- Oil & Gas Journal: Federal report: EPA should address oversight of fracking using diesel fuel
- The Washington Examiner: House panel unveils sweeping energy bill
POLITICO Morning Energy for 7/21/2015
By DARIUS DIXON, with help from Nick Juliano, Andrew Restuccia, Elana Schor and Alex Guillén
E&C AIRDROPS ENERGY PACKAGE: The House Energy and Commerce Committee released long-awaited energy policy legislation that aims to tackle efficiency, security, workforce and infrastructure. E&C’s energy and power subcommittee will mark up the bill Wednesday morning, panel leaders announced just before 9 p.m. last night. Lawmakers have until 8 a.m. Wednesday to submit amendments. The 95-page bill: http://1.usa.gov/1Ig9yjt
How bipartisan will it be? Last night’s press release touted “weeks of bipartisan negotiations” leading up to the bill, but it only quoted E&C Chairman Fred Upton and Ed Whitfield, a subpanel chief. After the committee’s announcement went out, ME reached out to Reps. Frank Pallone and Bobby Rush, the top Democrats on the full committee and subcommittee, but neither office responded right away. A GOP aide says the committee is expecting a broad bipartisan vote at tomorrow’s markup and that the bill reflects bipartisan agreements.
So, what’s in it? ME noticed a few apparent compromises in a speed-read of the bill last night. It doesn’t reverse a plan Congress implemented with the 2007 energy law directing federal agencies to phase out the use of fossil fuels in major new or renovated buildings. The bill also appears to rewrite the process by which the Energy Department finalizes the development of the furnace efficiency standards, which has drawn complaints from the natural gas industry. Lawmakers also endorsed the Quadrennial Energy Review recommendation of creating a strategic reserve of electric transformers that could be deployed to critical areas to help prevent major power outages.
FERC can stand down from Defcon 2. The new draft from E&C has axed a section seeking to make significant changes to the agency’s enforcement office, which tackles energy market manipulation cases. FERC, which is now headed by the former head of that office, and Democrats voiced major objections to the “transparency” section of the earlier draft that gave those being investigated of bad behavior increased document access and a channel of communication to the agency leadership. That’s been kicked to the curb. In another section, language requiring FERC to conduct a “reliability analysis” on any proposed or final federal regulation that may affect power plants appears to have been excised. Also, a new FERC unit called the “Office of Compliance Assistance” has been amended to include “… and Public Participation” but is largely intact in the new draft except for a couple of small changes. The new bill cuts a staffing mandate for the new office, which would’ve redirected at least 10 employees already working at the agency to move to the new compliance operation.
HAPPY TUESDAY! I’m Darius Dixon and fortunately for you, Dear Reader, this is my last day as your morning host (for real, this time). I reprised the role briefly to help fill in for Eric Wolff. If you remember nothing else about me, remember that I completely agree with Jon Stewart about pizza: http://bit.ly/1ecPRea. But now I bequeath the platform to my colleague Darren Goode, so send him your energy news, tips, and commentary to dgoode@politico.com, and follow us on Twitter @DarrenGoode, @Morning_Energy and @POLITICOPro.
THE EXTENDABLES: The Senate Finance Committee is marking up a lengthy tax extenders package today, and things may go ahead somewhat drama-free (but this is Congress, so you never know). While the bill throws a two-year lifeline to the wind energy production tax credit at the rate of $23-per-megawatt-hour, Sens. Pat Toomey and Dan Coats have offered an amendment to remove the PTC extension language. Somewhere in the middle is Sen. Rob Portman, who has filed an amendment to phase out the PTC: A 30 percent cut in 2017, a 40 percent cut in 2018, and eliminating it altogether beginning in 2019. The Ohio Republican’s amendment would also end the solar investment tax credit in 2019 allow solar projects to qualify if they have begun construction by the credit’s deadline. A variety of other amendments have been filed tweaking the “commence construction” qualifying deadline or the rate of the phase out.
Taking a little off the top, Toomey has also offered up an amendment targeting the 1 percent: An amendment to “prohibit any individual with adjusted gross income above $400,000 … to claim energy tax credits extended in this legislation.” Sorry to all the millionaire electric motorcycle enthusiasts looking to make efficiency upgrades to their homes. It’s unclear whether amendment will actually come to a vote, it just caught ME’s eye.
The underlying bill also extends about a dozen other energy-related tax breaks, including those to promote energy efficiency in homes and biofuel production. But plenty of energy-related amendments have been submitted, including extensions for:
— the PTC for open-loop biomass and waste-to-energy facilities;
— the credit for electric motorcycles;
— the ITC to high efficiency transmission and distribution projects;
— a tax credit to waste heat-to-power projects;
— credits for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and alternative fuel infrastructure.
Other amendments would:
— create credits for combined heat and power systems and waste heat-to-power properties;
— create a 30 percent offshore wind ITC;
— make permanent an enhanced credit for charitable conservation easements;
— allow renewable energy and energy storage projects to create master limited partnerships;
— allow public partners of advanced nuclear projects to transfer their portion of the PTC to a partner that can monetize the credit.
If you want to sift through them yourself, be ME’s guest: http://1.usa.gov/1ME5PtA
Looking for a summary of the base bill? Violà: http://1.usa.gov/1Key6H4.
If you go: The markup starts at 11 a.m. in Dirksen 215.
