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TRUMP’S EPA ROLLS BACK OBAMA-ERA ‘PUDDLE’ RULE: The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday put new limits on an Obama-era rule that subjected watering holes and ditches to federal clean water regulations by treating them like rivers and streams.

The EPA’s definition makes some key changes to the 2015 Waters of the U.S. rule, but does keep a fair amount of the original rule intact.

“Our goal was not to reinvent the wheel,” said David Ross with EPA’s water pollution office. “Our goal was to try and simplify.”

Rolling back Washington’s authority: EPA acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler explained that Tuesday’s changes would replace the 2015 rule’s definition of a waterway with the intent of clarifying the extent of federal authority under the Clean Water Act.

“The agency’s proposal would replace the 2015 definition with a clearer and easier to understand definition that will result in significant cost savings, protect the nation’s navigable waterways, and reduce barriers to important economic and environmental projects,” Wheeler said on a call with reporters.

Step two in Trump’s plan: Tuesday’s announcement marks the second step in a two-step process initiated by President Trump nearly two years ago to rein in EPA’s authority to regulate bodies of water under the WOTUS rule. The first step was to conduct a thorough review of the Obama-era rule, and the second was to change the key definition of what constitutes a waterway.

The rule has been a thorn in the side of the GOP for years. They see the water regulation as a prime example of federal overreach and an affront to developers and energy producers.

The rule has made its way through a number of courts and has been halted on several occasions after being implemented. That’s why the Trump administration believes it has a strong legal case to modify the waterway definition and reverse EPA’s overreach.

Reversing Washington’s ‘power’ play: The Obama administration’s definition “further expanded Washington’s reach into privately owned lands,” Wheeler said. “They claimed it was in the interest of water quality, but it was really about power — power in the hands of the federal government over landowners.”

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OIL AND ETHANOL INDUSTRIES BOTH CAN’T SUPPORT GOP PUSH TO REFORM EPA’S ETHANOL MANDATE: Rep. John Shimkus, R-IL, is using the final remaining weeks of the GOP-controlled House to discuss a bill he has been promising for months to reform the Renewable Fuel Standard.

Shimkus is the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s environment panel, which held Tuesday’s hearing on his discussion draft legislation called “The 21st Century Transportation Fuels Act.” Shimkus doesn’t have much time as his leadership post switches in just a matter of weeks.

It is not clear whether reforming the ethanol program will be a front-and-center issue once the Democrats take over in January. Further doubts crept in as both the oil industry and ethanol lobbyists voiced their lack of support for the bill.

No love from ethanol country: Renewable Fuels Association president Geoff Cooper said Tuesday that the ethanol industry cannot support the draft “because it falls short of providing the future market certainty and clear growth trajectory our industry needs.”

The bill would eliminate the Renewable Fuel Standard requirements for oil refiners to blend corn-based ethanol, beginning in 2022, and replace it with a high-octane fuel rule, instead. Since ethanol is high-octane fuel, Shimkus believes it will incentivize ethanol without holding to a hard-and-fast mandate, while seeking to advance more advanced biofuels to take the place of corn fuels through 2032.

Cooper says the bill is a no-go for the industry.

Oil industry doesn’t like it either: The American Petroleum Institute sent Shimkus a letter Tuesday saying it couldn’t support the bill as written.

The oil industry wants nothing less than for the ethanol program — with all its renewable fuel blending requirements — to be sunsetted beginning in 2022.

JOE BARTON LAYS OUT LIST OF TRUTHS AT FINAL HEARING BEFORE RETIRING: Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, the Energy and Commerce Committee chairman emeritus, closed out over three-decades of service in the House by laying out what he called the “Barton Truths” at Tuesday’s ethanol hearing.

“I am going to tell what I think are some Barton truths,” Barton said. “Now they might not be truths, but I think they’re truths.”

Barton wants to repeal everything: “I’d repeal every existing regulation and law on [fuel] oxygenates and CAFE standards,” Barton said. “Repeal them all.”

Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard and fuel oxygenate standards regulate the nation’s fuel system, in part by blending more ethanol in the gasoline supply to reduce smog. Ethanol is an oxygenate used in gasoline that helps reduce soot and other pollutants.  

But there are some exceptions: Some exceptions Barton laid out to total repeal: The oxygenate requirement in the Clean Air Act, and perhaps the quotas on ethanol imports.

Credit where credit is due: Barton took credit for passing the 2005 Energy Policy Act that put the ethanol mandate in place, which he said is the root cause for most of the clean energy innovation seen today, from ethanol being a “mature” market to solar becoming competitive.

In the end, it’s unworkable: But the current law that set higher targets for biofuels in 2007 is “unworkable,” Barton warned.

“Come 2020, don’t kid yourself if we throw all this to whoever is running EPA,” because “they don’t have any magic wands over there,” he continued. “They aren’t going to be able to bring order out of chaos.”

