Energy

It's electric


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As the president-elect commits to building out electric vehicle infrastructure, a new lobby group launched this morning will push for 100 percent electric vehicle sales by 2030.

President Donald Trump left the Paris climate agreement. Joe Biden, not yet a sitting leader, can’t attend next month’s virtual climate summit. That leaves the U.S. in limbo as world leaders meet to confer on climate commitments.

The Interior Department opened a call for nominations on which parts of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge it should put up for auction in a potential oil and gas lease sale.

WELCOME TO TUESDAY! I’m your host, Kelsey Tamborrino. The trivia win goes to Mike Sewell of TECO Energy, who correctly identified the two U.S. capital cities, Austin and Boston, that rhyme. Honorable mentions that also came through your host’s inbox: Boise and Tallahassee, Olympia and Columbia, and Annapolis and Indianapolis. For today: Which U.S. national park is the largest? Send your tips and trivia answers to [email protected].

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: Environmentalists’ big, green Treasury dream

IT’S ELECTRIC: A coalition of utilities, electric vehicle makers and mineral producers have formed a new association to push for 100 percent electric vehicle sales by 2030, Pro’s Anthony Adragna reports this morning. The group, dubbed the Zero Emission Transportation Association, will seek policies to help the growing sector, such as point-of-sale consumer incentives to buy electric vehicles, investments in federal infrastructure and strengthened emissions performance standards. The aim is for all light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicle sales to be entirely electric by 2030.

“We can either invest in this sector and compete and win, or we’re ceding that leadership to other foreign, commercial interests,” said Joe Britton, the group’s executive director. “We’ll be able to show we represent job creators in every state of the country.”

Members of the group include major utilities like Pacific Gas and Electric, Duke Energy, Vistra, Southern Company and Con Edison, as well as auto giants Tesla, Lordstown Motor Co. and Uber, though none of the major legacy automakers are involved. Producers of charging infrastructure like ChargePoint, EVgo and Volta are also members, as are mineral producers like Albemarle, Ioneer and Piedmont Lithium.

The launch of the new group comes as President-elect Joe Biden met Monday with union representatives and the heads of major businesses to discuss how they can work together on an economic recovery. After the meeting, Biden said the officials — which included General Motors CEO Mary Barra and Rory Gamble, president of the United Auto Workers — discussed the “need to own the electric vehicle market.”

“We talked about climate a lot, building 550,000 charging stations, creating over 1 million good-paying, union jobs here at home,” Biden said.

GRIJALVA BACKS HAALAND FOR INTERIOR: House Natural Resources Chair Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) backed New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland for Interior secretary in a new letter to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. In the letter shared with ME, Grijalva thanked CHC members for their recommendations to Biden regarding Grijalva’s own nomination as Interior secretary, but declined to seek the position. Instead, Grijalva wrote that he felt “most useful” in his current position atop the Natural Resources Committee.

Grijalva said Haaland is the “best person” to serve as the head of Interior. “It is well past time that an Indigenous person brings history full circle at the Department of Interior,” he wrote. “As her colleague on the Natural Resources Committee, I have seen first-hand the passion and dedication she puts into these issues at the forefront of the Interior Department from tackling the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women to crafting thoughtful solutions to combating the climate crisis using America’s public lands.” Haaland is thought to be among the leading contenders for the Interior job.

Not alone: A group of Native American organizations affiliated with the Indigenous Environmental Network sent a letter to Biden also backing Haaland for Interior secretary. “There is a unique opportunity at this time to have a highly competent person take the reins at the Department of Interior that understands all of its dynamics and does not have to be educated on the depth of their meaning,” the letter said.

During a Reuters event this week, Haaland declined to say whether she’s been vetted for DOI but said the federal government should prioritize expanding renewable energy projects on public land.

GREENS URGE BIDEN NOT TO PICK MONIZ: Meanwhile, a slew of environmental groups — including the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, Friends of the Earth U.S. and Climate Hawks Vote — want to make sure Ernest Moniz “holds no public or private role, whether formal or informal” in Biden’s transition team, Cabinet or administration. They write that Moniz, who is being floated for Energy secretary, is an “unrepentant founding father of the fracking industry” and call his approach “incompatible with a stable climate.”

U.S. IN CLIMATE LIMBO: The U.S. government will be missing when national leaders gather online Dec. 12 for a global climate summit — and the timing couldn’t be more inconvenient, Pro’s Zack Colman, Ryan Heath, Karl Mathisen and Kalina Oroschakoff report. Leaders are eager to work with the incoming Biden administration, which is promising the most ambitious climate change policies of any incoming American administration.

With national government invitations restricted to sitting leaders willing to present new climate commitments, summit organizers plan to reserve several slots for local and state government and nonprofit speakers, allowing them to include Democratic representatives aligned with Biden.

Two British officials told POLITICO that former Secretary of State John Kerry discussed speakers with Alok Sharma, the British minister in charge of the Dec. 12 summit. That list of possible U.S. speakers includes: Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, and Energy Innovation CEO Hal Harvey. A decision is expected later this week.

The timing of the summit puts Biden in the position of having to gather global leaders again next year to show U.S. commitment after Trump obliterated trust in America by ditching the Paris accord, the four report. That could come in the form of a global summit within Biden’s first 100 days in office, or by placing climate change at the top of the agenda of G-7 and G-20 summits.

