CLIMATE FIGHT SHIFTS TO THE COURTS: It looks like Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s desire for a debate on climate science will be held in the courts, not in a “red team” vs. “blue team” debate proposed by the EPA chief. For starters, the White House reportedly shot down the idea of a debate earlier this year.

Instead, the debate is going to begin in a San Francisco federal court on Wednesday. The court is holding a hearing of sorts, what it is calling a “tutorial,” on the science of climate change. The hearing is meant to explain the arguments made by cities in the Golden State, which are suing large energy companies such as Exxon Mobil and Shell over the effects of global warming. The cities blame the burning of the companies’ products — fossil fuels — for causing sea-level rise, and they want to be compensated for investments in new infrastructure to protect against it.

• Climate skeptics file in support of oil companies: The Heartland Institute, which had been advising the Trump administration last year on running a red-blue team debate on climate science, filed an extensive brief Tuesday night supporting the energy companies.

The group is well-known for its skeptical views on climate change. It opposes the findings of United Nations climate reports, which show climate change to be manmade, caused by burning fossil fuels.

• Enter the ‘tutorial’: The group’s friend of the court brief explains that District Court Judge William Alsup’s “tutorial” will be to “trace the history of scientific study of climate change” before hearing the cases brought against the energy giants. Alsup had explained that he wants to hear “the best science now available,” Heartland pointed out.

• What climate change? The brief looks to answer a key question put forth by the judge: “What are the main sources of heat that account for the incremental rise in temperature on Earth?”

The Heartland Institute answers the question by attacking the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s idea that scientific consensus has been reached on the causes of climate change.

• No consensus, no harm: Heartland will “demonstrate that there is no ‘consensus’ among scientists that recent global warming was chiefly anthropogenic [or, manmade], still less that unmitigated anthropogenic warming has been or will be dangerous or catastrophic.”

The group says there is no evidence that supports the idea that manmade emissions are causing a “net harm” to the planet.

The group also argues that warming will occur at less than half the rate predicted by the U.N. for this century.

• We’re friends, right? Many of the companies that Heartland is backing don’t share its views.

Exxon, for example, accepts the idea of manmade global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and openly advocates for the imposition of a carbon tax to curtail carbon dioxide emissions.

• Exxon says there is consensus: “There is a broad scientific and policy consensus that action must be taken to further quantify and assess the risks.”

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PRUITT TRAVEL TOPS $100,000 IN FIRST YEAR: Pruitt has spent more than $105,000 on first-class flights in his first year, according to documents the EPA provided Tuesday night to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, of South Carolina, asked the EPA in January for details on Pruitt’s frequent use of first-class travel, including how he has been able to obtain waivers to travel first class instead of coach.

The Washington Post and Politico received the documents and reported on their details.

• Morocco trip under scrutiny: The most expensive travel detailed to Congress is a $17,631, four-day trip in December to Morocco where Pruitt promoted natural gas. That trip included a $500 overnight stay in Paris on the way to Morocco, which the EPA says was required by weather delays.

The EPA inspector general is investigating Pruitt’s Morocco trip, which critics have said was inappropriate because the agency plays no formal role in overseeing natural gas exports, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Energy Department or Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

• Security for Italy trip nearly $31,000: The documents released to the Oversight Committee do not include Pruitt’s June trip to Italy. A watchdog group earlier Tuesday released documents showing the EPA spent nearly $31,000 on Pruitt’s security detail during that trip, bringing the total to more than $80,000.

• Inspector general probe: The inspector general is also investigating Pruitt for his use of private and military flights and his frequent travel as administrator to his home state of Oklahoma, where he served as attorney general.

• Pruitt’s defense: Pruitt has deflected criticism of his travel habits by saying he faces “unprecedented” security threats from taunting travelers, which has prompted EPA career security staff to grant him the waivers.

An EPA official previously told the Washington Examiner the agency submits the same security-related waiver before each trip.

Pruitt has vowed to curtail his frequent first-class travel, saying he will fly coach if threats to his security can be managed.

ETHANOL LOBBY MARCHES THROUGH SNOW, AS TRUMP LOOKS TO CONGRESS ON MANDATE: A major lobbying push by ethanol proponents is underway despite the snowstorm in Washington Wednesday.

The American Coalition for Ethanol’s 10th annual fly-in begins two days of lobbying Congress to defend the EPA’s Renewable Fuel Standard.

