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SUPPLYING THE SUPPLY CHAIN: Analysts and auto industry leaders are keeping the pressure on to help improve the critical mineral supply chain landscape, warning it’s so vastly underdeveloped that it will be a major check on countries’ intentions to more quickly replace fuel powered vehicles with electric ones.
The war in Ukraine and high price of fuel have the Biden administration and other western governments saying they want to be more aggressive in greening their economies than they were even at COP26, even while they emphasize the importance of ensuring immediate fossil fuel supply.
The mineral supply issue has been a headline subject of multiple congressional hearings and all kinds of research reports over the last year and is not especially new.
Still, while a combination of prolonged high fuel prices, new tailpipe emissions rules, and electric vehicle marketing from the Biden administration creates even more favorable conditions for EV expansion, industry watchers keep insisting the battery manufacturing capacity isn’t in place to support goals like President Joe Biden’s target for 50% of new car sales to be electric models by 2030.
Joe “Mr. Lithium” Lowry, a mining industry vet who runs a podcast popular with industry players, brought up the difficulty in standing up new mines in a new interview with Bloomberg.
The issue has been resurrected, too, this week after the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality pulled back Trump era reforms to implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act, which had been designed to speed up environmental reviews for those kinds of projects.
“You can build a battery factory in two years, but it takes up to a decade to bring on a lithium project,” he said.
He also noted the different characteristics of lithium distinguishing it from other EV inputs.
“It’s not a commodity,” he said. “Lithium is often compared with iron ore or other major commodities, and it behaves nothing like that. The auto industry is just finally figuring that out.”
Separately, RJ Scaringe, CEO of EV builder Rivian, said recently that “90% to 95% of the [battery cell] supply chain does not exist.”
Scaringe said further the shortage of semiconductors, which has been implicated as a leading factor driving car prices higher and which active congressional legislation seeks to alleviate, is “a small appetizer to what we are about to feel on battery cells over the next two decades.”
A caveat: The higher commodity and shipping prices may be standing in the way of what could have been with regard to EV sales, but they’ve by no means totally hampered growth.
Multiple manufacturers marked record first quarters this year, including Tesla, Volkgswagen, and Mercedes-Benz.
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BIDEN’S EARTH DAY CIRCUIT: Biden will mark Earth Day in Seattle, where he will promote his climate change agenda, talk wildfire mitigation, and lobby Congress to pass green energy legislation.
Biden was in Portland, Oregon, yesterday where he did much the same, blaming Vladimir Putin for causing high gasoline prices.
“We need to get off this rollercoaster of relying on oil,” he said. “We need to declare America’s energy independence.”
BIDEN FORESTRY ORDER INCOMING: The administration announced details this morning of an executive order Biden will sign today while in Seattle, calling on the secretaries of Agriculture and Interior, via the Forest Service and Bureau and Land Management, to inventory mature and old-growth forests on federal lands within a year.
The order’s MO is to figure out ways to better protect the trees from wildfires so they can continue to sequester carbon and mitigate climate change.
It also will direct the agencies to develop new policies for the conservation of these “valuable assets” to the environment and climate change mitigation, as several administration officials referred to the trees on a call with reporters.
Another section of the EO takes on deforestation around the globe by ordering the secretary of state to reduce or eliminate U.S. purchases of agricultural commodities grown illegally or on recently deforested lands.
What’s a mature tree, anyway? Part of the agencies’ directive will be to establish a working definition of an old-growth tree, one senior administration official described.
“Just using things like the age of a tree or the diameter of a tree are really a poor proxy for how important that tree is too complex for forest systems,” the official said.
Meanwhile…Some 500 firefighters are racing to contain a new and rapidly growing wildfire in Arizona. The fire is 32 square miles but threatened to keep growing this weekend amid high wind conditions. The blaze was one of at least a half-dozen that tore through Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico this week.
Those elements are “pretty much on steroids in the atmosphere″ Scott Overpeck, an employee at the National Weather Service in Albuquerque, told the AP. “And by that we mean they are really cranked up … Everything is overlapping together at the same time.”
ADDITIONAL DETAIL ON STEPHEN MILLER HAUNTING WHITE HOUSE CEQ: Recent legal victories against one of the Biden administration’s race-based economic programs won by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller and his America First Legal group are weighing on the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality as it crafts policy and guidance related to Biden’s environmental justice agenda.
An administration official told E&E News that Miller’s “name has been invoked” during the crafting of policies to direct federal resources to people or communities on the basis of race. The official said Miller and his group’s success against one program in particular has “people spooked.”
