With help from Matt Daily, Zack Colman, Gavin Bade, Annie Snider and Anthony Adragna
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— The U.N. climate conference in Madrid is set to end today with little progress made on how global carbon markets should operate.
— Spending leaders say they have reached a “deal in principle” to fund the federal government for the rest of fiscal 2020.
— David Dunlap, a former Koch Industries chemicals expert and current top political official in EPA’s research office, is expected to answer questions today from the House Science Committee.
WELCOME TO FRIDAY! I’m your host, Kelsey Tamborrino. Check out the new 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.
Advanced Energy Economy’s J.R. Tolbert gets the win for knowing Colorado elected the first three women to serve in any state legislature: Clara Cressingham, Carrie Holly and Frances Klock. All three were elected in 1894 to the Colorado State House of Representatives the year after the state granted women the right to vote. For today: Who is the youngest current senator in Congress? Send your tips, energy gossip and comments to ktamborrino@politico.com.
THE CLIMATE PAIN IN SPAIN: The chances of making major advances on climate change are looking slim heading into what’s supposed to be the final day of negotiations in Madrid. The U.N.’s COP25 talks have stumbled over some of the same issues that have bedeviled the process for decades: a long-standing split between rich nations and developing countries over who will bear the burden of cutting greenhouse gas emissions and how much money the industrialized countries will funnel to poor countries to green their economies and protect them from rising seas and higher temperatures.
A group of large developing economies — China, Brazil, India and South Africa — are pushing back on efforts to write the rulebook for international carbon trading regimes. That’s a major priority for the meeting, and the nearly 200 countries attending the talks need to get that out of the way if they’re going to move on to the next big task: preparing their new domestic climate targets for 2020’s meeting in Glasgow. A failure to get a set of rules on trading in place is threatening to push back that effort to raise the world’s climate “ambition” — and could undermine the entire Paris agreement.
But unlike in 2015, when the Obama administration pulled out the stops to get that deal across the finish line, the U.S. influence in Madrid has shrunk because of President Donald Trump’s move to withdraw the U.S. from the pact. That’s given China and its allies more room to influence the proceedings and put any advances in jeopardy. It’s those countries that are drawing the criticism from the most vulnerable nations — the small island states that may cease to exist.
“At this stage we are being cornered, we fear we’re having to concede on too many issues that would undermine the very integrity of the Paris Agreement,” Carlos Fuller of Belize, who is leading the bloc of small island states at talks, told POLITICO’s Kalina Oroschakoff in Madrid.
GORE’S 2020 VISION: Former Vice President Al Gore told ME the “the prospects are excellent” that a Democratic president would make climate change a top priority, given what he’s seen from the 2020 field. Gore, who was in Madrid for the U.N. climate conference, said he sees health care and climate change as the top two issues during the primary. “Conventional wisdom on this point is correct in my experience — you have to pick two or three priorities and emphasize them when the mandate from the election is fresh and push as hard as you can as quickly as you can,” Gore said.
Gore has met with candidates, but he declined to name them. He said Democrats should run on the Green New Deal, saying the concept is a “broad brushstroke, bold proclamation, the details of which are designed to be filled in later,” despite efforts by Republican opponents to turn it into a sweeping, socialist boogeyman.
While Gore said he hasn’t seen Republican policy positions shift much, he said “underneath the surface” views are starting to change. “We’re not that far away from a restoration of bipartisan support, particularly since Mother Nature is getting everybody’s attention with these fires and floods and hurricanes,” Gore said.
CLOSE BUT NO POLAND: EU leaders last night fell short of agreeing to a bloc-wide goal of reaching climate neutrality by 2050, POLITICO Europe’s Paola Tamma reports. While all 28 EU countries backed the mid-century target in line with the Paris agreement, they had to carve out an exclusion for coal-dependent Poland. The European Council said it would revisit the issue in June 2020, according to conclusions adopted by all EU leaders. The move comes less than two days after the EU announced its ambitious Green Deal program.
BREAKING DOWN THE GREEN CLIMATE FUND: The Green Climate Fund, meant to help developing countries cut emissions and adapt to climate change, is valued at $20.6 billion. The fund helps finance 124 projects around the world, with 73 percent of those projects publicly or privately financed. Pro DataPoint’s Patterson Clark breaks down the projects.
