Subscribe today to the Washington Examiner magazine and get Washington Briefing: politics and policy stories that will keep you up to date with what’s going on in Washington. SUBSCRIBE NOW: Just $1.00 an issue!
STATES RACE TO SECURE EPA’S ACE RULE: A handful of fossil fuel-heavy states are racing to submit plans to comply with the EPA’s Affordable Clean Energy (or ACE) rule nearly two years earlier than required.
They’re hoping the political upsides of moving quickly will be huge: improving the Trump EPA’s defense of its regulation in court and making it harder for a potential Joe Biden administration to peel it back.
“There’s some line of thinking that getting a plan in now and getting a plan approved, or at least subject to approval or conditionally approved, would provide some legitimacy to ACE, even if there were a change in administration,” said Stuart Spencer, an attorney with Mitchell Williams based in Arkansas.
“The hope is that the submission of the plan creates at least some level of precedent and compliance,” Spencer, who previously served as Arkansas’ top air quality official, told Abby.
Which states are moving: All of the early movers are states with sizable coal fleets that fiercely fought the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which set first-time limits on carbon emissions from power plants.
They far prefer the Trump EPA’s narrower approach to controls under the ACE rule, requiring only the reductions that could be achieved at an individual coal-fired power plant by improving its efficiency. By seeking EPA approval for their plans, maybe even as soon as before the November election, they’re hoping to lock in that approach long-term.
West Virginia is likely to be the first state to move, said Mike Nasi, a partner with Jackson Walker in Texas. The state is on track to soon advance part of its plan, covering the 700-megawatt Longview Power coal plant.
Oklahoma is also moving quickly, working closely with Oklahoma Gas & Electric, the state’s largest investor-owned utility, on a plan, Nasi told Abby.
In addition, Texas and Ohio are working to collect information from their utilities to help them craft their plans. Ohio will hold a public hearing on proposed new rules to comply with the ACE rule later this month.
Setting a higher hurdle: Having an approved state plan wouldn’t stop a potential Biden EPA from going after the ACE rule, but the early-mover states are hoping it makes it more difficult.
“Administrations do change regulations all the time, but I do think there’s merit to it being a higher hurdle for a future administration to clear if a state has taken that step and EPA has taken that step,” Nasi said. “That’s really what has primarily motivated the states that have moved sooner.”
There could be a legal benefit, too. The ACE rule is facing a fierce legal challenge from environmental groups, a coalition of state attorneys general, and others who argue the Trump EPA rule is far too weak and not a serious effort to address carbon emissions from power plants.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear marathon oral arguments over the regulation on Thursday, and many legal observers think the case will eventually make its way to the Supreme Court.
Having a state plan on the books and under consideration at the EPA could help it and its allies defend the ACE rule. Such a “real world, concrete example, as opposed to speculation about what the plan might look like, would probably be advantageous to refute concerns about how the rule will lack technical seriousness,” Nasi said.
Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers Josh Siegel (@SiegelScribe) and Abby Smith (@AbbySmithDC). Email [email protected] or [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.
NATURAL GAS’ RECORD-BREAKING YEAR: The U.S. set new records last year in natural gas consumption, production and exports, the Energy Information Administration reported this morning.
Dry natural gas production increased by 10% in 2019, reaching a record-high average of 93.1 billion cubic feet per day. Consumption rose by 3%, due to greater use of natural gas for electricity because of low prices and ongoing coal plant retirements. Natural gas gross exports increased 29% to 12.8 Bcf/d.
BUT…RENEWABLE DEVELOPER JUMPS EXXON: The world’s largest producer of wind and solar power has surpassed oil giant Exxon Mobil in market value.
NextEra Energy, a Florida-based utility and renewable energy developer, had a market capitalization of $138.6 billion during trading on Friday, the Financial Times reported, a two-thirds increase over the past two years.
Exxon’s market capitalization was $137.9 billion, down from a high of more than $500 billion in 2007. Exxon this summer was removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a dramatic fall for what was once the largest company in the world.
“NextEra’s ascent and ExxonMobil’s decline reflect a collapse in oil consumption in the pandemic, the rise of renewable resources on the electric grid and investors’ desire for steady returns at a time of low interest rates,” the Financial Times said.
CALIFORNIA HITS BACK AT EPA: “It is remarkable that you prioritized fabricating baseless mistruths about Governor Newsom’s bold climate directive rather than working for the health and welfare of Americans,” California air chief Mary Nichols and California top environment official Jared Blumenfeld wrote EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler in a letter last week.
The California officials were responding to Wheeler’s recent letter slamming Newsom’s executive order requiring all new passenger car and truck sales be zero emissions by 2035. Wheeler questioned whether California had the authority to issue such a mandate, given the Trump administration has eliminated the state’s ability to set its own tailpipe greenhouse gas rules, and suggested the state’s rolling blackouts in August demonstrate it couldn’t handle ramping up electric vehicle adoption.
