Daily on Energy: The natural gas industry’s Turkey Day campaign

It’s only a few cents here and there. Analysis conducted by the gas lobby found cooking a 15-pound bird costs on average $0.49 — compared to $0.51 in an electric convection oven and $0.95 in a standard electric oven.

But the natural gas industry’s point is broader: Don’t count out the benefits of natural gas appliances.

“To me, what this suggests is you use a little bit of energy to cook, but you use a lot of energy to heat,” Richard Meyer, who directs the American Gas Association’s energy analysis and standards, told Abby. “The difference between gas and electric can be substantial.”

The gas group’s Thanksgiving PR push comes as the industry is fighting city-level bans on natural gas appliances in new buildings. More than a dozen California cities have adopted such prohibitions in a quest to cut carbon emissions from buildings, and the trend is expanding eastward. Brookline, Massachusetts adopted an even more expansive ban last week, extending the ban on natural gas appliances to building retrofits, too.

Commercial and residential buildings emitted nearly 12% of total U.S. greenhouse gases in 2017, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency. One of the primary drivers of those emissions was burning fossil fuels for heat, the agency said.

The city-level actions are calling into question how customers will react to switching to all-electric appliances — and whether they’ll still back that option if their energy costs go up. Cooking with natural gas adds a more personal element to the fight.

Already, Berkeley faces a lawsuit from the California Restaurant Association over its natural gas appliance ban.

An overwhelming number of cooks are trained on and use natural gas ovens and stoves, Robert Phillips, a chef and chairman of the Chef De Cuisine Association of California, said. “It’s like taking paint away from a painter and asking them to create a masterpiece.”

Are there are better ways to make everyone happy?: Meyer said the gas industry is identifying alternative pathways, whereby cities can cut their building emissions without getting rid of every natural gas appliance.

That could be by improving the efficiency of natural gas appliances and looking to renewable sources of natural gas, through biomass, for example, Meyer said, previewing research the American Gas Foundation will be releasing in the coming weeks.

“There are a lot of pathways that we could think through and explore that could bend the curve on emissions from our buildings that don’t adhere to a simple all-electric approach,” Meyer said. “Climate change is challenging enough without limiting our options to address emissions within the building sector.”

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.

2020 DEMOCRATS HAVE A KAVANAUGH PROBLEM: Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh tipped his hand as to how he and the other conservative justices could strike down ambitious climate regulations.

Kavanaugh, in a recent court statement, suggested he’d join with his conservative colleagues to resurrect the “non-delegation doctrine” — a legal tool used by the Supreme Court in the 1930s to reject New Deal legislation, writes Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at UCLA, in a blog post Tuesday.

Under that doctrine, federal agencies have very little room to interpret and implement federal statutes, Carlson says. That would jeopardize regulations like the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, where federal agencies were creative in using their existing authorities to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Why this matters for 2020 hopefuls: They’d have to rely much more heavily on Congress to get anything done on climate change.

Democrats running for the White House have big, bold climate plans — but many of the actions they’d take would be through regulation. Any of those regulations could fall victim to the Supreme Court’s conservative justices, who could say Congress hasn’t spoken specifically or precisely enough yet to give federal agencies the ability to regulate greenhouse gases.

“The bottom line of all of this technical Constitutional doctrine is, to me, clear: we will not have expansive policy to tackle climate change until Congress acts,” Carlson writes. “And Congress won’t act unless the Democrats can take the Senate in addition to the White House in 2020.”

SCIENCE COMMUNITY STILL IN UPROAR OVER EPA PLANS: The editors of six major scientific journals aren’t at all confident the Environmental Protection Agency listened to their concerns about its science transparency proposal.

In fact, they’re raising alarm the EPA’s supplemental proposal, currently under White House review, could be worse than the agency’s first take — especially given EPA’s plans to expand the restrictions to all science the agency considers in policymaking, even studies that were the basis of prior regulations.

“[F]oundational science from years past—research on air quality and asthma, for example, or water quality and human health—could be deemed by the EPA to be insufficient for informing our most significant public health issues,” the editors wrote in a joint statement Tuesday. “That would be a catastrophe.”

If you recall: The EPA’s proposal, dating back to the Scott Pruitt era, would bar the agency from using certain scientific studies in policymaking where the underlying data isn’t publicly available. Under Administrator Andrew Wheeler, however, the agency could be far expanding that reach.

