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February 3, 2023 by

Sen. Joe Manchin pressured a top Energy Department official on Thursday to expand markets for coal waste, a high-polluting energy source that has earned Manchin’s family millions of dollars.

At a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the West Virginia Democrat pressed Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk on why the Biden administration hasn’t used more federal money to help commercialize new uses for coal waste. Also known as gob, the toxic byproduct of mining is a mix of coal, rock and other material.

Over three decades, Manchin has built a lucrative business called Enersystems Inc., that supplies gob to the last power plant in West Virginia that burns it. In 2021, Manchin earned more than $500,000 from that company, according to his financial disclosures, which values Manchin’s stake in the firm at up to $5 million. (The senator has said the company is operated by his son and held in a blind trust.)

Asked after Thursday’s hearing about advocating for a fuel that personally profits him, Manchin said that he’s been working with coal waste since the 1990s. That work, he asserted, converted an an environmental hazard into something that can help remediate the acidic runoff from coal mines.

“I mean, I live in coal country, so if you don’t work in coal country, you don’t work in West Virginia, usually. I can tell you, 50 out of 55 counties — it’s just our way of life, OK?” Manchin told reporters.

As the Senate Energy chair, Manchin has used his influence to add hundreds of millions of dollars for minerals research to bipartisan infrastructure legislation — with a focus on coal waste that has boosted the coal industry. Ethics experts say that has created an apparent conflict of interest (Climatewire, April 4, 2022).

On Thursday, Manchin continued in that effort. After accusing the Biden administration of undercutting fossil fuels, he said the Energy Department was dragging its feet specifically on programs to demonstrate coal waste’s potential beyond burning it for energy.

Coal waste could produce graphite and rare earth elements for batteries, he said, “in more sustainable ways than the traditional methods being used today.”

“It’s already been mined, you don’t have to do anything, just clean it up,” he said.

Coal, he continued, “has so many values to it, not just for burning.” He accused the administration of ending “some promising projects” because “they want to eliminate [coal].”

“This administration continues to wage war on coal,” he said. “They can say what they want to — I’m from coal country, so I know what’s happening,”

Manchin urged Turk to help commercialize coal waste by using funding from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law and the CHIPS Act, which is aimed at boosting domestic manufacturing of semiconductors.

“Are you going to ensure that funding from the infrastructure bill and the CHIPS Act will be used, rather than just basically saying you’re not going to do it?” Manchin asked Turk.

The deputy secretary responded that “a whole team” at the National Energy Technology Laboratory, part of the department’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, was already working on on coal waste options.

“What I’m told is we have four smaller pilot projects out there, and there’s plans to try and build from that,” Turk said, adding that he’d be “happy to talk further with you and your staff to make sure we’re going forward in a way that makes sense.”

Manchin said he would be talking about the issue with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and the White House.

The Grant Town power plant that burns Manchin’s coal waste has struggled financially for many years and has been on the verge of shutting down a number of times. For more than three decades, Manchin has used the levers of government to protect the money-losing plant and keep it operating. Over five years, that cost ratepayers an extra $117 million, E&E News has reported (Climatewire, Nov. 17, 2021).

Manchin’s company makes money hauling coal ash to the Grant Town power plant and then hauling the ash away and spreading it back on mine land. Coal ash is applied to abandoned mine lands and can absorb some of the acid mine runoff. However, the ash also contains heavy metals, such as arsenic and lead, that can leach into water supplies.

Environmental groups have been calling for coal ash regulations that would classify the material as a hazardous waste and create more rigorous requirements for storing and transporting the ash. It would also increase costs on businesses that move the substance.

Manchin has opposed more stringent coal ash regulations.

Efforts to develop new markets for coal waste are already underway in West Virginia. Omnis Sublimation Recovery Technologies is spending $60 million to build a facility to extract rare-earth elements from coal waste in Wyoming County, in the heart of the state’s southern coal fields. It’s expected to open in mid-2023.

Reporter Scott Waldman contributed.

February 3, 2023 by

The phrase “environmental justice” — which Democrats use to describe the remedy to the outsize exposure of poor and marginalized communities to harm from hazardous waste, resource extraction and extreme weather — is missing from new House Energy and Commerce Committee documents.

During an organizational hearing this week, Rep. Nanette Díaz Barragán (D-Calif.) noticed the term wasn’t referenced in materials outlining subcommittee jurisdictional boundaries.

“My understanding is that the jurisdiction of environmental justice has been stricken from jurisdiction of the subcommittees,” said Barragán. “It’s something our committee should absolutely oversee, how communities of color and low-income communities are disproportionately impacted.”

Full committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said that despite changes to subcommittee titles and outlines, the jurisdiction of the different panels hasn’t shifted compared to the last Congress.

Rodgers, during an interview, said the committee intends to focus on the impact of energy development on minority and low-income communities.

“We’re absolutely committed to high environmental standards, environmen

tal justice and energy justice,” said Rodgers.

Still, Democrats argue language matters. They believe stripping the phrase from subcommittee jurisdiction descriptions is a sign that the new majority Republican might overlook issues of equity.

“I think they’re saying that they don’t care about these communities that have been disproportionately impacted by environmental contamination,” said Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), ranking member of the newly minted Energy, Climate and Grid Security Subcommittee. “I think it’s a very bad statement to make.”

‘No reason to take it out’

The committee’s public-facing website includes jurisdiction details for the Energy, Climate and Grid Security Subcommittee; Environment, Manufacturing and Critical Materials Subcommittee; and Health Subcommittee. None says environmental justice explicitly.

In contrast, House Democrats included the words “environmental justice as it relates to the above-referenced jurisdiction” in subcommittee descriptions for the 117th Congress, when they were in the majority.

“There’s no reason to take it out,” said full committee ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.). “It was in there specifically because we felt that it should be promoted or that we should do as much as we can to make sure there is environmental justice.”

DeGette suggested that Republicans might find something “weird” about using the term.

“Maybe it’s weird for them, but I betcha many of my Republican colleagues on the Commerce Committee have environmental justice areas in their districts,” said DeGette.

Republican refocus

This week Democrats similarly expressed concern when Oversight and Accountability Committee Republicans scrapped the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee. That panel helped probe pipeline permitting and eminent domain controversies.

Democrats made environmental justice a central focus of their plans for the last Congress. Advocates and many lawmakers felt the issue had finally become prominent enough on Capitol Hill.

Republicans, however, objected to how Democrats described and defended environmental justice. And Rodgers this week signaled how the committee will address concerns regarding low-income and minority communities as it relates to energy, and its not exactly how Democrats view the matter.

Republicans on Tuesday showcased witness Donna Jackson, a membership director for Project 21, an initiative of the National Center for Public Policy Research to highlight conservative views among African Americans.

