Daily on Energy: Renewable energy companies beef up DC operations

More than 30 companies, including GE Renewable Energy, Invenergy, Google, and NextEra, have been working throughout this year to form the American Clean Power Association. The American Wind Energy Association has helped to lead the group’s creation and plans to merge with the new group, according to a statement from the wind energy group Thursday.

The formation of the new group shows the renewable energy industry’s lobbying efforts are evolving.

Wind and solar power aren’t emerging technologies in the energy landscape anymore. There’s big money behind renewables. Utilities are promising to bring on a massive amount of wind and solar in the next decade. Costs of the technology are continuing to fall, and renewables are gaining a greater share of U.S. electricity generation.

In 2019, for the first time in more than 130 years, renewable energy surpassed coal generation, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Renewables haven’t had the same success in terms of federal policy, however: Clean energy has been left out of every coronavirus relief bill so far, despite the sector losing half a million jobs since the pandemic began.

At the federal level, some of the few major policies supporting renewable energy are the wind and solar tax credits, which don’t have the support of many Republican lawmakers. There have been bipartisan efforts to create tax incentives for battery storage, but none of those have made it across the finish line yet.

Lobbying dollars from the renewable energy industry also pale in comparison to the fossil fuel industry. The oil, gas, and coal sector shelled out $104 million on lobbying in 2019, whereas the renewable energy sector spent less than $18 million, according to Bloomberg data.

There’s strength in numbers: The new trade group will represent interests across the clean energy sector, not just wind and solar companies, but also manufacturers, utilities, and corporate purchasers of renewable power.

“Collaboration with our colleagues across different renewable energy industries makes good business sense because success for the renewables energy industry is mutually inclusive of all these technologies working together,” the AWEA statement says.

Whereas tax credit extensions have been the main political request of the renewables industry thus far, the American Clean Power Association plans to lobby aggressively on issues like revising permitting and siting requirements, modernizing the electricity grid, and setting broader carbon policy.

The group’s creation “will help boost the pan-renewable sector’s advocacy capabilities during this critical inflection point for energy and climate policy,” said Gregory Wetstone, head of the American Council on Renewable Energy, a nonprofit that also represents a cross-section of the renewables industry.

Indeed, a clean energy trade group such as the American Clean Power Association could take on a much larger role in shaping public policy if Joe Biden wins the White House and sets out to achieve his ambitious climate plans, including a zero-carbon power sector by 2035.

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THE CHAMBER’S CLIMATE BET: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s decision to endorse a host of centrist House Democrats from fossil-fuel states could provide the business group leverage to temper aggressive climate change legislation in a Biden administration, Josh reports in a story this morning.

Some centrist Democrats in tight reelection races whom the Chamber is planning to endorse, such as Rep. Kendra Horn of Oklahoma, have suggested they are not on board with a top-down Biden approach to climate change. The Chamber’s endorsement of members, including Horn, is designed to encourage them to work with Republicans to hold the line, according to lobbyists and energy industry officials.

“Having a few Democrat allies on the Hill is beneficial to their cause,” said Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor and CEO of the oil services company Canary. “I suspect the ultimate aim of the Chamber is to ensure Republicans plus some Democrats equals a pro-fossil fuel majority in the lower chamber.”

The Chamber tries to close the gap on climate…to an extent: Long viewed by Democrats as a barrier to climate-related legislation, the group has recently shifted its message, identifying the issue as a problem that businesses are working to combat.

But the Chamber opposes carbon taxes and more sweeping ideas favored by Biden and Democratic leaders in Congress, who have proposed using mandates, regulations, and massive federal spending to support renewable energy and reduce fossil fuel use.

There could be some centrist holdouts for the picking, however, including some Democrats selected for endorsements by the Chamber.

“There is a recognition the Democratic Party’s energy and environmental policy is becoming more radicalized, more anti-fossil fuels, more anti-business,” said a House Republican aide. “They are looking to cultivate relationships to help mitigate what’s happening.”