The push comes as President Trump may decide to wash his hands of the ethanol mandate and let Congress figure out how to overhaul it with legislation, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said Tuesday.

“The White House is trying to determine whether they need to make a call on the decision or let Congress go back and fix it,” Perdue said at the National Press Club in Washington.

• Back off, White House: Perdue said some members of Congress have been pushing the administration to back off. “We’ve had some members of Congress call and say, ‘We’re working on this, let us handle it,'” he told reporters after an event marking Agriculture Day. “So, we’ll see how that works.”

• No RIN cap: Nevertheless, the president is not inclined to impose a price cap on ethanol credits, or RINs, despite Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s insistence and the refinery industry’s argument that the credits are too expensive and damaging their businesses.

“It’s a complex issue that I think needs a reasonable solution that doesn’t include a RIN cap,” Perdue said.

He added that the price cap was a solution offered early on in the White House discussions, but “I don’t know the president will make that choice.”

• Don’t throw farmers under the bus: The ethanol coalition is running a digital ad and social media campaign starting Wednesday that urges Trump to oppose the credit cap or risk throwing farmers under the proverbial bus.

BARRASSO FEARS NUCLEAR REGULATOR WILL HAVE TO SHUT DOWN BY JUNE: Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., warned that if the Senate allows the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to shut down, it will be to the detriment of the industry and set a harmful precedent in favor of environmental activists.

“If we don’t make progress shortly, the NRC will lose its three-member quorum at the end of June,” the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said at a hearing on the NRC’s budget Wednesday morning. “The Senate cannot let that happen.”

• Only one shutdown: Since the NRC was established more than 40 years ago, it lost its quorum only once for seven months in the mid-1990s.

“During that time, the commission delegated its authority to Chairman Shirley Jackson,” Barrasso said. “Not surprisingly, antinuclear activists then challenged that delegation of authority.

• Expect a challenge: “If the NRC loses its quorum in June, I fully expect those same forces to once again challenge the NRC’s authority and ability to act. We simply cannot allow our nation’s nuclear safety regulator to lose its quorum.”

The commission must have at least three commissioners in place to form a quorum to issue rules and conduct the business of regulating the nuclear power industry. If it loses that quorum, it will effectively have to shut down.

MARKEY SCOLDS NUCLEAR CHIEF OVER SAUDI TALKS: Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., scolded Kristine Svinicki, the chairwoman of the NRC, Wednesday for not advising the Senate on talks her agency was a party to when Energy Secretary Rick Perry traveled to London last week to negotiate a nuclear energy deal with Saudi Arabia.

Svinicki had claimed ignorance on her agency’s participation but then was advised by staff during the hearing’s questioning that the NRC had expert counsel with Perry at his meeting.

That disclosure outraged Markey, who said the results of those talks could lead to a war in the Middle East but the Senate has been left in the dark.

Markey said the agency may be in violation of the law that covers nuclear agreements with foreign countries to help on civil nuclear development.

HOUSE GOP URGES PRUITT MEETING ON STAFF CUTS: House Republicans are giving Pruitt a week to schedule a briefing with senior congressional staff on the agency’s non-public plans for staff cuts and agency reorganization.

• The letter: The GOP leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent Pruitt a two-page letter Tuesday requesting the briefing “to assist us in understanding more about EPA’s plans to reorganize the agency and how workforce analysis will factor into those plans.”

The letter was signed by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., the panel’s environment chairman, and Rep. Gregg Harper, R-Miss., the chairman of the committee’s oversight and investigations panel.

• Long overdue: The lawmakers said an EPA workforce review has not been done for 20 years and is long overdue. Even the agency’s inspector general has been pressing for a workforce review since 2012, saying it is necessary to ensure workers are in the right place to fulfill the agency’s mission.

$124 MILLION IN BIDS IN LARGEST OFFSHORE LEASE SALE: The largest oil and natural gas lease sale in U.S. history brought in $124 million in bids, the Interior Department announced Wednesday.

The sale, held Wednesday morning, covered all available unleased areas in federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico. The sale, held in New Orleans, offered 14,776 blocks covering 77 million acres off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

The Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management said the government received 159 bids from 33 companies. Bidders includes Chevron, Shell and BP.

• ‘Bellwether’ event: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recently called the sale a “bellwether” for industry interest in the Gulf, as offshore is overshadowed by onshore opportunities from the shale revolution. Brazil and Mexico are also competing for business in their offshore areas.

