With help from Alex Guillén, Zack Colman, Ben Lefebvre and Eric Wolff.
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— The winter storms paralyzing nearly all of Texas are offering a real-time lesson in the chaos climate change can inject into markets, industries and politics.
— The crisis is also offering an opening for the President Joe Biden’s push to invest huge sums of money on hardening the nation’s electric grid.
— Rep. Deb Haaland will go before the Senate Energy Committee next week for what’s likely to be a contentious confirmation hearing to be Biden’s Interior secretary.
WELCOME TO WEDNESDAY! I’m your fill-in host, Annie Snider. Congrats to Cheniere’s Khary Cauthen for knowing that January’s vocab word of the month — bivouac — is also the name for the nest Army ants make out of their bodies. For today: Almost half of all insect species belong to what group? Hint: This group includes ladybugs, fireflies and the insect known by the ancient Egyptians as the scarab. Send your tips and trivia answers to [email protected], who will take the reins for Thursday’s edition.
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. Today’s episode: The Texas blackouts, explained.
FREEZE FRAME: The winter storms that have paralyzed nearly all of Texas are proving to be a real-time lesson in the chaos climate change can inject into markets, industries and politics. The cold weather front has left almost 4 million people in the state without electricity, sent energy prices skyrocketing and lawmakers everywhere looking to pin blame on their favorite hobby horse.
Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem went so far as to say the catastrophe should convince President Joe Biden to reverse course on his energy policy and allow the Keystone XL pipeline project to proceed, a statement in the running for our “Not Going To Happen” award for February. But ME would suggest that, coming just months after the California wildfires, this week’s events show that climate change is fuel-supply agnostic when it comes to wrecking infrastructure.
On top of the power disaster in Texas, the temperatures dropped far enough in the state’s Permian Basin to knock 20 percent of oil production offline, Bloomberg reported. The benchmark oil prices jumped past $60 a barrel on Tuesday for the first time in over a year — but since the cold also forced refineries that buy the oil to shut down production, oil prices pulled back from their highs.
The weather catastrophe is also unveiling potential rifts among Texas Republicans. George P. Bush, director of the Texas General Land Office, blamed wind power for outages, tweeting “Relying solely on renewable energy would be catastrophic. Many of these sources have proven to be unreliable.” Who would disagree? Well, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, for one. Abbott, who regularly throws out more red meat than keepers at the Houston zoo, made it a point to say that the downed power production “includes the natural gas & coal generators.” Abbott’s anxious to lure high-tech companies to the Lone Star state, and renewable energy developers aren’t likely to appreciate the ad hominem attacks.
DON’T WASTE A GOOD CRISIS: The Texas disaster could be a boon to Biden’s proposal to harden the nation’s electric grid, as the administration seeks to connect giant wind and solar power plants to cities and states thousands of miles away, Pro’s Eric Wolff and Lorraine Woellert report. That infrastructure will be essential to keeping the lights on as more solar, wind and other renewable energy is fed into the grid.
Specific regional conditions worsened the crisis in Texas: The state’s grid, though geographically large, is almost entirely cut off from the rest of the country, so it could not draw power from other regions. In contrast, parts of the Midwest that avoided Texas’ fate are members of regional power networks linked by high-voltage transmission lines. Expanding those interregional power lines would make the grid more resilient, preventing future crises, the American Council on Renewable Energy said.
THE BALANCING ACT: Biden’s promises to be both the greenest and the most pro-union president in history are on a collision course. Democrats on Capitol Hill have been cranking out bills filled with carrots for developers of zero-emission infrastructure, but with pro-labor strings attached, including prevailing wage, job certification and Buy American provisions, Eric and Rebecca Rainey report.
Labor groups that are skeptical that green jobs can sufficiently replace high-paying union jobs in the fossil fuel industry argue that these provisions are the bare minimum, but solar and wind producers want to see those labor demands pulled back.
Unions say the renewables industry is well out of its infancy and should now come to the table and engage in collective bargaining like other mature industries. “It’s pie-in-the-sky bullshit about these green jobs being good middle-class jobs, because they’re not,” said Terry O’Sullivan, general president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America.
WHITE HOUSE WEIGHS IN ON NORDSTREAM 2: White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration “would consider sanctions if action occurs to complete” the Nordstream 2 pipeline that would double exports of Russian gas to Germany, calling the project a “bad deal because it divides Europe.” Construction on the pipeline resumed earlier this month, but the White House has so far not moved to implement sanctions passed by Congress. The administration was due to report Tuesday on companies it deems to be in violation of U.S. laws aimed at halting the project.
KERRY CLIMATE TEAM ADDS TRADE LEAD: David Livingston is joining the State Department to handle the intersection of climate and trade issues, filling a key role on White House climate envoy John Kerry’s international operation, three people with knowledge of the move tell ME. Livingston previously was a senior analyst with Eurasia Group — an email sent to his address there resulted in an automatic reply indicating he’s left the consulting firm. He also has held positions at the Atlantic Council, the World Trade Organization and the U.N. Industrial Development Organization.
BILL GATES BONUS ROUND: LESSONS FROM 2009: When Bill Gates sat down (remotely) with our Kelsey Tamborrino, the billionaire philanthropist had sharp words for some of the energy activities funded under the 2009 stimulus bill. Measures like funding for insulating houses, he said, didn’t make sense as a climate mitigation measure since it was too expensive per ton of carbon avoided.
