the supply chains of critical minerals but haven’t advanced much substantive policy on the issue. While Biden has directed a review of vulnerabilities in the U.S. critical minerals supply chain, he and officials in his administration haven’t directly pressed for more mining to increase domestic supply.
Canadian officials, on the other hand, say the nation’s mining industry will be crucial to helping supply the raw materials for clean energy technologies. Canada unveiled a list of 31 minerals it considers critical to its economic security and transition to a low-carbon economy.
“Canada can and will produce every one of them, and our country’s workers and prospectors will lead the way,” Seamus O’Regan, the country’s natural resources minister, said in remarks unveiling the list last week, according to CIM Magazine.
O’Regan added that Canada already supplies 13 of the 35 minerals on the U.S. critical minerals list, released by the Trump administration in 2018.
Will Biden support expanding mining? He certainly faces a tougher challenge to do so, as many environmental groups have fought projects that would mine critical minerals such as lithium, silver, and other minerals used in clean energy technologies.
Environmental activists are also opposed to changes to permitting requirements that the mining industry says are necessary to speed up project approval. The National Mining Association has said it takes seven to 10 years to permit a new mine in the U.S., compared to just two years in Canada and other U.S. allies.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has made comments supportive of critical minerals production, saying during her confirmation hearing there are methods to mine critical minerals “in a way that respects the environment.”
Tensions to come? The Energy Department’s role in supporting critical minerals is limited, however. While the agency can support projects focused on recycling and processing critical minerals with loan guarantees and research dollars, the crucial permitting and approval of mines will fall to other agencies, most significantly the Interior Department.
It’s possible we could start to see some tensions between the two agencies over mining, as the Energy Department’s driving focus is to speed up development of clean energy technologies while Biden’s Interior Department team is rooted more in conservation of lands and waters against resource extraction. Those two missions will inevitably collide as Biden seeks to implement his aggressive climate plans.
TOP SENATE DEMOCRAT IS STICKING WITH CARBON PRICING: Sen. Dick Durbin, the second highest-ranking Democrat in the chamber, reintroduced legislation to impose a carbon price last week, even as Biden and many other Democrats are coalescing around a clean electricity standard as their preferred climate policy, Abby reports in a story posted this morning.
The legislative details: Durbin’s bill would set a $25 per ton fee on carbon emissions beginning in 2023 that would increase $10 each year. The fee would apply first to emissions from fossil fuel production and expand to cover non-fossil fuel, high-emitting entities in 2025. Around three-quarters of the revenue from the carbon free would be paid through rebates to low- and middle-income households.
The politics: Among many other Democrats, including Biden and top lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, support for a carbon price appears to be waning as the policy looks increasingly politically challenging.
“I think it’s time to try something new,” New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the committee’s chairman, told reporters during a press call earlier this month. “The votes are just not there for a price on carbon.”
ATTORNEYS GENERAL SET EFFICIENCY PRIORITY LIST FOR BIDEN: More than a dozen state attorneys general are calling on the Energy Department to peel back Trump administration rules weakening appliance energy efficiency standards and replace them with stricter limits, starting with the products that prompt the biggest energy savings and emission reductions.
In recent comments to the Energy Department, the attorneys general identified a number of appliances the Biden administration should start with: residential water heaters, light bulbs, central air conditioners and heat pumps, refrigerators and freezers, clothes dryers, and furnaces.
For some of those products, such as light bulbs and water heaters, the Trump administration took steps to relax existing efficiency standards, whereas updates to other standards simply sat dormant. According to the attorneys general, the Energy Department missed almost two dozen deadlines to update efficiency standards under the Trump administration.
The attorneys general are also asking the Biden administration to reverse a regulation making changes to the way the Energy Department sets the efficiency standards, which they and environmentalists have argued was too friendly to industry.
US-ISRAEL PARTNER ON CLEAN ENERGY: The Energy Department is partnering with Israel’s ministry of energy to offer a $4 million funding opportunity to develop new renewable and energy efficiency technologies.
“The more we share resources and ideas with allies around the world, the closer we get to the clean energy solutions needed to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050,” Granholm said this morning.
The funding comes from the Binational Industrial Research & Development (BIRD) Energy, a program established by Congress in 2007 that has funded 55 projects.
Over the last seven years, four projects supported by the project have reached the market, including a self-powered wireless sensor for monitoring energy use in buildings, a new enzyme for the production of biodiesel, a utility-scale solar system that employs a new active cooling module, and a system to facilitate wind speed and power output forecasting for wind generation.
BIDEN AND ‘QUAD’ LEADERS VOW TO COOPERATE ON CLIMATE: Biden and a trio of Indo-Pacific countries have established a working group to address climate change, the administration announced Friday after the president and fellow “Quad” leaders convened for the first time.
In a joint Saturday op-ed in the Washington Post authored by Biden, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga pointed to climate change as a particular cause of concern for the region.
“It is clear that climate change is both a strategic priority and an urgent global challenge, including for the Indo-Pacific region,” they wrote. “That’s why we will work together and with others to strengthen the Paris agreement, and enhance the climate actions of all nations.”
The alliance committed to advance low-emissions technology and pledged to cooperate on climate mitigation, adaptation, resilience, and finance.
The Rundown
Politico Kerry to Wall Street: Put your money behind your climate PR
Wall Street Journal Companies’ climate risks are often unknown. Here’s how one opened up.
New York Times Tiny town, big decision: What are we willing to pay to fight rising sea?
New York Times Biden vowed to make climate ‘essential’ to foreign policy. The reality is harder.
Reuters US Congress launches probe into multibillion-dollar ‘clean coal’ tax credit
Calendar
TUESDAY | MARCH 16
9:30 a.m. 366 Dirksen. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing to examine ways to strengthen research and development in innovative transportation technologies.
WEDNESDAY | MARCH 17
10 a.m. G-50 Dirksen. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a hearing titled, “Examining the Challenges Facing Drinking Water and Waste Water Infrastructure Projects.”
THURSDAY | MARCH 18
10 a.m. The House Science Committee will hold a remote hearing titled, “Lessons Learned From the Texas Blackouts: Research Needs For a Secure and Resilient Grid.”
11 a.m. The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s environment and climate change subcommittee will hold a virtual legislative hearing on the CLEAN Future Act.