Throughout her testimony, Jackson spoke about how policies promoting a green energy transition have raised prices and put significant financial pressure on low-income communities.

“We see the entrepreneurial spirit of the black community in many black-owned small businesses, but those businesses struggle and sometimes fail under the weight of high energy costs,” Jackson said. “Climate change policies and environmental justice initiatives take us in exactly the wrong direction by blocking domestic sources of energy.”

Even though Democrats prioritized environmental justice and secured funding for communities dealing with pollution, they were unable to pass broad environmental justice reform legislation championed by progressives (E&E Daily, Dec. 19, 2022).

Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the Environment Subcommittee, said he hoped to keep politics out of environmental justice debates.

“I hope the rhetoric will be as straightforward as it could be,” said Tonko. “It’s about creating a just situation.”

February 3, 2023 by

Congressional Republicans introduced two resolutions this week to overturn executive branch rulemaking on issues relating to the environment.

It is likely only the beginning of a GOP campaign to challenge the Biden administration’s regulatory agenda in a divided Congress, while also testing whether Republicans can pressure Democrats up for reelection to break from their party.

The resolutions, which Republicans in the House and Senate rolled out within 24 hours of each other, would challenge proposed rules by the Labor Department and EPA.

The first, to be sponsored by Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) and Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.), would overturn the Department of Labor’s rulemaking to allow fiduciaries to take environmental, social and governance — or ESG — factors into consideration when choosing retirement investments.

Proponents of ESG investing say that financial advisers have always looked for the best risk-adjusted returns, and sometimes that means turning away from companies or industries — such as oil and coal — at most risk from the clean energy transition. Republicans, however, are targeting this practice as “woke capitalism” designed to drive dollars away from the fossil fuel sector (Climatewire, Jan. 27).

The second resolution, championed by Senate Environment and Public Works ranking member Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and House Transportation and Infrastructure Chair Sam Graves (R-Mo.), would permanently repeal the Biden administration’s waters of the U.S. — or WOTUS — definition, arguing the regulation amounts to federal overreach that will burden businesses and farmers.

The WOTUS rule, which determines which waters and wetlands fall under federal protection, has been at the center of a decadeslong regulatory, political and legal fight.

The Republican resolution would nullify a regulation EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers released in December, which revived a definition of WOTUS coined during the Reagan era and updated it to accommodate limits the Supreme Court has placed on federal jurisdiction during the intervening 36 years (Greenwire, Dec. 30, 2022).

Each measure would come to the floor under the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to overturn recently finalized rules via simple majority in both chambers. In the Senate, CRA resolutions are introduced as a “privileged resolution,” meaning the Democrats will have to schedule votes on them.

And, with Senate Democrats only holding a 51-member majority, including three independents who caucus with Democrats, Republicans will need to peel off just two lawmakers across the aisle to win the simple majority necessary for adoption of either CRA resolution.

Assuming the Senate-endorsed resolution then gets adopted by the GOP-controlled House, President Joe Biden would almost certainly veto it. Republicans would still, however, count that as a victory.

Already, the anti-ESG resolution has won the support of Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who is up for reelection next year.

“At a time when our country is already facing economic uncertainty, record inflation and increasing energy costs, it is irresponsible of the Biden Administration to jeopardize retirement savings for more than 150 million Americans for purely political purposes,” Manchin tweeted earlier this week.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who is weighing a run for reelection in 2024, told E&E News on Thursday that he would “take a look at” the ESG measure.

Braun, the lead sponsor of the CRA resolution on the Labor Department’s proposed ESG rule, told E&E News on Wednesday he continues to court other Democrats and remained optimistic he would find one to vote with Republicans and Manchin. But he didn’t expect an announcement until closer to the time of floor consideration.

WOTUS questions

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) speaks with reporters. — Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). | Francis Chung/POLITICO

It’s less clear whether the WOTUS resolution would be able to attract similar bipartisan support.

Manchin’s office did not reply to requests for comment Thursday on whether he would back the measure now, after voting with Republicans in 2015 to overturn the rule when it was first written during the Obama administration.

Tester, meanwhile, suggested the Republican-led effort would be moot in a couple of months, given the Supreme Court ruling expected this summer in Sackett v. EPA — even as Republicans have argued for the need to stop Biden from issuing a new WOTUS definition in light of that undecided case.

“The WOTUS thing is a little weird because the Supreme Court is going to come out with a ruling in June that’s going to be the one that’s gonna be the law of the land,” Tester explained. “We’re either gonna have to vote to change that or leave it the way it is.”

Furthermore, the resolution as written would actually do little to change federal protections for wetlands and other waterways. The Republican measure as currently written would, in erasing the Biden rule, actually reinstate those same rules put in place during the Reagan administration.

Braun was also not optimistic Republicans would have the same success in overturning the WOTUS rule as they would in targeting the Labor Department’s handling of ESG investing.

“I think this, on ESG, has a better chance, comparing the two,” Braun told reporters Thursday. “WOTUS has been debated back and forth … so that’s got kind of — less kind of starkness to it. ESG is fresh.”

A Senate GOP leadership aide who was granted anonymity to speak candidly said timing for consideration of the two resolutions was still up in the air but that they could hit the floor as early as the week of Feb. 13.

The House does not have to act with urgency on the resolutions but likely will prioritize their consideration, particularly if the Senate is successful on either one.

Barr, who chairs the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Monetary Policy, which has jurisdiction over the ESG issue, told E&E News he was “confident that this is going to be a priority” in the House.

“The new majority in the House — and especially in the Financial Services Committee — we’re going to be prioritizing putting ESG on trial,” Barr said. “This is a cancer within our capital markets.”

Reporter Ariel Wittenberg contributed.

This story also appears in Climatewire.

February 2, 2023 by

BOULDER CITY, Nev. — Looking out at a vast, dusty valley, Alan O’Neill nods at a long concrete ramp that hasn’t seen a motorized boat launch in nearly 20 years.

“This next one will make you cry,” says O’Neill, who spent more than a decade as the superintendent of Lake Mead National Recreation Area, overseeing these 1.5 million acres a short drive from Las Vegas.

Approaching one edge of Las Vegas Bay Marina Overlook — now more than 1.5 miles from the water’s edge — O’Neill points out the picnic tables shaded by green metal gazebos near the abandoned boat ramp, a nearby campsite that still draws visitors, and the dry ground that once used to be part of Lake Mead.

“We were really happy with the way that turned out,” O’Neill says, referring to the creation of the picnic site and the reconstruction of Lakeshore Road in the 1990s, “and then the water disappeared.”

