With help from Anthony Adragna, Sam Mintz, Eric Wolff, Stephanie Beasley and Alex Guillén
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— A changed energy industry will converge today for the kick-off of the annual CERAWeek conference, where a raft of Biden administration officials and regulators will speak about the social, regulatory and financial impact of climate change.
— Three nominees key to President Joe Biden’s environmental agenda will testify on the Hill this week as they move toward confirmation to EPA, the Energy Department and the Council on Environmental Quality.
— The Biden administration unveiled an interim social cost of carbon on Friday, quantifying the economic and societal damage from greenhouse gas emissions.
WELCOME TO MONDAY! I’m your host, Kelsey Tamborrino. Shane Schulz of QEP Resources got the trivia win for naming the three other Energy secretaries, besides Jennifer Granholm, who also served as governors. Rick Perry was the governor of Texas, Bill Richardson of New Mexico and James Edwards of South Carolina. For today: In the 117th Congress, what’s the average age in the Senate? Send your tips and trivia answers to [email protected].
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. Today’s episode: Gauging the social cost of carbon
THE ENERGY CONFERENCES ARE A-CHANGIN’: A year ago the preeminent U.S. energy industry conference, CERAWeek by IHS Markit, called off the annual event as the coronavirus pandemic shut down the global economy. Today, the five-day conference returns entirely online — but that’s not the only noticeable difference from the conferences of the past.
This year’s lineup features a parade of Democrats and Biden administration officials who will push the new president’s goals to speed the energy transition, decarbonize the economy and tighten rules around oil and gas production, Pro’s Ben Lefebvre reports this morning.
It’s likely that oil and gas industry executives will hear more from U.S. officials about methane emissions and green investment strategies this week than in the all of the previous four years. Attendees, for instance, will hear from special climate envoy John Kerry talk about the United States’ plans to lead the global effort to fight climate change.
“There’s clearly been an evolution as the focus on emissions has become more intense,” Dan Yergin, the industry’s leading historian and the vice chair of research firm IHS Markit, told Ben. “In the past, maybe one or two policy makers would speak. If I think over the past decade, many more policy people and ministers from around the world are participating. The focus has shifted from supply and energy security to emissions. I think we’ve seen a growing role of financial players at the conference. The world has turned.”
On the agenda: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will deliver a keynote speech, as will CEOs from energy giants around the globe. Also set to speak: Newly confirmed Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm; national climate adviser Gina McCarthy; Allison Herren Lee, Biden’s acting chair of the SEC; Andrew Light, the Energy Department’s acting assistant secretary for international affairs; Rostin Behnam, acting chairman for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; and FERC Chair Richard Glick.
NOMINEES HIT THE HILL: Senate committees will hold confirmation hearings this week for Brenda Mallory to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Janet McCabe to be deputy EPA administrator and David Turk to be deputy Energy secretary. Mallory and McCabe will appear before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Wednesday and Turk before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Thursday.
Ahead of the EPW hearing, Republican leaders who served at EPA and CEQ under the administrations of President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush wrote to the committee to “enthusiastically support” Mallory. “We know Brenda to be an exemplary candidate who possesses the deep domain expertise, open mind and leadership skills needed to be a strong and effective Chair of the Council,” they write. The letter is signed by former EPA chiefs William Reilly, Christine Todd Whitman, Michael Leavitt and Stephen Johnson; former Deputy EPA Administrators Linda Fisher and Marcus Peacock; former CEQ Chair James Connaughton; the EPA chief of staffs from 2001-09 and general counsels from 2003-09.
HOUSE PASSES COVID RELIEF PACKAGE: The House approved President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion pandemic rescue plan, H.R. 1319 (117), early Saturday morning, sending the measure to the Senate, POLITICO’s Caitlin Emma and Sarah Ferris report. The sprawling measure — which passed the House in a 219-212 vote — would provide $4.5 billion to the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which aids families in affording utilities. It would also allocate $100 million to EPA to “address health outcome disparities from pollution and the COVID–19 pandemic” — $50 million of which would be doled out through environmental justice grants and $50 million for air pollution monitoring and research.
PATH FORWARD ON LANDS: House Natural Resources Chair Raúl Grijalva called ME shortly after the House passed its sweeping lands bill, H.R. 803 (117), on Friday to say he expected the senators from Arizona, Colorado and California will play a critical role in determining whether the package advances through the Senate. “There is enough in the legislation up and down the line to be attractive to too many of the senators,” he said. “So, I’m looking forward to it.” He said he has a meeting set up with Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, hopes to schedule one with Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and plans to meet with Senate Energy Chair Joe Manchin.
It’s an early signal of the importance of climate change and public lands to the Democratic agenda. “By putting it on, you establish that it is an important issue going forward and the role that these lands in this instance, and oceans in the future, play in trying to meet the agenda and meet the commitments that have been made around climate change,” he said.
ARMY CORPS CONSIDERS PEBBLE APPEAL: The Army Corps of Engineers has officially deemed complete the Pebble Limited Partnership’s request for an administrative appeal of its rejection of permits for the Pebble Mine in Alaska, the company announced on Friday. The agency now has around 90 days to consider the company’s appeal and make a decision, though it can extend that deadline. The Trump administration last year rejected the mine after concluding that its mitigation plan fell short of being able to offset the mine’s environmental impacts.
Meanwhile, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said the Army Corps has rejected the state’s own administrative appeal after determining it doesn’t have standing. “This is another example of the federal government imposing a flawed decision that blocks Alaska’s ability to responsibly develop its land and resources,” Dunleavy said in a statement.
SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT: Gina McCarthy, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and National Economic Council Director Brian Deese met virtually with airline executives Friday to discuss reducing carbon emissions and using biofuels, among other issues. White House officials were “grateful and optimistic to hear airline leaders share information about the industry’s ongoing and future efforts to address climate change, and they offered the Administration’s support to strengthen and advance the airlines’ climate goals,” according to a readout.
Industry says: Airlines for America, an industry trade group, released a statement after the meeting pledging to work with the Biden administration on climate goals and highlighting its members’ commitment to a 50 percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050, as compared to 2005 levels. Delta and American separately announced Friday that they had partnered with Deloitte to reduce emissions through sustainable fuel use.
And yet: It isn’t enough, according to at least one environmental group. “Biofuels are false solutions that don’t decarbonize air travel,” according to Clare Lakewood, climate legal director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “Real action on aircraft emissions requires phasing out dirty, aging aircraft, maximizing efficiencies and funding the rapid development of electrification.”
CLIMATE CALCULATIONS: Biden restored an Obama-era calculation on the economic cost of greenhouse gases on Friday, making it easier for his agencies to approve aggressive actions to confront climate change, POLITICO’s Lorraine Woellert and Zack Colman report. The administration, however, stopped short of boosting the cost figure to higher levels that economists and climate scientists say are justified by new research — at least for now.
The interim figure — $51 for every ton of carbon released into the atmosphere with a 3 percent discount rate applied — is on par with a price based on analyses undertaken between 2010 and 2016 under former President Barack Obama.
It’s also temporary: A new Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases is required to issue a final number by January. “A more complete update that follows the best science takes time. This is why we are quickly restoring the prior estimates as an interim step,” Heather Boushey, a member of the Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in a blog post.
GRANHOLM: TEXAS SHOULD LINK GRID TO REST OF THE COUNTRY: Newly minted Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told NPR on Friday that Texas might face fewer problems if it joined its grid with the larger U.S. power network and ended its decades of electricity self-reliance. “I think the country would welcome Texas being at least connected to the national grid in some way, shape or form that allows for its neighbors to help,” she said. Texas has long pledged its independence from the rest of the grid, exempting its market from federal regulation. But the power problems it suffered for five days in February might have been ameliorated with more wires to the rest of the United States. FERC, committees in the House and Senate, the Texas legislature, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have all launched investigations into last month’s blackouts.
— Granholm also told The Washington Post that she expects the administration’s upcoming jobs package to include a “significant commitment to investing in the national grid, both expanding the lines for transmission, as well as investing in the resiliency of the grid.”
CONSOLER-IN-CHIEF VISITS LONE STAR STATE: Biden visited the emergency operations center in Harris County, Texas, as well as a food bank on Friday. He brought with him Deputy National Security Adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, who served as deputy Energy secretary in the Obama administration. “One thing we know for sure is we cannot treat what happened in Texas and in the whole region, in the South, as an isolated event,” she told reporters. “The impacts reflect our shared vulnerabilities to extreme weather events and other threats, and the need for collective action to modernize and harden our critical infrastructure across the country so that we can meet the full spectrum of challenges that we will face in the future.”
A QUANDARY: Trains are in general the most fuel efficient way to carry freight, and environmentalists and policymakers often argue that the U.S. should be trying to move more freight by rail. At the same time, it’s an industry that relies heavily on shipping coal, and has been involved in funding climate denial for decades, as illustrated by a 2019 Atlantic article.
In a new report, the Association of American Railroads, the main group representing the country’s biggest freight rail companies, makes the case that they’re part of the solution, not the problem. “The AAR and the rail industry recognize that the climate is changing. If action is not taken, climate change will have significant repercussions for the planet, our economies, our society, and even day-to-day railroad operations,” the report says.
The thrust of their proposals is simple, while also inherently self-serving: push freight traffic off the roads, and onto the tracks. They argue that if 10 percent of the freight shipped by the largest trucks were moved by rail instead, greenhouse gas emissions would fall more than 17 million tons annually. AAR’s suggested methods include using market incentives to encourage shipping through lower-emissions modes, boosting the gas tax and eventually switching to a vehicle miles traveled fee, and imposing a “graduated emissions surcharge” to make higher-emitting vehicles pay more.
Other points include boosting research for alternative fuels and carbon capture (which the railroads argue they can be involved in by helping transport carbon to permanent storage sites).
Wordplay: The 2019 Atlantic article noted that AAR hadn’t mentioned climate change in any public statements in recent years, and that the term didn’t show up on the group’s website. That’s obviously not the case anymore, and it’s notable what word doesn’t show up anywhere in the climate report: coal, the commodity that in 2019 made up nearly a third of freight railroad’s tonnage.
NGOs CALL ON CEOs: The leaders of a dozen environmental nonprofits signed onto an open letter, released today, asking America’s CEOs to adopt “a science-based climate advocacy agenda” that includes publicly supporting a 2030 goal for the U.S. under the Paris agreement and advocating for legislation and regulations to cut climate pollution on a path to net zero by 2050. The letter also calls for aligning their trade associations’ lobbying with the net zero by 2050 path, including withholding dues from trade groups that do not.
— “Biden admin call on Putin pipeline provokes GOP anger,” via Axios.
— “The city where cars are not welcome,” via The New York Times.
— “NOAA mulls moving start of Atlantic hurricane season up to May 15,” via The Washington Post.
— “Frustrated Jackson locals are nearing two weeks with no water,” via Daily Beast.
— “Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry reckons with grid catastrophe,” via Washington Examiner.
— “More than 25M drink from the worst U.S. water systems, with Latinos most exposed,” via The Guardian.
THAT’S ALL FOR ME!
