- United Press International: House panels seek review of drillers’ financial risk transparency
- Wall Street Journal: EPA’s New Emissions Rule to Alter Energy Landscape
- National Journal: Obama Reaches For Green Legacy, But Will History Books Agree?
POLITICO Morning Energy for 8/3/2015
By DARREN GOODE and ALEX GUILLÉN
WHITE HOUSE ROLLS OUT CLIMATE RULE: President Barack Obama today will officially roll out a historic crackdown on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that the administration is touting as even more aggressive than drafts issued in 2013 and last summer. Obama will hold a 2:15 p.m. event in the White House’s East Room to tout the final rule requiring power plants to put out an average of 32 percent less carbon dioxide in 2030 than they had in 2005 — slightly steeper than the 30-percent cuts that last year’s draft had called for.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told reporters Sunday that the estimated public health and environmental benefits are actually lower than the proposed rule, but will still bring benefits between $34 billion and $54 billion annually. The proposal pegged benefits at $55 billion to $93 billion. Annual costs are estimated to be $8.4 billion.
The key details:
— EPA appears to make it easier for states to establish regional trading programs or other cooperative approaches to meet their carbon dioxide reduction goals. The language may be aimed at a threat from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who in April argued that the Clean Air Act requires that states get approval from Congress should they wish to use regional cooperatives — something he assured them he would block.
— Power plants will reduce reliance on coal to just 27 percent of the U.S. electricity mix in 2030 in the final rule. That’s down from the 30 percent EPA projected in its initial proposal — and about 50 percent from recent years.
— It still requires some carbon capture and sequestration technology for new coal-fired units, but at a lower rate than originally proposed.
— EPA will not count nuclear reactors that are currently under construction as existing generating capacity in calculating state goals. That’s a win for South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, which are building a total of five reactors, since those zero-carbon units will still apply toward states’ compliance plans.
INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW: How close does the rule really get to meeting U.S. commitments in the international talks? How does EPA prove carbon capture is a viable technology? How — and why — do state targets change? How does the emission trading system available to states work without forming an interstate agreement? How can the administration guarantee that the infrastructure to build out gas and renewables can be approved in time? How will Republicans fight this rule? How do foreign nations respond? How exactly do the changes shore up EPA’s legal justification?
Today’s announcement is “the starting gun for an all-out climate push by the President and his Cabinet” ahead of December’s United Nations climate talks in Paris, the White House says. That will also include an upcoming visit by Obama to the Alaskan Arctic, a speech he will give later this month in Las Vegas at an annual clean energy summit hosted by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, and a climate discussion he plans to have with Pope Francis when the pontiff visits the United States in September.
The political dynamics surrounding the rule are entirely unchanged, however: It will set up years of legal and political battling with congressional Republicans and other opponents, who call it the major weapon in Obama’s “War on Coal,” and it promises to become a major point of contention for the 2016 presidential race.
A POLITICO energy team effort this weekend, led by Alex Guillén: http://politi.co/1fZkUve
THE ACTUAL DAY OF THE WEEK IS IRRELEVANT: I’m your host Darren Goode and by my unofficial count there are 1,356 … now 1,357 emails in my inbox offering an expert to speak with me about the Clean Power Plan. Please don’t be insulted if I don’t reach out to all of you. But do continue to send energy news, tips, and commentary to dgoode@politico.com. Follow us on Twitter @DarrenGoode, @Morning_Energy and @POLITICOPro.
BUSH, RUBIO, WALKER BASH RULE: The two GOP presidential hopefuls from Florida, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, were quick off the mark to bash the rule. It is “irresponsible and overreaching,” would run “over state governments, will throw countless people out of work, and increases everyone’s energy prices,” Bush said in a statement to POLITICO. “Climate change will not be solved by grabbing power from states or slowly hollowing out our economy.”
The “practical impact” of the Clean Power Plan is electricity costs will be “higher for millions of Americans,” Rubio said in an interview with POLITICO’s Mike Allen Sunday at an event hosted by the Koch Brothers’ affiliated Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce. And in a thinly-veiled jab at billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer, Rubio said: “So if there is some billionaire somewhere who is a pro-environmental, cap and trade person, yeah they can probably afford for their electric bill to go up a couple of hundred dollars. But if you’re a single mom in Tampa, Florida and your electric bill goes up by $30 a month, that is catastrophic.”
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker sent a statement from his campaign late Sunday saying the plan “should be called the Costly Power Plan because it will cost hard-working Americans jobs and raise their energy rates.”
CRUZ WENT THERE: And POLITICO’s Ken Vogel notes that one of the biggest applause lines during the series of interviews Mike had with GOP presidential candidates at the Koch donor summit was when Sen. Ted Cruz went all the way in denying that climate change is real. “I’m saying that data and facts don’t support it,” Cruz said.
INDUSTRY PREVIEWS LEGAL FIGHT: National Mining Association CEO Hal Quinn said the climate rule “reflects political expediency” and the two-year pushback of the interim deadline “merely forces ratepayers into steeper cost increases in later years than originally proposed.” In a preview of the broader legal fight ahead, NMA will file a stay with EPA on the rule so that “courts have the opportunity to determine the lawfulness of the agency’s attempt to commandeer the nation’s electric grid. If EPA denies our request we will ask the courts to do so.”
National Association of Manufacturers President Jay Timmons said the rule “will be exceptionally difficult for manufacturers to meet and will increase energy prices and threaten electric reliability.” He said NAM “will keep all options on the table, including litigation.”
National Rural Electric Cooperative Association CEO Jo Ann Emerson said while “we appreciate the efforts intended to help offset the financial burden of rising electricity prices and jobs lost due to prematurely shuttered power plants, the final rule still appears to reflect the fundamental flaws of the original proposal. It exceeds the EPA’s legal authority under the Clean Air Act, and it will raise electricity rates for our country’s most vulnerable populations while challenging the reliability of the grid.”
