The Week Ahead: Solyndra execs face Congress; House EPA attacks reach floor

What to watch for the week of Sept. 19:
 
The GOP’s probe of the failed solar company Solyndra will stay in high gear this week when executives appear before a House Energy and Commerce Committee panel.
 
The panel is probing the Energy Department’s $535 million loan guarantee for the company — and in particular, the White House’s involvement.
 
Solyndra went belly-up in late August and laid off 1,100 people. Republicans are alleging the White House rushed the 2009 financing for political purposes and are using Solyndra’s collapse to attack President Obama’s “green jobs” push.
 
Executives including CEO Brian Harrison are slated to appear before the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee on Friday.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Republicans are getting in on the act too — they have scheduled a Thursday hearing titled: “How Obama’s Green Energy Agenda is Killing Jobs.”
 
From the committee to the floor:
 
House Republicans are bringing legislation to the floor this week that would require new interagency analyses of the cumulative economic impact of various Environmental Protection Agency rules.

The bill would also delay new EPA rules to cut power plant emissions that blow across state lines and worsen ozone and particulate pollution, as well as upcoming mercury standards for power plants.
 
The House Rules Committee will meet Tuesday evening to set the ground rules for the floor debate. A final floor vote is expected Friday, according to a GOP leadership aide.
 
Other items to watch for during a busy week:
 
The Energy and Commerce Committee will begin marking up three bills Tuesday: a pair of measures to delay and soften EPA air toxics rules for industrial boilers and cement plants, and a pipeline safety bill.

The committee's Oversight and Investigations panel will hold a hearing Thursday on "EPA's Regulatory Planning, Analysis and Major Actions."

The House Natural Resources Committee will hold a Wednesday hearing on proposals to allow oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
 
Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) is urging the bipartisan deficit supercommittee to open ANWR and other areas for offshore drilling as a way to raise revenue to help cut the federal deficit.
 
The Natural Resources Committee will hold a Friday hearing on the new Interior Department-U.S. Coast Guard report on the BP oil spill. The report placed heavy blame on BP for the 2010 disaster but also faults its major contractors: Deepwater Horizon rig owner Transocean and Halliburton, which did the cement job on BP’s ill-fated Macondo well.

A House Foreign Affairs Committee panel meets Wednesday for a hearing about China’s dominance in the production of rare earth minerals — which are used in several clean-energy technologies — and the implications for the U.S.

On Thursday a House Ways and Means Committee panel will hold a hearing on energy tax policy.

The hearing will explore a bill backed by billionaire oil-and-gas magnate T. Boone Pickens that would provide billions of dollars in tax incentives for conversion to natural gas in the nation’s heavy trucking fleet.
 
Off Capitol Hill:
 
Later today, the federal Energy Information Administration will roll out its 2011 International Energy Outlook. The event will be held at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
 
Also Monday, and also at CSIS, will be a forum on controversial development of natural gas through hydraulic fracturing.
 
The event will focus on the recent report by a panel of outside Energy Department advisers chaired by John Deutch, the MIT professor who was a top Energy Department official in the Carter administration and CIA director in the Clinton administration. He is slated to appear at the event.
 
On Tuesday, federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement Director Michael Bromwich will appear at a press briefing hosted by the energy news service Platts.
 
This week also brings the big RETECH 2011 conference on renewable energy, held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.