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President Joe Biden has set his regulatory agenda, laying out policy items that could prove crucial in winning over recalcitrant voters, as he gears up for his 2024 reelection battle.

On Wednesday afternoon, the White House released the fall Unified Agenda. The document lists regulatory plans across the federal government, showing what rules dealing with climate change and water pollution as well as chemicals and public lands the administration proposes to wrap up in the months ahead.

Biden’s latest rulemaking proposal takes on even greater significance as it could determine his legacy out of office. Regulations not completed soon could be left vulnerable if Republicans win the White House and make gains on Capitol Hill.

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James Goodwin, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform, a liberal-leaning regulatory think tank, said lawmakers only have 60 legislative days under the Congressional Review Act to review a regulation once it’s finished. Yet if a rule is finalized too late next year, it could carry over to 2025 and then be reversed if Biden loses reelection.

Goodwin warned there could be a regulatory bloodbath if Republicans succeed in the coming elections, noting in 2017, President Donald Trump signed off on several resolutions overturning Obama-era rules.

“It would be another Congressional Review Act free-for-all,” Goodwin told E&E News. “If the Biden administration is not careful, we could see a repeat of that.”

Wayne Crews, a fellow in regulatory studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank, said he expected agencies will want to finalize their highest priority rules between April and June next year to avoid being tossed later on.

“If they are really an agency priority, we could expect to see those rules in the Federal Register in the next three months, not the next six months,” Crews said. “They would need to do that to protect them from a potential CRA resolution of disapproval.”

Crews added he sees the Unified Agenda as “kind of a framing document” for Biden as the president pitches his plan to voters.

“He has these agenda items he is building into the administrative state,” Crews said. “We are going to see pledges from agencies that will likely conform to the Biden agenda and what he will be discussing on the campaign trail for this upcoming election.”

Goodwin also said the regulatory agenda indicates what Biden may do if he wins reelection.

“This is how he starts making his case for a second term,” Goodwin said. “It’s all about his policy priorities. He is saying this is what I plan to do if you return me to office.”

The fall regulatory agenda released Wednesday also comes after Biden’s executive order modernizing regulatory review as well as a number of other changes proposed for the rulemaking process, including revising how agencies conduct cost-benefit analysis. In addition, the administration emphasized it has boosted public engagement in the regulatory process.

“Federal regulations address a range of important issues and affect many different communities — from families with children to workers to small businesses and entrepreneurs,” said Sam Berger, associate administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, in a blog post accompanying the agenda.

“The Biden-Harris Administration has made a concerted effort to increase public involvement in the development of regulations, particularly early in the process. Public engagement has significant benefits for agencies and the public alike,” Berger said.

In July, OIRA issued guidance calling on agencies to expand the role of the public in drafting regulations. Berger highlighted some examples of that juiced outreach in his blog post, including EPA holding over 40 external meetings to inform its proposed rule dealing with risks from the chemical 1-bromopropane.

“The Biden administration has made a commitment to democratizing the rulemaking process, and this fall agenda would be the first step in fulfilling that commitment,” Goodwin said, noting it stands “in stark contrast to the conservative vision of the regulatory system.”

Climate rules

EPA finalized a major methane rule over the weekend, but climate rules for power plants and cars and trucks have yet to cross the finish line.

The agency must also finalize changes it proposed over the summer for how oil and gas sources tally and report their methane emissions. And OIRA is currently reviewing a proposed rule for a new fee on petroleum sector sources that release excessive methane.

EPA’s final power plant carbon rule is still due in April — the same timeline provided by the spring Unified Agenda. And the final reporting rules for methane are also slated to be final in April.

But the methane fee, which was enacted as part of last year’s climate law, is due to be proposed this month and finalized at a time “to be determined.” By contrast, in the spring agenda, EPA was expected to unveil the proposal for implementing the fee by October and finalize it in May.

Reporter Jean Chemnick contributed.

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This story was updated at 5:17 p.m. EST.

President Joe Biden will present a tribal summit Wednesday with a potentially far-reaching executive order intended to reform how the federal government funds and supports Native Americans.

In an appearance scheduled for early afternoon at Interior Department headquarters, Biden will unveil the set of directives the administration casts as the latest step toward improved relations between the U.S. and tribal nations.

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“In the past three years, we’ve made big, challenging and transformative accomplishments,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said Wednesday morning during an address before the gathered tribal leaders.

Biden’s executive order is expected to direct federal agencies to increase their deference to tribal decisionmaking, streamline their application process for tribes to obtain funding, and remove some restrictions and cost-sharing requirements, among other steps.

Officials said the order will also set up a one-stop tribal funding clearinghouse and directs agencies to measure and report annually on tribe-related funding need shortfalls.

“We know that gaining access to federal resources is not always easy,” Haaland told reporters in a call Tuesday. “We want to make sure that we’re not just delivering more resources for Indian Country, but they’re actually reaching Indian Country.”

Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet secretary, was diagnosed with Covid-19 on Monday and appeared remotely Wednesday, the first morning of the two-day summit that has drawn about 300 tribal representatives.

Members of the Native American Women Warriors Color Guard prepare Wednesday to present the colors at the White House Tribal Nations Summit at the Interior Department in Washington.
Members of the Native American Women Warriors Color Guard prepare Wednesday to present the colors at the White House Tribal Nations Summit at the Interior Department in Washington. | Michael Doyle/POLITICO’s E&E News

This year’s summit, like the previous ones that started in 2009, blended rituals, rollouts and roundtable discussions, all launched with a rousing presentation of the colors by the Native American Women Warriors Color Guard.

The chants and swell of the drums from an Oklahoma-based group called Sizzortail were followed by a prayer offered by Crystal Williams, vice chair of the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana.

Several participants said they welcomed Biden administration efforts to strengthen relations between the federal government and tribal nations.

“I think there’s always room for improvement,” said Germain Ruvalcaba, chair of the Northern California-based Fort Bidwell Indian Community, “but I think the Biden administration has done a good job of trying to make the effort.”

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Council on Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory on Wednesday morning represented the Biden team on a panel discussing climate change and natural resource policies. During a morning break, Assistant Interior Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland moved easily among the crowd, chatting casually with all comers.

“The administration recognizes how important it is for us to come together,” Mallory said.

In addition to Biden’s executive order, initiatives rolled out as part of the summit included updated rules guiding the protection and repatriation of Native American remains.

Passed in 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act has been slow in getting remains collected by museums, universities and other institutions back to their traditional caretakers. To date, less than half of the Native American human remains in collections have been repatriated. Interior says the final rules will streamline the cumbersome process and set clear timelines for action.

The remains of more than 764,000 funerary objects and 108,000 Native American individuals remain in collections, with more than 90 percent of the latter yet to be affiliated with a tribe, according to the National Park Service’s 2022 report to Congress.

“Look, the NAGPRA has been has been in effect now for three decades and and there have been a lot of challenges with getting institutions and people in compliance with the law,” said a senior Biden administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss still-pending actions. “So what we’ve set out to do in consultation with tribes and also through public notice and comment is to update those rules to make sure that we are all meeting Congress’ intent facilitating the return of remains.”

The National Park Service announced it is starting a “theme study” that will help tell the story of what is called the Indian Reorganization Period, between 1934 and 1950. This study will identify a list of properties for possible future National Historic Landmarks, an effort that Haaland tied to her previous focus on uncovering the troubled history of American Indian boarding schools.

“So we’ll build on our federal Indian boarding school initiative and other efforts by the department to ensure that we are telling an honest and conclusive story of America,” Haaland said.

