Subscribe today to the Washington Examiner magazine and get Washington Briefing: politics and policy stories that will keep you up to date with what’s going on in Washington. SUBSCRIBE NOW: Just $1.00 an issue!
STRONG DEMOCRATIC SHOWING IMPERILS MURKOWSKI-MANCHIN: If there’s a blue wave in November, Democrats’ climate ambitions could jeopardize the sweeping bipartisan energy bill.
“I fear that if Democrats do pick up the Senate or the White House that they will feel like the bill is not” strong enough on climate change and “they’ll want to go bigger,” said Heather Reams, executive director of the conservative clean energy group Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions.
“I think that would be a mistake,” Reams told Abby in a recent interview. “Moving forward is important, and these bills are ready to go. Moving big ambitious packages and waiting for the right moment is delaying progress important for emissions reductions.”
CRES is hosting National Clean Energy Week this week. While Reams considers the forum one of the only places where Republicans can engage comfortably on climate and clean energy, she also said this year’s event is the most bipartisan it’s ever been.
The big energy bill has been a long time coming: Senate Energy Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski, leading the effort in her chamber, has for years been working to update U.S. energy law to provide greater support for clean and low-carbon energy and modernize the electric grid, among other efforts.
Her bill, co-sponsored with her Democratic counterpart Sen. Joe Manchin, is inching closer to another vote on the floor after Senate Environment Committee leaders resolved a dispute over an amendment limiting potent greenhouse gas coolants.
House Democrats, meanwhile, are bringing an equally sweeping and slightly more aggressive clean energy package up for a vote this week.
Climate high on Democrats’ 2021 agenda: There’s no doubt Democrats would want to go bigger and bolder on climate if they win either the Senate or the White House in November. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already said her chamber will tackle climate legislation early in 2021. The Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Sen. Dick Durbin, has recently introduced several climate bills of his own, including carbon pricing legislation, that could drive talks in that chamber if Democrats retake it.
Even so, Democrats could have some incentive to pass the bipartisan energy package this year.
Rep. Paul Tonko, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s climate panel, said the House energy bill “will not stop climate change” but it “might make it easier to do a big, more ambitious bill in the future.”
While the bill is not the “totality of what is needed for clean energy, we can open up the totality of future options,” he added during remarks Monday at National Clean Energy Week.
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.
MURKOWSKI LEADS GOP CHARGE AGAINST PRE-ELECTION SCOTUS VOTE: Murkowski and fellow centrist Susan Collins are the holdout Republicans so far saying the upper chamber should wait to vote on filling the vacancy on the Supreme Court.
“For weeks, I have stated that I would not support taking up a potential Supreme Court vacancy this close to the election,” Murkowski said in a statement on Sunday following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “Sadly, what was then a hypothetical is now our reality, but my position has not changed.”
Collins’ statement indicated she would also oppose voting for Trump’s nominee during the lame-duck period after the election.
What to watch for: Other Republican senators who could favor delaying a vote (and have been silent so far) are: Trump critic Mitt Romney, Cory Gardner of Colorado — facing a tough re-election race in a purple state — and Chuck Grassley, the former Judiciary Committee chairman.
With a 53-to-47 majority and Vice President Mike Pence able to break ties, Republicans could afford to have only three of them, including Murkowski and Collins, vote “no.”
Trump this morning said he expects to announce his nominee for the Supreme Court Friday or Saturday and will be picking a woman.
LIBERALS EYE FILIBUSTER REPEAL IF REPUBLICANS RUSH SCOTUS VOTE: If they win full power, Democrats could have new reason to kill the filibuster in retaliation for Republicans moving to confirm Ginsburg’s replacement while Trump is president.
At least, that’s what some liberals are calling for as a means to exact revenge and to smooth passage of Democrats’ legislative wishlist, including sweeping action to combat climate change.
“We must make it absolutely clear that if McConnell attempts to fill this seat, we will abolish the filibuster and expand the court when we retake the Senate,” tweeted Sen. Ed Markey, a sponsor of the liberal Green New Deal.
For his part, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told his colleagues this weekend that “nothing is off the table next year” if Republicans push through a nominee for the Supreme Court in the next several weeks.
That’s the same phrasing Schumer has used before Ginsburg’s death to discuss the possibility of repealing the legislative filibuster to overcome Republican opposition.
The energy/climate stakes: Our issues are unlikely to dominate the conversation around the next Supreme Court justice, but the Washington Post has a nice rundown of the potential stakes of a 6-3 conservative majority on the nation’s highest court.
Broadly, a Republican-dominant court could make it harder for Biden to overturn Trump’s deregulatory efforts and replace them with stricter emissions rules.
“A Biden Administration could find it harder to demonstrate that it had a ‘reasoned explanation’ for rewriting final, Trump-era rules,” the research group ClearView notes.
TRUMP OFFICIALS POKE RENEWABLES GOALS — AGAIN: Deputy Energy Secretary Mark Menezes, citing California’s recent blackouts, said today the liberal state is taking the “wrong approach” to cleaning its energy system by relying on variable renewables.
Menezes, however, misstated California’s climate goals, claiming the state seeks to reach 100% renewable power by 2045, when in fact it seeks carbon-free electricity by that time (meaning technologies other than wind or solar could be used).
Menezes, with a kick-off address at Clean Energy Week, touted the Trump administration’s focus on promoting private-sector innovation of clean energy technologies to reduce emissions.
“There is no doubt everyone here today supports reducing our emissions, but we still have work to do,” Menezes said, citing DOE’s R&D investments in energy storage, carbon capture, and nuclear.