Scientists and environmentalists are concerned the proposal would undercut the EPA’s ability to use scientific research based on the study of human health, known as epidemiology studies. That type of research underlies many of the EPA’s most consequential regulations limiting air, water, chemical, and toxic pollution.

CHINA’S CHILL RESPONSE TO ‘BLEAK’ UN REPORT: China is not promising additional action in the wake of the United Nations’ “bleak” report Tuesday finding the world needs to increase its pledges to the Paris agreement, especially the largest emitters.

China’s top environmental officials at a press briefing Wednesday reiterated their support for the Paris agreement, a step beyond what the U.S. is doing after the Trump administration began the process of withdrawing from the pact. China and the U.S. are the world’s two largest emitters, in that order.

However, China did not pledge deeper emissions cuts beyond its original Paris commitment of halting the increase in its emissions by 2030, which experts consider insufficient. Officials told reporters China has met its carbon reduction goal for 2020 ahead of schedule.

But the officials did not respond to a proposal from the U.N.’s “emissions gap” report that China ban all new coal plants. While China has invested more than any country into clean energy, and is the largest market for electric vehicles, it is planning a surge of new coal plants.

“As the world’s largest developing country, on the one hand, we continue to work hard to advance the fight against climate change,” Zhao Yingmin, China’s vice environmental minister, said at the briefing, in comments reported by Bloomberg. “On the other hand, we are indeed facing multiple challenges such as developing the economy, improving people’s livelihood, eliminating poverty and controlling pollution.”

His comments come ahead of a new round of climate talks in Madrid next week, where countries will work to finalize rules implementing the Paris agreement.

TEXAS REFINERY PLANT EXPLOSION INJURES THREE: Three people were injured in a refinery plant explosion Wednesday in Port Neches, Texas, a city about 95 miles east of Houston where several chemical plants are located.

The company that operates the plant, TPC Group, reported in a news release the explosion involved a processing unit. The explosion blew out the windows of buildings several miles away, video posted to social media shows.

Emergency personnel were still responding to the incident this morning. Two employees and one contractor who were injured were taken to the hospital. TPC reported the explosion to federal authorities, and is so far unable to specify a cause.

People living within a half mile of the plant were forced to evacuate, while those living within a mile of the plant were encouraged to evacuate, according to local television station KTRK.

Interesting timing: The explosion occurred days after the EPA proposed rolling back Obama-era chemical handling rules put in place in response to a 2013 explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas that killed 15 people.

EPA claims the changes keep safety protections in place but remove burdensome requirements and respond to concerns from first responders and state regulators. Environmental groups, though, have said EPA’s rollback would weaken safeguards in place to protect communities from chemical explosions and other incidents.

FERC’S CHATTERJEE TRIPPIN’ TO EUROPE: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Neil Chatterjee will travel to Europe next week to give technical advice on other nations’ electricity markets, and to help them integrate renewables.

“This might be the first time the new EU member countries have met with another national regulator who knows firsthand the challenges of balancing regional transmission organizations with increasing amounts of renewable energy.” Mary O’Driscoll, a FERC spokesman, told Josh.

Chatterjee’s itinerary, beginning Dec. 3 and ending Dec. 6, includes stops in Vienna, Warsaw, Prague, and Budapest.

The discussion topics, in addition to integrating renewables, include decarbonizing energy markets, cybersecurity, and developing markets for liquified natural gas in the EU.

The Rundown

Wall Street Journal Asia seeks to breeze past Europe with offshore wind projects

Reuters Feuding Korean firms risk disrupting electric car battery supplies

Financial Times Miami Republicans at odds with Trump on climate change

Washington Post A crisis in the water is decimating this once-booming fishing town

E&E News U.S. grid reliability threatened by warming rivers — study

Calendar

TUESDAY | DECEMBER 3

3 p.m. 406 Dirksen. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety will hold a hearing on the nomination of Robert J. Feitel, of Maryland, to be Inspector General of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

THURSDAY | DECEMBER 5

10:30 a.m. 2322 Rayburn. House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee will hold a hearing entitled “Building a 100 Percent Clean Economy: Solutions for Economy-Wide Deep Decarbonization.”