Daily on Energy: A SCOTUS win for MVP, Biden talks extreme heat, and oil and gas complain about methane summit snub
by Breanne Deppisch, Energy and Environment Reporter & Nancy Vu, Energy and Environment Reporter | July 27, 2023 01:21 PM
Daily on Energy: A SCOTUS win for MVP, Biden talks extreme heat, and oil and gas complain about methane summit snub
by Breanne Deppisch, Energy and Environment Reporter & Nancy Vu, Energy and Environment Reporter |
July 27, 2023 01:21 PM
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BREAKING THIS MORNING: The Supreme Court vacated judicial stays on the Mountain Valley Pipeline, siding with the developers of the 303-mile natural gas pipeline and allowing construction to proceed.
The order vacates two stays of construction handed down earlier this month by the Fourth Circuit Court.
Remember, pipeline developers filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court this month, arguing that the stays violated the text of the debt ceiling bill signed by President Joe Biden in June, which shielded the project from further legal challenges by ordering the approval of all remaining permits and limiting judicial review of those permits to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The decision is a victory for Sen. Joe Manchin, who has long pushed for approval of MVP during its five years of court delays and filed an amicus brief on behalf of its developers earlier this month. He praised the SCOTUS order on Twitter this morning, writing that he was “relieved” by the court’s decision.
Not so happy, of course, are environmental groups: They’ve long opposed the pipeline, and challenged the debt ceiling provision as an unconstitutional violation of congressional authority.
Congress “cannot pick winners and losers in pending litigation by compelling finds or results,” the Wilderness Society and other environmental groups argued in their own Supreme Court filing.
What’s next: MVP’s lead developer Equitrans said earlier this month that MVP is roughly 90% complete, and could be completed within the year if the stays were lifted. Once fully operational, it is expected to have a capacity of 2 billion cubic feet per day.
The order was handed down as oral arguments over the pipeline were underway at the Fourth Circuit Court in Richmond. It allows construction to proceed as court cases play out.
Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers Breanne Deppisch (@NancyVu99) and Nancy Vu (@b@NancyVu99. Email bdeppisch@washingtonexaminer.com or nancy.vu@washingtonexaminer.com for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.
BIDEN SPITS HEAT: Biden announced new actions that his administration would take to address extreme heat across the nation, which include issuing a heat hazard alert and granting more funds to help build cities and towns plant more trees to help bring down temperatures.
In a press conference with members of his administration and local mayors, the president announced that the Labor Secretary Julie Su would issue the new alert, aiming to clarify that workers have “federal heat related protections” when working in extreme temperatures.
“The acting secretary of labor will work with her team to intensify enforcement [of] increasing inspections in high risk industries, like construction and agriculture,” Biden said. The president also threatened to call out states that don’t adhere to the provisions – what one can assume is a subtle jab at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who approved a law undoing local ordinances mandating water breaks for workers.
The president mentioned that the U.S. Forest Service will award more than $1 billion in grants to help cities and towns plant trees, in an attempt to repel the heat and expand access to green spaces.
Other agency actions: The Department of Housing and Urban Development is expected to grant billions to make buildings more energy efficient and heat resistant, along with opening cooling centers, Biden said. The president also mentioned the Department of Interior is using infrastructure funding to expand water storage capacity in the Western states. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is also launching a new partnership with universities and impacted communities to improve the accuracy of the nation’s weather forecast.
YELLEN APPOINTS CLIMATE COUNSELOR: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said today that she is appointing Ethan Zindler, of BloombergNEF, to be the agency’s first climate counselor.
He will be tasked with “efforts to facilitate and unlock the financing needed for investments to achieve a net-zero economy at home and abroad,” Treasury said. Zindler, who has degrees from Georgetown and Columbia, has written extensively on climate finance and participated in Energy Twitter.
A PEEK INTO INTERIOR AND ENVIRONMENT APPROPS BILL: The Senate Appropriations Committee dropped their bill summary for the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies subcommittee, with a topline of approximately $42.7 billion in total funding.
The Appropriations Committee marked up the measure and voted unanimously to pass the bill, which includes millions invested towards environmental justice, billions in infrastructure and wildlife suppression and preparedness.
