Document q8RmdbLgqx7Y4X204Vqk1OB5

To: Jackson, Ryan[jackson.ryan@epa.gov] From: POLITICO Pro Energy Sent: Wed 9/27/2017 9:42:11 AM Subject: Morning Energy, presented by the U.S. Chamber's Global Energy Institute: Fears of humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico as federal response ramps up -- Not freaking out, yet, about Zinke's renewables comments -- Pruitt's private plane rides By Anthony Adragna | 09/27/2017 05:40 AM EDT With help from Ben Lefebvre, Emily Holden, Alex Guillen and Darius Dixon FEARS OF HUMANITARIAN CRISIS IN PUERTO RICO: Federal officials appeared to dramatically ramp up their response to the devastated Puerto Rico on Tuesday as the dire conditions became ever clearer. According to the Defense Department, just 44 percent of the island's residents have potable drinking water while only 11 of 69 hospitals have fuel or power. In addition, 80 percent of the island's electricity transmission system and 100 percent of the distribution system are damaged. Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio , who toured the island Monday, called for a "more aggressive" federal response and summed up the severity of the situation: "I'm concerned about human suffering and potential loss of life if aid doesn't reach the places it needs to reach quickly enough," he said. President Donald Trump, who one day earlier appeared to partially blame the territory's plight on its "broken infrastructure & massive debt," touted the "amazing" response Tuesday. "We are literally unloading, on an hourly basis, water, food, supplies," he said. "And we are going to do far more than anybody else would ever be able to do. And it's being recognized as such, but it is a tough situation." Trump later convened two briefings on relief efforts, the second of which included EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Energy Secretary Rick Perry. EPA also approved a waiver for certain fuels on Puerto Rico on Tuesday. POLITICO'S Andrew Restuccia and Louis Nelson with more here. Both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker Paul Ryan reiterated Congress would respond with additional hurricane aid when the administration made a formal request. "I also want the people of Puerto Rico to know that they are going to get the kind of help and aid that Texas and Florida enjoyed," Ryan said. But Pro Budget and Appropriations Briefs Sarah Ferris and Jennifer Scholtes report that formal request is likely several weeks away as officials focus right now on delivering supplies rather than requesting more funds. What about the Jones Act? The Trump administration is not waiving the Jones Act for Puerto Rico, as it did for Florida and Texas after hurricanes ravaged those states earlier this year. And Sen. John McCain wants to know why. McCain, a long-time proponent of revamping the law requiring shipments between domestic ports be carried on U.S.-flagged vessels, sent a letter to DHS urging the agency to reconsider its decision . "I am confident that repealing this law would lead to hastened recovery efforts where our country needs it most," he wrote. Separately, Tuesday, the unlikely duo of Sens. Cory Gardner and Kamala Harris asked Perry in a letter to "work expeditiously" with utilities around the country to help get the lights back on. But Southern CEO Tom Fanning, co-chairman of the Electricity Subsector Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906 ED_001523_00000692-00001 Coordinating Council, sought to keep expectations realistic in a Tuesday statement: "Puerto Rico is facing complicated logistical challenges for life and safety that need to be stabilized before full power restoration efforts can get underway." WELCOME TO WEDNESDAY! I'm your host Anthony Adragna, and the American Chemistry Council's Jon Corley was first up to name Ralph Nader as the 1977 SNL host (his opening sketch here). For today: What legendary Hollywood star was also a five-term president of the National Rifle Association? Send your tips, energy gossip and comments to aadragna@politico.com, or follow us on Twitter @AnthonyAdragna, @Moming Energy and @POLITICOPro. NOT FREAKING OUT -- YET: Utility-scale solar developers and environmentalists remain hopeful BLM's ongoing leasing program will remain on track despite Zinke's comments Tuesday that large-scale solar development is a poor use of federal lands, Pro's Esther Whieldon and Eric Wolff report. "Our hope is that he was just blowing off steam, it was just a casual off the cuff conversation and that it doesn't have any material or practical implications for the permitting process for our projects," Shannon Eddy, executive director of the Large-scale Solar Association, said referring to his comments at National Clean Energy Week event in Washington. ICYMI: During his speech, Zinke highlighted some negative environmental consequences of renewables and said fossil fuel development was the best use of public lands. "I think the biggest opportunity in solar is the roof," Zinke said. "Because when I see solar cells out on land, that land is no longer useful for anything else but energy. But there's a lot of roofs. And I think the greatest opportunity for the solar industry is look at where the roofs are." But he also didn't mention the Obama-era solar leasing program at BLM, an omission that some are taking as an encouraging sign. BISHOP DEFENDS ZINKE'S LOYALTY COMMENT: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke faced heated criticism Tuesday for his Monday comment that one-third of his agency's workforce is "not loyal" to the administration, but House Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop told reporters that guess is "probably low." Bishop added: "The assumption is, you have a whole lot of professional staff-- in quotes -- that stay from administration to administration. So having that [lack of loyalty] would not surprise me." 