Energy

FERC widens California grid operator’s power contracting authority


With help from Gavin Bade

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FERC weighs in on a proposal from a California grid operator, expanding the operator’s power authority.

Automakers in the midst of an antitrust probe will meet with the Justice Department this week, according to The Wall Street Journal.

2020 Democratic candidates for president are still rolling out environmental plans, most recently targeting public lands and the influence of lobbyists.

WELCOME TO MONDAY! I’m your host, Kelsey Tamborrino. Faegre Baker Daniels’ Brandon Kirkham gets the trivia win — Abraham Lincoln is said to be the only former president who was a licensed bartender. For today: Which chief justice has presided over the most swearing-ins of a president? Send your tips, energy gossip and comments to ktamborrino@politico.com.

FERC WIDENS CALIFORNIA GRID OPERATOR’S POWER AUTHORITY: FERC late Friday approved a proposal from the California grid operator that gives it more authority to contract for power generation outside of its electricity markets when the operator feels reliability may be threatened by retiring natural gas plants and increasing renewable energy.

The 2-1 decision expands the California ISO’s ability to set so-called Reliability Must Run contracts, allowing the grid operator to set ratepayer-funded contracts for power, usually natural gas plants, “to address any reliability need” the grid operator perceives.

CAISO put forth its proposal, which alters the process for identifying, dispatching and compensating RMR plants, to deal with the retirement of natural gas plants in its capacity market, which are being pushed offline by an influx of cheap renewable energy and local opposition to fossil fuel plants.

The Republican FERC majority dismissed objections from California regulators, utilities and some generators who said CAISO’s RMR authority would be too broad and its market impacts were not adequately addressed. Democrat Commissioner Richard Glick dissented, saying FERC was giving CAISO unprecedented authority to “end-run around the Commission-approved market structures” to keep gas plants online.

Also on Friday, FERC regulators released statements outlining their positions on capacity auction results in New England last year, which FERC allowed to take effect because a recusal from Glick deprived the commission of a voting quorum. FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee and Bernard McNamee said in a joint statement that they would have dismissed challenges to the auction results had they been able to vote on the issues, including one raised by offshore wind developer Vineyard Wind.

REPORT: CARMAKERS, DOJ TO MEET: Car makers who joined with California will meet with the Justice Department this week amid a federal antitrust probe into their emissions deal with the state, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The meetings will mark the “the first substantive discussions between the two sides” since the DOJ first sought information on the agreement between Ford, Volkswagen, BMW and Honda and the California Air Resources Board, the Journal reports. As part of their deal with California, the four carmakers agreed to reduce their fleetwide emissions by 3.7 percent per year for model years 2022 to 2026.

The meeting comes as DOJ comes under fire for the antitrust probe. Democrats on the Hill have questioned whether the probe is driven by political motivations and have demanded documents on the investigation.

ON THE MOVE: P. Daniel Smith will leave his position as acting director of the National Park Service and will be replaced by David Vela, E&E News reports. Vela, a former superintendent of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, was initially tapped to run the parks service in August 2018, but his nomination lapsed in the Senate after clearing the Energy Committee.

GREENS TO PROTEST PENDLEY: The environmental group Clean Water Fund will mark William Perry Pendley’s 90 days as acting secretary of Bureau of Land Management today with “a real estate sign spinning visibility event” outside of Interior in a bid to draw attention to the department’s “liquidation of our public lands.”

FUNDING CAN KICKED: The president on Friday evening attached his signature to a short-term spending bill, averting a government shutdown just as discretionary funding for the federal government neared its midnight deadline tonight. The measure extends current funding levels and programs through Nov. 21, POLITICO’s Caitlin Emma reports.

The continuing resolution, H.R. 4378 (116), gives lawmakers more time for bicameral negotiations on fiscal 2020 spending bills. But as Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) warned last week agreement on those bills would still require Congress and the White House to reach an agreement on border security. Lawmakers are currently out of town for a two-week congressional recess.

