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FILIBUSTER SUPPORT WEAKENING: Former President Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders threw their weight Thursday behind ending the Senate filibuster to thwart Republican opposition, which would remove a major barrier to Democrats’ plans for major climate change legislation.
Obama and Sanders spoke about their opposition to the filibuster, the Senate’s legacy procedural weapon, in terms of overcoming an obstacle to addressing racial justice issues.
But the filibuster has long been a target of climate activists, and briefly became a dividing line in the Democratic primary when Jay Inslee attacked Joe Biden, now the party’s nominee, for his long-time support of maintaining the tool.
“It’s impossible and unsupportable to try to say you are both for addressing climate change and to maintain the antiquated filibuster,” Inslee told Josh last August.
A final concession from Biden? Inslee has since rallied behind Biden’s upgraded climate plans, which adopt many of the latter’s ideas, and the Democratic nominee has recently expressed openness to eliminating the filibuster if Democrats win the White House and Senate, with likely a slim majority.
Nixing the filibuster would allow the Senate to pass legislation with a simple majority, rather than a 60-vote minimum. Biden, and before yesterday, Sanders, have been fearful of upsetting Senate procedure, and seeing the move turned against them if Republicans were to control the levers of power.
“We need to take action now to defeat the climate crisis, and we can’t allow Mitch McConnell to wield an antiquated tool on behalf of the fossil fuel industry to stop progress,” said Jared Leopold, a spokesman and co-founder of Evergreen, a new climate policy group of Inslee campaign alums that has advised Biden. “President Obama’s endorsement of ending the filibuster is the biggest step yet in a growing movement to finally get the Senate back to doing the people’s business,” Leopold told Josh.
Mike Carr, a former Democratic counsel to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, says the prodding of Biden’s former boss, Obama, and Sanders, a one-time rival turned campaign confidant, could shift Biden’s position.
“I suspect Biden was already realizing this was a necessary step to do climate change legislation right and Obama and Sanders’ endorsement of the idea may be the final lift he needed,” Carr told Josh.
Keep this in mind: It’s also important to note that one of Biden’s central policy proposals, passing a 100% clean electricity standard, would likely not be able to pass muster using budget reconciliation.
Reconciliation is a procedural tool that allows for passing of fiscal measures with a simple majority, and could be a good fit for passing something like a carbon tax, a policy Biden has been quieter about (see more on that below).
“You just can’t do the regulatory actions that are necessary through reconciliation,” Inslee told Josh. “It’s a fool’s errand. There are very narrow things you can do if you are extremely lucky.”
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PLAYING DEFENSE, GOP CARBON TAX GROUP CLAIMS $1 TRILLION ECONOMIC BOOST: A Republican-backed group pushing for Congress to pass a carbon tax is out with a new study Friday showing it would significantly reduce emissions while unlocking more than $1 trillion of new investment into the economy, Josh reports in a story posted this morning.
The group, the Climate Leadership Council, is seeking to shore up support for carbon taxes as policymakers have gravitated toward other proposals.
Democrats, including Biden, are instead embracing clean electricity mandates as a main mechanism for combating climate change, while Republicans oppose new taxes or regulations. The council, led by former Republican Secretaries of State James Baker III and George Shultz, is seeking to counter that.
“The report confirms and supports a belief we have held for a long time and what the economic community long has been saying,” said Greg Bertelsen, executive vice president of the council. “A price on carbon like ours is the single best way to spur mass amounts of innovation across the economy as we transition to a lower-carbon future.”
Emissions cuts without harming the economy: The council commissioned the research firm Thunder Said Energy to model its proposal for a carbon tax beginning at $40 per ton, increasing 5% every year. The proposal, dubbed a “carbon dividend,” would return the revenue to taxpayers through equal quarterly payments to offset higher energy prices.
The study found the plan would reduce emissions 57% by 2035 compared to 2005 levels while leading to $1.4 trillion of new capital investment in clean energy technologies by that year when the carbon price would have reached $112 per ton. It projects the new spending would create up to 1.6 million new jobs by 2035, including indirect ones, for things such as building electric vehicles, solar panels, carbon capture technologies, and offshore wind farms.
But the politics are still dicey: Oil companies and other businesses have endorsed the council’s proposal, but that has not been enough to entice Republicans. Democrats, meanwhile, also seem to view carbon taxes as politically unfavorable compared to clean electricity standards, where the costs are less obvious.
“The politics of carbon pricing always made sense as sort of a compromise, moderate pathway to decarbonization, and that still might be the case,” said Noah Kaufman, a climate and energy economist at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy who supports a carbon tax. “But now, there are folks on the Left saying, ‘We’ve never much trusted the market anyway, why are we bothering to compromise when there is no one on the other side to deal with right now?’”