'Deeply insulting': In a joint statement, the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, the Public Lands Foundation and the Association of Retired Fish and Wildlife Service Employees called Zinke's comments "simply ludicrous" and "deeply insulting." And top Natural Resources Democrat Raul Grijalva expressed similar outrage: "Secretary Zinke should clarify his comments and apologize to the public servants he is supposed to be leading," he said in a statement. IT'S A SECRET: EPA has hired a Virginia contractor to build a "privacy booth for the administrator" at a cost of $24,570, according to records first uncovered by The Washington Post. As Pro's Alex Guilln reports , the booth -- known formally in Washington speak as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility -- is secured against physical and electronic eavesdropping and hacking. The agency already has such a facility for classified discussions, the newspaper reports. EPA contract records also indicate the agency spent $8,000 this month for Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906 ED_001523_00000692-00002 another firm, Fairfax-based Secure Mission Solutions, to "remove CCTV equipment to accommodate a secure phone booth for the administrator's office." PRUITT'S PRICEY TRAVEL: Turns out it's not just $25,000 soundproof booths that Scott Pruitt has a taste for. On June 7, the EPA administrator flew from Cincinnati to New York on an Air Force jet with a cost to taxpayers of $20,000, CBS News reports . Then, on Aug. 4, Pruitt took a private plane from Denver to Durango, Colorado and back for a meeting with state officials, but only after declining to fly on Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper's plane. A spokesman said Pruitt, a self-described "fiscal conservative," booked the plane "after his flight was significantly delayed in order to ensure that he did not miss a critical meeting," and ethics officials were consulted. But the spokesman did not respond to requests for why he used a military plane for the earlier trip or why he declined to fly with Hickenlooper, CBS reports. **A message from the U.S. Chamber's Global Energy Institute: American infrastructure needs attention, and energy infrastructure should be front and center in that discussion. Today, it is too difficult to build infrastructure, and our electricity grid and pipeline network needs investment. Without ways to move energy of all kinds, our economy will stall. Visit www. globalenergyinstitute .org for more. ** HAMM TO PRESS PERRY ON EIA ESTIMATES: Oil titan Harold Hamm, a major Trump supporter, will meet today with Energy Secretary Rick Perry to argue that EIA is missing the mark with its oil production estimates, he told POLITICO'S Mike Grunwald, who tweeted a few tidbits from their conversation Tuesday. The Hamm-backed Domestic Energy Producers Alliance prepared slides outlining its case that EIA is too optimistic with its forecast of U.S. oil production growing to close to 10 million barrels a day next year. The group points out oil companies reported an overall second-quarter drop in production rates, while rig counts and well completion rates also fell -- that implies activity is too slow to boost production from August's 9.2 million barrels a day. "EIA's Phantom Forecast needs huge growth to catch up to projections," DEPA argues in slides it shared with POLITICO. Hamm and the association have a vested interest in downplaying production rates -- less oil coming out of the ground equals higher prices -- but the EIA forecasts have been known to be wrong before. "The EIA analysts do credible, independent work. Of course, no one gets everything right 100 percent of the time," Raymond James energy analyst Pavel Molchanov told ME. GUARDIANS OF THE ENVIRONMENT: New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman asserted the U.S. was entering a new era of "progressive federalism" on Tuesday with a coalition of attorneys general responsible for guarding against environmental rollbacks, POLITICO New York Marie J. French reports . "With the new administration clearly in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry, the chemical industry and others, and putting people in power who deny the most basic science, it's very important to recognize the brilliance of our federal system that there is this second tier of protection at the state level," he said. NEXT WEEK EYED FOR EPW NOMINEE HEARINGS: Senate EPW Chairman John Barras so told reporters Tuesday he plans to hold two separate nomination hearings next week on "seven or eight" of Trump's agency nominees. The committee declined to provide further details, but the hearings would likely include four EPA and one NRC nominees who saw their Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906 ED_001523_00000692-00003 confirmation hearing postponed last week, as well as several Tennessee Valley Authority selections. Barrasso did say he planned to spread out the sessions between Wednesday and Thursday. LOOK TO FEBRUARY IN CHALLENGE TO CHEMICAL RULE FREEZE: The legal challenge over Pruitt's decision to delay a key chemical facility safety rule until 2019 will stretch through February at least. The D.C. Circuit set a briefing schedule Tuesday beginning next month and stretching through Jan. 31, 2018. Don't mess with Texas (counties): Harris County, Texas, has decided to sue Arkema, the owner of the Crosby chemical plant that burned in the wake of Hurricane Harvey's flooding. The county had to dedicate "literally dozens of first responders" to that event rather than helping other people, county attorney Rock Owens told the Houston Chronicle. FUEL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY PICKS GETS HEARING: Skip Elliott, Trump's selection to run the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration gets a nomination hearing today