Daily on Energy: Biden’s energy diplomacy under the Senate microscope

There were no letter grades involved but Hochstein, who is senior adviser for energy security at the State Department and has helped lead the Biden administration’s energy diplomacy in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, emphasized the work of the joint U.S.-EU energy security task force and noted that U.S. liquefied natural gas exports to Europe have risen significantly (The U.S. exported 74% of its LNG to Europe through April, as compared with 2021’s annual average of 34%, per Energy Information Administration data.)

Hochstein said there’s much more to do, though, and the Europeans have given a tall order.

“Europe has put itself in a really precarious position, and we the United States are now in the position of helping them get out of this precarious condition,” Hochstein told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security Cooperation.

Financing emphasis: Much of the administration’s energy diplomacy focus has been on securing LNG supplies for Europe. The task force’s mission is to help Europe secure at least 15 billion cubic meters worth of LNG this year alone.

Hochstein, however, said he envisioned a larger role for the U.S. in Europe by way of more financing for energy projects that would support Europe’s breakup with Russian energy.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean that you as taxpayers should pay for gas in Bulgaria,” he said, but added that U.S. financing of some projects, including nuclear projects, could help EU allies.

A green angle: U.S. and European leaders have resolved that Europe’s energy crisis implies the need for an even swifter shift to green energy, a point Hochstein emphasized this morning.

At the same time, environmental groups have been critical of the administration’s and the European Commission’s energy strategy, and for Hochstein’s role in it all in particular, for favoring more gas exports and infrastructure in addition to renewables.

Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers Jeremy Beaman (@jeremywbeaman) and Breanne Deppisch (@breanne_dep). 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.

BIDEN’S COMMITMENT TO LATIN AMERICA TAKES CENTER STAGE AT SUMMIT OF AMERICAS: President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are announcing two new initiatives at the Summit of the Americas conference today in California aimed at helping Latin American countries fight climate change, in an effort to support new renewable development projects and protect natural resources in the region.

Both Biden and Harris will speak during the second of the three-day summit. Harris is slated to unveil a major initiative, the U.S.-Caribbean Partnership to Address the Climate Crisis 2030, this afternoon, which the White House said will help improve countries’ access to financing and clean energy project development.

Biden, meanwhile, will announce that five new countries—Barbados, Jamaica, Guyana, Argentina and Brazil— plan to join 15 existing members in an initiative that promotes trade and investments in clean energy and encourages regional collaborations.

In a phone call with reporters yesterday, senior administration officials said Biden will also announce a $12 million reforestation effort in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, aimed at helping protect the Amazon rainforest and reducing carbon emissions.

In his opening remarks last night, Biden said the international partnership would help “tackle the climate crisis head-on”: “When I hear climate, I think jobs,” Biden said. “Good-paying, high-quality jobs will help speed our transition to a green economy of the future and unleash sustainable growth: jobs in developing and deploying clean energy, jobs in decarbonizing the economy, jobs in protecting biodiversity of our hemisphere, jobs that provide dignity of being able to feed your family, give your children a better life.”

EU PROPOSES INCREASING NATURAL GAS IMPORTS FROM EGYPT, ISRAEL: The European Commission is proposing a deal to increase the EU’s imports of natural gas from Egypt and Israel. News of the draft proposal, which was first reported by Reuters, comes as the bloc seeks to reduce its dependency on Russian energy supplies amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. It also comes just days before EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is slated to travel to Cairo next week.

The nine-page draft proposal outlines principles for “enhanced cooperation” between the three partners, Reuters reports, but does not indicate how much gas the bloc would import, or give any sort of timetable for delivery. European Commission officials declined to comment on the report or to confirm whether von der Leyen will seek to make progress on the deal during her trip to Cairo next week.

“The natural gas to be shipped to the European Union will originate either from the Arab Republic of Egypt, the State of Israel, or any other source in the East Mediterranean region, including EU Member States in the region,” the draft document states.

