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THE ADMINISTRATION LINE: White House press secretary Jen Psaki laid out the administration’s response to the Republican argument for boosting fossil fuel production to counter Russian aggression, saying that the crisis instead shows the necessity of President Joe Biden’s plans to massively increase clean energy.
Psaki said on ABC News’s This Week yesterday that calls to lift restrictions on oil drilling on federal lands or reopen the Keystone XL pipeline are a “misdiagnosis.”
Her remarks came in response to Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, who said on the same program that the lifting of such restrictions “would bring more oil into America every day from Canada than we import every day from Russia.”
“The Keystone Pipeline was not processing oil through the system,” Psaki responded. “That does not solve any problems. That’s a misdiagnosis, or maybe a misdiagnosis of what needs to happen.”
“I would also note that on oil leases, what this actually justifies in President Biden’s view is the fact that we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, on oil in general … and we need to look at other ways of having energy in our country and others,” Psaki added.
Asked whether Biden would be open to lifting such restrictions on U.S. production, Psaki demurred — saying only that Biden hopes to use “carefully crafted sanctions” that “maximize the impact” and consequences for Putin, while “minimizing the impact” on Americans and the rest of the world.
What the administration has and hasn’t done: The administration has responded sensitively to the high cost of energy, especially gasoline, and has tried to avoid sanctions on Russia that would drive up the price of oil too much. But it has also been very careful, throughout the past year of high gas prices, to avoid backing added production in the way that trade groups are asking it to do.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm walked up to the line with her exhortation that producers hire workers and get their rig counts up, and Biden has, too, when he said there could be “some value added in terms of the price of gas” to help Russia-dependent European allies with their high natural gas prices.
Yet Biden officials have stopped well short of what the oil and gas industries and Republicans have talked about in terms of reducing Russia’s market share.
Instead, the administration has pursued mostly symbolic measures: In addition to sales from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve late last year, Biden has suggested that oil and gas companies are to blame for high prices and called for an FTC investigation into the possibility that they are gouging. Biden hit that theme again in his comments last week, saying that “American oil and gas companies should not — should not exploit this moment to hike their prices to raise profits.”
Meanwhile, Biden faces pressure on his climate agenda: An important note of context is that the White House faces restlessness from green groups, who are demanding Biden press on with his energy and climate change agenda on his own while it sits in Congress.
Evergreen Action is pushing Biden to act through executive action to move liberal priorities forward, including by directing federal agencies to speed up acquisition of green electricity and by speeding up rollout of a clean building standard for federal properties.
Another recommendation is for Biden to “use all existing authorities to end oil and gas drilling on, and the hoarding of, public lands and waters” and to dig deeper into the Interior Department’s oil and gas leasing programs.
Other interest groups, including Sierra Club, are lobbying for an outright end to new leasing, and Interior’s November lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico was upended by a successful legal challenge by environmentalists.
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SCOTUS TO HEAR MAJOR CASE OVER EPA AUTHORITY: Oral arguments began today in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency — a major case that some environmental activists fear could significantly curtail the agency’s authority. Jeremy previewed the case here.
API REQUESTS CLARITY ON LEASING DELAYS: The American Petroleum Institute is asking the Interior Department to give more details about the extent to which its oil and gas leasing programs are delayed.
Interior said recently that delays are in order after U.S. District Judge James Cain, a Trump appointee, enjoined the Biden administration’s higher social cost of carbon valuation. Government lawyers explained in a preceding court filing that multiple federal agencies’ rulemakings and other processes would be disrupted by the ruling.
API President and CEO Mike Sommers requested Secretary Deb Haaland identify which pending lease sales and applications for drilling permits require extra work due to the injunction, while emphasizing the strain on global energy markets related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The industry “need[s] clarity as they strive to provide reliable and affordable energy for the United States and the world,” Sommers wrote.
API, which represents some 600 firms across the oil and gas sector, has been at loggerheads with the administration since Biden took office.
Earlier this month, the trade group appealed a decision by Obama-appointed D.C. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, which blocked and sent back to the agency the Interior Department’s November lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico.
OFFSHORE WIND AUCTION RAISES RECORD $4.4B: In case you missed it, the Interior Department’s sale of the rights to build wind turbines in 488,000 acres off the coasts of New York and New Jersey Friday yielded a record $4.37 billion in bids, delivering a concrete win for Biden’s energy agenda as his other green priorities are stalled on Congress.