at 10:30 a.m. before the Senate Commerce Committee. Also in the hot seat is Timothy Gallaudet, the administration's pick for the No. 2 position at NOAA. CLEAN ENERGY CHAMPS NAMED: Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions will today announce Govs. Kim Reynolds and Brian Sandoval, Reps. Mia Love and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, and Sens. Thom Tillis and Susan Collins as its 2017 clean energy champions. SENATE PASSES BILL TO FIGHT ALGAL BLOOMS: Lawmakers cleared by unanimous consent legislation S. .1057 (1.15) aimed at controlling harmful algal blooms. The bill would authorize the appropriation of $110 million to NOAA over the 2019-2023 period. MAIL CALL! PRUITT'S MEETING RECORDS SOUGHT: Rep. Frank Pallone, top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, sent a letter Tuesday to EPA's inspector general asking for a "factual record" of Pruitt's meetings that may have violated the Antideficiency Act and other anti-lobbying provisions. Of particular interest is an April meeting with the National Mining Association where Pruitt reportedly encouraged members of the group to criticize the Paris climate accord. NEW MEXICANS: TOSS OUT INACCURATE MONUMENT REPORT: Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich, as well as Reps. Ben Ray Lujan and Michelle Lujan Grisham, sent a letter to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly on Tuesday calling on the White House to reject Zinke's report urging changes to a host of national monuments after they claimed to find a number of factual errors surrounding recommended changes to two in their state. "The public deserves better than predetermined political conclusions based on hearsay and claims that are easily disproven if the Department had taken the time to listen to and work with local communities," they wrote. HOUSTON SUPERFUND SITE RESPONSE PROBED: Texas Democratic Rep Gene Green, whose district took a direct hit from Hurricane Harvey, asked Pruitt in a Tuesday letter to provide a host of information concerning the agency's response to the U.S. Oil Recovery Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906 ED_001523_00000692-00004 Superfund site, which was potentially damaged in the storm. "The apparent slow response and lack of transparency from your agency is already causing harm, by fostering fear and distrust," he wrote. ME FIRST -- LOCAL OFFICIALS: NO CUTS TO EPA'S BUDGET: More than 300 local elected officials are out with a letter today urging Congress not to cut EPA's budget as it considers fiscal 2018 spending packages. "Deep budget cuts will suddenly impose significant new funding requirements -- including some unfunded mandates -- on states," they write. "To the extent that states cannot make up for the loss of EPA grant funds, public health will be put at risk." GROUPS: PLEASE SPEND THAT MONEY: A group of energy efficiency organizations, companies and trade associations are asking the House and Senate to ensure funds directed to critical energy efficiency and clean energy programs are actually spent by the Trump administration while longer-term funding is negotiated. "When letters and written inquiries are not enough, we urge you to call on senior leaders to testify on the record about the status of programs and their plans to ensure their agencies are acting consistently with congressional intent," they write. DOE IG: AGENCY SLUGGISH TO TAKE ON ADDED IT SECURITY: The Energy Department has been slow to setup multifactor logins across its computer systems, a new inspector general audit says . "Although requirements existed for more than 10 years, none of the locations reviewed had fully implemented multifactor authentication for secure access to information systems and resources," the report says, while noting that DOE had nevertheless made progress on the issue. The IG's office studied 18 federal systems and "identified weaknesses related to ensuring adequate protections over access to network and application resources" and found that information DOE reported to 0MB on a 2015 "Cybersecurity Sprint" initiative was not consistent. The lack of an agency-wide multifactor authentication process exposes DOE information to "a higher than-necessary risk of compromise," the audit says. DOE concurred with the IG's five recommendations and laid out a plan to square things up over the next year. READY TO FIGHT: The environmental justice group Green for All kicked off its fly-in last night at a dinner featuring moms from Flint, Mich., and other communities hit hard by pollution. Today they'll visit Capitol Hill to protest EPA budget cuts and urge action on climate change. Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragan, a California Democrat who sits on the House Natural Resources committee, said Republican members of the panel "won't even mention the words 'climate change,"' and she urged women in the group to run for public office. REPORT: REVAMP OF CLEAN WATER ACT NEEDED: Today's the last day to comment on EPA's efforts to repeal the previous administration's Waters of the U.S. regulation, but the Regulatory Transparency Project, a venture of the Federalist Society, released a paper Tuesday questioning whether Congress needs to fundamentally revisit the Clean Water Act to clarify how to decide what constitutes a waters of the U.S. Read it here. MAP ALLEGES BIG AIR POLLUTION RISKS FROM OIL, GAS PRODUCTION: Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906 ED_001523_00000692-00005 Earthworks is out this morning with an updated analysis finding 2.9 million children are at risk from toxic air pollution from active oil and gas production sites within half a mile of their schools. QUICK HITS -- Hawaii Lawmaker Presses SEC Chairman on Climate Change. The Street. -- Failing Puerto Rico dam that endangers thousands not inspected since 2013. Washington Post. -- Mnuchin