With help from Anthony Adragna and Kelsey Tamborrino.
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— The Biden administration’s efforts to marry environmental justice and clean water access will depend a lot on Radhika Fox, who’s currently laying the groundwork at EPA.
— A bipartisan cohort of lawmakers head to the White House today to discuss infrastructure, and its an open question on whether the administration’s proposal can win the support of the entire Democratic caucus.
— The White House breathes a sigh of relief after two South Korean battery makers settle their intellectual property dispute — which will allow new factory in Georgia to be built.
HAPPY MONDAY! I’m your host, Matthew Choi. Congratulations to Sarah Vilms of Squire Patton Boggs for knowing Queen Victoria had nine children. For today’s trivia: Elle Woods grew up in Bel Air across the street from whom? 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: Is Biden building the grid of the future?
WATER YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT?: Democrats are seeking to advance environmental justice and update the nation’s waterworks as cornerstones of their infrastructure policy, and Radhika Fox is leading the Biden administration in merging the two together at the EPA.
Fox spoke with Pros’ Annie Snider about her priorities, including Biden’s call that 40 percent of the benefits of the spending on things like clean drinking water infrastructure go to serve disadvantaged communities. The plans are still being formed, Fox said, but the goals are clear: “How do we target investments to those communities who are disproportionately impacted? How do we ensure that we are really meaningfully engaging communities as we develop important rules? That engagement piece is incredibly important.”
Fox is also looking for close cooperation with states to deploy the funds under the State Revolving Funds, and she indicated she’d step gingerly into the political minefield around the Waters of the U.S. rule, saying EPA would “be measured in how we move forward.” That rule determines which waterways fall under federal regulation, and Fox said EPA is reviewing the Trump version that sharply reduced the scope of the Obama one.
And one other thing Fox was circumspect about: whether she might be bumped to be assistant administrator. “I am loving the job that I’m in,” she said. Read more from the Q&A here.
NOW COMES THE TRICKY PART: President Joe Biden will convene a bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers today at the White House as Democrats begin in earnest to work on infrastructure legislation chocked full of climate change provisions. Sweeping frameworks and proposals abound on paper — whether it’s Biden’s “American Jobs Plan,” the Energy and Commerce Committee’s CLEAN Future Act H.R. 1512 (117), or a bill ramping up a host of green tax provisions H.R. 848 (117).
The Administration drew some blowback from moderate Republicans who chafed at the claim they hadn’t sought to engage with the White House on the COVID-19 package that passed with only Democratic votes. And now the White House would surely love some support from GOP moderates on infrastructure — even if its real priority is ensuring it can win the support of the whole Democratic conference amid razor-thin margins in the House and Senate. It’s sure to be a multi-month slog.
Nuts and bolts: The exact process remains murky even at this stage. Perennial swing vote Sen. Joe Manchin wrote in an op-ed last week that he did not “believe budget reconciliation should replace regular order in the Senate,” though most on and off the Hill still think that’s the likeliest way the eventual bill moves. House committees will consider and advance their portions of the package in the coming weeks ahead of floor consideration where Democrats can lose only a handful of votes.
Moving on up: E&C holds a hearing Thursday on environmental justice provisions within the CLEAN Future Act, and it previously held legislative hearings on another infrastructure proposal H.R. 1848 (117) with significant climate change sections. House Transportation Chair Peter DeFazio has pledged to move his surface transportation package out of committee by the third week of May, while Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she wants the House to pass the ultimate package before July 4. T&I holds its members’ day on Wednesday where members can discuss local priorities for the package.
Pro’s Megan Cassella goes deeper into Democrats’ balancing act as they determines what can pass reconciliation’s strict rules while also maintaining the requisite party discipline.
HOUSE E&C GOP REVEAL KEYSTONE FORUM SPEAKERS: Republicans of the House Energy and Commerce Committee unveiled the participants in their Tuesday forum on the Keystone XL Pipeline: Scott Moe, premier of Saskatchewan; Austin Knudsen, attorney general of Montana; and John Stoody, vice president of government and public relations for the Association of Oil Pipe Lines.
BIDEN’S BUDGET BONANZA: In case you missed it, the White House released its “skinny” budget proposal on Friday, outlining the administration’s spending priorities for the next fiscal year.
The proposal includes a massive boost for the administration’s climate and environment efforts across agencies. The Departments of Transportation, Energy, Interior, Agriculture, Homeland Security and Housing and Urban Development, as well as EPA, would all get increased funding specifically targeted at climate and environmental programs. Zack Colman goes into the details of the cross-agency climate funding boost, which ranges from bolstering deployment of clean energy to protecting housing from natural disasters brought on by climate change.
Overall, it clocks it at $796 billion for non-defense programs and another $753 billion for national defense programs. That’s a 16 percent increase for domestic programs from the current fiscal year. Caitlin Emma breaks it down for Pros.
Jennifer Scholtes and Caitlin have the top 12 takeaways from the proposal for Pros here.
INTERIOR REVOKES TRUMP OPINION ON OFFSHORE WIND: The Biden administration withdrew a Trump-era legal opinion on Friday that made it more difficult to permit offshore wind projects in order to prevent interference with commercial fishing. When considering whether to permit an offshore wind farm, the Trump opinion signed by former Solicitor Daniel Jorjani called for a cautious approach “to prevent interference with reasonable uses in a way that errs on the side of less interference rather than more interference.”