“You[‘ve] got to have an analytic framework, and going in and spending federal labor rates to insulate houses is kind of insane dollars per tons avoided, and not scalable,” he argued. The Energy Department loan program, on the other hand, is the type of effort Gates wants to see revived. “When it comes to R&D, and if you’re careful about how you do the tax credits — that’s government working pretty well,” he told Kelsey.
ICYMI, Gates’ interview breaks down his take on how to fight climate change. And that loan program? Zack reported recently on the money still available there to jump start Biden’s green priorities.
HAALAND ON THE CALENDAR: The Senate Energy and Natural Resources will hold a confirmation hearing for Interior secretary nominee Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) on Feb. 23, Pro’s Anthony Adragna reports. The hearing may be one of the most contentious yet: some Republicans on the panel, including ranking member Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), have already signaled they will oppose her nomination.
LANDS PACKAGE ON THE MOVE: The House is slated to vote on sweeping legislation that would permanently protect the area around the Grand Canyon and several hundred thousand acres in Colorado from new oil and gas development on Feb. 23, House Natural Resources Chair Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) announced Tuesday. The hefty package, H.R. 803 (117), is cobbled together from a group of bills considered in prior sessions of Congress, but may stand a better chance now that Democrats control the Senate, Anthony reports.
BACK TO THE FARM: A comment that National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy reportedly made at a recent conference about “getting the middle of the country understanding and active on climate” rubbed Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) the wrong way. “Surely belittling folks in the middle of the country with disparaging comments is not what President Biden meant in his inaugural address,” Grassley wrote in a letter to McCarthy Tuesday inviting her, Biden and other administration officials to visit Iowa to learn about the state’s renewable energy work.
LET’S BE SYSTEMATIC: The Biden EPA said Tuesday it will overhaul the process it uses to sift through scientific studies to determine the health risks posed by toxic chemicals following criticism from the National Academies of Sciences over the Trump administration’s contentious approach. The Trump EPA’s systematic review method, used for risk evaluations conducted under the Toxic Substances Control, was crafted by a former chemicals industry official when she oversaw the chemical safety office and was criticized by environmental groups and public health advocates who said it elevated industry-backed research and discounted studies conducted on humans. EPA said it will propose a new systematic review protocol later this year for public comment. More here from your host and Alex Guillén.
RIDE THAT WAVE: The Interior Department on Tuesday approved the first lease for an experimental offshore energy research project that would use ocean waves to generate electricity. The PacWave South test project proposed by Oregon State University would generate up to 20 megawatts of power, Ben Lefebvre reports, and follows through on Biden’s campaign promise to put government efforts behind transitioning the U.S. toward greater clean energy production.
BOEING DEFENDS TRUMP EPA AIRCRAFT CO2 RULE: Boeing on Tuesday filed a request to intervene in a challenge to EPA’s 2020 rule creating CO2 emission standards for jet aircraft before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. That rule set a standard that aligns with the requirements in an international agreement on aircraft signed by the Obama administration in 2016. But last month 12 states, including California and New York, filed a challenge to the rule, calling for one that requires steeper emission reductions.
Boeing thinks the existing rule should stand. “The U.S. EPA’s rule regulating aircraft CO2 emissions directly aligns with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards, which began under the leadership of the Obama-Biden Administration and should continue to be an important pillar of President Biden’s multi-lateral approach to addressing climate change,” Boeing said in a statement, arguing that overturning the regulation would “only discourage future international agreements, which are essential to addressing this global issue.” The Aerospace Industries Association of America, Inc., the industry’s top trade group, also sought to intervene in the litigation late Tuesday.
AGs SUE OVER CAFE PENALTY DELAY: Fifteen states on Tuesday sued the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over a late-Trump rule (Reg. 2127-AM32) delaying a hike in CAFE penalties for automakers until model year 2022, echoing a lawsuit filed last month by environmental groups. “NHTSA should not let automakers who fail to comply with Congress’s mandate to improve the fuel efficiency of their vehicles off the hook,” said Bethany Davis Noll, executive director of NYU’s State Energy & Environmental Impact Center
David Fotouhi, who spent most of the Trump administration as a top official in EPA’s general counsel office, including a few months as acting general counsel, has returned to the Washington office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.
Kimberly Wise White has been named vice president of regulatory and technical affairs for the American Chemistry Council. She had previously been a senior director within the group’s chemical products and technology division.
Katie Lineweaver Robinson joins the Electrification Coalition as the senior director of EV programs, most recently having served as director of sustainability for the city of Indianapolis. Julie Sutor, who previously worked in communications for Summit County, Colo., and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, joined the group last month as director of communications.
Tatiana Monastyrskaya joined Kirkland & Ellis LLP as a partner in the Debt Finance Practice Group working on energy and infrastructure finance.
Dustin Davidson has been named director of government relations of Waterways Council, Inc. He previously served as professional staff for the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis and as legislative assistant to Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.).
— “150 years of spills: Philadelphia refinery cleanup highlights toxic legacy of fossil fuels,” via Reuters.
— “Ted Cruz tweet attacking California energy policies resurfaces amid Texas power outages,” via Newsweek
— “Texas and California blackouts: A song of fire and ice,” via Bloomberg (Opinion).
— “Texas blackout hits minority communities especially hard,” via New York TImes.
Did we miss anything? Send future events to: [email protected].
THAT’S ALL FOR ME!