Asks Judge to Toss Exxon's Suit Over Russia Drilling. Bloomberg. -- Before U.N. Deadline, China Again Buys North Korean Coal. Wall Street Journal. -- A small region in Iraq just became one of the oil market's biggest concerns. CNBC. -- Kinder Morgan Canada ordered to stop some work on pipeline expansion. Reuters. HAPPENING TODAY 9:00 a.m. -- "North America Energy Forum 2017," Wilson Center, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW 10:00 a.m. -- Senate Commerce Committee hearing on nominations, Russell 253 10:00 a.m. -- "Forest Management to Mitigate Wildfires: Legislative Solutions," Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Dirksen 406 2:00 p.m. -- "Encouraging the Next Generation to Visit National Parks," Senate Energy and Natural Resources National Parks Subcommittee, Dirksen 366 3:00 p.m. -- "Global Lessons from the Thawing Arctic," The Study of Environmental Arctic Change, 1200 New York Ave NW THAT'S ALL FOR ME! **A message from the U.S. Chamber's Global Energy Institute: Pipelines Power America. America has over 2.6 million miles of pipelines that safely deliver natural gas and petroleum products throughout our nation. It would take over 750 tanker trucks a day to transport the same amount of energy as a single pipeline. While our analysis shows that certain regions like the Northeast face a critical lack of pipeline infrastructure that is contributing to higher prices and negative economic impacts, pipeline projects are under attack across the nation. It's time to end delays and allow for energy that is essential for our daily lives to move around our nation. Find out more about how Pipelines Power America here: http://bit.ly/2wG6Ij9 ** To view online'. Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906 ED_001523_00000692-00006 https://www.politicopro.com/tipsheets/morning-energy/201 7/09/fears-of-humanitarian-crisis-inpuerto-rico-as-federal-response-ramps-up-024784 Stories from POLITICO Pro White House weeks away from formal funding request for Puerto Rico aid, sources say Back By Sarah Ferris and Jennifer Scholtes | 09/26/2017 03:01 PM EDT The White House is likely weeks away from a formal funding request for Puerto Rico, as the storm-ravaged island enters its sixth day without power, according to Trump administration and congressional sources. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is demanding that lawmakers approve a disaster aid package by week's end to help Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands recover from Hurricane Maria. But aides familiar with the devastation on the Caribbean islands say the government is far more focused on delivering resources right now than getting more cash from Congress. "The thing is, funding doesn't help them. Getting people and supplies there is what needs to happen," one administration aide said Tuesday. "There's no crunch in the short term for cash." Still handling three simultaneous hurricane relief efforts, FEMA's staff is stretched thin. But the agency's disaster relief fund is still flush after Congress provided $15 billion in disaster aid, H.R. 60.1 (.1.15), earlier this month, as well as another $6.7 billion that will kick in at the start of the fiscal year Oct. 1. Advocates argue that funding for FEMA doesn't mean Puerto Rico's government can pay its own bills, however, including its already depleted Medicaid program. While the federal government continues to calculate a damage estimate, responders deployed to the region are focused on logistics like getting food and water to millions of people who remain without power as temperatures hit 90 degrees and humidity hovers above 70 percent. The administration contends that much of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands is so damaged that officials can't even begin damage assessment, meaning the federal government may not know for weeks how many roads, buildings or power lines will need to be rebuilt. "The issue is not paying for any of this," the administration source said. "It's like: Paying for what?" But Democrats say the administration's response is already wholly anemic, accusing President Donald Trump of taking potshots at the ailing islanders while neglecting to deploy the full force of federal resources. "We have the greatest military the world has ever seen," Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.), chairman Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906 ED_001523_00000692-00007 of the Democratic Caucus, told reporters on Tuesday. "We know how to invade other nations. We know how to bring that equipment in. We have paratroopers. We have sailors. We have Marines. We have men and women who would want to help their fellow countrymen in their time of need. It's time for the president to invoke that and to bring that type of response." Trump said Tuesday that he plans to travel to Puerto Rico early next week to survey damage, more than a dozen days after Maria compounded devastation wrought by Hurricane Irma earlier this month. The president has fielded criticism for neglecting to visit the islands as quickly as he arrived in Texas and Florida following Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. But he told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that his administration is "getting really good marks for the work we're doing" in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Congressional Democrats have derided Trump for focusing on the NFL's national anthem controversy in the wake of the disaster and noting Puerto Rico's financial issues. "Texas & Florida are doing great but Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt, is in deep trouble," Trump tweeted late Monday. Rep. Nydia M. Velazquez (D-N.Y.), who is the first Puerto Rican woman to be elected to Congress, said she is "offended and insulted" by the president's tweet. "If you don't take this crisis