With help from Anthony Adragna, Ryan Heath, Ben Lefebvre and Daniel Lippman
Editor’s Note: This edition of Morning Energy is published weekdays at 10 a.m. POLITICO Pro Energy subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter each morning at 6 a.m. Learn more about POLITICO Pro’s comprehensive policy intelligence coverage, policy tools and services at politicopro.com.
— The United Nations General Assembly holds a climate summit today from New York City, where countries are expected to raise commitments that go beyond the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
— The building that will be home to the Bureau of Land Management’s new headquarters in Colorado also houses corporate offices for oil and gas companies.
— Senate appropriators will take action this week on an Interior-Environment spending bill for fiscal 2020.
WELCOME TO MONDAY! I’m your host, Kelsey Tamborrino. The National Association of Manufacturers’ Rachel Jones gets the trivia win for identifying Roslynn Carter — the first first lady to keep her own office in the East Wing of the White House. For today: What letters of the alphabet are not represented by streets in Washington, D.C.? Send your tips, energy gossip and comments to ktamborrino@politico.com.
ON THE WORLD’S STAGE: World leaders are in New York City today for the U.N. General Assembly’s climate summit, where Secretary-General António Guterres has said he wants “concrete commitments” on how countries will tackle greenhouse gas emissions during the next decade in order to better align policies under the Paris climate agreement, POLITICO Europe’s Kalina Oroschakoff reports. “I expect that there will be announcements of a number of meaningful plans on dramatically reducing emissions during the next decade and on reaching carbon neutrality by 2050,” Guterres said last week.
Of course, as POLITICO’s Anthony Adragna and Ryan Heath report, the larger context here is that no one — neither the European or Asian governments that will attend today, nor the U.S. that won’t — is cutting emissions fast enough to address many scientists’ warnings of looming catastrophe in the coming decades. By announcing his decision to pull out of the Paris pact, President Donald Trump slowed the diplomatic and policy momentum behind a coordinated global response — and the U.S. will remain the spoiler at the global confab this week.
“When Donald Trump takes the thumping he’s going to get — and so richly deserves — it’s going to be a signal that the U.S. is prepared to act,” said Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat who made climate change the centerpiece of his recently ended presidential campaign. “I remain confident that we’re going to be really fully engaged as a nation in 2021. I feel good about that.”
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who had urged Trump to remain in the Paris agreement, nevertheless argued that the diplomatic fallout to the U.S. was minimal given the size of its economy and geopolitical importance. “So far, it looks to me like the United States is winning the battle if you will,” he told POLITICO. “Nobody wants to be isolated from the United States.”
What to watch: Even so, Trump isn’t the only player able to drive the climate policy agenda in the U.S. Hundreds of mayors, more than a dozen states and the biggest American philanthropists are throwing their weight behind activist laws, pollution targets and investments. Today’s summit and its 10 days of related official events will likely drive a global conversation about climate, Anthony and Ryan report.
Shut it down: Several environmental groups, including Extinction Rebellion DC, 350 DC and Friends of the Earth Action, will attempt to “shut down D.C.” this morning in a coordinated effort to call for sweeping action on climate change. As part of the effort, activists will block entry points throughout the city this morning.
BLM, MEET THE NEW NEIGHBORS: The Interior Department late Friday announced it has leased office space for the new BLM headquarters in Grand Junction, Colo. The move to 760 Horizon Drive “is another step in providing better service to the American people and our neighbors in the West,” said Interior Secretary David Bernhardt in a press release.
But a Google Maps search and a few phone calls show that the new neighbors are literally oil and gas companies; Chevron and Laramie Energy have their regional corporate offices in the same four-story building as BLM’s new digs. Marathon Oil has its regional office almost literally around the corner. Critics of the administration have taken note: “You can’t get physically into bed with industry, but looks like Bernhardt did the next best thing by moving BLM right next door to them,” Western Values Project Deputy Director Jayson O’Neill told ME.
