Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) — who oversees the Appropriations panel’s subcommittee overseeing Interior Department and Environmental Protection Agency spending — said debate on the appropriations bill in the committee is indefinitely postponed, in part over concerns about efforts to delay EPA climate regulations.
“It’s off the calendar,” Feinstein told reporters Thursday. “A decision will have to be made about whether it goes back on or not.”
Asked whether the spending bill would be put back on the calendar before the November election, Feinstein said, “I can’t answer that right now,” adding that it “may have to go on an omnibus” spending measure.
On tap Thursday: New poll to show consumers want efficient cars
The Mellman Group, a major Democratic polling firm, will unveil a green group-backed survey of voters’ views on auto efficiency and pollution.
The poll was commissioned by four groups – the Union of Concerned Scientists, NRDC, the Sierra Club and Environment America – that are pushing for a big jump in federal mileage standards.
Voters want 60 mpg – and they’ll pay for it
Here’s a preview of the results: 74 percent of likely voters favor having “the federal government require the auto industry to increase average fuel efficiency…to 60 miles per gallon by the year 2025,” according to a sneak peak provided to The Hill.
“Sixty-six percent of respondents still supported the idea even if it added $3,000 to the price of a new car. Support for the policy increased to 83 percent when respondents were asked to consider if an additional $3,000 cost was recouped in four years through savings at the pump,” according to a summary.
The poll comes as the Transportation Department and EPA have begun work on a joint rulemaking to set combined mileage and carbon emissions standards for model years 2017 and beyond.
On tap Thursday II: X marks the spot for Pelosi
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will speak Thursday at the Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE Awards Ceremony in Washington, D.C.
The X PRIZE is an Energy Department-backed program that will award $10 million total to as many as three teams racing to create a super-duper efficient car. The vehicles must get the equivalent of 100 miles per gallon and “survive grueling real-world safety, efficiency, emissions, durability and range tests,” according to the big auto insurer’s website about its program.
On tap Thursday III: House to vote on rural energy efficiency bill
Sweeping energy bills aren’t moving on Capitol Hill. But some small measures are. The House will consider the Rural Energy Savings Program Act Thursday.
It allows the Agriculture Department to make loans to rural public and cooperative power companies, which in turn would offer low-interest loans to customers to support energy efficiency measures. Pipeline accidents fuel legislative push
It has been a bad few weeks for pipeline safety.
An Enbridge, Inc. oil pipeline ruptured in Michigan in July, spilling roughly 1 million gallons, and oil reached the Kalamazoo River. And last week a natural gas pipeline blast in San Bruno, California killed at least four people and destroyed several dozen homes.
The Transportation Department on Wednesday rolled out proposed legislation to beef up safety enforcement and penalties.
“The nation’s pipelines, our energy highways, are by far the safest way to quickly transport large volumes of fuels and other hazardous liquids over long distances,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement. “However, as the recent oil pipeline failures near Marshall, Mich., and Romeoville, Ill., have shown, as well as the tragic gas pipeline explosion in Northern California, the Department needs stronger authority to ensure the continued safety and reliability of our nation’s pipeline network.”
The bill would increase the max civil penalty from $1 million to $2.5 million for the most serious violations and authorize another 40 inspection and enforcement personnel over four years, and close some regulatory “gaps,” according to the department. Feinstein, Boxer, Oberstar vow pipeline safety action
California Senators Dianne Feinstein (D) and Barbara Boxer (D) said Wednesday evening that they will soon float legislation that draws from LaHood’s plan.
“We are going over the legislation proposed today by Secretary LaHood very carefully, will retain the best parts, and introduce it as quickly as possible,” Feinstein said in a statement.
Across the Capitol, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) said Wednesday at a hearing on the Enbridge spill that he will also seek to move legislation forward this year.
Landrieu to promote Gulf of Mexico drilling at hearing
Look for the Obama administration’s post-BP spill restrictions on offshore drilling to come under bipartisan attack Thursday.
The Senate Small Business Committee will hold a hearing on the economic effects of the Obama administration’s six-month freeze on deepwater oil-and-gas drilling. Two Commerce Department officials will appear.
But look for Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), the panel’s chair, to also criticize the slowdown in permitting for shallow water projects that are not covered by the formal moratorium.
“I'm doing everything I can to get this moratorium lifted – both the deepwater, which is the official moratorium, and the de facto moratorium which is on shallow water,” Landrieu told reporters earlier this week.
Charting the slowdown
Landrieu will likely highlight the reduction in the number of new shallow water wells that Interior Department regulators have approved over the last several months, such as data showing just two wells approved in waters less than 400 feet in August of 2010 compared to seven in August of 2009.
“This administration's policies are causing a substantial economic disaster along the Gulf Coast and in some parts of the country and it needs to be reversed or substantially modified as quickly as possible,” she said.