INSIDE THE EARLY DAYS OF MARKEY’S REELECTION BID: Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey “has come out breathing fire in the early days of his re election bid” against Rep. Joe Kennedy, POLITICO’s Stephanie Murray reports. The Green New Deal co-author, who has already garnered support from environmental groups like the Sierra Club, is seemingly embracing an underdog role, Stephanie writes, “campaigning more like a scrappy long shot than an incumbent at the tail end of a long congressional career.”

That includes putting climate change front-and-center in his Senate campaign. On the morning of Kennedy’s campaign launch, Markey called on Kennedy and his two lesser-known rivals, businessman Steve Pemberton and attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, to join him in a climate change debate. While Liss-Riordan and Pemberton accepted the debate invitation, Kennedy did not, instead privately suggesting the campaigns meet to discuss the framework for future debates.

“Three of the candidates have AGREED to correct the mistake of the national party by holding a stand-alone climate debate first and soon. The proposal reflects the urgency of the climate crisis,” Markey campaign manager John Walsh wrote in response to Kennedy’s team, according to emails obtained by POLITICO. “Ed, Shannon, and Steve have agreed to a climate debate . … Does Congressman Kennedy agree to join us, or do you continue to reject the principle and urgency of a stand-alone climate debate to be held first?”

Last week, Markey introduced legislation, S. 2565 (116), that would establish a Global Climate Change Resilience Strategy and would authorize a humanitarian program for people who have been displaced by environmental disasters. “We cannot allow climate-displaced persons to fall through the cracks in our system of humanitarian protections simply because they do not meet the definition of refugee,” he said in a statement on the legislation.

WHAT’S THE PLAN? Montana Gov. Steve Bullock unveiled a public lands plan Friday that would make public lands carbon neutral by 2030. As part of Bullock’s plan, he would undo the Trump administration’s moves on national monuments and would fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Bullock’s plan also would direct the BLM to change course on drilling and would reverse direction that BLM offices “issue leases every quarter, regardless of other demands on the agency.” And it would direct the Interior and Agriculture departments to achieve net-zero emissions on public lands by 2030.

Warren looks at lobbying: Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren also unveiled a new plan Friday focused on corporate lobbying’s influence on the Hill. The plan would reinstate and modernize the Office of Technology Assessment — a nonpartisan congressional office defunded in the 1990s — and would increase salaries for congressional staffers.

In a Medium post describing her plan, Warren writes that if the OTA had survived, “it would have provided Congress with a vital resource to counter the disinformation peddled by the fossil fuel industry and climate change deniers.” She argues that had the OTA stuck around “more independent information on the threat of greenhouse gas emissions could have pushed Congress to take decisive action decades ago,” since the office also published “objective research” on climate change.

In case you missed it: Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer also unveiled an international climate action plan on Friday. Pro’s Gavin Bade writes: “Steyer’s plan calls for the U.S. to rejoin the Paris climate accord and to meet the Obama administration’s pledge to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 26-28 percent of 2005 levels by 2025 — and increasing that cut to 40 percent by 2030 under the next round of international commitments.”

NEWSOM VETOS ‘TRUMP INSURANCE’ BILL: California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed legislation Friday that aimed to protect California against the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks, Pro California’s Debra Kahn reports. Advertised as “Trump insurance” by its supporters, the bill would have enshrined in the state Obama-era versions of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act. The measure was opposed by water agencies over language that would preserve current versions of water-pumping rules in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to protect endangered fish against expected Trump rollbacks.

While state lawmakers passed the bill with healthy margins in both houses, Newsom immediately came out against it. The governor cited water agencies’ argument that the bill would interfere with ongoing negotiations over water-sharing agreements that would replace mandatory flow requirements on Delta tributaries that state regulators imposed last year, Debra writes.

— “The gas tycoon and the vice president’s son: The story of Hunter Biden’s foray into Ukraine,” via The Washington Post.

— “The Interior secretary wants to enlarge a dam. An old lobbying client would benefit,” The New York Times.

— “Path shifts for advanced nuclear legislation in the House,” via Morning Consult.

— “Climate movement now ‘too loud to handle’ for Trump and critics, Greta Thunberg says,” via Reuters.

— “Coal is piling up in Europe as utilities prefer natural gas,” via Bloomberg.

THAT’S ALL FOR ME!



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