Daily on Energy: Senate Democrats complain about USMCA but vote for it anyway

Legislation implementing President Trump’s U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement sailed through the EPW Committee 16-4 on Tuesday.

“We didn’t get nearly enough in the agreement, far from it,” said Tom Carper of Delaware, the committee’s top Democrat, before voting to approve it. “If it were solely an environmental agreement, I could not vote for it,” he added, saying the USMCA “cannot be considered the template for future trade negotiations.”

“I am very disappointed in the conduct of this committee,” said Jeff Merkley of Oregon, who nonetheless voted to move the bill to the Senate floor because of its “strong” labor provisions. “We have to do far better in our international agreements. Let us not repeat this mistake.”

Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, a Democrat who voted against the new NAFTA, said “there is no doubt this deal easily wins the record of the most improved on environmental matters,” highlighting enforcement measures for environmental violations.

But that improvement is insufficient compared to “a baseline of terrible, horrible, and no-good, which has been the history of these trade agreements.”

2020 politics, with a debate tonight: The revised NAFTA has also split the shrinking 2020 presidential field, which convenes Tuesday night for the last debate before next month’s Iowa caucuses.

Most candidates have said they’d make climate change central to future trade deals, and not do business with countries that don’t have serious plans to reduce emissions.

But only Bernie Sanders, a member of the EPW committee, said he’d vote against the new NAFTA, saying in the last debate it was an “outrage” the deal doesn’t mention climate change.

Elizabeth Warren, Sanders’ progressive rival, has said she’ll support the trade deal, which critics say boosts fossil fuels by enabling the U.S., Mexico and Canada to maintain “zero tariff” status for energy products that cross borders, chiefly oil and gas.

It also keeps a provision preserving investor protections for existing energy projects in Mexico.

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BLACKROCK’S BIG CLIMATE MOVE: BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is vowing to make climate change central to its investment strategy and pressuring other companies to reduce their carbon footprints.

BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink warned business leaders Tuesday that climate change has become a “defining factor” in the long-term outlook.

“Awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance,” Fink said in his annual letter to U.S. corporate leaders. “The evidence on climate risk is compelling investors to reassess core assumptions about modern finance.”

BlackRock announced changes to its investment practices: By focusing on sustainability; exiting investments that present a high sustainability-related risk, such as thermal coal producers; and launching new investment products that screen fossil fuels.

Fink said BlackRock would also be “increasingly disposed to vote against management and board directors” when companies are not making sufficient progress on setting strategies to reduce emissions, and disclosing what they are.

But fossil fuels remain a part of the future: BlackRock will remain one of the biggest investors in oil and gas.

“BlackRock’s announcement today is a major step in the right direction,” said Sierra Club campaign representative Ben Cushing. “It is time to turn off the money pipeline to dirty fossil fuels for good. BlackRock should expand on its commitments and other financial institutions should follow suit.”

TRUMP’S NEPA OVERHAUL COULD HELP CLEAN ENERGY: The Trump administration’s effort to speed permitting reviews for infrastructure could allow for an easier build-out of massive clean energy projects envisioned by Democrats to decarbonize the economy, such as wind farms and interstate power lines.

“When you think about all of the infrastructure that needs to be financed, permitted, and built to drastically reshape our energy system, there is no doubt our current regulatory framework is not designed to facilitate that kind of transition,” Sasha Mackler, director of the Energy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told Josh.

Democrats and environmentalist groups have attacked the Trump administration’s proposed changes to the National Environmental Policy Act, arguing the reforms would boost fossil fuel development while limiting consideration of climate change in permitting reviews.

Yet members of both parties have acknowledged the need to streamline environmental reviews under NEPA, which are required for federally involved projects such as highways, bridges, pipelines, oil and gas leases, transmission lines, and wind farms.

“Eighty percent of what we talk about here, most Republicans and Democrats would agree with,” said Christy Goldfuss, who led the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which oversees NEPA, under the Obama administration. “We have to get better at building big projects.”

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

WIND AND SOLAR SET FOR ELECTRIC 2020: Most new power generating capacity in 2020 will come from wind and solar, the Energy Information Administration projected Tuesday.

EIA expects 42 gigawatts of new electricity capacity this year, with solar and wind representing almost 32 GW, or 76%, of these additions.

Wind accounts for the largest share of additions at 44%, followed by solar and natural gas at 32% and 22%, respectively. The 18.5 GW of wind coming online in 2020 and 13.5 GW of new solar will surpass previous annual records for both electricity sources.