MEANWHILE, RUSSIA SAYS IT IS NOT PLANNING TO CUT NATURAL GAS SHIPMENTS FOR MORE EUROPEAN CUSTOMERS: Russia is not planning to cut gas supplies to any additional European countries, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said today.

Speaking on a call with reporters, Pekov said everyone who was to be cut off from the system has already been cut off. Asked whether additional cuts should be expected, he said: “No.”

Peskov’s comments come after Russian state-owned gas supplier Gazprom cut supplies to gas companies in Denmark, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Poland, and Finland after they refused to meet Putin’s demand to pay for their gas supply in rubles.

DOE ANNOUNCES $504 MILLION LOAN GUARANTEE FOR WORLD’S LARGEST HYDROGEN STORAGE FACILITY: ​​The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) said it has closed on a $504.4 million loan guarantee for the Advanced Clean Energy Storage project in Utah, marking the agency’s first official loan guarantee for a new clean energy technology project in nearly a decade, and one that will help finance construction of the largest hydrogen storage facility in the world.

The Advanced Clean Energy, or ACES, facility is expected to create some 400 construction jobs and 25 operations jobs in central Utah, DOE said. Once operational, the facility will provide long-term, low-cost storage of clean hydrogen—which is made using renewable energy—and will help pave the way for decarbonizing Western U.S. power grid.

“Accelerating the commercial deployment of clean hydrogen as a zero-emission, long-term energy storage solution is the first step in harnessing its potential to decarbonize our economy, create good paying clean energy jobs and enable more renewables to be added to the grid,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a press release yesterday.

The effort was also praised by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who said in a statement that he was pleased to see the agency’s “support of Utah’s efforts to become a world leader in hydrogen.”

“This is not only a win for Millard County and Utah, but it is also an important step toward developing new energy technologies as we utilize an ‘all of the above’ approach to meet our energy demands,” he added.

TEXAS LAWMAKER URGES BIDEN ADMINISTRATION TO BETTER PROTECT POWER GRID: Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) called on the Biden administration to take steps to better protect the U.S. power grid from cyberattacks and from reserve capacity shortages, warning in a letter shared exclusively with the Washington Examiner that these vulnerabilities risk setting off a nationwide reliability crisis.

In the letter, sent to Energy Secretary Granholm, the Texas Republican said DOE “lacks a clear plan to protect our critical infrastructure systems from nefarious actors, like Russia, and ensure peak power demand can be sufficiently met.”

If the United States “does not develop a long-term, serious energy policy for the 21st century,” he wrote, “then America will soon face a reliability crisis that inflicts needless pain on American families, businesses, and workers.”

Pfluger urged DOE to prioritize energy security and reliability needs in the short-term while also taking steps to deliver on the administration’s clean energy goals. While “it is inevitable that intermittent renewables will play a role in our electric infrastructure,” he said, the U.S. must “move forward with a central focus on affordability and reliability of the grid.”

“We are in an energy expansion, not an energy transition,” Plfuger said, and America “must be able to meet our domestic needs while prioritizing the key principle of reliability.”

The letter comes after U.S. grid operators warned last month that roughly two-thirds of the U.S. would face a heightened risk of power outages this summer, citing threats posed by extreme weather conditions and a shortfall in generating capacity. Energy officials have also warned against the rise of cyberattacks from state-sponsored hackers—particularly, from Russia, which is believed to be behind the development of malicious new cybertools capable of gaining “full system access” to the systems that control electricity and natural gas in the U.S. Read more from Breanne here.

The Rundown

The Hill Increasingly autonomous cars raise cybersecurity fears

E&ENews U.S. LNG surge may have a flood problem

New York Times As the Great Salt Lake dries up, Utah faces an ‘environmental nuclear bomb’

Washington Post Biden proposes making underwater canyon off New York a marine sanctuary

Calendar

THURSDAY | JUNE 9

7:00 p.m. The American Conservation Coalition kicks off its inaugural three-day summit at the J.W. Marriott in D.C. Learn more and register here.