LEGISLATION THIS WEEK: The House is considering bills this week that would undo a number of regulations from the Biden administration – including measures that would reverse the White House’s decision restricting oil and gas leasing in Alaska and a conservation rule from the Bureau of Land Management.
Here’s what’s being considered today in the Rules Committee: Most notably, the House Rules Committee is considering a bill from Republican Rep. Pete Stauber that would reverse the Biden administration’s decision to restrict oil and gas leasing on 13 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. The move, which has drawn bipartisan ire from the Alaska delegation, finalizes protections for wildlife such as caribou and polar bears. Rep. Mary Peltola, an Alaska Democrat, is the sole Democrat cosponsoring the bill currently.
There are several amendments submitted to the bill, including one from GOP Rep. Garret Graves to require the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to hold additional offshore lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and the Cook Inlet Region of Alaska.
A bill introduced by Republican Rep. John Curtis would withdraw a finalized Bureau of Land Management rule that allows the agency to lease federal lands for conservation purposes, while giving groups opposed to new fossil fuel development the same right to bid on federal leases as oil companies, miners, and cattle ranchers. Even before the rule was finalized, a group of Western states were prepared to sue the Biden administration over the regulation, arguing that it violates federal law and poses significant harm to energy, mining, and agriculture interests.
Another bill, introduced by Stauber, would withdraw a public land order issued under the BLM in January of last year. The order, which is effective for 20 years, withdrew more than 225,000 acres of public lands in Minnesota from mineral and geothermal leasing.
A measure introduced by GOP conservative Rep. Lauren Boebert would require the Interior Secretary to remove protections for the gray wolf under the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Republican Rep. Cliff Bentz will be having a field hearing on the gray wolf on Friday, May 3, advocating for the species’s ESA removal.
A mining bill: A bill from Rep. Mark Amodei would fast-track mining projects on public lands by addressing a ruling from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals against the Arizona Rosemont Copper Mine.
A bill heading to the floor today: A measure that’s being considered under the suspension of the rules is one from Rep. Jim Baird, which would expand the Department of Energy’s work to research, develop, demonstrate, and commercialize carbon storage – specifically including terrestrial carbon sequestration (the storage of carbon through plants and biomass) and geologic CS (through basins or aquifers). The bill would require the DOE to submit a research proposal that addresses the scientific challenges for widespread adoption of both forms of CS within two years of the bill’s adoption.
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BREAKING – G-7 AGREEMENT TO PHASE OUT COAL PLANTS BY EARLY 2030s: Negotiators from the Group of Seven nations have an agreement to set a target date in the early 2030s for shutting down their coal power plants, the United Kingdom’s minister for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero Andrew Bowie said on CNBC.
A meeting for G-7 energy ministers is scheduled for early this week in Turin, and the language on the agreement is expected to be included in an official document released Tuesday, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, host nation Italy is also pushing for an agreement related to ramping up battery capacity.
PLANT VOGTLE FULLY ONLINE: The Plant Vogtle Unit 4 nuclear reactor is now serving customers, Georgia Power announced this morning, providing power to an estimated 500,000 households and businesses.
With that, Plant Vogtle is rully up and running, and Georgia Power claims that it is the “largest generator of clean power in the nation.”
The long-delayed units are the first new reactors to enter commercial use in 30 years.
Could Three Mile Island be brought back online? Department of Energy Loan Programs Office director Jigar Shah said in an interview published by Bloomberg this morning that there “are a couple of nuclear power plants that we probably should, and can, turn back on.”
Shah did not specify which plants those could be, but one possibility flagged in the article is that of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, which famously suffered a partial meltdown in 1979, leading to changes in perceptions of nuclear power and new regulations.
FIRST FULL-SCALE SODIUM-ION BATTERY PLANT IS RUNNING IN MICHIGAN: Natron Energy is set today to unveil what it touts as the first full-scale sodium-ion battery plant in the country, Bloomberg reports.
The plant in Holland, Michigan, received a $20 million grant from the federal government – part of the Biden administration’s efforts to build out a domestic battery supply chain.
Sodium-ion batteries are thought to provide an advantage over lithium-ion in part because they can be made with fewer hard-to-source minerals. They have a disadvantage in that they lack the same energy density. But Natron said that it will target use by data centers, for which size considerations are not as important. Data center power demand is expected to soar thanks to the needs of artificial intelligence.
SUSTAINABLE AVIATION FUEL COALITION FORMED: A new group announced today, the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Coalition, will advocate for incentives and policies to boost the sector.
Members include Airlines for America and several individual airlines, as well as the Renewable Fuels Association, aircraft and equipment manufacturers, airports, technology developers, and labor unions.
The coalition’s executive director is Alison Graab, who was a senior vice president at the Alpine Group and a staffer for the Senate Appropriations Committee’s transportation subcommittee.
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