BILLION DOLLAR BLUES FOR EXXON AND CHEVRON: U.S. oil giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron posted billions of dollars of losses for the second quarter as the coronavirus-fueled price crash did not leave anyone unscathed.
Exxon reported a $1.1 billion loss, its second straight quarterly loss and the worst loss in its modern history, as Bloomberg described it.
Chevron posted a $8.3 billion loss, but that includes write-downs reflecting its lower forecast for oil and gas prices in the future. It is fully impairing, or erasing from its books, its $2.6 billion investment in Venezuela due to U.S. sanctions preventing operating there.
“While demand and commodity prices have shown signs of recovery, they are not back to pre-pandemic levels, and financial results may continue to be depressed into the third quarter 2020,” said Chevron CEO Michael Wirth.
Exxon senior vice president Neil Chapman said on a conference call that the company reduced capital spending by 30% in the second quarter, along with cutting operating expenses by more than 15%, allowing it to preserve its dividend payment to shareholders.
“We have acted quickly and decisively while preserving long term value,” Chapman said. “Financial discipline means you can weather the storms and reward the reliability of shareholders.”
Down with shale: But Exxon, like Chevron, is not backing down from its commitment to U.S. shale, even as European oil majors have acknowledged the price collapse and long-term demand uncertainty could accelerate the clean energy transition.
Exxon expects to produce 345,000 barrels per day in the Permian on average for 2020, down just 15,000 barrels per day from what it expected in March. It expects gasoline demand from road travel to return to last year’s levels by the 4th quarter of this year. Jet fuel demand from flying will be the “slowest recovery,” Chapman said, meaning it will be “well into 2021” before the supply “overhang is cleared and returns to pre-pandemic levels.”
SHAKEUP AT DOMINION: Virginia utility Dominion’s long-time CEO, Thomas Farrell, is exiting his post but will remain as chairman of the board of directors, the company announced Friday.
Robert Blue, Dominion’s executive vice president and co-chief operating officer, will become the company’s president and CEO, effective Oct. 1.
“I will be particularly focused on continuing to develop our strategic plan and Dominion’s leadership in the new clean energy economy,” Farrell said.
Farrell, who was president and CEO since 2006, has been under scrutiny over a report in the Huffington Post that examined his record on racial issues.
Dominion, which provides power to 6.7 million people in eight states, announced this month with Duke Energy that it would cancel construction of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, amid ballooning costs and years-long delays as the project has been caught up in the courts.
It recently committed to a net-zero emissions by 2050 goal, a reversal from the utility’s previous position that such a target was unattainable, after Virginia’s Democratic legislature became the first state in the South to pass legislation targeting 100% clean power.
SENATE MOVING ON MENEZES: McConnell filed cloture on Thursday for Mark Menezes to be deputy secretary at the Energy Department, teeing up a Senate vote on his confirmation next week.
The Energy Committee advanced Menezes by voice vote in early June.
Menezes currently leads policy at DOE as the under secretary of energy, and was formerly chief counsel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and a lobbyist at Berkshire Hathaway Energy.
HOUSE VOTING ON SPENDING BILL FOR ENERGY AND INTERIOR: The Democrat-controlled House is expected to pass a six-bill, $1.3 trillion appropriations package that includes spending for the Energy and Interior Departments.
The bill provides $49.6 billion in Energy and Water Development programs for fiscal 2021, an increase of $1.26 billion, or 3% above the fiscal year 2020 enacted level.
“This funding will spur energy innovation that will create jobs and reinvigorate the economy while working to mitigate and adapt to climate change,” said Appropriations Committee Chairman Nita Lowey.
The White House objected to the topline spending levels in the bill, along with a rider expanding the Shasta Dam in California, among other things, threatening to veto it. It also includes an amendment preventing the Trump administration from pursuing the Pebble Mine project, a controversial proposed gold mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay.
The Rundown
WOSU Public Media Ohio House votes to remove Larry Householder as speaker after indictment
New York Times A quarter of Bangladesh is flooded. Millions have lost everything.
Wall Street Journal Environmental groups urge Fed to end energy bond buying
Calendar
WEDNESDAY | AUG 5
10 a.m. 106 Dirksen. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee holds a hearing to examine the American Nuclear Infrastructure Act of 2020.
10 a.m. 366 Dirksen. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee holds a hearing to examine federal and industry efforts to improve cybersecurity for the energy sector.
