With help from Eric Wolff
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— The recent hiring of a climate science skeptic atop the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has scientists worried that the newly created position will give a contrarian broad powers to shape the way the federal government studies and talks about climate change.
— The president’s rollback of Obama-era climate regulations will cause the U.S. to pump an extra 1.8 billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere between now and 2035, researchers said.
— FERC approved a rule allowing behind-the-meter power products, like rooftop solar arrays and batteries, to band together to sell electricity into wholesale energy markets.
WE MADE IT TO FRIDAY! I’m your host, Kelsey Tamborrino. Congrats to Charlie Riedl of the Center for LNG for getting the trivia win. Five former senators have received the Nobel Peace Prize: Al Gore, Cordell Hull, Frank Kellogg, Barack Obama and Elihu Root. For today: What chemical element has the lowest boiling point? Send your tips, energy gossip and comments 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: The future of energy, with Dan Yergin
NOAA HIRE WORRIES CLIMATE SCIENTISTS: The Trump administration’s decision to install David Legates, an academic and a climate science skeptic, atop NOAA blind-sided staffers. It also has scientists worried that the decision to create the new position may signal that the administration will seek to influence the bedrock science the agency performs, Pro’s Zack Colman reports this morning.
The hire comes as the federal government’s fifth National Climate Assessment is at “a critical formative stage,” an administration official told Zack. NOAA is the lead for the quadrennial 13-agency, cross-government review of climate change that conveys the sources and effects of climate change on every corner of the country.
NOAA this summer began the public input process for shaping the sweeping report, such as selecting the authors who will guide its scope and direction. The White House Presidential Personnel Office began interviewing candidates this summer for the role that Legates secured around the same time.
“Legates arguably could directly or indirectly influence the direction the assessment takes,” said Rick Spinrad, who was NOAA’s chief scientist under Obama. “There’s an opportunity to manipulate.”
That the White House was so involved in the process and seemingly favored candidates largely dismissive of the scientific literature has worried scientists that NOAA may be next for political meddling in everything from climate observations to data informing local flood control managers how to improve resilience to rising seas and storms.
“None of the rank-and-file saw this coming,” said one NOAA official who asked to speak anonymously for fear of retribution. “It’s something that sends a kind of shiver up your science spine.”
GRADING TRUMP’S ROLLBACKS: Trump’s rollback of Obama-era climate regulations will cause the United States to pump an extra 1.8 billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere between now and 2035, at a time when scientists say the world needs to slash its carbon pollution dramatically to avoid catastrophe, climate research firm Rhodium Group said Thursday. Those extra emissions mean that if Trump’s rollbacks remain in place, U.S. climate pollution 15 years from now will be 3 percent higher than current projections indicate, POLITICO’s Zack Colman and Alex Guillén report.
— For experts judging how the administration has dealt with climate change, the grades are clear. “On the climate issue, it’s pretty unambiguously an ‘F,'” said Zeke Hausfather, climate and energy director at Oakland, Calif.-based think tank Breakthrough Institute.
FERC OKs DISTRIBUTED ENERGY IN POWER MARKETS: FERC approved a final rule by a 2-1 vote on Thursday that will allow behind-the-meter power products to sell electricity into wholesale energy markets, Pro’s Eric Wolff reports. The rule will require energy markets to allow aggregations of everything from electric vehicles and rooftop solar panels to demand response into organized markets. It could also set off a renewable energy gold-rush, Eric writes, since companies will have access to new revenue streams that could offer incentives to install and own a variety of renewable products.
The rule will shield smaller utilities that could see a “greater burden,” according to FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee, and aggregators will need to get FERC’s permission in those situations.
Rural electric cooperatives applauded FERC’s inclusion of an opt-in provision for small utilities. “It is important that the Commission has recognized the challenges that this order could pose for small utilities, including virtually all distribution co-ops,” said Louis Finkel, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association’s senior vice president of government relations.
Why Danly said no: Commissioner James Danly dissented from the DER order, and his two-page dissent went out Thursday evening. In brief, he thinks FERC is choosing winners and losers in the energy markets. “If the promises of DERs are what they purport to be, the markets will encourage their development,” he writes. “I have greater faith in the power of market forces and in the discernment of the utilities and the States.”
What else? FERC also announced at Thursday’s open meeting it will not ask the Supreme Court to reinstate its power to use “tolling orders” to delay rehearing requests, Eric also reports for Pros.
AG SENATORS RAIL AGAINST REPORTS OF REFINERY BAILOUT: Ag champions flew to the defense of the Agriculture Department as Reuters reported Wednesday the possibility that the administration would funnel $300 million of USDA’s budget to small refiners. The money would be intended to help the small refiners after EPA declined to grant them exemptions from back years of Renewable Fuel Standard mandates. “It is outrageous for the Administration to even consider taking away millions from our farmers to bail out Big Oil,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the Agriculture committee.
She was joined by a spokesperson for Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) who said in a statement, “Why would money meant to support struggling farmers go to Big Oil? It shouldn’t, and lawfully it can’t. This is just Big Oil’s reaction to the ‘gap year’ waivers being denied and an attempt to get a bailout.”
BROUILLETTE MAPS OUT SECOND TERM: Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette pledged to stay the course if President Donald Trump wins a second term, your ME host reports. During a natural gas event Thursday, Brouillette said he’d stick with the “all-of-the-above” energy approach, while also noting continued roadblocks to building new energy infrastructure.