Alan O’Neill at Lake Mead. — Alan O’Neill, former superintendent of Lake Mead National Recreation Area, stands on the Government Wash boat ramp, one of several facilities that have closed as water levels in the reservoir drop. | Jennifer Yachnin/POLITICO’s E&E News

The plummeting water levels at Lake Mead receive national attention because of the reservoir’s key role in supplying water to municipal and agricultural users in Arizona, Nevada and California, forcing state and federal officials to make difficult decisions about how to keep the water flowing after more than two decades of drought. But the changing geography of the lake over the years also has put significant pressure on the National Park Service as it scrambles to keep the lake accessible — an often futile exercise now memorialized in the useless boat ramps left around the lake.

This is a challenge NPS still faces, while also needing to manage new lands emerging from the site and protect the history that is being revealed by the receding water. Visitors still flock to the reservoir year-round, with some 7.6 million coming in 2021.

Las Vegas Bay is one of the many former launch sites for boaters that O’Neill highlighted on a December visit to the recreation area, which is home to the nation’s largest reservoir.

At the time, the lake sat just under an elevation of 1,045 feet, a few feet above the record lows set in both July and November.

The drought across the West shrank flows into the Colorado River Basin, which feeds into Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border and then continues through the Grand Canyon into Lake Mead across the Arizona-Nevada border. The two reservoirs were created by the federal government decades ago, generating electricity with their hydropower dams and creating recreational attractions.

“The lake is still beautiful when you get out on it,” says O’Neill, who remains an advocate for the site as well as other public lands in Nevada, like the proposed Avi Kwa Ame National Monument (E&E Daily, Dec. 1, 2022).

Lake Mead first began to fill in late 1934, and required nearly three years to rise to an elevation of 1,044 feet in April 1937. Bureau of Reclamation data shows it sat at just under 1,047 feet on Thursday. At its peak in July 1983, the reservoir reached an elevation of more than 1,225 feet.

Boats moored in the Lake Mead Marina. White marks on the shore show how high the water once reached in the shrinking reservoir. | Jennifer Yachnin/POLITICO’s E&E News

When full, the reservoir could hold as much 31 million acre-feet of water, or twice the Colorado River’s annual flows. As of December, it sat at just 28 percent of its capacity.

But access to the water has changed significantly in recent years, as dropping water forced NPS to close motorized boat launch points around the lake.

At first, NPS tried to adjust. At many of the ramps, O’Neill points out changes in concrete composition that indicate a site was expanded in an attempt to keep up with receding waters.

But given the popularity of motorized boating on Lake Mead, the sites were already expansive to begin with, to accommodate multiple lanes of boaters putting in and taking out their vessels. For example, the Government Wash ramp, which closed in 2001, spans eight vehicle lanes. Each time that ramp was elongated to reach the receding waters, each of the eight lanes had to be extended, creating a vast concrete ramp.

The Las Vegas Bay Launch Ramp was shut down in 2003, while NPS closed the Overton Beach Launch Ramp in 2009. The Callville Bay and Echo Bay launch ramps were shuttered in 2014. During the same period, NPS closed or relocated numerous marinas, as well.

At the sole remaining operating boat ramp, Hemenway Harbor, a series of signs along one side show the water level as it dropped 170 feet since 2000.

A series of signs at Hemenway Harbor on Lake Mead show how water levels have dropped. — At Hemenway Harbor, the sole remaining boat ramp in operation at Lake Mead, a series of signs show how water levels have dropped since 2000. | Jennifer Yachnin/POLITICO’s E&E News

“It’s a big investment to continue trying to find the water,” O’Neill says, and later adds: “Every time we think we can outguess Mother Nature, she fools us.”

Park officials are weighing how to fix the problem of crowding at Hemenway Harbor, where lines can stretch for hours at peak times. One option is a time-entry system, similar to that implemented in recent years at other popular parks (Greenwire, Nov. 15, 2022).

But that may not address the issues created by the newly exposed lake bed — nor the objects emerging from their once-watery tombs, including sunken pleasure boats and a World War II-era craft, tires used for docks, and, on occasion, human remains (Greenwire, Aug. 8, 2022).

“As the shorelines recede, some of the biggest pressures are visitors who are taking advantage of that newly exposed shoreline and traversing the shoreline with their vehicles to try and launch boats in different locations,” said Chris Nycz, the cultural resource manager at Lake Mead NRA.

History revealed

A formerly sunken boat standing upright in mud along the Lake Mead shore in Nevada. — A man stands on a hill overlooking a formerly sunken boat standing upright into the air with its stern buried in the mud along the shoreline of Lake Mead near Boulder City, Nev. | John Locher/AP Photo

As the lake shrinks, NPS officials are faced with a new balancing act: how to protect newly uncovered cultural artifacts and protect areas formerly safeguarded by the lake’s waters while also guaranteeing access to a lake that remains popular with motorized boaters.

“There’s a lot of additional acres that are being uncovered as the waters go down, and in the 1930s, when they were planning the reservoir, there was not a full-scale cultural survey conducted that would be comparable to what we would do today,” Nycz said.

The challenge includes preserving archaeological finds that were obscured by the creation of Lake Mead decades ago along with the new treasures.

NPS already maintains some historic sites, including the town of St. Thomas in the northern arm of Lake Mead. The town was established as a Mormon settlement in 1865, and was later abandoned and repopulated and then purchased by the federal government before the reservoir began to fill.

The town disappeared beneath the water in 1938 and, according to NPS, at one point sat nearly 60 feet below the surface before emerging again from the depths. Remains of the town — foundations, walls, steps — can be explored via a 2.5-mile walking trail.

And now NPS is working on cataloging new findings.

“There’s the potential for a lot of undocumented archaeological resources,” Nycz said. While land managers in the 1930s focused on large archaeological sites, she said modern cataloging is focused on much smaller habitation sites, including those used by Indigenous peoples and later explorers who pushed West looking for mining opportunities.

The receding waters are also revealing the history of Lake Mead’s creation in the 1930s. There are numerous construction sites related to the construction of Hoover Dam, she said, including railroad beds and an aggregate plant used to supply sand and gravel.

A water clarifying tank used in the construction of Hoover Dam sits above the water line at Lake Mead. The site, now reached via an uphill hike, was previously a popular spot for scuba divers. | Jennifer Yachnin/POLITICO’s E&E News

One such site, a water clarifying tank has already emerged from the water and drawn visitors who have left behind graffiti.

That tank was once a technical underwater dive — an activity that requires more specialized training than those needed for a typical recreational dive, because of deeper depths and longer times underwater — but now requires an uphill hike to reach.

“There’s a strong urgency to protect the public from not only vandalizing the resource themselves, but protecting them from any bodily harm that may come from exploring” those sites, Nycz said.

That can be made difficult, in part, because the dramatic changes at Lake Mead are proving to be popular draws for social media users looking for the perfect picture or reel.

