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— Activist shareholders are pushing new resolutions that would require oil companies to address whether their facilities are prepared for the growing threats from climate change.
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— Two senior officials at one of the world’s most influential environmental groups have exited following an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment and workplace misconduct.
— The Ohio House approved legislation that would subsidize two at-risk nuclear power plants and increase existing payments for two coal plants after a last-minute push from a Trump re-election official.
GOOD THURSDAY MORNING! I’m your host, Kelsey Tamborrino. Entergy’s Rob Hall notched another win for knowing David Davis stepped down from the Supreme Court to serve in the Senate in 1877. For today: Who was the first African-American female senator? Send your tips, energy gossip and comments to ktamborrino@politico.com.
ARE YOU READY FOR THIS? Oil and gas companies are facing new scrutiny over whether they have adequately prepared for the consequences of climate change. Activist investors who have long criticized the industry for its role in causing climate change took a new tack at two shareholder meetings this week, where they homed in on concerns that the industry has not done enough to prepare for risks like wildfires, sea level rise or intense storms, as Pro’s Zack Colman reports this morning.
On Wednesday, Exxon shareholders voted down a resolution that requested the company publish a report “on the public health risks of expanding petrochemical operations and investments in areas increasingly prone to climate change-induced storms, flooding, and sea level rise.” On the same day, Chevron shareholders opposed establishing an independent panel to evaluate its holistic climate change plan. Both companies said their boards already take climate change into account in other ways.
Amy Myers Jaffe, a senior fellow and director of the energy security and climate change program at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Zack, however, many companies know they are exposed to climate change, but willfully look the other way or downplay the risks to investor returns.
“There’s a real question I think in public policy about how we’re going to handle forward-looking climate liability,” Jaffe said. “Not hardening facilities and not taking risk on board enough could have real damage, which is separate from, ‘Are you the cause of climate change?'”
2 EXIT GREEN GROUP AFTER SEXUAL MISCONDUCT PROBE: Two senior officials at The Nature Conservancy have left the organization after an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment and workplace misconduct, Zack reports. Mark Burget, who headed the group’s North American operations, and Kacky Andrews, who led global programs, will depart, according to an email from CEO Mark Tercek to staff.
The environmental group’s president, Brian McPeek, who stepped into “a less active role” during the investigation, will now return to his job. The moves follow an internal investigation into the organization’s workplace culture by the law firm McDermott Will & Emery, which Tercek wrote revealed female employees believed The Nature Conservancy’s “culture can make it difficult to thrive.”
The investigation found that “[s]pecifically, in several instances where there were serious allegations of misconduct, TNC opted for no or minor discipline because TNC perceived the event as ‘he said/she said’ with no corroborating evidence. In these instances, the accused was given the benefit of the doubt,” the report said. Read more here.
OHIO IS FOR NUCLEAR SUBSIDIES? A senior adviser to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign made calls Tuesday night to at least five members of the Ohio House of Representatives, pressuring them to vote “yes” on a bill to subsidize at-risk nuclear and coal plants that successfully passed the chamber on Wednesday, POLITICO’s Gavin Bade reports.
Sources told Gavin that the adviser, Bob Paduchik, said the president’s re-election would be harmed if jobs were lost at the state’s Perry and Davis-Besse nuclear plants. “The message is that if we have these plants shut down we can’t get Trump re-elected,” said one senior legislative source with knowledge of the conversations. “We’re going into an election year, we can’t lose the jobs.”
FirstEnergy Solutions has threatened to shut down the plants if they are not subsidized, and Cleveland.com reports Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, and labor union leaders made similar arguments in other eleventh-hour calls to lawmakers.
Approval in the House means the bill will now move to the Senate, where it has fewer vocal supporters but is still expected to pass by June, according to research firm ClearView Energy.
WHERE’S PERRY? Energy Secretary Rick Perry is in Salt Lake City today for the Governor’s Energy Summit. The secretary will deliver remarks with Republican Gov. Gary Herbert and Dominion Energy CEO Thomas Farrell. He will later take part in a fireside chat with Wyoming GOP Gov. Mark Gordon. Agenda here.
PARK SERVICE MOURNS LOSS OF 2: Two Alaska-based National Park Service employees, Jeff Babcock and Charles Eric Benson, died in an airplane crash in Whitehorse, Canada, on Monday evening, the agency confirmed in a release. Babcock served as the NPS Alaska region aviation manager and Benson was the NPS Alaska region safety manager.
The men were “on a personal trip to ferry a privately-owned airplane from the Lower 48 to Anchorage, Alaska, when the plane went down shortly after take-off from Whitehorse International Airport,” the release said. In a statement, Bert Frost, NPS Alaska regional director, called the men “two of our very best,” adding that the NPS and Alaska region “have suffered a terrible loss.”
MARKEY QUESTIONS WHITE HOUSE ROLE IN CLIMATE ASSESSMENT: Democratic Sen. Ed Markey (Mass.) wrote to Kelvin Droegemeier, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, to express concern that the White House is interfering with climate science at federal agencies, following a recent New York Times report that said the next National Climate Assessment would not include worst-case scenario projections.
Markey asked Droegemeier to identify all federal agencies and any outside agencies involved in the modeling of the NCA. “Any political interference into the climate science that underpins this report could have a chilling effect on the scientific research going forward and could potentially put American lives and property at increased risk by understating the urgency of climate action,” Markey wrote.
SOUND BITE: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the Green New Deal a “wonderful aspirational statement” Wednesday, but made clear it is not legislation. “It’s a wonderful thing to attract attention and galvanize support,” but “legislation is legislation. Advocacy is advocacy,” she said at the Commonwealth Club. Instead, Pelosi pointed to the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis to address the best legislative approach.
— “This is an imperative, it’s not an issue, it’s not a bill. It is a value,” she said of addressing climate change. “It is again an imperative that it gets done. But we want it to get done in a way that unifies people. … We can bring people together, but they all have to be at the table as we shape the consensus that is the boldest, toughest common denominator and not any weakening of the resolve.”
FLORIDA SENATORS CALL FOR RED TIDE DECLARATION: Florida’s GOP senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, urged Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to approve Gov. Ron DeSantis’ request for a disaster declaration for southwest Florida fisheries harmed by red tide, Pro’s Bruce Ritchie reports. DeSantis last week requested the declaration for red tide events that occurred between November 2017 and February 2019 and from October 2015 to February 2017.
In their letter, the two senators said the region’s commercial and charter fishermen had suffered “substantial economic losses and have had to radically change their business practices just to survive.”
— “Montana tribe rips Trump administration over federal coal leasing,” Reuters.
— “Michigan AG will move to shut pipeline in June if no deal,” Associated Press.
— “The Permian Basin is booming with oil. But at what cost to West Texans?” Texas Monthly.
— “Cato closes its climate shop; Pat Michaels is out,” E&E News.
THAT’S ALL FOR ME!
