Trump is a lot greener than you think he is

He made the comments after saying that he would cancel payments to the United Nations for a Green Climate Fund under the Paris climate accord. Instead, the money would be “used to support our environmental infrastructure” with the goal of clean water and air.

Trump reiterated the same sentiment in a meeting with automakers early in his presidency

“I am to a large extent, an environmentalist. I believe in it,” he said. “But it is out of control.”

But Trump is no longer trying to convince people of his environmental leanings.

Instead, the administration is implementing energy programs that focus on technological innovation over regulation, much like past Republican administrations.

The Energy Department has been making frequent announcements about funding, international agreements, and private-sector collaboration to push clean energy development.

“They’ve really started to get things flowing at the DOE,” said Rich Powell, executive director of the conservative ClearPath Foundation, pointing out a number of significant renewable energy and low-emission technology announcements this spring.

No, the administration hasn’t abandoned fossil fuels. But it is working on clean-coal technology that would remove carbon dioxide from the air. Natural gas, which it is pushing especially for exports, is considered a bridge to renewable energy. Meanwhile, the Energy Department wants technology for emissions-free small nuclear reactors, offshore wind, underwater energy turbines, and ways for wind and solar to be able to be used around the clock.

“I’ve noticed an emphasis on emerging technology and a shift away from deployment … and more of an emphasis on doing research and development and more applied and basic research in areas like [energy] storage,” said Tom Pyle, president and CEO of the conservative American Energy Alliance think tank, and Trump’s former transition chief for the Energy Department.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry and his top officials have “all been saying we want to see an agenda focused on more innovation and less regulation,” Powell said.

“I think they are carrying out pretty strongly on both those fronts,” Powell said. His group advocates for clean energy policies that hold to Republican ideals, including innovation and support for lower-emission resources such as nuclear, natural gas, hydropower, and clean coal technologies.

In a recent interview with the Washington Examiner, Perry was quick to point out his role in supporting clean energy as part of Trump’s “America First” agenda.

“We’re not here just to promote the fossil fuels,” Perry said. “We’re here to promote wind, and solar, and hydro, and maybe some forms of energy that we haven’t even dreamed up yet.”

Perry’s ‘big hairy challenge’

More recently, Perry has been playing up his support for energy storage technologies, such as batteries, which renewable energy proponents consider crucial for increasing the use of solar and wind energy. The batteries kick in quickly to provide stored power from solar and wind when electricity output drops — at night, during storms or when the wind doesn’t blow.

Last month, his department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy issued a funding opportunity for companies doing work on long-duration energy storage that supporters like Powell called “huge.” Long-term storage projects would provide electricity for days, as opposed to the shorter-term devices now available that can provide power for only hours.

He said for renewable energy advocates, “that’s the most important thing this administration can be doing.”

If the administration can find a way to solve wind and solar’s inherent intermittency problems to integrate them into the grid, that would increase the amount of renewable energy being used, Powell said.

It’s a “big hairy challenge” that ARPA-E is taking on, but exactly the type of thing the Energy Department should be doing, focusing on “big, disruptive technologies,” Powell said.

Doling out the dough

In the last several weeks, the Energy Department has pushed out $340 million in funding announcements, with the biggest efforts focused on renewable energy, said an Energy Department official. That doesn’t include the ongoing work at the Energy Department’s numerous national labs, such as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado.

For example, the Energy Department is ponying up $105 million to help companies advance new solar energy technologies. The Solar Energy Technologies Office wants to use the money to seed 70 projects that address affordability, flexibility, and performance of solar technologies on the grid.

That includes “solar concentrating power plants,” such as the Ivanpah plant in the California desert, a popular target of Republicans during the Obama administration. Republicans dubbed it the “death ray” because its solar panels incinerated birds.

Nevertheless, the Trump administration wants to improve the technology.

The department also is doling out $19 million to support 12 research projects focused on battery and electric vehicle technologies that can charge the automobiles faster. The technologies aim to shorten charging times to 15 minutes or less. That could help sales of electric cars get off the ground.

Perry also announced new funding for exploring marine energy technologies, which are essentially underwater wind turbines that harness a river’s natural current and flow to produce electricity. The effort also supports tidal energy projects that use the ebb and flow of the tide to generate energy.

A trip Perry took to Alaska this month was punctuated by his tour of Kodiak Island, which receives 98 percent of its energy from renewable sources. He tweeted out photos under large wind turbines and toured the battery back-up facility there.

