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MCCARTHY TALKS CLIMATE: House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is promising his party will offer a proactive agenda to combat climate change to counter Democrats ahead of the 2020 election.
McCarthy says House Republicans are planning to introduce a series of bills addressing climate change that follow conservative, free-market principles, while rejecting Democratic proposals such as the Green New Deal.
“Let’s have that debate instead of everybody saying we’re just deniers,” McCarthy told our political reporter David Drucker in an interview during an appearance at the Sea Island Summit, a political conference hosted by the Washington Examiner.
McCarthy is worried about young voters: McCarthy, a close ally to President Trump, represents a conservative, rural district in California, among the most aggressive states in fighting climate change.
Once considered one of the GOP’s original “young guns,” McCarthy issued a stark warning for his party. He said younger voters are worried about climate change and cautioned that Republicans were risking their viability in elections over the long term by ignoring the issue. McCarthy warned that the GOP risks permanently losing voters in their late 20s, the largest cohort in the U.S.
“We need to have an open discussion about, what should the party look like 20 years from now, and we should be a little nervous,” McCarthy said. “We have to do something different than we’ve done.”
A few conservative groups that favor major legislation to address climate change have provided McCarthy’s staff with polling showing Republicans risk losing young voters if they don’t address climate change, sources tell Josh.
“Young voters believe the climate is changing, and they want their elected leaders to acknowledge the issue,” Alex Flint, executive director of the Alliance for Market Solutions, told Josh. “Any politicians who wavers on the science is perceived as dodging the issue — of being dishonest, and that breaks their relationship of trust with young voters.”
Reading the tea leaves on legislation: McCarthy said he’s working with fellow House Republican Bruce Westerman of Arkansas on a bill focused on combating wildfires.
He didn’t offer other details on legislation. But he has tasked Republicans on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Select Climate Crisis Committee to come up with a GOP response to climate change. Congressional Republicans generally have focused their messaging on promoting private sector innovation, investing in R&D on emissions-reducing technologies such as carbon capture, and advanced nuclear energy. There are a number of bipartisan bills addressing those issues pending in both chambers of Congress.
“We are certainly encouraged by Leader McCarthy focusing on policy to affordably meet growing global demand for reliable and lower-carbon power, and to address climate change by developing a new generation of miracle technologies,” Rich Powell, executive director of ClearPath Action, a conservative clean energy group, told Josh.
However, McCarthy and Republicans are unlikely to back more comprehensive action like carbon pricing, leading to criticisms from Democrats that the GOP is looking to cover itself without doing anything significant.
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CALIFORNIA BURNS IN THE DARK: The Golden State’s fire season is in full swing.
Governor Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency. Nearly 200,000 people have had to evacuate Sonoma County amid blazes. More than 2 million Californians went without power as the state’s largest investor-owned utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, shut off power for the second time amid high winds and risk of more fires. The utility is already weighing whether a third shutdown in as many as 32 counties will be necessary.
The fires have observers asking whether this is a new normal, as the intensity of the fires’ impacts are compounded by the planned blackouts imposed by the utilities.
“The hots are getting hotter. The dries are getting dryer. The wets are getting wetter, and the winds are becoming more and more a factor,” Newsom said in a press conference Saturday. “Climate change is wreaking havoc.”
But Newsom also placed blame squarely on PG&E. California has “inherited the mismanagement” of the state’s investor-owned utilities, he said.
On Friday, Newsom announced he would direct $75 million toward the places in the state facing increasing exposure to planned blackouts by PG&E and other utilities. Those funds, he said, would support county and state agencies working to protect public safety and restore power.
DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CONTENDERS ADD FUEL TO THE FIRES: Democratic presidential candidates offered their own spin on the California wildfires.
Bernie Sanders pushed his plan to massively expand the federal government’s role in electricity generation.
“Climate change is real, and when I am president, we are going to treat this like the existential crisis it is,” Sanders tweeted in response to the fires. “It is time to begin thinking about public ownership of major utilities.”
Sanders as part of his climate change plan has proposed to expand the use of federally owned utilities, like the Tennessee Valley Authority, to build out new wind, solar, energy storage, and geothermal power plants.
Andrew Yang focused on forest management, highlighting the importance of removing overgrowth, dead trees, and other ignitable material like brush off the forest floor.
“The California wildfires – and blackouts – are killing people and causing billions of dollars of economic harm as our forests have become tinderboxes due to climate change,” Yang tweeted. “We need a new approach to forest management that includes large-scale federal resources and intervention.”
Elizabeth Warren suggested that powerful winds and dry air fueled by climate change are making wildfires worse.
“Climate change is driving devastating wildfires across California—and these fires will only grow more dangerous and destructive until we act to stop the climate crisis,” Warren tweeted.
CAPTURING CARBON’S POTENTIAL: More projects are being added to the carbon capture pipeline as the technology picks up steam and some policy support.
The Global CCS Institute added 10 new projects to its database of global carbon capture and storage projects, including several in the U.S.
