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REPUBLICANS FAVOR POLICIES TO ADDRESS CLIMATE CHANGE: Most Republicans support a number of government policies to address climate change, according to a Pew Research Center survey out Tuesday, even as they still expect the private sector to do the heavy lifting.
The strongest support is for policies championed by Republicans in Congress.
About 90% of people polled favor planting a trillion trees around the world to absorb carbon emissions, including 88% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (President Trump favors this idea too).
Support is nearly as high for providing tax credits to businesses that capture their carbon emissions, with large majorities of Democrats (90%) and Republicans (78%) backing the idea.
Most of those polled also support tougher restrictions on power plant emissions (80%), imposing a carbon tax on businesses (73%), and tougher fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks (71%).
The partisan divide is greater on those policies, but still, about half or more of Republicans say they would favor each of them, including 64% who support tougher emission standards for power plants.
Republicans skeptical of government: A majority of the people polled (58%) says government regulations will be necessary to encourage more use of renewable energy, but only 37% of Republicans think that. About 61% of Republicans say the private marketplace will ensure a transition to renewable energy.
Only 37% of Republicans and Republican leaners say climate change is impacting their local community, and 35% say the government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change.
Climate change more salient for coastal Republicans: Republicans who live less than 25 miles from the coastline are more likely to acknowledge the local effects of climate change (45% of them), compared with a smaller share of Republicans (31%) who live 300 or more miles from the coastline.
“Younger generations and women in the GOP tend to be more critical of government action on the environment than their older and male counterparts,” Pew notes.
The Pew poll was conducted April 29 to May 5 among 10,957 U.S. adults.
Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers Josh Siegel (@SiegelScribe) and Abby Smith (@AbbySmithDC). Email [email protected] or [email protected] 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.
FORMER ADVISER ALLEGES TRUMP CAVED TO AUTO LOBBYING: Trump’s former chief economist says the White House backed off from plans to “totally rip out” Obama-era fuel economy standards because of pressure from car companies.
Trump instead made the political calculation that it didn’t benefit him to freeze the Obama-era standards and compromised with automakers, said Casey Mulligan, an economics professor at the University of Chicago who served as the chief economist for the Council of Economic Advisers from July 2018 to June 2019. Major car companies had publicly opposed a freeze and had aggressively lobbied the White House to abandon it for standards that increase year-over-year (albeit at slower pace than the Obama-era rules).
Mulligan, in a forthcoming tell-all book about his time in the White House, also traces internal opposition to a report he was producing on the fuel economy standards’ costs to consumers back to automaker lobbying.
Former and current administration officials, though, dispute Mulligan’s account.
“I never ever was told, nor did I have anyone at NHTSA receive a message that we needed to do something for the auto industry,” said Heidi King, former acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration who oversaw development of the rules.
Read all the details in this morning’s story from Abby and Washington Examiner economics policy reporter Nihal Krishan.
SPEAKING OF FUEL ECONOMY…WHISTLEBLOWER TO TESTIFY DOJ PROBE WAS POLITICAL: A Justice Department antitrust investigation into the four automakers that struck a deal on fuel economy with California was initiated the day after Trump tweeted about the deal, according to prepared testimony from John Elias, a career Justice Department employee and whistleblower.
Elias plans to tell the House Judiciary Committee today that political appointees at the Justice Department advanced the probe over questions and criticism from career enforcement staff about the “legal and factual basis for the investigation.”
Political leadership at the Justice Department continued the probe even after the four automakers indicated they’d independently entered into an agreement with California, undercutting the premise of the investigation, according to Elias’ written testimony. Political officials directed staff to examine “an announcement by California that it would purchase state vehicles only from automakers that comply with stricter fuel efficiency standards,” Elias says, before the department formally closed the probe in February.
US GASOLINE DEMAND MAKES HALFWAY COMEBACK: U.S. gasoline demand is more than halfway back from what consumption was before the coronavirus pandemic, the research group IHS Markit reported Wednesday.
Fill-ups at the pump hit rock bottom in the second week of April, down 49% from 2019 volumes, as stay-at-home orders across the country kept people off the roads. In the second week of June, however, demand was down 22% compared to the same week in 2019.
