Daily on Energy: Pacific Northwest heat wave raises pressure for Biden

The National Weather Service has issued heat advisories for almost all of Washington and Oregon — states unaccustomed to extreme temperatures — as well as parts of California, Idaho, Montana and Nevada.

The timing adds new urgency to Democrats’ push for a climate-heavy reconciliation bill to be passed along with a narrower bipartisan package that has some emissions reductions measures (we broke down the items included in the smaller measure on Friday, which President Joe Biden is selling as a downpayment on his American Jobs Plan).

The White House is signaling it intends to use this summer’s extreme weather in its messaging.

Biden on Wednesday plans to convene Cabinet officials, Western governors, and private-sector partners to discuss “the devastating intersection of drought, heat, and wildfires in the Western United States.”

Last week, Biden expressed alarm about “astounding” droughts, wildfires, and flooding during remarks ahead of a meeting with FEMA’s emergency preparedness team.

“So we’re in for a tough season, but I think we’ve got to be prepared and have every resource available to make sure we’re there for the American people,” he said.

Climate activists are sirening: “These events are climate change. The science is clear,” said Leah Stokes, professor on climate and energy policy at University of California Santa Barbara, in response to a record projected temperature of 108 degrees in Seattle.

“It’s tragic, but the timing will elevate the issue of climate change in a lot of peoples’ minds because heat waves in particular are very easy for people to connect to climate change,” Stokes told Josh. “So we have to talk about the policies to address it.”

The youth group Sunrise Movement, meanwhile, is protesting outside the White House this morning with liberal Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York, chanting “no climate, no deal.”

Varshini Prakash, Executive Director of Sunrise Movement, warned that Democrats risk “flooding our homes” if they “water down” their climate plans to win GOP support.

“We have a historic, narrow opportunity to combat the climate crisis, and if we stall on this for a performative bipartisan stunt, costs and consequences will only be greater,” Prakash said in a statement.

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.

RELATED…OREGON LAWMAKERS APPROVE CLEAN ELECTRICITY STANDARD: Both chambers of the Oregon legislature passed a bill Saturday that require power companies to reach 100% carbon-free power by 2040, setting one of the quickest timelines among handful of states that have established clean electricity standards.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, is expected to sign the legislation into law. The bill also sets interim targets for utilities to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2030 and 90% by 2035. Under the measure, Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality will determine the baseline emissions level for each power company and set an emissions target.

“Oregon’s clean electricity standard is a model for the kind of bold power sector policy we urgently need at the federal level,” said Pam Kiely, associate vice president for U.S. Climate at the Environmental Defense Fund, in a statement.

BIDEN CAN’T PLEASE ANYONE WITH PIPELINE MOVES: The administration’s gymnastics over pipelines last week caused environmental activists to accuse Biden of taking an “inconsistent” approach to interstate oil and gas infrastructure and not being fully committed to his pledge to cut emissions from fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change.

If you missed it, the administration took opposite sides on the contentious Line 3 and 5 oil pipeline expansion projects.

“Projects like Line 3 and Dakota Access that Biden has refused to stop are just as deadly for the climate as Keystone XL and Line 5 where they’ve intervened,” Collin Rees, senior campaigner with Oil Change U.S., told Josh for a story posted this past weekend.

Biden is taking a case-by-case approach: Tom Russo, a former analyst at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission specializing in fossil fuel infrastructure, argued the Biden administration’s approach is “pragmatic” because it is appropriately reviewing projects on a case-by-case basis.

The Biden administration would face legal scrutiny and be accused of being arbitrary and capricious if it wholesale wiped out previously approved fossil fuel projects that undergo intense regulatory processes and have gone through multiple levels of review by career professionals at permitting agencies.

“There is no inconsistency from Biden here,” said Christi Tezak, a managing director at ClearView Energy Partners who studies interstate pipelines. “Just because it was issued under the last administration, a permit is not guaranteed to be flawed. The best protection against shifting political winds is following law and regulations.”

CLEANUP ON INFRASTRUCTURE ENOUGH FOR SOME REPUBLICANS: Biden this weekend issued a long statement walking back his threat that he would not approve the bipartisan infrastructure proposal unless there is a guarantee Democrats can pass a second larger spending package through reconciliation.

The president’s clarification seemed to mollify Republicans who negotiated the bipartisan deal, including Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, and Rob Portman of Ohio. Each of them, during appearances on the Sunday shows, remarked that they trust Biden’s new stance.

But not McConnell: Biden’s statement did not appease Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who has not said if he supports the bipartisan deal and seems intent on derailing Democrats’ attempts to pass a more sweeping bill with aggressive climate measures.

McConnell, in a statement this morning, called on Biden to request that Democratic congressional leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi also commit to decoupling the passage of the bipartisan agreement with the bigger liberal spending package.

“Unless Leader Schumer and Speaker Pelosi walk-back their threats that they will refuse to send the president a bipartisan infrastructure bill unless they also separately pass trillions of dollars for unrelated tax hikes, wasteful spending, and Green New Deal socialism, then President Biden’s walk-back of his veto threat would be a hollow gesture,” McConnell said.

Why McConnell matters: His stance on the bipartisan deal figures to be key to its package, since only the five Republicans who negotiated it support it so far, and he has sway over much of the rest of his conference.

MANCHIN LAYS DOWN A PRICE MARKER ON INFRASTRUCTURE: Centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia assured his party over the weekend that he supports their attempt to pass a larger “human infrastructure” reconciliation bill, but he laid down a marker for how big it should be.