The Interior Department doesn’t deny a slowdown in shallow water development, but says that’s happening because drillers must provide new information under safety mandates issued in June. Offshore industry to Obama administration: Do your part on offshore platform mandate
As we reported Wednesday, the Interior Department is requiring offshore energy companies to permanently plug unused oil-and-gas wells and dismantle idle platforms.
The National Ocean Industries Association said sure, but help us help you.
“While industry stands ready to fulfill this commitment, it can only do so with the cooperation of State and Federal agencies. For example, will the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration commit to prompt review and approval of the Incidental Take permits needed under the Marine Mammal Protection Act before companies can actually decommission a platform? Will the Administration work with the states to finalize Rigs-to-Reefs Programs so that decommissioned structures might find a second life as habitats for offshore ecosystems?,” said Randall Luthi, the group’s president, in a prepared statement.
“Industry is ready to meet its obligations with respect to offshore structures. We ask only that the Federal government meet us halfway by approving the actual work,” he added.
The report released Wednesday is the joint, two-year product of groups that don’t always see eye-to-eye, including mining giant Rio Tinto, the Union of Concerned Scientists, as well as agriculture industry officials and a range of other experts convened by the Johnson Foundation at Wingspread.
“In spite of the challenges we face, we see a promising future for U.S. freshwater resources – a future that is sustainable and resilient. Streamlined and effective regulation and enforcement, collaborative problem solving, innovative local and regional strategies, technological innovation, integrated policy and management solutions, and co-beneficial strategies and outcomes are the hallmarks of the new course we see for freshwater management and resources in the United States,” the report states.
The Interior Department announced new mandates Wednesday that require offshore energy companies to install permanent plugs on non-producing oil-and-gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico and to dismantle scores of idle platforms.
The requirements cover wells that have been inactive for five years, and will lead to the permanent plugging of nearly 3,500 wells that currently have subsurface safety valves, Interior said.
Companies must also dismantle roughly offshore 650 platforms if they are no longer used for exploration or production, Interior said.
The first eight months of 2010 tied for the warmest combined global land and ocean surface temperatures since records started in 1880, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday.
The January though August time period tied the same period in 1998 for the warmest. This year's summer — from June through August — was the second warmest globally after 1998 and last month was the third-warmest August on record, according to NOAA.
Wednesday’s announcement echoes previous monthly indications this year from NOAA that 2010 is well on pace to be one of the warmest years on record.
July was the second warmest on record and the combined global land and ocean surface temperature during the first seven months of this year was also the warmest on record.
Arctic sea ice covered 2.3 million square miles in August — or 22 percent below the average from 1979 through 2000 and was the second-lowest August since records began in 1979. The record low August was in 2007. It was also the 14th consecutive August with below-average Arctic sea ice.
Antarctic sea ice, meanwhile, was the largest ever on record this August. It was 4.1 percent above the 1979-2000 average. The previous record was set in August 2000.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is scrapping a voluntary Bush-era program that helps a range of large companies measure and curb greenhouse gases on a voluntary basis, a step that comes as EPA is imposing mandatory greenhouse-gas restrictions and reporting.
The action starkly highlights the political divide on climate between former President George W. Bush, who opposed mandatory climate rules, and the Obama administration, which is pushing ahead with several regulations.
EPA announced Wednesday that it’s winding down the eight-year-old Climate Leaders program, which helps companies measure their emissions, set reduction goals and report progress to EPA.
Environmentalists are launching a new ad campaign Thursday designed to defeat efforts to delay or block Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) climate regulations ahead of expected Senate debate this year after the elections.
The six-figure television ad buy from the Clean Energy Works campaign — a coalition of about 80 groups — argues that some lawmakers “are getting squeezed by the special interests again, trying to delay action and give polluters free reign to keep dumping toxic pollution into the air.” The 30-second ad blames lawmakers for “letting Big Oil lobbyists get their way,” and says that “Washington politicians need to get off the dime and not let corporate polluters off the hook.”
Twenty-two green, labor and renewables groups on Wednesday released an “action statement” calling on the Senate to pass a renewable power mandate that won bipartisan backing on a key Senate panel in 2009.
That renewable electricity standard (RES) — calling for 15 percent of electricity produced in the country to come from sources like wind, solar and geothermal by 2020 — is less than what green groups had initially sought but is deemed more politically palatable.
“The RES passed in 2009 by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee isn’t perfect, but it is the right RES to pass as a starting point at this moment of acute urgency,” according to the statement sent to Senate leaders in both parties.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a top lieutenant of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said Wednesday that Democrats have not yet decided whether to maintain the Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming in the next Congress.
“One step at a time. We are going to get through these elections, and then I am sure the Speaker will review the committee structure and special committees and make a decision,” he told The Hill outside the Capitol.
Van Hollen heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and is also in House leadership as an assistant to Pelosi.
