Daily on Energy: International energy chief says that nuclear and carbon capture, opposed by Sanders, are critical for emissions reduction

“If had to pick one technology as the most critical, if I had a magic touch to make this technology mature and [gain] market share,” it would be carbon capture, Birol told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in testimony Thursday. “I cannot think of any technology more crucial.”

Birol added that providing a lifetime extension for existing nuclear plants in the U.S. is the cheapest way to reduce emissions — better than renewables — and he called for policymakers to invest in smaller advanced reactors.

Bernie bets on only renewables: Sanders, running against Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, thinks he knows better.

His official climate plan calls carbon capture and nuclear power “false solutions.”

His plan would halt construction of new nuclear plants and end license renewals for existing ones, while aiming for the electricity and transportation sectors to be run entirely on renewable power no later than 2030. Biden, by contrast, says addressing climate change should include “all low- and zero-carbon technologies,” including carbon capture and nuclear.

Birol favors the Biden approach and his reasoning is simple: Globally, fossil fuel use isn’t falling despite the growth of renewables (80% of global energy comes from fossil fuels). It is “completely wrong” to declare the end of the coal era, he added, as global consumption of the dirtiest fuel increased 65% between 2000 and 2018, he said.

Birol acknowledged that wind and solar are growing “very strongly” with solar being the “star” of new electricity generation due to falling costs.

But the world will continue to need oil and gas for “years to come.”

Scaling up the use of carbon capture for fossil fuel plants and industrial purposes is “not an easy task” because it is expensive, while nuclear power remains underappreciated by governments of advanced economies, Birol said.

But here’s the bottom-line: “The problems are so huge we need all fuels and all technologies to be on board,” Birol said. “Energy is a good thing. Emissions is a bad thing. Some people confuse it.”

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WARREN HAD A CLIMATE PLAN FOR THAT, BUT SHE DROPS OUT: Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the Democratic primary Thursday, leaving behind a suite of climate plans that she adopted from former candidate Jay Inslee.

Warren had the most detailed climate agenda of all candidates, taking up Inslee — the original “climate candidate” — on his offer to swipe some of his ideas.

Some of those included setting immediate carbon-reduction targets, in addition to 2050 goals popular with the rest of the field. Like Inslee, Warren sought for utilities to achieve 100% carbon-neutral power by 2030, and reaching all-renewable electricity generation by 2035. Warren copied Inslee as the only candidate to set the specific target of retiring all coal plants within a decade.

She also set targets for other sectors, such as buildings and transportation.

Just this week, Warren released a novel plan targeting fossil fuel investments by banks, vowing to use a powerful financial law — the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act — to force higher standards on climate risk within the financial markets.

RUSSIA HOLDS UP OPEC DEAL TO CUT OIL PRODUCTION: OPEC has proposed cutting oil production by 1.5 million barrels per day through June to counter reduced global demand and low prices caused by slowed economic activity from the coronavirus.

The proposal, agreed to during a meeting in Vienna on Thursday, is contingent on approval from Russia, a top producer that has allied with OPEC to prop up prices in recent years but has resisted further cutting oil production in response to coronavirus. Russia will join the OPEC meeting on Friday as the parties try to finalize an agreement.

OPEC officials are “gambling that they can overcome Russian opposition that could block the move,” Bloomberg reported from Thursday’s meeting.

Oil demand, consumption take major hit: World oil demand will suffer the largest quarterly drop in history — 3.8 million barrels per day, or about 4% of world supplies — a steeper fall than what occurred during the 2009 financial crisis, according to a projection by research group IHS Markit. Birol on Thursday said energy “will be disproportionately effected by the coronavirus” because aviation represents 10% of global oil demand. While the “fundamentals of oil demand are still strong” for the long-term, Birol said, if consumption continues to suffer for a long time “it will have an impact” on U.S. shale production.

Oil prices have declined more than 20% this year since the coronavirus outbreak began in China, with the current Brent crude level at about $51 per barrel.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin says that price is sufficient to balance its budget, but Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s de factor leader, requires a higher price. OPEC is already implementing an agreement from last year to cut production 2.1 million barrels per day in response to sustained lower prices from the U.S. shale boom, so any new reduction would be in addition to that.

SENATE FAST-TRACKS CONSERVATION BILLS WITH TRUMP’S APPROVAL: And the biggest political winners are two Republican senators up for reelection this cycle — Colorado’s Cory Gardner and Montana’s Steve Daines.

In a press conference Wednesday, Gardner and Daines said they convinced Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Trump during a meeting last week to back bills to permanently fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund and to address a backlog in national park maintenance. Trump on Tuesday announced his support in a tweet, and McConnell has agreed to a speedy process to bring the bills, both bipartisan, to the floor.

Gardner, during the news conference, said passage of the two bills would be “one of the most significant conservation accomplishments in our country.”

It’s not the first time Trump officials have supported such efforts: Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke previously supported legislative proposals to use energy revenues to fix national parks, as the senators’ Restore Our Parks Act would do.

But there appears to be a new energy behind moving the bills swiftly, perhaps reflecting a political urgency to give Gardner and Daines a win heading into November. Gardner faces one of the toughest reelection races this cycle, and Daines could soon get a well-known Democratic challenger, Montana Governor Steve Bullock, who is rumored to be considering a Senate run after a failed bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

FIGHT HEATING UP OVER REFRIGERANT AMENDMENT: Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy is threatening to hold up the entire sweeping energy bill the Senate began considering this week.