Nichols and Blumenfeld, however, defend California’s authority to set its own standards. California is allowed to set its own standards to meet “compelling and extraordinary circumstances,” and poor air quality and worsening climate change fit that bill, the officials said.
They also pushed back on Wheeler’s criticism of their state’s energy woes. “Your claims about the lack of compatibility between renewable energy and grid reliability are simply inaccurate,” the California officials wrote.
CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES SURPASS 4 MILLION ACRES BURNED: The wildfires that have raged through California in 2020 have scorched more than 4 million acres of land. The Golden State surpassed the historic milestone on Monday, which is more than double the previous record, 1.67 million acres in 2018, for the most acreage burned in a calendar year.
“The 4 million mark is unfathomable. It boggles the mind, and it takes your breath away,” Scott McLean, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire, said, according to the Associated Press. “And that number will grow.”
Since the beginning of the calendar year, there have been more than 8,200 wildfires that have killed 31 people statewide and nearly 8,500 structures have been destroyed, according to a statement from the department. There are 23 major wildfires that 16,500 firefighters across the state are still fighting.
GREEN GROUPS’ HOME STRETCH PUSH: Five major environmental groups are funneling resources to tough races in 16 states, as well as seeking to give Biden a boost in those states.
The effort — from Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, Environmental Defense Fund Action, the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, and the National Wildlife Federation Action Fund — targets major swing states, including Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Florida. In addition to boosting Biden and several House candidates, the groups will stump for a handful of Democratic Senate candidates: Mark Kelly in Arizona, Sen. Gary Peters in Michigan, John Hickenlooper in Colorado, and Rep. Ben Ray Lujan in New Mexico.
More than 70 professional organizers will staff the environmental groups’ effort and coordinate directly with individual campaigns.
WHITE HOUSE TOUTS ‘WILDLY SUCCESSFUL’ SOLAR TARIFFS, DESPITE LOOPHOLE: President Trump‘s top trade and manufacturing adviser Peter Navarro on Friday called the White House’s solar tariffs “wildly successful,” despite a loophole that threatens hundreds of U.S. jobs.
Failure to rescind a Section 201 tariff exemption on bifacial, or two-sided, solar panels led to a flood of imports, undercutting U.S. manufacturers, sources told the Washington Examiner’s Katherine Doyle.
“Hundreds of U.S. jobs are at stake,” an administration source said in July.
But Navarro claimed Trump’s tariffs on $8.5 billion dollars worth of solar panel imports created 2,500 new jobs across eight factories and saved 1,750 jobs across five factories, he said.
Navarro’s office and the White House press office did not respond Friday to questions regarding the status of the exemption.
BERNHARDT CRUSHING ‘HOPES AND DREAMS’ OF ENVIRONMENTALISTS: Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said Friday that environmentalists’ “hopes and dreams are about to be crushed” if they think a federal court ruling ousting his public lands chief, William Perry Pendley, will invalidate his actions.
“I think we’ll find any action Perry took was consistent with the law,” Bernhardt said in an interview with Colorado Politics.
He added that the groups’ “inflammatory rhetoric” is “completely detached from the reality of the legal process.” Environmental groups and Democrats have said Pendley’s actions to open swaths of western lands to oil and gas drilling while leading the Bureau of Land Management without being Senate confirmed should be nullified.
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Rep. Greg Walden, the ranking member for Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, announced Friday that the panel’s staff director, Mike Bloomquist, is leaving for the private sector.
Deputy staff director Ryan Long will succeed Bloomquist.
NEW GIG FOR EPA GENERAL COUNSEL: Matt Leopold, most recently the EPA’s general counsel, has landed at the law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth, where he will join the firm’s environmental practice as a partner.
Leopold, who stepped down from the agency last month, was the EPA’s top legal official for more than two years. He helped develop many of the Trump administration’s overhauls of major Obama-era regulations, including carbon controls for power plants and fuel economy standards.
The Rundown
Bloomberg Exxon’s plan for surging carbon emissions revealed in leaked documents
Axios In a pandemic winter, dinner comes with a side of propane
New York Times How coal-loving Australia became the leader in rooftop solar
Reuters US oil refiners look to leapfrog Canadians in making renewable diesel
Wall Street Journal GM, Ford need electric-car batteries, but take different paths to get them
Financial Times Boris Johnson planning major package of green energy policies
Calendar
TUESDAY | OCT. 6
2 p.m. The House Natural Resources Committee’s energy and mineral resources subcommittee will hold an oversight hearing entitled “Interior’s Royalty Cuts: Thoughtful Policy or Industry Giveaway?”
WEDNESDAY | OCT. 7
9 p.m. University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris face off in the vice presidential debate.
