|
Presented by the Edison Electric Institute: Delivered daily by 10 a.m., Morning Energy examines the latest news in energy and environmental politics and policy. | | | | |  | | By Matthew Choi | Presented by the Edison Electric Institute | With help from Catherine Morehouse, Ben Lefebvre, Josh Siegel, Meredith Lee, Kelsey Tamborrino and Daniel Lippman Editor’s Note: Morning Energy is a free version of POLITICO Pro Energy’s morning newsletter, which is delivered to our s each morning at 6 a.m. The POLITICO Pro platform combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day’s biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro.
| | | — President Joe Biden will issue a new order to protect forests today as his administration uses Earth Day to tout its record on climate and energy. — Clean energy backers are optimistic FERC's proposed transmission rulemaking will clear the way for more renewables on the grid. — The American Petroleum Institute is deliberating on whether to lobby for a price on carbon, but political forces are pulling in different directions. HAPPY EARTH DAY! I’m your host, Matthew Choi. Another Friday, another traumatizing episode of “Pachinko.” Parabéns to EPRI’s Rachel Gantz for knowing TAAG is the flag carrier of Angola. For today’s trivia: What was the name of Lord Farquaad’s domain in “Shrek”? Send your tips and trivia answers to mchoi@politico.com. 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: What the French election means for climate.
| | | A message from the Edison Electric Institute: Happy Earth Day! Today and every day, America’s investor-owned electric companies are working to get the energy we provide as clean as we can as fast as we can, while maintaining the reliability and affordability that are essential to the customers and communities we serve. Today, carbon emissions from the U.S. power sector are nearly 40% below 2005 levels, and 40% of our electricity comes from clean, carbon-free sources. We are #Committed2Clean.® | | | | | | BIDEN'S EARTH DAY ORDER: Last year, President Joe Biden marked Earth Day with a climate leaders summit that brought together the heads of both the world's top emitters and the countries most vulnerable to climate change. This year, the president and his administration are far more domestically focused, taking today to tout efforts at home to rein in emissions and invest in clean energy. It's a bid to draw attention to the accomplishments of the past year as Democrats face an uphill battle in November, with Republicans pillorying the administration for rising energy costs and progressives deeply disappointed over the failure to move major climate legislation. Several prominent members of the administration have taken the week to meet with lawmakers and communities across the country to praise last year's bipartisan infrastructure package and other climate investments. Among them is a new executive order Biden will sign today protecting and restoring the nation's forests to combat climate change. The order includes new inventories by USDA and DOI of the nation's old-growth forests on federal lands, coordination across agencies to protect forests from fires, local partnership for forest-based economic development, State Department-led reports on stopping global deforestation and interagency efforts to advance and catalog nature-based climate solutions. Biden will sign the order in Seattle in the last leg of his Pacific Northwest tour, which he is using as both a forward-looking call on Congress to pass a comprehensive package to replace the failed Build Back Better bill and to recap some of his biggest energy cost saving and climate change fighting actions. Biden's visit today will include highlights on moves to lower consumer energy costs, including waivers for year-round E15 use and the record Strategic Petroleum Reserve release. EPA Administrator Michael Regan is also heading to South Carolina today with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, White House infrastructure coordinator Mitch Landrieu and Rep. Jim Clyburn to talk about funding opportunities through the infrastructure package, particularly involving clean water access.
| | | | DON'T MISS ANYTHING FROM THE 2022 MILKEN INSTITUTE GLOBAL CONFERENCE: POLITICO is excited to partner with the Milken Institute to produce a special edition "Global Insider" newsletter featuring exclusive coverage and insights from the 25th annual Global Conference. This year's event, May 1-4, brings together more than 3,000 of the world’s most influential leaders, including 700+ speakers representing more than 80 countries. "Celebrating the Power of Connection" is this year's theme, setting the stage to connect influencers with the resources to change the world with leading experts and thinkers whose insight and creativity can implement that change. Whether you're attending in person or following along from somewhere else in the world, keep up with this year's conference with POLITICO’s special edition “Global Insider” so you don't miss a beat. Subscribe today. | | | | | | | | FERC’S RULE HITS A BALANCE: FERC's much talked about proposed rule Thursday requiring future generation considerations in transmission planning and giving states more say in cost assignments garnered widespread praise from industry, clean energy and environmental groups alike. There was widespread agreement throughout the comment period that the status quo is not working with transmission reform, but utility transmission owners in particular feared upending the planning process could hurt their incumbent status allowing them to be first in line on the transmission investments that make up a significant portion of their bottom line. But FERC seems to have struck a tentative balance with its proposal Thursday — not to mention securing bipartisan consensus that has eluded some of its other major rulemakings. The commission indicated it may revisit a 2011 rule that eliminated utilities' ability to build transmission lines without a competitive bidding process, securing industry support. Clean energy advocates, meanwhile, were thrilled by the proposal's broader efforts to reform cost allocation and long-term planning, two significant hurdles to getting necessary transmission built in the U.S. "From both an economic and climate perspective, ... all of the analysis that we've seen shows the need for a lot of transmission, but there's barriers to building that transmission," said Chaz Teplin, a principal at clean energy think-tank RMI's Carbon-Free Electricity program. "And FERC today, we think, took two important steps towards overcoming some of the barriers that we see." For more on Thursday’s FERC meeting, POLITICO’s Catherine Morehouse has you covered.