CHAMBER BACKS GOP YOUTH GROUP’S ELECTRIC VEHICLES INITIATIVE: Speaking of the Chamber, the business lobby is identifying itself a partner in a new project by the youth conservative climate group American Conservation Coalition to draw awareness to electric vehicles.

ACC’s president Benji Backer is undertaking a 45-day road trip through 19 states beginning this month in a Tesla Model X, in what the youth group says is a partnership with the Chamber.

NAVALNY POISONING PROMPTS CRUZ TO PUSH AGAINST NORD STREAM 2: Republican Sen. Ted Cruz is joining the fray calling on Germany and Europe to cooperate with the U.S. in stopping Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline in retaliation for the poisoning of a critic of Vladimir Putin.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has demanded an explanation from Russia on the circumstances of opposition leader Alexei Navalny being poisoned with a Soviet-era chemical nerve agent.

But she has stopped short so far of dropping her support for the Nord Stream 2, which has proved difficult for opponents like Cruz to stop. The pipeline would double the capacity for natural gas flowing from Russia to Germany.

Merkel said last week the Navalny case should not be linked to completion of the pipeline, aiming to separate commercial interests from political ones. Cruz disagrees.

“Nord Stream 2 is a political project that will allow Russia to dominate and coerce our European partners,” Cruz told Josh Thursday. “Navalny’s poisoning reinforces the need for us and our allies to work together to stand against Russia’s threat.”

TRUMP UNVEILS ENDORSEMENT OF BUILDING TRADE UNION IN PENNSYLVANIA: President Trump on Thursday unveiled an endorsement from a building trade union as he promised to protect blue-collar jobs in a campaign speech in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania, the Washington Examiner’s Rob Crilly reports.

“They work hard, they do great,” Trump said of the Boilermakers Local 154 union that endorsed him, which has 1,500 members. “We really put them back to work because this state was in real trouble.”

Trump continued to rail against what he sees as Biden’s ambivalent stance on fracking (although Biden has clearly stated he won’t ban it) and claimed his opponent’s embrace of green energy policies could cost hundreds of thousands of jobs in the state.

John Hughes, business manager for Boilermakers Local 154, which is based in Pittsburgh, praised Trump’s effort to cut environmental regulations and promote U.S. oil and gas production.

“My members and their families are dependent on these industries, and it is imperative that we continue to develop new opportunities and energy infrastructure in America,” he said.

Members of his union install, maintain, and repair boilers in coal and natural gas plants, refineries, steel mills, and petrochemical plants. Josh reported on the union’s skepticism of Biden’s energy policies in a story this summer.

WHEELER’S VISION FOR EPA: EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said he wants to use a second Trump term to clean up air, water, and toxic waste pollution in places he says have been “left behind” by prior administrations more concerned with climate change.

Wheeler accused prior administrations and the governors of Democratic states such as California and New York of spending too many resources on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, at the expense of cleaning up pollution.

“Communities deserve better than this, but in the recent past, EPA has forgotten important parts of its mission,” Wheeler said during a major address Thursday at the Nixon Library. “It’s my belief that we misdirect a lot of resources that could be better used to help communities across this country.”

Critics, though, say the EPA’s rollbacks of Obama-era climate, air, and water regulations have done more harm for the minority and low-income people Wheeler says he wants to help. Those rollbacks “send a clear message that the lives of black, brown, and Indigenous lives have little value to the current administration,” said Mustafa Santiago Ali, senior vice president for environmental justice for the National Wildlife Federation who previously served as the EPA’s senior adviser on environmental justice.

WYOMING TOUTS BRIGHT FUTURE FOR CARBON CAPTURE: It could reduce more carbon emissions and create more jobs if Wyoming retrofitted its coal-fired power plants with carbon capture instead of shutting them down, according to a report commissioned by Gov. Mark Gordon in partnership with the Energy Department.