Resource Management Division Chief Mark Sappington noted that there are plentiful videos of popular sites like the previously sunken Higgins boat, a World War II-era landing craft, and oddities like an upright speedboat planted in the ground.

“It’s just a kind of a curiosity of, ‘Oh, my God, these things were underwater. Now they’re above water. This is really cool. I want my photo next to this,'” he said. “And unfortunately, there’s a downside to that we are seeing some vandalism of things.”

With the emergence of newly accessible land, Sappington said, NPS is “trying to develop, essentially, a new type of management plan for these resources,” to address those macabre treasures emerging from the lake bed, as well as archaeological finds.

“They’re not necessarily just curiosities to take Instagram photos with and climb on, and things like that. But they are a part of our history, and we’re charged with protecting them. We can’t do it alone. We certainly need everyone’s help in helping steward these,” Sappington added.

Nycz, who is leading that management plan, is working alongside the NPS Submerged Resources Center, which specializes in underwater archaeology, to determine how best to address newly exposed structures.

“One of the approaches, especially for those structures that have been submerged for so long, would be to work with some structural engineers to evaluate the stability of those items and work towards preservation,” Nycz said. Alternatively, park managers could opt to restrict access to some areas to prevent further degradation of objects.

She also warned that would-be treasure hunters are not allowed to bring metal detectors or a sonar system to search in the lake bed or elsewhere.

“The artifacts are federal property, and they’re protected under federal law,” Nycz said. “It’s illegal for folks to come into the park with a metal detector or with the purpose of removing artifacts of any size, any kind.”

February 2, 2023 by

A massive oil and gas project in the Arctic sits on a knife’s edge — and along with it perhaps President Joe Biden’s climate legacy — as administration officials weigh whether to approve an $8 billion drilling project on federal lands that’s fiercely opposed by environmentalists.

The Biden administration advanced ConocoPhillips’ Willow project Wednesday, releasing a final environmental review that embraced a constricted version of the project that would still allow drilling of more than 200 wells in the approximately 24-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Still, officials were quick to stress that Willow could be further restricted or even denied in a final record of decision that’s required within the next 30 days.

“Let me just be clear: No decision has been made on this,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a press conference Wednesday while defending the president’s commitment to climate action.

“He continues to deliver on historic climate change action while carrying out the law and meeting our energy needs. Again, no decision has been made yet.”

Observers say the Biden administration insistence that the project is still in limbo in this final stretch shows that the White House is considering multiple factors, including the politics of energy prices and the unique vulnerability of the Arctic region to climate change before it makes a consequential decision.

“I am optimistic that the door is still open,” said Karlin Itchoak, the Alaska senior regional director for the Wilderness Society, which opposes the project. “The administration appears to still be considering further reductions to the size of the project, and still has the opportunity to do the right thing.”

Should the administration block Willow, it would be the first time in history a president has barred drilling for oil and gas on public lands due to climate change. But despite the Biden administration’s focus on climate, the president is still aware of the country’s need for oil and gas and hesitant to be seen as restricting supply, a conundrum that the White House has needed to maneuver around during the last two years, said Paul Bledsoe, a former climate official for then-President Bill Clinton.

“They’re in a difficult position politically,” said Bledsoe, who was director of communications for Clinton’s Climate Change Task Force. “It can be seen by some on the left-hand side that it should be a no-brainer, very easy, but that’s not true. Global oil prices are still high.”

While Willow alone isn’t going to shift global energy prices or significantly impact demand for crude oil, the project is the latest example of how thorny oil and gas politics have proved for Biden.

Biden has backed unprecedented climate policy to ramp up renewable energy like offshore wind and help bolster the development of a domestic electric vehicle industry. But climate activists have slammed the president for allowing oil and gas drilling to continue on federal lands despite a promise to retire the program. Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers have been unrelenting in their attacks on the administration for restricting oil and gas leasing — pointing to White House policy when oil prices spiked after the Russian war against Ukraine.

Willow was initially approved in 2020 amid the Trump administration’s push to unleash oil and gas production on federal lands. Just a year later, however, a federal judge kicked the issue back to the Interior Department over a faulty climate analysis.

Interior’s Bureau of Land Management on Wednesday published a final supplemental environmental review to correct those errors, advancing a “preferred alternative” for Willow that would greenlight a scaled-down version of the 30-year drilling project.

That option, which would reduce roads, pipelines and emissions, has the approval of the company, which said Wednesday it would be a “viable path forward for development.”

Support for the Willow project is also entrenched in parts of Alaska, with the state’s congressional delegation and many Alaska Native leaders lobbying for its approval.

“While it has been a long and arduous road to get back to this point, we have pushed hard, as a delegation, and are now just one step away from Willow’s re-approval,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said in a statement. “Thousands of good union jobs — and immense benefits that will be felt across Alaska and the nation — will hang in the balance until a positive final decision has been issued.”

But like the White House, Interior was adamant that it could still restrict the project due to “substantial concerns” over Willow’s greenhouse gas emissions and the potential to impact Alaska Native food supply by disrupting caribou herds.

After several years of environmental review, political fighting and court battles, the administration is poised to make or break Willow at last. Here are three areas likely influencing the White House’s decision:

Difficult politics

The political winds have shifted dramatically since Biden took office and ordered Interior to reevaluate the Willow project only to later turn around and defend the Trump-era approval in court. But the political pressure could still be the ultimate force guiding the White House’s hand on Willow, some argued.

Some of the pressure that the White House faced when Biden took office has evaporated with a shift on Capitol Hill, possibly freeing up the president’s decision on Willow.

A handful of pro-oil politicians held leverage over Biden when the draft analysis on Willow came out last summer. The administration’s signature clean-energy package was still stalled on Capitol Hill, with the pro-oil Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, from West Virginia, pressuring the president to increase fossil fuel access on federal lands.

Murkowski, too, had some significant clout as a moderate Republican, which she used to pressure the White House to switch out a nominated second-in-command at the Interior Department for one she perceived as more friendly to oil and gas interests.

With a slightly stronger hand in the Senate now with a 51-seat majority, the White House may not worry as much about a backlash if Willow gets denied.

But Bledsoe said the White House is still caught between the reality of oil demand in the country and the perception of how to reduce it. He also maintained that reducing oil and gas supply will fail to deliver the kind of emissions reductions that climate activists might expect.

The administration could score a huge win for its climate bona fides by blocking Willow, which could emit anywhere from 278,036 million to 286,575 million metric tons of carbon emissions over its 30-year lifespan, according to BLM’s analysis.

But it would also run the risk of monkeying with the politics of oil policy, which only last year put immense pressure on the White House when gas prices rose, Bledsoe said.

“This is exactly the type of really hard decision that confronts us during that clean energy transition,” he said. “I’m less convinced that adding one new project is a climate disaster, because the real problem is demand.”