He seemed to use his truths to show that the Shimkus bill is “a good place to start” that will have to be worked out in the next Congress.

SAUDI ARABIA’S LEAD CLIMATE NEGOTIATOR SOUNDS A LOT LIKE TRUMP ON TWITTER: The oil-rich kingdom’s top climate change negotiator, Mohammed Al-Sabban, has been calling out supporters of the Paris climate deal as brainwashed, and the climate accord itself as “dead,” while tweeting from the U.N. climate conference in Poland this week.

For example, he sparred with author Andrew Revkin on Twitter over the weekend.

Al-Sabban sounded a lot like President Trump at the U.N.’s COP24 climate meeting, meant to hash out the rules to strengthen Paris. “I think -with all respect- you are among those who have been successfully brainwashed,” he tweeted in replying to his detractors.

Saudi Arabia and the U.S., along with Kuwait and Russia, joined together to downplay the relevance of October’s U.N. climate report that urged nations to begin weaning themselves off of fossil fuels by 2050.

The four major oil-producing nations only agreed to take note of the report, not to “welcome” it as other countries agreed to do in a joint statement endorsing the study’s findings.

MEANWHILE… RICK PERRY TALKS UP SAUDI ARABIA’S ROLE AS ENERGY ALLY: Energy Secretary Rick Perry wrapped up talk in Saudi Arabia on Monday, assuring the kingdom that it “is a strategic ally, especially in the energy space.”

Perry met with Saudi energy minister Khalid Al-Falih as part of his tour of the region, which included a stop in Qatar to discuss cooperation with the large natural gas exporter.

Support on Iran sanctions: “I also discussed the need for open, free, and fair markets with the Saudis,” Perry tweeted. “The Saudi increase in oil this year to offset the Iran sanctions shows the responsibility our countries have to ensure energy is abundant, affordable, and available for world markets.”

Replies to Perry’s tweets criticized the show of friendship amid evidence showing that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder of Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi.

CARBON CAPTURE INDUSTRY SAYS TRUMP EPA IS WRONG TO UNDERESTIMATE THEM: The carbon capture industry is smarting from the Trump administration’s determination last week that their product is not ready for prime time, and looking to prove that it is feasible and worthwhile to trap carbon emissions from power plants and industries.

“The Trump administration is implying that carbon capture is not achievable,” Matt Lucas, an associate director at Carbon180, a nonprofit group pushing the technology, told Josh. “That’s not consistent with 25 years of experience with major carbon capture projects.”

The EPA dissed carbon capture last week as part of a proposal to weaken an Obama-era rule that would have effectively required new coal plants in the U.S. to be built with carbon capture and storage, also known as CCS.

But CCS is not limited to coal:  A new report issued Tuesday by the Global CCS Institute, in conjunction with a United Nations international climate meeting this week in Poland, said that carbon capture has a “vital role” in decarbonizing more “difficult” industrial sectors, such as cement production and steelmaking.

The industrial sector emits 21 percent of global greenhouse gases.

Eighteen large facilities around the world, including two at coal power plants, currently capture and store 30 million tons of carbon each year.

The next big breakthrough: Net Power, a North Carolina-based energy startup, successfully launched in May a $140 million, 50-megawatt demonstration facility in La Porte, Texas, for what would be the world’s first zero-emissions carbon capture and storage natural gas plant.

If proven successful, Net Power hopes the technology powering the facility, designed by one of the company’s investors, 8 Rivers, can be used to capture and store carbon in other power plants around the world.

Read Josh’s full report here.

CALIFORNIA, FEDS, GREENS PARTNER ON LOGGING TO STOP WILDFIRES: While Trump fights with Democrats over the role of forest mismanagement in wildfires, the state of California has partnered with the federal government, environmentalists, and the logging industry to collaborate on a project to cut down trees in order to make forests less flammable.

“It’s a very positive sign to have this level of collaboration in California,” Rich Gordon, president of the California Forestry Association, told Josh. “It reflects an understanding with people on the ground actually facing the problem that it’s not either-or.”

What the partnership does: The Camp Fire and others like it have amplified the urgency of the Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative, whose partners call it the largest state-federal forest management project in the country.

The initiative, launched in 2017 by the U.S. Forest Service, the Nature Conservancy, the Forestry Association, and others, aims to cut trees in 2.4 million acres of forest, in a process called thinning, targeting an area that contains much of the the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

The group also plans to do more prescribed burns, which gives trees more space to breathe.

Most of the work will happen soon: The coalition had completed early stages of the project before the Camp Fire, but most of the work will occur next year. This summer, Cal Fire, the state firefighting agency, awarded $27.5 million in grants to the Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative for thinning projects. After it had struggled to secure funding, the partnership has earned a total of $32.5 million in grant funds.

Read Josh’s story on the initiative in this week’s Washington Examiner magazine.