COOLANT BILL GETS CHILLY RECEPTION FROM GOP LAWMAKERS: Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee made clear they likely won’t be supporting legislation to slash potent greenhouse gas refrigerants.

That’s despite the bill already having backing from GOP colleagues in both chambers and industry arguments that U.S. appliance and chemical makers could suffer economic losses without a legislative push to reduce the chemicals, known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs.

Congressman Greg Walden of Oregon, the top Republican on the committee, said he’s open to working on the bill, but he argued the process has been rushed, skipping over key questions about energy efficiency, safety, and impact on consumers. He and other Republicans also pointed to several instances where the legislative text was more ambitious than technical advice the Environmental Protection Agency provided to the committee.

One Republican spoke for the group: Lawmakers spent much of their time during a hearing Tuesday yielding to Oklahoma Congressman Markwayne Mullin, who owns a small plumbing company.

Mullin slammed the proposed legislation, arguing it would be harmful to small businesses and consumers, and he repeatedly pressed Cindy Newberg, a career EPA employee and director of the agency’s stratospheric protection division, on why HFCs needed to be phased out at all.

ENERGY & COMMERCE DEMS CAN’T DODGE PRICING POLITICS: Democrats on the committee avoided explicitly pricing carbon in their big climate plan for now, but the politics are still following them around.

The Democrats’ climate framework, released last week, is already getting criticism from Republicans, hesitant to economically penalize emitters, and the progressive Left, who aren’t sure market-based mechanisms can slash emissions quickly enough.

That’s in part because the framework includes market-based policies that would put an indirect price on carbon emissions — through clean energy credits that can be bought and traded under a clean electricity standards and through a backstop “carbon fee” as part of a proposed state-federal climate partnership.

House Energy and Commerce Democrats could alleviate some of these political concerns — or deepen them — when they release draft legislative text later this month, in which they’re promising many more specifics on how their proposals would work.

More on the political tensions in Abby’s story from this morning.

IS BLOOMBERG TOM STEYER’S NEXT TARGET? Billionaire climate advocate Tom Steyer is arguing his work on the issue has been more wide-reaching than that of his fellow billionaire vying for the Democrats’ 2020 bid, Michael Bloomberg.

“I’ve actually pushed for a broader way of thinking in terms of climate than just coal,” Steyer told the New York Times editorial board in an interview published Monday. He touted his work to stop natural gas pipelines and encourage electric vehicles as examples.

“If you look across the spectrum of where greenhouse gases are coming from, focusing entirely on generation isn’t enough because you’re seeing greenhouse gases come from across the spectrum,” Steyer added.

For context: Bloomberg has poured hundreds of millions into a campaign dubbed “Beyond Coal” that has worked with environmental groups to shut down coal plants. Last year, Bloomberg expanded the campaign to “Beyond Carbon,” shifting his sights to target the broader fossil fuel infrastructure.

Steyer is on tonight’s debate stage in Iowa. Bloomberg isn’t because his self-funded campaign doesn’t meet the party’s donor requirements.

TRUMP’S ‘DANGEROUS’ MOVE TO ALLOW LNG BY RAIL: Democratic attorney generals filed a comment letter Monday opposing a proposal by the Trump administration to allow the transport of liquified natural gas by rail for the first time.

The top lawyers of New York, Maryland, California, and more than a dozen other states say the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s proposal understates the safety concerns of shipping LNG by rail, and provides an insufficient assessment of the environmental risks.

“This proposed rule would turn cities across the country into potential crash-test laboratories to demonstrate the risk of LNG by rail,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.

The Trump administration proposal, which faced a Monday deadline for public comment, is intended to allow energy shippers to sidestep congested pipelines to move gas to market.

The Rundown

Wall Street Journal Australia fires push some species to brink of extinction

New York Times 2019 was a record year for ocean temperatures, data show

E&E News Coal’s clout could rise after Murkowski committee exit

BuzzFeed How a bad boss remade himself as a climate hero

Associated Press Zinke gives $11K in campaign cash to foundation he started

Calendar

WEDNESDAY | JAN. 15

10 a.m. 406 Dirksen. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee holds a hearing entitled “One Year of Progress: An Update on Implementation of the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act.”

10 a.m. 2318 Rayburn. The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology holds a hearing entitled “An Update on the Climate Crisis: From Science to Solutions.”

2 p.m. 2318 Rayburn. The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology holds a hearing entitled “The Department of Energy’s Office of Science: Exploring the Next Frontiers in Energy Research and Scientific Discovery.”