The Agriculture Department announced what it called the “first Indigenous animals meat processing grant for processing Indigenous animals, including bison,” while the Interior Department announced the release of final rules designed to streamline the taking of land into trust, a process that can be used in establishing casinos in tribal land.

Administration officials also took some victory laps, reciting a litany of the past year’s accomplishments, which they said ranged from the signing of 190 co-management agreements with Tribes to the establishment of the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument in Nevada and the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument in Arizona. Summit hosts presented participants with a bound 81-page compilation entitled as a “2023 Progress Report” touting administration actions to date.

Mallory noted that “ideas about co-management and co-leadership” of the national monuments and other public lands are gaining more traction.

” We’re pretty adamant about co-management and co-stewardship with our forests and our waterways,” said Russell Attebery, chair of the Karuk Tribe in Northern California.

Following public presentations by Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, tribal representatives this afternoon will be participating in three sessions billed as “nation-to-nation talks” that will include top administration officials but will be closed to the press and public.

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The company behind the Dakota Access oil pipeline has neglected a different, older pipeline, federal safety regulators say, resulting in a cascade of troubling spills.

A recent proposed safety order for the Mid-Valley pipeline could complicate matters for Dakota Access, the hotly contested system that moves crude from North Dakota to Illinois. Federal officials are conducting an environmental review to determine whether Dakota Access can continue to operate under a federally controlled lake.

Both pipelines are owned by Energy Transfer, and the company’s spill record has been a key point of contention in the legal drama surrounding the Dakota Access pipeline. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has long warned that a pipeline spill could foul its water supply, a prospect dismissed by the company.

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Now, the tribe argues the Mid-Valley order — issued by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) — shows safety and environmental problems are “pervasive” in the company. The order, issued in October, has not been previously reported.

“PHMSA’s Safety Order shows these issues are systemic to Energy Transfer,” Doug Crow Ghost, the tribe’s water resources director, said in a statement to E&E News. “This is a major reason why DAPL is unsafe and must be shut down.”

Mid-Valley, built in the 1950s, experienced three leaks within 10 days last summer, on top of two others earlier in the year. That prompted PHMSA to look into the pipeline’s record in the years since Energy Transfer bought it.

The inquiry found that the Mid-Valley system has had 34 spills or other mishaps since 2014 — some of which were repeats, occurring in the same places for the same reasons.

“Conditions exist on the Mid-Valley Pipeline that pose a pipeline integrity risk to public safety, property, or the environment,” PHMSA wrote in the proposed order.

Dallas-based Energy Transfer did not respond to requests for comment. It can appeal the proposed order.

In an email to E&E News, PHMSA said Energy Transfer has so far not appealed but sought “informal consultation.”

Some of the tribe’s earliest objections to the Dakota Access pipeline were about whether regulators had properly assessed the risk of a spill on Lake Oahe, a reservoir on the Missouri River about half a mile north of the tribe’s reservation in North Dakota. The lake is managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and is the tribe’s primary water supply.

The tribe says a pipeline spill in its water supply would be an existential threat. Energy Transfer has called chances of a catastrophic spill “infinitesimal.”

But when it comes to the company’s Mid-Valley pipeline, federal regulators say neglect has increased the risk of spills. Energy Transfer acquired the pipeline with its 2012 purchase of Sunoco Inc.

The Mid-Valley system runs a little more than 1,000 miles from East Texas through Kentucky and Ohio to a point in southern Michigan near Toledo, Ohio. It’s designed to deliver more than 10 million gallons of crude daily to refineries in the Upper Midwest.

The pipeline runs near or through several high population areas, according to the PHMSA order, as well as environmentally sensitive areas such as lakes, rivers and streams.

The 34 Mid-Valley failures were from various causes, including internal corrosion, pump failures, third-party damage, faulty equipment, exposed pipe, failed repairs and operator errors, according to the order.

In one case, a mower hit a section of pipe that had become exposed, resulting in a 200,000-gallon spill in Tennessee in 2022. The spill, in which the crude reached a creek, was reportedly the second-largest spill to occur in the state.

PHMSA said the company failed to fully investigate the cause of some of the spills, leaving open the possibility that similar problems might exist elsewhere on the Mid-Valley system.

“Numerous" spills were also detected by the public rather than control room operators, the order said, raising questions about Energy Transfer’s “inability to self-monitor and detect failures."

Controversial review

The Army Corps' environmental review of the Dakota Access pipeline, called a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), was released in September. It discounts much of Energy Transfer’s spill record — including a large spill on Mid-Valley — as irrelevant.

Standing Rock and two other tribes have criticized the corps' use of Environmental Resources Management to conduct the review, noting the contractor's membership in the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group that supports Dakota Access. The tribes accused the corps of producing "an advocacy document that appears to be prepared by the proponent for a single purpose: to justify issuance of a new easement."

The DEIS document notes that Sunoco has "one of the worst pipeline release records" and that one of its worst spills occurred on Mid-Valley in 2014.

But the review’s authors exclude the spill history of Sunoco, Mid-Valley and the company's 90,000 miles of natural gas lines.

They argue that Sunoco spills before 2017 should not be counted against Energy Transfer because the two companies remained separate until they were merged that year in a restructuring. Since then, the review says, Sunoco's performance has been improving.

In the last five years, Sunoco and Mid-Valley had the fourth- and fifth-worst spill records for barrels spilled per mile among companies with more than 1,000 miles of pipe, according to PHMSA data. Dakota Access ranked far better at 31.

Dakota Access has had 12 leaks and other issues that met PHMSA's reporting threshold. The company and the DEIS both emphasize that those problems took place at aboveground facilities and not on the underground mainline of the pipe.

PHMSA has taken three enforcement actions against Dakota Access, including a notice about problems with its operating procedures, which did not involve a fine, and a proposed $93,000 fine in 2021 for several safety violations. The 2021 case was settled for $20,000; some violations were dismissed. The DEIS stresses that none of the violations were applicable to the Lake Oahe crossing.

Energy Transfer’s spill record for liquid pipelines is better than the industry average, according to the DEIS. So the review’s authors used industry averages to analyze the likelihood of a spill, concluding that “the probability of a large release (over 1,000 bbls) from underneath Lake Oahe is remote."

The review notes that the Dakota Access pipeline is buried at least 95 feet below the lake, is built to higher-than-required standards and has the "best epoxy coating available" to prevent corrosion.

Army Corps officials have made no recommendation on whether the Biden administration should grant an easement for the 1.02-mile portion of the pipeline that runs under Lake Oahe. Possible actions outlined in the DEIS include allowing the pipeline to operate as is, shutting it down, adding features to protect groundwater and rerouting it.

The Army Corps is accepting comments on those possibilities and other aspects of the draft until Dec. 13. The next step will be for the agency to issue a final EIS that incorporates the comments. A decision could come at the same time.

Construction of the 1,172-mile Dakota Access pipeline inspired intense protests by thousands of people in 2016 and 2017. The bitter fight spurred a debate about tribal treaty rights and the costs of the United States' newfound abundance of oil.

In its waning days, the Obama administration declined to grant a final permit for the pipeline to cross under the lake. But former President Donald Trump rescued it with an executive order four days after his inauguration, to which Energy Transfer CEO Kelcy Warren had contributed $250,000.

The pipeline began operations in 2017 and has remained online since then, despite legal challenges.

In 2020, Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Dakota Access pipeline should be closed and drained of oil because the Army Corps' environmental reviews had been inadequate, particularly in addressing the risks of spills and leaks.

An appeals court stepped in to prevent closure of the pipeline but agreed further review was needed under the National Environmental Policy Act. That led to the DEIS released in September.

