With help from Zack Colman, Caitlin Oprysko and Anthony Adragna
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— President-elect Joe Biden plans to crack down on greenhouse gas pollution — and that could help rescue Texas LNG producers who are seeing climate-minded European customers start to snub U.S. gas shipments.
— A key regulator proposed cracking down on big banks that deny loans and other services to entire industries, like the fossil fuel industry.
— The industrial slowdown seen across the globe because of the pandemic has not curbed record levels of greenhouse gases, according to a new report this morning.
WELCOME TO MONDAY! I’m your host, Kelsey Tamborrino. Stephen Brown is back with the trivia win for knowing the first sitting speaker of the House to lose reelection was not Tom Foley, but William Pennington way back in 1860. For today: EPA was established in conjunction with what other U.S. government organization? Send your tips and trivia answers to [email protected].
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BIDEN’S TRANS-ATLANTIC TRUCE? As pressure grows on European countries to reduce their greenhouse gas pollution, U.S. LNG opportunities are being threatened due to poor emissions controls used to produce the gas in the first place. But it may be President-elect Joe Biden’s promise to take quick action to reduce emissions of methane, the main component of natural gas, that could ultimately help rescue U.S. fossil fuel producers, Pro’s Ben Lefebvre reports this morning.
“If we continue to have high levels of venting and flaring in the Permian, we’re going to see more and more scrutiny from Europe,” said Jason Bordoff, director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and former Obama administration official. “There’s growing pressure in the European Union that if they’re going to go with gas, they have to hold it to a higher standard and not go with the lowest common denominator” in production standards.
A wider European pushback against U.S. gas is real, multiple people at U.S. LNG companies told Ben. The best way to tackle the problem is for a Biden administration to negotiate a shared standard for countries to measure the carbon content of natural gas and, at home, making methane emissions regulations a top policy priority, they said.
“There’s a real sensitivity in the EU about fracked gas,” said one industry executive who asked for anonymity to discuss business discussions. The incoming administration “would be well advised to prioritize that. If [customers] can’t use U.S. gas, then they’re using Russian gas and Mideast gas.”
TRUMP RAILS AGAINST PARIS AGREEMENT AT G20: President Donald Trump maintained his criticism on Sunday of the Paris climate agreement that he has exited — but which his successor intends to rejoin come January.
“To protect American workers, I withdrew the United States from the unfair and one-sided Paris climate accord, a very unfair act for the United States,” Trump said in a video address to the G-20 summit hosted by Saudi Arabia. “The Paris accord was not designed to save the environment, it was designed to kill the American economy. I refuse to surrender millions of American jobs and send trillions of American dollars to the world’s worst polluters and environmental offenders. And that’s what would have happened.”
In his remarks, which came during a side discussion on safeguarding the planet, Trump also touted clean air and clean water, the United States’ commitment to the One Trillion Trees Initiative and the signing of the Great American Outdoors Act. Other world leaders used their remarks to call for greater action in tackling climate change. “Climate change must be fought not in silos — but in an integrated, comprehensive and holistic way,” said Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi.
REGULATOR MOVES TO STOP BANKS FROM BLOCKING UNPOPULAR LOANS: The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency proposed cracking down on big banks that deny loans and other services to entire industries, taking up a longstanding Republican crusade to protect politically unpopular businesses, Pro’s Victoria Guida reports. The new proposal would require banks to treat customers on an individual basis rather than refusing to serve them because they’re part of a particular industry.
Recall: Some banks have bowed out of controversial investments with industries like oil drilling firms, causing consternation among GOP lawmakers.
“I am aware that many people will focus on the idea that, ‘Gee, oil and gas is controversial,'” Acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks told reporters. “If this only affected one industry segment, we’d probably look at it a little bit differently,” he added. “The banking system cannot function as designed on this basis. The banking system is here to be accessible for everyone who is not breaking the law on equal terms, subject to risk management.”
Brooks emphasized that it’s still acceptable not to serve certain clients due to the risk of losing other customers or a legitimate concern that the company isn’t a good investment. “But you need to do the work” on a case-by-case basis, he said.
The action was blasted by progressives, who say that encouraging lending to fossil fuel companies will contribute to climate change and called on the regulator to do more to fight discrimination against poor and minority borrowers. “This proposal is a dangerous last gasp from a regulator who is desperately trying to satisfy President Donald Trump and fossil fuel-backed members of Congress,” said Gregg Gelzinis, a senior analyst for economic policy at the Center for American Progress, calling it an “abuse of power.”
DWS APPROPS CLIMATE PLAN: As she competes against Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) for the Appropriations gavel, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) released a four-page plan Friday for how she would integrate climate change considerations throughout every subcommittee in the annual spending cycle. Her idea is to fund policy priorities identified through Biden’s $2 trillion climate plan, as well as proposals unveiled this Congress by the Energy and Commerce; Natural Resources and Climate Crisis committees, none of which have been enacted into law.
“Substantial federal investments are desperately needed to expedite the transition to clean energy and blunt the impacts already afflicting our communities — especially communities of color,” the plan reads. Among the ideas that caught ME’s eye: Renewed funding for the Green Climate Fund, which aims to help developing countries adapt to climate impacts; Biden’s so-called ARPA-C, which would develop new low-carbon energy technologies, within the Energy Department; prohibitions on funding for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and offshore drilling; and investments in moving the military toward adopting clean energy technologies.
