Daily on Energy: House Democrats proclaim climate and infrastructure week

A big chunk of this week’s agenda starts in the Natural Resources Committee, where Arizona Democrat Raúl Grijalva holds the chairman’s gavel.

The action begins Tuesday with an oversight hearing aimed at the president’s fiscal 2020 budget priorities for the government’s premier climate research agency, the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration.

President Trump is looking to slash nearly $1 billion from NOAA’s fiscal 2019 spending levels. The cuts would eliminate several climate change research programs, including the Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments and the Regional Climate Data and Information Subactivity programs, according to the agency’s budget justification document.

California Democrat Jared Huffman’s Water, Oceans, and Wildlife Subcommittee will lead the oversight hearing. The meeting will also examine Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget priorities for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is in charge of endangered species protections.

On Wednesday, Huffman is holding a separate hearing on the findings of a new United Nations report that examines the role climate change has played in pushing one million species to the brink of extinction.

The Energy and Commerce Committee also springs to life with a hearing on the LIFT America Act, a climate-focused infrastructure bill aimed at boosting the nation’s renewable energy mix as part of a plan to rebuild aging infrastructure.

Senate joins the renewable energy debate: The Republican-led Senate will also dive into the subject of renewable energy at an Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing Tuesday morning.

“The purpose of the hearing is to examine opportunities to advance renewable energy and energy efficiency efforts in the United States,” reads a committee notice.

The hearings coincide with a major industry lobbying push to demonstrate support for a carbon tax on greenhouse gas emissions.

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.

BP AND SHELL DONATE $1 MILLION EACH TO GOP-BACKED CARBON TAX DRIVE: Oil and gas giants BP and Shell are donating $1 million each over two years to a Republican-backed group urging Congress to pass a federal carbon tax to fight climate change.

The companies are helping fund Americans for Carbon Dividends, the advocacy arm of the Climate Leadership Council, a group led by former Republican secretaries of state James Baker III and George Shultz that promotes a carbon tax plan that would return the revenue to taxpayers.

BP’s and Shell’s donations reflect oil and gas companies’ intent to move beyond just rhetorical support for carbon pricing proposals.

“It’s our hope Shell’s support of AFCD and like-minded coalitions ultimately leads to legislation that establishes a national price on carbon,” Shell U.S. President Gretchen Watkins told Josh.

Shell and BP are joining a coalition of nearly 100 companies for two days of lobbying on Capitol Hill this week geared toward generating support for a carbon tax.

What the plan would do: The Climate Leadership Council proposal would impose a gradually rising carbon tax beginning at $40 per ton and return the money to the American people through equal quarterly payments to offset higher energy prices.

As part of a “grand bargain” to win over industry, the plan would also scrap carbon regulations and protect oil companies from lawsuits by states and cities blaming them for climate change.

Read more of Josh’s report here.

POLL SHOWS REPUBLICAN SUPPORT FOR CARBON TAX PLAN: A poll released Monday by the firm Luntz Global — led by Republican consultant Frank Luntz — shows 2-1 support among GOP voters for the Climate Leadership Council’s carbon tax and dividend plan.

Fifty-three percent of Republican voters support the carbon dividends approach, compared with 80% of Democrats. The GOP support is more pronounced in younger people, with 75% of Republicans under 40 years old backing the proposal. Sixty-nine percent of Republicans polled said they are concerned the party’s stance on climate change hurts the GOP with younger voters.

The poll also shows that 43% of Republican voters are more concerned about climate change than they were a year ago, compared with 74% of Democrats.

Luntz Global conducted the online poll of 1,000 voters this month.

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE MICHAEL BENNET RELEASES 100% CLEAN ENERGY CLIMATE PLAN: Presidential candidate Michael Bennet, a Democratic senator from Colorado, introduced a plan Monday for America to use 100% clean energy and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

Bennet would help achieve that goal by spending $1 trillion in federal funding to spur $10 trillion in private sector investments towards clean energy technologies and infrastructure.

A plan for middle America: Bennet’s climate change plan would create 10 million clean energy economy jobs within a decade, with a special focus on agriculture, by launching a research agency to finance the development of technologies to sequester carbon and fight infectious disease.

“My state proves it’s a false choice to say we can’t do what’s required on climate change and at the same time address economic growth,” Bennet told reporters on a press call. “We need to scale the efforts of farmers and ranchers to make them part of the solution.”