** A message from Green for All: The Clean Power Plan lets us all breathe easier. It cuts carbon pollution from power plants by 40 percent and is the greatest action the U.S. has ever taken in the fight against climate change. Learn more here: https://bitly.com/1SoO34t **
EEI ENCOURAGED: The Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities, was still reviewing the rule but an official said an early analysis is “encouraging.”
CLINTON, SANDERS PRAISE PLAN: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were quick to praise the White House’s plan, while suggesting it doesn’t go far enough. Clinton said it was “a significant step forward” in addressing climate change and vowed to defend it from critics, including her Republican rivals for the White House. “Because Republican doubters and defeatists — including every Republican candidate for president — won’t offer any credible solution,” she said. “The truth is, they don’t want one.” She added that the White House climate plan is “the floor, not the ceiling” and touted her initial climate goals she announced last week of moving the economy along “a path toward deep decarbonization by 2050” and deploying “enough clean renewable energy to power every home in America” by 2027, largely through expanding domestic solar power.
Sanders said he had yet to see “all of the details of the president’s proposal but it sounds to me like a step forward in ending our dependence on fossil fuel and I support that effort.” Sanders had been critical last week of EPA’s decision to give states two more years — until 2022 — to meet an interim target. “No, it’s not ok. I want to see this thing move as quickly as possible to see what we can do about it,” he told POLITICO last Wednesday. He also emphasized in his statement Sunday that “we must also kill the Keystone XL pipeline which would facilitate the excavation and transportation of some of the dirtiest fuel on the planet.”
Democratic presidential candidate and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley also chimed in via Twitter, saying the White House’s plan “is a great step fwd” while touting his campaign proposal to end fossil fuels by 2050.
RNC HITS CLINTON FOR LIKING WHITE HOUSE RULE: Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus went after Clinton for liking the White House rule. “With her support for yet another job-killing Obama policy, it’s becoming clearer by the day that Hillary Clinton doesn’t have answers to get our economy growing again,” he said.
GREEN GROUP BACKS SANDERS: Friends of the Earth endorsed Sanders’s presidential bid Saturday. “He has proven himself a bold and fearless voice for the planet,” Friends of the Earth Action President Erich Pica said. In a related piece for the Huffington Post, Pica does not mention Clinton by name, but does take a swipe at her by noting Sanders has long opposed Keystone XL. Clinton declines to comment on the pipeline. Read the piece: http://huff.to/1LWBvvM
CPP MEET KXL?: Speculation has hit a fever pitch that Obama could pair the final Clean Power Plan unveiling with rejecting the Keystone pipeline. He has publicly downplayed the jobs that the project would create and the amount of oil that would stay in the U.S., along with citing environmental concerns over the heavy crude the pipeline would carry despite State Department reviews that have largely cleared the project of environmental harm. That has been coupled with supposedly new intel from pipeline backers like Sen. John Hoeven that he’ll turn it down, possibly after senators leave for the summer this week. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper remains pessimistic especially given how long the decision has taken already.
ME’S BEST GUESS: The administration announces its decision on the project Friday, one day after the first Republican presidential debate hosted by Fox News, sufficient time after today’s Clean Power Plan rollout (so as not to step on that too much) and with both chambers of Congress likely gone from Washington for the summer. Tweet your predictions to us: @Morning_Energy
GREENS OPPOSE GOP-APPOINTED JUDGES FOR CARBON SUIT: Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club Saturday criticized an attempt by states opposed to EPA’s carbon rule to keep the same panel of GOP-appointed judges who heard an early legal challenge to the rule. That panel threw out those initial suits as premature, but the states are hoping to keep that panel for eventual lawsuits against the final rule, as opposed to a new randomly chosen panel that could include judges considered friendlier to the administration. Attorneys for the environmental groups laid out legal reasons why the judges should avoid that action, and ultimately argue that they “should not allow parties that filed premature challenges — challenges that contravened bedrock principles of administrative law — to exploit those improper filings so as to choose how review of final rules shall proceed, which circuit judges should decide the properly filed challenges, the order in which issues should be decided, or any other matter.” Read their filing: http://politico.pro/1E23uE6
POWER PROVIDER ASKS FOR EXEMPTION FROM MERCURY RULE: Hours after the Supreme Court Friday issued formal judgment against EPA’s mercury and air toxics rule — the step that allows the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to start working out exactly how to instruct the agency to move forward — a power provider asked for a special exemption from the still-in-effect rule. In an emergency motion, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association asked that the circuit exempt its 110-megawatt coal-fired Nucla Station in Colorado for a part of the rule that limits hydrochloric acid emissions. Tri-State says the plant, which meets the mercury standard, is needed to maintain grid reliability until new transmission is online. And the company argues that its impending deadline means a decision will have to be made before the legal issues can be settled, and that would “make a mockery of the Supreme Court’s decision.” Motion: http://politico.pro/1HfoYNF
DOE OFFICIAL TO SOLAR COMPANY: Former Energy Department senior adviser Hasan Nazar will be deputy director of policy and energy markets at SolarCity. Nazar was in DOE’s Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs and was previously at the League of Conservation Voters.
QUICK HITS
— John H. Gibbons, Clinton science adviser, dies at 86: N.Y. Times: http://nyti.ms/1Izwwff
— Ministers fail to clinch major trade pact. POLITICO: http://politi.co/1OZr0bf
— Iran says it can boost oil output just days after sanctions end. Bloomberg: http://bloom.bg/1DkzMz3
Tags: energy, fuel, gas, oil