With help from Eric Wolff, Annie Snider, Alex Guillén and Zack Colman
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— Joe Biden will be sworn in today as the 46th president of the United States. He’s taking quick action to rejoin the Paris climate agreement and cancel the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.
— Even before taking the oath, he called this morning for revising emissions standards for cars, methane and appliances and pausing oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, among a flurry of other action across the incoming administration.
— And he got some help on President Donald Trump’s last full day in the White House, when a federal court struck down one of Trump’s biggest climate change rule rollbacks, creating a path to return to something resembling the Clean Power Plan of the Obama era.
WELCOME TO INAUGURATION DAY! It’s Wednesday and I’m your host, Kelsey Tamborrino. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Christopher Guith gets the trivia win. There are four states that begin and end with the same letter: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona and Ohio. For today, some timely trivia: Whose inauguration was the first to be livestreamed on the internet? 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.
ENTERING THE BIDEN ERA: Joe Biden takes the oath of office today, installing the former vice president and Delaware senator as the 46th president of the United States with a mandate in hand to tackle climate change and drive the country toward net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Biden has declared climate change one of the four top issues for his administration, and the new president will embark today on his promise to tackle the crisis with an abrupt about-face from President Donald Trump’s energy and environmental policies.
Biden announced a raft of executive actions this morning, from rejoining the Paris climate agreement to halting the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, Pro’s Zack Colman, Ben Lefebvre and Eric Wolff report. In addition, Biden called for revising emissions standards for cars, methane and appliances, as well as pausing oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and reviewing the boundaries of national monuments Trump downsized.
The new president called for a review of other Trump-era rules that came out of the Interior Department, including its loosening of offshore drilling safety standards. He also reinstituted an interagency group to develop a social cost of carbon and directed agencies to review regulations and actions Trump initiated “that were harmful to public health, damaging to the environment, unsupported by the best available science, or otherwise not in the national interest.”
Taken together, the actions reorient the U.S. toward putting the country on a path to eliminate planet-heating emissions on the power grid by 2035 and economy-wide in 2050. “At this moment of profound crisis we have the opportunity to build a more resilient, sustainable economy, one that will put the United States on an irreversible path to achieve net-zero emissions,” said Gina McCarthy, the incoming White House domestic climate chief and former EPA chief, who noted Biden’s actions would propel his agencies to reverse more than 100 Trump administration environmental policies.
The world is watching: Rejoining the Paris climate agreement won’t be enough on its own to win the trust of the government officials, CEOs and climate action advocates who incoming climate envoy John Kerry will be dealing with around the world. Instead, the rest of the world will have two key asks for Kerry, officials and advocates across the globe tell POLITICO. The first is that Congress backs Kerry’s rhetoric with tough domestic emissions reduction legislation, and the second calls for Kerry himself to play the role of the world’s climate cheerleader, prodding laggards and increasing financial aid to convince reluctant governments to set aggressive climate goals.
Staffing up: Former Energy Department staffer Tarak Shah will be tapped as chief of staff at DOE, your ME host and Daniel Lippman report for Pros. The announcement, expected today, will return the former Obama official to DOE as the incoming president moves to advance clean energy technology as part of his climate agenda.
COURT HANDS BIDEN PATH ON CLIMATE RULE: Biden’s EPA could have significant legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide from power plants now that a federal court vacated one of the Trump administration’s biggest climate change rule rollbacks. The split-panel opinion Tuesday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit offers a binding judicial opinion on the statutory scope of EPA’s regulatory powers on greenhouse gases, POLITICO’s Alex Guillén reports.
Tuesday’s ruling expressly rejected the Trump EPA’s argument that the Clean Air Act constrains EPA to only those improvements that can be made on-site at coal-fired power plants. Instead, the majority ruled that EPA can consider “beyond the fenceline” options such as generation-shifting, the strategy envisioned under the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. Clare Lakewood, legal director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, said the decision “frees up the new Biden administration to begin working immediately on the science-based greenhouse pollution rules we desperately need to make up for lost time.”
