Daily on Energy: Democrats try to one-up each other in debate

We saw more one-upmanship once we got our first — and really, only — climate question about an hour into the debate, in which Rachel Maddow asked how candidates would get bipartisan support for their initiatives.

“I’m the only person on this stage who will say that climate is the number-one priority for me. Vice President Biden won’t say it. Senator Warren won’t say it,” said Tom Steyer, before promising to bypass Congress (dismissing Maddow’s question) and declare a national emergency for climate on day one of his presidency.

“Congress has never passed an important climate bill ever,” Steyer noted.

Joe Biden, however, took exception to Steyer’s claim, poking the billionaire candidate for building his wealth with fossil fuel investments (read more about Josh’s recap of that exchange here).

“It is the existential threat to humanity. It’s the number-one issue,” Biden said, proceeding to recap his legislative record without proposing new ideas to prove his point.

Sanders then jumped in to say he too would make climate change a national emergency, and has even signed on to legislation to do it.

Climate is everything: Candidates did manage to weave in specifics during other parts of the debate, again showcasing how they would make climate change central to other related policies.

Steyer said he’d consider climate as part of his housing plan, noting, “how we build units, where people live has a dramatic impact on climate and on sustainability.”

Pete Buttigieg, polling well in Iowa, the first-in-the nation farm state, repeated a well-worn pledge echoed by most candidates that “American farming should be one of the key pillars of how we combat climate change.”

Buttigieg also proved his loyalty to politically important ethanol interests by criticizing the Trump administration for granting generous waivers to small oil refiners from renewable fuel standard responsibilities, a trend he called “the worst thing” for farmers.

Elizabeth Warren, meanwhile, said climate change presents an opportunity to encourage increased participation in public service. She plugged her plan for people to volunteer “to serve in our federal lands to be able to help rebuild our national forests and national parks as a way to express both their public service and their commitment to fighting back against climate change.”

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.

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF CANNOT STAND: Or at least, that’s the idea behind House Democrats’ latest sweeping climate policy.

But to get everyone on board, the bill doesn’t have a whole lot of nitty-gritty specifics. Instead, the 100% Clean Economy Act of 2019 puts a marker down for the goal — a U.S. economy that is net-zero emissions by 2050 — that the lead sponsors are hoping everyone can agree on.

“It’s bold. It’s ambitious. It’s exactly what the scientists say we need to do and when we need to to do it,” Virginia Rep. Donald McEachin, the lead sponsor of the bill, told Abby late Wednesday. (Abby has more here on exactly how the bill would try to accomplish that goal.)

Democrats’ strategy seems to be working for now: When introduced later today, the bill will have more than 150 co-sponsors, including House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone of New Jersey, a last-minute sign-on.

That doesn’t mean, though, that everyone in the caucus is holding hands and singing kumbaya. McEachin hopes everyone can get behind his bill, but he acknowledged there are lawmakers and activists who want to push farther and faster.

DEMOCRATS CONFRONT PROTESTORS AT ‘CRISIS’ HEARING: House Democrats got a taste of activists’ unsatisfied demands when young protestors with the group Extinction Rebellion interrupted a Select Climate Crisis Committee hearing Wednesday.

The group is mounting hunger strikes this week, demanding that Speaker Nancy Pelosi meet with them, and that Democrats declare a national emergency for climate.

Select Committee Chairman Kathy Castor of Florida calmly managed the interruptions of the hearing, which was focused on climate adaptation.

“We’re working on climate solutions,” she told the group during several disruptions. “We don’t have time to waste. Listen to the testimony and help us develop solutions.”

Competing demands: Castor, in an interview with Josh after the hearing, acknowledged the challenge of balancing the demands of impatient activists groups with the realities of Congress, where bipartisanship is usually required to get anything done. She said Democrats are doing what they can, and blamed Republicans for the lack of progress.

“People are going to continue to protest to urge action and they should do that,” Castor said. “This Congress needs to be pushed. It needs to be pressed. They [activists] also need to look down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House and the other side of the Capitol where a lot of the roadblocks are.”

WHAT DOES CONSERVATIVE CLIMATE POLICY LOOK LIKE?: Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions is offering their vision to the Select Climate Crisis Committee, in response to that panel’s open call for ideas.

“Our strategy builds off traditional federal and state roles in the energy sector, therefore we believe it is politically expedient, market-friendly, and durable climate policy,” Charles Hernick, CRES’ director of policy and advocacy, wrote in a letter Wednesday to the committee. He added their plan aims to meet a goal of net-zero emissions by mid-century.

The strategy has four pillars:

1. It’s not a carbon tax — but a “federal carbon avoidance and sequestration price” built through a 10-year program of tax incentives for zero-carbon energy, including wind and solar, carbon capture, electric vehicles, and energy efficiency.
2. Everyone works with the same toolkit: A Congress-developed voluntary framework to track carbon emissions and allow for credit trading, plus a program for certifying greenhouse gas offsets.
3. The federal government steps it up big-time on clean energy investments and breaks down regulatory barriers to massive and rapid deployment.
4. The U.S. keeps its international peers accountable — in part through a 10-year border-adjustment tariff on carbon intensive products coming from overseas.

SONDLAND ‘MISREPRESENTED’ PERRY’S UKRAINE EFFORTS, ENERGY DEPARTMENT SAYS: The Energy Department rejected testimony from U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland on Wednesday alleging that Secretary Rick Perry was aware of Trump officials’ effort to pressure Ukraine to announce an investigation related to Biden

Perry has said he did not know about the White House linking military aid or a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to a commitment for the country to investigate the gas company, Burisma, where Biden’s son was a board member.

