Energy

Whitehouse on climate


With help from Kelsey Tamborrino, Anthony Adragna and Eric Wolff.

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— Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is one of the most vocal advocates for climate change action, and says he isn’t seeing enough fervor from corporate America despite their green messaging.

— Large swaths of the Southeast are still suffering from fuel shortages even after the Colonial Pipeline resumed operation.

— Senate Republicans will present the White House with a list of infrastructure pay-fors next week after a “productive” meeting with administration officials and President Joe Biden on Thursday.

HAPPY FRIDAY! I’m your host, Matthew Choi. Congrats to Flin Hyre of CNH Industrial for knowing Alonzo drove a 1979 Chevy Monte Carlo in “Training Day.” For today’s trivia: What actor starred in all the movies in this week’s trivia questions? Send your tips and trivia answers to [email protected]. Find me on Twitter @matthewchoi2018.

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. On today’s episode: Colonial Pipeline makes its return.

WHITEHOUSE CALLING: Our Anthony Adragna chatted with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) recently on his push for greater climate action in Congress. His message: Can’t we get this ball moving faster?

Whitehouse has long been at the forefront of Congressional calls for climate action and was optimistic that Democrats would present a united front and deliver on climate in their infrastructure plans. Despite some emerging opposition from the environmentalist left-flank, Whitehouse said all options were still on the table, from a clean energy standard to carbon capture. And he said there are Republicans who are receptive to a carbon pricing measure.

Still, he expressed disappointment that despite the shift by companies and business groups to support more aggressive policies and a price on carbon, they weren’t pushing the case hard enough and “better get off their rear ends right now” and call for climate legislation. And he’s keeping an eye on the clock, saying the opportunity for passing climate measures in infrastructure legislation is closing fast if they expect to get anything done by the summer.

“Immense amounts of all of this are TBD. So we’ll just have to wrestle our way through it,” he told Anthony. Read Anthony’s full conversation with Whitehouse here for Pros.

THE STATE OF THINGS: The Colonial Pipeline may be back on line, but the saga is far from over. Fuel shortages continue in the Southeast, and President Joe Biden said Thursday he expects things to remain shaky into next week.

Biden urged drivers not to panic buy gas, warning it would only prolong the supply pinch. But that hasn’t stopped consumers from draining more than 17,000 gas stations in the region, The Washington Post reports. The national average price of gas also surpassed $3 per gallon, reaching its highest price since 2014. About 70 percent of North Carolina gas stations and 50 percent of Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia gas stations had no fuel on Thursday, Reuters reports.

“This is not like flicking on a light switch,” Biden said said. “It’s going to take some time.”

The administration has implemented emergency measures this week to temper the crunch, including easing restrictions for truckers, relaxing pollution rules and granting a waiver for the Jones Act that bars foreign carriers from shipping between U.S. ports.

Still, Bloomberg reported Thursday morning that the pipeline’s operators paid nearly $5 million in ransom, contradicting earlier reports this week that the company had no intention of paying the hackers. The federal government was aware of the payment, per Bloomberg, but Biden declined to comment on it Thursday.

The aftermath: Biden said the debacle illustrated the need to improve cybersecurity throughout the U.S., though he stopped short of saying private companies should be mandated to adopt stronger security measures. (Biden issued a sweeping cybersecurity executive order for the federal government Wednesday night, but it had been in the works long before the Colonial hack.)

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency remains on the case, and revealed Thursday that Colonial has since shared technical information with investigators after CISA Director Brandon Wales had told lawmakers Wednesday that it had not. But cooperation between the two still seems limited. When asked about the reported ransom payments Thursday, Wales said “I have no knowledge of whether a ransom was paid, how much was paid, if it was paid, when it was paid.” Eric Geller has more for Pros on CISA’s investigation.

And Ben Lefebvre has a rundown on the administration’s response to the pipeline shutdown for Pros.

INFRASTRUCTURE TALKS: A group of Senate Republicans are planning to meet with the White House early next week with a list of pay-fors they would support for an infrastructure package. The delegation left a meeting with Biden on Thursday feeling “very encouraged,” said Senate EPW Ranking Member Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). Other members included Sens. Roy Blunt, Mike Crapo, Pat Toomey, Roger Wicker and John Barrasso.

Biden said just before the meeting that he’s “prepared to compromise” and that discussions were proceeding in earnest. But Blunt said he doesn’t want talks to drag on and that “we should know before Memorial Day whether there’s a deal to be had or not.” POLITICO’s Laura Barrón López and Burgess Everett have more from the meeting.

Related: T&I Republicans unveil water infrastructure counteroffer, from Pro’s Annie Snider.

EASING THE TRANSITION: Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) unveiled a new proposal Thursday aimed at helping fill the financial holes in fossil fuel-producing communities’ budgets as the nation transitions to cleaner energy sources.

The Schools and State Budgets Certainty Act, to be introduced next week, would calculate a baseline for federal fossil fuel revenues for each state, county and tribe that receives them, and would decrease that level by five percent each year to reflect a clean energy transition. Any lost revenue would be replaced by a direct “energy transition” payment from the federal government.

Mitigating the impacts on those communities in the clean energy transition has been a key priority for the Biden administration, especially Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, and will likely be critical to securing the support for moderates like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on an infrastructure package.