“We are confident this administration’s balanced and realistic approach to energy will not only power an economic comeback, but allow us to be a global leader [in clean energy],” he added.
By contrast, the Green New Deal is ‘not feasible’: EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, in separate remarks Monday at the American Enterprise Institute, said he has yet to see a version of the Green New Deal “that actually makes sense.”
Like Menezes, Wheeler questioned efforts to get to zero-emissions power, arguing there isn’t the battery storage technology yet to support that. He also criticized what he considers little focus on the negative environmental effects associated with renewable energy, including foreign mining of rare earth elements, disposal of solar panels, and wind turbines’ effect on birds and bats.
In addition, Wheeler significantly downplayed any role climate change has in worsening the Western wildfires, saying the blazes are “mostly caused by poor forest management.”
LONG-TERM ELECTRIC CAR TRENDS REMAIN STRONG: 2020 will be a speed bump for electric vehicle adoption due to the coronavirus pandemic, but money continuing to flow to the electric car market underscores momentum behind the transition to electrification, Cox Automotive says in a new white paper Monday.
Automakers have poured billions into electric vehicle research, with some literally betting “their whole future on these vast investments, making it unrealistic to reel in,” the white paper says. Cox Automotive expects costs of electric cars will continue to fall, especially as battery costs drop, and companies and cities converting their fleets to all-electric will fuel growth in the market.
Even so, there are still a few major hurdles to quicker growth, the white paper notes. Access to charging infrastructure, for example, is improving, but building out a nationwide network of high-speed charging stations is a bit of a “wild west” right now, the firm says.
“The ‘who pays’ is really going to be the biggest challenge going forward,” said Lea Malloy, head of research and development, Cox Automotive Mobility. “There’s a lot of capital outlay to set up national charging infrastructure.”
Policy also will play a big role in how quickly electric cars are adopted, including the stringency of tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions limits, Malloy told Abby. She added she sees a role for the federal government to create incentives for used electric cars, too, similar to federal tax credits for new electric vehicles.
CLIMATEWORKS LAUNCHES CARBON REMOVAL HUB: ClimateWorks Foundation, in partnership with the Economist’s Intelligence Unit, wants to educate executives about carbon removal approaches, including direct air capture and storing carbon in soils and forests, to try to boost private sector funding for removal efforts.
Recently, several tech giants, including Microsoft and Amazon, have either pledged to remove their historic carbon emissions or to ramp up investments in negative emissions technologies. Those pledges are a good start, but resources devoted to carbon removal are still “too modest” to scale the approaches up by mid-century, said Jan Mazurek, who directs ClimateWorks’ carbon removal program.
ClimateWorks is hoping getting more information to corporate executives will encourage them to commit more dollars to carbon removal and recognize nature-based and technological approaches aren’t in competition with each other. Some approaches, like planting trees and storing carbon in soils, can be scaled up now, Mazurek told Abby, while technologies like direct air capture, are a “harder sell” for companies because of the high cost.
For many companies to feel confident investing in direct air capture, they’ll need to know there’s an escalating carbon price of some kind driven by policy, Mazurek added.
GENERAL ELECTRIC PLANS TO DITCH COAL: The company, one of the world’s largest makers of coal-fired power plants, announced Monday it intends to stop building them, instead focusing on renewable energy and nuclear power equipment.
“With the continued transformation of GE, we are focused on power generation businesses that have attractive economics and a growth trajectory,” said Russell Stokes, GE senior vice president and CEO of GE Power Portfolio. “As we pursue this exit from the new build coal power market, we will continue to support our customers, helping them to keep their existing plants running in a cost-effective and efficient way with best-in-class technology and service expertise.”
WALMART TO GO ZERO EMISSIONS BY 2040: To reach that target, Walmart will seek to power its facilities globally with 100% renewable energy by 2035; eliminate emissions from its vehicle fleet, including long-haul trucks, by 2040; and move to climate-friendly refrigerants by 2040, the retail giant announced Monday.
The company and the Walmart Foundation will also help conserve, manage, or restore at least 50 million acres of land and 1 million square miles of ocean over the next decade.
One caveat, though, is Walmart’s new target doesn’t include indirect (or scope 3) emissions, which is a big deal for the retail giant because most of its environmental footprint and emissions come from its supply chain. The company already has an effort, started in 2017, to work with suppliers to avoid 1 gigaton of greenhouse gases by 2030.
BROUILLETTE’S VISIT TO PITTSBURGH: Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette is in Pittsburgh today to tour Shell’s proposed ethane cracker plant, continuing a trend of Trump energy officials visiting swing states in the lead-up to the election.
Brouilette plans to highlight “the importance of Appalachian natural gas and innovative technology development for the region’s economic growth and prosperity,” according to the Energy Department.
Brouillette will continue his visit Tuesday with a roundtable discussion involving Western Pennsylvania energy, labor, and business leaders, as the Trump administration looks to show support for union jobs in the oil and gas industry.
The Rundown
New York Times How California became ground zero for climate disasters
Axios Big tech takes the climate change lead
Reuters Shell launches major cost-cutting drive to prepare for energy transition
New York Times U.S. and European oil giants go different ways on climate change
Calendar
TUESDAY | SEPT. 22
10 a.m. 366 Dirksen. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee holds a hearing on offshore energy technologies.
12 p.m. The House Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources holds a virtual hearing titled “Trump Administration Broken Promises on Renewable Energy.”
WEDNESDAY | SEPT. 23
10 a.m. 106 Dirksen. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee holds a hearing on legislation to amend the Endangered Species Act.
