- Bloomberg BNA: EPA looks to address ethanol blend wall issue in RFS
- New York Times: Obama Announces New Rule Limiting Water Pollution
- Washington Examiner: Wall Street regs could drive up energy costs
POLITICO Morning Energy for 5/28/2015
By DARIUS DIXON, with help from Elana Schor and Alex Guillén
THE RAINMAKER: President Barack Obama hit up two Democratic National Committee fundraisers Wednesday night in Miami and will step into the National Hurricane Center today for the first time. White House spokesman Eric Schultz suggested that Obama may offer some remarks about climate change during his visit. “The president will also take the opportunity to speak on how climate change will mean more intense hurricanes, and rising sea levels will result in more flooding and damage from the storms,” Schultz told reporters on Air Force One en route to Miami, according to a transcript. “He will also address how he is committed to combatting climate change both here at home and leading abroad, and assisting our communities in preparing for these storms.”
Schultz also noted that the president has received a hurricane briefing every year but that a visit was a nice touch this time around. “We thought that this year it would be appropriate to go down to the Hurricane Center in person, take a look at a lot of the new technologies they’ve been employing, both that’s available to them but also that has been released to the public in terms of the new data sets, new levels — new sets of transparency that we’ve put in place down there,” Schultz said. Obama’s tour is scheduled to start around 10:40 a.m.
On those DNC events: Obama’s visit to the first Wednesday fundraiser lasted more than an hour but was closed to the press. A DNC official told the pool team covering Obama that it included about 30 supporters contributing up to $33,400. The second fundraiser, which was open to the media, had about 60 people with the same financial ceiling. At the second event, Obama told attendees that grassroots action was needed in order to press lawmakers on Capitol Hill to act on a bevy of issues, like global warming. “[U]ltimately, the great genius of this democracy is that the most important office is the office of citizen,” the president said. “We’ve got to get people involved so that Congress ultimately responds to an electorate that is expressing our highest and best values around issues like climate change, and issues like education, and issues like opportunity and poverty.”
JEWELL IN THE HOUSE FOR THE GROUSE: Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is in Wyoming today for a crucial announcement on conservation of the sagebrush that’s sparked a congressional brouhaha over protections for the quirky bird that calls it home. Jewell is set to appear alongside Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead and Bureau of Land Management chief Neil Kornze for “a major milestone in the unprecedented and proactive partnership” to safeguard habitat for the greater sage-grouse. With or without their binoculars, longtime grouse watchers expect to see the rollout of more than a dozen final environmental impact statements that set aside public land for regional management of the species, whose 11-state reach includes areas that the western oil and gas industry sees as prime candidates for development.
IT’S ‘ALREADY’ THURSDAY! I’m Darius Dixon and I’ve gotta admit that today’s ME was helped along by some Laphroaig that wouldn’t drink itself. Xkcd had a good comic to explain a similar phenomenon: http://bit.ly/1POKaVk. I was collecting data. Send your energy news, tips and commentary to ddixon@politico.com, and follow us on Twitter @dariusss, @Morning_Energy and @POLITICOPro.
** A message from Fuels America: The EPA has a choice: Oil industry profits, or rural economies and American innovation? Congress designed the Renewable Fuel Standard to offer certainty to investors and employers. If the EPA caves to oil lobbyists, billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs will be threatened: http://bit.ly/1Hdnfyo **
NORWAY CREEPS FORWARD WITH ANTI-COAL GAMBIT: Via Reuters: Norway’s $900 billion sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, should cut its exposure to the global coal industry and sell stakes in firms that focus on the sector, the key parliamentary finance committee said on Wednesday. A bipartisan motion on the panel said that the fund, which owns about 1.3 percent of all listed companies globally, should sell stakes in firms that generate more than 30 percent of their output or revenues from coal-related activities. Already under pressure from Norway’s political establishment, the fund has been selling down its coal portfolio in recent quarters and said its holdings were already small. http://reut.rs/1HNdqEG
Small or not, 350.org cofounder Bill McKibben is excited, tweeting Wednesday night: “Norway’s $900bn fund, that just divested from coal, is in fact the world’s largest fund. Like, in the world. The whole planet. Earth.”