Oil and gas production in the Western and Central Gulf of Mexico, which accounts for almost all current U.S. offshore production, is expected to hit a record high in 2018, after suffering three years of losses.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimates that offshore resources in the Gulf contain more than 48 billion barrels of oil and 141 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

• Sale part of old plan: The sale is part of the National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2017-2022, a five-year program whose terms were established by the Obama administration.

DISHWASHER TOO SLOW? PERRY’S BEING PRESSED TO FIX IT: A free-market group is calling on Energy Secretary Rick Perry to speed up dishwasher wash cycles, which are taking hours to clean the dishes — hopefully — and have become a “royal pain” for consumers.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute petitioned Perry Wednesday morning to roll back energy-efficiency standards for dishwashers that are making the wash cycles twice as long as what they used to be. The long cycles are becoming a top complaint for consumers.

The Washington libertarian group wants the Trump administration to ensure dishwashers take no more than an hour to complete their wash cycles, which is how long they took a decade ago.

PERRY SUSPENDS POLICY OF SELLING EXCESS URANIUM: Perry said Tuesday he will suspend the Energy Department’s practice of selling excess uranium for the rest of the fiscal year, after a key Republican blocked the nomination of an agency nominee.

Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman John Barrasso has said the sales hurt the domestic uranium mining industry, particularly in his home state of Wyoming.

“I hope we can extend ending the barter beyond this fiscal year by working together to fully fund our environmental management cleanup through the appropriations process,” Perry told Barrasso Tuesday at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing.

• Hold up: To protest the policy, Barrasso had placed a hold on a key Energy Department nominee who would lead the agency’s environmental office. That has prevented the Senate from confirming Anne White, President Trump’s nominee to be assistant secretary for environmental management.

Mike Danylak, a spokesman for Barrasso, told the Washington Examiner that the senator “did not have any announcements” on whether to lift the hold on White’s nomination or if he seeking an extension of a suspension of uranium transfers beyond this fiscal year.

Perry said he’s open to extending the suspension.

PERRY SAYS HE BACKS CLEAN ENERGY RESEARCH HUB TRUMP SEEKS TO CUT: Perry at the hearing expressed support for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, the clean energy research hub that Trump in his fiscal 2019 budget proposed to eliminate for the second year in a row.

“I know the results of really well-managed programs,” Perry said. “I know there are people on both sides of aisle very supportive of ARPA-E. I have looked at the results and found very good things come out of it. If this committee supports funding of that, it will be operated in a way you are most pleased with.”

• Supporting innovation: ARPA-E is a program with bipartisan support in Congress that funds innovations in energy technology, such as battery storage.

“While we should always be looking for places to cut the budget, we should also recognize that innovation is critical to our nation’s energy future,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, the chairwoman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

• Scorecard: The agency, which spends $300 million per year, was created by a law signed by President George W. Bush.

A National Academies of Sciences assessment from last year said that ARPA-E “has made significant contributions to energy R&D that likely would not take place absent the agency’s activities.”

It cited 74 patents granted and 36 companies founded based on ARPA-E-funded research. Congress rejected cuts to the agency last year, and it appears that will happen again.

REGULATOR SAYS NUCLEAR ENERGY PROBLEMS ‘GEOGRAPHIC:’ Nuclear power plant closures and strain facing the industry are a “geographic” problem, not a national one, the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday.

“Some of the units in the regions they operate in are operating at kind of breath-taking losses, and are not economic,” said Kristine Svinicki, the regulators chairwoman, testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on its fiscal 2019 budget request.

However, the situation that is causing nuclear power plants to not be financially viable in one region is not the same across the nation, she said.

“Others operate in other markets in the country, and have other regulatory, rate-recovery mechanisms that they are profitable,” Svinicki said. “So it appears to be a very geographic situation.”

RUNDOWN

Wall Street Journal Complaints about falsified pipeline endorsements draw no response

New York Times BMW offices raided by authorities in emissions-cheating investigation

Reuters BMW raises R&D spending for electric, autonomous cars

Wall Street Journal How Pennsylvania slashed coal emissions without alienating industry

Bloomberg OPEC to discuss changing measure of success for supply cuts

Washington Post Park Service warned lease sale Tuesday could harm Utah national monument

PBS NewsHour Puerto Rico went dark 6 months ago. Here’s how solar energy may speed the recovery

New York Times Canada’s outdoor rinks are melting. So is a way of life