- Morning Consult: Comprehensive Energy Bills Prize Bipartisanship – For Now
- The Hill: House passes bill to fight coal ash rule
- Morning Consult: For Wind Tax Credit, Same Fight, Different Congress
- The Washington Examiner: Business launches new push to roll back ozone rules
POLITICO Morning Energy for 7/23/2015
By ANDREW RESTUCCIA, with help from Alex Guillén, Darren Goode and Nick Juliano
HOW LONG WILL LAWMAKERS HOLD THEIR TONGUES? House and Senate committee leaders moved ahead Wednesday with proposals that would represent the broadest update to energy law in nearly a decade. The bills unveiled this week emerged after months of intense public hearings and delicate backroom deal-making. That was the easy part. Now, lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol will have to decide whether they can set aside some of the most controversial fights of the Obama era — over hot-button controversies such as energy exports, the Keystone XL pipeline and tough climate change regulations — in order to find consensus on narrower policy overhauls that experts say are long overdue. That will take a level of restraint rarely seen in recent years on Capitol Hill, where comprehensive energy legislation has not been enacted since 2007. Darren Goode explains it all for Pros: http://politico.pro/1Ifdg6z
MURKOWSKI, CANTWELL UNVEIL ENERGY BILL: Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski and Sen. Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the panel, officially unveiled their long-awaited energy legislation on Wednesday.
WHAT’S IN THE BILL: The 357-page bill — dubbed the Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2015 — includes sections on efficiency, infrastructure, supply, accountability and conservation. The legislation avoids the most controversial issues for now in hopes of building bipartisan support, omitting some of Murkowski’s top priorities: opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and lifting the ban on crude oil exports.
The bill also includes several measures from bipartisan energy efficiency legislation authored by Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Rob Portman, as well as provisions aimed at reforming DOE’s loan guarantee program, modernizing the electric grid, codifying DOE’s role in cybersecurity and bolstering FERC’s role in hydropower permitting. The bill also permanently reauthorizes the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Read the bill here [http://1.usa.gov/1On1Bap], read a section-by-section summary here [http://1.usa.gov/1KlkhJK], and read a one-page summary here [http://1.usa.gov/1Mp7tm5].
But the legislation makes one thing clear: Murkowski and Cantwell don’t want to raid the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to pay for unrelated spending, as Republicans have proposed. Section 2103 of her bill directs SPR funds only to projects related to the upkeep and improvement of the reserve itself; it also authorizes “non-reserve projects needed to enhance the energy security of the United States,” including improvements to infrastructure. A committee aide said the language would cover a narrow list of potential uses. It was meant as a response to other lawmakers looking to the SPR as a catch-all piggy bank, an example of which came less than three hours later when the transportation bill cleared a key procedural hurdle.
MARK YOUR CALENDARS: The committee plans to mark up the bill next Tuesday and Thursday, and it may add another session in the first week of August.
HAPPY THURSDAY AND WELCOME TO MORNING ENERGY! I’m your host Andrew Restuccia — and after a hectic day packed with energy news, let’s get down to business. Send your energy news, tips, and commentary to arestuccia@politico.com, and follow us on Twitter @AndrewRestuccia,@Morning_Energy and @POLITICOPro.
WHITE HOUSE, BUSINESSES TALK CLEAN POWER PLAN TODAY: Brian Deese, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, and other White House officials will meet this morning with executives from dozens of small businesses in the green energy and efficiency sectors in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to discuss the Clean Power Plan ahead of the rule’s expected rollout next month. The closed-to-the-press gathering, hosted by Business Forward and the White House Business Council, will allow the executives to discuss how the administration’s climate agenda and other actions on extreme weather and federal investments affect their businesses and for administration officials to say where their policies are going and what resources the government offers.
— Will Gathright, the founder of McLean-based energy storage startup Tumalow, said he hopes to hear whether the Clean Power Plan will address issues like distributed generation and onsite energy storage, not just big power plants and the bulk power system. “Given that this is already the way technology and industry is going, will policy recognize this trend and follow it?” Gathright told ME ahead of the meeting. “From what I’ve seen, a lot of stuff in the Clean Power Plan talks a lot about these big, centralized power plants, which are of course a very large part of the energy mix. But it’s completely silent on this sort of distributed energy.”
THIS IS SPR: For four decades, the U.S. has held onto its Strategic Petroleum Reserve as a hedge against disaster or war — but now Republicans in Congress want to sell off some of its 700 million barrels to pay for unrelated projects. The Senate’s proposed highway bill calls for unloading 101 million barrels to raise $9 billion for roadwork. Two weeks ago, the House voted to sell 64 million barrels over eight years to help pay for an overhaul of the federal drug-approval process. It’s yet another sign of how much the U.S. energy boom has eased the fears of scarcity that inspired the reserve’s creation during the oil-shock 1970s. Until now, the government has approved large sales from the reserve only three times, including during the first Gulf War and after the fuel price spikes that followed Hurricane Katrina. Darren Goode and Elana Schor put everything into perspective: http://politico.pro/1OytVqY
— Meanwhile: The Senate’s attempt to pass a six-year highway and transit bill cleared a key procedural hurdle on Wednesday, roughly 24 hours after a Democratic revolt helped defeat a similar attempt. Senators voted 62-36 to begin debate and will now take up amendments, which could prove contentious as the must-pass bill threatens to become a vehicle for a host of unrelated causes.
