Daily on Energy: Trump budget runs counter to congressional GOP climate plans

But his administration stuck the knife in the entire concept with its proposed 2021 budget request that came out Monday.

“Congressional Republicans have stood up to the President on his defeatist budget over the last three years and for the sake of clean energy, our economy, and the climate, we hope they have the fortitude to be counted upon one more time,” said Josh Freed, senior vice president of the climate and energy program at Third Way, a center-left think tank that supports aspects of the Republican innovation agenda.

Trump’s budget release comes on the same week that House Republicans led by leader Kevin McCarthy are set to unveil parts of their climate innovation agenda, with plans to formally introduce carbon capture and sequestration bills, including a long-awaited tree-planting measure (see more below). Congress will block Trump’s cuts, but the theater matters because much of this is messaging anyway.

Trump’s budget cuts programs critical to the agenda: The topline numbers understate the extent of the cuts. The budget calls for an 8% cut to the Energy Department, but the remaining funding skews heavily toward nuclear weapons and defense programs. The agency’s innovation and science programs would undergo a 29% cut, while DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office declines by 75%, from $2.85 billion to $720 million.

Trump is also still calling for eliminating funding for DOE’s ARPA-E, a program loved by both parties in Congress that funds next-generation advances in clean energy. And he proposes zeroing out the DOE’s loan guarantee programs for energy technologies and automobiles, along with eliminating tax credits for electric vehicles, and wind and solar.

Instead of promoting clean energy, Trump’s budget emphasizes faster infrastructure permitting, deregulation, and a rollback of climate-related programs at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Trump’s agencies rush to defense: To be fair, Trump’s agency heads don’t like seeing their funding cut, and likely had little say in a process overseen by the Office of Management and Budget.

Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, in a call with reporters, touted clean energy innovation components of the budget, including $97 million earmarked for an “Energy Storage Grand Challenge,” which he said would fund development of long-duration batteries that could “revolutionize” how renewables are integrated into the power grid.

Under Secretary of Energy Mark Menezes noted that clean energy is progressing, even without an extra push from the federal government. Renewables will provide 75% of new power generation in 2020, he said, as the U.S. looks to hold onto its position as the second largest generator of wind and solar behind China.

Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers Josh Siegel (@SiegelScribe) and Abby Smith (@AbbySmithDC). Email [email protected] or [email protected] for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.

TRUMP AND GOP PUSH FOR 1 TRILLION TREES WON’T BE EASY: While Republicans describe tree-planting as ready-made and easy to understand, it cannot alone make a big dent in cutting carbon, and it carries a host of practical, political, and scientific questions.

“Hypothetically, if we had a unified world government, we could do this relatively easily,” Seaver Wang, a climate and energy analyst at the Breakthrough Institute, told Josh. “But even if we did it, a trillion trees don’t dent emissions that much.”

Increasing the world’s trees by one trillion could store the carbon equivalent of wiping out a decades’ worth of accumulated emissions.

But Wang argues that’s not as effective as policies that reduce fossil fuel use, given the emissions reduced from planting trees is a “one-time shot” compared to using zero-emission sources of energy in perpetuity.

Wang said there is enough land in the world for a trillion more trees, but the space required for such a project would at least be half the size of the land area of China.

Accessing the land to plant trees would require cooperation across countries, governments, and local populations. Some of the lands are privately owned and used for other purposes such as agriculture or grazing.

Another potential problem is that global warming is creating more difficult growing conditions for forests.

And planting trees is not as effective as protecting them from being cut down in the first place because it takes decades for new forests to mature.

“You want to absolutely eliminate deforestation as your highest priority,” said Steven Hamburg, chief scientist of the Environmental Defense Fund. “That will have the biggest rate of impact for addressing climate change.”

Read more of Josh’s story in this week’s Washington Examiner magazine.

FOR ONCE, GLOBAL EMISSIONS ARE NOT RISING: Carbon emissions from energy flattened in 2019 after two years of increases, even as the world economy expanded by 2.9%.

The stall in emissions, as reported by the International Energy Agency on Tuesday, was mainly due to rich countries using less coal for electricity, replacing it with natural gas, wind, solar, and nuclear power. Coal generation in advanced economies fell by nearly 15%.

U.S. emissions fell 2.9%, or by 140 million tons, continuing the trend of the United States leading the world in total emissions decline since 2000.

Emissions in the European Union declined 5%, while Japan’s emissions were 4.3% lower in 2019.

But emissions in the rest of the world grew by nearly 400 million tons, with 80% of that increase coming from developing countries in Asia due to strong demand for coal

LOS ANGELES INKS GREEN NEW DEAL: Mayor Eric Garcetti signed a sweeping climate executive directive Monday that includes a requirement that all new, renovated, or retrofitted city-owned buildings be carbon-neutral by 2030.

