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SANDERS EYES BANNING OIL EXPORTS ADMINISTRATIVELY: One of the first actions a Bernie Sanders administration might take would be to reimpose a ban on U.S. crude oil exports.
The action could have significant effects not just on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, but also on global oil markets, geopolitical tensions, and the U.S.’ emerging status as a net energy exporter. And it would reverse a policy signed into law by President Barack Obama, as part of a bipartisan deal lifting the 40-year-ban in exchange for extensions of tax incentives for wind and solar energy.
Reinstating the crude export ban is being floated as part of a number of executive orders drafted by Sanders’ campaign policy team, according to the Washington Post.
The draft orders, which include a number of other progressive policy priorities, signal Sanders would be likely to embrace unilateral executive authority to start implementing his agenda quickly. The crude oil ban would be paired with declaring a national climate emergency. (The 2015 budget deal allows the president to impose “export licensing requirements or other restrictions” on crude oil exports for renewable one-year periods if a national emergency is declared.)
Environmental groups are ramping up the pressure: Just this week, Greenpeace and Oil Change International released a policy briefing saying reimposing the crude oil export ban could slash emissions by 73 million to 165 million metric tons per year. That’s equal to the emissions reductions from shuttering 19 to 42 coal plants, the groups say.
“Reinstating the ban would also send a strong signal to energy investors that the fossil fuel era is drawing to a close, act as a failsafe against future export-directed investments and carbon leakage, and provide a useful policy lever over emissions beyond U.S. borders,” the groups wrote in a blog post Tuesday.
The groups would also want a Sanders White House to go even further, placing similar restrictions on coal and liquified natural gas.
U.S. energy exports would take a big hit: Without any changes in policy, the U.S. is expected to become a net energy exporter this year, according to the Energy Information Administration’s latest energy outlook released Wednesday. “Large increases” in oil and gas production, and slower growth in U.S. energy consumption, would help the U.S. maintain that net energy exporter status through the 2050s, the EIA projected.
Halting those exports, though, could have an impact on geopolitical tensions. A new report to Congress from the Center for a New American Security says the U.S. should continue exporting crude oil and LNG to Asian countries, recommending even that Congress should further reduce barriers to LNG exports.
“Abundant U.S. supply to global oil markets has had a demonstrated calming effect on market prices during times of geopolitical turmoil, which has the benefit of avoiding price spikes even for countries that import little U.S. crude oil,” the report says. It adds an “open approach” to crude oil and LNG exports “will provide considerable security and economic benefits for the United States and U.S. partners in Asia.”
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HOW HOUSE REPUBLICANS SWAYED CONSERVATIVES ON CLIMATE: Even conservative Republicans are embracing a “clean energy innovation” legislative agenda, primed for release this spring and advanced by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and his top energy and climate lieutenants.
“Climate denial is a bad political strategy,” said Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, a 37-year-old member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and an ally of President Trump. “At some point, you have to be for something to fix it.”
Republicans, alarmed by polling showing vulnerability among young and suburban voters, sidelined the most strident and skeptical conservative outside groups to recognize climate change as an urgent problem requiring a response to the liberal “Green New Deal,” according to conversations Josh had with more than a dozen Republican representatives and others familiar with congressional GOP plans.
The major themes of the pending agenda are capturing carbon dioxide (through technology and planting trees), curbing plastic waste, exporting natural gas, and promoting “resilience” or adaptation to sea-level rise and other effects of climate change.
These are my concessions: To land on a message that appealed to everybody, Republicans had to navigate potential fault lines among themselves by setting aside difficult questions and sticking broadly to a “free market” approach.
“It’s not that we’ve gone out there to the Freedom Caucus to say, ‘We are asking you to take a hard left turn,’” said Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana, the top Republican on the select climate committee.
To keep (most) everyone happy, House Republicans put aside divisive (critics would call essential) questions. That meant they rejected carbon taxes and regulations, and even cleared the way for more fossil fuel use.
“Fossil fuels aren’t the enemy,” Graves said. “It’s emissions. So let’s devise strategies that are based on emissions strategies, not based on eliminating fossil fuels.”
Republicans also left out some of their more liberal members, like Rep. Francis Rooney of Florida, a carbon tax backer who says he was not consulted on the climate agenda: “They are not ready to talk about the things I am ready to talk about,” he said.
Read more of Josh’s report published this morning.
COAL STATE REPUBLICAN PROPOSES CLEAN ELECTRICITY MANDATE: Rep. David McKinley of West Virginia plans to introduce a bipartisan bill that would impose a clean electricity mandate, becoming the first Republican in recent memory to endorse a mandate for non-emitting power.
McKinley revealed a few details on his plan in an op-ed in the USA Today with his co-sponsor, Rep. Kurt Schrader, a centrist Democrat from Oregon. The duo plan to formally introduce legislation in the coming weeks.
The plan is modest, compared to other Democratic proposals aiming to reach net-zero emissions by midcentury across the entire economy, and many states that have imposed immediate clean electricity standards without delay.
Wait-and-see approach: McKinley’s proposal, by contrast, would wait 10 years until imposing the clean mandate, which only would apply to the power sector and seek to reduce emissions 80% by 2050. In the decade before applying the clean standard, the federal government would spend tens of billions of dollars annually on clean energy technologies (via measures such as grants, loans, tax credits, and public-private partnerships), in order to bring down their cost to make the mandate more tenable. It would target the investments to solar, wind, hydropower and other renewables, as well as nuclear, carbon capture for fossil fuels, direct air capture, energy efficiency, transmission, and storage.
“We need a new approach that combines these ideas—innovation and reformed regulations—in a pragmatic way,” McKinley and Schrader write in the op-ed. “We can transition from an outdated regulatory scheme focused on the Clean Air Act to a new law that would give the government the ability to require the use of clean energy technologies as they become economically competitive.”