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Oil industry allies in California are filling television and computer screens statewide with a multimillion-dollar ad campaign that blames state climate policies for pushing up gasoline and electricity costs.

Some key details around the ads are unclear, including who exactly is funding the spots and what — if any — policies or votes they are trying to influence. But some observers see the fossil fuel industry exerting its financial muscle, as the nation’s most populous state seeks to transition away from oil and gas and toward cleaner energy options.

The ad blitz “tees up the messaging that it’s government that’s at fault here,” said Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment.

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One ad comes from Californians for Energy Independence (CEI), which has ties to fossil fuel interests. The other comes from Californians for Affordable and Reliable Energy, which is linked to a big business association. Both groups describe themselves as nonprofit coalitions. Neither would provide specifics on their membership.

The two groups have spent a combined $4.3 million so far this year to put the ads on television and Facebook in both English and Spanish, according to data from AdImpact. The commercials take a broad approach to energy and climate issues, and they don’t mention specific regulations, referendums or candidates.

“California is an energy island” with “no pipelines and limited rail transport” to get domestic oil, says the commercial from CEI. “Experts warn policies to shut down our highly regulated local oil production before we have enough alternative energies in place would force our state to depend on volatile foreign countries for the oil we still need.”

Meanwhile, the ad from Californians for Affordable and Reliable Energy argues that “since 2018, California’s energy policies raised residential electricity rates by 54 percent, but only increased renewable electricity supply by 2 percent.” It also says that the “California government is adding $1.12 in taxes and fees to a gallon of gas” and that “working people pay for state capital politics.”

Neither ad makes direct mention of a major electoral fight on the horizon.

Next year, California voters will decide whether they want to throw out a state law prohibiting new oil wells near schools, homes, parks, and other sensitive sites. Oil drillers and their allies spent $21 million to get that measure on the ballot.

Officials affiliated with the groups behind the ads said the commercials aren’t aimed at the 2024 ballot measure.

They “are in no way, shape or form an attempt to sway the discussion and debate on that measure,” said Brooke Armour, executive vice president at California Business Roundtable. Its president, Rob Lapsley, also heads Californians for Affordable and Reliable Energy. Armour wouldn’t reveal members of the Business Roundtable nor provide names of its current board of directors.

Armour said the ads, which are running statewide, are “designed to kind of explain, as Californians see the costs going up and up and up, and not just at the gas station but their electric bills as well, where some of those costs are coming from.”

The group earlier this year ran a slightly different version of its ad, which said the California “legislature assigned a bureaucracy to add penalties to gasoline prices.” That’s a reference to the California Air Resources Board and its approval of adding fees to gasoline as part of the state’s carbon cap-and-trade program, Armour said.

Rock Zierman, chief executive officer of the California Independent Petroleum Association, a trade group for oil drillers, said the ad from CEI has “nothing to do with the referendum” on the 2024 ballot.

“The commercials are discussing the importance of domestic energy production and the dangers of being overly dependent on foreign imports, as California currently is,” he said in an email.

For the interests behind the ads, there’s an advantage to being vague, said Jamie Court, president at Consumer Watchdog. Under state and federal laws, any political ad that calls out a specific policy is required to list funders of the ad.

The timing of the ads, with the 2024 election approaching, is raising eyebrows among activists and academics.

“It can create this sort of framing, at the outset, that the problems with high energy prices in California” come from government policies and not industry said Elkind at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment.

Going forward, he added, the groups or allies can follow up with ads asking voters to overturn the drilling law on next year’s ballot “or take other electoral actions.”

Court took a similar view.

“They are doing what we call issue advocacy, which is laying the groundwork for an argument that they are going to use once the referendum has a [ballot] number and can be targeted,” Court said in an email. “This is soft money, does not have to be reported, so it can be hidden, and there does not have to be disclosure about the true source of the money on the ad.”

In addition to the ballot measure, California officials are considering other efforts that are likely to affect petroleum companies. Those include potentially penalizing price gouging from gasoline sales, toughening up regulations for the state’s carbon market cap-and-trade program, and revising another rule that seeks to lower the carbon content of fuels.

Californians currently pay the highest gas price in the nation, at $4.78 per gallon this week, AAA said, compared with the national average of $3.22 per gallon.

Close ties to the fossil fuel industry

Consumer advocates say both coalitions are “front groups” for the oil industry.

In 2014, the Western States Petroleum Association — the largest oil trade group — gave a presentation to the Washington Research Council on how it was combating some California climate policies. It showed a slide deck with several groups it was using to push out messages.

Among them are the two organizations behind the new ads: Californians for Energy Independence and Californians for Affordable and Reliable Energy, said Consumer Watchdog. It cited a report from Bloomberg Businessweek.

Kevin Slagle, spokesperson for the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), said the link with Californians for Affordable and Reliable Energy was accurate in 2014 but is not accurate now.

In terms of CEI, Slagle wrote in an email, it was “possible WSPA helped get CEI started back then, I just don’t know for sure.” He noted the 2014 presentation was nine years old, and said the oil trade group is not funding either of the current California ads, nor is it directing strategy.

However, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president and CEO at the Western States Petroleum Association, is listed as “principal officer,” president and director at CEI on a 2021 document filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

Reheis-Boyd is on the group’s board but is not in a leadership role, Slagle said.

Zierman, with the California Independent Petroleum Association, is also listed as CEI director on its IRS paperwork.

CEI “was created over 10 years ago to educate the public on energy policy and the in-state oil and gas industry,” Zierman said.

The group is active and lobbying on California policies. Through September it spent $6.9 million on influence efforts. according to the California secretary of state database. The filing doesn’t specify whether that included money paid for the television and internet ads.

About $4 million of the money went to Winner & Mandabach Campaigns, which says on its webpage that it’s “managed and consulted on over 200 statewide and local ballot measure campaigns in 31 states, and has maintained a win rate of 90%.” The company did not respond to a request for more information on its work for the group.

Californians for Affordable and Reliable Energy spent more than $3.4 million on influence work in January through March, including for some advertisements, the California secretary of state database filing said.

Fact checking the ads

The ads from the two coalitions lack key details, experts said.

The commercial from Californians for Affordable and Reliable Energy says that California’s energy policies have raised residential electricity rates by 54 percent, but it doesn’t say why beyond government policies.

Armour, with California Business Roundtable, said the claim is based on data from the Center for Jobs and the Economy, a nonprofit she called a “sister” organization to the roundtable.

For the 12 months that ended in August 2023, the average annual residential electricity bill in California was up 72 percent compared to 2010. That tracks with the time frame when California put into effect AB 32, a major climate law, she said.

James Sweeney, Stanford professor of Management Science and Engineering, said bills have increased sharply for several reasons. Those include that in the early years of California’s push towards renewable energy, utilities were required to buy power from wind and solar projects when it cost more than the current prices. Ratepayers are still paying off some of those contracts.

Benefits given to households that have added rooftop solar also have increased bills, he said, as other households cover more of ongoing costs. And catastrophic wildfires drove up bill totals, too — with utilities passing on expenses for preventing future wildfires.

As for the claims about California policies adding $1.12 to gas prices, the figure is close to what’s found in California Energy Commission data, Sweeney said.

That data lists 33 cents per gallon tacked on from state environmental regulations, 65 cents in state and local taxes and a 2-cent charge for the state’s underground storage tank fee, for $1 total. There’s also an argument that the state’s requirement for a cleaner burning fuel raises refinery costs, he said.

However, the ad is misleading, said Court, with Consumer Watchdog, because it infers the difference between California gas prices and those of other states is $1.12. Other states also add in taxes, he said, and the actual difference between California and other states is about 70 cents per gallon.

