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Presented by Williams: Your guide to the political forces shaping the energy transformation | | | | |  | | By Heather Richards | | | |  The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska (left); President Joe Biden speaking in Washington this month (right). | U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/AFP via Getty Images; Evan Vucci/AP (Biden) | President Joe Biden has a potential climate headache brewing in Alaska, where a congressionally imposed deadline requires him to hold an oil lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by December. It’s an unwelcome mandate for the president with the election looming, as he tries to woo voters concerned about climate change without putting off independents who may share Republicans’ rosier views of fossil fuel development. The challenge for Biden is particularly stark given how many Americans are unaware of the president’s signature climate actions, such as the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. A Yale University poll released in December found that 58 percent of voters had heard “a little” about the law, which provided at least $369 billion in federal money to steer a transition to green energy. Biden’s record on federal drilling has been mixed. He’s throttled new leasing in many areas while increasing royalties and attempting to overhaul environmental regulations. Last year, he also canceled leases in the ANWR sold during the Trump administration. Most recently, he froze new permitting for natural gas exports so his agencies can review the climate and energy impacts of shipping the fossil fuel. But the president has also approved more new oil and gas wells than former President Donald Trump did in his first three years in office. Last year, Biden took a massive hit to his climate-conscious reputation when he approved ConocoPhillips’ Willow oil project in Alaska, with anger at the approval ricocheting across social media platforms like TikTok. Supporters of Biden are hoping he doesn’t catch the blame for the upcoming Arctic oil sale, given that he inherited it when he took office. The Republican tax overhaul in 2017 requires the sale — the second ever in the refuge. Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton White House climate official, said the sale may not attract much industry attention or cause significant climate damage. The first ANWR auction, held at the tail end of the Trump administration, brought in only three bidders. “[Activists will] try to dramatize the irony that the climate-friendly president may be forced to do this,” Bledsoe said “But the truth of the matter is that it's very unlikely that any of those leases are going to end up resulting in production.” Still, the president has proved reluctant to tamp down oil and gas production in the U.S. since taking office, and an oil sale in the sensitive Arctic refuge could add to boiling anger from some younger climate voters. “He can't throw a bone to young people Monday, cave to oil and gas millionaires Tuesday, and expect to get young people to turn out for him,” said Stevie O'Hanlon, communications director for the Sunrise Movement, a climate organization.
| | | It's Wednesday — thank you for tuning in to POLITICO's Power Switch. I'm your host, Heather Richards. Power Switch is brought to you by the journalists behind E&E News and POLITICO Energy. Send your tips, comments, questions to hrichards@eenews.net.
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Iowa Republican Zach Nunn on the campaign trail for Congress in 2022. Now in the House, he has been critical of rulemaking that would promote electric vehicles. | Charlie Nebegall/AP | Electric cars as campaign fodder
Republican disdain for electric cars is now part of the culture wars — but it’s not exactly new, write Kelsey Brugger and Rebekah Alvey. In recent months, GOP lawmakers have called Biden's EV push a "fantasy," railed against proposed federal limits on car pollution and jumped on news that EV sales aren't growing as fast as they were a year ago. The main message: EVs are for the coastal elite. That rhetoric can be traced back to the early 2010s, when the federal government first offered Tesla and Fisker loans, said Nick Loris, vice president of public policy at the conservative climate consulting firm C3 Solutions. “It’s an obvious choice for Republicans to attack EVs because it’s an easy way to paint Democrats as out-of-touch,” said Emily Becker, deputy director of communications for the climate and energy program at the centrist think tank Third Way. Climate rules in eleventh hour
Biden faces a spring deadline to finalize many big-ticket environmental rules to ensure they're immune to procedural rollbacks if Republicans win control of Congress and the White House next year, write Robin Bravender, Kevin Bogardus and Michael Doyle. Environmental advocates are getting concerned about the pileup, which includes proposals to limit power plant pollution, update tailpipe emissions standards and protect endangered species. They don't want a repeat of 2017, when then-President Donald Trump used the Congressional Review Act to undo more than a dozen Obama administration rules. The exact deadline for avoiding that fate is unclear, as it depends on the sometimes unpredictable congressional schedule. The law allows lawmakers to overturn agency rules within 60 session days of when a rule is finalized and sent to Congress. “I am acutely aware of the calendar, and I’m checking on status regularly,” said Paul Billings, national senior vice president for public policy at the American Lung Association. “In a month, my hair may be on fire.” Science fiction nears reality
Climate scientists, environmental activists and philanthropists gathered for two days last month to discuss a once-taboo technology: solar geoengineering. The private meeting underscores the tech industry's interest in the risky idea of spraying particles into the stratosphere or altering cloud cover to limit global warming, writes Corbin Hiar. The roughly 30 attendees met at the offices of the Environmental Defense Fund to come up with a set of best practices for philanthropic-funded studies into the concept — in the absence of such guidelines from the federal government. Lisa Dilling, EDF’s associate chief scientist, said the workshop was an acknowledgment of “the reality of the world as we see it now, which is that there are foundations starting to be interested in this topic.”
| | | | A message from Williams:   | | | | | That sinking feeling: New research shows how sea-level rise is affecting parts of the East Coast differently, with groundwater depletion being a major factor. In the mainstream: Three projects in the U.S. and overseas are testing geoengineering efforts to slow climate change.
| | | | A message from Williams: At Williams, our experience speaks for itself. From horseless carriages to EVs, telegrams to smartphones—we have a 116-year history of powering innovation in action, continually transforming ourselves to help America meet rising energy demand with clean natural gas. That know-how helps us deliver one third of the nation’s natural gas across 33,000 miles of energy infrastructure and drives our investments in emissions-reducing technologies. Together, we can reliably and affordably power the world while ushering in a clean energy future, because experience powers us. | | | | | A showcase of some of our best content.
|  Misha McBride looks at a formerly sunken boat that was once underwater at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area on May 9, 2022, near Boulder City, Nevada. | John Locher/AP | A study that used artificial intelligence to scour social media finds people with similar views on climate change form echo chambers that make it hard to combat disinformation. Google is working with the Environmental Defense Fund to create a global map of methane emissions from the oil and gas industry. Biden doesn't plan to replace former Nuclear Regulatory Commission member Jeff Baran until next year, leaving the commission split evenly between Democrats and Republicans. That's it for today, folks! Thanks for reading.
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