Brouillette said the U.S. had suffered for years from problems that made it costly to produce and buy energy, but some of those issues were now gone. “We’ve solved the supply problem,” he said. “What is challenging us, I think what is challenging the industry is an infrastructure problem. We need more pipelines. We need more export facilities. We have to improve our permitting processes so that we can allow this infrastructure to be built more quickly, more efficiently.”
DEPARTMENT OF INTERESTING TIMING: The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will hold oral arguments in the appeal over the Dakota Access Pipeline on Nov. 4 — one day after Election Day, Alex reports.
HERE’S A SUGGESTION: Evergreen Action, which includes former staffers on Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s presidential campaign, sent a letter Thursday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) urging them to unlock federal clean energy financing from the Energy Department’s Loan Program Office as part of the massive clean energy package, H.R. 4447 (116), Democrats released this week. The bill, dubbed the Clean Economy Jobs and Innovation Act, is expected on the House floor next week.
In the letter shared with ME, Evergreen Action’s political director Maggie Thomas, co-founders Sam Ricketts and Bracken Hendricks, and policy fellow Becca Ellison urge the lawmakers to amend the bill to include reforms that will deploy greater public clean energy financing to “jumpstart” a clean energy economy. The Office’s Title XVII Program contains about $24 billion in financing “that could be leveraged for productive investment with negligible cost to the federal Treasury,” they write, urging Pelosi and Hoyer to make state and local clean energy financing institutions eligible to receive DOE-LPO financing as part of the bill.
AMAZON BACKS CLIMATE TECH COMPANIES: Amazon announced Thursday the initial recipients of its Climate Pledge Fund — a $2 billion venture investment created in June to spur the development of sustainable technology, as part of the company’s wider goal to hit net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.
The five companies are: CarbonCure Technologies, a technology company that removes carbon dioxide from concrete; Pachama, a nature-based carbon markets tech company; Redwood Materials, which is developing tech for recycling end-of-life Lithium-ion batteries and e-waste; Turntide Technologies, an energy efficiency motors company; and electric-truck startup Rivian, from which Amazon previously announced it would buy 100,000 electric delivery vans.
Reminder: The Climate Pledge Fund is separate from Amazon CEO and Founder Jeff Bezos’ $10 billion global climate initiative, which he announced earlier this year to fund scientists, activists or NGOs. That effort was expected to start doling out grants this summer, although Amazon did not respond to ME on Thursday on the latest timeline.
BUSINESS TO INSURANCE INDUSTRY: STOP UNDERWRITING FOSSIL FUELS: Nearly 60 American businesses called on the U.S. insurance industry to stop underwriting and investing in fossil fuels, which they say is in “direct contradiction” to the action necessary to mitigate the climate crisis. “As insurance customers, we are therefore expressing our desire for insurance coverage in the U.S. market that isn’t tied to supporting fossil fuels and actively supports renewable energy,” the companies wrote in a joint statement. Signatories include Aspen Skiing Company, Ben & Jerry’s, Bigelow Tea, Burton, Patagonia and Seventh Generation.
The letter will be sent directly to Liberty Mutual Insurance, AIG, Travelers, The Hartford Insurance, Chubb and WR Berkley on Monday, ME is told.
“Environmental sustainability has been a key focus for us for some time, and we have a long-term strategy of reducing carbon emissions and investing in renewable energy,” a Liberty Mutual spokesperson said. The company also announced a global policy on coal underwriting and investing last year. The Hartford announced in December it would no longer insure or invest in companies that generate more than 25 percent of their revenues from thermal coal mining or directly from the extraction of oil from tar sands, or more than 25 percent of their energy production from coal. Chubb declined comment.
BAD FOR THE BRAND: More than 250 Indigenous, conservation and faith organizations signed onto a letter urging Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Hilcorp not to pursue fossil fuel development in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to withhold from bidding on any lease parcels that are offered in the Arctic refuge. “The reputational, environmental, climate and economic risks of drilling in the refuge are not worth the potential harm such calamity can do to your brand,” the groups write.
The organizations, which represent more than 27 million members, also call on the companies to make a public statement in opposition to development of oil and gas in the refuge. “Any company that bids on leases or expresses interest in destroying the Arctic Refuge for oil will face a major public backlash and long-lasting damage to their reputation,” they warn.
— Trump tapped Katherine Crytzer this week to serve as judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. Crytzer currently serves as principal deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy. She also has a pending nomination before the Senate to be inspector general of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
— Jason Wells has been appointed executive vice president and chief financial officer of CenterPoint Energy, effective Sept. 28. Wells most recently was executive vice president and CFO at PG&E Corporation.
— Alejandro Pérez is joining the World Wildlife Fund as senior vice president for policy and government affairs. He previously was director of federal affairs for California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and is an Obama White House and Steny Hoyer alum. (H/t Playbook).
— “Chamber of Commerce announces layoffs, restructuring to staff,” via POLITICO.
— “UC national labs suspend diversity training after Trump administration order,” via San Francisco Chronicle.
— “As Sally’s remnants soak Southeast, Hurricane Teddy and new storm in Gulf of Mexico pose new threats,” via The Washington Post.
— “5 major U.S. utilities that haven’t promised to fully decarbonize,” via GreenTech Media.
— “AT&T sets goal to cut majority of its emissions by 2035,” via Bloomberg.
— “EPA bails on mining case after Minn. balks,” via E&E News.
— “This billionaire governor’s coal company might get a big break from his own regulators,” via ProPublica.
THAT’S ALL FOR ME!
