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WHEELER TELLS DEMOCRATS THE EPA CAN DO MORE WITH LESS: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler defended the administration proposal to slash his agency’s budget by 26%, even cuts to core air, water, and waste programs Wheeler says the EPA is refocusing on, rather than climate change. Wheeler insisted the cuts wouldn’t hurt the EPA’s ability to do its job because the agency is able to do more with fewer resources.
House Democrats, during a budget hearing Thursday, claimed the White House’s proposal undercuts the EPA’s ability to deal with air, water, and chemical pollution. They attempted to box Wheeler in, pointing to large cuts to programs the administrator has praised as revitalized under the Trump administration.
Wheeler said he “fully supports” the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory, where he started at the EPA during a stint as a career employee in the 1990s. That program is targeted for cuts under the budget proposal, but doesn’t believe those cuts will affect the program.
“If you look historically at the number of resources the program has taken,” it has declined over time as the program has gotten more efficient, he said, in response to questions from Delaware Democrat Lisa Blunt Rochester, who said she is proposing legislation to strengthen the TRI program.
“Why are you proposing to cut more than $112 million” from the Superfund program “when you clearly could use more money?” full committee Chairman Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat, asked Wheeler.
Wheeler insisted the EPA was cleaning up more Superfund sites more quickly than previous administrations, though he didn’t object to the cuts, as other energy and environment leaders in the agencies have done in the past. Former Energy Secretary Rick Perry, for example, often chose not to defend some of the deep cuts to energy innovation programs the Trump White House has proposed.
On Superfund, which the Trump administration has boasted as a priority for the EPA, Wheeler suggested the agency is receiving funds through enforcement actions that help balance the cuts.
Pallone, though, wasn’t convinced. “It just doesn’t make sense to cut back on the money that we could spend to clean up these sites,” he said.
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FRACKING BAN WOULD COST 7.5 MILLION JOBS BY 2022, API WARNS: Banning fracking and federal oil and gas leasing could trigger a U.S. recession, leading to a $1.2 trillion reduction in GDP and 7.5 million lost jobs by 2022, according to a report Thursday by the American Petroleum Institute.
Swing states Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas — all hotbeds for natural gas production, along with Florida would be among the states with the highest job losses, underscoring the political risk of proposals by Democratic presidential candidates to ban fracking and fossil fuel leases on public lands.
Those four states, plus California, would lose 3.6 million jobs combined by 2022, says the new report by API.
The oil and gas lobby projects an increase of $618 per year on average in household energy costs, including gasoline, residential natural gas for heating, electricity, and heating oil.
Average gasoline prices would be 15% higher, while electricity prices average 20% more per family, per year.
Under the fracking and federal leasing bans, the U.S. would import 21% of its total energy by 2030. It would import more than 40% of its oil and petroleum products by that year, including motor gasoline and jet fuel, and nearly 30% of its natural gas.
Read more of Josh’s coverage here.
PUT YOUR POLITICAL CAPITAL WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS: Elizabeth Warren and several of her Democratic Senate colleagues want to know exactly how BlackRock CEO Larry Fink intends to center its investment strategy on climate change and environmental sustainability.
Warren is asking Fink to detail the “concrete steps” BlackRock will take to meet the commitments he laid out in his annual letter to shareholders, in which he pledged the firm would confront climate risk by taking a number of steps such as exiting investments like thermal coal.
The Massachusetts senator, though, is urging Fink to back her legislation that would require public companies to disclose climate-related risks.
“[I]nvestors lack access to basic information about the potential risk of the climate crisis on American companies,” Warren and her colleagues wrote Fink in a recent letter. “If BlackRock plans to live up to the commitments you made, we hope that you will go further by endorsing the reforms laid out in the Climate Risk Disclosure Act, and require companies in which you invest to issue public disclosures consistent with its requirements.”
‘WELL-DESIGNED CARBON PRICING PROGRAMS’: It might not have gotten as much buzz as BP’s trade group exits, but the oil major also announced support Wednesday for two carbon pricing programs — the Northeast’s cap-and-trade system for power plants and a similar system the region is crafting to cap emissions from cars.
Susan Dio, chairman and president of BP America, in an op-ed Wednesday urged Virginia’s government to join both initiatives. This is the second time in recent months BP has come out to support a sub-national carbon pricing program. It also publicly backed proposed cap-and-invest legislation in Washington state.
Dio said state and regional carbon pricing programs are the next best thing to a federal policy. BP, which recently set a goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, has backed a carbon tax and dividend plan proposed by the Climate Leadership Council, led by two former Republican secretaries of state.