A vote by the full parliament is scheduled for June 5.
EPA, COAST GUARD ISSUE OIL SPILL CLEANUP ORDER: The order establishes federally enforceable timelines and cleanup requirements for the long-term response action along the coast of Santa Barbara County, Calif., after last week’s crude oil spill. http://1.usa.gov/1KqHsyC
WOTUS’ WORLD: Pro Agriculture’s Jenny Hopkinson has been the pointwoman of our Water of the United States rule coverage over the last 24 hours and her latest story focuses on the next — and inevitable — step in the regulatory process: Lawsuits. Jenny: “It remains to be seen which group from any number of industries, states and cities will file the first complaint against the two agencies and the 297 pages of regulatory language, definitions and appendixes that the administration has dubbed the Clean Water Rule, but they’ll no doubt argue the federal government strayed too far from the Clean Water Act’s mission to regulate ‘navigable waters.’ Attorneys representing agriculture, energy and a multitude of other industries have now retreated to their respective corners to begin reviewing the mammoth document and its interpretation of which bodies of water or ditches should be governed by the federal Clean Water Act and which should instead be left to the states. While the 1972 law has always been interpreted to cover big waterways, like the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes, lawmakers and the courts have long struggled with how far upstream protections need to go to ensure the health of those water bodies.” http://politico.pro/1JW3w65
YOU JUST CAN’T KEEP HIM AWAY FROM TIPSHEETS: As many of you know, Alex Guillén, the immediate past-president of ME-dom, has taken the reins as our biweekly Energy Regulation Watch, but he also writes our Energy Influence tipsheet for Pros, cataloguing related spending. The headliner for the latest edition of EI is Plains All American Pipeline, the company at the center of last week’s crude oil spill in Santa Barbara County, Calif. Get the skinny on Koch PAC’s energy spending, ExxonMobil donations and Clean Line Energy Partners registering as a lobbying entity: http://politico.pro/1ck0kUa
MORE ON THE CHAMBER’S EPA CHALLENGE TALKS: Pro readers heard Wednesday that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has begun behind-the-scenes talks that could lead to a consensus legal challenge to the EPA’s landmark emissions rules for power plants after they are finalized later this year. Some industry interests warn that casting the Chamber in the leading role could hurt opponents’ chances of winning a stay of the regulations, since its broad-based manufacturer membership would have to work harder to prove direct harm.
One of the two companies that a source identified as participating in the Chamber’s talks, however, sounded a positive note about collaboration. Luminant, which relies on coal for power generation, “believes the Clean Power Plan is unlawful, unworkable for Texas and should be withdrawn,” spokesman Brad Watson said in an email. “We’re waiting to see what the EPA releases as a final rule, but absent huge, fundamental changes, we would work with a broad coalition of groups to challenge the final rule.” A spokesman for ExxonMobil, the second company linked to the Chamber’s early-stage talks, declined to comment.
NEW ANALYSIS MAPS NATGAS ‘GUARDRAILS’: The Stockholm Environment Institute is out today with a new analysis of the policy “guardrails” required to ensure that natural gas can play its oft-cited “bridge fuel” role in a global push to ratchet down coal use. Curbing growth in energy demand that might come from increased gas production, limiting and cutting methane leaks associated with that production, and steering new gas supplies towards replacement of dirtier alternatives rather than “lock-out” of cleaner-burning options are among the key recommendations in the paper: http://bit.ly/1GF1q9R
WE CAN MAKE THEM BETTER, STRONGER, FASTER…: Lynn Orr, the Energy Department undersecretary for science and energy, is among the headliners at this year’s Better Buildings Summit in D.C. and he’s expected to announce two new Better Buildings “accelerators” this morning during his keynote. The first such “accelerator” will focus on improving access to home energy efficiency and consumption information in much the same way the age and size of a house can be made available. The second addition will support residential efficiency programs managed by utilities and local governments as they provide upgrade services. The summit is taking place at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel starting at 8:30 a.m.