The CEI commercial argued that limiting local oil drilling could drive up gas prices. But the biggest factor in higher gas prices “by far” is the cost of crude oil, Sweeney said, and that’s set in a worldwide market.

The secondary reason for price spikes in California is refinery shutdowns for maintenance or following accidents when “you have a big chunk of the supply” unavailable, he said. Then, because of California requirements for cleaner burning fuel, it’s difficult to import more oil quickly.

Timothy Cama contributed to this report.

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The high-profile congressional delegation scheduled to attend the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, later this week will no longer be led by House Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers.

The Washington Republican told E&E News on Tuesday she would not be attending the conference, known as COP28, citing a scheduling conflict.

“Unfortunately, Chair Rodgers’s schedule has changed,” her spokesperson, Sean Kelly, said in a follow-up statement.

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Replacing her at the helm of the delegation will be Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), the vice chair of E&C.

“She is thrilled Vice Chair Armstrong will be leading the delegation in Dubai in her place,” Kelly said of McMorris Rodgers.

The switch-up came as a surprise to many House Republicans, who had been cheering the significance of McMorris Rodgers’ leadership of the delegation to COP28 and the message it sent that the party was perhaps ready to engage in a conversation about how to tackle the climate crisis and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Indeed, at a hearing of an E&C subcommittee Tuesday, McMorris Rodgers was talking up the “message that Energy and Commerce plans to carry to the world stage at COP 28 … a message about building on America’s energy leadership, to demonstrate a path to a cleaner, more secure world, and more prosperous and resilient communities.” At the same time, Democrats and Republicans were pointing out where they have made bipartisan inroads on climate action, for instance in promoting nuclear energy to lower emissions.

More than a dozen Republicans are currently signed up for the trip to Dubai, many for the first time, including Armstrong. McMorris Rodgers was due to make her inaugural COP appearance as well.

Rep. Kelly Armstrong speaks to a reporter holding up a phone.
Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) is seen outside the Republican Steering Committee meeting Jan. 9 at the U.S. Capitol. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

The number of Republicans scheduled to attend COP28 is also, for the first time, due to eclipse the number of Democrats traveling with the E&C delegation — a lopsided ratio that has Democrats grousing about being sidelined from the annual climate talks, which are also being hosted by the president of the UAE’s state-run oil company.

Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah), the chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus, had originally planned to travel to COP28 with the Conservative Climate Foundation, as he did the previous two years. A member of E&C, Curtis instead opted to travel as part of McMorris Rodgers’ delegation, enthusiastic about the participation of the Republican chair of the powerful panel.

In a statement Tuesday, Curtis said that “although I was looking forward to attending COP with Chair Rodgers, I’m pleased that Kelly Armstrong, an active member of the Conservative Climate Caucus, will be leading the group of bipartisan members to the event.”

Armstrong signaled to E&E News that, as delegation leader, he planned to promote a similar agenda as McMorris Rodgers: celebrating U.S. emissions reductions, asserting domestic energy dominance, demanding other countries do better and pushing back against deals that could result in regulatory burdens back home.

“We have a great story to tell; North Dakota has a great story to tell; the U.S. has a great story to tell,” Armstrong said in an interview Tuesday. “We lowered carbon emissions, and we have supplied the country and the world with reliable fuel, and we’re going to continue to do that, and we’re not going to apologize for that.”

Armstrong was also unapologetic about the GOP’s defense of fossil fuels, which many Democrats say must be phased out as soon as possible to avert the worst effects of the climate crisis.

“With the exception of democracy, nothing has lifted more people out of poverty than cheap and reliable energy, and that is going to continue into the 21st century,” said Armstrong. “Two things can be true: The world is going to drive more electric cars in 10 years, and the world is going to need more oil and gas in 10 years.”

A ‘tool,’ not a ‘silver bullet’

The Republican sentiment ahead of COP28 was on full display at a hearing earlier Tuesday convened by the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy, Climate and Grid Security, titled “America’s Future: Leading A New Era Of Energy Dominance, Security and Environmental Stewardship.”

“As we continue our path towards the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and cleaner air and water, we cannot lose sight of the role energy plays in assuring our economic future, our nation’s security, and the security of our allies,” subcommittee Chair Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) said in his opening statement. “We also cannot lose sight of the fact that the world will demand more energy, not less, in the future.”

It followed a hearing from the previous week, held by the Subcommittee on Environment, Manufacturing and Critical Minerals Subcommittee, which was also an opportunity for Republicans to refine their messaging in advance of COP28.

Unlike in the first hearing, however, where Democrats accused Republicans of worshiping fossil fuels and prioritizing “polluters over people,” many Democratic members of the subcommittee Tuesday suggested there were opportunities — if modest ones — for common ground, at COP28 and on Capitol Hill.

Texas Democratic Reps. Marc Veasey and Lizzie Fletcher, whose state’s economy relies on the oil and gas industry, both said it was worth acknowledging the gains the United States has made in reducing its carbon footprint through new innovations, even if there’s more work to be done.

And Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), the Energy, Climate and Grid Security Subcommittee ranking member, agreed with Duncan that there was cause for celebration around their bipartisan bill — H.R. 6544, the “Atomic Energy Advancement Act,” which would combine a number of bills passed by the Energy, Climate and Grid Security Subcommittee to bolster the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s ability to license new reactors into one legislative package.

It was reported out of the full E&C Committee in a 47-2 vote later Tuesday afternoon.

She said she hoped their bill could “get to the floor as quickly as possible” and help support a new initiative the U.S. agreed to join at COP28 — the “Net Zero Nuclear Initiative, which is a commitment to tripling global nuclear capacity by 2050.”

“Nuclear energy is currently responsible for almost half the carbon-free electricity we produce here in the U.S.; it’s part of our clean energy transmission toolbox,” said DeGette, though she cautioned it was “not the so-called silver bullet that will solve the climate crisis,” stressing a meaningful reduction in fossil fuel use was critical.

‘Low-hanging fruit’

DeGette also spoke about the new EPA rule to put more of the onus on individual companies to control methane emissions, a highly potent greenhouse gas, and the extent to which the oil and gas industry is embracing its role in helping the U.S. continue its distinction as being “a leader” in reducing methane emissions.

“We should be agreeing on methane here,” Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) said. “The industry has described how they’re leading in the reduction of methane emissions, and it’s not because of Joe Biden’s ‘rush to green’ agenda; it’s because of customer demands.”

In developing new technology to measure and limit methane emissions, Peters continued, “the oil and gas industry is doing a lot of what my Republican colleagues say we don’t need to do. … It’s a low-hanging fruit.”

McMorris Rodgers herself, in a statement on the announcement of the methane rule over the weekend, expressed skepticism about the new regulation but also some restraint, saying it “could” — not that it certainly would — “dramatically expand the [EPA’s] regulatory reach in a manner that will stifle innovation, increase operational costs, and increase the price of energy.”

Anne Bradbury, the CEO of the American Exploration and Production Council, blasted the new rule in her prepared opening remarks, saying it would “disincentivize the use of many … advances in technology and approaches in favor of the older, less efficient approaches” to controlling methane emissions, with a “chilling effect” on innovations around new methane detection and maintenance technologies.

But in response to a question about what she thought the new rule would mean for her industry, specifically, Bradbury was a bit softer.

“The United States oil and gas companies are leading the way in reducing methane emissions, and industry has stated that we could support the reasonable and workable regulation of methane,” she said. “The final rule was dropped this weekend and is 1,600 pages long, and so we are still trying to get our arms around it.”