The U.S. projects range from carbon capture retrofits like Project Tundra in North Dakota to the Wabash Valley Resources project that pairs saline storage with capture from an ammonia plant, to the world’s largest direct air capture plant being constructed by Occidental Petroleum and Carbon Engineering in the Permian.
“We’re excited to expand our existing carbon capture project plans,” Richard Jackson, president of Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, an arm of Occidental, said in a statement. He added the projects, including the direct air capture plant, “will open a pathway to producing fully carbon-neutral or even net-negative fuels.”
But the project pipeline could be flowing even more: Many of the new U.S. projects are still waiting to break ground because they’re waiting on critical tax credit guidance from the Internal Revenue Service.
Congress passed bipartisan tax incentives for carbon capture in February 2018, legislation that carbon capture advocates say could be a huge boon to projects. But nearly two years later, the IRS has yet to issue guidance outlining how it will implement the tax incentives, known as the 45Q credit.
The agency put out a request for comments earlier this year, but hasn’t yet released a proposal.
The delay is keeping investors on the sidelines for now, hesitant to commit dollars to capital-intensive carbon capture projects before they know the rules of the road for how to take advantage of the tax credits.
“This is just the beginning,” Brad Crabtree, vice president of carbon management at the Great Plains Institute and director of the Carbon Capture Coalition, said in a statement. “We will see even more projects emerge as soon as the U.S. Treasury comes out with its long-delayed guidance on the 45Q credit.”
But not everyone is pumped about carbon capture: Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, released a study Friday that he says suggests carbon capture isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. He said his research proves more money should be spent transitioning to 100% renewable, rather than investing in carbon capture.
Jacobson is well-known in energy circles for igniting controversy in 2017 with a study touting the feasibility of transitioning fully to wind, solar, and hydropower by mid-century. His research drew criticism from many other experts as not realistic.
The Hulk weighs in: Some environmentalists, though, were quick to jump on Jacobson’s study. “Carbon capture is not the answer to keep burning fossil fuels,” actor Mark Ruffalo tweeted Sunday. “Time to transition to non-carbon energy sources.”
REPUBLICANS MOVING FULL SPEED AHEAD ON FERC NOMINEE: Republicans leading the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee are proceeding with a hearing for Trump’s FERC nominee James Danly.
The committee has scheduled Danly’s hearing for Nov. 5, despite criticism from Senate Democrats who have accused Trump of politicizing FERC for nominating a Republican commissioner without also putting forth a Democrat, leaving open the seat vacated by Cheryl LaFleur.
Committee chairman Lisa Murkowski argues that she does not control who the White House nominates, and she is eager to fill a Republican seat that has been open for more than nine months after the death of FERC Chairman Kevin McIntyre.
CLAIM: SHUTDOWN OF NUCLEAR AFTER FUKUSHIMA CAUSED MORE DEATHS THAN THE ACCIDENT ITSELF: A noteworthy new paper concludes that more people died because of the shutdown of nuclear in Japan following the Fukushima accident than died during the disaster itself.
The authors, three economists, reckon that electricity prices rose as much as 38% in some places after nuclear was shut down, making it unaffordable to some and leading to the deaths of vulnerable people in extreme weather. They figure that at least 1,280 people died from 2011 to 2014 because of the higher electricity prices, more than the 1,232 thought to have died as a result of the evacuation from the Fukushima disaster site (no deaths have been attributed directly to radiation exposure).
Note, though, that paper, distributed by the National Bureau of Economic research Monday, has not yet gone through peer review.
The Rundown
New York Times Secret deal helped housing industry stop tougher rules on climate change
Bloomberg New York doesn’t need a smoking gun to win the Exxon climate trial
Axios Troubles lurk for America’s emerging offshore wind boom
Wall Street Journal PG&E power lines remain risky to California, even during blackouts
New York Times New Mexico’s ‘little Texas’ booms, igniting battles over oil windfall
Calendar
TUESDAY | OCTOBER 29
10 a.m. 2154 Rayburn. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform holds a hearing entitled, “Trump’s Wrong Turn on Clean Cars: The Effects of Fuel Efficiency Rollbacks on the Climate, Car Companies and California.”
10:30 a.m. 2123 Rayburn. The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee holds a hearing entitled, “Protecting the RFS: The Trump Administration’s Abuse of Secret Waivers.”
2:30 p.m. Senate Visitors Center, Room 200/201. Senate Democrats Special Committee on the Climate Crisis holds a hearing entitled, “Dark Money and Barriers to Climate Action.”
WEDNESDAY | OCTOBER 30
10:00 a.m. 406 Dirksen. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee holds a hearing on the nomination of Sean O’Donnell to be Inspector General of the Environmental Protection Agency.
10:30 a.m. 2322 Rayburn. The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Energy Subcommittee holds a hearing entitled, “Building a 100 Percent Clean Economy: Solutions for the U.S. Power Sector.”
THURSDAY | OCTOBER 31
10:00 a.m. 1225 Eye Street NW. The Bipartisan Policy Center hosts an event entitled “Scaling Carbon Removal: From Public Innovation to Commercial Opportunity.” Former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz delivers a keynote address.
