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UNANSWERED QUESTION: We’re still wondering if Interior secretary nominee Deb Haaland’s pledge that the Biden’s administration’s pause on new oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters won’t be a "permanent thing” represents a policy change.
We asked the White House and the Interior Department to clarify, and they declined to tell us if Haaland’s statement reflects the Biden administration’s position or anything new.
Without more clarity, it’s hard to know if Haaland got out ahead of the White House and slipped in an attempt to moderate her views to appease fossil fuel state senators, or whether the administration is indeed intending to allow lease sales again after its “indefinite” review and pause of the oil and gas leasing program.
President Biden’s campaign platform said nothing about the leasing ban being temporary. Time will tell if that proves true in reality.
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.
HOUSE GOP’S SECRET CLIMATE SUMMIT: House Republicans held a summit this past weekend in Salt Lake City, Utah, to discuss how to position themselves to address climate change in the new Congress, Josh scooped yesterday.
Rep. John Curtis of Utah organized the summit attended by 25 House Republicans from across the ideological spectrum.
The meeting is the latest in efforts by congressional Republicans to overhaul their party's climate change platform and messaging to compete with Democrats and the Biden administration.
“This is not something Republicans should shy away from,” said Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, the top Republican of the Natural Resources Committee, who attended the event.
HAPPENING NOW: The Senate is voting this hour on Biden’s energy secretary nominee Jennifer Granholm. We expect her to be confirmed in a bipartisan vote.
MANCHIN TO VOTE FOR HAALAND: Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, a key centrist swing vote and the chairman of the energy committee, said yesterday that he will vote to confirm Haaland to be Biden’s interior secretary, likely paving her way to confirmation.
During her hearing, Haaland seemed determined to moderate her positions on fossil fuels to appease Manchin, who represents West Virginia, a major coal and natural gas state.
Even if Haaland failed to persuade any Republicans — still a major if (we’re looking at you Lisa Murkowski) — she could be confirmed assuming all Democrats vote for her, and Vice President Kamala Harris breaks the tie. Another key centrist Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, has not revealed where she stands on Haaland.
BIDEN’S CIA PICK SAYS CHINA SELF-MOTIVATED ON CLIMATE COOPERATION: Biden’s pick to lead the CIA insisted yesterday it's in China’s self-interest to cooperate with the United States on climate change as Republicans expressed skepticism that climate envoy John Kerry can achieve progress while disagreeing on other issues, the Washington Examiner’s Jerry Dunleavy reports.
Sen. Ben Sasse during a confirmation hearing for longtime State Department diplomat William Burns said that he and some fellow senators were “very worried” that China “is going to lie about what they will do on climate.”
The Nebraska Republican said the Biden administration might get sidetracked seeking a climate deal with China instead of prioritizing pushing back on national security challenges such as Beijing's theft and pursuit of advanced technology and its human rights abuses.
Burns seemed to dismiss the concern.
“On climate, I think it’s important for the United States to view cooperation with China on climate issues as not a favor to the United States — it’s in the self-interest of China to do that,” he said. “So in other words, it’s not something to be traded, it’s in the self-interest of China as well to work on these issues, and it’s important for us to be clear-eyed about that, as I’m sure President Biden and Secretary Kerry will be.”
US POWER SECTOR CUT EMISSIONS 38% SINCE 2005: Those emissions reductions have blown past the goal set by the Obama administration’s centerpiece climate regulation, the Clean Power Plan, which would have required utilities to cut emissions 32% below 2005 levels by 2030.
“The data suggest that President Biden’s ambitious plan to obtain all U.S. electricity from carbon-free sources by 2035 may not be so unrealistic after all,” says the report released this morning by the Environmental Integrity Project, citing the latest EPA emissions data.
Nonetheless, other sectors of the economy, such as transportation and heavy industry, haven’t seen the same emissions declines, meaning the United States is still off track to meet the economy-wide target former President Barack Obama set under the Paris climate agreement to cut overall emissions 26% to 28% by 2025.
Biden is expected to set an even stricter emissions target as part of the U.S. return to the global climate deal.
US OFF TRACK TO LIMIT WARMING TO 1.5 DEGREES: To align its emissions trajectory with the Paris Agreement’s more ambitious temperature target, the U.S. should commit to phase out coal power by 2030, reach 100% clean electricity by 2035, ensure all car and bus sales are electric by 2035, and move to all-electric building component sales by 2030, according to a new report today from Energy Innovation.
Those policies, along with switching to zero-carbon fuels for heavy industry and slashing emissions of methane and potent greenhouse gas refrigerants, would put the U.S. on a path to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 (from a 2010 baseline) and by 95% by 2050, the report finds.
TEXAS GAS PRODUCTION DROPPED 45% DURING COLD SNAP: Natural gas production in Texas fell by almost 45% during the recent extreme cold weather, the Energy Information Administration reported today.