Miller and the Trump-aligned America First Legal group sued on behalf of some farmers last year to stop a program funded by the American Rescue Plan meant to forgive debts of “socially disadvantaged” farmers which, under USDA’s definition, would exclude white people from being eligible.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said at the time, “It’s pretty clear why [white farmers are] not included — because they’ve had the access of all the programs for the last 100 years.”
A federal judge enjoined the government from discriminating on the basis of race or ethnicity in administering the program, and CEQ is reportedly now worried about the chances other prospective race-based policies hold up in court.
At the time the injunction was ordered, Miller told Jeremy, “The notion that the proper way to remedy past injustice is future injustice is one of the greatest logical fallacies I can possibly imagine.”
In response to E&E’s report, he said, “The Biden Administration knows we beat them in court and will keep beating them in court and we will continue to confront their insidious plans to racially discriminate with aggressive legal action.”
As part of the White House’s “Justice40” initiative, the administration intends to “deliver at least 40 percent of the overall benefits from Federal investments in climate and clean energy to disadvantaged communities.”
DOE AWARDS FIRST SPR BARRELS OF WAR-TRIGGERED RELEASE: All 30 million of Strategic Petroleum Reserve barrels made available as part of the administration’s initial, coordinated IEA stockpile release in response to the war in Ukraine have been awarded, the Energy Department announced yesterday.
The barrels will be delivered in May and June, along with 20 million barrels made available in earlier releases.
DOE said it plans to issue another notice of sale on May 24 for an additional 40 million barrels, to be delivered in June, as part of the approximately 180 million-barrel emergency sale announced last month.
JEAN-PIERRE ON ‘WALK AND CHEW GUM’ ENERGY STRATEGY: The White House is out to “meet folks where they are” by encouraging more oil production with fuel prices so high, Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters yesterday.
“Our strategy from day one has been to meet folks where they are,” she said in response to a question about whether calls for more production compromise Biden’s green energy goals.
Jean-Pierre added the administration can walk and chew gum “because families need to take their kids to school and go to work, get groceries, and go about their lives. And sometimes that requires gas today, this month, and this year.”
EUROPEANS ASKED TO TURN DOWN AIR CONDITIONING TO FOIL PUTIN: The European Commission asked citizens Thursday to limit energy use and thus counter Russia and Putin by working from home, turning down air conditioning, and walking rather than driving when possible.
The recommendations for cutting reliance on Russian fuel came were presented by IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol and European Commission Director-General for Energy Ditte Juul Jørgensen.
The recommendations say that turning down the thermostat by just 1°C would save around 7% of heating energy, while setting an air conditioner 1°C warmer could reduce electricity use 10%.
NEW HOUSE BILL ON ENERGY CYBERATTACKS: The Energy Cybersecurity University Leadership Program Act, co-sponsored by Republican Mike Carey of Ohio and Democrat Deborah Ross of North Carolina, comes after a string of alarming ransomware attacks and attempted breaches against companies in the U.S. and other nations – many of which appear to be targeting the energy sector.
“Cyber threats on America’s energy sector have never been greater and must be met with urgent action to protect the critical infrastructure that makes modern life possible,” Carey said in a statement.
CISA, FBI, NSA and other allied nations issued a joint advisory warning two days ago about malicious cyber activity from state-sponsored Russian hackers,
Jen Easterly, the director of CISA, said yesterday that her agency has seen “evolving intelligence” that the hackers are looking to breach areas of critical infrastructure.
“Given recent intelligence indicating that the Russian government is exploring options for potential cyberattacks against U.S. critical infrastructure, CISA along with our interagency and international partners are putting out this advisory to highlight the demonstrated threat and capability of Russian state-sponsored and Russian aligned cybercrime groups,” she said in the advisory, which can be read in full here.
Meanwhile, the FBI’s cyber division warned U.S. agriculture cooperatives Thursday that they should be on “high alert” for a potential cyberattack, urging recipients to take every possible step to defend their networks from a malware attack. The FBI does not share additional details about the nature of an ongoing threat, but Progressive Farmer Magazine noted that the alert was also sent to cooperatives in the U.K. and Australia.
The Rundown
Wall Street Journal New York is battleground for crypto mining fight
E&E News A climate election in France could shape Europe’s future
Calendar
THURSDAY | APRIL 28
10:00 a.m. House Energy and Commerce’s Energy Subcommittee will hold a hearing with Secretary Jennifer Granholm on the fiscal year 2023 budget request for the Energy Department.
10:00 a.m. 2318 Rayburn The House Science, Space and Technology Committee will hold a hearing on climate change mitigation.
