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GRAVES GOES AFTER DEMOCRATS: Rep. Garret Graves, the top Republican on the House’s special climate change committee, is planning to accuse Democrats of “exploiting child labor” as part of their clean energy and infrastructure spending plans.
Graves will unleash the pointed new line of attack during a select climate committee hearing tomorrow on “building a just clean energy economy,” the first time the panel is convening (remotely) since Democrats released a released a report last month that looks to tackle emissions in every sector of the economy, with a goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
“This is the party when the cameras are turned on, we care about children, but when cameras are off, they say child labor, who cares when we are getting our electric vehicles,” Graves told Josh in an interview. “It sounds great everyone is going to be driving EVs and Flintstone-powered cars, but when you start saying how do you do this, you quickly get to a point where you are depending on rare earth minerals coming from supply chains controlled by China and other less than friendly nations.”
Graves is seeking to draw attention to an incident early this month when House Democrats passed their sweeping green infrastructure bill, “The Moving Forward Act.”
Rep. Peter DeFazio, the Democratic chairman of the Transportation Committee, which Graves also serves on, kept out an amendment to the bill by GOP Rep. Pete Steuber of Minnesota that would have required the Commerce Secretary to certify that federally funded clean energy technologies, such as electric buses or charging stations, do not use critical minerals mined or processed with child labor.
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board accused Democrats of “killing a child-labor measure for green energy minerals.” It called out “the dirty little secret of clean energy” that technologies such as EV batteries are built with cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel, and other rare earth elements that are produced or mined in countries that exploit child labor, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
GOP latches onto critical minerals concerns: House Republicans in recent weeks have looked to highlight the issue, arguing the pandemic has exposed the risks from the production of essential minerals being concentrated in a few countries. The coronavirus has already set back mining operations across the world, imperiling clean energy supply chains, the International Energy Agency recently warned.
Republicans have introduced legislation to encourage U.S. production of critical minerals by easing permitting for domestic mining, specifically targeting China, the largest producer of EVs and a major producer of rare earth elements and exporter to the U.S.
“We can’t be stupid on further enslaving us to China in terms of rare earth or renewable technologies,” Graves said.
Read on for Democrats’ response to Graves.
Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers Josh Siegel (@SiegelScribe) and Abby Smith (@AbbySmithDC). Email [email protected] or [email protected] for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.
Democrats respond to Graves: DeFazio told Josh that Graves’ comments are “dangerously misleading and beneath the dignity of the Committee we both serve on.”
“Republicans, the fossil fuel industry and other green technology opponents have cherry-picked the facts in a cheap, election year stunt designed to mislead the public and score political points,” DeFazio said, adding the majority of rare earth minerals are used in cellphones, laptops, medical devices, aerospace parts, and military applications, not in clean energy.
His staff noted DeFazio replaced the minerals amendment to the infrastructure bill with broader language saying “it is the policy of the United States” that funds from the legislation “should not be used to purchase products produced whole or in part through the use of child labor.”
A Transportation Committee aide said the GOP original amendment, which Republicans consider stronger and enforceable, ran into “jurisdictional” issues.
Rep. Kathy Castor, the chairman of the climate committee, said Democrats are not ignoring the need to improve the supply chain for critical minerals, and accused Republicans of being disingenuous and distracting.
“Democrats and Republicans unequivocally oppose the abhorrent practice of child labor in the production of any product,” Castor told Josh. “I’m concerned that my Republican colleagues are only bringing up these challenges when it comes to electric vehicles and renewable energy as an excuse to avoid acting on climate change.”
Climate committee Democrats’ recent report acknowledges the need to “secure supplies of critical minerals” and says “many of these materials are in vulnerable or volatile supply chains.”
It calls on the Energy Department to develop a national strategy for securing critical minerals in the clean energy and EV supply chain in an “environmentally, economically, and socially responsible way” and proposes new research funding into sustainable recycling of lithium batteries and other components.
DEMOCRATS SEE CLIMATE AS ‘POLITICAL WEAPON’ IN 2020: Democrats are bucking conventional election wisdom and leaning strongly into climate as the general election heats up because they see the issue as an opportunity to pick up key Trump 2016 voters, Abby reports in a story posted Sunday.
The tactics show how much climate politics have shifted in recent years. Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, recently unveiled his most aggressive climate plan yet.
“The assumption has always been, incorrectly, that climate is a dangerous place for Democrats,” said Andrew Baumann, vice president of research for pollster Global Strategy Group.
Baumann, who has conducted polling in the last few months for Democratic and environmental groups, says Democrats can actually pick up voters by pressing hard on climate change, including independents in swing states and center-right women.
A threat to Trump: Pollsters say Trump needs to hold onto as many voters as he can. His margin of victory in 2016 was “razor thin,” dependent on roughly 70,000 votes in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
It could also be a bigger risk for Biden not to campaign on climate: That’s especially because elections are increasingly about turning out a party’s base, as opposed to relying on swaying unaffiliated swing voters, increasingly rare in today’s polarized politics, Leiserowitz said
“Biden still has to make the case to his progressive base,” he added. “He was not their first choice.”
DEUTSCHE BANK LIMITS LENDING TO FOSSIL FUELS: Deutsche Bank, based in Germany, announced Monday it will stop investing in coal mining by 2025, along with not financing new oil and gas projects in the Arctic.