Under the directive, the city will also adopt California’s state-wide “buy clean” guidelines and study how the city could use building materials that store captured carbon dioxide. Garcetti is also requesting the city’s pension boards explore divesting from fossil fuels.

The directive also includes a number of other provisions related to clean power and zero-carbon transport, such as building microgrids to increase the city’s resilience and accelerating deployment of zero-carbon cars and buses.

THE LATEST UTILITY WITH A NET-ZERO GOAL: Virginia-based Dominion Energy announced Tuesday it will target net-zero emissions by mid-century, making it part of a small but growing group of utilities raising targets for ramping down greenhouse gases.

Previously, Dominion had been targeting an 80% cut below 2005 levels by 2050. Its new goal, though, will also include more aggressive near-term reductions in methane, a potent greenhouse gas and the main component of natural gas. The utility will aim to cut its methane emissions 65% (from 2010 levels) in the next decade and slash 80% by 2040.

Dominion has stood out on climate before: If you remember, the Virginia utility was one of just a few power companies to defend the Obama-era Clean Power Plan in court. Dominion’s argument that the power sector carbon limits were feasible carried some weight because natural gas and coal generate more than 40% of power for its customers.

DRILLING DOWN INTO PUBLIC VIEW OF FRACKING: Those who live closest to oil and gas wells are more likely to support continued drilling, according to new research reviewing Coloradans’ view of the industry.

The researchers from Resources for the Future and the Colorado School of Mines overlay Coloradans’ vote for a local proposition that would have sharply limited drilling in the state (it ultimately failed with 56% voting against) with proximity to oil and gas operations. In fact, fewer than 4% of the Colorado precincts that backed the proposition actually had any oil and gas wells, they find.

Politics play a role, of course: Republicans and conservatives tend, unsurprisingly, to support oil and gas development far more than liberals, the report says. Nonetheless, the researchers still find more overall support for the industry in those precincts that have oil and gas wells.

That shifts a little bit in precincts where the fastest oil and gas growth has occurred since 2000, where opposition to the industry has increased slightly. That’s because much of that growth has occurred in densely populated and growing urban and suburban areas, the researchers say.

BILL GATES’ CLIMATE PLANS: The billionaire Microsoft founder says he’s developed a “major sense of urgency” to address climate change as a priority for his foundation and he’ll be making “big bets” to do so.

Gates didn’t offer a whole lot of new details about what those big bets might be, but he stressed in his foundation’s annual letter Monday they’d have to include funding technology innovation to bring down emissions and investing in adaptation efforts, particularly in the developing world.

Influencing policy is a bigger bet: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, said Gates should be putting his muscle behind supporting federal policies to combat climate change.

Gates’ failure to do so makes him “a key support for do-nothing Republicans saying the Innovation Fairy will save us,” Whitehouse tweeted Monday, adding U.S. fossil fuel subsidies are more than $600 billion annually. “Innovate around that.”

TRUMP’S BUDGET SEEKS MORE TO ADDRESS ‘FOREVER CHEMICALS’: While the White House proposed steep cuts to the EPA’s budget (though not quite as steep as years past), it did request some issue-specific bumps.

Among those, the EPA’s budget requests an additional $6 million and 5 staffers to implement its action plan to address per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS chemicals.

EPA TAPS UTILITY LAWYER TO LEAD WEST COAST REGION: John Busterud, who served as environmental counsel to Pacific Gas & Electric for three decades, will lead the EPA’s Region 9, the agency announced Tuesday.

Busterud’s appointment comes after the abrupt, drama-filled exit of Region 9’s prior chief, Michael Stoker. (Bloomberg Law has more on that back-and-forth). Busterud is no stranger to the EPA. He served for five years as an industry representative on the EPA’s Clean Air Act Advisory Committee. Region 9 is headquartered in San Francisco and oversees California, Arizona, Nevada, and Hawaii.

The Rundown

Houston Chronicle The growth of ‘made in China’ energy

Bloomberg There’s an oilman on JPMorgan’s board. Climate activists want him out

Reuters In fire-hit rural Australia, climate debate burns deep

Calendar

WEDNESDAY | FEB. 12

8 a.m. to 5 p.m. National Press Club. The 2020 Energy Storage Association Policy Forum convenes state and federal regulators, policymakers, storage industry members, utility decision makers, and power sector stakeholders.

10:30 a.m. 2322 Rayburn. The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Energy Subcommittee holds a legislative hearing on six bills to improve energy efficiency and storage.

THURSDAY | FEB. 13

9:30 a.m., 1101 New York Avenue NW. The Business Council for Sustainable Energy and Bloomberg New Energy Finance host a press briefing on the release of the eighth annual edition of the Sustainable Energy in America Factbook.