seriously, this is going to be your Katrina," Velazquez told reporters Tuesday about Trump, suggesting the president appoint a military general to organize comprehensive emergency response. Rep. Jos E. Serrano (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that he has gotten commitments from House Appropriations Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan that Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands will be "treated equally in any funding package to come. "You can't look at this funding and say, 'Whatever is left over can go to the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.' No -- it has to be equal to Texas, to Florida, to Louisiana, to Georgia. ..." Serrano said. "Now it's incumbent on us to stay on top of the leadership to make sure that a certain segment of the other party doesn't break this promise that the speaker and the chairman of Appropriations have put out." Congress approved its massive hurricane relief package on Sept. 8 -- six days after Harvey made landfall in Texas -- yet appropriators appear weeks away from an aid request devoted to Puerto Rico. The White House believes there is "plenty of money" for the hurricane response in the short term, an administration aide said, acknowledging that much more will be needed in the months to come. While White House officials plan to discuss that longer-term funding strategy this week, even a back-of-the-envelope estimate will be incredibly difficult, according to one person familiar with Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906 ED_001523_00000692-00008 the damage assessment efforts. The government officials charged with surveying the damage -- including those from FEMA, the Defense Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- each have to come up with their own funding estimates. But many of the damage assessment teams are still working on recovery in states like Texas and Florida. Heather Caygle contributed to this report. To view online click here. Back White House denies Jones Act waiver for Puerto Rico Back By Ben Lefebvre | 09/26/2017 02:07 PM EDT The Trump administration will not waive a rule banning foreign vessels from delivering fuel to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, the Department of Homeland Security said today. Waiving the Jones Act would not address the lack of port space needed for vessels to deliver the fuel to the island, DHS spokesman David Lapan said. DHS consulted with other federal agencies and found that "there is sufficient numbers of U.S.-flagged vessels to move commodities to Puerto Rico," Lapan told POLITICO in an email. "The limitation is going to be port capacity to offload and transfer cargo, not vessel availability," Lapan said. "The fuel supply challenges facing Puerto Rico are not a function of the lack of fuel being shipped to the island, but caused by the devastation to Puerto Rico's transportation networks that have prevented fuel from being transported on the island to all of the places that need it." The Jones Act stipulates that only U.S.-flagged ships can deliver fuel to domestic ports, keeping the number of vessels available to deliver fuel. Puerto Rico is running out of fuel and other necessitates after taking a direct hit from Hurricane Maria last week. DHS waived the rule when hurricanes ripped through Texas and Florida in recent weeks, but in those cases, the ships were necessary to replace lost fuel production after refineries were shut down during the storms, Lapan said. WHAT'S NEXT: President Trump is scheduled to visit Puerto Rico next week. To view online click here. Back Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906 ED_001523_00000692-00009 Solar industry stays calm after Zinke says it's a bad fit for public lands Back By Esther Whieldon and Eric Wolff | 09/26/2017 06:23 PM EDT Renewable energy supporters are worried -- but not yet panicked -- after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke slammed large-scale solar development as a poor use of federal lands. Zinke urged solar companies to focus on smaller rooftop projects rather than sprawling installations on federal lands. But utility-scale developers and environmentalists remain hopeful that BLM's ongoing leasing program will remain on track. "Our hope is that he was just blowing off steam, it was just a casual off the cuff conversation and that it doesn't have any material or practical implications for the permitting process for our projects," said Shannon Eddy, executive director of the Large-scale Solar Association. Zinke's speech Tuesday at a National Clean Energy Week event in Washington offered the clearest indication to date of his preference for fossil fuel development over renewable energy. "If you are operating on public land, extraction is going to be in the best public interest," he told the audience, which included representatives from the renewable energy, natural gas and nuclear industries. In his speech, Zinke stressed his support for an "all of the above" approach to energy, though he focused more heavily on the negative environmental consequences of renewables than of fossil fuel development. He pointed to bird deaths or habitat loss that can be caused by wind and solar development, but said little about the air pollution or spills that can come with oil, gas or coal production. And climate change was hardly mentioned at all. "I think the biggest opportunity in solar is the roof," Zinke said. "Because when I see solar cells out on land, that land is no longer useful for anything else but energy. But there's a lot of roofs. And I think the greatest opportunity for the solar industry is look at where the roofs are." By the end of 2016, utility scale solar made up 70 percent of the industry's growth, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, the largest solar trade association. Environmentalists