Is compromise possible?

The preferred alternative that the BLM released Wednesday is a compromise option that tries to cut down on the impacts of the oil project while still allowing it to move forward.

But when it comes to Willow, the project’s opponents don’t see room for compromise.

Itchoak said the project must be viewed from the perspective of the Arctic, where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the rest of the planet. This has real implications for people living in the region: Villages are facing erosion that could force relocation, thawing permafrost could undermine other communities, and changing weather patterns are affecting the supply of wildlife Alaska Natives depend on for food.

“When your house is on fire, you don’t set the other side of the house on fire,” he said.

Siqiñiq Maupin, director of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, warned that completion of the Willow Project would leave residents of the city of Nuiqsut completely surrounded by oil and gas development

“It’s going to create a rural area that has households that primarily rely on subsistence, changing their entire ways of life, while still being remote and inaccessible to places like larger grocery stores,” Maupin said.

The oil project’s supporters aren’t willing to budge much either, nor accept a Willow approval from the administration so restrictive that it could lead to the project’s demise.

Last year, ConocoPhillips said if the White House scaled back Willow beyond the three well sites that would be approved in the “preferred alternative,” it would make the project not viable.

The company has already sunk significant money into Willow, and it represents part of the company’s long-term outlook for the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska — a largely undeveloped area the size of Indiana where it believes additional oil reserves could still be found. ConocoPhillips’ interest in the NPR-A in part led the Trump administration to try and open additional lands near Willow to facilitate more exploration, a move that was reversed by the Biden administration.

ConocoPhillips has also been clear that it will not make a final investment decision until it knows for sure that Interior will approve Willow in a form that makes sense for the company.

The department’s insistence that it may indeed add more restrictions on Willow before approval hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Murkowski warned the Biden administration in a statement Wednesday to approve Willow without “further limits or extraneous conditions” that could make it nonviable.

Legal maneuvers

The Willow project’s opponents said the agency still had the legal authority to back out of the project altogether.

BLM is required under the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act (NPRPA) to protect surface resources of the petroleum reserve, such as land, water and wildlife, attorneys for environmental groups said.

“It can’t possibly do that by allowing new oil drilling when the surface is literally melting away because of climate change,” wrote Kristen Monsell, a litigator with the Center for Biological Diversity.

However, BLM tends to take a limited view of its own authority, she said, and that became part of its subsequent environmental review.

“That narrow view infected its entire analysis,” she said.

BLM has argued that it is not allowed to strand any economically viable quantity of oil, but the agency is required under the NPRPA to consider and mitigate environmental impacts, said Ann Alexander, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The final analysis for the project comes after fierce courtroom battles to block Willow from going forward. The agency’s continued consideration of the project despite its expected emissions revealed a broader need for agencies to define when climate emissions become harmful, project opponents said.

Environmental groups had cheered after Judge Sharon Gleason of the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska ruled in August 2021 that BLM’s NEPA review of the project had “serious problems” (Energywire, Aug. 19, 2021).

Her decision required BLM to go back to the drawing board and conduct a new analysis of the project that addressed three main concerns: impacts on foreign greenhouse gas emissions, alternative project designs and legal requirements to provide “maximum protection” for land in the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area.

The fact that the agency could still go forward with the project after NEPA review isn’t a failure of the environmental law per se, but rather with its implementation, said Alexander.

When it comes to implementing NEPA, it’s challenging to tie specific emission to specific climate impacts, said Alexander, who noted this is a challenge that extends across federal agencies.

“Anyone looking at the climate impacts here can see they’re significant. This is a carbon bomb,” she said. “But there is currently no objective threshold to say how significant they are.”

There is still at least one other roadblock for Willow ahead.

Monsell noted that the project is still missing a new consultation under the Endangered Species Act of the impacts of the project on polar bears, which should be released ahead of the agency’s record of decision.

Trustees for Alaska staff attorney Bridget Psarianos said it was still too early to say whether environmental groups were likely to pursue further legal action against BLM, if the administration moves ahead.

“We need to really take a closer look at the EIS and read BLM’s decision carefully and figure out what our next steps are,” she said.

Reporter Robin Bravender contributed.

Correction: The original version of this story incorrectly described the metric tons of carbon emissions that the Bureau of Land Management estimates will be emitted by the Willow project.

February 2, 2023 by

Keeping global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius is “currently not plausible,” warns a new report from the University of Hamburg. The types of swift, transformative social change needed to reach that target just aren’t happening fast enough.

A less ambitious target of 2 C still could be in the cards, the report adds. But it would require world leaders to set more ambitious climate goals for their nations and put them in motion immediately.

The report, known as the “Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook,” examines the factors affecting the world’s ability to meet its global climate goals. Nations participating in the Paris climate agreement have pledged to keep global warming well under 2 C while striving for a more ambitious 1.5 C target.

The most recent reports from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change make it clear that meeting these targets requires immediate and rapid global efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions. The 1.5 C threshold requires global emissions to hit net zero by 2050, the IPCC warns, and they should fall by roughly half within the next decade.

But studies consistently find that global climate action isn’t happening fast enough to keep up with those requirements. The U.N.’s latest annual emissions gap report, which assesses global progress on the Paris targets, found that the climate policies currently in place around the world aren’t even enough to meet the 2 C target, let alone 1.5 C.

As it is, studies suggest that humanity could blow past the 1.5 C threshold in about a decade. Though it’s still technically possible to achieve it — if world leaders took the necessary steps right away — climate scientists and policy experts increasingly acknowledge that it’s probably not going to happen (Climatewire, Nov. 11, 2022).

The new Hamburg report affirms those fears.

The report examines 10 different social drivers that can affect the world’s ability to achieve “deep decarbonization” in time to meet the Paris targets. These include governance from the U.N., transnational initiatives, climate-related regulation, climate protests and social movements, climate litigation, corporate responses, fossil-fuel divestment, consumption patterns, journalism, and the production of knowledge on climate change.

On a global scale, not one of them supports deep decarbonization by 2050, the report finds.

Most of them are, in general, moving in the right direction. They just aren’t aggressive enough yet to be consistent with the kind of transformative social change required to achieve the 1.5 C target.

Journalism has an ambivalent influence, the report notes. Depending on the media organization, platform and the framing of the story, it sometimes promotes climate action and sometimes hinders it.

And two social drivers actively impair global efforts to achieve 1.5 C. Those are corporate responses and global consumption patterns. The report finds that “the majority of companies are still not responding adequately to support decarbonization.”

Social change has been further complicated by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the report adds.

Global lockdowns in 2020 resulted in a temporary dip in global carbon emissions. But as the world reopened, recovery efforts aimed at jump-starting the global economy likely have increased the world’s reliance on fossil fuels, the report suggests.

