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POLITICO Morning Energy for 5/19/2015
By DARIUS DIXON, with help from Alex Guillén, Elana Schor and Matt Daily
THE BIG SPENDER: The Senate energy and water spending bill is getting rolled out today and ME’s eyes will be targeting sections related to, you guessed it, nuclear waste. Lawmakers can quibble about specific funding levels for Energy Department offices, weapons programs, or U.S. contributions to the ITER fusion project. But a lot of people want to know how Energy and Water subcommittee Chairman Lamar Alexander intends to play his hand on Yucca Mountain, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and nuclear waste issues in general.
The Tennessee Republican has tried to work both sides of the issue. He wants to see Yucca Mountain opened. But recognizing that the current stockpiles of waste intended for the site would fill the place right up, Alexander has also supported creating a new independent agency to handle the issue as well as a process that reflects the “consent-based” siting process the Obama administration has pursued since shuttered Yucca. The House version of the bill approved $200 million for processing Yucca Mountain’s license and other nuclear waste disposal work. So in some respect, folks are waiting to see how Alexander’s numbers line up but…
He could end up playing for the long(ish) game. Affairs at the subcommittee level, especially on Appropriations panels, are downright kumbaya and Alexander is a man of the institution. He may seek to avoid including funds for Yucca Mountain in the base bill with the expectation that one or more amendments get setup for votes during the full committee markup, or even on the Senate floor. There is some precedent for doing so, when you look at the House. Low Yucca Mountain funding levels in previous energy spending bills allowed Rep. John Shimkus and then-Rep. Jay Inslee to stage bipartisan votes on the floor to boost funding, which also demonstrated Congress’ continued support for the project. It’s been a long time since anything related to Yucca has had a vote in the Senate.
Also, a Senate aide told ME that repeated efforts by Alexander and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, his Democratic counterpart, to pass language designed to kick off a pilot program to begin collecting the nation’s nuclear waste will continue this year — but there may be some tweaks now that there are companies in Texas and New Mexico offering to take nuclear waste.
For you science wonks: There are tremendous budgetary pressures to cut spending but basic research, and DOE’s ARPA-E program probably couldn’t find a better friend on the Republican side of the aisle than Alexander (he’s likely a bit more enthusiastic for those programs than some Democrats). The same Senate aide said basic research is expected to get an increase.
If you go: The markup is slated to begin at 2:30 p.m. in Dirksen 138.
Synchronize your watches: The full Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to vote on the E&W bill Thursday morning, alongside the military construction and veterans affairs spending measure. http://1.usa.gov/1dgsFMy
CLINTON CLOGS FOIA TIL 2016: In some late-breaking news, the State Department said it needs until January 15, 2016 to complete its review and public release of 55,000 pages of emails former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton exchanged on a private server and turned over to her former agency last December. Recall this Washington Post story from last Tuesday about how the State Dept. can’t fulfill your FOIA because it’s overwhelmed by Hillary e-mails. http://wapo.st/1QHJdew. What about the documents that are just Hillary AND Keystone XL?
HAPPY TUESDAY! I’m Darius Dixon, and as someone who grew up in awe of Richard Feynman and could never stand biology your host found that this xkcd comic had a pretty amazing comeback: http://bit.ly/1JVFvKj. Send your energy tips to ddixon@politico.com, and follow us on Twitter @dariusss, @Morning_Energy and @POLITICOPro.
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FACING SOME STIFF COMPETES-TION: The House Rules Committee filtered out all but 12 of the 45 amendments submitted to the America COMPETES Act reauthorization bill Monday night. The bill would cut funding for Energy Department renewable programs while boosting spending on the National Science Foundation and DOE’s Science office. Those slated to get a floor vote include amendments (http://1.usa.gov/1KHqn34) to strike language requiring all National Science Foundation grants to include a written “national interest” justification and to allow DOE to continue partnering with the Pentagon to produce military biofuels. None of the Democratic measures to insert stronger language on climate change will get a vote.
Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith said that the panel was “trying to edge the government out of business of picking winners and losers and subsidizing specific forms of energy production. What we are doing is increasing the amount of research and development for all forms of energy whether it be fossil fuel or alternative forms of energy.” But before he began to list NSF grants that didn’t seem like a good use of taxpayer dollars, he added: “We cut social sciences but we increased the hard sciences, which is where the real breakthroughs in innovation occur.” Funding for climate research is also reduced because other federal agencies have seen increases in that field.
Democrats continued to pan the bill for not having either subcommittee or full committee hearings. Science Committee ranking member Eddie Bernice Johnson said, “We are not, as a committee, in a position to say who the National Science Foundation should fund in studies.” She added: “This legislation, in its present form, is not what any of us would be proud about.” Rep. Louise Slaughter, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, levied the harshest language against the measure, saying that “picks its own winners and losers” and “violates every one of the basic principles that underlay the original COMPETES Act.” She added: “H.R. 1806 seeks to pit different scientific disciplines against one another and prevent research in fields to which the majority is ideologically opposed.”
No 15-minute timeout for ME: The White House threatened to veto the bill as the Rules hearing was going on Monday. The GOP’s COMPETES legislation “would weaken investments in critical clean energy research and development and grid modernization,” the White House Office of Management and Budget warned. The White House also singled out provisions in the bill crafted by Smith, such as barring DOE R&D from being used in any regulations, saying that they “would set an extremely harmful precedent of political interference in the scientific integrity of the regulation process, which would undermine the value of the federal research and development enterprise as a whole.”
Climate vs. weather: Rep. Rob Woodall asked Smith to explain a statement at the end of the bill saying that “climate change is real,” which was added during the committee markup. “Is there anyone making the claim that the climate doesn’t change?” Woodall asked. “Because speaking from the great state of Georgia, ours changes at least four times a year, sometimes more.” To which Smith interjected, trying to keep with Woodall’s humor: “Sometimes on a daily or hourly basis.” Huh.