accused Zinke of trying to draw attention away from the harm the administration is doing to the environment by promoting fossil fuel production. "It's a false choice to say that we can either protect our wildlife or advance renewables on public lands," said Alex Daue, assistant director for energy and climate campaign at The Wilderness Society. Zinke did not mention the solar leasing program at BLM, which was launched during the Obama administration, an omission that some are taking as an encouraging sign. If he does not formally tell BLM field staff to slow down or turn their attention to other matters, it could lessen the Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906 ED_001523_00000692-00010 immediate effect on the environmental studies and other work happening on the ground, said Nathanael Greene, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's renewable energy policy initiative. Still, his general disinterest in the solar industry's priorities such as improved siting and streamlined permitting could amount to "death by neglect" for the program, he said. Solar developers also could lose valuable federal tax incentives if BLM slow rolls its approval of their projects, Eddy noted. Furthermore, it's unlikely that rooftop solar panels would be able to replace the potential generation available on public lands without unduly straining the electric grid, said Kim Delfino, Defenders of Wildlife California program director. California "learned the hard way that... we do have to have a certain amount of utility scale renewable energy as we work really hard to put in place the grid and policies to have rooftops," Delfino said in an interview Tuesday. BLM estimated in 2012 that about 24,000 megawatts of solar panels could be installed on about 214,000 acres of federal land over a 20-year period. Under the Obama administration, BLM authorized 42 projects totaling 9,540 MW. No new leases are expected to be offered until next year at the earliest, officials have said. Solar leasing is dwarfed by the amount of land occupied by the oil and gas industry. The oil and gas industry held 27 million acres under lease as of Sept, of last year, including 12 million acres under production, according to BLM data. And that figure is down from a peak in 1989 when the industry had 67 million acres under lease. BLM leased 62,000 acres to solar developers by October 2016. The Interior Department and BLM did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday. Zinke's remark may foretell yet more gloom and uncertainty for the solar industry, which already faces the prospects of tariffs on the cheap, imported solar panels that fueled its growth. Tariffs would likely jack up costs for developers and installers, leading to project slowdowns and the loss of as many as 88,000 jobs, the industry says. The Solar Energy Industries Association, which represents both rooftop and utility-scale developers, offered an optimistic interpretation of Zinke's comments. "The beauty of solar energy is it can be deployed in multiple ways. From rooftop panels to large scale installations owned by utilities, there is room for all solar energy and each one plays an important role in the diversification of our nation's electricity mix," SEIA CEO Abigail Ross Hopper said in a statement. "We are pleased both Sec. Zinke and [Energy Secretary Rick] Perry took part in National Clean Energy Week and we look forward to continued conversations with both of them on the ways in which solar is strengthening America." Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906 ED_001523_00000692-00011 Other proponents pointed to the wide support solar enjoys on both sides of the political aisle. "I think there's bipartisan support for providing access to federal lands for energy development, I can't imagine it's been undermined, despite what the Secretary said today," said Todd Foley, senior vice president of policy and government affairs at the American Council on Renewable Energy. "To put it as some people do, we shouldn't be picking winners and losers." To view online click here. Back EPA building Pruitt secure communications room Back By Alex Guillen | 09/26/2017 03:59 PM EDT EPA is building a special secure communications room for Administrator Scott Pruitt, according to contract records first reported today by the Washington Post. EPA hired Richmond, Va.-based Acoustical Solutions to construct a "privacy booth for the administrator" at a cost of $24,570, according to the contract details. It is expected to be completed by Oct. 9. The privacy booth will serve as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman told the Post. SCIFs, as they are known in Washington lingo, are rooms specially secured against physical and electronic eavesdropping and hacking that are used for discussing classified issues. EPA already has a SCIF facility used for discussing sensitive matters, the Post reported. The agency's SCIF appears to have existed for years; an agency guide on national security issues dated 2006 includes information on accessing and maintaining the agency's CIA-accredited SCIF facilities. EPA last week said employees will have to complete new rounds of training for handling sensitive information, including classified data on critical infrastructure. To view online click here. Back How Bannon and Pruitt boxed in Trump on climate pact Back By Andrew Restuccia and Josh Dawsey | 05/31/2017 08:00 PM EDT Donald Trump's chief strategist and Environmental Protection Agency administrator maneuvered Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906 ED_001523_00000692-00012 for months to get the president to exit the Paris climate accord, shrewdly playing to his populist instincts and publicly pressing the narrative that the nearly 200-nation deal was effectively dead -- boxing in the president on one of his highest-profile