A splash of cold water: Jeff Holmstead, a Bush-era EPA air chief, noted Tuesday that any rule Biden ultimately writes will have to pass muster with the Supreme Court, which in 2016 blocked the Clean Power Plan in an unprecedented move (and has since only moved rightward). “This means that the Biden folks now face a real dilemma. Will they invest considerable time and effort to develop a rule that is likely to be rejected by the Supreme Court, or will they pursue a different approach?” Holmstead said.
THREE FOR THE ROAD: EPA made public Tuesday night that it would grant two small refiners exemptions from 2019 Renewable Fuel Standard requirements, and an exemption from 2018 mandate, according to its RFS dashboard. The exemptions reduced the effective mandate for 2018 by 110 million gallons and for 2019 by 150 million gallons. Rumors had been swirling for weeks over whether EPA would unleash a big batch of exemptions as the Trump administration left office, and as recently as last week the agency signaled it would not do so in a regulatory filing. The agency still has 65 pending requests for exemptions dating back to the 2011 blending mandates. Corn growers and ethanol producers promised to fight the new exemptions.
DOWN TO THE WIRE: EPA announced on Tuesday a number of steps aimed at addressing toxic “forever chemicals,” including formally launching the process for regulating two of the chemicals in drinking water, but whiffing on the biggest issue — designating the chemicals as hazardous under the Superfund law, Pro’s Annie Snider reports.
Trump’s first EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, promised a Superfund designation that would force DoD and other parties to foot the bill for cleanups back in 2018. But a proposed rule to do so sat at EPA’s policy office for more than a year, untouched, after DoD and industry fought it fiercely. In the Trump administration’s waning days, political officials at EPA watered it down to a notice simply seeking public comment on what should be done about PFAS in the environment. “This is the ultimate midnight rule,” said Betsy Southerland with the Environmental Protection Network, noting that DoD has often refused to cleanup groundwater contamination if it’s not used as a municipal drinking water source.
The agency also released a final regulatory determination finding that the two best-studied chemicals in the family, PFOA and PFOS, should be regulated in drinking water, launching the years-long process of developing a Safe Drinking Water Act limit. It also proposed requiring drinking water utilities to test for 29 types of PFAS as part of the next round of mandatory, nationwide sampling from 2023–2025.
TRUMP QUICKLY APPROVES ANWR LEASES: The Trump administration said it has completed the legal work necessary to finalize the oil and gas development leases that were won by two small companies and the state-owned Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority in the Jan. 6 auction for parcels in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The 13 days the department took to finalize the lease sale is a fraction of the typical monthslong process and sets up another hurdle for Biden’s promise to protect the region, Pro’s Ben Lefebvre reports.
Related: Interior Secretary David Bernhardt told Bloomberg he was optimistic the Arctic oil leases will endure under Biden.
GOING OUT WITH A BRIEF: California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced Tuesday that he is involved in nine new lawsuits against Trump’s environmental rollbacks on Trump’s last full day in office. Becerra, whom Biden nominated as secretary of Health and Human Services, took the lead in suing over four recent rules and backed other states in challenging five others. The nine suits filed Tuesday bring Becerra’s total number of Trump administration challenges to 122 — 70 of which are environmental. The latest suits address endangered species protections, toxic air pollution, greenhouse gases and energy efficiency rules. Debra Kahn and Alex have the full rundown for Pros.
FLURRY AT FERC: FERC rejected a change to PJM Interconnection’s minimum offer price rule during a jam-packed meeting Tuesday, with a majority of commissioners saying the move would have only made the operation of an obscure state market more complicated, Pro’s Eric Wolff reports.
At the same meeting, the agency dropped transmission incentives, an expansion of minimum offer pricing in New York and permits for the PennEast pipeline from the agenda. It also rejected construction certificate requests from the developers of three natural gas projects and a bid by a Puerto Rico LNG plant to end a proceeding into its construction, and the commissioners voted down a notice of inquiry on whether some projects can be excluded from reviews required by the National Environmental Policy Act. Tuesday’s meeting represented Chair James Danly’s last chance to move projects forward before Biden appoints a Democrat to lead the commission.
