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WHEELER DEFENDS EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS UNDER TRUMP IN CLIMATE REPORT PUSHBACK: Environmental Protection Agency acting administrator Andrew Wheeler plans to defend the Trump administration’s record of reducing carbon pollution and accelerating energy innovation in pushing back against a new federal climate report’s findings that show dire consequences for the economy.

The national climate assessment “downplays innovation,” even under its less stringent scenario on projections of economic harm, Wheeler said Wednesday at an event hosted by the Washington Post.

Wheeler noted that there has been a 14 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change since 2005. And part of that reduction in emissions, he noted, came during Trump’s first year in office.

Emissions dropped 2.7 percent in Trump’s first year in office, Wheeler noted. He added that the report should have gave credit to technology innovation for the emissions reduction.

Wheeler said the federal government needs “to take a more realistic look at technology” in evaluating the national climate assessment’s findings. It is “not fair to freeze technology and innovation,” he added.

What is technology innovation? One of the biggest factors in emissions reductions has been the switch from coal to cleaner-burning natural gas power plants.

But Wheeler sees a special place for coal innovation, through which technology development focused on curbing emissions from coal power plants would help the world, not just the U.S., cut greenhouse gases.

Coal use “has not peaked,” Wheeler said. He said the Obama-era Clean Power Plan “took coal out of the mix,” but Trump’s Affordable Clean Energy rule would allow coal technology to expand.

Obama “would have frozen” clean coal technology, but under the new rule we will see that technology developed and then exported to other countries, where the ultimate goal is worldwide greenhouse emissions reductions, Wheeler said.

Meeting Paris but withdrawing anyway: Wheeler also said that the administration is still participating in the United Nations climate meetings, despite the president’s stated goal of withdrawing from the Paris climate change agreement.

“We are still participating in the process, but we are withdrawing from Paris,” Wheeler said. “We are actually meeting our Paris” emission reduction targets, “but we are withdrawing.”

Wheeler said he will have staff in Poland next week for the U.N. climate meeting called the COP24. The meeting will define what direction nations will take in meeting the Paris climate goals of curbing global warming by 2 degrees by the middle of the century, or accepting a more aggressive target of 1.5 degrees.

The more strict target would call for a rapid transition toward renewable energy by 2040, which could undermine Trump’s clean coal plans.

Welcome to Daily on Energy, compiled 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.  

WHEELER DELAYED LEAD PIPE RULE TO GET THE AGENCY’S PRIORITIES STRAIGHT: Also at Wednesday’s event, Wheeler took credit for hitting the pause button on the agency’s lead and copper pipe rule, deemed critical to removing lead from drinking water in the wake of the Flint, Mich., water crisis.

Although the agency is now “moving forward with it,” Wheeler said he slowed it down for a “big reason”: He was concerned about how EPA would prioritize the most corrosive pipelines for repairs.

He said that he directed staff to categorize all lead pipes, which has never been done, before issuing the rule, in order to get new pipes to those who need them the most.

HOUSE LAWMAKERS INTRODUCE FIRST BIPARTISAN CARBON TAX BILL IN A DECADE: A small group of Democratic and Republican House lawmakers introduced Tuesday night the first bipartisan carbon tax legislation in nearly a decade as a way to combat climate change.

Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida, the Democratic co-chair of the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, unveiled the bill along with fellow members of the group, Reps. Francis Rooney, R-Fla., Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., Charlie Crist, D-Fla., and John Delaney, D, Md.

“We are taking a monumental step forward in showing our colleagues and the country there is a bipartisan solution to climate change that addresses risks to our health, environment, and economy and puts a price on pollution to end our reliance on carbon,” Deutch told reporters on a press call.

The big-picture outlook: Despite its poor chances of passage anytime soon, the new bill represents an increasing willingness from at least some Republicans to address global warming and tests the idea of a revenue-neutral carbon-fee-and-dividend model that distributes all of the proceeds from the tax into equal portions in the form of a monthly rebate to American households.

What’s in the bill: It would impose a tax of $15 per ton of carbon dioxide in 2019, a relatively low starting number. But the price would increase $10 each year, a rapid pace, rising to nearly $100 per ton by 2030, and potentially higher if the emissions targets set in the bill are not met. The legislation exempts agricultural fuels.

It also creates a border carbon adjustment, forcing exporting countries to pay a fee on carbon-emitting products coming into the U.S., to avoid harming the competitiveness of American industries.

And it restricts the ability of the government to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, which would be duplicative with a carbon tax.

Projecting the impacts: The bill’s authors say the legislation would reduce U.S. carbon emissions 45 percent by 2030 compared to 2015 levels, and 80 to 90 percent by 2050, well beyond the pace of the Obama administration’s target under the Paris climate agreement that President Trump rejected.

Read more of Josh’s report here.

DEMOCRATIC SENATORS MOVE TO DEFEND NEW CLIMATE FINDINGS: A group of over two dozen Democratic senators introduced a resolution on Tuesday endorsing the findings of a new federal climate report issued Friday along with recent findings by the United Nations.  

