| | | | |  | | By Matthew Choi | Presented by Equinor | With help from Alex Guillén and Catherine Morehouse. Programming announcement: Starting June 27, Morning Energy will be exclusively available to POLITICO Pro subscribers. Subscription benefits include access to the must-read daily Morning Energy newsletter and POLITICO Pro's exclusive suite of nonpartisan news, real-time intelligence, in-depth analysis, bill tracking and research tools. Please visit our website to continue receiving Morning Energy and to learn more about a POLITICO Pro subscription . Additionally, on June 27 POLITICO will launch Power Switch, a new energy- and climate-focused consumer newsletter. This will be a high-level newsletter focused on the larger conversation around the politics and policy of the energy transition.
| | | — Climate negotiators are buzzing over a new strategy to help developing countries quit coal. But failures to live up to previous climate finance promises are creating skepticism. — A White House meeting to calm tensions in the solar industry left U.S. manufacturers cold — and complaining the administration lacked a solid plan to boost panel production. — U.S. financial institutions will have several more months to process Russian energy transactions. HAPPY WEDNESDAY! I'm your host, Matthew Choi. Joseph Stanko of Hunton Andrews Kurth gets the trivia for knowing it takes six twists to take off a standard champagne muselet. For today: Which of the traditional six Celtic nations is on the European mainland? Send your tips and trivia answers to mchoi@politico.com. Find me on Twitter @matthewchoi2018. Check out the POLITICO Energy podcast — all the energy and environmental politics and policy news you need to start your day, in just five minutes. Listen and subscribe for free at politico.com/energy-podcast. On today's episode: The rich country strategy to pay nations to ditch coal?
| | | | A message from Equinor: Can a wind turbine generate more than electricity? We believe it can. At Equinor, we're working to power 2,000,000 New York homes with homegrown, renewable energy while boosting the economy, generating jobs, and launching tomorrow's clean energy infrastructure. Equinor is a broad energy company, committed to become net-zero by 2050. We're advancing the Empire Wind and Beacon Wind offshore wind projects and quickly becoming a leader in this growing industry. | | | | | | | THE NEW PLAN TO DITCH COAL: Developing nations seeking to move away from coal and natural gas are eyeing a new type of financing vehicle from wealthy countries: Just Energy Transition Partnerships, which would work outside the existing United Nations' climate funding mechanisms, POLITICO's Zack Colman and Karl Mathiesen report. The idea is causing a stir in the lead up to the global COP27 climate conference in Egypt, which is aiming to focus the November gathering around financing for developing countries. The projects could be modeled off of an $8.5 billion commitment from the U.S. and several European partners unveiled last year to help South Africa quit coal. But it has its skeptics. Rich countries famously failed to meet a 2020 deadline to provide $100 billion for climate resiliency and clean energy in developing countries, and the details around South African package remain vague. Some of the least developed countries also fear that funding would favor middle-sized economies with existing infrastructure foundations, leaving out the poorest countries that need a boost to get their clean energy goals started. There's also the question of whether U.S. finance commitments can make it past Congress — particularly if Republicans take control next year. Read more from Zack and Karl. SPICY SOLAR CALL: The White House convened key actors in the intra-solar industry fracas on a call Tuesday, and domestic manufacturers left unsatisfied with what they heard about the plan to use the Defense Production Act to stimulate U.S. solar equipment production, POLITICO's Kelsey Tamborrino reports. "What quickly became crystal clear is that the president's team lacks a comprehensive strategy or actual plan to support U.S. manufacturers," said Mamun Rashid, the CEO of Auxin Solar, the company at the center of Commerce Department's contentious tariff probe into solar imports from Southeast Asia. While the meeting itself didn't go into the tariff investigation, some participants felt the administration's solutions for ramping up domestic manufacturing were thin, since they largely rely on money from Congress. The meeting was led by Deputy White House National Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi and included officials from the Council on Environmental Quality, National Economic Council and the Energy Department, as well as representatives from SEIA, the American Clean Power Association, Nextracker, AES and Chinese company Jinko Solar. The White House contended the meeting reflected the administration's commitment to expand domestic manufacturing for clean energy technology and that it was focused on "the historic opportunity to ensure that new clean energy solutions are American made, while lowering energy costs for American families." Read more from Kelsey.