Danly could stick around: Traditionally, FERC chairs resign when they lose the gavel due to a change in administration, but Danly sounded like he plans to stay on after Biden takes office. At Tuesday’s meeting, Danly emphasized that he’s “looking forward to working with my colleagues” on an assortment of issues.
Companies that hold back water should stay liquid: FERC unanimously agreed to launch a notice of inquiry into how it can ensure that companies that own dams have enough financial resources to keep the dam in good working order. The action is a first response to the pair of Michigan dam breaks from last year, both owned by a company without the wherewithal to maintain them adequately. FERC had exercised its harshest punishment by withdrawing the dam’s license to produce power, but the dam continued to manage water flows without adequate maintenance.
How to manage hybrid generation: The commission also agreed to get feedback on how best to integrate renewables plus battery power generators. Grid operators have been unclear on whether to treat the installations as one project (solar plus battery) or two (solar, and also a battery), how best to connect the generators to the grid, or their role in the market. The NOI is FERC’s next step toward developing a rule.
YELLEN PLEDGES CLIMATE TEAM AT TREASURY: Treasury secretary nominee Janet Yellen pledged Tuesday to create a team to focus on climate change. During a Senate Finance Committee hearing, Yellen said she planned to start a new Treasury “hub” that would examine financial system risks arising from climate change and on related tax policy incentives, POLITICO’s Zachary Warmbrodt reports. She also intends to appoint a “very senior-level” official to lead climate efforts. Her remarks are the latest evidence that climate change will be a fundamental consideration in a wide range of actions undertaken by the new administration.
STEERING EPA’S OFFICE OF WATER: Radhika Fox, CEO of the nonprofit U.S. Water Alliance, will be heading to EPA soon to serve as an early Biden administration official in the Office of Water, three sources with knowledge of the move confirmed to ME. Fox has been a leading voice pushing for investment in water infrastructure, and has elevated environmental justice and equity considerations in her time with the alliance — both priorities for the Biden administration — although she has little experience with the hot-button regulatory issues facing the office.
It’s unclear exactly what Fox’s title will be, but the sources said that it is unlikely she’ll be tapped for the assistant administrator post, which requires Senate confirmation.
BIDEN BACKERS FORM CLEAN ENERGY GROUP: Clean Energy 4 Biden, a group of Obama administration alumni and clean energy executives, is transforming into Clean Energy 4 America, where it will focus on public education and electoral work to “support candidates and policies across the nation driving the deployment of low-carbon technologies,” it said in a statement. The group will register as a 501c3 and a 501c4, and it will make the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial race its first campaign foray. The spinoff comes after Clean Energy 4 Biden raised $2.3 million for the president-elect and supported get out the vote efforts in the Georgia Senate runoffs. Clean Energy 4 America has received a funding commitment from the Caldera Foundation.
— Corry Schiermeyer, EPA’s associate deputy regional administrator for Region 6, has exited the Trump administration. In her resignation letter dated Jan. 13 but effective today, Schiermeyer wrote she “was horrified and disgusted” with the actions of the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. And, she criticized Trump for not adhering to the peaceful transition of power, noting he “attempted to subvert our democracy by spreading a false narrative that the election was fraudulent” — a false narrative, that coupled with the president’s “irresponsible actions,” led to the Capitol attack, she wrote.
— Brad Viator is now vice president of external affairs at Edison Electric Institute. He was previously executive director of external affairs. (H/t Influence)
— “Biden’s narrow path to an infrastructure dream,” via POLITICO.
— “Bill Gates-led fund raises another $1 billion to invest in clean tech,” via Bloomberg.
— “Electric car batteries with five-minute charging times produced,” via The Guardian.
— “‘Unrig the data.’ How utilities embellish carbon cuts,” via E&E News.
— “Global investments into clean-energy technology reach record high,” via Axios.
THAT’S ALL FOR ME!