Reporter Nico Portuondo contributed.

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EPA and its largest union entered mediation Monday to hammer out a contract that could cement protections for agency staff long after President Joe Biden leaves office.

American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, which represents about 8,000 EPA employees, has pushed for provisions to promote diversity and champion scientific integrity in its collective bargaining agreement with the agency. Those articles and others are now under mediation, an expedited process intended to reach resolution between the two sides.

The stakes could not be higher for the EPA union. Its next contract will carry past the next presidential election and could serve as a bulwark for thousands of staff if a Republican administration takes charge and tries to tear down the agency.

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“We’re putting pressure on the agency to finally agree to our demands during this mediation process, especially on items like equal treatment regardless of race, gender expression or sexual orientation and scientific integrity so we can get our work done to protect human health and the environment,” said AFGE Council 238 President Marie Owens Powell in a statement.

Powell added, “As we enter into an election year, we need to ensure our ability to protect human health and the environment is preserved no matter who is in power.”

“The EPA is committed to maintaining a transparent and cooperative relationship with our union partners,” EPA spokesperson Remmington Belford told E&E News. “The agency will continue engaging with union partners on open articles.”

Joyce Howell, executive vice president for the council, told E&E News that starting Monday, the union entered into mediation with EPA over 11 of the contract’s articles. Those include provisions dealing with scientific integrity and diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility as well as the agreement’s career ladder and discipline process.

“The union proposed inclusion of a DEIA article in our contract because we know that EPA employees deserve established policies that protect their equal rights, and the union wants a role in ensuring that the agency follows through on these commitments,” Howell, also the union’s chief negotiator, said in a statement.

“This is of great interest for the EPA employees who work so hard to protect human health and the environment. Their eyes are upon us,” Howell said.

Time is now running short. If EPA and AFGE cannot reach agreement after two weeks of mediation, unresolved articles will go to the Federal Service Impasses Panel, according to the union.

To keep the pressure on agency leadership, the union released a petition signed by nearly a thousand of its members calling on EPA to agree to AFGE’s demands. The union has already received support from lawmakers on Capitol Hill who have called on the agency to bargain in good faith, including over the diversity article.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has sought to promote diversity in the federal workforce. EPA has been part of that effort, which has included hiring the agency’s first senior adviser for diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility and standing up its own diversity office.

The two sides have struggled to reach agreement on some parts of the contract but have made progress in other areas. The council also announced Monday the ratification of 14 articles in the agreement, including those involving leave and overtime pay.

Contract talks began over a year ago in June 2022, with the union setting ambitious plans to expand protections for EPA employees. AFGE also has wanted to wrap up negotiations before the 2024 election so those protections are in place if there is a change of administration.

Howell said the union expects its next contract will be done before the coming presidential election.

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Wyoming is highlighting a question at the center of the nation’s electricity mix: Can a coal state go “carbon negative”?

Republican Gov. Mark Gordon’s stated goal for the nation’s top-producing coal state is to suck more carbon out of the air than it emits. It has been framed both as a sky-high target to launch renewable energy and a potential middle ground strategy that can keep coal plants alive.

But as the plan — which Gordon first announced in 2021 — gains national attention, the state GOP is pushing back. Republicans issued a rare rebuke of Gordon over his climate change statements, raising new questions about the viability of the carbon negative goal — and how much political power Gordon will have to see it through.

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The Wyoming debate comes as some Republicans nationally are moving away from challenges to climate science and toward recognizing the role of heavy industry and fossil fuels in cutting emissions and battling climate change. A delegation of House Republicans to the U.N. climate summit in the United Arab Emirates, for example, is expected to tout the role natural gas has played in lowering emissions.

Karly Matthews, vice president of communications for the American Conservation Coalition, which represents young Republicans concerned about climate change, said the group was “encouraged” to see a Republican governor speaking forcefully about climate change.

“It’s so important to bring traditional energy communities along and empower them in the energy transition,” Matthews said. “We need practical solutions like carbon capture and nuclear energy. A Republican governor talking about those strategies encourages those communities and makes climate action seem more approachable.”

Gordon’s plight, however, shows the precariousness of that position in traditional coal states that are at ground zero of the energy transition.

The Wyoming Republican Party issued a vote of no confidence in Gordon in November, calling his climate change policies part of a “Socialist agenda.” Members of the state’s Freedom Caucus have hammered Gordon over it and organized a letter signed by 30 legislators and the state’s elected secretary of state challenging Gordon to a debate over the issue.

“A ‘carbon negative’ Wyoming means cold homes in the winter, unaffordable food prices, and 1970s-era gas lines — economy-wide,” state Rep. John Bear (R), who heads Wyoming’s Freedom Caucus, said in an email.

“I believe that Governor Gordon has chosen to manage the decline of our legacy industries rather than fight the religion of climate change that is erroneously portending doom for industries that are required for everything from plastics to steel, and from heating to air conditioning,” Bear added.

According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Wyoming’s coal industry employment was down 13 percent in 2022 compared with 2018, when Gordon was first elected.

Gordon turned down the debate request, writing in a letter to members of the Legislature that comments about his climate stance have been “either craven misrepresentations of my record on the topic for venal political gain or complete ignorance of my commitment to defend our core industries against all comers regardless of national climate policy.”

Gordon has said climate change is real and caused by human activity. He also said the debate over CO2 and a warming Earth has raged for decades.

“So rather than join the unfruitfulness of that fray, and recognizing that, alas, one side of that argument currently holds most of the levers of regulation, I have sought to position our industries as competitively as a practical and more proximate way to attain the stated objective of reducing CO2 in the atmosphere without also putting people out of a job,” the governor said.

Gordon has reiterated his position in public appearances since the vote of no confidence. At the Western Governors’ Association meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Gordon talked up opportunities to work with other states on clean-emitting technologies.

Gordon was first elected in 2018 and gained reelection in 2022 with about 74 percent of the vote. He has consistently rated as one of the nation’s most popular governors in a deep red state, despite frequently being at odds with Donald Trump, the former president and Republican frontrunner for next year’s GOP presidential nomination.

Michael Pearlman, a Gordon spokesperson, said the governor has long tried to strike a position that addresses climate change without harming the economy.

“Capturing CO2 emissions through carbon capture and augmenting that with better management of our natural resources offers a means to reduce CO2 in our atmosphere without sacrificing the jobs, careers and revenues that have built Wyoming,” Pearlman said in an email.

Chasing ‘carbon negative’

Gordon’s goal for Wyoming — which is nonbinding and does not have a timeline attached — stands out from the pledges other governors have made for their own states. Instead of calling for certain levels of clean energy or vowing to convert every economic sector to electricity or clean-burning fuels, Gordon wants the state to lead the way in sucking carbon dioxide out of the air.

To do that, Gordon has promoted technologies like carbon capture systems for coal- and gas-fueled plants and direct air capture facilities. Those technologies are still unproven at scale, but could offer a boost to the state’s existing fossil fuel infrastructure. Gordon has also said that the state could manufacture asphalt or other products from captured carbon, or import carbon dioxide from across state lines and store it underground.

In 2022, coal accounted for 71 percent of Wyoming’s electricity net generation, according to the Energy Information Administration. That’s the highest share of any state outside of West Virginia. Wind power accounted for another 22 percent in Wyoming last year, with total generation more than doubling since 2019.

According to EIA data, Wyoming was responsible for 54.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions across all sectors in 2021, down almost 2 percent from 2019 but still the 18th most of any state if the District of Columbia is included.

