Obama-era climate regulations are giving way to cybersecurity, infrastructure and nuclear power as top priorities for state groups descending on Washington this month to talk about how President Trump’s election changes their energy priorities.
President Obama’s cherished Clean Power Plan is sinking fast under Trump.
Even if the plan’s climate rules make it out of a federal appeals court, the Supreme Court will have the final say, as Trump’s nominee to replace conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia restores the nine-judge panel.
That has states embracing new energy realities under a Trump administration, especially with nearly 30 states’ attorneys general opposing the climate plan in court, and one of them nominated to lead the EPA.
“I think we’ve taken a hiatus on Clean Power Plan because a big part of that is going to be obviously driven by a new Supreme Court justice,” said Robert Powelson, new president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.
His group represents state economic regulators who decide what gets built and what doesn’t to keep the lights on and industry humming.
Climate regulation is toast, according to Powelson, who is from Pennsylvania, where fracked natural gas is king.
He sees natural gas reducing carbon dioxide emissions more effectively through the existing energy markets than through regulations enforced by the EPA.
“I come from a state where we are seeing tremendous reductions in the market-based decarbonization that is taking place in my state because of new state-of-the-art combined cycle gas plants that are driven by Marcellus [shale],” which is the source of his state’s natural gas boom, he said.
Powelson doesn’t have much sympathy for an EPA facing cuts under Trump of as much as half its staff.
“My governor is going to do a budget address here on Feb. 7 and he’s talking about merging state departments,” Powelson said. “And look, I will be the first one to tell you, just from personal experience, between [the Waters of the U.S. Rule] and Clean Power Plan, I think a lot of state regulators on the environmental side and the economic regulator side, [utility commission] types, we were deeply troubled by just the lack of understanding about each one of our states on how we were going to meet these targets and how the targets were set.”
Powelson will head the state utility group at its first winter meeting (Feb. 12-15 in Washington) with a new president in the Oval Office for the first time in in eight years. The mood as the meeting approaches is one of “excitement.” Yet there is uncertainty about what Trump is planning for new infrastructure, siting pipelines and creating an atmosphere of “cooperative federalism” between the states and the federal agencies, he said.
The new administration says, “Look, we’re going to build things, we’re going to site things, and we’re going to do it very efficiently, and we’re not going to have a command-and-control EPA, Energy Department or Army Corps of Engineers,” Powelson said.
“It strikes a balance,” Powelson said. “States can’t do everything on their own, and hence the need for what I call cooperative federalism and that can be seen in projects … like nuclear waste storage, new nuclear development, carbon capture storage, renewable integration and build out.”
Powelson sees new “opportunity for the states to cooperate with the federal government” under the new administration, including on renewable energy, developing clean coal technologies, such as carbon capture and storage, licensing, and building new nuclear reactors. Funding for clean coal suffered under Obama. He also failed to preserve existing nuclear plants, Powelson said. Instead he went all-out on renewables to the detriment on other zero-emission resources such as nuclear power.
Powelson wants Washington to lead, helping states protect the grid from cyber attacks and hackers.
“Cyber is another big area where states are trying to build capacities within their own agencies, whether its fusion centers or state public utility commissions,” he said. “We take a lot of our cyber direction from the federal government and we build a lot of our capacity through federal agencies.”
Other state groups say similar things going into meetings this month in Washington. The National Association of State Energy Officials, representing energy offices run by governors, is holding its annual policy meeting in Washington Feb. 7.
Jeff Genzer, its chief counsel, says climate regulation is out and energy infrastructure is in. Still, state energy offices want Trump to preserve a number of programs at the Energy Department that help them meet their goals.
About half the states have a renewable energy mandate, and that is unlikely to change even with the Clean Power Plan gone. Some Energy Department programs support these state mandates. They also want Trump to keep key programs in place to help low-income families with their energy bills.
One of the top issues at the NASEO meeting will be “continued robust funding for the State Energy Program and the Weatherization Assistance Program,” Genzer said.
These programs have been important for years. The weatherization program helps poor residents insulate their homes to cut energy costs. The State Energy Program includes grants to help states increase energy efficiency programs, increase renewable energy development, reduce energy costs, improve electricity and natural gas delivery reliability, promote economic growth, and improve environmental quality while reducing reliance on imported oil.
With the exception of promoting renewables, many of those same priorities are listed by the White House in Trump’s America First energy plan, which seeks to promote environmental quality and to reduce dependence on foreign sources of oil by doing more fracking.
“We see enhanced energy emergency preparedness and response, including physical and cybersecurity as a key priority,” Genzer said. “This includes all energy sectors and infrastructure — oil, gas, propane (and other petroleum products), electric systems and natural gas systems.”
The Energy Department’s Office of Electricity is an important part of responding to cyber threats through grid modernization.
“Overall, state-federal cooperation in the energy area could be enhanced,” Genzer said.