Related: If Biden campaign’s policies were fully implemented with the support of Congress, they could reduce emissions by between 38 percent-54 percent below 2005 levels, and reduce estimates for average global temperature increases in 2100 by 0.1 degrees Celsius, according to a new report this morning from the Asia Society Policy Institute and Climate Analytics. The report also looked at China’s carbon neutrality target by 2060, and found that to keep China aligned with a trajectory of keeping global temperatures to between 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius it would need to deepen its ambition in the short-term, including peaking emissions as soon as 2025.

TRUMP RUSHES ARCTIC LEASE SALE: The Trump administration is making an eleventh-hour push to open up long-protected Alaska wilderness to oil and gas drilling, Pro’s Ben Lefebvre reports. In a notice published in the Federal Register today, the department officially called for oil and gas companies to nominate acreage in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for the agency to put up for auction in a potential lease sale.

Industry interest in the remote region appears modest as oil producers struggle to shore up their finances amid weak prices that have pushed dozens of companies into bankruptcy this year and forced the sector to lay off thousands of workers, Ben reports. The high cost of drilling in the region, lack of developed infrastructure and regulatory uncertainty with the incoming Biden administration are expected to keep many companies from participating in any lease sale. Not to mention, top financial players such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have said they would not fund drilling activity in the refuge.

PEBBLE DEVELOPER FLOATS MITIGATION PLAN AMID SKEPTICISM: The developer of the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska on Monday submitted its “compensatory mitigation plan” to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for review. But the company hasn’t released the plan publicly yet, leaving a big question mark over whether it will clear the steep hurdle put up by the Trump administration in August. The plan, a standard step in the federal permitting process, is meant to lay out how the developer will offset environmental damage from the copper and gold mine by, for example, restoring nearby wetlands. Many experts have questioned whether such mitigation is possible given the Bristol Bay wilderness has few if any areas that need remediating.

The developer, Northern Dynasty Minerals, remains bullish on its chances, with President and CEO Ron Thiessen saying in a statement the project faces a “high bar” but that the company thinks it can clear it: “We have an experienced team in Alaska that has identified both the means and mechanism to meet the ‘in-kind’ and ‘in watershed’ mitigation requirements, and complete a CMP that we believe will be acceptable to the USACE in form and content.” An Army Corps spokesperson confirmed the agency is reviewing the plan and will release it if and when it is determined “to be compliant with applicable regulations.”

Pebble has faced a rocky road since the Army Corps’ August warning that the project “cannot be permitted” without substantial mitigation efforts. Alaska’s Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, came out against the mine’s permitting. Then in September, the CEO of the Pebble Limited Partnership, the U.S. subsidiary directly developing the mine, resigned after leaked recordings showed him touting close relationships with key decision makers and describing a long-term plan to expand the project. The incoming Biden administration has vowed to block the project. And Murkowski, who chairs the Senate’s energy appropriations panel, included language in her recent 2021 spending bill encouraging the government to reject the mine unless it can clear the high mitigation bar.

DANLY TO KEEP MEDIA, INDUSTRY AT ARM’S LENGTH: Newly appointed FERC Chairman James Danly will end the practice of discussing the energy regulator’s moves with members of the press at its monthly public meetings, Pro’s Eric Wolff reports. “At his discretion, Chairman Danly will not be conducting any media briefings and interviews,” FERC spokesperson Mary O’Driscoll said in a statement. “Chairman Danly views his FERC role as that of an adjudicator; therefore he will not be conducting briefings or any meetings with the news media.” Danly has also eschewed meetings with industry groups even before he was elevated to the chairmanship on Nov. 4, members of some groups said.

DOE STAFF SHAKEUP: Trump promoted Steven Winberg, the head of the Energy Department’s fossil fuel office, to acting undersecretary to Secretary Dan Brouillette, Eric also reports. Nicholas Andersen has also been appointed acting principal secretary for Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response.

GAMING OUT BIDEN’S APPLIANCE OPTIONS: A Biden administration could reduce cumulative CO2 emissions through 2050 by 1.5 billion to 2.9 billion metric tons through updates to national appliance standards done within the next few years, according to an American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy report out this morning. In its report, ACEEE estimated the potential savings from updated efficiency standards for 47 products over the next several years. Among the key findings, the report tabulated that by 2050 peak electricity demand could be reduced by almost 90 gigawatts, or about 13 percent of current total peak demand.

JUDGE DERIDES BLM CLIMATE REVIEW: A federal district court judge again blocked new oil and gas drilling permits on Wyoming public lands on Friday, calling an environmental analysis from the Bureau of Land Management “sloppy and rushed.” U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled a supplemental assessment from BLM did not comply with federal law and “does not adequately consider the climate change impacts of the oil and gas leasing decisions in accordance with this Court’s prior opinion.” Contreras last year froze oil and natural gas drilling on some federal land leases in Wyoming, finding BLM did not adequately account for the climate effects.

— “FBI searches home of Ohio’s top utilities regulator,” via Cincinnati.com.

— “Bezos makes first donations from $10 billion Earth Fund for fighting climate change,” via The Washington Post.

— “U.S. nuclear industry group sees reprocessing as potential nuclear waste fix,” via Reuters.

— “Region 8 Administrator Sopkin announces intent to leave EPA,” via InsideEPA.

— “Sources: Fish and Wildlife chief Aurelia Skipwith has COVID-19,” via E&E News.

— “Tesla stock jumps on carmaker’s addition to the S&P 500,” via CNBC.

— “Biden could revive enforcement tool, with new focus on climate,” via Bloomberg Law.

THAT’S ALL FOR ME!



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