But experts say Wyoming is a state ripe for clean energy, especially as coal’s fortunes decline nationally. The Department of Energy’s Wind Energy Technologies Office said Wyoming has the potential to produce as much as 472,000 megawatts of wind power, the fifth most of any state. EIA data analyzed by Environment America found that Wyoming could produce 374 times its electricity demand in 2020 from solar power alone and 108 times its demand from the wind.

Kyle Clark-Sutton, a manager with the U.S. Program at RMI — a nonprofit that promotes a move to cleaner energy — said that Wyoming has an “exciting opportunity to take advantage of the full toolbox,” including carbon capture, but that the state should focus on the path of least resistance.

Carbon capture carries significant questions about effectiveness and cost. A recent U.N. Environment Programme report also cautioned that an “overly-optimistic dependence” on future carbon removal could distract from near-term reduction efforts.

“We need to reduce emissions as much and as fast as possible, and we shouldn’t take any options off the table,” Clark-Sutton said. “But we should be really clear-eyed about what are the most cost-effective options, which are wind and solar power.”

The state has added potential thanks to last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, which offers additional tax credits for projects built in “energy communities,” including areas that have historically hosted coal mines or coal-fired power plants, or where the economy is dependent on fossil fuels. Almost all of Wyoming qualifies, making clean energy construction there even more attractive.

While Gordon has promoted renewable energy development, heralding it as an export opportunity, he is especially bullish on carbon capture and storage as well as direct air capture.

Wyoming hosts a national testing center for carbon capture at the Dry Fork Station, a coal plant in the northeast of the state. Gordon has also signed a memorandum of understanding with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) to collaborate on direct air capture, including applying for grants and exploring ways for the industry to work across state lines.

A 2020 state law also requires that coal plant operators explore installing carbon capture as an alternative to shutting them down. Utilities that cannot show that carbon capture would have been too expensive and decommission a plant ahead of schedule would not be allowed to put replacement power costs in Wyoming ratepayer bills.

A proposed state Senate bill would extend the deadline for that program from 2030 to 2038. The bill will be considered by lawmakers in the spring.

Whether utilities pick up on the state’s goal also remains to be seen. Rocky Mountain Power, the PacifiCorp subsidiary that serves about 144,000 Wyoming customers, does not include carbon capture in its long-range plans. PacifiCorp anticipates that systemwide carbon dioxide emissions will be down 46 percent compared to 2005 in 2026, 90 percent in 2035 and 100 percent in 2050.

Black Hills Energy, which serves nearly 45,000 electric customers in Wyoming, also has plans to slash emissions 70 percent of 2005 levels by 2040, but likewise does not include carbon capture in its sustainability plan. The company is conducting a feasibility study on hydrogen generation.

It all adds up to a strategy that will keep Wyoming’s coal industry humming while also reducing emissions, according to Pearlman, the spokesperson for Gordon.

“All in all, this approach to promoting our legacy industries while welcoming new technologies and opportunities might be called ‘carbon negative’ to simplify the phrase ‘Reducing Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere using new technologies appropriate to Wyoming,’” he said.

A political touchpoint

Although Gordon first announced the carbon negative goal in 2021, it was thrust back into the spotlight in October during an appearance at Harvard University. In a speech there, Gordon said it was “clear that we have a warming climate” and that “carbon dioxide is a major contributor to that challenge.”

That appearance triggered a rebuke from Park County’s Republican Party, which represents an area in the northwest corner of Wyoming, and eventually the state’s Republican Party in the form of a no-confidence vote. That is essentially a measure of disapproval and is less serious than a censure.

The party did not respond to a request for comment on why it issued the vote of no confidence now.

The disapproval came as the state Legislature is weighing the impact of high energy bills on residents. Lawmakers met last month to endorse a package of bills in response to Rocky Mountain Power’s recent request to state regulators to increase bills by nearly 30 percent.

Among the legislation that lawmakers on a state committee advanced are requirements that the state define “adequate, dispatchable and reliable” electricity; that regulators scrutinize utility spending that does not directly benefit Wyoming; and changes to the way utilities seek bids for new generation. Those will not come before the full Legislature until February, when lawmakers return.

In public testimony, some utilities and environmentalists expressed concern that the measures could hurt renewable energy. Rocky Mountain Power’s rates, for example, include payments to fund PacifiCorp’s interstate transmission spending to spread renewable energy across the region.

Despite the posture of many elected officials, some people in Wyoming are embracing the potential of renewable energy. Earlier this year, Carbon County marked the opening of a landmark transmission line that will carry power from a nearby wind farm — one of several massive renewables projects Wyoming is building to export power elsewhere.

Gordon’s stance has even won plaudits from some Democrats in the state. Theresa Livingston, the Democrat who ran against Gordon in 2022, said in an interview that climate change didn’t come up much on the trail. But she said she is “so glad Governor Gordon is speaking out about it.”

Bear, the Freedom Caucus chair, says he’s not looking to up the ante on Gordon — unless he abandons the state’s fossil fuel legacy. That’s why he’s looking for a debate — and a chance to clear the air.

“A cordial and honest debate on this issue is what the entire nation needs, and considering the differences of opinion here in the Cowboy State, we deserve to have a conversation about it,” Bear said.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the category of emissions from Wyoming.

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Corporate America has learned to love renewables. Now, it is beginning to dabble in next-generation climate solutions.

An advanced geothermal project supported by Google began generating electricity last week, a big step in the search for technology that can affordably fill gaps in wind and solar generation with carbon-free power. The small facility, a pilot project in northern Nevada, uses drilling and fracking techniques honed by the oil and gas industry to coax heat from the Earth to generate power — without the emissions associated with its fossil fuel brethren.

The involvement of Google was especially notable, illustrating the role that corporations can play in bringing emerging technologies to market. It also underscored the growing sophistication of the tech giant’s clean energy strategy, which has expanded from buying wind and solar power to financing the type of projects needed to deliver emissions-free power around the clock.

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“We’re hitting a high level of renewable energy and so we’re starting to recognize the limitations of this approach,” said Maud Texier, head of clean energy and carbon development at Google. ”Our business is relying on our capability of finding electrons, electrons that are running 24/7 and electrons that need to be clean — not just for us, but from the license to operate perspective.”

Project Red, as the pilot facility is known, represents a convergence of two companies’ climate ambitions. Fervo Energy is a Houston-based startup that has sought to apply advances in oil and gas drilling to geothermal technology.

Geothermal long has been viewed as a potential way to tap the natural heat of the Earth to make carbon-free power. But it has traditionally been limited to locations where there are natural underground reservoirs of hot water, which are few and far between. In 2021, geothermal accounted for less than a half a percent of U.S. power generation. All of it is concentrated in the western United States.

Fervo’s answer is to incorporate methods the oil and gas industry has honed in recent decades.

In Nevada, it drilled a well to a depth of about 8,000 feet and then extended it horizontally for more than 3,000 feet. The rock above the lateral well is fracked, creating tiny fissures in the subsurface. Water is then pumped into the first well, absorbing heat as it flows through the cracks and returning to the surface via the second well at temperatures high enough to make steam and spin a turbine.

The technology has the potential to fill a badly needed niche, cranking out carbon-free power at moments when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining.

“The demand for clean, firm power is so acute, especially now,” said Gabriel Malek, chief of staff at Fervo. “Already utilities in California, and other Western states that have started to decarbonize faster than others, they’re seeing the reliability concerns that come with a solar-heavy grid. And they’re also seeing the cost associated with battery storage and nuclear. And they’re recognizing that geothermal is the one viable option available to them for clean, firm power.”

But finding financing to prove that the company’s technology worked was a challenge. Luckily for Fervo, Google had just started reconsidering its approach to clean energy around the time the Houston-based company was looking to test its technology.

