Trump budget diverts spending away from EPA and renewables toward border wall

The Trump budget proposes over $12 trillion in agency cuts, with a nice clean 5 percent cut in domestic spending, with EPA sustaining a 31 percent cut if the president gets his way — the largest across-the-board slashing for any agency in the new spending request.

The Department of Energy’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office will see its fiscal 2020 budget gutted by 70 percent, from $2.3 billion to around $700 million.

The budget also proposes $8.6 billion in new funding for Trump’s promised Mexican border wall and significantly raises Defense Department spending.

The Energy Department fiscal 2020 budget requests $31.7 billion for the agency, which is a 11-percent decrease from the 2019 enacted level.

The budget document issued by the White House on Monday shows that part of the renewable energy office’s priorities will be diverted to a new energy storage initiative. The budget requests $158 million for the Advanced Energy Storage Initiative, which is described a coordinated effort jointly led by the Office of Electricity and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

The agency will place priorities on national security and energy security, with big boosts for nuclear and coal and cyber security.

EPA’s total budget request is $6.1 billion, which is a $2.8 billion decrease from the fiscal 2019 estimate. The budget proposes to eliminate many voluntary and lower-priority activities and refocus the EPA on strategic and regulatory reforms such as reforming the Obama-era Waters of the United States rule. The administration considers the WOTUS rule a prime example of regulatory overreach by the previous administration.

Another priority will be replacing the Obama-era Clean Power Plan climate rules with the Trump EPA’s Affordable Clean Energy rule, which benefits coal-fired power plants.

More detailed, line-by-line budgets from the agencies will come out on Wednesday, before being sent to Congress next week.

Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers John Siciliano (@JohnDSiciliano) and Josh Siegel (@SiegelScribe). Email [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.

JAY INSLEE COULD BECOME ETHANOL’S WORST ENEMY: Democratic presidential candidate Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington state poses a threat to Iowa’s corn ethanol producers in seeking to make his state’s climate proposals the law of the land.

Inslee said last week, following a campaign stop in Iowa, that he supports a Low Carbon Fuel Standard for the nation, akin to the one currently being considered by his state’s legislature.

“What we need to do nationally is what we are doing in Washington state,” Inslee said on a climate change panel at Washington University.

But what Inslee is proposing for Washington state is at odds with what ethanol proponents want done in D.C. Low Carbon Fuel Standard advocates in Washington, such as Carbon Washington, view corn ethanol skeptically, faulting it for producing more greenhouse gas emissions than other alternative fuels.

‘THE SECOND WAVE OF US SHALE REVOLUTION IS COMING,’ IEA SAYS: The U.S. will become a net exporter of oil and petroleum products like gasoline in 2021 for the first time in 65 years, the International Energy Agency said Monday, overtaking Russia and approaching Saudi Arabia, shaking up international trade and geopolitics.

The IEA, in its annual report on global oil markets, said the U.S. will account for 70 percent of the total increase in global oil production in the next five years — by far the largest share of any country — as the benefits of the shale boom keep on giving.

U.S. crude oil production is expected to rise to 13.7 million barrels a day by 2024, up from around 12 million barrels per day today.

The U.S. will also provide 75 percent of the global expansion in trade of liquified natural gas.

“The second wave of the U.S. shale revolution is coming,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. “This will shake up international oil and gas trade flows, with profound implications for the geopolitics of energy.”

America is now the world’s top producer of oil and gas, but has only achieved being a net exporter of crude and refined products intermittently, depending on the week, the Energy Information Administration has said. That will change in 2021, the IEA projected Monday, when the U.S. will become a net energy exporter on an annual basis.

Birol is set to address the report Monday morning to kickoff the massive energy industry conference CERAWeek by IHS Markit in Houston.

Other speakers at the week-long conference today include Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler, and Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the chairwoman and top Democrat of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, respectively.

Look out for continuing coverage of the conference from Josh, who is on the ground in Houston.

EPA’S WHEELER MOURNS DEATHS OF ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATORS IN HORRIFIC CRASH: Wheeler was one of the only members of Trump’s Cabinet to issue a formal statement after the horrific Ethiopia Airways crash on Sunday.

Wheeler explained that he felt compelled to respond to the deaths of several environmental regulators and colleagues who perished on the flight on their way to a major United Nations Environment Assembly in Kenya.