Output dropped from 21.3 billion cubic feet per day during the week ending February 13 to a daily low of 11.8 Bcf/d on Wednesday, February 17, the EIA said, citing estimates from IHS Markit.
Nationally, U.S. dry natural gas production fell to as low as 69.7 Bcf/d on February 17, a decline of 21% from the week ending February 13.
What happened: The decline in natural gas production was mostly a result of water and other liquids in the raw natural gas stream freezing at the wellhead or in natural gas gathering lines near production activities, the EIA said.
Unlike the natural gas production infrastructure in northern areas of the country, wellheads, gathering lines, and processing facilities in Texas are not weatherized to protect against the cold.
BIDEN WON’T PRESS INFRASTRUCTURE AGENDA ON TEXAS…FOR NOW: The Biden administration is passing up the opportunity to press its infrastructure spending and grid modernization agenda in the wake of Texas’ power shortage crisis, at least for now.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said yesterday Biden won’t be talking policy when he visits Houston tomorrow to survey the damage from power outages and observe recovery efforts.
“There's going to be a lot of time in the future to have a discussion and debate about what weatherization, what preparations should have been taken in advance,” Psaki said during her press briefing. “We're not going to have that debate today. We're not going to have that debate on Friday.”
“Right now we're going to help the people who are still suffering and going through a really challenging time,” Psaki added.
Psaki said Biden would be discussing “protecting our nation's critical infrastructure” in the months ahead as part of his “Build Back Better” agenda.
SEC TO INCREASE FOCUS ON CLIMATE DISCLOSURE: Acting Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Allison Herren Lee directed the agency’s Division of Corporation Finance yesterday to review whether and how public companies are meeting Obama administration guidance on climate risk disclosure.
The effort will be a first step toward updating the 2010 guidance, Lee said in a statement, noting the SEC plays a “critically important role” in making sure companies comply with disclosure requirements.
“Now more than ever, investors are considering climate-related issues when making their investment decisions,” Lee said. “It is our responsibility to ensure that they have access to material information when planning for their financial future.”
USPS ONLY ELECTRIFYING 10% OF NEW FLEET: The U.S. Postal Service can only afford to buy electric models for 10% of its next-generation fleet, though all of its new vehicles will be able to convert to electric, USPS Postmaster Louis DeJoy told lawmakers yesterday during an oversight hearing.
“We don’t have the 3 or 4 extra billion dollars in our plan right now that it would take to do it,” DeJoy said, in response to a question from California Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier as to why the USPS couldn’t electrify 90% of its fleet. DeJoy said the USPS is investing $500 million so each vehicle can be ultimately converted to electric, but could work with the Biden administration and Congress to obtain more funding to ramp up electrification.
DeJoy added later in the hearing that the cost of electric charging infrastructure is one of the major barriers to increasing the number of electric models the USPS can purchase. He declined to say, however, how much more money the USPS would need, saying it was a “procurement sensitive statistic” but was “significantly more” money.
CARBON CAPTURE COALITION SEEKS LEGISLATIVE PUSH THIS CONGRESS: The broad coalition of more than 80 fossil fuel companies, labor groups, and environmental organizations is calling on lawmakers to include measures in legislation this Congress that enhances carbon capture tax credits, establishes low-cost financing for carbon dioxide pipelines and storage infrastructure, and ramps up research funding.
“If we fail to commit to a broader federal policy portfolio now to enable significant carbon capture deployment by 2030, the U.S. and other countries risk being left without essential options needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change,” the coalition said in a new federal policy blueprint released yesterday.
The Biden administration has outlined support for carbon capture and carbon removal technologies as part of its climate plans. In a briefing with reporters, Shuchi Talati, chief of staff in the Energy Department’s Office of Fossil Energy, said the Biden team intends to leverage work the office has already been doing to develop low-carbon cement and steel, expand carbon storage, and develop carbon capture and direct air capture.
“It is only through demonstration and deployment, and learning by doing, will we be able to move down the cost curve so that these options will be affordable for all, in order to meet net-zero in the U.S. and globally,” she said.
The Rundown
Bloomberg Texas power companies face liquidity crisis as bills mount
Wall Street Journal Texas power regulator’s decision to raise prices in freeze generates criticism
Reuters Global LNG demand expected to almost double by 2040: Shell
Calendar
THURSDAY | FEB. 25
12 p.m. CRES Forum will hold a virtual event to review the “Energy Act of 2020” and discuss what its passage means for clean energy and climate action.
2 p.m. The House Appropriations subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies will hold a virtual hearing entitled “Strategies for Energy and Climate Innovation.”
6 p.m. The American Conservation Coalition will hold a virtual event with GOP Reps. Michelle Steel and Young Kim entitled “Diversity and Environmentalism in the GOP.”
WEDNESDAY | MARCH 3
10 a.m. 562 Dirksen. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a hearing on the nominations of Brenda Mallory to be chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and Janet McCabe to be deputy EPA administrator.
