Energy & Environment

The State Department has begun making available over 1.2 million public comments on the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline.

STATE OF PLAY: Interior Secretary Sally Jewell will spend her second day in Portland, Ore., on Friday, where she'll announce new cooperation on energy with state officials.

“Jewell will join [Oregon] Governor John Kitzhaber and Director of the Center for Regulatory Innovation and Assistance Jesus Sanchez (representing Washington Governor Jay Inslee) to sign an agreement to expedite the review and permitting of energy generation, power transmission and other vital infrastructure projects in the Pacific Northwest,” an Interior advisory states.

She will also speak at the 76th annual Ducks Unlimited conference in Portland.

Back in D.C: Behind-the-scenes talks are afoot aimed at getting a bipartisan energy efficiency bill to the Senate floor.

“Sen. Portman is working on it on his side, I am working on it on our side,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) told reporters in the Capitol, referring to the bill she co-sponsored with Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).

Shaheen said they’re trying to learn what amendments colleagues might want to offer. And she’s also hoping the bill won’t become a platform for battles over controversial but unrelated energy topics. 

Tesla Automotive CEO and co-founder Elon Musk said climate advocates need to “reframe” the argument on climate science.

Musk, whose electric car firm repaid its $465 million Energy Department loan on Wednesday, urged attendees at a Washington, D.C., event to flip the burden of proof onto those who deny greenhouse gas emissions contribute to global warming.

“If you were to ask any scientist, ‘Are you absolutely certain’ about anything, they would say, ‘Well, no. There’s a .001 percent chance it could be different.’ So it’s better to actually say, ‘Look, how certain are you that it is not catastrophic?’ And then you’ll get the correct answer,” Musk said Wednesday night at the Climate Leadership Gala.

The contentious debate on whether hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, contaminates drinking water bubbled to the surface Thursday during a Senate panel discussion.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) pressed environmentalists to name a specific site where fracking had polluted groundwater at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee natural gas roundtable.

“I keep hearing from the environmental groups that there are many examples of contamination of groundwater. And I keep hearing from the industry ... that they don’t know of a single incident," Landrieu said. "Please do not give me theories — just give me one site."

Rumors have long swirled that Obama might link approval of the pipeline to policies aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Washington Post looks at the politics of energy in the race for governor of Virginia.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will convene a meeting Thursday on “best practices and environmental concerns.”

Vanishing Arctic sea ice and ecological threats from maritime oil traffic will present big challenges to the incoming generation of U.S. Coast Guard officers, Vice President Biden said Wednesday.

Biden, speaking at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy commencement, said the “new fault lines” between nations are the global shipping lanes and straits that enable commerce but also bring security and environmental risks.

“You graduate into a world where our environmental security, our shorelines, our fisheries — all are threatened by this country’s need to drill in deep seas and transport hundreds of billions of gallons of oil on the high seas,” he said in New London, Conn.

“You graduate into a world where the consequences of global warming offer the possibility of ice-free passage across Arctic regions that didn’t exist when you were born — presenting entirely new challenges that will demand greater international cooperation,” Biden said, according to a White House transcript.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) noted Wednesday that a carbon tax could generate “significant” revenues for the United States and avert “catastrophic” effects of climate change.

CBO said in a new report that there are many uncertainties about how to design and implement a carbon tax, but waiting too long to curb greenhouse gas emissions would have clear results.

“[D]elays would increase the expected damage from climate change by increasing the risk of very costly, potentially even catastrophic, outcomes. … In general, the risk of costly damage is higher as the extent of warming increases and as the pace of warming picks up; thus, failing to limit emissions soon increases that risk,” the report said.

Virginia’s Democratic Senate duo is at odds with President Obama over offshore oil and gas drilling.

They’re pushing a new bill to open their state’s coastline to leasing, which would upend Interior Department plans that keep the Atlantic Coast off-limits until 2017 at the earliest.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) has introduced legislation in the past to allow drilling off his state’s coast, and now freshman Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) is on board as well.

“Virginia is well positioned to be a national leader in offshore energy exploration.  A comprehensive energy strategy – including oil, gas, wind, solar, tidal and other areas – can transition us to a clean energy future while bridging that transition with secure U.S. fuels we don’t have to import,” Kaine said in a statement about their new bill.