| | | SO CLOSE, YET SO FAR: The American Petroleum Institute is discussing internally whether to lobby for a specific carbon tax mechanism, the trade association confirmed to ME. The group's climate committee approved calling for a tax falling between $35 to $50 a ton of carbon, though there are still negotiations in store on exact details of how it all would work before the API executive committee takes up the suggestion, an API representative told ME after the Wall Street Journal first broke the news. Though nothing is final yet, the group feels that an easy-to-digest publicly known carbon price would serve the industry better than a price set by Interior and other government agencies that could fluctuate with every new administration, the person said. “The idea that consumers aren’t already paying for climate policy is a false status quo,” the representative said. “They are already paying through regulation and hidden taxation.” The oil and gas industry's lobby group, much like Biden, is caught between conservatives and progressives when it comes to energy policy. When API came out in support for a general price on carbon in 2021, Republicans lambasted the policy shift, and Louisiana’s Rep. Garret Graves , the top Republican on the House climate committee, called news of API’s fleshing out of the idea “ just idiotic.” Progressives have also walked back earlier enthusiasm for a carbon tax, saying it would fall too hard on low-income people who will spend a greater part of their paycheck on fuel. It's a similar story within the industry, with tension between international oil companies who need to adapt to meet changing regulations and investor expectations on climate policy and the more conservative firms that are loath to advocate a new tax. On the one side are European companies like Shell, BP and Equinor that have branded themselves as being aggressive on climate measures (France’s Total Energies publicly exited the association last year partly because of “differing positions” on carbon prices). But API membership also includes companies, mainly U.S.-based, that could threaten to take their membership fees elsewhere if it advocates too hard for a tax, leaving it in a bind. That could also put it on the outs with its traditional Republican backers in the federal government. The API “is afraid of losing member companies and is straddling the fence with its US-based companies and the European players, with splits among the former giving them further headaches,” said one industry source who requested anonymity to discuss internal association politics. ANOTHER GAS PRICE GOUGING BILL: Several prominent House Democrats introduced legislation Thursday that would require the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether oil majors are manipulating gasoline prices for their own profit. The Oil and Gas Industry Antitrust Act calls for probing market conditions in the liquid fuel energy sector and considering a long-term strategy to stabilize prices during national crises. Reps. Val Demings (Fla.), Jerry Nadler (N.Y.), David Cicilline (R.I.) and Kathy Castor (Fla.) introduced the bill. It’s the latest in a series of efforts by Hill Democrats to cast a spotlight on the oil sector, which several members have accused of price gouging to take advantage of the Ukraine war. Industry representatives said in numerous hearings over the past several weeks that the increases are driven by tight crude oil markets, and that they have no control over retail prices. MARK YOUR CALENDARS: Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm will appear on Capitol Hill next Thursday to discuss her department’s fiscal year 2023 budget. She’ll appear before the energy subpanel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is likely to key in on the transition to clean energy amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Rising oil and gas prices from Putin’s unprovoked war on Ukraine have proven that the fossil fuel market is too volatile and easily manipulated by our global adversaries,” said Chair Frank Pallone and Subcommittee Chair Bobby Rush in a joint statement.
