With help from Kelsey Tamoborrino, Ben Lefebvre and Alex Guillén
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— Sen. Joe Manchin and the Energy Committee’s top Republican John Barrasso are unveiling a bipartisan bill to restore forests to store carbon — while enabling more logging.
— Top Democrats say they have some options to pay for their reconciliation package, but the details are shrouded in mystery.
— FERC Chair Rich Glick wants to muscle in reliability standards in Texas after the state’s winter freeze out.
IT’S FINALLY FRIDAY. I’m your host, Matthew Choi. Felicidades to all the proud Bogotanos who knew Plaza Bolívar is in La Candelaria in Bogotá, but congrats in particular to Laura Forero in Rep. Doris Matsui’s office for getting it first! For today: What color was Mia’s dress in the “Someone in the Crowd” sequence in “La La Land”? Send your tips and trivia answers to [email protected]. Find me on Twitter @matthewchoi2018.
Check out the POLITICO Energy podcast — all the energy and environmental politics and policy news you need to start your day, in just five minutes. Listen and subscribe for free at politico.com/energy-podcast. On today’s episode: Biden’s low HFC diet.
ME FIRST: MANCHIN, BARRASSO TO RELEASE FOREST BILL: Senate Energy Chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and ranking member John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), along with Sens. Angus King (I-Maine) and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) are unveiling a bipartisan bill today aimed at capturing carbon through nationwide restoration of forests and rangeland — and encouraging new logging to reduce the risk of wildfires.
The bill, dubbed America’s Revegetation and Carbon Sequestration (ARCs) Act, would establish a nationwide revegetation effort, including on abandoned mine land, via regional task forces made up of federal agencies and non-federal partners. It would also bring revenue to the Forest Service via the sale of carbon credits to help with forest management and wildfire prevention. And it has provisions for expanding biochar and mass timber use, research into wood-based carbon storage and eradication of invasive grasses.
Tree-planting has long been a climate mitigation technique popular among Republicans and moderate Democrats. Even President Donald Trump got behind the One Trillion Trees movement, and House Natural Resources Ranking Member Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) has re-upped the One Trillion Trees Act (H.R. 2639 (117)) with support from three Democrats earlier this year. And with deadly forest fires and historic droughts devastating large swaths of the country, aggressive forest management efforts have wide bipartisan support in the West. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) has introduced his own forest management legislation, the Outdoor Restoration Partnership Act (S. 1248 (117)), which was largely included in House Ag’s reconciliation text.
“We can prevent carbon emissions and improve the resiliency of our forests and rangelands through proactive measures such as revegetation, wildfire prevention, hazardous fuels reduction projects and the expanded use of wood products,” Manchin said in a statement. Barrasso added that the bill would “help eliminate invasive grasses that fuel destructive wildfires and prevent livestock from grazing … [and] support the economy by expediting the logging of damaged trees and enhancing revegetation projects.” The bill has the support of a number of forest, wood and environmental groups, including The Nature Conservancy, Society of American Foresters and American Wood Council.
But major reforestation efforts won’t endear Manchin to progressives, who have directed their frustration over the logjam on the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill at the West Virginian, and may find the legislation to be *ahem* missing the forest for the trees. Manchin has expressed his displeasure with one of their biggest priorities — the Clean Electricity Performance Program, which would pay utilities to adopting more clean energy source, a measure he told CNN “makes no sense to me” if the market is already shifting toward renewables. But progressives argue that major technological shifts away from fossil fuels are the only way to prevent climate catastrophe and have been less receptive to more nature-based mitigation efforts.
Read the bill text here and a section-by-section here.
PAYING FOR IT: The Biden administration and Democratic leadership in the House and Senate revealed they have a list of ways to pay for their $3.5 trillion reconciliation package on Thursday. But what’s on the list and how they came up with it are a little less clear.
What is clear is that it was not formulated with input from some key Democrats, Heather Caygle, Sarah Ferris and Jennifer Scholtes report. “We don’t know what they’re talking about,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) told reporters. “It sounds good if they’re all working toward something to present to us after all the conversations yesterday. I haven’t seen it.” Democrats privately say that the announcement was largely to show that something is happening amid a sustained intraparty stalemate.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced the framework after meeting with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and White House adviser Brian Deese. Pelosi acknowledged that the framework doesn’t contain specifics for the public, but added “It’s not about a price tag, it’s about values.”