“America’s ‘all of the above’ energy bounty was on full display in the Last Frontier State,” Perry said after the trip.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the switch to renewables has saved Kodiak $40 million per year in energy costs that otherwise would be spent on expensive diesel fuel. She set up the trip with Perry.

“While the remoteness of our state is a challenge, we are blessed with an extraordinary and diverse set of resources, which makes Alaska the perfect testing ground for solutions to achieving more affordable, reliable and clean energy,” Murkowski said.

Perry also recently announced $60 million in federal funds last month as the first step in an effort to help financially ailing nuclear plants, while advancing new technologies.

The Energy Department selected 13 projects to receive the funding for cost-shared research and development for advanced nuclear technologies.

The funding selections are the first under a new quarterly application review and selection process. Perry intends to use up to $40 million in the next two quarters for innovative proposals.

“Supporting existing as well as advanced reactor development will pave the way to a safer, more efficient, and clean baseload energy that supports the U.S. economy and energy independence,” Perry said. Baseload plants provide power around the clock.

International energy matters, too

Clean energy agreements with allies are also part of the administration’s agenda this year.

Perry recently entered into a “new era” of nuclear power development with France, using the state visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to sign a fresh joint agreement on nuclear energy development.

The agency said the “signing ushers in a new era” of research and development cooperation between the two countries focused on enhanced collaboration in the area of advanced reactors that are supposed to be smaller, safer, and more powerful than conventional reactors. The reactors would use liquid metal, not water, for cooling. Some companies are making hot tub-sized liquid-metal reactors that function more like nuclear batteries and don’t require much space to build.

Perry also was in India last month to strike up new deals on clean coal technology that strips out carbon dioxide from a coal plant’s exhaust, and then stores it underground or uses it to produce transportation fuel or to extract oil from existing wells.

He also wants to collaborate on new nuclear development with the Asian giant, while looking for opportunities to expand its natural gas infrastructure. India is the largest new market for energy, and Trump wants to tap it by selling it U.S.-made technology to help it use more nuclear power, more natural gas and more coal.

India is also looking to meet the goals of the Paris climate deal by cutting its CO2 emissions that many climate scientists blame for driving manmade global warming. U.S. technologies and more natural gas exports will help that along.

Powell, with ClearPath, said the international agreements are just as important as the funding announcements, because their goal is to establish new markets for U.S. clean energy.

Even detractors of the Trump administration have recognized the benefits of the Energy Department’s efforts.

The announcement are “constructive,” said Greg Wetstone, the president and CEO of the American Council on Renewable Energy, a large umbrella group for the sprawling renewable energy industry. He acknowledges that renewable energy did get a “budget bump” above what the president’s initial request in the fiscal 2018 spending bill that Congress approved in March.

“We just want to make sure that those parts of DOE that deal with these technologies that are so important to our future continue to be well-funded, and we’re encouraged by some of the recent [funding proposals], including on battery storage and solar,” he said. “That’s good stuff, and that’s important and the direction we’re all going.”

‘Thumb on the scale’

Wetstone is critical of the Trump administration’s efforts to prop up financially struggling coal and nuclear power plants. In the fall, Perry pushed for market-based subsidies through the markets overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. FERC rejected Perry’s proposal, but Ohio-based utility First Energy is requesting a similar bailout using Perry’s emergency authority under the Federal Power Act to order that power plants stay open.

“Some of the proposals that have come from DOE are really about moving backwards,” Wetstone said.

First Energy made the request soon after announcing it would close three of its nuclear plants over the next three years. It also must make decisions later this year about closing its coal plants.

“What we’re concerned about is the thumb on the scale,” Wetstone said.

“The coal and nuclear power plants would require a big subsidy from electricity consumers to continue contributing to the grid, and really all we’re looking for is a fair competitive marketplace,” he said. “We feel we can out-compete those sources.”

Wetstone is part of a broad coalition, which includes the fossil fuel and renewable energy industries, opposing the First Energy petition. “It’s really a coalition that says ‘let this marketplace work, and let’s let consumers and competition determine the winners,’” he said.

Even Pyle, Trump’s former energy transition chief, says he did not support the Perry effort, nor does he support the First Energy petition or any other authority used to help power plants that are not financially viable.

Pyle says the idea may be hard to swallow politically, but the older industries need to find ways to make themselves more competitive and provide a “value added” benefit.

