With help from Alex Guillén, Annie Snider, Eric Wolff and Ben Lefebvre
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— As cities and local governments grow increasingly disenchanted with federal disaster aid, the private sector might have an alternative.
— Both Joe Biden and President Donald Trump will unveil infrastructure plans next week. Biden’s plan is expected to focus on clean energy, while Trump will announce environmental permitting changes.
— House appropriators will mark up their fiscal 2021 funding bill today for Interior-EPA.
GOOD FRIDAY MORNING! I’m your host, Kelsey Tamborrino. Holland & Knight’s Beth Viola gets the trivia win for correctly identifying Teddy Roosevelt, who disliked baseball, but was the first person to ever receive a lifetime pass to any Major League Baseball game. For today: Name the former Obama administration Cabinet official who also served in Congress simultaneously with a sibling. Send your tips, energy gossip and comments to [email protected].
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A NEW KIND OF INSURANCE: In theory, the federal government is supposed to step in after natural disasters and help municipal governments rebuild. But more and more, the disaster relief checks aren’t arriving from Washington, Pro’s Zack Colman reports this morning, as the federal bureaucracy is overwhelmed and an ever-polarized Congress is less agile about responding. That means towns can’t afford to rebuild.
One potential solution: A kind of municipal insurance called a “parametric policy,” which is explicitly designed to pay out quickly according to metrics agreed upon in advance by the insurer and municipal government. Say, if a hurricane develops into a Category 3 or higher, the cities can skip the claims and inspection process; the insurer just writes the check. If it doesn’t hit that metric, the damage isn’t covered.
But as those policies have gotten more popular, they’ve started to run into serious questions — like whether the companies are making fair calculations, whether towns are getting a fair return on their premiums, and whether their existence allows governments to punt on harder decisions about where people live and businesses operate in the first place.
“There’s just increasing concern about what kind of future disaster world we’re going to be facing and that’s driven attention and how we finance these events because losses are just going up,” said Carolyn Kousky, executive director of the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s getting sort of unsustainable for the public sector to be paying for all of this.”
BIDEN: FRACKING JOBS SAFE: Joe Biden told a TV reporter in Pennsylvania on Thursday that a Biden administration would not eliminate fracking jobs. “Fracking is not going to be on the chopping block,” he told WNEP when asked about displaced workers. Environmentalists who have been pressing the candidate to call for a fracking ban aren’t likely to greet that statement the way they did his “unity” task force’s climate proposal earlier this week. Biden has called for no new leases on federal lands, but some Democrats have joined in pressing him to promise to pursue a ban on the practice, while Pro-Trump ads have targeted him from the other side in the state that’s been a key player in the fracking boom.
COMING SOON: BIDEN’S CLEAN ENERGY PLAN: Biden will unveil an updated clean energy and infrastructure plan next week, the presumptive Democratic nominee announced Thursday, while touting his economic recovery plan. “Next week, I’ll be laying out an updated blueprint for how we build a modern, safe, sustainable infrastructure and clean energy economy,” Biden said. The plan will address how to make sure “communities who have suffered the most from pollution are first to benefit from this investment,” he said.
Biden released a separate plan Thursday to rebuild the U.S. economy. That plan includes a $300 billion research and development investment “to sharpen America’s competitive edge in new industries where global leadership is up for grabs, like battery technology, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and clean energy,” he said.
It also calls for a $400 billion procurement investment to support clean vehicles and the expansion of clean energy generation capacity. “Other countries should be buying the next generation of battery technology and electric vehicles manufactured by American workers,” the plan states. Biden also promised to apply a carbon adjustment fee against countries that are failing to meet their Paris agreement commitments.
NOT THE ONLY ONE: President Donald Trump is also planning to unveil an infrastructure plan next week, Pro’s Tanya Snyder reports. Trump will visit a UPS airport hub in Atlanta Wednesday to tout his administration’s progress on accelerating environmental reviews for infrastructure projects, as laid out in a 2017 executive order and in a January proposed rule. That rule has now been finalized and Trump will announce its implementation at his Wednesday appearance, according to a White House official.