decisions to date. Steve Bannon and Scott Pruitt have sought to outsmart the administration's pro-Paris group of advisers, including Trump's daughter Ivanka, who were hoping the president could be swayed by a global swell of support for the deal from major corporations, U.S. allies, Al Gore and even the pope. But some of that pro-Paris sentiment wound up being surprisingly tepid, according to White House aides who had expected that European leaders would make a stronger case during Trump's trip abroad in May. Those who want Trump to remain also faced an insurmountable hurdle: The president has long believed, rightly or wrongly, that the U.S. is getting a raw deal under the accord, and it proved nearly impossible to change his mind. The internal reality show will culminate Thursday when Trump finally announces his decision, after a rush of leaks Wednesday from administration officials saying he was on the verge of pulling the plug on U.S. participation in history's most comprehensive global climate agreement. "I will be announcing my decision on Paris Accord, Thursday at 3:00 P.M.," Trump tweeted Wednesday night, without revealing the outcome. "The White House Rose Garden. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" Some White House aides held out the prospect that the president still might take the middle course that Ivanka Trump and others had advocated -- staying in the deal while drastically scaling back the Obama administration's nonbinding carbon cleanup promises. But three White House officials said Wednesday that they expect Trump to make a clean break by withdrawing from the agreement, though they noted it's possible the president will change his mind at the last minute. In recent months, Pruitt and Bannon made sure Trump heard from a parade of conservative leaders and Republican lawmakers who raised concerns that the deal would hobble his pro-fossil fuel energy agenda. "We made very much the economic message argument," said Club for Growth President David McIntosh, whose group wrote letters to the White House and spoke to senior staff. "It was bad for the U.S. economy. It would stifle economic growth and the United States should withdraw." As the news of the impending decision spread Wednesday, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus began calling and fielding calls from lawmakers, indicating that the U.S. was unlikely to stay in the agreement, one person familiar with the conversations said. If Trump withdraws, Paris' foes will have Pruitt and Bannon to thank. One Republican close to the White House called it the "classic split" and said conservative activists had flooded the White House in recent weeks, after seeing increasing chatter that Trump Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906 ED_001523_00000692-00013 might stay in. This person said Bannon and Pruitt worked quietly to make sure Trump was hearing their side and touched base occasionally on political strategy to woo him. "You had the New Yorkers against it, and all the campaign loyalists for it," this person said, referring to the push to withdraw. "When the New Yorkers get involved, it gets complicated for Trump and everyone else around him." Pruitt and Bannon have told others repeatedly for months that Trump will pull out of the agreement, as they aggressively pushed a narrative that they hoped would prove to be true, even as White House aides continued to debate the issue. "Some of the debate was for show to help the moderates feel like they had their say," said one person who has spoken to Pruitt. "Pruitt has believed all along that this was never in doubt." Pruitt, who frequently attacked the EPA's regulations in court when he was Oklahoma's attorney general, used his new post as EPA administrator to orchestrate an aggressive campaign to marshal conservative opposition to the Paris agreement. He bashed the deal during a closed-door April meeting of the National Mining Association's executive committee, telling the group that the agreement would hurt the economy. Pruitt's staff also urged lawmakers and conservative groups to publicly criticize the agreement, sources familiar with the issue told POLITICO, which had the effect of increasing public pressure on Trump. Bannon similarly argued in meetings with Trump and his team that the president would be breaking his campaign promise to "cancel" the agreement if he decided to remain. And he argued that the accord is a bad deal for the United States because other countries aren't doing enough to curb their emissions. Pruitt and Bannon's anti-Paris campaign was meant to counter a separate offensive by members of the administration who supported staying in the pact, including Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner. In recent months, Ivanka Trump set up a process in which the president would regularly hear from people who supported remaining in the agreement, according to administration officials. The "remain" camp believed, perhaps naively, that Trump could be influenced by the support the Paris deal has received from major corporations, including Exxon Mobil, which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson led for more than a decade. "Ivanka is doing what she can to get him to stay," one official said. "But that doesn't mean he's going to do it." White House aides outlined a plan to remain in the agreement while weakening former President Barack Obama's pledge to cut domestic greenhouse gas emissions. They made the case that Trump could use the goodwill generated from remaining to negotiate better economic incentives Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906 ED_001523_00000692-00014 for fossil fuels, and they even won the buy-in of several coal companies that detested Obama's climate policies. They hoped European leaders could convince Trump he would risk damaging diplomatic relations if