The report, unveiled Thursday, paints a rosy picture for carbon capture in the coal-heavy state. Wyoming has long been a leader in developing carbon capture technology, housing a major carbon capture research hub and putting in place policies to speed development of CO2 pipelines. The EPA on Thursday also announced Wyoming had been formally granted primary authority to permit wells to inject CO2 underground.

According to the report, retrofitting nine units at four of Wyoming’s coal-fired plants with carbon capture would cut emissions by 100 million metric tons more than the resource plans of PacificCorp, the utility that operates the plants, that would shut down or sell off several of the plants.

A pretty important caveat, though: It’s still too costly to install carbon capture on many of the coal plants the report analyzed. The report finds the economics pan out for just two units on one of the coal plants, but all of the other projects “need some sort of additional funding to make the projects financially viable.”

Interestingly, the report suggests if Wyoming were to join a carbon pricing market, such as California’s cap-and-trade program, it could close the economic gap.

Some suggest the report’s assumptions are too rosy: For example, the report assumes an oil price of $60 a barrel, which boosts the use of enhanced oil recovery (through which CO2 is injected to produce more oil). That’s even as low and volatile oil prices amid the pandemic forced the only U.S. carbon capture project, on a coal plant in Texas, to shut down temporarily.

DEMOCRATS SLAM ENERGY DEPARTMENT FOR DELAYS: House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone and energy subcommittee Chairman Bobby Rush are raising alarms the Energy Department hasn’t begun collecting data on energy jobs for an annual agency report on employment in the sector.

That report, known as the U.S. Energy and Employment Report, is especially important this year, when the energy industry has lost more than a million jobs due to the pandemic, the lawmakers wrote Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette in a letter Thursday. The Energy Department is supposed to collect employment data this month for the report, the lawmakers said.

Senate Democrats are fed up with delays on efficiency standards: The Energy Department has fallen behind on issuing updates to more than two dozen appliance efficiency standards, all while it’s taking steps “that could undermine existing standards by creating loopholes,” 10 Democratic senators, led by New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan, wrote in a letter Thursday. The senators are demanding Brouillette update the standards immediately.

Their letter follows threats last month from a number of state attorneys general and environmental groups, who have all promised to sue the Energy Department if it doesn’t begin updating the 26 standards within 60 days.

CONSERVATIVE CLEAN ENERGY GROUP HIRES FORMER TESLA ANALYST: ClearPath announced Thursday it hired Savita Bowman, a former business resolution analyst at Tesla, as a policy analyst.

Bowman worked on solar and storage issues at Tesla and previously studied carbon capture technology and policy at Columbia University.

The Rundown

Bloomberg World’s top pork producer launches new plan to cut emissions

New York Times Its electric grid under strain, California turns to batteries

Axios The great battery race

Reuters Canada has big plans to use hydrogen to cut emissions – and produce more oil

Calendar

TUESDAY | SEP. 8

1 p.m. The House Natural Resources Committee holds a livestreamed forum focused on environmental justice issues in New Mexico.

WEDNESDAY | SEP. 9

10 a.m. 106 Dirksen. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee holds a hearing titled, “Successful State Stewardship: A Legislative Hearing to Examine S.614, the Grizzly Bear State Management Act.”

12 p.m. The House Natural Resources Committee holds a livestreamed roundtable titled “William Pendley’s Unfitness to Lead the Bureau of Land Management” with Chairman Raul Grijalva and Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, of the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

THURSDAY | SEP. 10

2 p.m. Ocean Conservancy hosts a webinar titled, “Blue-Green Future: U.S. Federal Ocean-Climate Recommendations for 2021” featuring a keynote address from Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Florida, chairwoman of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.

FRIDAY | SEP. 11

11:25 a.m. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette joins a conversation on the global outlook for the U.S. energy industry at Ex-Im Bank’s virtual annual conference.