E2-Wire

OVERNIGHT ENERGY: NRC chief to discuss lessons learned from Japan nuke disaster

by Andrew Restuccia and Ben Geman - 10/04/11 10:23 PM ET

But several commissioners initially raised concerns about Jaczko’s timeframe, arguing that while some regulations can be implemented quickly, others need further review.

The commissioners came to a compromise in August, instructing NRC staff to review and prioritize the federal task force’s recommendations.

In September, NRC staff released a report calling on the commission to immediately require nuclear power plant operators to re-evaluate the risks posed by earthquakes and floods, taking into account information that came to light in the aftermath of this year’s disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant.

{mosads}Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) a critic of nuclear energy, will also appear at the summit Wednesday, along with Richard Caperton, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, and Allison Macfarlane, an environmental policy professor at George Mason University.

NEWS BITES:

Rep. Simpson: Senate Dems afraid of crafting Interior spending bill: From The Hill’s Erik Wasson: Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee’s Interior and Environment panel, said Tuesday that the Senate has been unable to craft an Interior spending bill because Democrats are afraid their own members will support riders limiting the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Wasson reports: “They are holding it back, I believe, because, there are some provisions in there that they would lose,” Simpson said. “Greenhouse gas is one of them.”

He said another provision has to do whether limiting the ability of the EPA to regulate small streams.

“Even if they did a markup and it had those things in it, it makes it pretty easy to conference. You can say, ‘wait a minute, guys, your own members supported this,’ ” he said.

Simpson is looking to meet his Senate counterpart, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), to negotiate the bill soon.

Read more here.

State Department preparing defense of Keystone pipeline review: The State Department plans to release information about the scope of its meetings with a range of parties on the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline.

“It’s going to show broad engagement with government of Canada, with industry, with NGOs, with the environmental community, with public interest advocates on all sides of this issue. So let us get that together for you and then we will give it to you,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters Tuesday.

The department hopes to deflect claims it has been too close to TransCanada Corp., the project developer, in the wake of emails that show a friendly relationship between a department official and a TransCanada lobbyist.

Nuland said she does not expect the release of a batch of emails, but did say, “I think we’ll be able to give you a good picture of the engagements that we’ve had across the board on this issue.”

Her comments come a day after the environmental group Friends of the Earth released emails between Paul Elliott, a top lobbyist at TransCanada and former aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, and Marja Verloop, a State Department official who works on energy and environmental issues at the U.S. embassy in Ottawa.

Nuland said Monday that Verloop did not play a role in the development of State’s environmental impact statement on the project, which brought the pipeline a step closer to approval, and added she will not play a role in Clinton’s ultimate decision on the project. Nuland also emphasized that Verloop meets with a range of parties, including green groups, Canadian officials and industry.

The Obama administration plans to make a final decision on the proposed $7 billion, 1,700-mile pipeline — which would bring crude from Alberta’s oil sands projects to Gulf Coast refineries — by the end of the year.

Green groups to Obama: Cut State Department out of Keystone review: A coalition of environmental and public-interest groups called on President Obama Tuesday to ignore the State Department’s input on a controversial proposed pipeline, in emails (noted above) that they say show the agency has a “pro-pipeline bias.’

“Mr. President, given this substantial evidence of pro-industry bias within your administration — evidence that the State Department was acting in partnership with the oil industry and Canadian government to secure pipeline approval prior to conducting an environmental review — it would be irresponsible for you to follow the State Department’s guidance as you make your determination about whether the pipeline is in the national interest,” the groups, which include Friends of the Earth, 350.org and the Center for Biological Diversity, wrote in a letter to Obama Tuesday.

Read more here.

Inhofe formalizes hearing request on EPA IG climate report: Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) on Monday sent Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) a letter spelling out his case for holding a hearing on an EPA inspector general report that delved into the Environmental Protection Agency’s peer review of a key climate document.

{mossecondads}The IG report alleged EPA did not follow Office of Management and Budget guidelines for peer review of the support document for its 2009 “endangerment finding” that greenhouse gases threaten humans, which forms the legal underpinning for climate regulations.

Inhofe’s letter states:

The Clean Air Act requires the Administrator to make her own judgment on the science, which she claims to have done in Court filings. Yet contradictory statements are made to the EPA’s IG. To ignore this duplicity and not hold oversight hearings is to accept the discrepancy and the poor state of EPA’s scientific process. EPA needs to explain to the American people why it blatantly circumvented its own procedures to make what appears to be a predetermined endangerment finding.