FOSSIL FUELS WIN BIG IN STIMULUS: Oil, gas and coal companies snagged between $10.4 billion and $15.2 billion in direct economic relief from pandemic stimulus programs, along with indirect help from $432 million of Federal Reserve corporate debt purchases, according to an analysis by BailoutWatch, Public Citizen and Friends of the Earth. The analysis found more than 26,000 fossil fuel firms secured some type of stimulus aid, though the bulk were from the Payroll Protection Plan.
The stimulus programs were administered agnostic of industry, with PPP and Fed corporate bond buying programs also buoying renewable energy firms. But environmental groups and fossil fuel industry critics have alleged many oil, gas and coal companies were in poor fiscal shape even before the coronavirus upended the economy. They argue that reality combined with an impending global turn away from carbon-rich energy make sending cash to fossil fuel companies bad bets for taxpayers. “Viewed together, these benefits amount to a multipronged government bailout for the fossil fuel industry. By directing aid to companies whose problems long predated the pandemic, the government has artificially prolonged the industry’s decline and postponed the coming transition to lower-carbon fuel sources,” the report said.
COMING SOON: Biden will announce his first Cabinet picks on Tuesday, top advisers to the president-elect said Sunday, POLITICO’s Maya Parthasarathy reports. Biden’s incoming White House chief of staff, Ron Klain said on ABC’s “This Week” Biden’s transition team would “beat the pace” of both the Obama-Biden and Trump transitions.
“But if you want to know what Cabinet agencies they are, who’s going to be in those Cabinet agencies,” he added, “you’ll have to wait for the president-elect to say that himself on Tuesday.”
Related: Republican Senate signals it will confirm Biden Cabinet
GROUPS DETAIL BUILDING AGENDA: More than 20 industry and environmental groups sent a letter to the Biden transition team today detailing how the president-elect can take administrative action to reduce energy use from homes and buildings, cutting greenhouse gases without the help of Congress. “While new funding and authorizing legislation is needed, concerted action by agencies under existing laws can do much to cut emissions,” the letter states. Signers include American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Association of State Energy, Sierra Club and American Institute of Architects.
The letter calls for reviving appliance efficiency standards through the Energy Department; ensuring new federally assisted housing is efficient through HUD; and setting strong energy efficiency standards for manufactured homes via both departments. The letter also calls for Biden to issue a new executive order on federal buildings and to quickly fill vacancies in understaffed agencies with top experts, especially at DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. In conjunction with the letter, ACEEE is publishing several papers today digging deeper into the actions.
BIOFUELS TO BOOST CLEAN FUEL STANDARD TO BIDEN: Some of the largest biofuels companies plan to ask Biden to impose a nationwide standard to reduce carbon emissions from transport fuels, Reuters reports, citing five sources familiar with the matter. The push reflects the industry’s “increasing concern about the future as Biden prepares measures to slash emissions that could upend traditional energy markets, and as the federal regulation that has underpinned growth in the biofuel market for more than a decade — the Renewable Fuel Standard — nears expiry in its current form,” Reuters reports.
CARBON DIOXIDE LEVELS CONTINUE DESPITE PANDEMIC: The industrial slowdown spurred by the coronavirus pandemic has not curbed the record levels of greenhouse gases, according to a new report today from the World Meteorological Organization. “[T]he reduction in anthropogenic emissions due to confinement measures will not have a discernible effect on global mean atmospheric CO2 in 2020 as this reduction will be smaller than, or at most, similar in size to the natural year-to-year variability of atmospheric CO2,” said WMO’s Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, released this morning.
“We breached the global threshold of 400 parts per million in 2015. And just four years later, we crossed 410 ppm,” said WMO Secretary-General Professor Petteri Taalas in a statement. “Such a rate of increase has never been seen in the history of our records. The lockdown-related fall in emissions is just a tiny blip on the long-term graph. We need a sustained flattening of the curve.”
The annual globally averaged level of carbon dioxide was about 410.5 parts per million in 2019 — up from 407.9 parts ppm in 2018 — according to the report. The increase in CO2 from 2018 to 2019 was larger than the increase seen from 2017 to 2018, and larger than the average over the last decade, according to the report. Emissions from combustion of fossil fuels and cement production, deforestation and other land-use change moved last year’s atmospheric CO2 to 148 percent of the pre-industrial level of 278 ppm.
According to the report, methane was 260 percent of pre-industrial levels in 2019. The increase from 2018 to 2019 was slightly lower than that observed from 2017 to 2018, but higher than the average over the last decade.
PEBBLE HIRES D.C. LOBBYISTS: Pebble Limited Partnership, the U.S. subsidiary of Northern Dynasty Minerals, hired BGR’s Haley Barbour and Loren Monroe “to provide strategic outreach and guidance regarding issues impacting” the company, according to a disclosure filing. The hire comes as the developers give one last push to get the Pebble Mine permitted, after both of Alaska’s Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, came out in opposition to the project and the Army Corps of Engineers warned in August it “could not be permitted” without substantial environmental mitigation. This week the developer submitted its plan to offset environmental damages to the Army Corps, though that plan has not been made public. Biden has said he would block the project. (H/t POLITICO Influence)
— “Charleston weighs wall as seas rise and storms strengthen,” via Associated Press.
— “Green is good for power traders chasing $430 billion market,” via Bloomberg.
— “Abu Dhabi approves ADNOC spending, unveils oil discovery to boost Murban futures plan,” via S&P Global Platts.
— “Some fracking sand was ‘revolutionary,’ or maybe it was just sand,” via Bloomberg Businessweek.
THAT’S ALL FOR ME!