AD WARS: The Sierra Club is launching a five-figure digital ad buy today that calls on Republican Sens. Cory Gardner (Colo.), Martha McSally (Ariz.), Joni Ernst (Iowa) and Pat Toomey (Pa.) to ensure clean energy jobs in their states are protected. Clean energy jobs across the country have taken a significant hit since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
A FRIDAY APPROPRIATIONS MARKUP, WHAT A TREAT: Buckle up for an amendment-filled ride, as the House Appropriations Committee this morning marks up its fiscal 2021 funding bill for the Interior Department and EPA. The $36.76 billion funding bill, which advanced out of the subcommittee earlier this week, would increase EPA funding by $318 million to $9.38 billion and increase Interior’s overall budget by $308 million to $13.8 billion, while blocking a spate of the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks.
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler on Thursday took the unusual step of putting his name to a veto threat, arguing that Democrats are “blackmailing” EPA in an “election year gimmick” related to the sound-proof phone booth former Administrator Scott Pruitt had installed in his office. The bill would withhold $2 million until EPA sends a report on the booth to Congress as the Government Accountability Office called for under the Antideficiency Act, a federal spending law. EPA in 2018 rejected GAO’s conclusions about the booth, so it said it didn’t need to send Congress any such report. The agency also noted to ME that it sent details about the booth’s purchase to Congress two years ago.
Wheeler also said Democrats’ bill “completely gutted” the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act program, which offers low-cost financing to cities for water upgrades. That’s despite the Trump administration proposing in its budget blueprint a combined $782 million cut to EPA’s state revolving funds, its primary mechanism for funding water infrastructure. A spokesman for Appropriations Committee Democrats said new WIFIA funding was excluded from the bill because EPA has not complied with provisions attached to last year’s funding for it, including a report to Congress on how to reform the program so it doesn’t violate budget law.
Doc of the day: Appropriators on Thursday released their Interior-Environment committee report.
DEMOCRAT INTRODUCES FEDERAL CLEAN ENERGY STANDARD: Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette (D) introduced a bill to establish a federal clean energy standard requiring U.S. electricity producers to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 at the latest. The Clean Energy Innovation and Deployment Act would create a system awarding energy providers a credit for every megawatt-hour of electricity they produce without emitting any carbon. Companies would also receive a credit for each ton of carbon dioxide they remove via carbon capture, utilization and storage. California Democratic Reps. Jared Huffman and Scott Peters are co-sponsors of the measure.
FERC READY TO RULE ON NET METERING: FERC’s open meeting agenda, released Thursday, says the commission will decide on a petition from the New England Ratepayers Association on whether to curb net metering. If FERC grants the petition, it would slash the return rooftop solar customers get on their generation by at least half. A wide variety of groups, from Republican governors and state regulators to environmental groups asked FERC to reject the petition in comments last month. Most utilities have long opposed net metering.
PURPA too: The commission will also vote on finalizing its proposal from last year to alter the rules implementing the Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act to address concerns of some utilities and states. FERC’s proposal allows states to challenge siting rules that help determine which power facilities are covered under the law, and it would allow utilities to pay variable rates for PURPA generation. Some utilities and states, particularly those in the West have been fighting to change PURPA for years.
LOYALTY TEST: The White House’s Presidential Personnel Office is having conversations with political appointees at the Energy Department to gauge staffers’ loyalty to Trump as the administration plans for a potential second term, two people familiar with the matter tell Pro’s Daniel Lippman. One administration official said the meetings with DOE officials have other objectives as well: to determine how the department is functioning with its political appointees; to discern the value that appointees are providing to the administration and what they have done to promote Trump’s agenda; and to ask the appointees for their goals for a second term.