NO SHUTDOWN: Top appropriators said Thursday they’ve reached a “deal in principle” to fund the federal government and boost defense and domestic budgets by $49 billion in fiscal 2020, averting a government shutdown when a stopgap measure ends Dec. 20, POLITICO’s Caitlin Emma and Jennifer Scholtes report. The House and Senate will likely look to pass all 12 appropriations bills in two big packages, or “minibuses.” The lower chamber could vote on the deal as early as Tuesday.
Negotiators are keeping most details of the long-delayed bipartisan agreement under wraps until lawmakers and staff can work through a host of technicalities over the weekend. But efforts to include a policy rider requiring EPA to swiftly set a drinking water limit for a pair of forever chemicals could be gaining traction, with multiple sources close to the negotiations giving it better than even odds of being included.
CHAIRS TO WHEELER: COOPERATE WITH OIG: The chairs of the House Science, Energy and Commerce, and Oversight committees sent a letter to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler on Thursday urging him to instruct staff to cooperate with the Office of Inspector General following a recent OIG report that said EPA leadership was acting with “recklessness” in defending chief of staff Ryan Jackson, as well as a previous “seven-day letter” detailing Jackson’s refusal to cooperate with investigators.
“We are extremely concerned that you are creating an environment at EPA that directly contradicts your 2018 message to employees, is hostile towards accountability, and enables the very waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement that Congress has charged the Inspector General to investigate,” the committee chairs wrote.
FORMALDEHYDE, THE (TRANSCRIBED) NOVEL: Months of battles between the Trump EPA and the House Science Committee culminate today as the agency’s research chief sits for a transcribed interview to answer questions about the scuttling of a controversial chemical assessment that his former employer had fiercely fought.
As a top chemical expert for Koch Industries, David Dunlap had sought to dismantle the Integrated Risk Information System’s assessment of formaldehyde, which POLITICO reported last year was poised to conclude that the widely used chemical is linked with leukemia and nasal cancer at levels that most Americans breath in daily.
When he took his post at EPA, Dunlap voluntarily recused himself from work on that assessment, although he led an effort to “prioritize” the IRIS program’s work that resulted in its formaldehyde assessment being spiked. Moreover, POLITICO reported in October that Dunlap communicated with colleagues specifically about the formaldehyde assessment even after informing ethics officials of his plans to recuse himself. “When environmental research is sidelined to protect special interests, we must respond,” House Science Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), who subpoenaed EPA for documents and Dunlap’s testimony, wrote in an op-ed last month.
WHAT’S FERC’S ROLE IN UTILITY BANKRUPTCIES? The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled Thursday that bankruptcy courts have final jurisdiction over whether utilities can get out of power purchase contracts as part of a Chapter 11 proceeding but should consult with FERC to determine whether doing so is in the public interest, Pro’s Gavin Bade reports.
A similar issue is being litigated in California, where the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is weighing whether FERC can intervene in Pacific Gas and Electric’s bid to abandon up to $42 billion in contracts as part of its bankruptcy proceeding.
MASSACHUSETTS AG TAKES ISO FIGHT PUBLIC: Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is taking her fight against ISO New England to the public, asking residents to sign a petition to tell the grid operator “you want market rules to promote clean, affordable energy.”
Healey and other clean-energy advocates say the ISO’s market rules are tilted in favor of fossil fuels — largely gas and fuel oil in New England. FERC last year accepted an ISO-NE proposal to bail out a large gas plant in Boston and approved rules from the grid operator that require fossil fuel plants to retire before new clean-energy resources can access its long-term capacity market. The ISO is working on a new proposal that will benefit “fuel secure” resources like LNG and oil plants that can keep fuel onsite.
— “Opinion: The stealth plan to erode public control of public lands,” via POLITICO Magazine.
— “Why is this top Democrat absent from the fight against toxic pollution in Cancer Alley?” via The Guardian.
— “States express support for offshore wind in Gulf of Maine,” via Associated Press.
— “EPA workers approach contract talks with ‘guarded optimism,’” via Bloomberg Environment.
— “It’s a vast, invisible climate menace. We made it visible,” via The New York Times.
THAT’S ALL FOR ME!