Pyle does not support renewable energy because of the subsidies it receives, but he does believe in maintaining a strong functioning market and letting the market decide which resources are competitive and which are not.

An Energy Department official pointed out that the issue is about the resilience of the grid, which “is not exclusive to the coal and nuclear industries.”

“I don’t think we’ve turned our backs on renewables just because we’re visiting the issue of resilience, which, by the way, includes renewable energy,” the official said.

Others think there is a policy vacuum on clean energy that has yet to be filled by the Trump administration.

“We do not have a clean energy policy in the United States, right now,” said Josh Freed, clean energy vice president at the Third Way think tank in Washington. “There are two visions being put forward.”

The first vision comes from the Office of Management and Budget, which spells disaster for clean energy innovation because of the steep cuts proposed for the Energy Department’s clean energy budgets, Freed said.

The second vision comes from Congress. That vision is the primary reason why Perry is able to make many of the spending announcements that he has, because Congress has rejected OMB’s vision.

Congress “has the United States pretty much on track on clean energy innovation,” he said. “Secretary Perry and the Department of Energy are carrying out the path forward that Congress has laid out for them on energy innovation. Fortunately, that means new funding opportunities in advanced solar and energy storage and real leadership on advanced nuclear.”

Still, “there isn’t a clear vision of where the United States should go.”

He would like to see achievable clean energy goals from the administration, working with the private sector. The lack of goals is “detrimental” to clean energy development and ultimate progress, Freed said.

‘Pro-energy, period’

The Energy Department doesn’t see it the same way.

“Congress does have a big role, obviously, but we prioritize trying to get this money out the door because we really think this work is important, and if we don’t do it soon it might not get obligated by the end of the fiscal year,” an Energy Department official said.

“We have been very proactive in trying to get these announcements out there,” the official said. “The administration is pro-energy, period. And that includes renewables.”

The official pointed out that the reduction in solar costs is one of the reasons for the drop in the nation’s most recent carbon dioxide emissions cuts, combined with the switch to more natural gas use by the power sector and other factors.

“From an R&D standpoint, the dramatically lower cost of solar, in particular, allows us to expand and refocus our R&D portfolio around grid integration, which we see as the longer-term challenge facing the solar industry.”

Grid integration has to do with how solar panels interact with the power grid to respond to fluctuations in electricity demand, and tying it into energy storage.

“That’s a significant shift that this administration is pursuing,” the official said.

The shift is most obvious in the $105 million in funding for solar innovation, announced last month, with the largest amount going to projects that help solar panels communicate with grid operators and be more flexible with energy supply and demand changes.

The work the administration is looking to do on the “death ray” solar thermal plants could make solar energy an “on-demand” energy resource by perfecting long-term energy storage using molten salt, the official said. It would mean solar energy no longer would be subject to rain or the sun setting to provide electricity to the grid, the official said.

Also, the agency is expected to award its American Made Solar Prize in the next month, or so, the official added.

The $3 million award is designed to give incentives to entrepreneurs to develop new processes and products that will reassert America’s solar leadership. This prize is in addition to $400 million the Energy Department granted for solar projects and related technologies in 2017.

The White House itself is looking to lead energy innovation efforts.

“Everyone loves energy innovation,” said George David Banks, Trump’s former adviser on international environmental policy. The broad benefits that come from innovating draw people to the idea, he said.

“It’s not just about oil and gas and fossil, but the U.S. leading the way on innovation,” Banks said.

Banks was behind Trump’s decision in June to issue a Civil Nuclear Review to revive and expand the nation’s nuclear energy resources. The review is continuing.

Banks suggested that the innovation agenda at the White House could be broader than energy, but energy would be a major part of it.

Some environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council have specific ideas on how the administration should proceed.

“I do think we are seeing some good stuff coming out of the administration,” said Elizabeth Noll, legislative director for the group.

She said that if the administration wanted to go for “an innovation push for clean energy,” the Energy Department’s loan office has $41 billion for clean energy and transportation projects.

“This seems like a significant down payment for clean energy innovation,” she said. Yet, instead, the administration has sought to cut some of the energy department’s authority in a rescission plan the White House has announced, she pointed out.

Banks said any energy innovation plan from the White House likely would be much narrower in scope.

“They might focus it on research that the private sector won’t do, and they may have a narrower role for government,” he said. The bottom line is “conservatives love it.”