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WHERE THIS IS HEADED: With President Joe Biden trying now to strike out on his own on climate, environmental groups and liberals in Congress coalescing around a climate emergency declaration as his most acceptable path forward.
“President Biden’s announcements, while welcome, don’t even scratch the surface of what’s needed and what communities suffering most are demanding,” said Collin Rees, U.S. program manager at Oil Change International.
Instead, Rees said, Biden must declare a climate emergency in order to “make it clear that [he] views the climate crisis as an existential threat.”
Senate Democrats began circulating a letter yesterday in conjunction with Biden’s speech, calling on him to “put us on emergency footing” by declaring an emergency under the National Emergencies Act.
“Under the NEA, you could redirect spending to build out renewable energy systems on military bases, implement large-scale clean transportation solutions and finance distributed energy projects to boost climate resiliency,” said the nine signatories, which included Sens. Jeff Merkley, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders.
Reps. Earl Blumenauer and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put in their own request to Biden earlier this week to do the same under the NEA or the Stafford Act, and to keep using the Defense Production Act to enable production of more green energy technologies.
Using the ‘e’ word: Biden’s environmentalist constituencies are beginning to view the climate emergency as a litmus test for Biden at this juncture in the electoral cycle, and Biden talked all around the emergency nature of climate change yesterday — without formally declaring one.
“Since Congress is not acting as it should,” Biden said, he would act. “This is an emergency, an emergency, and I will look at it that way.”
The White House teased earlier this week that a climate emergency is under consideration at some level, even though Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre assured that one way or the other, it wouldn’t be happening this week.
Political challenges: Green groups and some Democrats, including Merkley, have said a climate emergency encompasses an end to the approval of new fossil fuel projects.
The White House has made clear that restricting new leasing on federal lands remains Biden’s preferred policy, even though the Interior Department has moved forward with multiple oil and gas lease sales, citing compliance with a federal court’s ruling that Biden can’t unilaterally pause leasing.
Still, the globe is still staring down an energy crisis, and to the extent that a climate emergency would restrict oil and gas, Biden would be challenged, said Kevin Book of ClearView Energy Partners.
A question will be, “Is deploying this tool, which could limit hydrocarbon production and delivery to markets, the right thing to do right now when prices are high?” Book said during an energy forum on Tuesday.
“It’s clear the President wants to assert that he can bring this agenda to the voters that elected him and to the world that he’s promised to green,” he said.
There are obvious risks, too, of further alienating his green base if Biden doesn’t act on the emergency.
Alongside the stalling of Democrats’ spending bill, the Biden administration’s overtures to the oil and gas industry to increase production, as well as its selling of additional leases on federal lands despite Biden’s campaign promises, have left environmentalists repeatedly disappointed.
“We need President Biden to declare a climate emergency,” Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity said yesterday. “We need that rallying cry in this vacuum of climate leadership that we’re seeing right now.”
Expect a challenge: Republicans in Congress began trying to preempt a declaration of climate emergency back in April after the Congressional Progressive Caucus put the bug in Biden’s ear.
Senate Republicans introduced the Real Emergencies Act, which would codify that the president may not use climate as a basis for a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act, the Stafford Act, or section 319 of the Public Health Service Act.
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NORD STREAM 1 OPERATOR RESUMES GAS FLOW: Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom resumed its natural gas deliveries via its Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline early today, German news outlets reported, following a 10-day shutdown for planned maintenance. The news slightly assuages the fears of Germany and other EU countries, which had warned that Russia might be using the temporary shutdown as a pretext to more permanently halt deliveries via its key gas pipeline to the bloc.
Still, the future of the line remains uncertain. Gas flow remained far below normal capacity as of this afternoon, and leaders noted that Nord Stream 1 gas flow had returned only to pre-maintenance levels, which had already been cut to 40% capacity prior to the 10-day outage. Officials have warned that those levels would not be sufficient to fill EU gas storage tanks to necessary levels ahead of the winter season.
“In view of the missing 60% and the political instability, there is no reason yet to give the all-clear,” German network regulator president Klaus Mueller said on Twitter.
The reduced flow comes after the European Commission unveiled its new emissions reduction plan yesterday calling for all EU member nations to voluntarily cut their gas use by 15%. The plan also includes more binding contingency measures that would allow Brussels to make such cuts mandatory in the event of an energy emergency, should Russia halt gas flow to the rest of Europe.
MEANWHILE: Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó traveled to Moscow today to discuss purchasing more natural gas (just yesterday, he was in D.C., where he told the Washington Examiner’s Zach Halaschak that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had threatened to pull the U.S. tax treaty with Hungary over its resistance to the global minimum tax proposal).
Reminder: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said last week Europe had “shot itself in the lungs” with sanctions on Russia.
FORD MOTOR CO. PLANS TO CUT 8,000 JOBS TO FOCUS ON EV PRODUCTION: Ford Motor Co. is planning to cut as many as 8,000 jobs from its internal combustion division, or ICE, as it seeks to ramp up its electric vehicle production, according to Bloomberg.
CEO Jim Farley has previously announced plans to cut $3 billion in company costs by 2026, including through employee layoffs, as well as efforts to radically restructure the company. To that end, he has separated Ford into two separate units — “Ford Blue,” which focuses on traditional, industrial combustion engine vehicles, as well as the newer “Model e” division focusing solely on EV offerings.
Though the layoffs have not yet been finalized, they are expected to focus mostly on salaried employees within the Ford Blue division, and could begin as early as this summer.