FARM BILL A MIXED BAG FOR FOREST MANAGEMENT SUPPORTERS: Supporters of forest management to mitigate worsening wildfires in Western states won and lost in the new compromise farm bill released Monday night by House and Senate negotiators.

The Trump administration, congressional Republicans, and the forestry industry, had hoped the final legislation would contain provisions in the House-passed version of the bill to expand the pace and scale of certain forest-thinning projects to help relieve wildfires.

Democrats and environmentalists pushed back, saying those measures went too far in removing environmental reviews.

What made it in the deal: The final deal would ease environmental reviews for some projects, like the removal of trees damaged by insects or disease. It would also reform the “good neighbor authority,” making it easier for officials to work together on projects that straddle federal, state, local, tribal, and private land.

It also includes provisions to support development of wood products that can help store carbon and improve the market for timber removed from forests.

However, the bill leaves out a provision meant to limit lawsuits by environmentalists that would have required courts to find that plaintiffs are “likely to succeed on the merits” of a lawsuit before it proceeds.

GREEN GROUPS SUE OVER TRUMP’S PLANNED SEISMIC OIL SURVEYS: Environmental groups sued the Trump administration on Tuesday for its planned use of seismic surveys off the Atlantic Coast to explore for oil deposits.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, is in response to recent Trump administration approvals of five permits to companies conducting the surveys. Environmentalists say the airguns used in the surveys pose significant harm to sea life, including those that support local economies from Maine to Florida.

“This action is unlawful and we’re going to stop it,” said Diane Hoskins, campaign director at Oceana. “The Trump administration’s rash decision to harm marine mammals hundreds of thousands of times in the hope of finding oil and gas is shortsighted and dangerous.”

RECENTLY CONFIRMED FERC MEMBER BERNARD MCNAMEE IS SWORN IN: Bernard McNamee was sworn in Tuesday morning as a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Tuesday, after narrowly being confirmed by the Senate last week on a straight party-line vote.

He will be eligible to participate in FERC’s Dec. 20 meeting.

FERC watchers are curious to see how McNamee handles being an independent commissioner after his previous rhetoric supporting fossil fuels, and his work on the Energy Department’s efforts to subsidize coal and nuclear plants.

His colleagues welcomed him on Tuesday.

“I look forward to working together to continue [FERC’s] best traditions of independence and bipartisan cooperation!” Democratic commissioner Richard Glick said in a Twitter post.

PROGRESSIVES’ ‘GREEN NEW DEAL’ PICKS UP KEY SUPPORTER: Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the likely incoming chairman of the House Rules Committee, on Monday became the latest Democrat to support a progressive push for a “Green New Deal” to combat climate change.

McGovern’s endorsement is important because the Rules Committee would be charged with creating a select committee on climate change. Other likely committee heads are resisting the idea.

The Sunrise Movement, an activist group of young people, has allied with Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, to promote a resolution to allow the committee to draft a climate bill by 2020 that would require 100 percent of electricity to come from renewable sources.

However, supporters are expected to unveil changes to the plan on Tuesday, according to Politico, which would require any climate bill to go through the normal committee process.

In the past three weeks, roughly two dozen congressional Democrats have endorsed the “Green New Deal,” the Sunrise Movement says.

WASHINGTON GOV. JAY INSLEE UNVEILS PLAN FOR 100 PERCENT CLEAN ENERGY: Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat and likely 2020 presidential candidate, proposed a plan Monday for his state to use 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045.

Washington voters this November rejected a carbon tax ballot initiative, but even before the vote, Inslee had told Josh that he would push the state legislature to adopt a comprehensive plan to combat climate change.

“If it doesn’t happen this year, we are not done,” he said.

There’s more to the plan: The new proposal also would establish a clean fuel standard, similar to an existing program in California, requiring a reduction in carbon emissions from transportation fuels.

Inslee also aims to boost electric vehicle use, build energy-efficient buildings, and phase out hydrofluorocarbon, potent greenhouse gases used in refrigeration.

He says the combined measures would would reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Washington to 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2035.

Washington already has one of the cleanest electricity grids, running mostly on zero-carbon hydropower.

RUNDOWN

Wall Street Journal Harvard quietly amasses California’s vineyards, and the water underneath

NPR How one company pulls carbon from the air

Washington Post Interior officials downplayed federal wildlife experts’ concerns about Trump’s border wall

New York Times Scientists find some hope for coral reefs

SPONSOR MESSAGE: Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have spoken about supporting improvements to America’s infrastructure, with little ever being done. Now politicians have an opportunity to bridge the bipartisan divide and work to rebuild the nation’s roads, bridges, pipelines, and waterways. When lawmakers reconvene in Washington in January, GAIN encourages returning and newly-elected officials to find common ground to grow America’s infrastructure. To learn more and stay up to date on the latest go towww.gainnow.org or follow us @GAINNowAmerica.