With help from Ben Lefebvre and Anthony Adragna
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— The Biden transition named members of the teams that will guide the transfer of power inside federal agencies.
— World leaders piled on the congratulations to President-elect Joe Biden this week, with many pledging to work with the U.S. on tackling climate change.
— A Federal Reserve official told lawmakers he expects the agency will join the Network for Greening of the Financial System next year to help ensure the financial sector is prepared for climate change.
HELLO! IT’S WEDNESDAY. I’m your host, Kelsey Tamborrino. Michael Platner of Van Ness Feldman gets the trivia win for correctly naming Sam Rayburn, who was the House speaker under four different presidential administrations. Rayburn served during the administrations of Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy. For today: What U.S. state was first to have both a woman governor and two women serving in the U.S. 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. On today’s episode: Reshuffling the government’s climate science team
WHAT’S IN A NAME? Biden’s transition team is preparing for the transfer of power even as President Donald Trump refuses to concede. The Biden-Harris transition on Tuesday unveiled its agency review teams, which will lay the groundwork within agencies for the new administration. The list provides a look at what a Biden administration might look like, since many of the same names could end up with jobs in the agencies and will influence who the administration ultimately hires.
The who’s who: Patrice Simms, vice president of litigation at Earthjustice, will lead the EPA team. Arun Majumdar, the first head of the Energy Department’s Advanced Research Projects-Energy arm, will lead the Energy Department team. The Interior Department team will be led by Kevin Washburn, a University of Iowa law professor and member of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma who served in the Obama administration as assistant secretary of Indian Affairs. Cecilia Martinez, a veteran environmental justice advocate, will head the Council on Environmental Quality team.
Other notables: The DOE team includes several Obama-era alumni, including Kerry Duggan, a longtime ally of Biden, and Jon Elkind, now at Columbia University, who spent the entire Obama administration at DOE working on international issues. The EPA team includes Matt Fritz, who was chief of staff from 2015 to 2017 and now at firm Latham & Watkins; Cynthia Giles, a former EPA enforcement chief now at the Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program; Joseph Goffman, a top air adviser who now runs that Harvard program; and Ken Kopocis, a top water official now at American University’s law school.
At Interior, there’s Bret Birdsong, a University of Nevada law professor who served as Obama’s deputy solicitor for Land Resources; Janie Hipp, who led the Agriculture Department’s work with tribes under Obama; Kate Kelly, who led outreach work on public lands issues for Obama’s Interior Secretary Sally Jewell; Elizabeth Klein, now at New York University’s State Impact Center and an associate deputy Interior secretary under Obama; and Shannon Estenoz, a long-time Everglades restoration advocate who headed the Obama administration’s work on the River of Grass at Interior and now works at the powerful Everglades Foundation.
What’s it show? The transition team argued that its list represented its commitment to the party’s left wing, despite some progressives’ skepticism of Biden, POLITICO’s Alex Thompson, Theodoric Meyer and Megan Cassella report. More than half of the personnel will be women, and at least 40 percent are people of color or people who identify as LGBTQ+, according to the transition.
The names also suggest the Biden administration will look to address climate change and stick to the promise to create “good-paying” jobs in the transition away from fossil fuels. For example, Brad Markell, the executive director of the AFL-CIO’s industrial union council, will serve on the DOE team.
Richard Lazarus, an environmental law professor at Harvard Law School and an expert on the regulatory process, is staffing the Justice Department transition efforts, and longtime State Department climate negotiator Susan Biniaz is joining Biden’s team to staff up Foggy Bottom. Center for American Progress’ Andy Green is also among the names on the team for the Treasury Department — an inclusion that Evergreen Action’s Jamal Raad tweeted “speaks highly” of how the Biden team is putting climate center in financial regulation. Read the full list.
CABINET MAKING: Another day, another round of tea leaf reading on how Biden’s Cabinet may shape up. Biden said Tuesday that he would announce some names “before Thanksgiving.” Meanwhile, groups are peppering the transition team with potential candidates (in one case going open source: Clean Energy For Biden posted an online form for anyone wishing to pitch their name for a spot in the Biden administration).