The resolution was led by Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that oversees the EPA, and signed by 24 of his colleagues.

“The Trump Administration clearly wants to bury the findings of this new report, just like they want to bury their heads in the sand rather than acknowledge the truth about our climate,” Merkley said. “But we won’t let them.”

The resolution endorses the findings of the U.S. National Climate Assessment that found significant economic impacts if climate change is not addressed by reducing fossil fuel pollution. The assessment showed that the U.S. would suffer thousands of deaths and over $500 billion per year in crop damage, lost labor, and extreme weather damages by 2100.

The senators also endorsed the recent U.N. Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change report that showed that the signatories of the 2015 Paris climate accord must up their efforts to avert a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next 20 years.

A similar resolution was introduced in the House after the U.N. report was released last month.

WHITE HOUSE SAYS FEDERAL CLIMATE CHANGE REPORT ‘NOT BASED ON FACTS:’ White House press secretary Sarah Sanders denounced a new climate-change report as “not data driven” and “not based on facts,” sharpening the Trump administration’s repudiation of the document crafted by 13 federal agencies.

“You have to look at the fact that this report is based on the most extreme modeled scenario, which contradicts long-established trends,” Sanders said at a press briefing. “Modeling the climate is an extremely complicated science that is never exact.”

Sanders added: “We think this is the most extreme version, and it’s not based on facts. It’s not data driven. We’d like to see something that is more data driven. It’s based on modeling.”

Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Texas Tech University Climate Science Center and one of the co-authors of the climate assessment, responded to Sanders on Twitter by saying “we considered many scenarios.”

TRUMP SECOND-GUESSES CLIMATE ASSESSMENT: Trump, meanwhile, offered his most extensive comments yet on the climate report later Tuesday.

“One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers,” Trump told the Washington Post. “As to whether or not it’s man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it,” he added.

TRUMP THREATENS TO CUT FEDERAL SUBSIDIES FOR GENERAL MOTORS: Trump threatened Tuesday to cut General Motors’ federal subsidies, including for electric vehicles, after the carmaker announced that it would lay off thousands of workers and shutter several North American facilities to focus attention on emissions-free and self-driving vehicles.

“General Motors made a big China bet years ago when they built plants there (and in Mexico) – don’t think that bet is going to pay off. I am here to protect America’s Workers!” he wrote in a Twitter post.

Translating Trump’s threat into policy: GM has received billions of dollars in federal funding, much of it pertaining to the development of emissions-free cars, according to tracking website Good Jobs First. Among them is a $105 million grant from the Department of Energy to develop lithium-ion batteries for use in electric vehicles.

Some Republicans and Democrats, meanwhile, are seeking, as part of a package of temporary tax breaks slated for re-upping, to extend the $7,500-per-vehicle tax credit for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles — keeping it alive for more years — and lifting the individual manufacturer cap. The credit is capped at 200,000 vehicles sold per automaker, and GM is already close to using up its availability.

During a media availability a few hours after Trump’s tweets Rep. Kevin Brady R-Texas, the lead tax policy lawmaker in the House of Representatives, said he didn’t “anticipate any action on that in this session.”

FOX NEWS TO DISCIPLINE EMPLOYEES WHO CRAFTED INTERVIEW WITH SCOTT PRUITT: Fox News Channel said it will discipline employees who sent multiple emails to an aide to former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt about crafting a “Fox & Friends” interview with the then-administrator.

In the emails, Pruitt’s aide suggested the interview and provided “talking points,” according to the Associated Press.

The aide also asked to approve the script that would introduce the administrator, who served under Trump from Feb. 2017 to July 2018 before resigning because of ethics and spending scandals.

Although Fox did not say who was being disciplined, the network said the email exchange “is not standard practice whatsoever and the matter is being addressed internally with those involved.”

ZINKE CLEARED BY INSPECTOR GENERAL IN NATIONAL MONUMENT PROBE: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke did not give preferential treatment to a Republican state lawmaker when the Trump administration last year shrank the size of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, according to the agency’s inspector general.

Interior’s acting Inspector General Mary Kendall found “no evidence” that Zinke and the administration drew the monument’s boundaries in a way that would avoid nearby land owned by Utah state Rep. Michael Noel. The Associated Press obtained a letter Kendall wrote about the probe’s findings to David Bernhardt, the deputy secretary of the Interior.

Western Values Project, an environmental group, had requested the inspector general complete the probe. Zinke is still facing numerous inspector general investigations.

There are also pending lawsuits regarding the Trump administration’s decision to shrink the Grand Staircase-Escalante, along with the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah.

RUNDOWN

New York Times Energy speculators jump at chance to lease public land at bargain prices

Reuters Two U.S. pipelines rack up violations, threaten industry growth

Washington Post Companies launch plan to capture methane from hog manure lagoons

Wall Street Journal Macron recommits to fuel tax amid rising protests

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