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‘A LONG WAY TO GO’: In a few short words, President Joe Biden captured the tough political reality of where his climate change agenda stands in the face of a globally disruptive war and slim congressional majorities: “There’s a long way to go.”
Biden offered a rally-the-troops type speech to attendees of a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Washington last night in which he flexed his green energy and climate policy bona fides and sought to show he hasn’t lost focus, even while managing the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dominates his attention.
“The climate crisis is the existential threat. That’s not hyperbole; it’s a fact,” he said.
Yet the Russia-Ukraine war is existential in its own right, and Biden has had to deviate from his ideal path for politicking on energy in order to manage two other worries that he also listed off during the speech: consumer costs and national security.
The challenge: In the concrete, that has entailed his administration for the first time expressly calling for more investment in domestic oil production to help manage prices, something which liberal green group Evergreen Action called a “false solution” to the price crisis.
Biden even boasted about oil output ramping up under his watch during a separate speech to Democrats last week, something that would likely have never happened outside the fog of war and if he didn’t face enormous pressure to lower record nominal prices for gasoline.
At the same time, Biden is being pushed by liberal Democrats and environmentalist groups to keep the ball rolling on his climate change agenda, and the administration has emphasized through multiple channels that it still sees displacing fossil fuel demand as a top priority.
“The Russia and Ukraine [sic] is another reason why we have to get off our dependency on fossil fuels,” he said. “Imagine where we’d be right now if, in fact, Europe was in fact energy- free of fossil fuels and … it was all renewables. It’d be a different world.”
But getting off that dependency is “not an immediate solution to the crisis” for the West, Biden also said.
It’s not just Biden’s agenda: The EU’s project has become to uniformly begin severing ties with Russian natural gas but with that, officials have resigned themselves to an uneasy reality: That means more coal for a bloc of nations set on swiftly phasing it out.
“We will need it until we find alternative sources. Until that time, even the greenest government will not phase out coal,” said Václav Bartuška, the Czech Republic’s energy security commissioner.
Romania has plans to extract more coal from its operative mines going forward, while Bulgaria will keep burning coal rather than follow through with plans for a new natural gas-fired power plant, Euractiv reports.
Olaf Lies, energy minister for the German state of Lower Saxony, put the Europeans’ lot in these simple terms: “If we want to be more independent, we will have to operate with coal.”
Biden and European leaders maintain that these are short-term solutions, but nearer and longer term emissions reductions goals are still in place and the pathway to meeting them looks to be getting more difficult.
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HOUSE DEMOCRATS RESTIVE ON STALLED CLIMATE LEGISLATION: A group of more than 80 House Democrats called on Biden yesterday to restart negotiations on stalled climate portions of the Build Back Better legislation.
In the letter, Democrats asked Biden to take advantage of Democratic majorities in Congress to enact the bill’s $555 billion in clean energy tax credits and other climate provisions, adding to pressure on the administration to act before the 2022 midterm elections, which Republicans are favored to win.
“Throughout 2021, we bore witness to the devastating impacts of the climate crisis, further illustrating why transformational action cannot wait,” said the letter, authored by Reps. Sean Casten of Illinois, Jamaal Bowman of New York, and Nikema Williams of Georgia.
“Inaction now will mean irreversible consequences for our future generations,” the group added.
US COAL EXPORTS STRONG IN 2021: U.S. coal exports rose by 23% last year versus 2020 as higher natural gas prices helped drive global demand higher, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Asia was an especially strong market for coal exports. China brought in the second-highest amount of U.S. coal, while India was the largest importer.
Prices up: Spot prices across the range of coal commodities have been driven up by strong coal demand in recent months.
Prices for bituminous coal from Central Appalachia, Northern Appalachia, and the Illinois Basin regions are each up 28%, 27%, and a staggering 155% respectively since early October.
OIL PRICES DEFLATE: Crude oil prices are way down, and trading has been sustained below $100 per barrel this morning for the first time since Russia moved into Ukraine.
Brent crude stands at around $98 per barrel as of this writing after shooting above $130 last week, while the West Texas Intermediate is at $94.
Despite the price swings, the White House said yesterday it still expects the cost of gasoline to rise and that it is still trying to reduce prices.
JOHNSON RUES WEST’S RUSSIA ENERGY PARTNERSHIP: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the West should not have normalized relations with Russia after it took Crimea and criticized the “terrible mistake” in an article for the Telegraph.
He said further that Europe’s reliance on Russian fuel commodities has enabled Vladimir Putin’s aggression.
