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SPECIAL EDITOR’S NOTE — FAREWELL, JEREMY: Today is Jeremy’s last day with the Washington Examiner and last time writing for Daily on Energy.
His editor (that’s me, Joe Lawler) is sorry to see him go. Jeremy is a pleasure to work with. He is a strong writer with a great sense for stories and an ability to see angles where others do not. In his relatively short time on the beat, he’s gained a wealth of knowledge about a lot of different energy-related beats.
We’ll look forward to seeing what he does next.
Please follow Jeremy for updates.
Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers Jeremy Beaman (@jeremywbeaman) and Breanne Deppisch (@breanne_dep). Email jbeaman@washingtonexaminer.com or bdeppisch@washingtonexaminer.com for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.
FORD SECURES $9.2 BILLION GOVERNMENT LOAN FOR EV BATTERIES, THE LARGEST SINCE 2009 BAILOUTS: The Department of Energy is loaning Ford and its battery manufacturing partner $9.2 billion to finance the construction of three electric vehicle battery plants in Tennessee and Kentucky, a massive cash infusion meant to ramp up domestic battery manufacturing capabilities to compete with China.
The conditional loan agreement, granted to Ford and its Korean battery manufacturing partner by DOE's Loan Programs Office, is the largest government loan made to a U.S. automaker since the 2009 financial crisis and subsequent bailout of the auto industry.
The Biden administration has raced to build out the electric vehicle and battery manufacturing supply chain in a bid to compete against China and deliver on its goal of having 50% of all new cars sold in the United States be electric vehicles by the year 2030 – a significant uptick from this year, when EVs made up just 7% of all cars sold in the U.S.
The new BlueOval SK plants are slated to create roughly 5,000 construction jobs and 7,500 operating jobs once the sites are up and running, according to the DOE.
Jigar Shah, the head of the DOE’s Loan Programs Office, told Reuters that the goal of the new loan "is to have people choose to put these supply chains here in the United States, not in other countries, and to do them faster and more confidently here." Read more from Breanne here.
NEW WORLD BANK PLANS FOR COUNTRIES VULNERABLE TO CLIMATE CHANGE: The new World Bank president announced a host of new measures designed to aid vulnerable countries in the aftermath of a natural disaster, including a proposed debt payment pause for disaster-hit countries.
Speaking with other leaders in Paris today, World Bank President Ajay Banga outlined a so-called “toolkit” for affected countries dealing with a disaster—including allowing for more flexibility to allow them to redirect funds for emergency response, providing new types of insurance to help development projects, and aiding developing countries as they build advance emergency systems.
"It is clear that the international financial architecture has failed in its mission to provide a global safety net for developing countries," said United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
The summit brought together leaders from some 40 countries and global organizations to Paris to discuss how to boost funding for low-income countries and free up funds to help developing economies deal with the devastating effects of climate change.
In Paris, leaders are expected to back a push for multilateral development banks to put more capital on the line to boost lending, according to Reuters, which reviewed a draft statement from the summit.
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION MOVES TO RESTORE ENDANGERED SPECIES PROTECTIONS: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed reinstating federal protections for plants and animals classified as threatened, an effort to restore rules that were scaled back during the Trump administration.
Restoring the protections, which were dropped in 2019, would make it easier to designate land areas as “critical” to a species’ survival, according to the Associated Press. It would also do away with a rule requiring officials to factor in economic impacts when deciding whether animals or plants need protection.
GREEN GROUPS ASK BIDEN TO CUT DOWN ON LANDFILL METHANE EMISSIONS: More than a dozen environmental groups asked the Biden administration today to crack down on methane emissions from landfills, arguing in a new petition that the EPA’s current standards do not go far enough to crack down on the nation’s third-largest source of methane in the U.S.
According to the petition, by implementing two additional practices—upgrading technology used to burn off landfill gas and expanding the system used to capture gas after it’s burned off—the administration can save roughly 466,000 metric tons of methane annually.
It also recommended additional actions, such as lowering the threshold for which landfills have to install controls and improve monitoring.
“We’re asking EPA to look at its regulations and to revise them,” Leah Kelly, a senior attorney at the D.C.-based Environmental Integrity Project, told The Hill. “We think they very clearly do not meet the legal standard required … the fact that states are issuing stronger regulations clearly demonstrates the fact that more can be done.”
REPUBLICANS REQUEST UPDATE ON WOTUS AFTER SACKETT RULING: Leading Republicans requested that EPA update them on the agency’s implementation of the Waters of the United States following the Supreme Court’s Sackett ruling, which put new constraints on the agency’s ability to regulate under the Clean Water Act.
Sens. Shelley Moore Capito and Cynthia Lummis and Reps. Sam Graves and David Rouzer, who lead relevant environment and infrastructure committees, criticized EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers for finalizing WOTUS while the court’s Sackett decision was outstanding and asked how the administration is enforcing the regulations now that one of its underlying tests for deeming a water feature regulatable was deemed unlawful.
“This Administration ignored our repeated admonitions that the Agencies should wait until the Supreme Court acted to proceed, and our warnings that the rule being drafted would not be ‘durable,’” the lawmakers said in a letter to EPA and the Army Corps yesterday.
The Biden administration expressed disappointment in the ruling, which delegitimized Justice Anthony Kennedy’s significant nexus test. EPA’s rule relied on the significant nexus test in order to cover some categories of waters under WOTUS.
HIGH COSTS AND LOWER OIL AND GAS PRICES STUNTING GROWTH: DALLAS FED: Rising production costs and low commodity prices stunted business activity growth in the oil and gas sector during the second quarter, according to the Dallas Fed’s Q2 Energy Survey out today.
Surveyed firms reported rising costs for the 10th straight quarter on the back of muted product prices. Spot natural gas averaged $2.03 per MMBtu during the survey period.
Although employment in the sector continued to grow, the rate of production slowed relative to the first quarter, particularly affecting firms that prioritize gas extraction, according to Dallas Fed economists.
“They say that the lower natural gas prices are causing activity on natural gas focused drilling to decline,” senior business economist Kunal Patel told reporters this morning.
Change in fortunes: High oil and gas prices drove new investment up last year and enabled energy to outperform other sectors, and many were bullish on prices due to the war in Ukraine and disruption to the status quo whereby Russia was the Europeans’ top gas supplier.
“When we're looking back at last year, we even had a special question which kind of talked about if they believe the age of inexpensive natural gas in the U.S. is coming to an end. The respondents — some said no, but quite a few said yes,” Patel said.
Producers were plunged right back into cheap gas territory in early March, and futures prices have been anemic for most of the year below $3 per MMBtu.
OIL AND GAS EXECS BEARISH ON AI DISPLACING WORKERS: Most oil and gas executives do not expect artificial intelligence to replace workers at their E&P and field servicing companies in the near future, according to the Dallas Fed’s survey.
More than three quarters of executives said they don’t expect to use AI to displace workers over the next five years. Smaller firms that produce less than 10,000 barrels per day were even more bearish on AI, with 84% not expecting AI penetration to displace workers in the short term.
“For a small firm where personnel wear multiple hats, it will be difficult for artificial intelligence to replace these employees in the near term,” one survey respondent said, expressing skepticism that programming could sufficiently handle any given problem. “Also, our industry is such that the right answer may not come from what has been done in the past, which is the foundation of artificial intelligence.”
The Rundown
Financial Times China’s dominance of solar poses difficult choices for the west
Bloomberg A giant drilling machine moves Stockholm toward an emissions-free future
Associated Press Tornadoes, hail and hurricane-force winds tear through west Texas, kill 4 people in small town