It’s still unclear if the framework will ready the reconciliation bill for consideration next week, with Democrats’ self-imposed deadline for a Monday infrastructure vote fast approaching. House Budget Chair John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) told Pro’s Caitlin Emma and Nicholas Wu that he’s lining up a markup on the legislation for Saturday. Happy weekend!
Related: House and Senate agriculture leaders are very close to finishing a $28 billion piece of their sweeping reconciliation package, which is being touted by Democrats as “the largest investment in conservation since the Dust Bowl,” report Pro’s Helena Bottemiller Evich and Ximena Bustillo who saw a summary of the legislation. It includes $9 billion for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program through FY 2026, $4 billion for the Conservation Stewardship Program through FY 2026, $650 million for climate change adaptation through regional climate hubs and carbon sequestration, and more, which Helena and Ximena break down here.
And: “Progressive opposition grows even as reconciliation advances,” via Pro’s Tanya Snyder.
ACROSS THE (CARBON) BORDER: Senators from both parties met with European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans to talk about carbon tariffs and preventing companies from relocating to countries with less stringent emissions standards. The senators — including Chris Coons (D-Del.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.) and other members of the Senate Climate Solutions Caucus — asked Timmermans about the Commission’s proposed carbon border adjustment mechanism, which is meant to keep companies from avoiding Europe’s carbon prices by moving to countries with weaker rules.
The European proposal would rely on trading partners matching the EU’s carbon trading scheme with their own carbon prices. Carbon pricing had been on a list of potential pay-fors for the reconciliation bill floated by the Senate Finance Committee in recent weeks. But any kind of carbon tariff scheme is likely to run afoul of World Trade Organization rules, and Coons is concerned nations’ different climate tariffs could stymie trade cooperation. Read more from Zack Colman.
BIOFUELS PRESSURE RISING ON VOLUMES: News of the Biden administration’s impending proposal on biofuel blending requirements for compliance years 2020-2022 is already animating ethanol backers on Capitol Hill. Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth told ME on Thursday the rumored levels are “far too low,” especially given that the 15 billion gallons sought by ethanol backers are already a minimum. “We’re going to have some conversations,” Duckworth added, particularly with White House national climate adviser Gina McCarthy.
Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst called the rumored drop “absolutely ridiculous” and opposed the decision to retroactively revisit the 2020 standard. “This is the administration that came through Iowa touting their support for renewable fuels, and it was just an all-out lie,” Ernst said. “Shame on President Biden.” The sentiment was echoed by a joint statement Thursday from farming and biofuels groups, including the Renewable Fuels Association and American Farm Bureau Federation that said the yet-to-be-released plan would “brazenly violate the promises that President Biden made to farmers, green voters, and his own allies in Congress.”
NORD STREAM 2 IN COMMITTEE: The Senate Foreign Relations Committee invited Amos Hochstein, the State Department’s point person on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, to testify in a closed hearing on Wednesday. Europe is facing a major energy pinch after Russia decided not to increase natural gas flows through Ukraine next month — a move widely interpreted as a political maneuver over the pipeline that bypasses Ukraine via the Baltic Sea.
Hochstein told Bloomberg that Russia’s Monday move “increases the concern I have,” raising concerns that low Russian gas supply could mean Europe won’t be able to meet its winter energy demand. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in Poland on Wednesday “our partners have to be prepared to continue to stand up where there are players who may be manipulating supply in order to benefit themselves,” The Financial Times reports.
EPA NOMS AFTER DARK: The Senate last night approved by voice vote Jane Nishida’s nomination to run EPA’s Office of International and Tribal Affairs. Nishida is a career EPA official going back to 2011, serving as acting administrator during Michael Regan’s confirmation process. She got bipartisan praise in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee for her seasoned government service and was advanced out of committee on a voice vote as well.
FERC’S GLICK TO MESS WITH TEXAS: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chair Rich Glick offered his strongest warnings yet that he plans to try to force new reliability standards on the stand-alone Texas power grid. The chair said he would use “every power that FERC has” to make sure the devastating outage caused by a winter storm there in February doesn’t happen again.