The long-term consequences of Russia’s war are less clear. But experts are concerned it may also lock in more future fossil fuel dependence as places like Europe search for replacements for Russian fuel.

The report also looks at a handful of physical climate factors that could affect the speed of future warming. These include various feedback mechanisms and tipping points in the Earth’s climate system.

Permafrost, for instance, is a common point of concern among climate scientists. As the Earth warms and frozen soil in the planet’s coldest places begin to thaw, it can release large volumes of climate-warming carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. These emissions could, theoretically, further speed the rate of global warming.

Other potential physical drivers include the Earth’s melting ice sheets and dwindling sea ice; the potential slowing of giant heat-ferrying ocean currents; and the decay of the mighty Amazon rainforest, which stores billions of tons of carbon in its trees and soils.

Many of these drivers are cause for significant concern in the long term. But the report notes that their influence between now and 2050 is likely to be relatively small.

That means social drivers, rather than physical ones, are still the major barriers to achieving the Paris targets. That’s another nail in the coffin for the swiftly approaching 1.5 C target.

“The deep decarbonization required is simply progressing too slowly,” said Anita Engels, a social scientist at the University of Hamburg and a co-author of the report.

It’s not all bad news. The report notes that the 2 C target remains plausible — as long as the world takes immediate action to get on track.

In the meantime, the report also recommends that policymakers begin making more serious efforts to adapt to an increasingly likely post-1.5 C world. That means preparing for more severe heat, higher sea levels, more food insecurities, more forced climate migrations, and more extreme weather and climate disasters.

Instead of waiting for that world to arrive, the report stresses the importance of planning for it in advance, with a particular focus on the world’s most vulnerable people and places.

“In order to be equipped for a warmer world, we have to anticipate changes, get the affected parties on board and take advantage of local knowledge,” Engels said. “Instead of just reacting, we need to begin an active transformation here and now.”

February 2, 2023 by

Climate envoy John Kerry made a bet last year that companies would pony up billions of dollars for carbon credits that carry the State Department’s watermark.

His gamble might not pay off.

Kerry described his idea as a game-changing carbon offsets market that would help corporations meet their climate goals while funding the replacement of dirty electricity in developing nations with clean power — perhaps the world’s most intractable climate challenge.

But his claims about the program, called the Energy Transition Accelerator (ETA), depend on companies being willing to buy carbon credits that could cost far more than what’s currently available on the market for $2 or $3 a ton. Businesses can use carbon credits to claim they’re meeting reduction targets despite continuing to emit — whether they come from Kerry’s program or not.

“If a company can make the same [climate] claim with bad credits as they can with good credits, there’s not a huge incentive for them to go out and buy higher-quality credits,” said Luke Pritchard, nature-based solutions manager at the We Mean Business Coalition.

It’s unclear how much credits will cost under Kerry’s program, but Michael Wara, director of Stanford University’s climate and energy program, suggested that an ideal price for carbon, under any program, would hover around $50 a ton. That’s more than 10 times what the global weighted average price was in 2021.

“I think offsets can be done well at relatively high prices,” he said. “And the challenge is always that the entities buying the offsets don’t want to pay the prices that are required to do offsets well.”

The ETA is still being designed, but Kerry has said it will only support additional renewable energy and the retirement of coal-fired power in developing countries. It also takes a jurisdictional approach, meaning it will support national or regional plans to green power grids overall, not individual projects whose climate benefits could be undercut by fossil fuel development in the same area.

‘Dirt cheap’

Kerry targeted power systems in developing countries because they have the potential to make or break the world’s climate goals in the next decade. But it’s also an area with unique challenges for carbon crediting.

The point of carbon credits is to incentivize activities that result in lower emissions — which wouldn’t have happened without funding provided by the credits.

That is “fiendishly, fiendishly, fiendishly hard” to identify for renewable energy and coal retirements, said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist with Stripe, the financial infrastructure platform.

“Solar is dirt cheap,” he said. “There’s a lot of incentives to build solar, and a lot of the reasons people are not building solar and are using coal is not economic, it’s political.”

That’s why the certifiers of carbon credits are bailing out of the renewable sector.

Verra, the world’s largest carbon crediting registry, told E&E News that it had stopped certifying renewable energy production in 2019 with a handful of exceptions and had never certified coal plant retirements.

Kerry’s program — which is expected to formally launch at the U.N. climate talks in November — is making its debut just as the voluntary carbon markets are in the midst of a kind of identity crisis. Old methods of crediting projects have come under intense scrutiny for loading the markets with projects of poor quality.

Now there is an evolution in thinking about how credits should be used.

At conferences from Sharm el-Sheikh to Abu Dhabi, Kerry has suggested that companies might stock up on these credits as a means of achieving their voluntary net-zero targets in the short term — though he’s also insisted that the program won’t become a cheap alternative to cutting their own emissions (Climatewire, Jan. 23).

The Science-based Target Initiative’s Net-Zero Standard, which has become the benchmark for quality corporate climate commitments, doesn’t allow companies to buy credits that avoid emissions outside their value chain to compensate for their own continued emissions.

“Certainly under the current rules with SBTI, you couldn’t use ETA credits for meeting your targets,” said Pritchard of the We Mean Business Coalition.

All that begs the question, will there be enough corporate interest in these credits to deliver on Kerry’s promises?

The State Department hasn’t said how much buy-in they’re expecting for the ETA, but Kerry sold it at the climate summit at Sharm el-Sheikh as a way to compensate for the limitations of government climate finance.

The Bezos Earth Fund and the Rockefeller Foundation, which are joining Kerry’s team in standing up the program, touted an analysis by Climate Advisers that suggested it could mobilize more than $100 billion through 2030.

It’s based on the optimistic assumption that “many companies participate and that these companies are given significant latitude to receive credit for emission reductions financed via the ETA.” The report also included a more modest scenario in which less corporate participation might mobilize between $4 billion to $8 billion through 2030.

Niamh McCarthy, director of climate-related risk at Climate Advisers and one of the report’s authors, told E&E News that the program might appeal to companies in “hard to abate sectors, companies with interim carbon neutrality targets, companies with voluntary net-zero commitments, and companies in compliance markets.”

That description stands to include a vast number of companies in the U.S. and abroad. As an example, more than a third of all publicly traded corporations globally, or 703 companies, have adopted net-zero targets.

The program proposed by Kerry might lure some of those companies to participate through its association with the State Department. That could give investors confidence that the credits wouldn’t be useless if the federal government ultimately moves to regulate voluntary carbon markets.

But that assumes that companies can make use of their offsets in the first place — if not to comply with regulations, at least as a means of demonstrating progress toward their voluntary climate goals.

That’s far from certain.