“Many people from all over the world work tremendously hard and travel vast distances to come together for the united cause of protecting the environment,” Wheeler said. “Today we lost some of those good people, and our prayers are with them, their families, and their colleagues.”

FRANCE SENDS DILUTED CLIMATE BILL BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD: France is delaying the rollout of a new climate change law after lawmakers were criticized for drafting a watered-down and vague bill that lacked any real ability to enforce reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Officials with French President Emmanuel Macron‘s administration disclosed the delay on Sunday, Reuters reports. Macron has had to soften some of positions in recent months after protests broke out in Paris in response to a failed push to increase fuel taxes in support of his climate agenda.

But now critics say the new law to be presented to Macron’s Cabinet on Monday went too far to soften its climate policies.

BLOOMBERG FACES TOUGHER CHALLENGE WITH OIL AND GAS AFTER HELPING WOUND COAL: Former New York City mayor and climate change crusader Michael Bloomberg faces a tougher challenge in his new goal of fighting oil and gas than he had in his successful efforts shuttering coal plants.

Bloomberg announced last week that, rather than joining a crowded 2020 Democratic presidential field, he would invest his money and influence into “organizing and mobilizing communities to begin moving America as quickly as possible away from oil and gas and toward a 100 percent clean energy economy.”

He hasn’t provided further details, but the effort sounds a lot like the “Beyond Coal” campaign that Bloomberg has partnered on with the Sierra Club and other environmental groups that has helped retire more than half the nation’s coal plants, 285 out of 530, since it began in 2010.

But while Beyond Coal has benefited from piggybacking off coal’s existing market-driven economic challenges, the oil and gas industry is thriving.

“Bloomberg and the Sierra Club are declaring a premature victory on coal and not recognizing the role of gas in that process,” Paul Bledsoe, a former climate change adviser to President Bill Clinton, told Josh. “Gas is by far the most valuable fossil fuel in the clean energy transition, and it will be the last fossil fuel whose role will significantly diminish.”

The new project: Still, Democrats and environmental groups welcome Bloomberg’s decision to target all fossil fuels, which the former mayor is calling the “Beyond Carbon” campaign.

Anne Hitt, director of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal, said her group will keep shooting for eliminating all fossil fuels — and she hopes with Bloomberg’s help.

The Beyond Coal campaign has an existing mission to eliminate gas as well as coal by 2030. Hitt expects to discuss with Bloomberg’s team whether he will formally partner on that expanded mission.

“We recognize it is aggressive, but we also a have track record on delivering dramatic coal reductions,” she told Josh.

Read Josh’s full report here.

TRUMP FORMALLY NOMINATES BERNHARDT TO CONTINUE LEADING INTERIOR: Trump on Friday officially nominated Interior acting secretary David Bernhardt to stay on and continue leading the agency.

Trump announced via Twitter on Feb. 4 that he planned to nominate Bernhardt, but the White House stalled in getting the paperwork done, and submitting his name to the Senate.

Bernhardt has been serving as acting secretary since Ryan Zinke resigned from the Cabinet post last year amid an ethics investigation.

Bernhardt, a former lobbyist, has been criticized for his ties to the fossil fuel industry. Environmental groups and Democrats have vowed to fight his nomination, but he will likely be confirmed on the backs of Senate Republicans.

The Rundown

Wall Street Journal ‘Extension cord’ to carry green power from Midwest to East

Reuters China expands switch from polluting coal heating in 2018

Washington Post As Japan’s leader, Junichiro Koizumi backed nuclear power. Now he’s a major foe

New York Times Automakers retool marketing machines as they go electric

Bloomberg Tesla is in talks with Chinese battery giant to power Model 3s made in China

Calendar

MONDAY | March 11

Budget day. President Trump’s fiscal year 2020 budget is released.

All day, Houston. The CERAWeek energy conference kicks off, March 11-15.

TUESDAY | March 12

10 a.m., 2154 Rayburn.The House Oversight and Reform Committee’s Economic and Consumer Policy Subcommittee holds a hearing on “Examining the Public Health Risks of Carcinogens in Consumer Products.”

WEDNESDAY | March 13

10 a.m., 406 Dirksen. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee holds a full committee hearing on “Diesel Emissions Reduction Act of 2019.”