ADMINISTRATION GIVES CONDITIONAL NOD TO SHELL’S ARCTIC DRILLING BID: Shell won the Arctic drilling go-ahead it wanted from the Obama administration on Wednesday — but with conditions that again delayed the oil giant’s risky, multibillion-dollar push to tap the vast resources off the Alaskan coast. The decision is the latest sign that despite his efforts to combat climate change, President Barack Obama will allow the oil and gas industry to explore in new regions, but only under strict regulations on that activity. The Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement approved two drilling permits for Shell but said the company must stop before it reaches the oil reservoir beneath the Chukchi Sea until a damaged icebreaker that contained safety equipment returns from repairs in Portland, Ore. Elana Schor has more for Pros: http://politico.pro/1Jg0JVx
— Greens, unsurprisingly, aren’t happy. Here’s a taste: “Allowing Shell, with its horrible track record of accidents and disregard for the rules, to drill even on a limited basis without the equipment on site to contain a spill is truly reckless,” Rachel Richardson, the director of Environment America’s Stop Drilling program, said in a statement. And the Sierra Club is already fundraising off the announcement: http://bit.ly/1gPlrR4
** A message from Fuels America: EPA, the choice has never been more clear on the Renewable Fuel Standard. Will you cater to oil industry lobbyists? Or will you stand with the hundreds of thousands of hardworking Americans who delivered a strong message that the RFS is working for rural America? bit.ly/1VaQpmp **
HOUSE PASSES COAL ASH BILL: The House on Wednesday passed Rep. David McKinley’s coal ash legislation by a vote of 258-166, largely along party lines. The bill would permanently designate coal ash as a non-hazardous waste. EPA’s recent coal ash rulemaking came to the same conclusion, but the agency left the door open to changing its mind later on. The bill would also give states more power to manage their own coal ash permitting programs, while allowing EPA to directly regulate coal ash in states without rules, or that have plans deemed insufficient. States would have six months to notify EPA they plan to run their own permit program, then another three years to submit plans to EPA for approval.
— Greens are again unhappy. Dalal Aboulhosn, the Sierra Club’s senior Washington representative for clean water protections, said in a statement: “The McKinley bill will wipe out the modest protections put forward by EPA on coal ash and makes clear that House Republicans will stoop to any low to push the toxic agenda of the fossil fuel industry. It does nothing more than weaken, and in some cases eliminate, the modest gains won by communities living in the shadows of coal ash sites around the country.”
GREEN GROUP THANKS REPUBLICANS IN NEW ADS: The Environmental Defense Action Fund is up with two new online ads thanking Sen. Kelly Ayotte and Rep. Bob Dold, both Republicans, for “fighting for cleaner air, healthier families and for protecting our environment.” The group is spending $120,000 on the digital ads, which are running in New Hampshire and Illinois for roughly a month on various local news websites. The ads are part of a broader campaign by EDAF to find green-minded allies in the Republican party. See the ads here [http://bit.ly/1HJZSKF] and here [http://bit.ly/1ehyxoc].
MCGINTY MOVING TOWARD SENATE RUN: Kathleen McGinty is resigning her position as Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolff’s chief of staff to prepare for a possible run for Senate, according to National Journal [http://bit.ly/1MlAHB7]. McGinty, a long-time environmentalist, was the head of the Council on Environmental Quality during the Clinton administration and she later served as Pennsylvania’s secretary of environmental protection.
ME FIRST — REPORT PROJECTS POTENTIAL BILL SAVINGS WITH CARBON RULE: States can achieve significant savings on consumer electricity bills under the Clean Power Plan by investing heavily in renewable energy and energy efficiency, according to an analysis out today from Synapse Energy Economics. “For the two-thirds of residential consumers who participate in ratepayer-funded energy efficiency programs under this scenario, 2030 bills are expected to be $35 per month lower than in a business-as-usual … scenario and, on average, $14 per month cheaper than residential bills were in 2012,” the report says. Synapse’s scenario also predicted states would reduce emissions by 58 percent by 2030, well beyond EPA’s average goal. The report was funded by the Energy Foundation. It will be available at this link later this morning: http://bit.ly/1LEaywU. Factsheet: http://bit.ly/1IlUdxH
GOP TARGETS CLIMATE RULE COMPLIANCE DEADLINE: Republicans on Wednesday urged the Obama administration not to finalize carbon rules for power plants if the implementation period takes effect before expected legal challenges are decided. Expect the GOP to make this argument repeatedly over the next few months. Congressional Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Jim Inhofe, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton and other Republicans wrote to Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Administrator Howard Shelanski about “concerns regarding serious and extraordinary legal and economic aspects of this rule that violate core principles of regulatory decision-making.” Read the letter: http://1.usa.gov/1MJ0IIQ
QUICK HITS
— Moniz: Test results back up assurances on Iran deal, Politico’s Darius Dixon reports: http://politi.co/1OnvDL8
— The Boston Globe profiles Moniz: http://bit.ly/1CR7n3z
— “For the first time in more than three months, U.S. oil prices closed below $50 per barrel Wednesday,” the Houston Chronicle explains: http://bit.ly/1fnovCY
— “Court Approves Patriot Coal Executive Bonus Plan,” The Wall Street Journal reports: http://on.wsj.com/1IjXmw5
Tags: energy, fuel, gas, oil