| | | | JOIN US ON 4/29 FOR A WOMEN RULE DISCUSSION ON WOMEN IN TECH : Women, particularly women of color and women from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, have historically been locked out of the tech world. But this new tech revolution could be an opportunity for women to get in on the ground floor of a new chapter. Join POLITICO for an in-depth panel discussion on the future of women in tech and how to make sure women are both participating in this fast-moving era and have access to all it offers. REGISTER FOR THE CHANCE TO JOIN US IN-PERSON. | | | | | | | | A WAR-TIME TRANSITION: The Biden administration has come to embrace U.S. oil and gas in a bid to alleviate the supply squeeze as western nations shun Russian energy exports, but U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said ultimately, the war could push countries in the opposite direction. “Is there a momentary hold really on the [climate] progress we’re making? I think the answer is yes. It’s unfortunate. But in the long run, I think most countries have come to understand they don’t want their source of energy to be weaponized,” Kerry said in a Bloomberg interview released Thursday. “They want the freedom to be able to move to cleaner energy and they’re going to. So I think it could wind up actually accelerating the transition.” Kerry also wouldn’t put too much faith in natural gas as a climate-saving transition fuel, saying “we have to put the industry on notice: You’ve got six years, eight years, no more than 10 years or so, within which you’ve got to come up with a means by which you’re going to capture, and if you’re not capturing, then we have to deploy alternative sources of energy.” ERNIE’S LESS ROSY PICTURE: Former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said limiting global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius will be “very, very difficult, near impossible,” but stressed that any progress is better than nothing. Speaking with NBC News’ Chuck Todd in an interview aired Thursday night, Moniz added “there's no cliff event. There's no one temperature that determines whether we succeed or don't. The issue is we've got to fight for every tenth of a degree.” Moniz also said absent a federal policy guiding a transition to clean energy, much of the U.S.’ climate action will continue to be led by state and local governments and the private sector, as it had during the Trump administration. That is increasingly looking like a possibility if the Senate doesn’t manage to pass its clean energy tax credits and other climate provisions in its stalled social spending package. The tax credits passed out of the House last year include measures bolstering the country’s aging nuclear fleet while also pouring money into advanced nuclear development — which Moniz called the “holy grail” that could propel the country toward zero-emission energy. “There's been a lot of progress made, and amazingly the progress has been made with now over $4 billion of private sector money invested in smaller innovative companies,” he said. CYBER ON DOE’S MIND: The Energy Department is giving six universities a total $12 million to develop cybersecurity technology to protect the U.S. energy sector from cyberattacks. The recipients are Florida International University, Iowa State, NYU, Texas A&M, University of Illinois at Chicago and Virginia Tech. The administration has issued numerous warnings about potential foreign attacks on the U.S. grid, particularly amid the tensions with Moscow. SOME FRESH DOI NAMES: The Interior Department is getting some fresh faces, announcing four new political appointees on Thursday:
- Tracy Goodluck, senior adviser to the assistant secretary of Indian Affairs
- Kathryn Kovacs, deputy assistant secretary of Land and Minerals Management (Laura Daniel-Davis, the nominee for assistant secretary, is still stuck in political limbo in the Senate).
- Sally Tucker, senior adviser for Infrastructure Communications
- Joel West Williams, deputy solicitor for Indian Affairs
| | | | A message from the Edison Electric Institute:   | | | | | | THE PUSH FOR VENEZUELA: U.S. oilfield service companies are pushing for the Biden administration to allow them to resume operations in Venezuela after they lost assets and investments under 2019 sanctions on the country’s cash cow industry, Reuters reports, citing anonymous sources. The companies wouldn’t confirm their involvement to the wire service. The White House has been mum on whether it will open the doors to Venezuelan oil, stressing instead that a recent summit with Nicolas Maduro’s regime was focused on the welfare of U.S. nationals in the country. But the possibility has led to an outcry from Florida lawmakers who represent many Venezuelan expats who fled the Maduro government as well as Senate Energy Chair Joe Manchin, who has called for boosting domestic oil production. KEEP CALM AND TURN OFF THE LIGHTS: As Europe faces an energy dilemma from its reliance on Russian energy imports, the European Commission and the International Energy Agency are calling on everyday Europeans to find ways to cut their consumption. In a report not-so-subtly titled “Playing My Part,” the EC and IEA outline several steps consumers could use to save enough oil to fill 120 super tankers and enough natural gas to heat 20 million homes. The report frames cutting energy consumption not only as good for household pockets but also as a way to help Ukraine by depriving Russia of energy revenue. Read the report here.
| | | — Matthew Miller is now director for federal affairs at Exelon. He most recently was director for federal affairs and political affairs at Pacific Gas and Electric.
| | | — ”House Democrats push for EPA to crack down on crypto mining,” via POLITICO. — “University of Maryland Medical System goes in on a solar energy farm in Baltimore,” via The Baltimore Sun. — " EPA Employees Want To Put Protections Against Attacks On Science Into Their Union Contract," via BuzzFeed News. — ”Duke Energy Ohio customers will receive a credit of approximately $133, following settlement,” via The Cincinnati Enquirer. THAT’S ALL FOR ME!
| | A message from the Edison Electric Institute: Leading on Clean Energy. Meeting the climate challenge and delivering a carbon-free energy future are perhaps the defining challenges of our time and will require extraordinary, concerted effort from electric companies, technology partners, policymakers, and many other stakeholders.
America’s investor-owned electric companies are leading the clean energy transformation and are committed to continuing to reduce carbon emissions in our sector and to helping other sectors—particularly the transportation and industrial sectors—transition to clean, efficient electric energy. This is just the start.
With investments in new technologies and the right policies—including congressional passage of a robust clean energy tax package—we can do even more to build a cleaner, stronger economy together. For us, the path forward is clear. The path forward is clean. We are #Committed2Clean.® | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
