WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY: Good afternoon and happy Thursday, readers! If you are supposed to be flying the next couple of days, we hope you won’t be hit by the flight cuts caused by the ongoing shutdown (37 days and counting, in case you lost track) ✈️.
🪨⛏️ We have some news coming from the Interior Department today – the agency released its final list of critical minerals with 10 additions to the list.
Plus, in case you missed it yesterday, President Donald Trump announced two key nominations for nuclear regulation and managing public lands. Read on to find out who.
Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner energy and environment writers Callie Patteson (@CalliePatteson) and Maydeen Merino (@MaydeenMerino). Email cpatteson@washingtonexaminer dot com or mmerino@washingtonexaminer dot com 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.
INTERIOR DEPARTMENT FINALIZES MINERAL LIST: The Department of the Interior expanded its list of critical minerals to include new elements, such as copper and coal, allowing these new minerals to become eligible for federal funding and streamlining permitting.
The U.S. Geological Survey today released its final List of Critical Minerals 2025, which included 10 new minerals: boron, copper, lead, metallurgical coal, phosphate, potash, rhenium, silicon, silver, and uranium. The list includes 15 rare earth elements.
The expanded list demonstrates the Trump administration’s effort to build a domestic critical mineral and rare earth supply chain as it attempts to reduce its reliance on China.
During the public comment period, DOI asked whether uranium and met coal should be included on the list. Met coal is used in the production of steel. Both materials were included in the final list. It is another move by the administration that shows its backing for the coal industry.
The USGS list is updated every three years to help identify minerals deemed as essential for the economy. The list helps to inform investments in mining, mine waste, stockpiles, streamlined permitting, and other related areas. In total, the list now contains 60 critical minerals.
“In 2017, President Trump set a goal of first identifying and then securing the mineral resources needed to bolster America’s economy and national security,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement. “The 2025 List of Critical Minerals provides a clear, data-driven road map to reduce our dependence on foreign adversaries, expand domestic production and unleash American innovation.”
Read more by Maydeen here.
TRUMP EYES NEW RARE EARTH DEALS: Trump is seeking to sign new economic deals with five Central Asian nations that could include rare earths.
The deal would mark the 10-year anniversary of the C5+1 forum, which comprises Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The meeting between the nations is set to be held today at the White House for the first time.
White House officials confirmed to the Washington Examiner that the leaders would enter into new economic agreements.
A senior White House official said in a statement that “President Trump looks forward to hosting Central Asian leaders to recognize the tenth anniversary of the C5+1 format. Countries represented will include Turkmenistan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Republic of Kazakhstan, Republic of Uzbekistan, and Republic of Tajikistan.”
“Americans can expect more investments and good deals for our country spanning defense, technology, manufacturing, culture, and more — stay tuned!” the official noted.
The five nations have a significant amount of rare earth elements. According to the USGS, in 2016, Kazakhstan had 160 rare metals and elements, Kyrgyzstan had 75, Tajikistan had 60, Turkmenistan had two, and Uzbekistan had 87.
Read more by Washington Examiner’s Christian Datoc here.
BLOOMBERG COMMITS $100M TO LOWERING METHANE EMISSIONS: Billionaire philanthropist and former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg announced earlier this morning that he is investing $100 million to bolster global efforts to track and reduce methane emissions.
The details: This funding is expected to be used to expand satellite monitoring capabilities worldwide and support policy action in nine countries with high methane emission levels, including Australia, Indonesia, Mexico, and Nigeria, as well as in nine U.S. states, including Texas, New Mexico, California, and Pennsylvania.
The funds will also support the UNEP’s International Methane Emissions Observatory to scale global alert networks to quicken the response time for addressing methane leaks and expand training programs and education tools involving high-emitter data.
Some background: Bloomberg Philanthropies estimates that reducing global methane emissions by 30% by 2030 could have the same effect as removing around 10 gigatons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Methane emissions are broadly considered to have a greater impact on warming, as it is 80 times more potent than CO2 and can leak into the atmosphere at any stage of the production, export, and operation processes.
Key quote: “We know how to measure methane, and we know how to stop it. What’s needed now is the infrastructure to do it everywhere,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “Cutting methane is one of the most powerful and cost-effective ways we can slow global warming this decade — and this investment helps build the system to deliver results, fast.”
NATIONS GET A SCOLDING ON CLIMATE AHEAD OF COP30: United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres lambasted world leaders today, criticizing their failure to meet their targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and curbing global warming.
Guterres’ scolding came during the opening of the general plenary of world leaders who have gathered in Belém, Brazil, ahead of the UN’s Climate Change Conference. This week, a new UN report found that the world has made little progress toward hitting greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets set under the 2016 Paris Agreement. It also found that we are globally on track to see warming of around 2.3-2.8 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels.
Guterres appeared to refer to these findings today, saying “we have failed to ensure we remain below 1.5 degrees.”
“Every fraction of a degree means more hunger, displacement, and loss – especially for those least responsible. This is moral failure – and deadly negligence,” the secretary-general continued.