‘Very narrow and uncertain path’

While Kerry has talked up the credits as a way for companies to meet net-zero targets, policy experts who are designing the ETA expect participating companies to adhere to the STBI standard — which shuns the use of offsets to make up for continued emissions. The program’s architects have even questioned whether the ETA will be an “offsetting program” at all.

John Morton, who until last month was the top climate official at the Treasury Department, told E&E News that firms should get some form of credit in exchange for their investments. He expected it to attract buyers who are willing to pay a higher price because “it has the imprimatur” of the U.S. government.

“I think with all the missteps and kind of false starts, particularly recently, in the voluntary carbon market space, an effort like this that is beginning to have the participation of a broader set of market participants offers a greater sense of security and certainty for potential buyers,” he said.

Asked where they saw demand for ETA credits coming from, BEF and RF told E&ENews: “Companies are looking to invest in climate action — to meet Net Zero goals and be in line with the increased focus on [environment, social and governance]. They want to avoid being accused of greenwashing by investing in activities that don’t result in genuine climate results. An ETA that delivers on quality and that includes robust safeguards could attract a premium price.”

Voluntary carbon markets in general have had a wave of bad press recently after numerous studies and articles have been published scrutinizing their environmental performance.

Carbon crediting certification bodies have been playing defense after a spate of news stories reported they’ve routinely certified credits for projects with negligible climate value. Corporate investors have found themselves skewered in the press for buying “junk” credits to achieve their climate targets.

This legacy could stunt the sector’s future. Companies buy carbon credits to generate goodwill for their brand, and that could stop if they prove to be a reputational liability.

Some leading investors in climate action, like Stripe, are abandoning traditional carbon markets in favor of contracting with firms to support direct air capture of carbon.

Rachel Kyte, a former World Bank official who is now dean of Tuft University’s Fletcher School, said demand softened last year as businesses and their financial advisers eyed changes to the voluntary carbon markets and the rise of “anti-woke investing” sentiment emanating from Republican lawmakers.

“They’re picking their way along this very narrow and uncertain path,” Kyte said of would-be investors.

February 2, 2023 by

This story was updated at 7:45 a.m. EST.

The first meeting of the Natural Resources Committee featured a lot of gun talk, some light swearing and the triumphant return of a once-exiled Republican.

It’s going to be a long, interesting two years on the panel.

The committee — which oversees energy, public lands, mineral resources and other matters — ostensibly met Wednesday to adopt rules for the 118th Congress. But it instead erupted into a verbal shootout.

“This committee is one of the most partisan committees in Congress,” Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) said in response to Democrats’ talk of bipartisan intentions. “All last year, the year before, they didn’t give a damn about what we thought. All the big bills were on a unilateral basis. And you suddenly start preaching this bipartisan stuff.”

During the last Congress, Graves repeatedly accused Democrats of failing to focus on reducing energy prices by prioritizing environmental and conservation legislation instead of promoting more fossil fuel development.

He implored them to name five bipartisan measures. Democrats ticked off a few: a stalled conservation bill, the “Recovering America’s Wildlife Act” and some Native American bills. Graves laughed off their examples: “That’s like naming post offices, in some cases.”

The cutting tone had echoes of the last time the committee organized, in 2021, under Democratic control. That meeting was held over Zoom, and it famously featured then-first term Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) with a shelf stacked with guns noticeably behind her (E&E Daily, Feb. 19, 2021).

This time, they sparred over an amendment offered by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), which would prevent a member from taking a gun into the hearing room. Huffman wanted to revive a rule Democrats added during the last Congress.

“We have too many members who have incited and advocated armed political violence,” he said, invoking the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. “That is really unfortunate, but it is just a fact.”

Currently, U.S. law and Capitol Police rules allow members to have weapons only in their congressional offices, Huffman said. Lawmakers are allowed to transport weapons from outside Congress as long as they are concealed and wrapped.

But Huffman argued that members of the Natural Resources Committee “think that these rules do not apply to them.”

“They have vowed to take guns everywhere, and they have tried to bring guns into the House chamber and other places where they are prohibited,” he said.

Huffman led a letter Wednesday to House and Senate leaders about security during next week’s State of the Union address. Because lawmakers don’t have to go through metal detectors, he worries about members ignoring the law.

At one point, Boebert said she feels like she needs a gun “everywhere” in the Capitol complex. She helped lead a letter in 2021, days before the Capitol riot, supporting lawmakers carrying guns, citing threats and past incidents.

During Wednesday’s organizational meeting, Boebert displayed an easel of a blown-up photograph of Huffman with a tinfoil hat on his head. Huffman donned the tinfoil during a hearing last Congress to ridicule Boebert for her views on guns.

Boebert said, “The real question is, why did he choose to waste everyone’s time today bothering to file this amendment?”

Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) tried to maintain order and pleaded ignorance when pressed about whether a member could carry a concealed weapon into the hearing room.

The return of Gosar

Paul Gosar listening during a meeting. — Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) during a Natural Resources Committee meeting Wednesday. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

Westerman announced new subcommittee chairs, including Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.). The far-right lawmaker will once again lead Republicans on the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.

In 2021, Gosar shared a cartoon on social media that depicted him attacking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and President Joe Biden. Gosar was later censured and kicked off the committee by Democrats (E&E Daily, Nov. 18, 2021).

Ocasio-Cortez, who is new to the committee, will be ranking member of the Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee, to be chaired by Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.).

Other subcommittee chairs include Rep. Cliff Bentz (R-Ore.), who will chair the renamed Water, Wildlife and Fisheries Subcommittee; Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.), who will head the Federal Lands subpanel; and Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) who will chair the Indian and Insular Affairs Subcommittee (E&E Daily, Feb. 1).

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), ranking member of the committee, floated an amendment that would allow witnesses to testify remotely, reasoning that they could be of modest means or from rural areas. Westerman dismissed that as unnecessary and said he would make accommodations on a case-by-case basis. The amendment failed.

Another amendment from Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) would require witnesses to be available for questioning after their testimony. It passed.

Asked after the hearing if he was worried that partisanship would get in the way of committee business, Westerman shrugged: “You can’t control that, but we have issues that are very important to America,” he said. “And we’re going to lean in. I hope that our Democratic colleagues will come along.”

February 2, 2023 by

Capitol Hill’s permitting reform effort got new life Wednesday as two top Senate and House lawmakers held an initial summit on reviving the overhaul bid. This time, the House could take the lead.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) are discussing the path forward for the stalled permitting reform effort.

“They’re going to work on something,” Manchin said of the House. “I think it’s a high priority, which both sides know that we need it. Everyone has come to agreement that you got to have permitting. Let’s take the politics out of it, and do what’s doable.”

The talks are part of a broader Capitol Hill trend. Lawmakers from both parties are seeking to relaunch the permitting overhaul push after it ran into a blockade last year from conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats.