In a new replacement opinion, Biden’s principal deputy solicitor (and newly tapped solicitor nominee) Robert Anderson said the Trump interpretation took too narrow an approach to “prevention of interference,” failing to note the other objectives the secretary must consider. It added that the secretary “retains wide discretion to determine the appropriate balance between two or more goals that conflict or are otherwise in tension.”
The Trump legal opinion “improperly constrained the Secretary’s discretion to consider the full range of benefits and impacts that might result from uses of the Outer Continental Shelf,” an Interior spokesperson said in a statement Friday. “The Office has issued a new opinion that highlights the importance of striking a rational balance between multiple, potentially competing factors when making a decision on offshore renewable energy activities.” The new legal opinion comes as the Biden administration set a goal to add 30 gigawatts of offshore wind generation to U.S. coastal waters by 2030.
HOT GRID SUMMER: Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm predicts to have progress on Biden’s infrastructure by Memorial Day, with the goal of getting it out the door by the summer. Speaking with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, Granholm said Biden “wants to give it the time necessary to see if he can achieve that bipartisan support”, but pointed out “you can get a bipartisan solution on reconciliation, too.” More from ABC News.
NEW ENERGY NOM: Ali Nouri was nominated for assistant secretary of Energy for congressional and intergovernmental affairs, the White House announced Friday. Nouri was formerly president of the Federation of American Scientists as well as a Senate adviser on energy and the environment. He was also an adviser to then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
“Not only is Ali a tested consensus-builder, he’s a scientist who understands our climate challenges backwards and forwards,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. “He embodies the dynamic expertise and passion that we need to bring everyone on board the clean energy revolution—and if confirmed, he’ll play a huge role in helping this Administration tackle the climate crisis and achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.”
DAPL FLOWS ON … FOR NOW: The Biden administration said Friday it doesn’t plan to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline from operating while it undergoes a new environmental review. That leaves Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to decide on whether to shut down the pipeline’s operations during the review — a ruling that could come as soon as late this month.
The pipeline’s operator has until next Monday to update its filings with the latest estimates of the economic consequences of closing the pipeline — a key element in Boasberg’s decision making. The Native American tribes suing to stop the pipeline will then have until April 23 to respond to the operator. Afterward, Boasberg said he will issue his ruling. Read more from Alex Guillén and Ben Lefebvre.
CHAEBOL BATTERY DRAMA: South Korean battery manufacturers SK Innovation and LG reached a deal that would allow SK to complete its Georgia factory, allowing the Biden administration to wash its hands of the sticky intellectual property affair.
Without a deal, the Biden administration would have been forced to decide whether to overturn an International Trade Commission decision that said SK had wrongfully used LG’s intellectual property — a decision that could have shut down the factory, costing thousands of jobs in a crucial swing state and threatened supply of batteries for new EVs. Now the administration doesn’t have to pick a lesser of two evils.
“We need a strong, diversified and resilient U.S.-based electric vehicle battery supply chain, so we can supply the growing global demand for these vehicles and components — creating good-paying jobs here at home, and laying the groundwork for the jobs of tomorrow,” Biden said Sunday. “Today’s settlement is a positive step in that direction, which will bring some welcome relief to workers in Georgia and new opportunity for workers across the country.” Gavin Bade has more for Pros.
IRAN WATCH: Negotiators on the future of the Iran nuclear deal are coming back to the table this week after taking a break back to their home capitals for the weekend. The Biden administration said it wouldn’t lift all the economic sanctions on Iran by the Trump administration — the base requirement from Tehran to move forward with returning to compliance.
The road ahead is going to be a rocky one for Biden. The agreement continues to face stiff criticism both domestically and abroad, from the left and the right. But POLITICO’s Nahal Toosi reports that Democratic Sens. Chris Murphy and Tim Kaine are circulating a letter that “specifically supports a compliance [for] compliance return to the JCPOA and also urgently addressing other regional security issues.” Read more from Nahal here.
Related: South Korean premier in Iran for talks over frozen oil funds, from Bloomberg.
MEANWHILE IN IRAN: Iranian officials confirmed that there was an “incident” at a nuclear plant in Natanz. The country’s leadership blamed Israel for the attack and described the incident as an act of “nuclear terrorism.”
— Environmental counsel and policy expert Logan Hollers is joining Invariant. He was previously policy adviser and counsel to Sen. Jeff Merkley focusing on his environment, agriculture and transportation and infrastructure portfolio.
— Nick Goodwin is now district director and comms director for Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.). He most recently was comms director for the Interior Department. (H/t Playbook)
— “NOAA: New ‘average’ hurricane season has more storms,” via POLITICO.
— “John Topping, 77, Dies; Early Advocate for Climate Action,” via The New York Times.
— “How a shocking environmental disaster was uncovered off the California coast after 70 years,” via CBS News.
— “The bumps ahead for Joe Biden’s plan to decarbonise America,” via The Economist.
— “Joe Biden’s climate gamble,” via The Economist.
— “U.S. Justice Department seeks to modify oversight for Caribbean refinery,” via Reuters.
THAT’S ALL FOR ME!