Stay tuned: The America COMPETES Reauthorization Act is expected to reach the House floor on Wednesday.
AND WHILE WE’RE ON SCIENCE: The House is scheduled to consider six bills related to science and energy under suspension — a practice typically used for noncontroversial legislation — including a measure to improve technology transfer from DOE’s national labs to the private sector.
THE ENERGY COMMITTEES WANT TO KEEP YOU BUSY: The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is embarking on its third hearing to review several bills that might get folded into Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s forthcoming legislative package. The hearing will sift through 27 bills: 10 a.m. in Dirksen 366. On the House side, an Energy and Commerce Subcommittee holds a hearing related to its Architecture of Abundance legislative initiative and will discuss draft legislation on reliability and security (http://1.usa.gov/1Gib6Xw) at 10 a.m. in Rayburn 2123.
STUDY — DIESEL-TO-NATURAL GAS TRUCKING FUEL SWITCH IS NO CLIMATE PANACEA: Converting trucking fleets that now use diesel to run on natural gas is not guaranteed to produce a net greenhouse gas emissions benefit, thanks to uncertainty over methane leakage throughout the natural gas supply chain, according to a study published today in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. The study, co-authored by scientists at the Environmental Defense Fund and Columbia University’s Lenfest Center for Renewable Energy, represents potential new fodder for green groups pressing the Obama administration to take strong action on methane leaks from shale gas production. EDF urged in a blog post on the study that backers of a diesel-to-natural gas switch “use caution before promoting fuel switching to natural gas in the trucking sector as we gain better data on the magnitude and distribution of leakage and as both leakage and vehicle efficiency evolves.”
Natgas pushback: “This study clearly demonstrates that there is a role for natural gas in addressing climate change,” Matthew Godlewski, president of Natural Gas Vehicles for America. “We welcome all credible insight into paths for improving emissions, yet it’s confusing that the Environmental Defense Fund has chosen to conduct and release another study, outside of the cooperative work already underway,” citing a soon-to-be published “Pump to Wheels Methane Leakage” study.
YINGLI ON THE ROPES: China’s Yingli Green Energy, the world’s second largest solar panel maker last year (and No. 1 before that), warned late last week it has “substantial doubts” about its ability to stay in business, PV Tech reports. But it’s not because of weak solar demand — it’s the mountain of debt the company is struggling under. Yingli was one of several Chinese companies that got billions of dollars in loans from Chinese state and regional governments, and that debt is starting to come due. Those loans funded their massive expansion and led to the steep drop in solar energy costs, and sharply eroded profit margins. Yingli posted a loss of more than $200 million last year. The company’s hoping to raise new cash, or else it could end up like former rival Suntech, or (much) smaller U.S. upstart Solyndra. http://bit.ly/1Fl01D3
FIRST CIRCUIT SENDS CAPE WIND SUIT BACK TO DISTRICT JUDGE: A three-judge panel from the First Circuit Court of Appeals says that a district court judge was wrong to conclude last spring that a lawsuit brought by critics of Cape Wind over the project’s power purchase agreement violated the Eleventh Amendment and thus could not move forward. Judge Richard Stearns of the District Court for Massachusetts ruled that the groups opposing Cape Wind were seeking retroactive relief, something generally barred by the Constitution. But judges on the First Circuit ruled that the suit is subject to an exception because the alleged violation is ongoing via the PPA. They vacated Stearns’s ruling and sent it back to him for further proceedings. Ruling: http://politico.pro/1FkChyS
Wait, isn’t Cape Wind’s PPA kaput, you may ask? When Cape Wind at the end of 2014 failed to meet certain financing benchmarks, the utility NSTAR announced that it was canceling the power purchase agreement via a “force majeure” clause — which would make this entire lawsuit moot. Cape Wind disagrees, and argues that the PPA is still in effect. But the First Circuit declined to settle the matter conclusively, concluding only that “for our purposes there remains a case or controversy.” They added: “The district court is better able than is this court to determine the imminency of the contract termination dispute’s resolution.”
The name game: Laurence Tribe — the liberal Harvard icon who recently drew environmentalist scorn for arguing in court on behalf of a coal company against EPA’s Clean Power Plan — also represents one of the anti-Cape Wind entities here, the town of Barnstable.
NO DELAY FOR PEBBLE LAWSUIT: A lawsuit over the planned Pebble Mine in Alaska won’t be delayed because of the EPA inspector general’s inquiry into the matter. Judge H. Russel Holland had worried about a potential clash between the litigation and the IG inquiry after reading about it in a newspaper, but both EPA and the mine’s developers urged him not to delay oral arguments scheduled for next week. EPA and the developer “have helped to clarify the nature of the Inspector General’s proceedings: an evaluation as opposed to an investigation,” Holland wrote. “The court perceives no reason why it should delay the motion to dismiss proceedings.” His one-page order: http://politico.pro/1AgX2fV
QUICK HITS
— Texas Gov. Signs “Denton Fracking Bill.” The Texas Tribune: http://bit.ly/1AhAvzl
— Arizona Public Service to join Calif. power market in Oct. 2016. Reuters: http://reut.rs/1HdEtGw
— Critics Hear E.P.A.’s Voice in ‘Public Comments’ Over WOTUS Rule. The New York Times: http://nyti.ms/1L3A4Jl
— Warren Buffett Is Sending Mixed Messages on Green Energy. The Wall Street Journal: http://bloom.bg/1HdJkri
— More Clinton Fees to Be Disclosed. The Wall Street Journal: http://on.wsj.com/1QYZc82
Tags: energy, fuel, gas, oil