Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Lawrence Ukenye and producer Raymond Rapada Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren President JOE BIDEN’s best shot at unleashing a wave of clean energy projects through permitting reform could be a Corpus Christi native with family ties to the Texas oil industry. Few people have heard of ANA UNRUH COHEN, let alone the Council on Environmental Quality that she works for. But Cohen, a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist, has the opportunity to make changes to the process that could launch a renewable energy revolution. Those changes could also help achieve the president’s climate goals — even though they may boost the oil and gas industry in the short term. Cohen started in May as senior director of the National Environmental Policy Act team at CEQ. It’s a wonky position, to be sure, but the NEPA team has an important and rare opportunity to reshape how energy projects get approved. That’s because it is tasked with implementing changes to the 53-year-old “magna carta of environmental law” enacted as part of the debt ceiling agreement. How it does could very well impact Biden’s 2024 reelection bid, giving tangible backing to his economic argument with every new job-creating wind farm or solar panel manufacturing plant that’s built in the months ahead. Cohen’s personal and professional lives straddle both sides of the energy debate — where Republicans bemoan bureaucratic hoops to get oil and gas projects off the ground and Democrats have grown increasingly anxious that similar delays will forestall a clean energy boom to tame climate change. She’s an Oxford-educated climate scientist with deep roots in Democratic politics (she was a staffer on the first and second House select committees on climate change) and environmental nonprofits. But she’s also a daughter of the oil patch (she grew up with her father and brother in the business) with the slight Texas twang to prove it. In an interview with West Wing Playbook, Cohen said that growing up in Texas has informed her work. She watched the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill pollute the Gulf of Mexico and its beach communities, including her hometown of Corpus Christi. And although Cohen’s own middle class neighborhood was largely spared, she had friends living in the communities that bore the brunt of the chemical pollution. “I try to think of those neighborhoods and those friends as we are balancing sometimes challenging questions about infrastructure expansion,” she said. The National Environmental Policy Act requires federal agencies to assess the environmental effects of their proposed actions, but until now there’s been wide latitude for interpretation. The changes the debt bill made to the NEPA will likely tighten ambiguous definitions, potentially limit what projects require intensive reviews and impose deadlines for those assessments. It amounts to the most substantive reforms in more than 40 years. It’ll also be a major challenge, one which Cohen wasn’t willing to preview how CEQ was going to handle. “We need rules of the road that help ensure that we are able to grow our economy — as we’ve seen Bidenomics successfully doing — while providing that environmental protection and community protection as well,” she said, when asked how she planned to balance competing interests. Cohen and her team are also trying to proceed while fighting off the threats of litigation from industry groups on one side and environmental groups on the other. “They are under the gun,” said ALEX HERRGOTT, CEO of trade group The Permitting Institute and who previously led the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council in the DONALD TRUMP administration. “They actually are motivated to see where there are efficiencies because of all of the offshore wind, green hydrogen, solar and wind projects that would benefit from clarifications as well.” While Cohen’s Lone Star State roots might make her an atypical D.C. climate wonk, her colleagues say that’s exactly what’s made her successful in her field. “She is a very proud Texan. She will talk about family she has in the oil and gas industry,” said a former colleague of Cohen. “She’s not some effete liberal who came down from the mountains of Vermont and said, ‘Let everybody eat solar.’” MESSAGE US — Are you ALI ZAIDI, White House national climate adviser? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
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