THE CHINA SYNDROME — The contradictions of the energy transition were on full display at POLITICO's inaugural Energy Summit yesterday. Chief among those contradictions is U.S. companies' continued dependence on Chinese technologies and materials to underpin the transition to a domestic supply chain for renewable energy and electric vehicles. “We can’t decouple [from China] even if we wanted to," said Sharon Burke, president of the research firm Ecospherics and a former Obama administration defense official. Energy Department Loan Programs Office head Jigar Shah, whose agency has come under fire from lawmakers for considering backing companies with ties to China, said his office is doing background checks on a "person-by-person, investor-by-investor basis" to exclude anyone who has "direct ties to authoritarian regimes" but that they're certainly not trying to discourage foreign investors. "I think we can do both attracting foreign direct investment and avoiding folks who have track records that are ones that we want to stay away from,” he said. Other tidbits: — Participants mostly brushed off the political instability posed by a potential failure to raise the federal debt ceiling, although New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) said it could have a "chilling effect" on states' climate efforts. — There was some disagreement about whether permitting reform should be wrapped into the debt-limit negotiations. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said it shouldn't, but Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm was more circumspect. “In the context of the debt ceiling, that’s happening right now, but we should also be negotiating permitting,” she said. “We all feel this huge sense of urgency about it. It is insane that it can take 10 years or more for a transmission line.” — ESG investing is here to stay, Citi chief sustainability officer Val Smith said: "This is really about long-term strategies underpinned by very strong market trends that are, yes, about managing risks, but they really are about the opportunity." — And the SEC's proposed climate disclosure rule is not expected to survive a Republican administration (it will "go in a minute," Forbright Bank CEO and former Rep. John Delaney predicted) but is still driving corporate thinking, panelists said. Meanwhile, a California bill that would go further than the SEC's rule hurdled a key committee vote yesterday, our Jordan Wolman reports. CA SB 253 would require all companies doing business in California and generating more than $1 billion in annual revenue to disclose their emissions, including supply chain or Scope 3 emissions. All told, about 5,400 companies would likely need to comply. The SEC’s proposed rule would only apply to publicly traded companies and doesn’t mandate Scope 3 emission disclosures for all companies. | 