Inhofe is the top Republican on the environment panel and the leading climate skeptic on Capitol Hill.

EPA officials and environmentalists have noted the report doesn’t challenge the underlying science behind EPA’s endangerment finding. The report also finds that EPA met its statutory requirements for the endangerment finding and “generally followed” requirements for ensuring the quality of the supporting documents.

Overall, they have cast the report as a detailed discussion of a procedural detail rather than as evidence of flaws in EPA decision-making on climate change. We have much more on the report here and here.

Boxer’s office declined to comment on the hearing request. But the senator, in a prepared statement last week, noted that the report doesn’t question the science behind the endangerment finding.

“It is time to move on to protect the American people from the impacts of climate change, which we are already beginning to see,” Boxer said.

Chu applauds Nobel Prize winner: Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Tuesday congratulated Saul Perlmutter, a physicist at the department’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, for winning the Nobel Prize in Physics.

“His groundbreaking work showed us that the expansion of the universe is actually speeding up, rather than slowing down,” Chu said in a statement. “Dr. Perlmutter’s award is another reminder of the incredible talent and world leading expertise America has at our National Laboratories.”

Chu shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 with two colleagues for research focused on cooling atoms with lasers.

Read more about Perlmutter’s work here.

ON TAP WEDNESDAY

White House, Cabinet officials to tout grid projects: Several top Obama administration officials will announce “grid modernization pilot projects for accelerated Federal permitting,” according to an advisory.

“The Administration’s recently formed Rapid Response Team for Transmission (RRTT) will announce steps to accelerate responsible and informed deployment of several key transmission facilities. When built, the pilot projects will create thousands of construction and operations jobs, and help to transform the Nation’s electric system into a modern, 21st century grid that is safer, more secure, and gives consumers more choices about their energy,” an advisory states.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, White House CEQ Chairwoman Nancy Sutley, and senior adviser to the secretary of Energy Lauren Azar are slated to discuss the projects on a call with reporters.

Gulf Coast lawmakers to ramp up House push for BP penalty money: A coalition of Gulf Coast House lawmakers will roll out legislation Wednesday that would steer 80 percent of Clean Water Act penalties from the BP oil spill into the region’s recovery and restoration.

“The Gulf Coast members have been working for months to come together on legislation to ensure that the fines BP will have to pay for damages related to the Macondo Spill will be dedicated to Gulf Coast states as we still recover from last year’s disaster,” said Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.). “This is an important first step that we’re taking in the House to put in place a fair process that allows us to restore the Gulf Coast region that was directly impacted by the disaster.”

The companion Senate bill designed to steer what is expected to be billions of dollars in fines to the region cleared the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last month.

Forum to explore electricity markets: FERC Commissioner Philip Moeller will headline a Capitol Hill event on electricity markets. The event is hosted by the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, COMPETE Coalition and the Electric Power Supply Association. More here.

Event to examine healthy ecosystems: The Woodrow Wilson Center will host an event titled “Healthy People, Healthy Ecosystems: Results From a Public-Private Partnership.” 

It will examine programs to provide clean water and other services in areas of high biodiversity in Nepal, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo. More here.

Think tank: Close the efficiency ‘gap’: The environmental think tank Resources for the Future will convene experts for a forum that asks, “Can Creative Financing Programs Close the Energy Efficiency Gap?”

The event is full but a webcast is available. More info here.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT…

Here’s a quick roundup of Tuesday’s E2 stories:

— White House targets lawmaker for criticizing solar energy loans
— Sen. Paul to meet with pipeline officials over bill he’s blocking
— Rep. Shimkus criticizes Obama for defending Solyndra loan: ‘I can’t believe he said that’
— California senators to Rand Paul: Stop blocking pipeline safety bill
— Sen. Bingaman planning hearing on clean-energy investment
— House GOP says delaying EPA rules better than Obama’s jobs plan
— Long-awaited report finds next-wave biofuels unlikely to meet energy targets
— Bingaman: Emissions question on shale gas must be settled
— Rep. Stearns: US ‘can’t compete with China’ on green energy programs
— Fossil fuel subsidies rising despite reform effort