Heinrich said he doesn’t currently have any GOP co-sponsors but wants to hear input and work across the aisle. But Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) during a January press call blasted the idea of direct payments from the government to communities and said doing so only “exacerbates the mess we seem to be digging ourselves into in this country.”

TAX TALK: Democratic Reps. Earl Blumenauer (Ore.) and Mike Levin (Calif.) reintroduced legislation Thursday that would provide a direct pay option for renewable energy tax credits — a top priority for renewable energy groups amid constraints in the tax equity market. The president has similarly backed direct-pay investment and production tax credits for clean energy generation and storage as part of his American Jobs Plan.

GREENS EYE TVA NOMS: Environmental groups — including 350.org, Sunrise Movement, League of Conservation Voters and NRDC — urged senators on the Environment and Public Works Committee to ensure Biden’s picks for the Tennessee Valley Authority board of directors support a plan to provide 100 percent renewable and just energy to the Tennessee Valley by 2030.

It’s up to the committee to confirm that the president’s recent nominees “envision TVA as a national laboratory to engineer a zero emission, distributed energy, and public power system that can serve as a model for utilities across the country,” they wrote in a letter Thursday. Biden recently nominated Kimberly Lewis, Beth Geer, Michelle Moore and Robert Klein to the TVA board, which the groups say has previously “been driven by fossil fuel and corporate interests.”

OUT OF COMMITTEE: The Senate Energy Committee near-unanimously voted to advance Biden’s pick for deputy Interior secretary, Tommy Beaudreau, with only Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) voting against him.

Biden’s nominee for DOJ climate chief, Todd Kim, also got advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) joined the panel’s 11 Democrats in voting for Kim.

NEW RULES: EPA will do away with a Trump-era rule that environmentalists derided as putting up roadblocks to implementing effective Clean Air Act regulations. The old rule, implemented in December, required a string of cost-benefit analyses for future air regulations.

The new rules will take effect next month after a public listening period. Alex Guillén has more for Pros.

DECLINE IN ENFORCEMENT: EPA’s independent watchdog said Congress’ decision to slash enforcement funding and an exodus of staff are behind a decrease in enforcement actions at the agency between 2006 and 2018. Enforcement funding fell by 18 percent during that time period, accounting for inflation, and 675 inspectors and other staff left the agency.

What’s next: EPA agreed to include more information in the agency’s annual public enforcement reports, improve tracking of noncompliance rates and create a public-facing dashboard of EPA-led enforcement activities, Alex reports for Pros.

PERMITTING DELAYS FALL ON DEVELOPERS, TOO: Developers, and not just the government, are responsible for the interminable permitting process that slows the construction of large renewable projects and new transmission lines, according to David Hayes, a special assistant to Biden for climate issues.

“We still find situations where the companies haven’t really thought about the surveys needed to deal with the environmental issues and find themselves behind the eight ball because they haven’t done their homework,” David Hayes, a special assistant to the president, said at a Chamber of Commerce event Thursday.

BY THE NUMBERS: The wind industry installed 2,561 megawatts of new capacity in the first quarter of this year — the highest first quarter on record, according to a report released Thursday by the American Clean Power Association. That means U.S. project developers installed almost 40 percent more wind power in the first quarter of this year than 2020’s previous record. Texas led the way with the most wind capacity in Q1 with 592 MW, followed by Oklahoma with 555 MW and South Dakota with 462 MW.

The report also found there was 1,197 MW of new solar capacity installed in the first quarter, bringing the total U.S. operating solar capacity to 45,828 MW. Cumulative storage capacity also increased 6 percent in Q1 with the installation of 101 MW of new storage capacity, bringing total operating storage capacity to 1,736 MW. In total, the report found there is now 173,032 MW of operating clean power capacity in the U.S.

ESPAÑA WATCH: The Spanish parliament passed its first ever climate legislation, aiming for 74 percent renewable electricity by 2030, and a ban on fossil fuel exploration on Spanish soil, as well as uranium mining and fracking. The law also targets energy efficiency in buildings and phases out diesel car sales.

Greens, however, expressed disappointment with the measure, calling it unambitious compared to climate plans in Germany and France that call for far more aggressive reduction targets and touch on numerous aspects of everyday life. Read more from Aitor Hernández-Morales writing from Brussels.

MEANWHILE IN MOSCOW: Russia’s climate envoy dismissed nations’ new commitments to reduce emissions as an “unreasonable race” and that the country would stick to what it has committed to so far.

“Setting new targets every year for a few percent of additional emissions reductions not only raises questions about feasibility, but also pushes the whole world into an unreasonable race for numbers, diverting attention from the need for concrete results,” Ruslan Edelgeriyev said, according to Reuters. “We adhere to all our commitments and advocate for maintaining this fragile consensus.”

Russia is the biggest exporter of natural gas and second largest exporter of oil. The country set its emissions reduction goal at 30 percent lower than in 1990 by 2030 — though it’s not that heavy of a lift considering the state of the country’s industry in 1990 (hint: the USSR was falling apart).

— “Climate Change Is Wrecking 45,000-Year-Old Cave Paintings in Indonesia,” via Bloomberg.

— “Montana has made killing wolves easier. Some hunters are pushing back,” via National Geographic.

— “Central Maine Power Can Proceed With Transmission Line Project,” via Bloomberg.

THAT’S ALL FOR ME!





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