Lawmakers hope to build off permitting efforts from Manchin last year, which combined Republicans’ long-sought desire to streamline permitting approval with Democratic interest in unleashing more transmission and renewable energy infrastructure to combat climate change.

In exchange for supporting the reconciliation deal that enabled Democrats to pass $369 billion in climate spending last summer, Manchin secured a promise from Democratic leaders to attach his permitting proposal to a piece of must-pass legislation. The deal included completion of a major priority for Manchin, the Mountain Valley pipeline.

The effort failed multiple times last fall. Republicans were hesitant to back a Democratic deal on permitting that enabled the broader reconciliation package to pass.

They also complained that Manchin’s proposal did not go far enough to help streamline project approval timelines. At the same time, progressive Democrats attacked the proposal from the left, saying it would exacerbate climate change by approving more fossil fuel infrastructure.

This go-around, Manchin told reporters that he would defer at first to House negotiations.

“We’ve been down that road twice; we’ll see what they do,” Manchin said about the House talks. “They are going to do their thing.”

House Republicans, for their part, maintained that they have interest in finding a permitting compromise that can advance as they take control of the chamber this year.

Following the meeting, Westerman told reporters he saw “common ground between Sen. Manchin and myself.”

Stumbling block: NEPA

The new House GOP majority is currently gauging how best to proceed.

Republicans have made no secret that they plan to bring an energy package to the floor this spring, with permitting reform at its center.

Their current plan is to use, as a starting point, legislation introduced in previous sessions of Congress by Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), known as the “Builder Act,” which would achieve the main goals of speeding up permits for energy projects by making changes to the National Environmental Policy Act — the bedrock law many Democrats consider sacrosanct (E&E Daily, Jan. 24).

From there, Republicans could craft a bill that’s little more than a partisan wishlist and dare Democrats to oppose it. They could also choose to engage with more moderate Democrats who want to fashion themselves as bipartisan dealmakers on climate policy and remain committed to finding a compromise on permitting.

Westerman, whose committee will have jurisdiction over permitting reform legislation alongside the committees on Energy & Commerce and Transportation & Infrastructure, said he saw no point in trying to advance a permitting bill that wouldn’t have support from Democrats.

“If we want to get it on President [Joe] Biden’s desk, we’re going to have to have Democrats on board,” Westerman told E&E News earlier in the week. “Do I think we can pass something without Democrat support here in the House? Sure. But you can’t pass it out of the Senate without Democrat support.”

Westerman said he believed that Democrats have “skin in the game” to want to get a deal on permitting, if for no other reason than to speed up the “green infrastructure projects they approved all that money for” as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.

“There are going to be some reasonable Democrats who would want to get on board,” he added.

Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah), a member of both the Natural Resources and Energy & Commerce committees and the chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus, said he was having conversations with “a number of Democrats who are anxious to engage with me and have a good, productive dialogue” on the matter.

“We’re talking; it’s not clear what that’s going to actually mean yet,” said Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) of conversations he’s had with Republicans to find common ground on permitting reform.

Another Democrat making the rounds across the aisle is Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), who sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee and earlier this week devoted his speaking time at the panel’s first hearing to the issue.

In a recent interview with E&E News, Peters said there was “a lot of goodwill” between members of both parties “in trying to work together on permitting reform.”

But Peters and Curtis both said convincing Democrats to come on board would require them to convince the left flank that reopening NEPA wasn’t tantamount to scrapping all environmental protections and that certain adjustments to existing law were necessary to advance more clean energy transmission deployment.

“I think, on the conservative side, they’ve always wanted to reform processes to get to answers faster,” said Peters, “and I think, now, if you’re an environmentalist, you have to be concerned that we don’t have much time to build all these things we have to build … solar, utility-scale solar, public transportation — we have to build things a lot faster, and that’s going to require taking a look at permitting reform. If you’re a climate activist, you have to acknowledge it’s time to look at that.”

Curtis said Republicans had to specifically dispel the “automatic suspicion” among Democrats that “we want to undo NEPA.”

He explained, “We have to be very clear with them. … What we want with NEPA is not to take away the environmental protections; what we want is quicker answers and more certainty once those answers are given. And that should be comfortable for Democrats. But if they feel like we’re coming after environmental protections, they’re going to fight us.”

It’s going to be very hard to take Curtis and others at their word, said Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee who, as chair, in the previous Congress led the blockade against Manchin’s permitting reform proposal.

“What is an off-ramp? Grid, accessibility for renewables and alternatives — … to ignore that, which is the [Manchin] proposal, and only concentrate on locking up land for gas and oil at the expense of renewable alternatives, no access to the grid — if people are serious about ‘all of the above,’ you got to include this,” Grijalva said in an interview Wednesday.

Asked if he would accept any changes to NEPA as part of a deal, Grijalva replied simply, “No.”

‘This is not impossible’

Senators late last year came very close to striking a deal, said Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, pointing specifically to contributions from Manchin and Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.).

And although he said he “couldn’t assess the likelihood” of progress now until he sees “how the House is going to behave,” Schatz expressed optimism.

“Substantively, this is not impossible,” he said. He stressed the need for legislation to include provisions to accelerate transmission build-out — otherwise “there’s not much in it for the pro-climate side.”

Capito, ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said she has talked to “a lot” of Democrats about reviving permitting reform negotiations, including committee Chair Tom Carper (D-Del.).

“Permitting is not just the fossil fuel — not just for pipelines they don’t particularly like,” Capito said of Democrats. “You cannot site a wind farm, a solar farm, if you don’t have transmission.”

Late last year, Capito floated her own permitting bill, which included more aggressive mechanisms to try to speed up the process and limit litigation. She ultimately supported the Manchin plan (E&E Daily, Sept. 13, 2022).

“I do not believe the ship has sailed,” she said Wednesday. “I think there’s total appetite” to try again.

A Carper spokesperson said in an email that Carper “remains committed to working with Democrats and Republicans on permitting reforms that assist our ability to meet our nation’s clean energy goals while also safeguarding critical protections for our environment and the health of our communities.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a centrist dealmaker on Capitol Hill, told E&E News that many people are “starting to realize that the inordinately slow, onerous, cumbersome, burdening permitting process that we have effects not just fossil fuel projects — it affects the sitings of [renewables].”

Manchin’s bill raised the profile of the issue, she said.

The issue might only loom larger as the 2024 election approaches. Democrats are eager to promote their legislative wins, the Inflation Reduction Act and the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which allocated hundreds of billions of dollars for clean energy programs and projects.

But if renewable energy project proposals face delays because of permitting issues, that could be a political liability for Democrats, observers said.

“Democrats are going to have to answer for it,” Capito said. “But, they’re going to have to answer for everything.”