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CASSIDY PLANS POST-RUSSIA FUTURE FOR WESTERN ENERGY: Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy said he is speeding up development of a global energy policy outline to inform how the U.S. and its allies in Europe should respond to Russia’s war in Ukraine while maintaining their economic health and keeping on course to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
There is a nexus, Cassidy said, between energy, national global security, climate, and the economic health of nations and families.
“If you ignore any one of those, then you imperil all four, so what we’ll attempt to do with this, in recognition of the crisis in Ukraine and the desire to have a Russian-free energy future, is to attempt to address all four,” he told Jeremy.
It starts with cutting free from Russian oil and gas, which Cassidy, who represents a leading oil refining state in Louisiana and is co-sponsoring the Ban Russian Energy Imports Act detailed below, said would be easy for the U.S. to do.
But it wouldn’t be easy for Europe, which relies overwhelmingly on imports for its fossil fuel-generated energy. The strategy for Europe, then, should be to source its oil and gas from the United States and elsewhere, he said.
“If the Europeans become bankrupt paying for energy, or if they have to go back to using coal so much that they feel as if they are losing all ground on controlling emissions, we all lose the political will — aside from the human suffering — we’ll lose the political will for the Europeans to continue in this embargo against Russian products.”
An ‘Operation Warp Speed of sorts’: The Russian assault on Ukraine has calcified the resolve of Republican lawmakers and the domestic oil and gas industry groups to grow the global market share of U.S.-produced fossil fuels.
They have been bashing the Biden administration for its stance on fossil fuels and pressing it to encourage domestic production and speed up infrastructure projects, especially liquefied natural gas terminals and pipelines, to support a switch from Russian fuels to those sourced in the U.S.
The reticence of the Biden team to get behind such an approach, as well its favor for tighter regulations and resistance to building out fossil fuel infrastructure, has been a primary source of their criticism of President Joe Biden.
“We need an Operation Warp Speed of sorts in which we speed up the permitting and approval of such projects,” Cassidy said, hours after he and fellow Republican lawmakers on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee grilled FERC over its new pipeline approval policies. “There needs to be regulatory certainty, not somebody in administration deciding yes or no because of their particular prejudice about certain types of energy.”
(A mix of prominent conservatives leaders, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Deputy National Security Adviser KT McFarland, and Steve Forbes made this same analogy to the Trump administration’s COVID-19 vaccine development project in urging Biden earlier this week to support growing energy trade with Europe to achieve western “energy independence” in the face of the war).
Cassidy said he and other lawmakers will release a list of guiding principles on this outline next week.
And Biden’s stance? Managing the energy politik of high oil and gas prices and keeping true to its climate change policies has been a tough needle for the Biden administration to thread. Overall, Biden and other White House officials have been careful not to explicitly get behind these efforts to reduce regulatory barriers and grow production and exports, as they run counter to the policies Biden has pursued so far.
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NUCLEAR SCARE IN UKRAINE: Russian forces seized control of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in southeast Ukraine last night–– causing a building at the site to catch fire and touching off global fears of nuclear catastrophe.
Early reactions to the event appeared mixed as the world learned more about the event. On Twitter this morning, the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv called the attack on the Zaporizhzhia plant a “war crime.”
“It is a war crime to attack a nuclear power plant. Putin’s shelling of Europe’s largest nuclear plant takes his reign of terror one step further,” it wrote.
The U.N. Security Council said it will hold an emergency session to discuss the attack on Ukraine’s nuclear facility. The U.S. and the U.K. are expected to deliver remarks at the meeting, Reuters reports.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the attack “demonstrates the recklessness of this war and the importance of ending it, and the importance of Russia withdrawing all its troops and engaging in good faith in diplomatic efforts.”
In an emotional video posted to social media early today, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Russian military of “deliberately attacking” the Zaporizhzhia nuclear site, and added that an explosion there would be “the end for everybody, the end of Europe.”
In the video, Zelensky also called for European involvement, saying, “Only immediate actions by Europe could stop the Russian army.”
Early today, International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi said the fire at the plant was set off after a “projectile” that hit a training center on site. No radiation was detected in the immediate aftermath, he said, and the fire has since been extinguished.
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm echoed the IAEA assessment, saying that its reactors were protected by “robust” containment structures, and were in the process of being “safely shut down.”
Still, the blaze further underscored the potential catastrophic risks of waging war in a country with a fleet of 15 large, operational nuclear plants.
As we noted last week, the assault on Ukraine marks the first large-scale war waged amid a fleet of large, operational nuclear reactors. And it’s the second time in just seven days that military activity near Ukrainian plants has sparked global fears of a possible nuclear catastrophe.
Ukraine holds one of the largest nuclear fleets in Europe, second only to France, and as of last week all its reactors were all operating at full or near-full capacity. (The current operating status is unknown due to the fast-changing situation.)
Early today, Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba called on Russians to establish “safe zones” around nuclear facilities in the country, noting in an earlier tweet that, had Zaporizhzhia blown up, it would cause an explosion “10 times larger than Chernobyl!”
