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SENATE ENERGY COMMITTEE ADVANCES TRUMP’S NOMINEES: The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee moved swiftly Tuesday morning to advance five of President Trump’s energy nominees, unanimously advancing two for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, two Interior Department candidates and the Energy Department’s general counsel.
The FERC nominees include Richard Glick, a Democrat, and Kevin McIntyre, a Republican.
The other three appointees are Joseph Balash to be assistant secretary of the Interior for land and minerals management, David Jonas to be the Energy Department’s general counsel, and Ryan Nelson to be solicitor of the Department of the Interior.
Now it’s up to the full Senate to approve the nominations.
PRUITT: THE PATH IS TO EXIT PARIS: Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt said Tuesday that Trump will not waiver in his decision to pull out of the Paris climate change deal.
“The president has been steadfast, and I’d say the courage it took to stand in the Rose Garden in June and say to the world that he was going to put America’s interest first and not be apologetic to the rest of the world,” Pruitt told “Fox and Friends.”
Pruitt is the latest in a line of administration officials to reiterate Trump’s commitment to withdrawing from the Paris Agreement after news reports over the weekend said he was reversing that decision.
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KEEPING COAL IN THE MIX SAVES MONEY, CHAMBER SAYS: Using a mix of energy types is saving the nation $114 billion in electricity costs, according to a report Tuesday from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That means coal as well as renewables.
Perry’s grid study: The Chamber’s Global Energy Institute released the report in support of Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s grid study from last month that recommended that FERC and other agencies work to create market incentives and regulation changes that would keep that diversity.
FOIA BOOM AT THE EPA: Reporters and special interests groups critical of the EPA are filing Freedom of Information Act requests at the break-neck pace of more than 60 per day.
Through last week, nearly 11,000 have been filed. Many of them are so broadly worded that it will take years to answer.
The most ever filed for a full year has been 11,820 in fiscal 2007.
REG KILLER: The Trump administration is keeping the president’s campaign promise of wiping out costly Obama-era regulations, according to a new report card on the effort.
The conservative American Action Forum showed that the administration kept its one regulation in, two out plan on track that saved the taxpayer $645 million, and has another $600 million in savings on the way.
WASP INVASION: The pesky stink bug appears to have met its match with the arrival of a new Asian hitchhiker to the U.S. known as the “samurai wasp.”
It appears to take one Chinese invasive species to deal with, and ever eradicate, another. That’s the case here, as the stink bug’s arrival from China two decades has led to the destruction of vineyards, orchards and fields to 43 states and Canada, according to federal officials.
But the comma-sized wasp, known for killing 90 percent of the stinkers’ eggs in Asia, has rapidly made its way through the continental United States. So, help in eradicating the stink bug menace is on its way.
HURRICANE MARIA ‘EXTREMELY DANGEROUS’: That’s how the National Hurricane Center described the storm as it became a Category 5 hurricane Monday night and slammed into the island of Dominica.
The storm is on a trajectory to be the second Category 5 storm in a week to impact the Caribbean after Hurricane Irma.
Hurricane Jose rose in intensity soon after Irma but took a detour into the Atlantic and avoided landfall in the U.S. after Irma hit Florida.
But it is not yet known what Maria will do. The current trajectory has Maria on course to hit Puerto Rico Tuesday night, with the government there bracing for new damage so soon after Irma.
“At $2.62, today’s national gas price average is the cheapest in 14 days and 5 cents less than last week,” the auto club said.
GRAHAM, MCCAIN AND A CARBON TAX: Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina may drop a carbon tax bombshell at the Yale Climate Conference on Tuesday, as they are scheduled to deliver remarks Tuesday at the event hosted by former Secretary of State John Kerry.
History of climate policy: McCain and Graham have introduced energy and climate bills over the past decade. Kerry was a co-sponsor of Graham’s bill in 2010.
Cap-and-trade to tax: The legislation failed because of a lack of support for a national cap-and-trade system to control emissions. But now could be the time to push a tax, especially as Trump is looking to tax reform, according to proponents.
The case for a tax: The Yale conference on Monday focused on the need for putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions as the one key way to drive a clean energy revolution.
Politically untenable: Jeff Immelt, the head of GE, told Kerry he supports the carbon tax in theory, but won’t hang his hat on the policy anytime soon. It’s just too much of a political nonstarter for the manufacturing giant.
Down a bad path: “I’ve got 300,000 people that come to work every day and they need to know what to do. … And if their livelihoods depend on the price of carbon in the U.S., you’re leading them down a bad path versus saying, ‘Look, let’s get the price of wind down to 3 cents per kilowatt hour, let’s get the solar cost down, let’s get the storage cost down, let’s commercialize these technologies,” Immelt said.
Survival versus a tax: “That way we can survive no matter who’s president, no matter what changes take place and that’s where we spent a lot of our effort. Let’s make these technologies as efficient as we can.”
JOHN KERRY: CLIMATE CHANGE MORE WORRISOME THAN NORTH KOREA’s NUKES. The former secretary of state suggested Monday that the threat of climate change outweighs a nuclear attack from North Korea.
“A nuclear weapon overtly brandished in the hands of the wrong person, in the wrong country, receives significant focus and crisis management, and rightly so,” Kerry said in opening remarks at his two-day climate change conference at Yale University. “But a silent killer that compounds its destructive power daily and threatens the lives of literally billions of people with increasing destructive force is ignored and even mocked.”