YOU’VE GOT DAPL APPEAL: Energy Transfer Partners on Thursday appealed D.C. District Court Judge James Boasberg’s blockbuster order from Monday that told the company to halt deliveries on the Dakota Access pipeline while the Army Corps of Engineers completes an environmental review. The company filed the appeal in the D.C. Circuit (docket no. 20-5197) shortly after Boasberg denied Energy Transfer’s request for a stay of his shutdown order.
Ginger, get the popcorn: ETP has argued that it can’t meet Boasberg’s 30-day deadline for draining the pipeline. Despite the fact the company publicly acknowledges that it has taken no steps to begin the shutdown process, Boasberg on Thursday offered to have the company and tribes negotiate a longer timeline. But ETP instead told him to just deny a stay so they can appeal it. ME expects to see ETP file an emergency motion for relief any time now, and it’s possible the D.C. Circuit could temporarily stay the order just to maintain the status quo for the few days or weeks needed to brief the matter in the appellate court.
TRUMP TRIES TO TORPEDO AIR QUALITY SIDE DEAL: The Trump administration is trying to block a side deal the Sierra Club has struck with Michigan utility DTE in a long-running air pollution enforcement case. The case involves DTE’s alleged 2010 violation of the Clean Air Act when it installed new equipment at multiple power plants without getting proper pre-construction permits from regulators. The Trump administration and DTE agreed to settle the issue with a $1.8 million civil penalty and $5.5 million environmental mitigation project to offset the extra pollution.
But the Trump administration this week asked the judge to reject an additional settlement DTE reached with the Sierra Club, which had intervened in the case. The side deal includes shuttering three power plants by the end of 2022. It would also require that the $5.5 million mitigation project DTE has agreed to with EPA be used specifically to purchase electric buses for southwest Detroit and other environmental justice communities. And DTE would fund $2 million in other mitigation projects and pay for energy efficiency upgrades at a Detroit recreation center.
The side deal “perverts litigation claims meant to help the general public, just to benefit a select few,” the Justice Department wrote in its motion. The deal to close the plants “elevates outcomes sought by a special interest group over sound environmental policy,” DOJ wrote — although DTE has already announced it will close those plants by the end of 2022 anyway as its shifts toward renewable sources. DOJ also questioned whether the extra $2 million mitigation effort will result in a “grab bag” of “wasteful or inefficient projects” that are more about PR optics than “meaningful improvements.” Sierra maintains that its deal is private litigation that doesn’t require a judge’s approval.
DOJ ASKS COURT TO BLOCK AUTOMAKERS FROM SUIT: The Trump administration on Thursday asked a court to block Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW from becoming directly involved with litigation over the SAFE Vehicles rule (Reg. 2060-AU09). The automakers, which struck a voluntary emissions deal with California, last week moved to join the litigation as intervenors but declined to take any side on the merits of the case. In a filing on Thursday, the Justice Department argued that California “bestowed regulatory largesse” on the four automakers by agreeing to lower emissions rates than would be required of other companies under the state’s regulatory program, which the SAFE Vehicles rule would preempt, Pro’s Alex Guillén reports.
— Claire Richer joined the American Wind Energy Association as federal affairs director. The trade group anticipates she’ll register as a lobbyist. She was previously a legislative aide to Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). (H/t POLITICO Influence)
— Tracy Zea was elected Waterways Council, Inc.’s president and CEO on Wednesday. Zea most recently served as the group’s vice president for government relations and previously worked on the staff of the House Transportation Committee.
— “U.N. chief urges end to coal financing to spur clean energy shift,” via Reuters.
— “Wall Street giants plan more active role in climate fight,” via Axios.
— “Why the larger climate movement is finally embracing the fight against environmental racism,” via TIME.
— “NOAA officials feared firings after Trump’s Hurricane claims, inspector general says,” via The New York Times.
— “Inside clean energy: Sunrun and Vivint form new solar Goliath, leaving Tesla to play David,” via InsideClimate News.
THAT’S ALL FOR ME!