Over the weekend, Bernhardt spoke at Club 20, a gathering of local politicians and business people in Colorado’s Western Slope region, where he told The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel that he stood by the location, and said the General Services Administration handled the office space leasing. Bernhardt said GSA regulations would not allow them to rule out a location because of another tenant. “From my perspective [GSA] followed the rules,” Bernhardt told the newspaper. “They went through a process and, certainly, GSA does the real estate piece. It’s a great piece of property. I think it’s a really nice building. From my perspective, that is not going to be the issue.”
Making the move? Meanwhile, BLM has said it will advertise 19 positions, all currently vacant, to be located in the new headquarters. So far only six have reached the USA Jobs website, including one for a legislative affairs specialist responsible for “coordinating and conducting briefings for Members of Congress and their staff on BLM issues.” BLM spokesperson Greg Fuhs told ME that employees whose positions are moving out west have not yet been given a deadline as to whether they will follow, “but we are continuing conversations with individuals as they consider their options.”
HAPPENING THIS WEEK: Senate appropriators will mark up four additional fiscal 2020 spending bills this week, including Interior-Environment, Pro’s Caitlin Emma reports. The spending panel will mark up the measures in subcommittee on Tuesday and the full Appropriations Committee is scheduled to approve all four bills on Thursday.
REPORT: SCHUMER THREATENS TO BLOCK BILLS OVER FERC: E&E News reports that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has threatened to block several bills out of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee from reaching the floor if Republicans move ahead with a FERC nominee without a Democratic pairing.
Recall: The president is expected to soon tap FERC general counsel James Danly to fill an open spot on the commission, but he is not likely to be paired with a Democrat in the confirmation process, as has been tradition, Pro’s Gavin Bade and Eric Wolff reported. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), ranking member on ENR, previously called not pairing the FERC nominees “wrong.”
By the way: ENR is expected to mark up 21 bills on Wednesday, ranging from topics like energy efficiency and electric grid security to energy storage, Anthony reports.
HOUSE DEMS STEP INTO ANTITRUST FRAY: House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) demanded answers over the Justice Department’s antitrust probe into the voluntary emissions deal struck by California and four automakers, Pro’s Alex Guillén reports. “We are concerned the Department’s investigation is no more than a pretextual attack by the Trump Administration on the four automakers’ legitimate use of the governmental process,” they wrote in a letter. DOJ antitrust chief Makan Delrahim previously rejected Senate Democrats’ allegations of political motives for his investigation.
COURT TO WEIGH IN WITHOUT ORAL ARGUMENTS: A federal court on Friday said it would decide what to do about EPA’s 2018 rule that declared upwind states have done enough to curb their ozone-forming pollution — known as the “CSAPR close-out” — without hearing oral arguments, Alex reports. Oral arguments had been scheduled for Friday, but a ruling in a separate but related case the week prior over a 2016 ozone regulation left all sides scrambling to figure out how it affects the close-out challenge.
It is not clear how or when the court will act, Alex reports. In a notice to the parties, the three-judge panel wrote that it “will dispose of the petitions for review without oral argument” based on the briefs already filed.
HOLD UP: Environmental groups Friday asked that their legal challenges to EPA’s Affordable Clean Energy rule be put on hold until the agency completes a related rulemaking that could exempt many coal plants from a key permitting program, Alex also reports.
FALLING SHORT: Carbon prices are too low to accelerate the clean energy transition, according to a new report today from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation that looked at progress of Mission Innovation — a multinational effort to develop clean technology. Moreover, the report found, seven MI countries continue to subsidize fossil fuel consumption, and after declining from 2012 to 2016, fossil fuel subsidies increased in 2017 and 2018.
— Marcella Burke has been named a partner at King and Spalding. She was previously senior counselor to Assistant Secretary of Land and Mineral Management in Interior and deputy solicitor of the energy and mineral resources division. She is also an EPA alum.
— “Who’s speaking at the U.N. climate summit? Several champions of coal,” via The New York Times.
— “Countries must triple climate emissions targets to limit global heating to 2C,” via The Guardian.
— “Bill Weld: ‘I wouldn’t take money from the oil and gas companies,'” via The Hill.
— “Fracking ban, embraced by some Democratic hopefuls, could hit economy,” via The Wall Street Journal.
— “Inside the Trump administration’s chaotic dismantling of the federal land agency,” via ProPublica.
THAT’S ALL FOR ME!