CONGRESS MOVING FASTER THAN WHITE HOUSE ON RUSSIAN OIL BAN: The senators from energy-producing states who introduced legislation yesterday to ban Russian oil imports have made it clear they are willing to countenance higher gas prices as a result, but the White House has signaled it does not support an outright ban at risk of further driving up gas prices.
“Make no mistake: energy has become a weapon of war for Putin,” said Sen. Joe Manchin, who is co-sponsoring the bill alongside Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski. “Ukraine is essentially the catalyst for what he’s doing.”
Notably, the West Virginia Democrat said he would be willing to pay more for gas in exchange for sanctioning Putin: “If there was a poll being taken and they said, ‘Joe, would you pay 10 cents more per gallon to support the people of Ukraine and stop the support of Russia?’ I would gladly pay 10 cents more per gallon,” he said.
Asked if that’s a fair message to people coping with inflation, Manchin responded, “Inflation is a tax. This is war.”
But there’s plenty of daylight between lawmakers and White House: Asked about the ban during yesterday’s press briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters, “We don’t have a strategic interest in reducing the global supply of energy, and that would raise prices at the gas pump for the American people.”
That prompted a fiery retort from Manchin, who said of the White House response: “They’re so wrong, so wrong.”
“There’s other places in the world” to get oil, Manchin said. “And when you talk about an inconvenience––can you imagine if you lived in Ukraine right now? …This is life or death.”
Debate over the gas import ban comes as prices continue to surge in the U.S., climbing to an average of $3.83 this morning, according to AAA.
But lawmakers said they have other options to keep prices low, saying yesterday that the U.S. has “a moral obligation” to Ukraine. “I don’t want U.S. dollars to be funding this, this carnage in Ukraine led by Putin,” Murkowski said.
More from proponents of the Ban Russian Energy Imports Act: “Never in the history of warfare has a bad guy been so exposed as Putin is today,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican. “The revenue from oil and gas keeps them afloat. If we can isolate the oil and gas sector produced more here at home, that will do more to end this war than any single thing I can think of.”
Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio also delivered an impassioned appeal for swift, bipartisan legislation. “I was in Ukraine for the last congressional delegation in [January,],” the Ohioan said. “The people we met with are now in bunkers …”
“I’ve been to the line of contact—the soldiers I met are now under fire,” Portman added. “Some of them are dead. These are the people who turned to us.”
EIA FORECAST SHOWS FOSSILS KEEPING LOCK ON ENERGY SYSTEM: Green technologies like electric vehicles and wind and solar electricity generation are expected to grow, and in the case of the latter two, outpace competitors significantly through 2050.
Still, based on current policy conditions and assumptions, fossil fuels are expected to remain dominant over the same period, according to the Energy Information Administration’s new Annual Energy Outlook 2022.
Battery-electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles are expected to cut significantly into new sales of internal combustion engine vehicles, and overall ICE sales are projected to decrease from 92% in 2021 to 79% in 2050.
EIA also estimates that renewable electricity generation will increase more quickly than overall demand and that the total share of renewable generation will more than double.
Oil’s obstinacy: But oil and gas aren’t going away fast.
“We don’t see liquid fuels and natural gas losing their place as the top two sources of energy in the United States through 2050. That appears to be true under a pretty wide variety of assumptions,” including rapid growth of renewable energy, EIA Acting Administrator Stephen Nalley said yesterday during a presentation announcing EIA’s conclusions.
The demand factor: Industry and other proponents of maintaining or expanding fossil fuels often point to the strength of demand in arguing for such a course.
Meanwhile, backers of a more swift transition away from fossil fuels like Nat Kreamer, CEO of Advanced Energy Economy, argue that the project should be to weaken demand by getting more green technologies to market, not only for environmental reasons but for national security’s sake.
“If we continue to build vehicles that require hydrocarbons — a barrel of oil from Russia fungibly goes into the oil market next to a barrel of oil from us,” Kreamer told Jeremy, saying the prevailing goal should be to reduce overall demand instead and thereby weaken the likes of Russia.
“I love that we’re energy rich, and I love that we have started to wean ourselves [off] foreign hydrocarbons,” he said. “It’s not just about us. It’s about reducing the overall demand for hydrocarbons, because the oil and gas market is an international market.”
The Rundown
Reuters Saudi crown prince plays the oil card in quest for U.S. recognition
E&E News Grid operators’ ‘seam’ study paves way for renewable expansion
Axios Study: COVID recovery spending has not been green
AP News UN report paints dire picture of the Gulf of Mexico’s future
Calendar
FRIDAY | MARCH 4
11:00 a.m. The Wilson Center hosts a book launch for “Partial Hegemony: Oil Politics and International Order” by Dr. Jeff Colgan, which unpacks the role that oil politics has played in the world order. The event will include remarks from BP chief of international affairs Robert Scher, and Elizabeth Saunders, a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Register here.
TUESDAY | MARCH 8
10:15 a.m. The Energy and Commerce Committee’s Energy Subcommittee will hold a hearing entitled “Charging Forward: Securing American Manufacturing and Our EV Future.”