he withdrew. Ivanka Trump also brought Gore to Trump Tower to try to sway her father's mind during the presidential transition, and Pope Francis handed the president a copy of his papal encyclical on climate change when the two men met at the Vatican last week. Trump took calls from a parade of business leaders and foreign leaders in recent weeks, most pressing him to remain, according to a senior administration official -- and the calls continued on Wednesday. "He had tremendous pressure from international leaders, from members of his own Cabinet and advisers in the international sphere not to pull out of the accord because of the perceived loss of face," said McIntosh, the Club for Growth president. But while the leaders of G-7 nations all pressed Trump to remain in the agreement during last week's summit in Italy, Paris supporters in the White House have privately groused that they didn't make an aggressive enough case. European officials countered they tried not to push Trump too much during the meetings, believing that a hard sell could backfire. And they were buoyed by early signals from White House officials ahead of the summit that Trump was open to remaining. Indeed, European officials received a series of mixed messages from Trump's team during the summit. National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, a Paris supporter and the only U.S. official permitted to attend meetings with G-7 leaders, told reporters that Trump was "evolving" on climate change, which many interpreted to mean that he would remain. White House officials chalked up Cohn's comments to Trump's habit of echoing the perspective of the last person he talked to. By that time, Bannon and other opponents of the agreement had returned to the United States. But Trump's decision to delay a final verdict on the agreement gave Pruitt and Bannon a final opportunity to make their case. Pruitt met with Trump to discuss Paris on Tuesday. Most European officials were unwilling to comment about the prospect that Trump will withdraw, as they have not yet received official word from the White House and are still holding out hope that the president will change his mind. The officials have already begun looking to other countries for support on climate change, with the European Union set to promise deeper cooperation with China. Some officials have even adopted a new informal nickname for the major remaining countries that support action on climate change: the G-6. Some Trump administration officials were reeling on Wednesday after the news first broke that Trump was prepared to withdraw. Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906 ED_001523_00000692-00015 Trump had not officially told his entire team of senior aides he was considering leaving the agreement Wednesday when news leaked out. "Everyone assumed that's what was going to happen, but we weren't called all in and told, 'Oh, we're putting this story out today," one person said. Having learned a lesson after Trump changed his mind about pulling out of NAFTA, administration officials cautioned against definitive reporting, warning that the president is notoriously fickle. As administration officials began tamping down reports that Trump's decision was final, White House aides were swamped with calls, emails and texts from lobbyists and diplomats seeking clarification. Officials close to Trump sometimes leak information before it is final -- hoping to back him into a comer, or believing that comments during a private meeting represent his ultimate view. White House officials put out word in April that he was pulling out of NAFTA, even though Trump had not made up his mind, and news leaked during the campaign that he would pick Mike Pence as his running mate even as he weighed other candidates. "Sometimes people close to Trump put things into the media environment to see how he'll react to it," one adviser said. "If your idea gets good coverage, it's likely to help him decide to go with what you're saying." One of the biggest lingering questions: If he withdraws, how will Trump do it? He could abide by the formal procedures in the underlying text of the agreement, which mandate that a formal withdrawal will not go into effect until Nov. 4, 2020, at the earliest. Or he could pull out of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the underlying 1992 treaty that governs the negotiations, which would allow for a speedier pullout -- a far more radical step that would see the U.S. abstain from the entire climate negotiating process. He could also declare that the agreement is a treaty, which would require a two-thirds-majority ratification vote in the Senate that would certainly fail. Whatever he does, supporters of the climate agreement expect a harsh reaction from the United States' friends if the country pulls out. "I think the diplomatic backlash will be worse than it was when the U.S. rejected Kyoto," said Susan Biniaz, the State Department's longtime former climate change lawyer, referring to the George W. Bush administration's decision to spurn the 1997 Kyoto climate agreement. One former U.S. official agreed: "Will global leaders trust the U.S. to negotiate a climate treaty ever again? After Kyoto and Paris, who will trust us to keep our word as a nation? Our credibility is gone." To view online click here. Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906 ED_001523_00000692-00016 Back Was this Pro content helpful? Tell us what you think in one click. Yes, very. Somewhat Neutral Not really Not at all You received this POLITICO Pro content because your customized settings include: Morning Energy. To change your alert settings, please go to https://www.politicopro.com/settings This email was sent to jacksomryan@epa.gov by: POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA Sierra Club v. EPA, 1:17-cv-01906 ED_001523_00000692-00017