Jane Kleeb, the Nebraska Democratic Party chair who helped lead the battle against the Keystone XL pipeline, said her group was pushing for New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland to lead Interior. Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico is still considered an odds-on favorite given his long relationship with Biden, but Kleeb and others are saying new blood is needed. “The one folks in pipeline fights would like to see at the Department of Interior is Rep. Haaland,” Kleeb told ME. “We want her in the top spot. That department needs to be native-led.”
If the GOP holds the Senate, the calculations for Haaland get more complicated, one lobbyist source told ME. While Republicans in the Senate generally support one of their own, the chamber wouldn’t likely extend that to a House member, the lobbyist noted. If Udall gets the nod to lead Interior and Haaland doesn’t want to leave her seat to become deputy secretary, another name being floated is former Idaho Rep. Paulette Jordan, a member of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe in Idaho who lost a Senate bid this year.
Some left-leaning groups are still pushing for Mary Nichols for EPA, even though she would almost certainly be rejected by a GOP-controlled Senate. But progressive groups are still adamant that Biden nominate her or other progressive-backed nominees. “We’re absolutely pushing to get the folks we need in there, forcing the Senate to vote down qualified candidates,” said Collin Rees, senior campaigner at Oil Change International.
But it wouldn’t be as if the Republican senators would take a hit at home in rejecting progressives’ wish list, the oil and gas lobbyist noted. “It would be very easy for anyone in the [election] cycle for 2022 to fall in line” and vote against Nichols, the person said. “They’ll all say California couldn’t keep the lights on” and handily reject her nomination if it came to that.
Toney Toney Toney? One person that Rees and others say could make it through: Heather McTeer Toney. Nominating Toney would all but dare Republican senators to reject a former EPA regional head, current senior director of Moms Clean Air Force and a woman of color, sources said. A spokesperson for MCAF declined to comment on whether the transition team had reached out to Toney.
Iowa energy? Bloomberg reports the Biden transition team has contacted former Iowa Gov. Chet Culver about possibly helming the Energy Department. As governor, Culver helped create the Iowa Office of Energy Independence and Iowa Power Fund to invest in renewable energy research and development. Culver declined comment to ME.
ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE: International leaders pledged to work with the incoming administration on climate change in phone calls congratulating Biden on his win. “I look forward to strengthening the partnership between our countries and to working with him on our shared priorities — from tackling climate change, to promoting democracy and building back better from the pandemic,” U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted.
The prime minister also invited Biden to attend next year’s COP26 climate change summit that the U.K. is hosting in Glasgow, a Downing Street spokesperson said. Biden is expected to reassert the U.S. as a global leader on climate and put the issue high on the agenda at the G-7 meeting next year.
Johnson said last week that he expects the Biden-Harris administration will get the U.S. to focus on net-zero by 2050. “They certainly have the technology to do it in the United States of America, and you can do it while delivering hundreds of thousands of new green jobs at the same time,” Johnson said.
Biden spoke this week to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The two talked trade, NATO and energy, as well as the Keystone XL pipeline, according to a readout from Canada. A readout from the Biden-Harris transition team did not mention the Keystone XL but said Biden looks forward to deepening collaboration with Canada including on combating climate change. Biden has previously said he would rescind Trump’s permit allowing the oil pipeline, a sticking point for the Canadians.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel also congratulated Biden and called for collaboration on tackling climate change, as did French President Emmanuel Macron and Taoiseach Micheál Martin, according to readouts from the transition team.
FED TO JOIN CLIMATE COALITION: Federal Reserve Vice Chair of Supervision Randal Quarles said on Tuesday the U.S. central bank has requested membership into the Network for Greening the Financial System, a global coalition of central banks and regulators that is dedicated to making sure the financial system is prepared to deal with risks posed by climate change, Pro’s Victoria Guida reports. “I suspect we could probably join before the spring,” Quarles said at a hearing.
