SIGN UP! If you’d like to continue receiving Washington Examiner’s Daily on Energy newsletter, SUBSCRIBE HERE: http://newsletters.washingtonexaminer.com/newsletter/daily-on-energy/

TRUMP SUPPORTS COAL PLANT AS EPA WEIGHS LETTING IT CLOSE: President Trump tried something new on Monday by using his Twitter account to stop a coal plant from shuttering.

“Coal is an important part of our electricity generation mix and @TVAnews should give serious consideration to all factors before voting to close viable power plants, like Paradise #3 in Kentucky!” the president tweeted.

Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky also got into the fight, with a video prodding the federally-owned Tennessee Valley Authority from making a final decision on ending the use of coal at the Paradise Fossil Plant in the western part of his state.

But EPA issued a study that could weigh in favor of TVA taking the plant’s last remaining coal burner out of operation.

EPA issued its latest assessment on carbon dioxide emissions on Tuesday, which concludes that the main reason the climate change-causing emissions are down is because of the switch from coal to natural gas and renewable energy.

Although gross emissions were up 1.6 percent from 1990 to 2017, carbon emissions did fall 0.3 percent between 2016 and 2017 due to the change in the nation’s generating mix.

“The decrease in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion was a result of multiple factors, including a continued shift from coal to natural gas, increased use of renewables in the electric power sector, and milder weather that contributed to less overall electricity use,” the EPA report concluded.   

TVA wouldn’t exactly be closing the plant in Kentucky, but would likely continue to convert it to use cleaner-burning and lower-cost natural gas, which it has already done with the plant’s other two boilers.

TVA is reviewing its own environmental assessments in making a decision in the coming days on what do with Paradise. The EPA report could reinforce the decisions that TVA has already done, along with other Southeastern utilities like Duke Energy that have decided to transition away from coal.

Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers John Siciliano (@JohnDSiciliano) and Josh Siegel (@SiegelScribe). Email [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.  

TRUMP BETS ON NEW COAL PLANTS IF GAS PRICES RISE. BUT UTILITIES AREN’T BUYING IT: There are no new coal plants under construction or planned in the U.S. today, as utilities instead look to natural gas, wind, and solar.

But that could change if natural gas prices rise significantly, the Trump administration argues.

Steven Winberg, the Energy Department’s assistant secretary for fossil energy, told Josh coal could compete in wholesale power markets that reward the lowest cost resource if gas prices more than double in the future, from their current level of below $3 per million British thermal units, or BTU.

“Looking through a crystal ball is always a dangerous thing to do, but it is our job at DOE to look out over the horizon and say, ‘What if?’” Winberg said.

Outlook unchanged for utilities: Yet utilities planning futures without coal are unconvinced by the Energy Department’s latest argument for coal.

Utilities increasingly prefer natural gas and renewables, not only because they are cheaper, but also because they are easier to approve as the public demands cleaner energy.

“There would have to be a very significant change in the long-term outlook for natural gas — supply or price — to support construction of new coal-fueled generation,” Melissa McHenry, a spokeswoman for Ohio-based American Electric Power, one of the nation’s largest utilities, told Josh.

Asked about the outlook for coal if natural gas prices rise, Schuyler Baehman, a spokesman for Atlanta-based utility Southern Company, touted a recent proposal by one of its subsidiaries, Georgia Power, to shutdown one gigawatt of coal generation, swapping it out with a more than equal amount of renewable energy.

Read Josh’s full story in this week’s Washington Examiner magazine.

REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRATS SPAR OVER GREEN NEW DEAL IMPACT ON COAL COMMUNITIES: Republicans and Democrats of the House Natural Resources Committee sparred Tuesday morning over the impact progressives’ Green New Deal resolution could have on communities dependent on coal and other fossil fuels.

Rep. Alan Lowenthal, D-Calif., said the Green New Deal would encourage the transition in communities away from fossil fuels and provide for new job opportunities in clean energy and infrastructure development.

“If the solution is false hope that there is going to be a resurrection of coal, we are not acting responsibly,” Lowenthal said at a hearing focused on the energy transition hosted by the committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources. “The solution will be to provide new opportunities for these workers as we move towards clean energy.”

The Green New Deal, according to its backers, seeks to support people whose jobs are threatened by a decrease in fossil-fuel industries, and it offers a federal jobs guarantee for those working on the energy transition.

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., however, argued the Green New Deal would harm coal communities by speeding the transition away from fossil fuels. Coal is already suffering because of economics, losing out to cheap natural gas and renewables whose costs are falling, but Gosar repeated a Republican talking point also blaming Obama-era regulations.

“Delusional federal mandates in the Green New Deal will only topple America’s dominance in the energy economy,” Gosar said. “It would be a mass tax and a mass displacement of the poorest among us. If the policies of the ‘Green Dream’ are magically enacted, the economic plight of Appalachia will be the microcosm of the rest of our great nation.”

SOLAR INDUSTRY URGES TRUMP TO REVERSE TARIFFS AFTER JOB LOSSES: The solar industry suffered a loss of nearly 8,000 jobs in 2018, its second straight year of of job losses after seven years of growth.