Six companies provisionally won the plots spanning the New York Bight, with Bight Wind Holdings putting up the most: $1.1. billion for 125,964 acres.
Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said it expects to review at least 16 plans for new offshore projects by 2025, which together would add up to over 22 GW of capacity. The administration is targeting 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030.
“The scale of this lease sale is historic and shows the strong demand for clean energy. Development from this sale will create and support tens of thousands of new domestic jobs and help to revitalize our coastal communities,” said Heather Zichal, CEO of the American Clean Power Association.
ITALY’S DRAGHI TOYS WITH COAL IN THE FACE OF WAR: Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi shared worry Friday about the effects EU sanctions on Russia would have on his economy’s energy sector and entertained both increasing domestic natural gas production and reviving coal-fired electricity generation as immediate solutions, The Local reports.
“The reopening of coal-fired power stations could be used to make up any shortfall in the immediate future,” Draghi said. He also said “the government is ready to intervene to further lower the price of energy, should this be necessary. It is necessary.”
Some 45% of Italy’s gas imports come from Russia, an increase from 27% a decade ago, according to Draghi.
Other EU members returned to coal themselves over the last half year with gas prices as high as they’ve been. Coal-generated electricity in Europe rose 18% last year, per estimates from Rystad Energy.
NEW CLIMATE REPORT SUGGESTS WE HAVE REACHED ‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The dangers of climate change are mounting more rapidly and severely than previously thought, according to a sweeping new report released this morning by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, threatening “irreversible” damage without immediate and dramatic action to curb the damage.
Described as an “atlas of human suffering” by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, the report concludes that climate change has affected almost every person on the planet, both physically and mentally.
More than half of the global population is also considered “highly vulnerable” to climate damages, the IPCC report concluded.
Already, at least 3.3 billion people’s daily lives “are highly vulnerable to climate change, and [are] 15 times more likely to die from extreme weather,” the Associated Press’ Seth Borenstein reports.
Who’s at risk: The researchers identified Africa, parts of Central and South America, and South Asia as potential “hot spots” that could experience the most harm.
The report includes research from more than 200 scientists in 67 countries, and studies how climate change affects both the planet and the world’s population, largely through a rise in extreme weather events and displacement.
Already, some damage is irreversible. “Hundreds of local losses of species have been driven by increases in the magnitude of heat extremes,” the report found, “as well as mass mortality events on land and in the ocean [and the] loss of kelp forests.” Other losses are also “approaching irreversibility,” due to impacts of hydrological changes resulting from the retreat of glaciers, as well as the effect of warming temperatures on mountain and Arctic ecosystems.
The report warns that without changes in policy, climate change put millions of people at risk, and incur financial damages in the billions or trillions of dollars.
Read the full IPCC report here.
THE MESSAGE IS HITTING HOME: U.S. views on climate issues are changing––and fast, according to a new poll from Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (CRES). Since 2020, CRES found, the percentage of U.S. voters who say they believe human-caused pollution contributes to climate change has increased by more than 6 percent among all voters, with increases seen across the political spectrum.
An overwhelming 84% majority of independent voters––seen as a key voting bloc in the 2022 midterms–– said they believe human-caused pollution contributes to climate change. That view was also shared by a 69% majority of Republican voters and 94% of Democrats.
Also significant: In just one year, the number of Americans who said their lives have been affected by climate change jumped by 14 percent.
The Rundown
EE News Ketanji Brown Jackson could affect fight over climate metric
AP News Even in water-rich Michigan, no guarantee of enough for all
Reuters U.S. environmental enforcement activity has dropped, study shows
EE News Mass. revives gas ban battle with Boston-area ‘smackdown’
Calendar
MONDAY | FEB. 28
10:00 am: The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency. Petitioners are asking the high court to limit EPA’s authority to regulate power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions. Washington Examiner’s Jeremy Beaman has more about the case––and what’s at stake for each side––here.
TUESDAY | MARCH 1
10:00 am: The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hear testimony on pending legislation, including the Department of Energy Science for the Future Act of 2022 (S. 3699), the Fission for the Future Act of 2021 (S. 3428), the Energy Emergency Leadership Act (H.R. 3119), and more.
THURSDAY | MARCH 3
10:00 am: The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing to review FERC’s recent guidance permitting construction and operation of interstate natural gas pipelines and other natural gas infrastructure projects.