** 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 **
POPE IT LIKE IT’S HOT: Pope Francis threw his zucchetto into the ring last month alongside those urging aggressive action to address climate change, issuing a lengthy encyclical framing the issue as a moral affair. And on that note, the Vatican is hosting a summit today on the commitment cities have to “two dramatic and interconnected emergencies: the climate change crisis and the new forms of slavery.” (Translation: Climate change can be an exacerbating element to poverty, forced migration and sinister trades.) The summit has attracted several U.S. politicians, including California Gov. Jerry Brown, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, as well as the mayors of Birmingham, Portland (Ore.), Seattle, Boston, Minneapolis, San Francisco, San Jose and Boulder. The program started at 2:30 a.m. and the Pope arrives around 11 a.m. The program: http://bit.ly/1LoK04i
YOU’RE INVITED TO FIRST WATCH WITH JEH JOHNSON: Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson will sit down for an interview with POLITICO Chief White House Correspondent Mike Allen this morning. Johnson, a top lawyer in the “war on terror” while at the Pentagon, will talk immigration, cybersecurity, TSA, “lone wolves” — and his passion for model trains and old-school R&B. Right after that, Mike will chat with Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske, who led police departments in Buffalo and Seattle. It all goes down at the Mayflower Hotel, 1127 Connecticut Ave. NW. Doors open at 7:30 a.m. More info: http://politi.co/1VlgOy7. But if you can’t make it in person, you can watch it here: http://politi.co/1VnV5Wh
THE DAILY SHOW WITH BARACK OBAMA: The president is flying to New York City this afternoon and is scheduled to stop by The Daily Show studio to tape a segment with outgoing host Jon Stewart. This is supposedly Obama’s seventh interview on the program over the last ten years and today’s episode will be his third as president. After the taping, Obama will make a speech and take questions at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee event at a private residence elsewhere in Manhattan. Obama’s Daily Show interview airs tonight at 11 p.m. on Comedy Central.
NEW EDF-BACKED METHANE STUDY DROPS TODAY: The latest installment in the 16-part series of studies of natural gas-related methane emissions, backed by the Environmental Defense Fund in partnership with industry and academic research teams, appears today in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. This edition found about 80 billion cubic feet of methane released each year through compressor stations and storage facilities located along transmission pipelines and involved seven natural gas companies, as well as researchers from Carnegie Mellon and Colorado State University. EDF’s N. Jonathan Peress wrote in a blog post on the conclusions that the 30-percent difference in emissions between companies that volunteered for the study and those that did not “reinforces doubt about industry claims that it can manage methane emissions on its own.” http://bit.ly/1g1veTZ
AEA TO LAWMAKERS: EVERY VOTE YOU MAKE, WE’LL BE WATCHING YOU: The American Energy Alliance will unveil a new ranking of lawmakers today. The ranking is based on co-sponsorships and lawmakers’ votes on a series of bills that the group, which has ties to the oil industry, deems important. Support for industry priorities like approving the Keystone XL pipeline, repealing the Renewable Fuel Standard and eliminating the wind production tax credit all boost lawmakers’ scores. Twenty-two lawmakers — all Republicans — have a 100 percent score on the ranking so far. Check out the group’s American Energy Scorecard here: http://bit.ly/1Sy3pyw
MATTERS OF STATE, LATIN EDITION: The State Department Special Envoy for International Energy Affairs Amos Hochstein is slated to travel to El Salvador today to meet with “Central American Integration System energy ministers and regional electricity market institutions.” According to the State Department, the discussions will focus on U.S.-Central American energy cooperation, efforts to develop a regional electricity market and improve regulatory frameworks as well as “mobilize clean energy finance in the Western Hemisphere.” Hochstein’s meetings are designed to help set the stage for convening the U.S.-Caribbean and Central American Energy Security Task Force after trips President Barack Obama made to Jamaica and Panama this spring.
DOE THROWS IN THE TOWEL ON EFFICIENCY STANDARD: The Energy Department today is cementing a decision on an efficiency standard got the best of them: The complicated-sounding rule for packaged terminal air conditioners and packaged terminal heat pumps. (Think of those through-wall heating and cooling units you might see in a hotel or hospital.) In last year’s proposed rule, DOE estimated that heightened efficiency standards would translate into somewhere between $10.7 million and $69 million by 2048. But in the final rule being published in today’s Federal Register, those net benefits have largely evaporated. For air conditioning units, DOE is assigning the new efficiency floor to the industry standard. Meanwhile, standards for heat pump technology will go complete unchanged. Part of what happened was that the alternative refrigerants DOE initially thought might work to improve efficiency would be needed in larger quantities than the EPA approved for the chemicals in a separate rulemaking. “DOE is not able to show with clear and convincing evidence that energy conservation standards” the agency modeled for the equipment was “economically justified,” the final rule states. http://1.usa.gov/1gLnFB3
QUICK HITS
— Officials: Oil Train Didn’t Speed Before Montana Derailment. The Associated Press: http://abcn.ws/1CMGrSy
— State board grants provisional charter for New York Climate Museum. The Associated Press: http://bit.ly/1fiDSMZ
— Alberta spill heaps pain on Canada’s oil sector. CNBC: http://cnb.cx/1IgKEAc
— Ohio’s clean-energy mandates likely to be cut as legislative panel ends work. The Columbus Dispatch: http://bit.ly/1VnW48V
— Toshiba Must Adjust Operating Profit Down by $1.2 Billion. The Wall Street Journal: http://on.wsj.com/1KhnB8x
Tags: energy, fuel, gas, oil