“He knew the world would find it very hard to punish him. He knew that he had created an addiction,” Johnson said of Putin.
Johnson will reportedly travel to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates this week in an effort to convince the oil giants to release crude from reserves to tame prices.
More regret: German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck has expressed similar regret and said all his government’s efforts are focused on changing the dynamic.
“We know, and we have to admit it, that in the last 20 years, we have maneuvered ourselves into ever greater dependence on fossil energy imports from Russia,” he said.
YUAN PER BARREL: Saudi Arabia and China are actively working through whether they will begin exchanging oil for the Chinese yuan rather than pricing barrels using the U.S. dollar, the Wall Street Journal reported this morning, citing unnamed sources.
The report noted a deteriorating relationship between the U.S. and the kingdom, as well as China’s ambitions to grow the global reach and strength of its currency.
The Saudis were China’s top source of crude oil last year, followed by Russia.
INDIA WEIGHS PURCHASE OF CHEAPER RUSSIAN OIL: India is weighing whether to take up a Russian offer to purchase discounted crude oil and other commodities just days after the U.S. banned all energy imports from Moscow. Reuters reports: “India, which imports 80% of its oil needs, usually buys only about 2-3% from Russia. But with oil prices up 40% so far this year, the government is looking at increasing this if it can help reduce its rising energy bill.”
“Russia is offering oil and other commodities at a heavy discount. We will be happy to take that,” one Indian government official told Reuters.
EU ENDORSES PLAN ON CARBON IMPORTS LEVY: Bloomberg reports that EU members reached consensus today on a plan to impose a carbon imports levy on any iron, steel, cement, or aluminum imports produced in countries with lower environmental standards. Consensus on the so-called carbon border adjustment mechanism, or CBAM, comes as the bloc seeks to shield domestic producers from blowback during an ambitious green overhaul proposed by the European Commission last summer.
“This is a huge step forward on reduction of carbon emissions within our borders,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told the ministerial meeting in Brussels, according to Bloomberg. “We will be the first continent to adopt that kind of mechanism. This is a great victory for European ideas.”
FORMER LAWMAKER SAM BROWNBACK WEIGHS IN ON ENERGY SECURITY, DIPLOMACY, AND UKRAINE: Former senator and Kansas governor Sam Brownback joined former FERC chairman Neil Chatterjee on this week’s “Plugged In” podcast to discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its broader impact on energy for the U.S.
Brownback said the crisis in Ukraine underscores just how important it is for U.S. lawmakers to balance its energy security interests with broader climate objectives and decarbonization goals.
“My view of this is [that] you’ve really got to balance these three E’s[:] energy, the environment, and the economy,” Brownback told Chatterjee. “It’s kind of like a triangle sitting on top of a pencil––you can kind of tilt it one way or the other a little bit, but you can’t nosedive it, or the whole thing knocks off.”
Brownback also said natural gas is a “nice, middle-ground” option for the U.S. to move to as it seeks to increase domestic production: “[It’s] cleaner than other carbon-based fuels,” he said. “It’s not there fully, yet. to renewable energy, but … it’s an abundant resource––it burns cleanly, and you work with that.” Listen to the full episode here.
WHEELER TO ADVISE YOUNGKIN: Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin chose Andrew Wheeler to serve in his administration in a senior advisory role after the former Trump EPA head’s nomination to be secretary of natural and historic resources failed to receive enough votes in the state Senate.
Wheeler was the only of Youngkin’s Cabinet picks to be denied by lawmakers.
The Rundown
Washington Post SEC plans to force public companies to disclose greenhouse gas emissions
New York Times How an electric truck factory became a lightning rod in Georgia
ClimateWire How Andrew Wheeler’s Va. nomination came undone
Calendar
WEDNESDAY | MARCH 16
10:00 a.m. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a hearing to evaluate the formula for the EPA’s Clean Water State Revolving Loan Fund (CWSRF)––a federal-state partnership that seeks to provide communities with low-cost financing for water infrastructure projects.
10:00 a.m. The House Agriculture Committee will hold a hearing to review USDA’s climate change programs.
10:00 a.m. The House Energy Subcommittee on Science, Space and Technology will host a hearing on “Bioenergy Research and Development for the Fuels and Chemicals of Tomorrow.”
THURSDAY | MARCH 17
10:00 a.m. The Senate Energy Committee will hold a confirmation hearing for Kathryn Huff, Biden’s nominee to serve as DOE’s assistant secretary for nuclear energy.
1:00 p.m. The House Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife will convene to discuss five pending bills on fishing, wildlife.
