With help from Anthony Adragna, Kelsey Tamborrino, Annie Snider, Eric Wolff and Alex Guillén.
PROGRAMMING NOTE: Morning Energy will not publish on Friday June 18. We’ll be back on our normal schedule on Monday June 21.
— A federal judge blocked the Biden administration’s oil and gas lease pause that faced heated backlash from Republicans and industry groups.
— Progressives are threatening to jump ship on an infrastructure plan if it cuts out climate, human services and taxation requirements that are anathema to Republicans.
— President Joe Biden is meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin today, and Republicans aren’t letting go of Nord Stream 2.
HAPPY WEDNESDAY! I’m your host, Matthew Choi. Congrats to WRI’s Jillian Neuberger for knowing Gracie Lou Freebush represented New Jersey in “Miss Congeniality”. For today: What movie featured Julie Andrews singing publicly for the first time since her catastrophic 1997 surgery? 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: Bye Keystone XL, hello Line 3.
PAUSE THE PAUSE: The Biden administration’s pause on oil and gas leases got a major curveball Tuesday when a federal judge blocked the hold on grounds that it violated the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and the Mineral Leasing Act, Pro’s Alex Guillén and Ben Lefebvre report. Judge Terry Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, a Trump appointee, issued the order, arguing the administration offered no explanation for the pause and failed to receive public feedback beforehand. He mandated the administration carry through planned lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Cook Inlet.
It’s welcome news for Republicans and interest groups who decried the lease pause as an effective ban, with the Interior Department keeping mum on when the pause would get lifted. Louisiana was joined by 12 other red states in suing the administration over the pause. The American Petroleum Institute urged “the administration to move expeditiously to follow the court’s order.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and over 100 other chambers wrote to Biden demanding an end to the pause. Even members of Biden’s own party in fossil fuel-producing states voiced concerns over a permanent ban on new leases.
“This decision is a victory for the rule of law and American energy workers,” Senate Energy Committee Ranking Member John Barrasso said in a statement.
But House Natural Resources Chair Raúl Grijalva called it hypocrisy, pointing out that the Trump administration issued pauses on leases last year due to the pandemic and low oil prices. “Our economic and environmental future shouldn’t be subject to rulings based on industry-funded science or opportunistic complaints that we didn’t hear until President Biden was sworn into office,” he said in a statement.
The news also comes just before Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is set to defend the administration’s budget request for FY 2022 today — and she’s facing a number of Republicans who weren’t too keen on her nomination over concerns that she was hostile to fossil fuels on federal land. Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the only Republican member of the Appropriations subcommittee who voted to confirm her (Sens. Marco Rubio and Bill Hagerty didn’t vote).
The department is still conducting a review of the federal oil and gas leasing program, with a report due sometime early summer.
ON YOUR LEFT: A lot of attention has been focused on whether Biden will be able to woo the centrists in his party, but its left flank is now making it clear its votes for his infrastructure package aren’t a given, as Burgess Everett, Sarah Ferris and Marianne Levine report.
A bipartisan group of senators is negotiating a deal after talks led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Biden fizzled out last week. But a growing number of Democrats are insisting on a party-line measure with climate and other progressive priorities baked in, as they grow skeptical that Republicans are negotiating in good faith.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the emerging bipartisan deal a “good start,” but said it “doesn’t do enough” on climate change, and he acknowledged many in his conference wouldn’t support it without some reassurance. “There are large numbers of people in our caucus — and I sympathize with this — who will not vote for a bipartisan bill unless they’re quite certain what’s going to be in reconciliation,” he added at a press conference.
But the White House is privately reassuring Republicans a bipartisan negotiation is still on the table, Pro’s Sam Mintz and Tanya Snider report.
ALSO HAPPENING TODAY: The House Oversight Environment Subcommittee today convenes a hearing on what Chair Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) hopes will be a step toward convincing fossil fuel-reliant communities that climate change investments can reinvent their economies.
“I want to make the case long-term about how we have a climate agenda that the people of West Virginia, that people in places, like Kentucky, can get excited about,” Khanna told ME. “The burden is on us as political leaders to say, ‘here is why this is a good thing,’ and we have to make the sale and we have to tailor policies so that they embrace it.” The hearing kicks off at 1 p.m.
DRINK UP: The House Energy and Commerce Environment Subcommittee will mark up a series of drinking water bills this morning that could become part of a package the House would take to conference with the Senate’s water infrastructure bill (S. 914 (117)).
The House measures include Chair Paul Tonko’s AQUA Act (H.R. 3291 (117)) to invest $105 billion in the drinking water State Revolving Fund, as well as fund lead removal efforts and PFAS contamination. Other bills include the PFAS Action Act of 2021 (H.R. 2467 (117)) and a bipartisan bill to establish low-income water assistance programs (H.R. 3293 (117)).
START YOUR eRINS: A bipartisan group of six senators called on EPA Administrator Michael Regan this week to address “languishing” applications for renewable electricity producers to participate in the Renewable Fuel Standard program. The senators, led by Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), specifically call for biogas, biomass and waste-to-energy electricity producers to be included in the program.