David Terry, NASEO’s executive director, said “cybersecurity risks continue to rise across all critical infrastructure” and continued federal support is more important than ever.
“Continuing federal support and improved coordination among the DOE, states, and private energy companies … is needed to better prepare for and respond to energy supply emergencies,” Terry said. “Such emergencies arise to one degree or another regularly and range from relatively minor disruptions (e.g., small pipeline break) to the multi-fuel impacts of a major storm.” And cyber threats are only adding to the need.
Genzer said outside of the significant issues affecting states at EPA, Interior Department and Agriculture Department, he said the states’ energy officials want the Energy Department to change by making the states an integral part of its planning and policy development.
“There is a clear need to increase the level of cooperation between state energy agencies and various pieces of the Department of Energy,” Genzer explained. “This includes policy …, the Office of Electricity, Office of Fossil Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy and the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy divisions,” he said. “State policy activities range across all these entities within DOE, and stovepipes should be avoided.”
There is also room for the state groups to come together through an unprecedented state collaborative called the 3N that was created to respond to the challenges posed by the EPA’s climate rules. The 3N includes NARUC, NASEO and the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, which are the state environmental regulators.
Bill Becker, executive director of the air agency group, said the 3N collaborative is fully functional and will be used to confront other challenges now that the Clean Power Plan is on hiatus.
“3N is probably one of the most effective inter-governmental processes that I think was ever developed because for the first time it brought together a very disparate set of governmental officials with varying missions and a number of competing constraints.
“And over the past few years, not withstanding that, the groups got together in small and large settings to tackle some really important issues, including but not limited to the Clean Power Plan,” Becker told the Washington Examiner. “Those relationships have been established, they are ongoing and while the individual responses vary widely in scope and magnitude, the fact is the process is set up to handle new and emerging problems.”
Becker said 3N can adapt to the changing policy environment now that Trump is in office. He spoke after meeting with his board to discuss priorities for 2017.
“The Clean Power Plan is on standby,” Becker said. “States are generally standing down, with the exception of a few. But it doesn’t mean there isn’t significant activity in many parts of the country.”
But “that’s because the normal energy and economic activities … are going in a certain direction,” he said. “Renewables, natural gas and other cleaner technologies have allowed agencies to pursue greenhouse gas reductions totally independent of the Clean Power Plan.”
Becker said the EPA plan was “a necessary impetus” for starting and continuing the trend, “but even without the Clean Power Plan, if it is indeed struck down, these actions will continue to move forward and in some cases aggressively through normal, economic development and the relationships that have been established under the structure of 3N and other regional groups that have helped facilitate this.”
Becker said the focus of his group will likely be driven to implementing the core functions of the Clean Air Act, which is the principal responsibility of the state agencies he represents regardless of what happens to the climate regulations.
“Our association has been involved in climate change, but many, many other important activities,” he said. “We are responsible for implementing the Clean Air Act and providing tens of millions of people with clean air and a helpful environment. And because of that we are intent in making sure that the regulatory tools in the act and in regulation continue independent of the Clean Power Plan provisions.”
Becker’s focus will not be on preserving the infrastructure of transmission lines and the nation’s energy hardware as NASEO and NARUC, but on preserving the “infrastructure of the Clean Air Act and making certain that state and local agencies have the tools and most importantly the funding to comply with these responsibilities.”
The nation’s regulatory agencies that Becker represents are more dependent on EPA grants and funding than the state agencies that Powelson, Genzer and Terry represent. “The fear is if our funding to reduce ozone levels or fine particles or toxic air pollutants are diminished, then tens of millions of people’s health will suffer,” Becker added.
Recent reports that Trump is poised to cut funding for the EPA and along with it a huge chunk of its staff have him and his members concerned.
“We are watching closely the extent to which EPA’s program will be cut and we are worried about some of the things we have been reading, vis-a-vis the transition team, especially the aspirational goal of reducing staff at EPA from 15,000 to 5,000,” Becker said. “States and localities need a healthy and robust EPA in order for the national — not federal — but the national program to be administered effectively.”
The bottom line is: “EPA can’t do it without the states. The states can’t do it without EPA.”
Becker wants the agency to be more predictable and to be respectful of deadlines. He also wants it to respect the need for issuing guidelines for states “so we know exactly the rules and elements of the playing field.” Also, research from the agency is helpful to the states and needs to continue.
Becker’s main message is that there are “many things we need from a healthy EPA” while also respecting the idea of states and localities being the “primary implementers.” “And in order for that to continue we need significantly more resources to do the job.
“I can’t define the appropriate balance between the EPA’s budget and the states, but the kinds of cuts that are being tossed around at EPA seem very concerning,” he said. “Moreover, no matter what happens to EPA, states and localities need a very significant increase especially under the Trump administration who wants to delegate even more responsibility to the states,” he explained.
“We can’t do more with less,” Becker said. “We can do more with more.”