Gasoline sales have been rising at an average of 6.4% per week since the low point in April.
“Although people talk about ‘demand destruction’, it’s actually been ‘demand contraction’ in response to the economic shutdown,” said Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of IHS Markit. “And now we’re seeing demand ‘uncontracting’ as people get back into their cars.”
IHS Markit said early signs with economies re-opening are showing people prefer driving a car to public transportation and flying, which are seen as riskier for being exposed to the coronavirus.
OIL DEMAND INCREASING TOO: Overall U.S. oil demand rose to 18.35 million barrels per day last week after falling the week before to 17.29 million barrels per day, the Energy Information Administration reported Wednesday.
Over the past month, oil demand is still down 17% from the same period last year.
Meanwhile, the buildup of crude stocks continued, a signal of a glut in the market.
U.S. crude oil inventories increased from a record high the previous week, gaining another 1.4 million barrels to reach 540.7 million barrels.
FORD WILL TARGET CARBON NEUTRALITY BY 2050: The major automaker admits, though, that the stronger climate goal will be a challenge, especially if costs of lower-emitting vehicles are high and comprehensive policies to address climate remain out-of-reach.
“We don’t have all the answers yet but are determined to work with all of our global and local partners and stakeholders to get there,” said Bob Holycross, Ford’s vice president, chief sustainability, environment, and safety officer, in a statement.
Ford, in its Wednesday announcement, touted its plans to invest $11.5 billion in electric cars through 2022 and to power its manufacturing plants by 100% renewable energy by 2035. It also boasted being the “only full line U.S. automaker” aligning with the Paris climate agreement “and working with California for stronger vehicle greenhouse gas standards.”
Worth noting: In a climate change scenario report, Ford says it doesn’t plan to rely on offsets to eliminate emissions from its light-duty cars, but may need offsets to cut emissions from medium- and heavy-duty vehicles and in developing countries. The company also says it’s “sharpening” its focus on advocating for carbon pricing policies.
BROUILLETTE TO MAKE SWING STATE STOPS: Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette is traveling to Ohio and Pennsylvania later this week for a pair of energy-related tours reflecting his “all of the above agenda.”
On Thursday, he will join Vice President Mike Pence in Lordstown, Ohio, to participate in the launch event for Lordstown Motors’ new Endurance electric pickup truck. The Lordstown Motors’ factory was previously owned by General Motors, which shut it down and sold it last year.
Brouillette will head to Pittsburgh on Friday to visit CONSOL Energy’s Pennsylvania Mining Complex, the largest underground coal mine operation in North America.
FIRST US DIRECT AIR CAPTURE PLANT STILL ON TRACK: The coronavirus pandemic hasn’t delayed work on the first U.S. commercial-scale direct air capture plant, slated to be built in the Permian Basin by Carbon Engineering and Occidental Petroleum.
The project, which would suck 1 million tons of carbon dioxide from the air per year, is entering the last phase of its front-end engineering and design process, said Lori Guetre, Carbon Engineering’s vice president for business development. Much of that work has been able to be completed remotely, and members of the team have also been able to work on site as needed, Guetre told reporters Tuesday. She added there shouldn’t be any foreseeable interruptions in the next year, even amid the pandemic.
How the hit to oil companies’ balance sheets affects direct air capture: Occidental and ExxonMobil, which is working with another direct air capture firm, Global Thermostat, have been two of the biggest investors in the carbon removal technology to date. Neither company has backed down from their commitments, but a big question is whether the U.S. would have seen investment pick up even more absent the pandemic, said John Larsen, a director with the research firm Rhodium Group.
“I think there could have been a lot of potential to see more activity” absent the price turmoil in the oil and gas sector and overall economic uncertainty brought on by the coronavirus, Larsen told Abby.
The Rundown
Bloomberg Shale oil recovery is seen taking years after decade of excess
Reuters Oil tankers carrying two months of Venezuelan output stuck at sea
Wall Street Journal ‘Massive’ forgery helped hide $3 billion hole in energy trader’s books
Calendar
TUESDAY | JUNE 30
2:30 p.m. 366 Dirksen. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee holds a hearing to examine the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the territories.
