THE LATEST ON RECA: Republican Sens. Mike Lee and Josh Hawley are competing to extend compensation for nuclear contamination victims ahead of a June expiration – but it’s not looking like the House will take up Hawley’s bill due to its high cost and broad scope.
According to a senior Republican staffer familiar with conversations, House leadership isn’t expected to take up Hawley’s extension and expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act because of its $50 billion price tag and the fact that a number of members want their districts to be included in the expansion. Lee’s measure, which would simply extend current funding levels, failed to pass the Senate by unanimous consent on Thursday thanks to an objection by Hawley.
The significance: The 1990s law was enacted to provide monetary restitution for victims who were exposed to nuclear testing undertaken by the federal government and contracted diseases as a result. However, the clock is ticking: there’s 17 days left until RECA expires on June 10.
A spokesperson for Johnson’s office declined to outline a path forward for either bills – but referred to a statement previously provided to the Washington Examiner on RECA’s reauthorization.
How did we get here? This comes after an impassioned debate Thursday between the conservatives on the substance of the bills, following Lee’s unanimous consent attempt.
“It’s deeply troubling that amidst urgent need, that we might find ourselves entangled in one form or another of brinkmanship – sitting on our hands, waiting for an unjustly expansive and unobtainable bill, one that no one believes that can be passed by the House,” Lee said on the floor. “Expecting that the bill will be passed at the 11th hour puts real lives at risk.”
After objecting to the bill, however, Hawley called Lee’s measure an “11th hour bill.”
“My friend from Utah comes and says, ‘We need a clean extension,’” Hawley said. “Oh, there’s nothing clean about this bill – no, it leaves Missouri filthy, dirty with nuclear radiation.”
The competing bills: Hawley’s bill, as we covered extensively, had passed the Senate twice. The latest version of the bill was amended to be less expensive than the original proposal, but would extend RECA by six years while expanding coverage to areas in Missouri, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alaska, New Mexico, and Guam. The bill would also increase the payout maximum for eligible constituents to $100,000.
Lee’s measures: The Downwinders Act, introduced by the Utah Republican, is smaller in scope. As initially introduced, the measure would reauthorize RECA for two years without broadening coverage to additional states.
But Lee offered to modify his bill during Thursday’s floor debate to extend a downwinder classification to those in New Mexico and Utah, along with expanding coverage to those who were exposed to improperly stored nuclear waste in Missouri. The new bill would also extend coverage for eight years. His office said the cost estimate for the updated bill was $30 billion.
Lee mentioned during his remarks he opposed extending benefits to other states without scientific study. His bill, though, would require the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Energy to identify other areas that would fall under RECA coverage. Here’s a one pager and text of the updated bill.
How the law is right now: Currently, RECA divides the compensation into three categories: uranium workers who can receive a one-time, lump sum compensation of $100,000; “onsite participants” at nuclear weapon test sites who can be eligible for up to $75,000; and “downwinders” who lived downwind of the Nevada nuclear test site who can qualify for up to $50,000. Covered states include Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, South Dakota, Washington, Utah, Idaho, North Dakota, Oregon, and Texas.
Hawley staunchly maintained his objection to Lee’s bill, calling on the House to bring his bill to the floor. In a statement to the Examiner, Hawley scorched House Speaker Mike Johnson for not putting the bill up for a vote.
“House Leadership had no problem scheduling floor time and finding votes to give away billions and billions to Ukraine,” he said. “I have a hard time believing Mike Johnson truly gave away our last dollar to Zelensky. Put it up for a vote and give House members a chance to do the right thing.”
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EXXON MOBIL SHAREHOLDER MEETING SHAPING UP AS MAJOR BATTLE FOR ESG: Exxon Mobil’s annual shareholder meeting next Wednesday looks like it will be a significant battle in the war over ESG investing. Shareholders are going to be asked to weigh in on the controversy surrounding the oil major’s decision to forge ahead with a lawsuit to turn away a resolution from climate activist investors (an effort that got a boost in federal court this week).