Deutsche also pledged to review all its existing lending related to the oil and gas sector by the end of this year.
It will immediately cease financing oil and gas fracking in countries with “scarce water supplies.”
Deutsche joins more than two dozen banks that have ruled out support for drilling in the Arctic, including five of the six biggest U.S. banks: Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Chase, Citi, and Morgan Stanley.
OFFSHORE WIND’S TRANSMISSION CHALLENGE: Major upgrades to the electric transmission system will be needed to accommodate all of the offshore wind Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states are planning to bring online, and there’s not a planning process in place yet to support those upgrades, said Hannes Pfeifenberger, a principal at the Brattle Group.
The first few thousand megawatts of offshore wind can be accommodated fairly easily by the existing transmission system, Pfeifenberger said Monday during a virtual event hosted by the Atlantic Council. But upgrades will be needed after that, and permitting transmission is especially difficult, even more challenging than permitting pipelines, he added.
Pfeifenberger also said Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states will need to scale up offshore wind much more than what they’re planning now to meet their long-term climate goals. The Northeast alone would likely need around 40,000 MW of wind power to meet its 2050 decarbonization goals, he said.
California has its own challenges for offshore wind: Karen Douglas, a commissioner for the California Energy Commission, outlined a few major hurdles, including that the state is looking at deep water development, eliminating the possibility of fixed bottom turbines.
Offshore wind development along California’s central coast has run into significant challenges with Defense Department military compatibility that the state has been working to resolve for several years, Douglas said during the event. And on the north coast, where the resource is the best, there’s very little transmission, she added.
HOUSE CLEARS SPENDING BILL PACKED WITH ENVIRONMENTAL RIDERS: The House passed a spending package Friday that includes funding boosts for both the Interior Department and the EPA, as well as a number of Democratic amendments that would block Trump environmental rollbacks.
Lawmakers approved the bill 224-189, largely on party lines. The spending package also funds state and foreign operations, agriculture, and military construction and veterans affairs.
Democrats send a message: The bill takes aim, through amendments, at several of the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks — including recently finalized updates to the National Environmental Policy Act, a pending rule from the EPA restricting the types of science the agency can use in policymaking, and the EPA’s plans to maintain current soot standards (instead of strengthening them).
The legislation would also block Trump administration plans to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska up for drilling.
CHINA OFF THE MARK ON TRADE DEAL ENERGY PURCHASES: China is behind the pace of commitments it made to buy U.S. energy products under the countries’ “phase one” trade agreement.
China imported $487 million of energy from the U.S. in June, including ethanol, according to a review of China customs data by research firm ClearView Energy.
That’s a decline from China importing $588 million of U.S. energy in May.
“Phase one seems likely to continue limping along for now,” ClearView wrote in note Monday, predicting the agreement “could potentially collapse” in the coming months due to U.S.-China tensions.
As part of the January trade deal, China agreed to purchase $52.4 billion of energy products from the U.S. over two years, including oil and LNG.
ADMINISTRATION DIVIDED OVER TARIFF EXEMPTION FOR SOLAR PANELS: A no-show from the office of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer at a White House meeting to discuss ending a tariff loophole last week left participants feeling “defeated” and questioning the administration’s commitment to President Trump’s America First policy agenda, reports the Washington Examiner’s White House correspondent Katherine Doyle.
The 10-person meeting on solar panel imports, which included the deputy director of the National Economic Council, the head of policy for the office of Vice President Mike Pence, an assistant secretary from the Department of Commerce, and senior officials from the National Security Council and White House Trade and Manufacturing Director Peter Navarro‘s office, was originally scheduled to take place over the phone. It was moved to the White House once the NSC became involved.
The dispute up for discussion was over a Section 201 tariff exemption for bifacial, or two-sided, solar panels. After Lighthizer moved to close it last year, opponents of the rescission sued USTR, saying they had violated the Administrative Procedures Act. Opponents fear the exemption harms domestic manufacturers.
TRUMP TO VISIT PERMIAN: The president will visit Double Eagle Energy in Midland, Texas, one of the largest oil producers in the Permian Basin, the Associated Press reported over the weekend.
Trump will tout steps the U.S. has taken to help oil producers begin to recover from the pandemic-fueled price crash, including “cutting regulations, simplifying permitting and encouraging private investment in energy infrastructure,” the White House said.
The Rundown
New York Times A climate plan in Texas focuses on minorities. Not everyone likes it.
Axios In pandemic’s wake, global support builds for hydrogen
Wall Street Journal Russian oil grab in Libya fuels US-Kremlin tension in Middle East
Wired California’s air pollution cops are eyeing Uber and Lyft
Calendar
TUESDAY | JULY 28
10 a.m. 366 Dirksen. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee holds a hearing examine the development and deployment of large-scale carbon dioxide management technologies in the United States, including technological and natural carbon removal, carbon utilization, and carbon storage.
11 a.m. The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change holds a remote hearing entitled, “There’s Something in the Water: Reforming Our Nation’s Drinking Water Standards.”
2 p.m. The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis holds a remote hearing on “Solving the Climate Crisis: Building a Vibrant and Just Clean Energy Economy.”