Google’s carbon dioxide emissions are substantial. In 2022, the company estimated its emissions were more than 10 million metric tons — or almost what three coal plants emit in a year. Of those, three-quarters are so-called Scope 3 emissions, associated mostly with the manufacturing of consumer hardware products, according to the company’s most recent environmental performance report. Most of the remaining quarter are so-called Scope 2 emissions associated with the consumption of electricity for the company’s data centers.

Like many large corporations, Google’s first attempt to address those emissions was to buy wind and solar power. The company estimates it has signed contracts for 10 gigawatts of clean energy capacity globally. To put that number in context, there are only four states in the United States that boast more than 10 GW of wind and solar capacity.

Google’s approach was hardly unique. The Clean Energy Buyers Alliance, a trade group, reckons corporations purchased 71 GW of clean electricity between 2014 and 2022, or almost half of all wind and solar capacity brought online in the United States over that time period.

The strategy was a boon for renewable developers, and it increased the flow of green electrons onto the grid.

But it has limitations.

“Data centers and traditionally renewable energy sources don’t necessarily line up too well,” said Timothy Lieuwen, executive director of the Strategic Energy Institute at the Georgia Tech. “Renewables are not dispatchable, and data centers have some of the highest reliability requirements on the grid.

“The value of dispatchability,” he added, “is just going to rise as the percentage of wind and solar goes up.”

Google has been at the forefront of that trend. In 2020, the company announced a 24/7 initiative to power its operations with clean electricity around the clock by 2030. Yet there were few technologies at the time that were ready to jump from the lab to the field, which made Fervo’s technology especially appealing to the tech giant, Texier said.

Under its development deal with Google, Project Red would provide an additional 3.5 megawatts of power to an existing geothermal plant run by Cyrq Energy in Winnemucca, Nevada.

“Google was truly catalytic for Project Red,” Malek said. “Their corporate agreement with Fervo gave us the credibility to drill that well pair at a power plant, and it gave that power plant operator the trust that Fervo was a legitimate operator.

“The financing was also valuable to get operations up and running, and it allowed us to then raise subsequent rounds of corporate equity, which we wouldn’t necessarily have been able to do if we didn’t have that stamp of approval from Google,” Malek said.

Fervo is now working on a 400-MW project in Utah known as Cape Station. It already has drilled four wells and hopes to complete a first 90-MW phase of the project in 2026. The lengthy development timeline owes in large part to a shortage of transformer and other electrical equipment needed for the plant to come online, though Fervo says it is on track to meet its contractual obligations. The company has already inked deals with a group of community choice aggregators in California.

While the company uses techniques honed by the oil and gas industry, it has less environmental impact because it does not use the chemicals involved in fracking operations to extract oil and gas from the earth, Malek said.

The bigger question is how much geothermal can expand.

Though advanced geothermal has the potential to grow the industry, a recent study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that much of its potential remains concentrated in the western United States.

The report concluded that geothermal capacity in the United States could jump to 38 GW by 2035, up from 4 GW today. And while NREL projected geothermal would account for less than 2 percent of power plant capacity nationally, it estimated geothermal plants would generate more than 6 percent of the country’s power because of “the high capacity factor of geothermal technologies compared to other renewable energy technologies on the grid.”

Lieuwen, the Georgia Tech professor, said he expects to see more experiments like the one done by Google and Fervo. But he said the solutions likely would vary by region.

“What will be a clear trend is growth in dispatched renewables. It could be batteries, hydrogen, geothermal,” he said. “What looks good for Reno, Nevada, is going to look different from Atlanta, Georgia,” he said.

In Google’s case, geothermal represents an attractive option for its data centers located in the western United States as well as parts of Asia, Texier said.

“We just think it’s a good fit for a technology potential readiness, but also the resource access, you know, based on where we based our data centers,” she said.

The Fervo-Google deal represents the next step in corporate clean energy initiatives.

In their first iteration, many companies signed power purchase agreements with the cheapest renewable projects. Think wind power in places such as Texas and Oklahoma.

Then buyers started branching out, signing contracts with planned projects, rather than existing ones, helping to increase the amount of clean power injected into the grid. Companies increasingly have been focused on markets where renewable penetration is more limited — like the PJM Interconnection, a wholesale market covering much of the mid-Atlantic.

Now, there is a growing recognition among companies that achieving their climate goals means going a step further and matching their energy demand to clean electricity generation in real time, said Mark Dyson, managing director of the Carbon-Free Electricity Program at RMI.

“Many companies are now realizing that not every megawatt-hour of carbon-free electricity is equal,” Dyson said. “Not every megawatt-hour avoids the same amount of CO2 in the short term or long term. Not every megawatt-hour supports grid reliability.”

Deals like Google’s agreement to buy power from Project Red are important because they help “technologies that otherwise would not be able to move forward and achieve commercial scale quickly,” he said.

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House Republicans are using the fiscal 2024 appropriations process to slash government spending, and energy and environment programs would be among the biggest losers.

The question now is how much the Democratic-controlled Senate will be able to secure final bills free of riders and cuts to agencies like EPA and the Interior Department.

Across the seven spending bills the House has already approved — and others that may never clear the floor — GOP lawmakers took an ax to a host of programs dedicated to reducing energy consumption, shoring up environmentally friendly infrastructure and staving off the worsening effects of climate change.

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The bills, however, are far from passable. They are incongruous with the Senate’s bipartisan versions, and Democrats, who control that chamber and the White House, say they won’t accept Republican attempts to use must-pass legislation to dismantle the Biden administration’s climate agenda.

“We’re not doing that,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), a climate hawk on the Appropriations Committee. “It’s not complicated; we’re just not doing that. They always try. We never do.”

Still, the partisan discord over energy and climate funding is certain to complicate House and Senate negotiations on appropriations by thrusting environmental issues into the heart of an already contentious spending fight.

“It’s going to be a lengthy, complex and spirited negotiation,” said Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), chair of the House Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittee.

“I intend to come out on top,” he added.

The Senate has passed it’s bills in committee or on the floor with bipartisan support. The House’s bills have advanced mostly along party lines.

And if lawmakers can’t come up with a deal, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has spoken about a yearlong continuing resolution. That could mean automatic cuts from the debt ceiling deal.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) speaks during a press conference at the U.S. Capitol.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). | Francis Chung/POLITICO

The House GOP bills propose to reduce EPA’s funding to roughly $6.2 billion, a nearly 40 percent drop. Non-defense programs at the Department of Energy would suffer losses of over $5 billion, a decrease of more than 20 percent from current levels.

And energy programs in the Inflation Reduction Act — Democrats’ signature climate law — stand to see over $20 billion in clawbacks.

Those programs “are killing the United States’ energy industry,” said conservative Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who has helped lead the GOP’s crusade against clean energy funding.

Any efforts to support the clean energy transition “are bad for America,” he said. “I expect for our conferees to fight for those to remain part of the bill and part of the final package.”

Across the Capitol, climate-minded Democrats are trying to get ahead of the conference process and urging appropriators to produce bills that prioritize the environment.

More than 40 of them wrote to Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and ranking member Susan Collins (R-Maine) earlier this month asking them to keep “senseless, harmful, environmental policy riders out of FY24 appropriations bills.”

Heather Reams, president of the right-leaning Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, similarly wrote to the leaders of the Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittees asking them to support DOE programs “that advance clean energy research, innovation, and technology.”

Collins said last week that the appropriations process is “sort of on hold” until senators come to an agreement on border security measures as part of a national security supplemental spending package.