The Solar Foundation, a nonprofit group, reported the job losses Tuesday, attributing the 3 percent loss in solar industry jobs primarily to a slowdown in solar panel installations due to their higher price.

The industry’s main trade group Tuesday blamed Trump’s tariffs on solar panels for the job declines, and called on the administration to terminate the tariffs.

“The impact these unnecessary tariffs are having on America’s economy and its workers should not be ignored,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association. “The damage, from a decline in jobs to a decline in deployment, far outweighs any potential benefits the administration intended.”

“We hope this data serves as a wake-up call to the administration that the tariffs should be reversed before any more Americans lose their jobs,” she said.

In January 2018, Trump imposed a 30 percent tariff on imported solar panels as part of his trade agenda to target cheap products made by China and other Asian countries. The tariffs, to be levied over four years, are for 30 percent in the first year, 25 percent in the second, 20 percent in the third, and 15 percent in the fourth year.

SENATE SET TO APPROVE PUBLIC LANDS PACKAGE: The Senate is expected to approve a public lands package Tuesday evening that would permanently reauthorize the popular Land and Water Conservation Fund, which Congress let expire last year.

Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, the chairwoman of the Natural Resources Committee, and Maria Cantwell of Washington, the panel’s former top Democrat who stepped down from that position this year, have long pushed for the lands package, which also includes measures increasing sportsmen’s access to federal lands, boosting economic development in dozens of communities through land exchanges, and conserving lands of special importance.

New life for key public lands fund: Environmental groups had criticized the Senate for failing to permanently reauthorizing the popular Land and Water Conservation Fund during the last session of Congress. The LWCF gets its money from offshore oil and gas leases, rather than taxpayer money, and pays for public lands projects. It provides money to federal, state, and local governments for buying land and waters to improve national parks, forests, wildlife refuges, and other public areas.

Amendment to limit Antiquities Act fails: During debate of the lands package, the Senate rejected an amendment from Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, that would have blocked presidents from using executive authority to declaring national monuments in his state.

Lee and other conservatives have argued presidents, most recently Barack Obama, have abused the Antiquities Act in protecting larger and large swaths of public land as national monuments, and hindering the activities of ranchers.

CEI CALLS ON EPA TO SCRAP MODEL USED IN REGULATIONS: The libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute is calling on the Trump administration to scrap the EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS, which is used to model the harm a regulation seeks to resolve. The group says IRIS has significant problems that can be best resolved by scrapping it entirely, and allowing individual offices within the agency do their own risk analysis.

Risk analysis is a key tool in developing environmental regulations, helping regulators shape the stringency of regulations based on the future harm to public health that the rules are seeking to prevent.  

“Far from being the ‘gold standard’ for risk assessment, EPA’s IRIS has a long history of flawed risk assessments based on faulty research that have led the agency to release counterproductive regulations,” said Angela Logomasini, a senior fellow at CEI who authored the report.

She points out that concerns about IRIS have been raised by the Government Accountability Office, EPA’s Office of the Inspector General, Congress, and the National Academies of Sciences.

LEFT-LEANING GROUP SAYS ORGANIC FOOD SHOULD BE A HUMAN RIGHT: The left-leaning Friends of the Earth released a study Monday that shows that changing the nation’s diet to all-organic food would remove harmful pesticides from the population’s bodies, freeing people from carcinogens and nerve agents found on most conventionally-grown foods.

One of the study participants who was tested for pesticides in her urinary track both before and after being switched to an organic diet was quoted as saying that organic food should be a “human right.”

“We need organic for all,” the group said in releasing the study. “No one should be exposed to toxic pesticides in the food they eat …, [a]nd the way we grow food should protect rather than harm the ecosystems that sustain all life.”

Beyond the obvious human health effects – some of the pesticides found in participants are known carcinogens — the pesticides have also been shown as a cause in the spontaneous death of bee colonies and other pollinating insect species, which had been top issue for the Environmental Protection Agency under the previous administration.

The Friends of the Earth study was conducted by a number of reputable researchers and scientists, including research faculty from the University of Maryland.

AMERICAN GAS ASSOCIATION NAMES NEW CEO: The American Gas Association announced Tuesday that Karen Alderman Harbert will be its new president and CEO. She was formerly president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute.

RUNDOWN

New York Times Interior’s Bernhardt pushes a policy favoring his former client

Axios What the new carbon capture tax credit does for electricity

Los Angeles Times Los Angeles ditches plan to invest billions in fossil fuels

Bloomberg US sanctions spark surge in Venezuelan oil half the world away

Reuters As ice melts, Greenland could become big sand exporter

SPONSOR MESSAGE: 
Separating Fact from Fiction – GAIN Launches Fact Checker Site
The spread of misinformation about energy infrastructure projects is unfortunately not a new phenomenon. The GAIN Coalition recently launched a new website dedicated to countering targeted attacks of coordinated disinformation campaigns by so-called environmental activists. Through fact checking and original reporting, GAINFactChecker.org will provide straightforward, evidence-based analysis in order to increase the public’s knowledge and understanding of pipeline infrastructure.