Kennedy is trying to get a vote on his amendment, which reflects a bipartisan bill he introduced with Delaware Democrat Tom Carper directing the EPA to set federal standards reducing potent greenhouse gas refrigerants known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs. But Republican leadership won’t let him have it, even though Kennedy is confident he has more than 60 votes on his side.

So what’s the issue? A few in Republican leadership, including Senate Environment Committee Chairman John Barrasso, say they won’t accept the coolant bill without strong language prohibiting states from setting their own, more stringent HFC regulations. The White House has also expressed similar objections.

So far, there have been “informal discussions” among Carper, Kennedy, and Barrasso in which Carper offered to discuss a potential compromise to address Republicans’ concerns, but they haven’t reached any agreement yet.

More on the back-and-forth in Abby’s story from yesterday.

MINING GIANT SAYS ITS CLIMATE RISK IS ‘HIGH’: Mining giant Glencore says its risks from climate change, both physical risks from the effects of warming and transition risks from low-carbon policies, increased in the last year.

That is even as Glencore agreed to cap its coal production last year. In its 2019 annual report, released Thursday, Glencore acknowledges a number of material risks to its business from a transition to a low-carbon economy, including new climate regulations that could impact the mining company’s reputation and operations.

The mining company also cites risks from climate litigation, particularly lawsuits seeking payment from fossil fuel companies for climate damages, and from divestment away from companies like Glencore with large fossil fuel operations.

“We seek to manage our coal business tightly around cash generation, including ensuring that ongoing/further investment has shorter cost pay-backs so as to mitigate ‘stranded-assets’ risk,” the company wrote.

Silver lining: Glencore also identified one potential new opportunity in a low-carbon world, given the company’s mining of critical minerals like copper, cobalt, and nickel needed for production of batteries and electric vehicles, though it adds “technological change may over time reduce their requirement.”

‘MASSIVE INVESTMENT’ STILL NEEDED IN OIL AND GAS, EXXON SAYS: Continued investment and production of oil and natural gas is a critical piece of ExxonMobil’s long-term growth strategy, even as it acknowledges the need to address climate change.

Darren Woods, ExxonMobil’s CEO, said during the company’s annual investor day that population growth and an expanding middle class would continue to boost energy demand, requiring large investments in oil and gas even in a carbon-constrained world. Woods also said the company would invest in new technologies to cut emissions, like carbon capture, according to a press release.

“We’re investing in new energy supplies to improve global living standards, working on technologies that are needed to reduce emissions and supporting sensible policies, such as those putting a price on carbon or regulations to reduce emissions of methane,” Woods said.

Woods’ remarks come just days after Exxon unveiled a model framework for federal regulations to target methane emissions from both new and existing drilling operations. The Trump EPA has proposed to eliminate direct regulation of methane from the oil and gas sector.

CLIMATE COMMITTEE CHAIR ENDORSES BIDEN: Rep. Kathy Castor, Democrat of Florida, is backing Biden for president.

Castor, the chair of the House’s Select Climate Crisis Committee, said in a statement that Biden would work “to ensure a healthy environment for future generations.”

WHITE HOUSE WON’T OPEN DOOR TO MORE NEPA COMMENTS: The White House’s Council on Environmental Quality refused a request from Democrats to extend the comment period and allow more public meetings for its proposal to speed permitting reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act for infrastructure projects.

“CEQ has engaged in extensive public outreach on its proposal to update the NEPA regulations and the comment period will close on March 10th,” CEQ Chairman Mary Neumayr said in a letter Wednesday to Senator Tom Carper, ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Reps. Raul Grijalva, chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, and Peter DeFazio, chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Those committee leaders are three of 164 Democrats who requested CEQ extend the comment period from 60 days to 180 days, and hold five public meetings across the country, rather than two.

CEQ first proposed the NEPA changes on January 9, which call for limiting reviews to two years while making it more difficult for environmentalists to challenge projects in court.

THUNBERG RIPS EU ‘SURRENDER’ ON 2050 CLIMATE GOALS: Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg is not satisfied with the EU’s proposed climate law unveiled Wednesday which would legally bind the 27-nation political body to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Thunberg said the measure didn’t go far enough because it delays setting a revised, more ambitious target for 2030.

“’Net zero emissions by 2050′ for the EU equals surrender. It means giving up,” wrote Thunberg in an open letter signed by 33 other climate activists. She said the proposal “will “mean nothing if high emissions continue like today.”

The European Commission is analyzing how to improve its existing 2030 goal of cutting emissions by at least 40%, and will finalize a number later on. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has proposed increasing it to 50% or 55%.

In the meantime, Von der Leyen defended the EU’s 2050 target, saying it “offers predictability and transparency for European industry and investors.”

The Rundown

Bloomberg Tropical forests are reaching their carbon dioxide limit

New York Times Climate change affected Austrailia’s wildfires, scientists confirm

Star Tribune Wisconsin solar installations delayed because of coronavirus; Minnesota developers worried

Calendar

TUESDAY | MARCH 10

10 a.m. 366 Dirksen. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt testifies before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on the agency’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget request.