The heavy hitters that President-elect Trump has lined up to lead his energy and environment team are set to go before Congress this week to address major issues from climate change to protecting the chicken-like sage grouse in the West.
First up is Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Republican lawmaker from the coal-producing state of Montana, who will attend his first confirmation hearing Tuesday in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Zinke is Trump’s nominee to head the Interior Department, which houses the National Park Service and a number of agencies that regulate offshore drilling, permit mining, and oil and natural gas drilling on federal lands, and makes major decisions on which species to protect under the Endangered Species Act.
Coal, oil and natural gas leasing in the West is a big issue for Zinke. As a member of the House, he has opposed the moratorium imposed by the Obama administration on granting new coal leases while it reviews the old leasing program. A report from the Interior Department released last week showed that it will seek to raise the cost of leasing new lands for coal mining based partly on the harm it causes to global warming.
Zinke said last year that he fought to include language in a House appropriations bill to end the moratorium. “We’ve seen how hard hit Montana is as a result of this administration’s war on coal,” Zinke said after the bill passed in the summer. “The cost is real. In communities like Colstrip, Baker, Billings and Crow Agency, coal, oil, gas and other natural resources are the only answer. For the great Crow nation, their treaty specifically states the United States shall not interfere with their destiny if they choose to mine their coal.”
The revenue that comes from energy production in the state are the only way schools, infrastructure and communities survive, he said. He also opposes the Environmental Protection Agency’s implementation of the Waters of the United States rule that makes ranchers, farmers, energy producers and developers subject to the agency’s enforcement powers under the Clean Water Act. He also opposes the Obama administration’s new methane requirements, new Bureau of Land Management regulations on the oil and gas industry, and greenhouse gas regulations for new and existing power plants that Trump has vowed to repeal in his first 100 days in office.
Zinke also is expected to be asked about endangered species designations, which House Republicans have been especially critical of because the Fish and Wildlife Service has listed species at an increased rate. There also is the continuing controversy over how the Interior Department treats the sage grouse, a western chicken-sized bird species that has been a thorn in the side of Republicans because of its impact on land use decision due to the Interior Department’s complicated system of habitat protections for it.
On Wednesday, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, Trump’s nominee to head the EPA, will go before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee for what is expected to be one of the more contentious nomination hearings. Pruitt’s nomination is being aggressively opposed by environmental groups and most of the Democrats on the committee who will participate in Wednesday’s hearing.
Pruitt should expect Democrats led by ranking member Tom Carper to grill him over his record on climate change and the fact that he is one of 28 attorneys general suing the EPA over its Clean Power Plan that regulates greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
Pruitt and the other attorneys general, as well as more than 100 business groups, argue that the plan oversteps the EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act and is unconstitutional. The plan requires states to reduce their carbon pollution a third by 2030. It is being reviewed currently by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Carper held a rally on Thursday with his fellow committee Democrats to call on Pruitt to respect the science of climate change if he wants to gain their support to head the agency. Pruitt spent last week meeting with the committee’s Democrats.
Pruitt will be key to Trump’s goal of repealing the Clean Power Plan, which the president-elect has made a goal of his first 100 days in office.
Christopher Guith, vice president for policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, said the plan can’t be repealed by executive fiat but will require a process of significant “rejiggering” to undo. Pruitt would handle that process while working with the White House and Justice Department in addressing the litigation before the appeals court.
“These rules that are final, you can’t just repeal them,” Guith said. “They have to go through the Administrative Procedures Act regulatory process in order to change them,” he said. “They’re going to have to go through the regulatory process, consult with states and have public comment and all of that stuff. But they’re going to do that, period.”
Pruitt will be at the helm of that intense legal process. Guith said Pruitt also will have to contend with legal challenges that will be coming from environmentalists who are gearing up to sue the EPA at every turn in the process of overturning regulations.
Other issues that will come up at the hearing likely will be the EPA’s Renewable Fuel Standard that the oil and gas industry wants to see reformed or repealed in the new Congress. EPA vehicle emissions standards also will be discussed after the agency on Friday finalized its decision to move ahead with strict new rules through 2025 despite the automotive industry’s protests that it doesn’t work with market trends. The industry said it is looking to the Trump EPA to fix the regulations.
Last in the list of confirmation hearings will be Trump’s pick to head the Energy Department, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Supporters of Perry point to his long history as a two-term governor in one of the largest oil regions on the world and his understanding of the needs of the fossil fuel industry. Texas is also one of the largest deployers of wind energy in the country. He goes before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Thursday, one day before Trump is sworn in as the 45th president of the United States.
Climate change will be a sticking point for Perry at the hearing, but he is also expected to get grilled over how he will treat the legacy nuclear weapons facilities where the agency is obligated to address the waste. One of the facilities, the Hanford Site, is in the back yard of the committee’s top Democrat. Sen. Maria Cantwell, of Washington state, almost certainly will raise concerns about how the agency will move ahead on those obligations under Trump.
Energy committee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, will undoubtedly ask him about how the Energy Department plans to move forward on opening the waste facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada after the Obama administration tried to scuttle the project as a favor to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, who has retired from the Senate. The agency’s role in developing clean coal technology will also likely be an issue raised by senators as Trump said developing the technology is part of his plan to revitalize coal country.
There also will be questions over the department’s role in implementing part of President Obama’s climate agenda. Under Obama’s Climate Action Plan, the agency was charged with pushing out a slew of appliance standards to reduce energy consumption on everything from household refrigerators to industrial electric motors. The lead trade group that represents the heating and refrigeration industry, the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute, sent a letter to every senator last week asking that they support his confirmation.
“During his tenure as governor of Texas, Mr. Perry worked tirelessly to promote job growth and energy security within his state,” read the letter, representing more than 300 companies, including Carrier, which Trump already has formed a relationship with through getting the company to keep jobs in Indiana. “His understanding of the energy economy and its relationship to economic growth will serve the nation well as the next secretary.”