NOM WATCH: Schumer filed cloture on Tommy Beaudreau to be Interior deputy, per Anthony Adragna.
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS PRESIDENT BIDEN?: In Geneva, meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Today is the day of their much-anticipated summit, and Republicans aren’t happy that Biden is giving an adversary face time. House E&C Republicans also aren’t letting go of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline fracas, emailing reporters some snarky questions Tuesday about letting the project be completed while blocking pipelines at home.
Biden doesn’t plan to go easy on the Russian leader, POLITICO’s Anita Kumar reports, and has been currying support among European allies in the days preceding (he held summits with NATO and EU leaders in Brussels just before). And he’s no novice to confronting leaders he views as dictators — just check out the kicker on Anita’s story.
Speaking of the EU meeting, the United States and Europe may agree on the urgency of climate action, but what that actually looks like is a different story. U.S. Pro’s Zack Colman and POLITICO Europe’s Karl Mathiesen had a chat breaking down the fault lines on carbon border taxes, sustainable investments and coal.
From Brussels: “Tai: Don’t rule out retaliation on carbon border levy,” and “U.S. invites EU to join forces against China on steel” by POLITICO’s Jakob Hanek Vela.
EPA PREVIEWS MORE TAILPIPE RULES: EPA air officials said Tuesday they’re in the early stages of additional regulations related to conventional and greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes. The agency says it is on track to propose new federal light-duty standards sometime next month to replace the Trump rollback, but the Biden administration also is looking even further forward.
Alejandra Nunez, the deputy assistant administrator for mobile sources in the air office, told a virtual gathering of transportation advisers on Tuesday that post-2026 standards are “a priority for us” and that a firmer timeline could come “in the next few months.”
Keep on truckin’: Acting EPA air chief Joe Goffman also promised action on the long-delayed truck nitrogen oxide rule, formally known as the Cleaner Trucks Initiative, which would strengthen nitrogen oxide emissions limits. Administrator Michael Regan is working with the air office on a strategy for the heavy-duty trucking sector, to debut in the “not-too-distant future,” Goffman said.
DOE READY TO FUND GIGAFACTORIES: DOE is reviewing loan applications for as many as five new Gigafactory battery production plants, as well as facilities to domestically produce necessary minerals, loan chief Jigar Shah said Tuesday at a conference organized by the American Council on Renewable Energy.
The agency had determined that it could use authorizations from the Advanced Vehicle Manufacturing Program, the largest part of DOE’s $43 billion loan program, to support the U.S. electric vehicle supply chain, Shah said. The U.S. trails China in battery production capacity, and Biden wants to bring that manufacturing home.
RENDER UNTO CESER: Speaking with the Senate Energy Committee on Tuesday, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm pushed for Biden’s request to give responsibility over the country’s emergency crude oil stockpile to her department’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response, which played a major role responding to the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack. The move is included in Biden’s $46.2 billion budget request for DOE for FY 2022. Kelsey Tamborrino has more for Pros.
Granholm also batted down the possibility of naming a political appointee to head CESER. “Since CESER was established about half of its existence has been without leadership because it’s been a political appointee,” Granholm said. “The question is, this is an emergency operation sort of akin to an emergency response entity that is nonpolitical. It is not partisan.”
Bipartisan lawmakers previously supported preserving the assistant secretary role at CESER as it had been under the Trump administration. The department named Puesh Kumar to serve as acting principal deputy assistant secretary for CESER in April.
The secretary was also pressed on why DOE’s budget proposal did not include new funding for a national uranium reserve. Instead, Granholm said that funding had already been appropriated for last year and was carrying over, and she said the department would soon issue a request for information regarding establishing a reserve.
HEADING TO THE BORDER: Biden announced Tuesday his intent to nominate former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to be U.S. ambassador to Mexico. If he’s confirmed, that would put someone with deep experience with Western water politics and the Colorado River in the position at a time when seven Western states are negotiating with Mexico over new water-sharing guidelines — all amid a drought that is expected to trigger the first-ever mandatory cutbacks in water deliveries next year. Salazar was governor of Colorado when the current guidelines were negotiated and oversaw a major study on the gap between supply and demand on the river during his time at the helm of Interior.
ANY WAY THE WIND BLOWS: Fresh off of a record-breaking year in 2020, the U.S. wind industry saw one of its strongest first quarter this year, according to new analysis from S&P Global Market Intelligence. The U.S. added 3,334 megawatts of wind power capacity in the first quarter of 2021, marking a 75 percent jump from the same period in 2020 and bringing the country’s cumulative wind power capacity to 124,721 MW.
— “USDA announces $700M in Covid-19 aid for biofuels producers,” via POLITICO.
— “Big Oil Must Work Harder to Slash Africa Emissions, WoodMac Says,” via Bloomberg.
— “Investors sue SEC over Trump-era rule restricting shareholder votes,” via POLITICO.
THAT’S ALL FOR ME!