“People died. I mean, this is not just ‘People didn’t have power for a couple hours, and they were inconvenienced.’ People literally froze to death,” he said after FERC’s monthly meeting.
And unlike after the review of the 2011 outage in Texas when Glick said only modest changes to fortify the power system were made, he’d ensure that new reliability standards had teeth. “I guarantee you that this time FERC will not permit these recommendations to be ignored, or watered down.”
Fellow Democrat Allison Clements and Republican Commissioner Mark Christie both agreed that ERCOT needed new fixes, but the commissioners haven’t yet settled on what the core problem is. Catherine Morehouse focuses in on FERC here.
Also at the meeting, FERC punted on Southeast utilities’ plan to create an automated energy exchange in the region — a proposal Senate Energy ranking member John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) has been pushing FERC to review. That postponement was likely due to the commissioners’ inability to agree on the issue amid the 2-2 split since the departure of Commissioner Neil Chatterjee.
HAALAND: INSIDE INTERIOR’S ENERGY TRANSITION: Interior Secretary Deb Haaland says the department will be announcing new offshore wind projects soon, adding that Interior is “meeting the moment” on promoting clean energy on public lands. Interior in coming weeks will announce its decision on the South Forks Wind offshore wind project and also announce another lease sale for offshore wind development off the New York coast, Haaland told reporters Thursday.
Haaland didn’t shed any new light on the oil lease report Interior has submitted to the White House and that senators have repeatedly quizzed department officials on. She did say the department wouldn’t halt oil and gas drilling — something Republicans have alleged the White House wants to do and that progressives have pushed for. “As I said in my confirmation hearing, gas and oil will continue for years to come, it’s not something that we can just change tomorrow,” Haaland told reporters.
But she also made it clear the department’s priorities are for now ushering in greater number of clean energy projects. Haaland cited the abandoned Jackpile-Paguate uranium mine near her Laguna Pueblo home in New Mexico and now a Superfund site, as the sort of polluting project she hoped would not be repeated in the future. “People are still dying from that,” Haaland said. “I want that era to be over with.”
AIR IT OUT: The White House announcement this week that Biden intends to fill a key role at EPA running the agency’s science office with Chris Frey leaves just one highly conspicuous vacancy at the agency: The air office. It’s being run on an acting basis by Joe Goffman, the architect of the Clean Power Plan and other Obama rules, but it’s unclear what Biden’s plans are for the office overseeing climate regulation.
Installing Frey would add an air pollution expert who was a thorn in the Trump administration’s side to the science office. Frey has been deputy in EPA’s Office of Research and Development since February.
TEED UP FOR SCOTUS: A closely-watched case relating to the scope of the Clean Water Act is officially ripe for the plucking, should four justices on the Supreme Court want to take on the muddled area of law. The Pacific Legal Foundation, a property-rights focused group that has won big at the high court before on water matters, asked the high court this week to take up the case of an Idaho couple challenging federal jurisdiction over wetlands on their property after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit last month ruled against them.
The case represents the first opening for the high court, with its new 6-3 conservative majority, to weigh in on the hotly-contested question of how far the 1972 water law reaches — and could potentially throw off the Biden administration’s plans for crafting its own, more protective answer to the question.
— Avangrid Renewables added Jose Antonio Miranda as its new President Onshore to lead its onshore wind and solar business. Miranda was previously the CEO of onshore in the Americas region for Siemens Gamesa and chair of its boards in U.S., Mexico and Brazil.
— David Bloomgren will be joining Finsbury Glover Hering’s energy and sustainability team as a managing director in the DC office. He previously served as a senior adviser to then-EPA Administrators Lisa Jackson and Gina McCarthy.
— Laura Morton is joining Perkins Coie as a partner in the firm’s environment, energy and resources practice in D.C. She comes from American Clean Power, where she served as senior director of policy and regulatory affairs for offshore wind.
— “Defunct biogas plant to pay $1.1M for environmental breaches,” via The Associated Press.
— “Newsom signs raft of climate bills after Sequoia National Park visit,” via POLITICO.
— “‘We’ve been completely plowed over’: Jacumba residents sue to stop 600-acre solar project,” via The San Diego Union-Tribune.
— “Newsom signs California offshore wind bill,” via POLITICO.
THAT’S ALL FOR ME!