“I spent Election Day headed to Antarctica by way of New Zealand, and yes, the truth requires me to say that when we heard the results, we thought about staying in McMurdo Sound” in the frozen southern ice pack, he said.
Who else was at the conference? Former Obama administration officials including Ernest Moniz, the former energy secretary, and Jonathan Pershing, the former climate change envoy at the State Department.
MONUMENTAL FALLOUT: Lawmakers have reacted strongly to the leaked draft of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s proposal for President Trump to make changes to 10 national monuments.
In the draft memo, Zinke recommends shrinking or changing the boundaries of six national monuments and proposes management changes to four others that could reopen areas to logging, cattle grazing and commercial fishing.
Oregon Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden targeted Zinke’s call to reduce the size of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in their state.
“This attack on the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument is an attack on our American tradition of protecting public lands that are open to all,” Merkley said. “Using an unprecedented and legally dubious strategy, President Trump is threatening one of the most biodiverse places in America and ignoring the extensive public process that informed the expansion of the monument.”
Political play: Some Democrats accused Zinke of playing politics and pressured Trump to reject his recommendations.
Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico referred to Zinke’s review of monuments as a “sham.”
Zinke proposes to modify the management plan of two monuments in their state, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and Rio Grande del Norte.
“A decision to move forward with these recommendations would be both exceedingly unpopular and very likely illegal,” the duo said. “We strongly urge the president to reject this sham report, honor the work by New Mexicans, and confirm that he will leave intact Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, Rio Grande del Norte and all the other national monuments.”
Sparking reform: Republicans, meanwhile, credited Zinke for seeking to undo what they consider to be abuses of the Antiquities Act, the law that gives presidents power to unilaterally declare national monuments.
In recent years, presidents, most prominently Barack Obama, have protected larger and larger swaths of land, sparking calls by some Republicans for Congress to reform the Antiquities Act.
Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, has long pushed for Congress to change the law.
“What the rough draft says is all of these monuments, there are a whole lot of things that should have been done differently and one way or another we will see something different in all these monuments,” Bishop said Monday on KSL Newsradio in Utah. “I am proud Zinke tried to do this the right way.”
Reality check: The Trump administration still must decide whether to act on Zinke’s recommendations, and the White House has offered no timeline for doing so.
If Trump does follow Zinke’s advice, environmental groups have promised to sue.
Bishop acknowledges this reality, but insists he is OK with playing the long game.
‘Ying yang’: “No doubt there will be lawsuits coming out the ying yang on all of this stuff because everyone sues in our society today,” Bishop said. “I hope the lawsuits will spur on efforts to bring on reforms and finality to it.”
RUNDOWN
Washington Post Study shows the world has considerably more time than previously thought to avoid a ‘dangerous’ level of global warming
New York Times Florida continues building boom as it faces rising seas
Reuters Since Fukushima, Japan undergoes energy revolution as dozens of towns construct their own microgrids, become self-sufficient to produce renewable energy
CNBC U.S. shale growth forecast to slow in October as Hurricane Harvey takes a toll
GreenBiz Corporate buyers continue investing in renewable energy despite Trump’s regulatory rollback
Axios Blasts from seismic air guns used to search for oil and gas beneath the ocean floor increase the death rate in scallops, study finds
Calendar
TUESDAY, SEPT. 19
5 p.m., New Haven, Conn., Yale Climate Conference, Actor Leonardo DiCaprio closes the two-day event with a discussion about citizen engagement and activism. The session also will feature pre-recorded remarks from Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain.
news.yale.edu/2017/09/11/kerry-initiative-host-conference-climate-change-sept-18-19
WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 20
10 a.m., 406 Dirksen. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on the nomination of Michael Dourson to be assistant EPA administrator; Matthew Leopold to be assistant EPA administrator; David Ross to be assistant EPA administrator; William Wehrum to be assistant EPA administrator; and Jeffery Baran to be a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. epw.senate.gov
4 p.m., 1521 16th St. NW. The Institute of World Politics hosts lecture called “Energy Security: New Market Realities” with Sara Vakhshouri of SVB Energy International. The lecture will discuss how the rise of North America’s shale oil and gas production has changed market dynamics, energy trade flow and energy security. iwp.edu/events/detail/energy-security-new-market-realities
THURSDAY, SEPT. 21
3:30 p.m., Walter E. Washington Convention Center. The GAIN Coalition holds a conference called “Energy for All: Examining America’s Diverse Infrastructure. Moderated by former Rep. Albert R. Wynn of Maryland. Panelists include Paula Glover, president and CEO of American Association of Blacks in Energy; P. Anthony Thomas, director of Government Affairs at California Independent Petroleum Association; Ryan Boyer, Business manager of the Laborers’ District Council of Philadelphia. gainnow.org
FRIDAY, SEPT. 22
International Trade Commission to make Solar Trade Petition Injury Determination.
10 a.m.,1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. The Center for Strategic and International Studies hosts Bjorn Otto Sverdrup, senior vice president for Sustainability at Statoil, to present Statoil’s Climate Roadmap. csis.org/events/statoils-climate-roadmap
