E2-Wire

National Security Adviser Tom Donilon said Wednesday that falling U.S. oil imports will not bring a corresponding reduction in the country’s diplomatic and security focus on the Middle East and elsewhere.

“Reduced energy imports do not mean the United States can or should disengage from the Middle East or the world,” he said in New York City, according to prepared remarks.

“Global energy markets are part of a deeply interdependent world economy. The United States continues to have an enduring interest in stable supplies of energy and the free flow of commerce everywhere,” Donilon said at Wednesday’s launch of Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy.

The acting chief of the EPA sparred with GOP senators Wednesday over the use of aerial surveillance to track pollution.

A bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers revived legislation Wednesday that aims to spur renewable energy investment through a federal tax code tweak.

Lawmakers unveiled the Master Limited Partnerships Parity Act — spearheaded in the Senate by Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), and in the House by Reps. Ted Poe (R-Texas) and Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) — during a Wednesday news conference.

The bill would extend master limited partnerships to renewable energy projects ranging from wind power to energy efficiency. Currently, only oil-and-gas projects can use the financing mechanism.

Canadian Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver slammed a prominent United States climate scientist Wednesday for comments made about oil sands and the Keystone XL pipeline.

Oliver said former NASA climate scientist James Hansen “should be ashamed” for saying that developing oil sands would be “game over for the climate.”

“That kind of exaggerated rhetoric, that kind of hyperbole, doesn’t do any good,” Oliver said during remarks at a Washington, D.C., event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The acting head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sought to reassure lawmakers Wednesday that the agency doesn’t plan to make a habit of vetoing previously issued permits for mining and other projects.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld, for now, the EPA’s 2011 decision to scuttle a big mountaintop removal coal mining project that had been awarded a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers several years earlier.

“That authority that is in the Clean Water Act under Section 404 since 1972 has been used less than 20 times in the history of the law,” said acting Administrator Bob Perciasepe of the retroactive veto power.

“It is not something that EPA takes very frivolously through all the different administrations that have used it,” he told a Senate Appropriations Committee sub-panel that oversees the EPA. “It is a very rarely used authority.”

Here’s a sampling of coverage of Fisker Automotive, the deeply distressed, federally backed plug-in hybrid maker that’s the subject of a Wednesday House hearing.

The Associated Press reports on documents revealing that “the Obama administration was warned as early as 2010 that electric car maker Fisker Automotive Inc. was not meeting milestones set up for a half-billion dollar government loan.”

That was nearly a year before officials froze payments on the loan to Fisker in 2011.

Scientific American looks at Fisker – which ultimately drew nearly $200 million in federal financing – and concludes that “plenty of people have seen this disaster coming for years.”

The New York Times compares Fisker to Solyndra, the solar panel manufacturer that collapsed after receiving a $535 million federal loan.

“Veering on the edge of bankruptcy, without a buyer in sight, Fisker has become — to lawmakers and others — the Solyndra of the electric car industry. Not only private backers but millions of dollars in government loans gave life to a company, some would argue, that was a shaky investment from the start,” the Times reports.

In non-Fisker news ...

House Republicans are livid that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is objecting to the State Department's plans to proceed with the Keystone XL oil pipeline, and accuse the regulatory agency of trying to shut down the project by saddling it with endless delays and analysis.

ON TAP WEDNESDAY: A House panel will cast a critical eye toward taxpayer support for Fisker Automotive, the troubled electric car maker that received $192 million in Energy Department loans before the department halted payments in 2011.

The company’s woes — it recently cut most staff and hired bankruptcy lawyers — are reviving GOP criticism of Energy Department loan and loan guarantee programs.

A panel of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing titled “Examining the Department of Energy’s Bad Bet on Fisker Automotive.”
Read more...

Solar power trade group Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) named its new vice president of federal affairs on Tuesday.

The State Department on Tuesday vehemently denied the United States was considering sanctions against Venezuela after the oil-rich country threatened to cut energy exports to the U.S.

Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America Roberta Jacobson told CNN's Spanish channel over the weekend she did not know either way if the Obama administration would consider sanctions if the country does not have a full recount of last week's disputed presidential election. Foreign Minister Elias Jaua responded with a promise to retaliate if that happens, prompting State Department Spokesman Patrick Ventrell's remarks on Tuesday.

“I think the Venezuelan side may have looked at that … and read into [it that] we're considering something,” Ventrell said at his daily press briefing. “I'm saying that that's not something that we're currently contemplating at this moment.”