GAS STATIONS CAN HANDLE E15 — STUDY: A new biofuel industry-connected study concludes that refueling infrastructure is in fact able to handle gasoline with higher blends of ethanol than the current 10 percent. The study was backed by Blend Your Own Ethanol campaign, a joint Renewable Fuel Association-American Coalition for Ethanol project, and conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. NREL concluded that for several decades, manufacturers have rated their underground storage tanks to hold pure ethanol, while pipe thread sealant makers have long rated their products for E20. “Many manufacturers’ models, as well as other UST equipment including fill equipment, leak detection, overfill prevention, and containment, are compatible with E15,” the paper concludes. NREL plans to hold a webinar on the report on June 11 at 2 p.m. The paper: http://1.usa.gov/1ciVbM1
A BRAVE MERGER WORLD: If you wanted to submit a comment today on the Exelon Corp.-Pepco Holdings Inc. merger proposal, well, you’re kinda SOL. The comment period before the D.C. Public Service Commission, the last utility regulator still mulling the merger, closed Wednesday and a decision could come at any time. The proposal overcame its first major hurdle earlier this month when the Maryland Public Service Commission voted, 3-2, to approve the merger with 46 additional conditions — conditions the companies accepted in order to get the state’s blessing. The $6.8 billion merger has already been approved by regulators at FERC, and in Virginia, New Jersey and Delaware. But the outcome of the boisterous debate in D.C. is anyone’s guess since, like Maryland, the District has a “public interest” statue to meet rather than merely ensuring that the deal is inoffensive.
RFS FUNDAY FRIDAYS: EPA is expected to release a trifecta of proposed annual volume mandates under the Renewable Fuel Standard on Friday, according to sources closely following the issue. The release of the proposed annual RFS mandates covering 2014, 2015 and 2016 would come ahead of the June 1 deadline that EPA promised for the release the proposals under a settlement after the agency was sued by oil producers and refiners for missing earlier statutory deadlines. An EPA spokeswoman would only reiterate by email that the agency was “committed to getting it out by June 1.” The agency is long overdue in releasing its 2014 and 2015 proposals, and the Office of Management and Budget still has meetings scheduled with lobbyists up through Thursday to hear their views on all three annual mandates to be proposed. EPA will now be re-proposing the 2014 mandate, and for the first time proposing the annual mandates for 2015 and 2016. The agency is trying to finalize all three proposals by Nov. 30.
SEEDING BIO INFORMATION: A group of forest owners, wood suppliers and manufacturers of pulp and paper goods have created a new website, Biomass101.org, focused on being a “clearinghouse for scientifically sound information on carbon-neutral bioenergy.” The project, cross-pollinating the American Forest & Paper Association, American Wood Council, Forest Resources Association, and National Alliance of Forest Owners, is expected to pump out blog posts, infographics, videos and the like.
QUICK HITS
— Canada wildfires rage on, intensify near oil sands sites. Reuters: http://reut.rs/1ckjtp4
— ExxonMobil CEO mocks renewable energy in shareholder speech. POLITICO: http://politi.co/1LKuewW
— Fracking battle in Texas not over. Denton Record-Chronicle: http://bit.ly/1GFnQrs
— Duke Energy building solar facility at Disney World. The Orlando Sentinel: http://bit.ly/1G1he80
— The Tanker Market Is Sending a Big Warning to Oil Bulls. Bloomberg: http://bloom.bg/1EyVbhF
— Alaska governor tours Shell oil rig in Seattle. The Associated Press: http://bit.ly/1J7D5K0
Tags: energy, fuel, gas, oil