While the world is on track to overshoot the Paris Agreement goals, Guterres emphasized the need to make that margin as small as possible by accelerating the phase-out of fossil fuels, reducing methane emissions, deploying clean energy sources like wind and solar, and stopping deforestation.
“Too many leaders remain captive to these entrenched interests,” he said. “Too many countries are starved of the resources to adapt – and locked out of the clean energy transition. And too many people are losing hope that their leaders will act. We need to move faster – and move together.”
TRUMP TEAM PUSHES FOR PARIS AGREEMENT TO BE ‘DESTROYED’: Looming over Guterres’ urging for greater global coordination is the Trump administration’s absence from the climate change conference. While Trump has moved to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement and international climate mitigation efforts, some allies wish he would go a step further.
Richard Goldberg, who worked as a senior counselor with the White House’s National Energy Dominance Council earlier this year, told Politico that it is “not enough” to just withdraw from the climate agreement.
“You have to degrade it,” he said. “You have to deter it. You have to potentially destroy it.”
While Trump himself has not directly called on other UN member states to also leave the Paris Agreement, his administration has taken several steps that undermine the international climate agreement’s goals. This includes calling for lengthy multilateral agreements on exporting U.S.-produced oil and gas and urging the European Union to soften its methane reporting and ESG regulations.
MINERAL PRODUCTION BEGINS AT TESLA CO-FOUNDER’S FACTORY: Redwood Materials has begun operations at its $3.5 billion battery recycling factory in South Carolina to provide critical minerals, Bloomberg reports.
JB Straubel, who is also the co-founder of Tesla, founded Redwood Materials. Straubel stated that the company has a system capable of recovering 20,000 metric tons of critical minerals annually.
The company has a recycling plant in Sparks, Nevada, which recovers 60,000 tons of critical minerals annually, making it the primary domestic source of cobalt. The plant also produces as much nickel and lithium as the largest mines in the United States. The South Carolina factory has yet to reach full operational capacity.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S ENERGY POLICY THREATENS SOLAR POLICY: The Solar Energy Industries Association released an analysis that shows that the Trump administration’s approach to energy threatens more than 500 solar and storage projects, totaling 116 gigawatts of capacity.
The SEIA analysis utilized data from the Energy Information Administration indicating that 73 GW of solar and 43 GW of storage projects have not yet obtained all necessary permits. It added that they are at risk of being targeted by the administration. Trump has blocked renewable energy projects from moving forward, while boosting the fossil fuel industry.
The association stated that the projects are located across 44 states, providing power to at least 16 million homes. It added that 18 states have over 50% of their planned electricity capacity at risk of being blocked.
Key quote: SEIA President and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper said, “America’s energy future is under threat. Political attacks on solar and storage are putting half of all power planned to come onto the grid this decade at risk, just as electricity demand from AI is exploding.”
“These are projects that would lower costs for families, strengthen our grid, and cement America’s global competitiveness. Every delay and disruption drives up power bills and hands economic opportunity to China. We need to get back to building,” Hopper said.
ICYMI – TRUMP NAMES NOMINEES FOR BLM AND NRC: More than six months after Trump’s first pick to lead the Bureau of Land Management unexpectedly withdrew her nomination, the president has tapped someone else to head up the agency and boost drilling on public lands.
The details: Trump has named former New Mexico Rep. Stevan Pearce to serve as director of BLM. If confirmed, Pearce is likely to back Trump’s intention of expanding oil and gas drilling on federal lands – something Pearce himself supported while in Congress. While in office, Pearce also supported limiting the Antiquities Act to prevent the executive office from using it to create large national monuments, limiting development opportunities.
Pearce was a member of the House of Representatives until 2018, when he ran an unsuccessful campaign for New Mexico governor.
Pearce does appear to be more closely aligned with Trump’s ‘drill, baby, drill’ message than the president’s first pick to lead the agency, Kathleen Sgamma. While Sgamma is also a longtime oil and gas advocate, she withdrew her nomination at the last minute in April, after a 2021 letter she wrote lambasting Trump over the Jan. 6 riot resurfaced. The White House never formally offered a reason for the withdrawal of her nomination.
Plus…another nuclear regulator: Trump also nominated longtime nuclear regulatory expert Douglas Weaver to fill the last open seat on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Weaver previously worked with the NRC for nearly 20 years, last serving as the deputy director and acting director of the Division of Spent Fuel Storage and Transportation in 2012. Weaver also oversaw regulatory affairs at Holtec International as well as the Westinghouse Electric Company for about 10 years.
Weaver will have to go before the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee before receiving a floor vote on his nomination. In a bipartisan vote last month, the committee advanced the nomination of Ho Nieh, another former NRC staffer, to fill another vacant seat on the commission.
Given Weaver’s extensive experience, his nomination is likely to face little pushback from pro-nuclear Democrats on the committee. If confirmed, Weaver will remain on the commission through June 2026, when former NRC commissioner Annie Caputo’s term is set to expire. Caputo resigned from her post in July.
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