“Put simply, the world isn’t moving fast enough to curb emissions and limit the impacts of climate change,” Dio wrote in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “While a national carbon pricing program would be the gold standard, state and regional plans can play a critical role now. And we can’t wait.”
INTERIOR CLAIMS NO ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT FROM RESUMING COAL LEASES: The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management determined Wednesday that resuming coal leasing on federal lands will have no significant environmental impact.
The agency’s issuance of that finding in its final environmental assessment is a key step toward actually resuming coal leasing on federal lands.
Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke previously lifted the Obama administration’s 2016 stoppage of new coal mining leases on public lands.
But a U.S. district judge last year ruled the Interior Department failed to adequately analyze the environmental impacts of resuming coal mining, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.
U.S. District Judge Brian Morris of Montana did not stop the Trump administration from issuing coal sales, but said the Interior Department had to conduct an environmental review before doing so.
By issuing the new environmental review, BLM is complying with that ruling.
“Coal is and will continue to be a critical part of our nation’s energy portfolio and we are committed to the responsible development of our abundant resources and advancing American energy independence, jobs, and economic growth,” said Casey Hammond, BLM’s acting assistant secretary for land and minerals management. The agency said production on federal lands provides nearly 40% of U.S. coal.
Environmental groups, however, accused BLM of conducting a biased review, and said it would do little to restore declining demand for coal.
“The result of this environmental review was cooked from the start,” said Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities.
EPA ROLLS BACK COOLANT RULES MANY IN INDUSTRY LIKE: The EPA pulled back leak repair and management regulations for potent greenhouse gas refrigerants, even though most appliance makers and chemical manufacturers backed the Obama-era rules.
Wheeler signed Wednesday a final rule eliminating the leak repair regulations for hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, which are refrigerant chemicals that warm the atmosphere hundreds of times faster than carbon dioxide. The EPA left in place the requirements for other chemicals that deplete the ozone but are not greenhouse gases.
The rollback also comes as appliance and chemical makers, as well as industry trade groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, are backing similar leak repair requirements for HFCs in broader bipartisan legislation to limit the greenhouse gases.
Already at least one environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, has signaled it may sue to keep the Obama-era leak repair rules in place.
“This rollback will fuel the climate crisis by adding more super-polluting HFCs to the atmosphere each year, in an amount equal to the carbon pollution from one million cars,” said David Doniger, senior strategic director of NRDC’s climate and clean energy program. “It will save industry just $24 million a year, a pittance when spread across thousands of industrial facilities.”
EFFICIENCY GROUP CHARTS FUTURE FOR CUTTING ENERGY USE IN HALF: The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy released a “call to action” on Thursday for the U.S. to halve its energy use and associated emissions by 2050.
The nonprofit group pledges to work with businesses, government, academia, and philanthropy to decarbonize the industrial sector by midcentury, while cutting transportation energy use in half and emissions by more than 60%. It also wants to see new buildings be “zero energy” and carbon neutral. In the near term, it calls for a public-private agenda to cut industrial emissions by a third in 2030, compared to 2020. Meanwhile, it envisions one-quarter of new construction to be net-zero energy and carbon neutral in a decade, and the rate of existing building retrofits to have doubled.
The Rundown
Wall Street Journal When safety rules on oil drilling were changed, some staff objected. Those notes were cut
Bloomberg Trump to pare biofuel waivers for refineries on court ruling
The Guardian Heathrow third runway ruled illegal over climate change
Bloomberg Coronavirus is starting to slow the solar energy revolution
Financial Times Trump appointees vote to block US coal joint venture
Calendar
THURSDAY | FEB. 27
2 p.m. 2362-B Rayburn. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette testifies before the House Appropriations Committee’s Energy and Water subcommittee on the agency’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget request.
TUESDAY | MARCH 3
10:30 a.m. 2322 Rayburn. The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Energy Subcommittee will hold a hearing titled, “Building a 100 Percent Clean Economy: Advanced Nuclear Technology’s Role in a Decarbonized Future.”
WEDNESDAY | MARCH 4
9 a.m. to 5 p.m. 600 14th Street, NW. The American Council on Renewable Energy holds its annual Policy Forum. Speakers include Sens. Ron Wyden and Chris Van Hollen, Reps. Paul Tonko and Garret Graves, and FERC Commissioner Richard Glick.
10:30 a.m. 2322 Rayburn. The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee will hold a hearing on recycling and waste management in the United States, including its impacts on climate and the environment.