Sondland testified in his opening statement at House Democrats’ impeachment hearings that Rudy Giuliani, President Trump‘s personal attorney, “conveyed to Secretary Perry…and others that President Trump wanted a public statement from President Zelensky committing to investigations of Burisma and the 2016 election.”

A spokesman for Perry, who has not complied with a subpoena from House Democrats, contested Sondland’s account.

“Ambassador Sondland’s testimony today misrepresented both Secretary Perry’s interaction with Rudy Giuliani and direction the Secretary received from President Trump,” said DOE press secretary Shaylyn Hynes. “As previously stated, Secretary Perry spoke to Rudy Giuliani only once at the President’s request. No one else was on that call. At no point before, during or after that phone call did the words ‘Biden’ or ‘Burisma’ ever come up in the presence of Secretary Perry.”

SENATE FAST LANE FOR BROUILLETTE. The Senate is moving closer to confirming Dan Brouillette to replace Perry as Energy Department secretary. Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell filed cloture Wednesday night, teeing up his confirmation vote, likely after Thanksgiving break.

Brouillette, a known commodity who is currently DOE deputy secretary, sailed through the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Tuesday by a bipartisan 16-4 margin.

FERC APPROVES LNG PROJECTS, BUT CLIMATE STILL A ‘THIRD RAIL’: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Thursday approved three new liquified natural gas export facilities, and the expansion of another, but is no closer to resolving internal disagreements on how to consider climate change in reviewing projects.

FERC at its monthly meeting approved three LNG projects, all located in the same Texas county, on the backs of Republicans with a party-line 2-1 vote: Texas LNG Brownsville, Rio Grande LNG, and Annova LNG.

It also certified Corpus Christi (Stage 3) as an additional terminal at an existing LNG facility.

Richard Glick, FERC’s lone Democrat who opposed each of those decisions, continued to make the case that the commission should be assessing the impact that emissions from LNG projects could have on climate change. Republicans insist it’s sufficient to simply list the amount of associated emissions from a project, without determining how that level of pollution effects climate change.

“I still can’t understand why we are treating climate differently than all other significant environmental impacts,” Glick said. “Actually, everyone knows why. It’s because it’s climate change. It’s the third rail of our regulatory politics.”

Glick suggested Republican commissioners Neil Chatterjee, the chairman, and Bernard McNamee are flouting a federal court ruling by too narrowly considering climate change.

McNamee, however, countered that Republicans are complying with the courts, but remain bound by the text of National Environmental Policy Act and Natural Gas Acts. He said FERC is limited in how it considers climate change absent action from Congress or the EPA.

“We cannot by ourselves come up with a process,” McNamee said.

In other action Thursday: FERC approved two gas pipelines, the El Paso Natural Gas’ South Mainline Expansion and the Spire STL project. It also accepted compliance filings from grid operators Midcontinent ISO, California ISO and ISO-New England related to FERC’s energy storage ruling, which removed long-standing barriers to storage in power markets.

RISKY BUSINESS: The Environmental Protection Agency is rolling back Obama-era chemical handling rules that were put in place in response to a 2013 explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas that killed 15 people.

The agency says the Trump administration changes keep the safety protections in place but remove burdensome requirements and respond to concerns from first responders and state regulators. The EPA’s new rule already has the backing of the oil and gas industry, with the American Petroleum Institute saying the pared-down requirements provide “both regulatory consistency and appropriately balance transparency with national security and public safety.”

Environmental groups, though, have said the Trump EPA’s rollback would sharply weaken safeguards in place to protect communities from chemical explosions and other incidents.

IT FINALLY HAPPENED: The House Energy and Commerce Committee finished their marathon 18-bill, two-day markup.

The panel approved the remaining two energy and environment-related bills — one, a bipartisan bill dealing with nuclear waste, by voice vote without much controversy.

Then two Republicans — Michigan Congressman Fred Upton and West Virginia Congressman David McKinley — voted with Democrats on the committee to approve legislation requiring the EPA and other federal agencies to restrict the “forever chemicals,” per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. Republicans had complained, though, about Democrats’ approach, which included adding language to portions of 11 other PFAS bills to the legislation.

If you remember: The committee also sent two other energy-related bills to the floor — a bipartisan bill to ban asbestos and pipeline safety legislation, which kicked off the markup with an hours-long partisan bickering match.

CENTRIST DEMS PRESS PELOSI ON SOLAR TAX CREDITS: Heading into their first re-election year, a group of more than two dozen potentially vulnerable Democrats are making it known they support extending solar tax credits.

Extending the investment tax credit for solar power, as well as other clean energy sources like geothermal and fuel cells, has bipartisan backing, the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Pelosi. They’re urging her to prioritize the ITC extension in must-pass end-of-year legislation because the credit begins to phase down in 2020.

Their push comes days after House Democrats on Ways and Means Committee unveiled a discussion draft of comprehensive clean energy tax legislation that also includes an extension of the ITC.

BIPARTISAN BOOST FOR RENEWABLES ON PUBLIC LANDS: The House Natural Resources Committee approved bipartisan legislation Wednesday boosting renewable energy development on public lands.

The Public Land Renewable Energy Development Act would streamline permitting of wind, solar, and geothermal energy on public lands. It establishes a revenue-sharing mechanism from the energy production that seeks to ensure a fair return among relevant stakeholders, including the state and counties hosting the development, and uses 15% of revenues to speed permitting for renewables projects.

The Rundown

Reuters Trump administration to miss 2019 target for Alaska refuge oil lease sale

Wall Street Journal The wall that would save Venice from drowning is underwater

Bloomberg Aramco faces serious risks from climate change, report says

E&E News Young Republican staffers frustrate CO2-loving group

Calendar

MONDAY | NOVEMBER 25

House and Senate are out for Thanksgiving recess