Manchin suggested on ABC’s “This Week” that he would not favor the $5-6 trillion package floated by Budget Committee chairman Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont liberal.

“If they think in reconciliation I’m going to throw caution to the wind and go to $5 trillion or $6 trillion when we can only afford $1 trillion or $1.5 trillion or maybe $2 trillion and what we can pay for, then I can’t be there,” he said.

BUSINESS GROUPS WARN OF CLIMATE DISCLOSURE COSTS: Certain business groups, including those representing oil and gas companies and retailers, are warning the Securities and Exchange Commission that climate disclosure requirements could subject them to high costs, especially disadvantaging smaller companies and deterring their growth.

Their concerns come as the SEC is taking steps toward setting requirements for public companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions and the physical risks they face from climate change.

Some business groups fear a climate disclosure regime will require their companies to spend to hire teams of consultants and lawyers to oversee a lengthy, complex reporting process. That could be a particular strain on smaller businesses, which don’t have built-in sustainability teams to handle such information-gathering.

Environmental activists, meanwhile, acknowledge there is a cost to companies for conducting climate disclosures, but they say the cost of not knowing the risks from climate change is far greater.

More in Abby’s story posted over the weekend.

NUCLEAR PTC EMERGES IN SENATE…BUT NO REPUBLICANS: Democratic senators on Friday introduced legislation to provide production tax credits to keep financially struggling nuclear plants from retiring.

It’s somewhat of a surprise given the bipartisan interest in promoting nuclear power as part of infrastructure discussions that there are no Republican senators on the bill. The Democratic co-sponsors are Sens. Manchin, Tom Carper of Delaware, Ben Cardin of Maryland, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, and Cory Booker of New Jersey.

The new legislation comes after a bipartisan group of House members unveiled production tax credit legislation for nuclear plants last week. The Biden administration has already said it supports a production tax credit for existing nuclear plants to stay online, a necessity if it wants to meet its goal of 100% carbon-free power by 2035.

HEADS UP…EPA’S TAILPIPE PROPOSAL IS AT THE WHITE HOUSE: The EPA has reached a decision on how stringent it wants to set greenhouse gas tailpipe standards, sending its proposal to the White House budget office for interagency review late last week.

Biden has directed the EPA and the Transportation Department to propose stricter fuel economy standards for passenger cars by next month. Earlier this month, EPA Administrator Michael Regan held meetings with officials from several large automakers, including General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen, Ford, and Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler).

One of the big questions is whether the Biden administration will propose standards in line with a deal several automakers struck with California regulators during the fight over the Trump administration’s much weaker regulations. Under that deal, the automakers agreed to follow fuel economy standards much stricter than the levels Trump officials set, but less stringent than the Obama administration’s prior rule.

Strict fuel economy standards are a key administrative policy lever for Biden to reduce greenhouse gases from the transportation sector, currently the largest emitter in the U.S. Much of the rest of Biden’s climate agenda for transportation, such as providing consumer incentives to accelerate electric vehicle adoption and building out public electric car chargers, can only be accomplished with Congress.

ELECTRIC CARS TO DOMINATE SALES BY 2050: More than half (56%) of all vehicle sales will be electric by 2050, according to new research by Wood Mackenzie this morning.

By midcentury, Wood Mackenzie expects more than three out of every five vehicles, and nearly one in two commercial vehicles, on the road in China, Europe, and the United States to be fully electric. Globally in 2050, Wood Mackenzie projects just 18% of vehicle sales will be gas-powered.

“In Q1 2021 alone, electric vehicle sales rocketed to almost 550,000, which represents a 66% increase over the same period last year,” said Ram Chandrasekaran, Wood Mackenzie’s head of road transport. “The re-emergence of the US as a climate leader and China’s net-zero target are key to this surge.”

HOUSE GOP SLAMS BIDEN PLANS TO REWRITE WOTUS: More than 100 House Republicans, including GOP leader Kevin McCarthy and top GOP committee leaders, are raising concerns with the Biden administration’s plans to again redefine which waters are covered under federal protections.

In a letter Friday to EPA Administrator Regan and acting assistant secretary of the Army for civil works Jaime Pinkham, the House Republicans say they fear by reversing the Trump administration’s much narrower definition of covered waters the Biden team will “reimpose a vastly overbroad interpretation.” The Republican lawmakers also urge the Biden administration not to rely on the Obama administration’s waters of the U.S., or WOTUS, rule.

The House Republicans are also calling on the EPA and the Army Corps to issue a preliminary call for public input (known as an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking) before it proposes a new definition. In addition, they are asking the EPA to convene a panel specifically examining the effects any new proposal would have on small businesses. Both of these steps would lengthen the rulemaking process.

The Rundown

Reuters Old, small and CO2-intense: why Canada’s highest-carbon oil sites keep pumping

Washington Post Trump appointees allowed terminated EPA staffers to keep receiving salaries, watchdog report says

Bloomberg Trump’s thwarted oil buy would’ve given Biden $6 billion bonanza

Wall Street Journal Panama Canal tackles climate change puzzle: too little rainwater or too much

Axios The next major climate science report: What to expect

Calendar

TUESDAY | JUNE 29

10:30 a.m. 2123 Rayburn. The House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on the CLEAN Future Act and electric transmission.

WEDNESDAY | JUNE 30

2 p.m. The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis will hold a remote hearing titled “Transportation Investments for Solving the Climate Crisis.