Bennet is a moderate Democrat aiming to appeal to middle and rural America. The fact he is focusing his first policy agenda item on climate change shows the potency of the issue in the Democratic primary.

Other components of Bennet’s plan include: providing federal infrastructure funding to states that reduce emissions quickly; establishing a national “commitment” to conserve 30% of America’s lands and oceans by 2030, cutting food waste 75% by 2030, and creating a “Next Generation Climate Board of Directors” comprised of young people.

APPROPRIATORS PASS SPENDING BILL WITH HIGHER CLIMATE SCIENCE FUNDING: The House Appropriations Committee passed a number of spending bills on Friday with new investments in climate change science within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The fiscal 2020 spending bill provides an increase of $561 million for the National Science Foundation to solve “tomorrow’s gravest problems” while also investing in NOAA’s climate research activities and coastal resiliency to “ensure the public and our shorelines are better protected when disaster strikes,” said New York Democrat Nita Lowey, chairwoman of the committee.

Oil’s interests: The oil industry group American Petroleum Institute touted the panel’s success in also passing funding for the Army Corps of Engineers, which they see as vital for expanding harbors to move oil and natural gas exports.

D.C. CIRCUIT GRANTS REFINERS A VICTORY IN ETHANOL WAIVER BATTLE: A federal appeals court granted oil refiners a victory Friday by denying a renewable fuel group’s attempt to block the Environmental Protection Agency from exempting oil companies from blending ethanol in gasoline.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied the Advanced Biofuels Association’s request for a temporary injunction to stop the EPA from exempting oil companies from the Renewable Fuel Standard. The standard requires refiners to blend billions of gallons of ethanol and other biofuels into the nation’s fuel supply each year.

The ethanol industry is set to argue that the EPA refinery exemptions are illegal next month in oral argument before the appeals court in a separate lawsuit.

Read more from John’s story here.

ATLANTIC COUNCIL GETS ROCKEFELLER BACKING TO RELAUNCH MAJOR CLIMATE EFFORT: The nonpartisan Atlantic Council recently got a big boost from the Rockefeller Foundation and others to relaunch its work on climate change.

“We also just got a major grant from the Rockefeller Foundation relaunching our Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, where we are going to be focusing, above all, on climate-related work, also migration and security,” Fred Kempe, the think tank’s president and CEO, told attendees last week at a climate forum with oil company Total’s CEO Patrick Pouyanné.

The Rockefeller Foundation provided $30 million. The center also received a $25 million gift from business leader and philanthropist Adrienne Arsht and was renamed the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center.

The center will address the “urgent crises of climate change, migration, and security,” with its goal being to enhance the resilience of 1 billion people by 2030.

LARGEST US CARBON CAPTURE PLANT PLANNED IN INDIANA: Wabash Valley Resources plans to invest in the largest plant to sequester greenhouse gas emissions in the country in West Terre Haute, Ind.

The plant will sequester carbon dioxide emissions from the production of ammonia fertilizer.

“The project will capture and sequester close to 100% of the plant’s CO2” and deposit it 7,000 feet below the surface into a salt cavern, the company said.

It will create the world’s first ammonia produced with a near-zero carbon footprint.

The company also says that corn grown using the low-carbon fertilizer will have a lower greenhouse gas rating, making U.S. ethanol a viable commodity for the growing number of low-carbon fuel standards, which demand the use of cleaner fuels that don’t exacerbate global warming.

The Rundown

Washington Post States aren’t waiting for the Trump administration on environmental protections

AP Trump’s EPA shifts more environmental enforcement to states

Wall Street Journal Despite Mideast tensions, OPEC inches closer to maintaining production cuts through 2019

New York Times It was supposed to be Australia’s climate change election. What happened?

Calendar

TUESDAY | May 21

10 a.m., 366 Dirksen. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee holds a hearing on advancing renewable energy and energy efficiency.

2 p.m., 1324 Longworth. The House Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife holds an oversight hearing on “Examining the President’s Fiscal Year 2020 Budget Proposal for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.”

WEDNESDAY | May 22

10 a.m., 1324 Longworth. The House Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife holds an oversight hearing entitled “Responding to the Global Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.”

10 a.m., 2123 Rayburn. The House Energy and Commerce Committee holds a hearing on “LIFT America” infrastructure and climate legislation.