| | | IN COMMITTEE: Here's what's going down in committee today. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has a legislative hearing on four coastal resilience and conservation bills. In the Senate Agriculture Committee, lawmakers dive into climate research and its role in protecting the country's agriculture sector. Across the Rotunda, the House Natural Resources Committee votes on a host of bills ranging from developing biking trails to lighting up the Gateway Arch in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. BARRASSO'S MAJORITY PLANS: Senate Energy ranking member John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) offered a preview into his energy priorities if Republicans retake the Senate in the midterms, including to get "American energy production up, costs of energy down, infrastructure in place — and work in a bipartisan way to get there," he said Tuesday. Speaking at an event hosted by Punchbowl News, Barrasso also expressed frustration with DOE on a lack of progress in ramping up U.S. uranium production for nuclear plants — an issue that's gotten increased bipartisan attention as the country looks reduce its dependence on Russian supplies.. He also expressed angst over Biden's planned visit to Saudi Arabia next month, saying it all could have been avoided if the U.S. had invested more in domestic production. "We have different human rights and values at a time when we need the energy that they have — but we put ourselves in that situation, in a sense, by preventing us from ... getting permits and getting the exploration going," Barrasso said. MONEY FLOW: Last year's bipartisan infrastructure package included historic funding for shoring up the nation's water infrastructure — but a lot of those authorizations were never actually appropriated. Now several environmental and water infrastructure interest groups are writing to House and Senate appropriators to ensure sufficient money flows to the programs, with $1.093 billion in water program authorizations not appropriated for FY 2023. Raising appropriations for those issues will require committee leaders to give the Interior and Environment Subcommittee significantly more money to play with relative to FY 2022. While Biden's budget request for FY 2023 included full funding for most programs, it kept its funding request for the clean water and drinking water state revolving funds flat relative to FY 2022. That's despite the infrastructure package authorizing an increase of more than $2.7 billion for the programs combined for FY 2023. Signatories include the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and American Council of Engineering Companies. Read the letter here. BIPARTISAN FOR WILDLIFE: The House passed the Recovering America's Wildlife Act on Tuesday night, with 16 Republicans joining 215 Democrats in support. The bill, which also enjoys bipartisan support in the Senate and the backing of the Biden administration, provides almost $1.4 billion annually for state, tribal and territorial conservation programs. ICYMI: From POLITICO's Josh Siegel: Sen. Ron Wyden, chairman of the Finance Committee, is planning to introduce a bill in the coming weeks that would apply a 21 percent tax on what it deems as excess profits of oil and gas companies that have more than $1 billion in annual revenue. And: The Senate Energy Committee unanimously voted to advance the nominations of David Applegate to be director of the United States Geological Survey, Carmen Cantor to be an assistant secretary for insular and international affairs at Interior and Evelyn Wang for director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy at DOE. More from POLITICO's Kelsey Tamborrino.
| | | | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president's ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | | | | AN EXTRA SANCTIONS BUFFER: U.S. financial institutions will be able to continue processing Russian energy transactions until Dec. 5 when Europe's ban on oil imports is set to take effect, the Treasury Department told The Wall Street Journal. U.S. financial institutions originally faced a June 24 deadline, but the administration pushed that back to "provide for an orderly transition to help our broad coalition of partners reduce their dependence on Russian energy as we work to restrict the Kremlin's revenue sources," a Treasury spokesperson told the Journal. AMOS HASTE: The State Department changed course and agreed to expedite Friends of the Earth's FOIA request for records on special energy envoy Amos Hochstein. The environmental group requested documents regarding Hochstein's ties to the natural gas industry, raising alarm over his past work for LNG giant Cheniere Energy. When the State Department initially refused its expedited FOIA request, FOE sued the department, accusing it of withholding records without justification. Read the department's notice to FOE here. A FOURTH SALE: The Energy Department announced a fourth notice of sale for 45 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve on Tuesday under its plan to release 1 million barrels every day for six months to bring down high fuel prices. DOE said it had awarded about 40 million barrels for release this month through July, with Valero Energy, Marathon Petroleum, Exxon Mobil and Motiva Enterprises getting the lion's share. Gasoline prices have so far seen debatable impact, and continue to rise steadily, with the national average gasoline price hitting $5.016 per gallon Tuesday. Deliveries from the sale announced Tuesday will take place from Aug. 16 to Sept. 20. MORE LEASES, MORE PROBLEMS: Republicans are calling on the Biden administration to expand federal oil and gas leasing to bring more supply to market. But environmental groups retort that a lot of the remaining land for lease sales doesn't have much potential for oil and gas development. The National Wildlife Federation, Trout Unlimited and Rocky Mountain Wild released a storymap Tuesday showing the wildlife at risk from federal oil and gas leases on lands with low production potential, including diversion of resources for conservation and recreation. More than half of leases sold since 2012 are on lands with little to no oil and gas potential, the groups write, citing a2021 GAO report that "the most attractive federal lands were already leased and that the remaining federal lands had lower development potential." MAIL CALL: A petition organized by environmental groups and delivered to the White House Tuesday calls on Biden to nominate someone to run the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement to ensure the $11 billion funneled into the Abandoned Mine Land Fund under last year's bipartisan infrastructure law "is used efficiently and effectively." Also, several environmental groups have asked the Biden administration to probe Toyota's U.S. operations following a March diesel emissions cheating scandal in Japan that struck Hino, the company's truck-manufacturing subsidiary. The groups asked for a probe into whether any of those trucks were sold in the U.S. or whether Toyota acted similarly regarding U.S. vehicles. Toyota did not return a request for comment.