Here are a couple of highlights of the unamended bill:
$100 million for environmental justice,
$2.76 billion for aging water infrastructure
$5.6 billion for wildlife suppression and preparedness
$11.2 billion for Tribal programs across the Department of Interior and the Indian Health Service for fiscal year 2024 – an increase of $325 million over fiscal year 2023.
$9.9 billion in grants and funding for the Environment Protection Agency
$15.6 billion in total for the Department of Interior, which includes $1.5 billion for the Bureau of Land Management, $1.8 billion for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and $3.5 billion for the National Park Service
$6 billion for the Forest Service
$900 million for federal land acquisition and financial assistance to states through the Land and Water Conservation Fund
ON THE HILL: It’s a busy day for committees as Congress prepares to head out for August recess. Here’s a rundown:
A subcommittee on the Senate Environment and Public Works met to examine solutions for single-use waste, focusing on expanding refill and reuse infrastructure. Watch that here.
The Energy and Mineral Resources subcommittee on the House Natural Resources Committee had a hearing this morning, calling out the Department of Interior for being overdue in issuing a five-year program for offshore and natural gas leasing, and criticized the Biden administration for not conducting any new lease sales. Watch the hearing here.
Upcoming: The Oversight subcommittee on the House Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing today at 2 p.m. analyzing the “mismanagement” of America’s National Park System, and how it may harm rural and gateway communities. House Republicans are expected to argue that NPS “failed to reduce their deferred maintenance (DM) backlog and develop a strategy to prevent increasing the DM backlog in the future," along with being unable to mitigate overcrowding in national parks. Read the memo from House Republicans here, and watch the upcoming hearing here.
LEFT OUT OF THE LOOP: The White House held its first ever methane summit Wednesday, hosting leaders from the local to federal levels to discuss the need to reduce methane emissions. But some key players were left out of the conversation.
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Independent Petroleum Association of America President and CEO Jeffrey Eshelman blasted the White House for not inviting members of his group to the summit.
“The U.S. oil and natural gas industry is responsible for, and committed to, achieving methane emissions reductions, yet is absent from the invitee list for the White House's methane summit. Our members are committed to improving environmental performance. American producers are taking the right steps to produce energy cleanly and responsibly. We’re the envy of the world in reducing emissions and we have the cleanest air in more than two decades because of natural gas,” he said.
A spokesperson for the White House did not immediately respond to the comments.
The summit, according to a press statement, focused on the use of emissions-detecting technology, mitigating methane emission leaks and responding to super-emitting events, and leading international efforts to mitigate methane emissions. The White House also announced the creation of a cabinet-level Methane Task Force, focused on implementing key portions of the Inflation Reduction Act to reduce emissions from the petroleum and natural gas sector.
Biden himself did not attend the summit, said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre during a daily briefing on Wednesday.
CANADIAN WILDFIRE EMISSIONS DOUBLE ALL OTHERS: The carbon emissions from the wildfires in Canada are more than double those from all other sources in the country combined, according to preliminary data from Natural Resources Canada, the government body tasked with measuring such emissions.
Historically, Canada’s forests have been carbon sinks, but that has changed.
“Now, fires have been getting more frequent, with larger areas burned, and more intensifiers," Werner Kurz, a senior research scientist with Natural Resources Canada, told Breanne. "And if you combine all that, you get the observed increases in emissions that we are reporting. And, of course, the forecasts are for a continuation of a worsening of the situation for years to come."
Read more about the emissions from the wildfires in Breanne’s piece here.
TESLA CREATED SPECIAL TEAM TO DEFLECT DRIVING RANGE COMPLAINTS: Tesla created a special team in Las Vegas to cancel service appointments with owners complaining that their cars were not achieving ranges advertised by the company and displayed on the dashboard range at the outset of trips, according to a Reuters investigation.
The team members would hit a metal xylophone to celebrate cancellations of service appointments, unnamed sources told the news service. The investigation found that Tesla was inundated with service requests related to range because it overhyped the ranges its vehicles could achieve.
CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY TAKES CREDIT FOR ENDANGERED PROTECTIONS FOR THREE BUTTERFLIES: The environmental group took a victory lap yesterday for the Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposal to protect three Brazilian butterfly species under the Endangered Species Act. The swallowtail butterflies had been on the agency’s candidate waitlist for three decades, according to the group.