The Fed has been in membership talks for at least a year with the group and has already been participating in working groups, according to past statements by Fed officials. But joining the network requires support for the Paris climate change agreement, which posed political hurdles for the Fed, since the U.S. under Trump withdrew from that deal. It’s unclear whether the Fed will join as a full member or as an observer.
RELEASE THE BILLS: Republican Senate appropriators released a slate of spending bills Tuesday for the remainder of fiscal 2021, kicking off negotiations with the House on a trillion dollar-plus funding deal to ward off a government shutdown next month, Pro’s Caitlin Emma reports.
Senate Republicans are proposing $51.75 billion for the Energy Department, Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation — a $3.4 billion boost over current levels that would largely go to DOE’s work managing the nation’s nuclear stockpile, Pro’s Eric Wolff and Annie Snider report.
They also called for $38.2 billion for their Interior-Environment spending bill, including big boosts for wildfire response and the Land and Water Conservation Fund, Pro’s Anthony Adragna, Alex Guillén, Ben Lefebvre and Annie Snider report. That bill would provide $9.09 billion for EPA, a slight increase above this year’s funding of $9.06 billion but below the $9.38 billion that was passed by the House earlier this year, H.R. 7608 (116). It would fund the Interior Department at $13.6 billion, up $1.6 billion from the current fiscal year.
The measures reject the Trump administration’s calls for deep cuts, but are far from the major funding boosts that House Democrats passed earlier this year. Still, modest increases offered in Senate Republicans’ bills reaffirmed bipartisan interest in renewable energy and infrastructure funding — areas that Democrats hope could be the backbone of an economic stimulus measure next year.
Docs: Read the committee report on the Energy-Water bill and the report on the Interior-Environment bill.
ROUDA CONCEDES IN CALIFORNIA: Rep. Harley Rouda conceded his reelection race Tuesday to Republican challenger Michelle Steel. Rouda, a first-term Democrat in Orange County, serves as the chair of the House Oversight environment subcommittee.
FOR THE RECORD: Democratic chairs in the House wrote to the heads of several federal agencies on Tuesday, including EPA, the Energy Department, the Interior Department, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and FERC, demanding they take immediate steps to preserve federal records ahead of the presidential transition, Pro’s Anthony Adragna reports.
What they’re saying: “The false assumptions in this perfunctory letter notwithstanding, the Department has and will continue to comply with all federal records-keeping laws and regulations,” Interior spokesperson Ben Goldey said. An EPA spokesperson said the agency would respond “through the proper channels.”
PARKS GROUP DECRY LWCF LIST: Former National Park Service staffers are crying foul over Interior’s recently released list of proposed projects to receive funding for fiscal 2021 under the Land and Water Conservation Fund, as directed by the Great American Outdoors Act signed into law by Trump.
The list laid out 20 Fish and Wildlife Service projects and 26 National Park Service projects. But a statement Tuesday from Phil Francis, the chair of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks that includes former NPS employees, said the list cuts projects at national parks and wildlife refuges, and “entirely eliminates” federal public land protection through the Bureau of Land Management.
Francis said Congress specifically called for 40 percent of LWCF funds to go to federal land protection. “This did not happen and to add insult to injury, this list includes $120M for the Forest Legacy Program under ‘Federal Land Grants’ — but Forest Legacy grants go to states and have always been counted as state grants,” he said in the statement. “This is a clear attempt to fudge the math, since including that $120M gets the federal land portion to exactly 40 percent. Without it, it’s only 27 percent.”
— “What Biden’s win means for California environmental policy,” via POLITICO Pro.
— “2020 Atlantic hurricane season breaks all-time record while leaving Gulf Coast battered,” via The Washington Post.
— “Houston’s Occidental Petroleum loses $3.8 billion in third quarter,” via Houston Chronicle.
— “Former White House climate adviser: ‘We just don’t have enough time,'” via Bloomberg.
— “TD Bank says it will not finance oil and gas activities in the Arctic,” via Reuters.
— “BP and Orsted plan green hydrogen project,” via Financial Times.
THAT’S ALL FOR ME!