Ford’s shares tumbled 39% over the past year, due in large part to inflation and broader supply chain issues that have roiled the automotive industry as a whole. Earlier this year, Farley announced plans to boost the company’s EV spending by $50 billion and set an ambitious goal to build 2 million battery-powered EVs annual by the year 2026. Read more from Bloomberg here.
AMAZON ROLLS OUT NEW CUSTOM EV FLEET OF DELIVERY VANS: Amazon announced today that it has begun making deliveries using its custom-made fleet of electric cargo vans designed by Rivian, putting hundreds of battery-powered vehicles on the road nearly three years after the company first announced a deal with the U.S.-based EV manufacturer.
In total, Amazon said it plans to launch “thousands” of the custom-made EV cargo trucks in 100 U.S. cities by the end of this year, and 100,000 EVs across the country by 2030.
Amazon said it has begun using the electric vehicles for its deliveries in Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Nashville, Phoenix, San Diego, Seattle, and St. Louis, with rollouts in other cities expected to soon follow suit.
INTERIOR ANNOUNCES STEPS TO ADVANCE OFFSHORE LEASING iN GULF: The Interior Department announced Wednesday that it is taking steps to advance offshore wind projects in the Gulf of Mexico for the first time, and will begin seeking public input on the location of two potential wind energy areas, or WEAs, off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana.
The news comes after Biden delivered remarks in Somerset, Massachusetts, to highlight executive actions he has taken to fight climate change— including through directing Interior to advance the offshore wind development projects, which would be located off the coasts of Galveston, Texas, and Lake Charles, Louisiana.
“Let’s clear the way for clean energy and connect these projects to the grid,” Biden said, adding that he has directed DOI “to clear every federal hurdle and streamline federal permitting” to bring these clean energy projects online “right now, and right away.”
Together, the new projects would have the combined potential to power more than three million homes, according to a White House fact sheet.
HEAT WAVE PROMPTS WEATHER ADVISORIES IN 28 STATES: At least 28 U.S. states issued heat advisories yesterday as a heat wave washed over most of the country, with temperatures reaching as high as 115 degrees Fahrenheit in Texas and Oklahoma, according to the Washington Post. And for the first time in recorded history, every single one of Oklahoma’s 120 weather stations reached 103 degrees.
So far, nearly 110 million Americans are living in areas under heat advisories and warnings, the National Weather Service said, a number it predicted would rise to as many as 211 million people later in the day.
An estimated 60 million Americans are likely to see triple-digit temperatures over the next week, increasing the dangers of heat-related illness and heatstroke, especially in areas with higher-than-average humidity.
According to NWS, most of the extreme weather advisories are concentrated in the central U.S. and the Northeast.
THE LATEST FROM EUROPE… Meanwhile, over 1,900 people died in Spain and Portugal from heat-related causes this week, as temperatures in some parts of the region climbed above 104 degrees Fahrenheit. In Portugal, officials urged the country to take more precautions to better prepare for the next period of extreme heat.
“Portugal … is among one of the areas of the globe that could be [more] affected by extreme heat,” Graça Freitas, the head of Portugal health authority DGS, told Reuters. “We have to be more and more prepared for periods of high temperatures.” Read more from Axios here.
WEST VIRGINIA DELEGATION NUDGES FERC ON MVP: West Virginia’s congressional delegation is asking Chairman Richard Glick and the rest of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to extend certificate authorizations for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, as its operator requested last month.
The natural gas pipeline’s certificates expire in October, but MVP LLC wants them extended through 2026. The pipeline is mostly completed but has faced litigation in numerous courts as its operator seeks approvals for rights of way and for its Southgate project, which would extend the pipeline down into North Carolina from its termination point in southern Virginia.
In their letter to FERC, Sen. Joe Manchin et al framed the extension in terms of the energy crisis, saying it is “imperative that FERC works to accelerate the development of domestic energy infrastructure” during a time of high energy prices.
MVP and Manchin: MVP’s delays have been a particularly sore spot for the Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman, who has urged FERC to more liberally approve natural gas infrastructure to help bring more gas to market.
In April, Manchin said he specifically urged the White House to use its authority and influence to complete the line.
“I talked to the White House and they said, ‘What can we do to help you?’ And I said, ‘Build the damn line. Finish it,” he said.
Retaliation point?: Now that Manchin has stepped back from negotiations over energy and climate spending in Democrats’ reconciliation package, there’s been talk that Biden should pull the rug out from MVP to get back at Manchin.
“If Manchin won’t do the right thing for the planet, and for his own grandchildren, then that pipeline should be blocked,” said Leah Stokes, a professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara and adviser to Evergreen Action.
HOUSE BILL WOULD FUND BIDEN’S USE OF THE DPA: The House passed a “minibus” spending bill yesterday that appropriates $100 million to the Department of Energy for use in conjunction with the directions Biden gave DOE to facilitate the production of more green energy technologies.
All but $5 million of the funding is to be used to expand the domestic production capabilities for solar energy components, transformers, electric grid components, and other technologies.
Biden invoked the DPA to increase production of those technologies on June 6, but skeptics and some outright critics of the decision said at the time that it wouldn’t do much because funding provided under the DPA to actually achieve that goal was being used elsewhere, such as for increasing supplies of baby formula.
The Rundown
Associated Press Vatican cardinal backs fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty
Washington Post Amid summer heat wave, Germany worries about having enough gas for winter
E&E News Manchin says climate bill risks inflation. But does it?
Calendar
WEDNESDAY | JULY 27
2:30 p.m. 628 Dirksen The Senate Indian Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on “Select Provisions of the 1866 Reconstruction Treaties between the United States and Oklahoma Tribes.”