| | | | DON'T MISS DIGITAL FUTURE DAILY - OUR TECHNOLOGY NEWSLETTER, RE-IMAGINED: Technology is always evolving, and our new tech-obsessed newsletter is too! Digital Future Daily unlocks the most important stories determining the future of technology, from Washington to Silicon Valley and innovation power centers around the world. Readers get an in-depth look at how the next wave of tech will reshape civic and political life, including activism, fundraising, lobbying and legislating. Go inside the minds of the biggest tech players, policymakers and regulators to learn how their decisions affect our lives. Don't miss out, subscribe today. | | | | | | | | WET FIRST MONDAY: The Supreme Court will open its fall term on Oct. 3 with Sackett v. EPA, the high-profile case challenging how courts have interpreted the Clean Water Act's jurisdictional test, according to the court calendar published on Tuesday . That will make Sackett the very first case to be heard by Ketanji Brown Jackson.
| | | 90 DAYS: The Freeport LNG export facility is now predicting another 90 days or so until partial operations can resume — a considerable increase from the three-week range timeframe floated last week. The assessment led to a precipitous drop in domestic gas prices with far less supply capable of leaving the country. That's good news for U.S. buyers but a setback for Europeans hoping to stock up before the winter heating season, POLITICO's Ben Lefebvre reports. "An absence of that supply over the next 90 days is obviously a problem for Europe — we already see EU gas prices rising further," Pavel Molchanov, managing director for renewable energy and clean technology research at Raymond James, told Ben. "But the silver lining is that this is summertime, so demand is less urgent. The impact would have been much worse if this had happened six months ago." CLEARING SOLAR TRANSMISSION: Solar and storage technology are rapidly coming onto the grid, but utilities are still stuck with policies based on fossil generation leading to interconnection logjams, the Solar Energy Industries Association asserts in a new policy paper today. The industry group calls for utilities to update their policies with a greater eye toward renewable energy and for regulators to increase transparency and accountability requirements for utilities. "Interconnection procedures designed for the by-gone thermal generation era are not aligned with today's advanced technologies, and interconnection delays now constitute a major threat toward meeting state and national clean energy goals," the paper says. Read it here.
| | | — "Fracking Pioneer Harold Hamm Moves to Take Continental Resources Private," via The Wall Street Journal. — "Wind and solar power are 'bailing out' Texas amid record heat and energy demand," via CNN. — " OPEC sees global oil demand growth slowing in 2023," via Reuters. — "CSB Chair Resigns Days After Biden Names Latest Board Nominee," via Inside EPA. — "Florida Power & Light Co.'s parent company to eliminate carbon emissions by 2045," via POLITICO. — "How Ukraine wants to make Russia pay for war's environmental damage," via POLITICO. THAT'S ALL FOR ME!
| | | | A message from Equinor: The energy transition is the defining challenge opportunity of our time. Our world needs energy to keep moving forward — but it must be affordable, reliable, and accessible. We all have a role to play. At Equinor, we're doing our part by helping accelerate the energy transition . We're growing our renewable energy portfolio and lowering emissions from production. We're already on the way to powering 2,000,000 New York homes with energy from the Empire Wind and Beacon Wind offshore wind projects. We're creating jobs, building tomorrow's infrastructure, and sparking new economic activity. But for us, that's only the beginning. By the time the global population reaches 9 billion in 2050, our goal is to have net-zero emissions. Discover more about Equinor at www.equinor.com/USA. | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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