The latest: Norway’s $1.5 trillion sovereign wealth fund said today that it would vote against the reelection of Jay Hooley to Exxon’s board of directors as a protest against the suit, the Financial Times reports.
With that stance, it joins CalPERS, as we’ve written about. The FT also notes that New York City comptroller Brad Lander and Washington state treasurer Mike Pellicciotti this week asked the world’s biggest asset managers, including BlackRock, JPMorgan and State Street, to vote against the reelection of Hooley and CEO Darren Woods.
Those same firms are getting pressure from the other side, though. Yesterday, officials from 19 Republican-led states sent letters to money managers asking them not to vote against reappointing Exxon’s directors, Reuters reports.
What to expect: Climate activist investors have scored upset wins against Exxon in past years. But opposition to ESG investing has hardened and gained strength in more recent times, especially as state GOP officials have taken steps to punish asset managers who prioritize ESG goals. This latest battle could provide an indication of the balance of power between the two sides. It’s worth noting that Shell shareholders earlier this week easily batted down a climate resolution advanced by one of the activist investors involved in the Exxon lawsuit.
CARBON OFFSET GUIDELINES COMING NEXT WEEK: Biden administration officials will lay out guidelines on Tuesday for carbon offsets meant to guarantee their integrity and ensure that carbon markets actually help to address climate change, Bloomberg reports.
Carbon offsets are controversial among climate hawks for two reasons. The first is that many of them have proved to be sketchy, promising emissions reductions that never panned out or that would have happened anyways. The other is the fear that carbon offsets could provide license to companies to continue emitting carbon and building out or maintaining fossil fuel infrastructure.
To address those concerns, the officials are expected to say that offsets should represent real, additional, and permanent carbon emission reductions that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. And they will say that companies should not use offsets to substitute for efforts to cut Scope 3 emissions – that is, the broadest category of emissions that includes emissions generated not just by the company directly but also in its supply chain and in the use of its products.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, White House senior climate adviser John Podesta, and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm will announce the framework, Bloomberg said.
VANCE AND YOST SAY NORFOLK SETTLEMENT WAS PREMATURE: Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance and Attorney General Dave Yost said that the Department of Justice jumped the gun with its settlement with Ohio Southern over the East Palestine disaster.
The DOJ would have more leverage, the two Republicans said in a joint statement, if it had waited until after the National Transportation Safety Board finished its investigation into the circumstances of the derailment. The announced settlement “risks undercompensating the residents of East Palestine,” they said.
COPPER WATCH – HEDGE FUND PREDICTS PRICE TO SOAR TO $40K: French hedge fund manager Pierre Andurand told the Financial Times that he expects the price of copper to roughly quadruple over the next few years to $40,000 a tonne, thanks in part to the demand created by the energy transition.
“We are moving towards a doubling of demand growth for copper due to the electrification of the world, including electric vehicles, solar panels, wind farms, but also military usage and data centres,” he said.
His fund has gained 83% this year thanks in part to the run-up in copper prices to as high as $11,000 this week.
Goldman Sachs economists issued a much more restrained but still bullish forecast yesterday, saying that they expected copper prices to “rise further from here, to $12,000/t by year-end, as the market remains in a structural deficit on the back of an improvement in global manufacturing activity, rapid green demand growth, and a constrained mine supply environment.”
INTERESTING – ELECTRIC VEHICLES TWICE AS LIKELY TO HIT PEDESTRIANS: A new study published this week in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health and written up by OilPrice.com found a pedestrian casualty rate of 5.16 per 100 million miles driven for electric and hybrid vehicles, versus 2.4 for traditional cars.
Why would that be? The study flags a few reasons that EVs may be more likely to hit pedestrians. One is that they’re quieter and thus may be harder to hear coming before a collision. Another is that they’re more likely to be driven in crowded urban areas where there are more pedestrians to hit. Finally, they may be driven disproportionately by less experienced drivers.
RUNDOWN
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