But progress could pick up as soon as this week, with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) pledging to put President Joe Biden’s request up for a vote.

Here are the biggest energy and climate issues to watch as Congress works to keep the government funded beyond the current stopgap.

Climate programs

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas).
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) has introduced spending bill amendments against Biden administration climate executive orders. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

Biden’s executive orders on climate change have been among the hallmarks of his first three years in office — and a common target for House conservatives.

GOP lawmakers have so far inserted amendments to undo those orders into the fiscal 2024 Agriculture, Homeland Security and Financial Services bills.

The executive orders, most of them signed during Biden’s first few months in office, aim to put the federal government on a path to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, guard against the impacts of climate change and alleviate pollution that disproportionately affects communities of color and low-income and rural areas.

Many Republicans have cast the measures as a waste of taxpayer dollars, while Democrats see them as important tools for confronting the climate crisis.

“Going backwards on our climate action is a nonstarter,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), a member of both the Environment and Public Works Committee and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Earlier this year, Biden signed another executive order to lay the foundation for an American Climate Corps, a massive green jobs training and service initiative.

House Republicans are looking to use the Agriculture, Energy-Water and Labor-Health and Human Services bills to shut the program down.

The House Agriculture bill includes a provision to eliminate funding for the Department of Agriculture’s regional Climate Hubs, and the Financial Services bill would defund the Treasury Department’s Climate Hub.

The State-Foreign Operations bill contains amendments to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord and slash funding for Biden’s special climate envoy, John Kerry.

Emissions and pollution

Several of the House’s fiscal 2024 bills seek to maintain momentum for Republicans’ war on federal emissions disclosures and limits.

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.), for example, secured an amendment in the Commerce-Justice-Science bill that would prohibit the implementation of a proposed rule to require certain federal contractors to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risks as a condition for getting the government’s business.

But the administration’s proposed rule has been a frequent target of Republicans. Tenney’s amendment echoes language in both the House and Senate versions of the fiscal 2024 defense policy bill.

The Senate version, a compromise with Energy and Natural Resources Chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), is narrower in scope than the House’s.

House Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas), chair of the Economic Growth, Energy Policy and Regulatory Affairs Subcommittee, sent a letter to administration officials over the summer arguing the rule could place undue burdens on contractors and drive up food prices.

And the House Science, Space and Technology Committee held a hearing on the proposed rule last week where GOP members questioned an administration official.

The Financial Services bill contains riders that would block the Securities and Exchange Commission from finalizing a proposed rule that would force publicly traded companies to disclose their carbon emissions and other climate impacts. That rule is expected to be released in the coming weeks.

An amendment from Rep. Michelle Fischbach (R-Minn.) would prohibit funds from being used to require farmers to disclose their Scope 3 emissions, or emissions derived from a business’s supply chain.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) got an amendment to prohibit funding for the Office of Management and Budget’s efforts to consider the social cost of greenhouse gases in developing budgets, federal procurement processes and environmental reviews.

Republicans are also looking to use the Interior-Environment bill, which funds EPA, to go after that agency’s emissions and pollution rules.

In addition to slicing funding for EPA’s air office in half, the bill contains provisions against proposed soot standards and more stringent vehicle emissions limits.

The tailpipe rule would gradually set car emissions limits so low that it would effectively require about two-thirds of cars sold in the U.S. in 2032 to be electric.

Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) last week led a letter to EPA with more than 200 House and Senate Republicans stating their opposition to the rule, calling it a “misguided attempt to force the production of a vehicle mix that fails to meet the transportation needs or fit within the budgets of American families.”

Further, the Interior-Environment bill would block EPA rules on greenhouse gases from power plants and mandate new oil and gas lease sales.

IRA rescissions

Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio).
House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development ranking member Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) have been vocal against Republican riders and cuts in the fiscal 2024 bills. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

Clawbacks, or rescissions, from the Inflation Reduction Act are certain to be another nonstarter for Senate Democrats, who have touted the climate law as one of the most significant achievements of the current administration.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (R-Ohio), ranking member on the Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittee, said IRA clawbacks in the House-passed bills amount to “poison pill policy riders that sadly show extremist Republicans are not interested in bills that can gain bipartisan support and become law.”

The House Interior-Environment bill would cut about $9.4 billion from energy programs in the IRA as part of Republicans’ broader effort to reduce government spending.

The Energy-Water bill aims to rescind more than $5 billion from those programs, and the Agriculture bill includes some $7.5 billion in cuts to IRA programs.

The Interior-Environment bill would specifically target IRA funding for EPA, the Presidio Trust and the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The Financial Services bill would reduce IRA funding for the General Services Administration to make buildings more energy efficient.

Targeted programs in the climate law are designed to help “countless American families save money on their monthly energy bills while simultaneously creating thousands of jobs in new energy technologies,” Kaptur said during debate of Republican amendments.

“For energy and water needs,” she continued, “it is not an overstatement to say people in our nation live and die by decisions being made here in Congress.”

Energy efficiency standards

Among the Biden administration’s most inflammatory proposals to many GOP lawmakers are the Department of Energy’s efficiency standards for a range of appliances — from gas stoves to ceiling fans.

Republicans argue the rules limit consumer choice and drive up prices, and they have attempted to use legislation to block new standards from going into effect. They are also using fiscal 2024 bills to deprive DOE of funding to implement the rules.

The House Energy-Water bill includes a provision that would block a proposed DOE efficiency rule for distribution transformers. The measure would reduce funding for DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy by 42 percent.

House conservatives also proposed a host of amendments to prohibit the implementation of proposed standards for residential gas furnaces, water heaters, air conditioners, ice-makers and mobile homes. Democrats allowed the amendments to pass by voice vote.

Texas Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar, who had an amendment made in order for debate to strike the transformer provision, withdrew her amendment at the last minute.

DOE’s proposed standards have the support of most Democrats, but Manchin, a pro-fossil fuel centrist who often aligns with Republicans on energy issues, said he could support some Republican provisions that aim to roll the efficiency standards back.

“It just depends,” he told E&E News. “What [regulations] eventually do is just raise the price of products that you and I have to pay for.”

“Eliminating gas stoves was going to basically save the planet and I didn’t see that at all,” he said, referring to a DOE rule that would disqualify about half of gas stoves on the market today.

Manchin has blocked the nomination of a top DOE official because of the agency’s gas stove proposal, and he succeeded in getting a rider with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in a Senate spending bill.

Even though the Senate bills are largely free of controversial riders, Manchin and Cruz secured a provision in the Financial Services-General Government bill against potential Consumer Product Safety Commission rulemaking on gas stoves.

Infrastructure funding

Several House bills contain controversial provisions that would slash funding for federal infrastructure programs, including transportation and water projects.

Indeed, the House delayed a final vote on the Transportation-Housing and Urban Development bill last month after losing the support of a number of Republicans who said they could not back a rider that would cut Amtrak funding by more than $1 billion.

Republicans had previously teamed up with Democrats to tank another proposed clawback from the bipartisan infrastructure law that sought to defund the national electric vehicle infrastructure program, which provides funding for EV chargers.

The bill includes riders that would reduce funding for the Department of Transportation’s Climate Change Center and cut Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s salary to $1.

Republicans are looking to deal another blow to electric vehicles in the Financial Services bill. That bill would block funds for GSA’s Electric Vehicles Fund, which allows federal agencies to purchase zero-emissions vehicles and chargers.

The Energy-Water bill would repeal an initial form of the Biden administration’s waters of the United States rule, finalized in January.

Agencies have since issued a new regulation following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Sackett v. EPA that effectively gutted the January version. The Interior-Environment bill includes a similar provision.

E&E News

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