Their plan would also prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from using the Clean Air Act to regulate emissions in the power sector during the 10-year spending period before the mandate is imposed.
FERC RULES IN FAVOR OF PIPELINES SEIZING STATE LAND: Republicans on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved an order Thursday supporting the ability of companies building natural gas pipelines to condemn state lands for pipeline routes.
FERC’s GOP majority carried a 2-1 vote supporting the PennEast pipeline, which wants to use federal eminent domain authority to take land owned by New Jersey to finish its project.
While the Natural Gas Act allows pipeline projects to seize privately-held land, there’s dispute if that right extends to state-owned land.
The project has been on hold after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in September ruled that PennEast cannot condemn state-owned land, ruling that the Natural Gas Act does not allow the federal government to do so.
PennEast asked FERC, which first approved the project in 2018, to intervene. PennEast plans to appeal the circuit court ruling to the Supreme Court, and FERC’s order boosts the chances that the nation’s highest court would consider the case. However, FERC’s order does not overturn the circuit court ruling.
The arguments: FERC Republican Bernard McNamee argued the text of the Natural Gas Act is clear that a company has the authority to pursue eminent domain on state-owned land.
Chairman Neil Chatterjee, a Republican, argued FERC’s ruling “will provide much needed clarity to other potential litigants.”
FERC’s lone Democrat, Richard Glick, argued in dissent that Republicans are inappropriately trying to put their thumbs on the scale to prod the Supreme Court to consider PennEast’s case.
“I don’t think we should be pushing out an opinion just to bolster a private party’s legal position,” Glick said, adding “this outcome oriented approach is both deeply troubling and frankly a discredit to this agency.”
SANDERS TARGETS ‘FOREVER CHEMICALS’: Sanders’ newly introduced bill would require the EPA to designate all per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, as hazardous under the Superfund law.
House Democrats passed a sweeping PFAS package earlier this month that would also take such a step, though many Republicans criticized the measure as too broad and heavy-handed. Senate Republicans have indicated they won’t take up the bill, and the White House issued a veto threat.
Sanders’ bill, which he introduced Wednesday with Senators Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, would also ban use of PFAS in substances that come into contact with food and would set up a number of drinking water and other grant programs to address PFAS contamination.
“It is unconscionable that huge corporations like DuPont have, for decades, concealed evidence of how dangerous these compounds are in order to keep profiting at the expense of human health,” Sanders said in a statement.
Sanders isn’t the only 2020 Democrat wading into the PFAS issue. Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg unveiled a PFAS plan earlier this month and held a roundtable in New Hampshire on the issue.
CLIMATE CHANGE RISK ‘PART OF’ FED’S ROLE: But the Federal Reserve will be leaving society’s broader response to climate change up to elected officials, Chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday.
“I think the public has every right to expect and will expect that we will assure that the financial system is resilient and robust against the risks from climate change,” Powell said during a news conference after the Fed’s January meeting. However, the Fed, like other central banks, is just in the beginning stages of understanding what its role is, he added.
Powell also said the Fed likely will join a network of more than 50 global banks working on climate risk management and sustainable finance. He said the Fed has been talking with the group — the Network for Greening the Financial System — about joining, and in the meantime has been attending all of its meetings.
CARBON CAPTURE GROUP ADDS OIL MAJOR: The Global Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Institute added a dozen new members in recent months, including oil giant BP and major banking institution HSBC, the first global commercial bank to join the group.
Also among the institute’s newest members are cement and building materials manufacturers, refining and energy infrastructure companies, and carbon capture technology makers, according to a news release Wednesday.
DON’T BLOW OFF WIND: Solar may be getting all the hype as the fastest growing generating source, but the wind industry is touting what it called its third-strongest year on record in 2019.
Project developers added 9,143 megawatts of wind last year, enough to power more than 3 million homes, the American Wind Energy Association reported Wednesday.
Another 44,000 megawatts are being developed.
That includes significant plans for offshore wind, which accounts for 17% of projects under development.
Demand for wind power among businesses and utilities set a record in 2019, AWEA claims, with 8,726 megawatts of power purchase agreements.
DEMOCRATIC STATES SUE EPA OVER CHEMICAL SAFETY ROLLBACK: Fourteen Democratic states, along with D.C. and Philadelphia, sued the EPA on Wednesday for rolling back Obama-era chemical handling rules that were put in place in response to a 2013 explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas that killed 15 people.
“The Trump EPA is gutting critical safeguards against explosions, fires, poisonous gas releases, and other accidents at these facilities, putting New Yorkers in harm’s way,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the suit filed in the D.C. Circuit Court.
As part of the changes, the EPA eliminated a requirement for independent audits and “root cause” analyses following accidents, as well as analyses of technology alternatives that could reduce the chance of incidents. The EPA also cut back on training and information-sharing requirements on companies handling hazardous chemicals.
The EPA argues the changes, backed by the oil and gas industry, keep safety protections in place but remove burdensome requirements and respond to concerns from first responders and state regulators.
The Rundown
Wall Street Journal Microsoft strives for a carbon-free future. A setback in Fargo shows the hard reality.
New York Times Trump administration moves to ease rules against killing birds
Reuters US refiners, chemical makers pare insurance coverage as accidents boost costs
Calendar
WEDNESDAY | FEB. 5
10 a.m. 2318 Rayburn. The House Science Committee holds a hearing on “management and spending challenges within the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.”
10 a.m. 2322 Rayburn. The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Energy Subcommittee holds a hearing on “Modernizing the Natural Gas Act to Ensure it Works for Everyone.”
