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Columbia Energy Exchange

Reporters’ Roundtable: Trump’s Quick Start on Energy

Guests

Transcript

Bill Loveless: Maxine Joslow, welcome to Columbia Energy Exchange and Jennifer Dlouhy. Welcome back.

Jennifer Dlouhy: Thank you, Bill.

Maxine Joselow: Thank you.

Bill Loveless: Well, I’ve looked forward to having this conversation. So much has been going on over the past few days. Well, let’s start by first having you each briefly describe your role and your beats, for your respective news organizations..

Jennifer Dlouhy: I cover energy and environmental policy for Bloomberg News. And really what that means is that I’m focused, really closely on the intersection of policymaking in Washington, D. C., and how it affects the oil and gas and renewable energy companies around the country.

Bill Loveless: Maxine?

Maxine Joselow: And I have a similar beat as Jen. I cover U.S. climate policy and politics for the Washington Post, and I’m really interested in stories about complex policy topics that affect real people.

Bill Loveless: Well, President Trump promised to drill baby drill in his inauguration speech and declared an energy emergency through an executive order right out of the gate. Jen, what are the main points and the immediate impacts?

Jennifer Dlouhy: Well, the most immediate impact, it seems to me, is for wind development, particularly offshore, where he moved right away to pause permitting of offshore wind projects onshore as well, although the significance is mostly in coastal waters. And he moved to indefinitely withdraw all of the U.S. coastal waters from future wind leasing. And this is, you know, this is important because it’s an industry in its infancy in the U.S. and one that has really struggled with costs, in recent years. So, you know, that’s one of the most immediate things. Much of what he’s done,  in other orders, is set things in motion.

And we’ll see the regulatory changes play out over time. But that is the one that hits right away — and for a really key industry that’s building in the United States now.

Bill Loveless: Yeah, Maxine, what’s your take on the, the most immediate impacts?

Maxine Joselow: Not to be boring and just agree, but I agree with Jen. I think, just to elaborate on her points, I think the executive order that declared a quote unquote national emergency. The experts I talked to largely viewed that as a symbolic move. You know, we’re not necessarily really in an energy emergency, according to those experts.

We’re now producing record amounts of oil and gas in the United States. And the order that could have the real biggest impact is a separate order that issued the pause on permitting and leasing for offshore wind. And just to elaborate a bit on that, the experts I talked to did also agree that the largest impact will be on the offshore wind sector because onshore — not many people realize this, but 99 percent of projects are located on private lands where the projects typically need to go through a permitting process with state and local authorities.

They don’t need to interact with the federal government quite as much unless there’s an endangered species on the property and then they need to deal with the Endangered Species Act or what have you.

Bill Loveless: Yeah, I want to dig into some of these specific issues in the discussion. There’s a lot more there that we can discuss, but, you know, we sort of touched on the immediate. Maxine, what about medium-term, longer-term? What’s your take on how things might play out over those periods of time?

Maxine Joselow: Yeah, I mean, that’s kind of the key time period to watch because not much of this will be immediate. You know, there’s a lot of fanfare when the president signs an executive order, but there are presidential historians who I think have said that an executive order is basically a glorified press release on some fancy paper with a big splashy announcement, but then the real impact comes months or even years down the line.

And I think, especially in terms of the executive order on declaring an energy emergency and also a separate order on rescinding and replacing a lot of Biden era regulations. That’s going to take months, if not years, for agencies to do the grunt work of, you know, replacing the technical record, rewriting each rule, to ensure that it survives court challenges, which are inevitable.

So, that’s what I’ll be watching in this space for the next couple of years, probably.

Bill Loveless: Yeah. I’m just thinking, Jen, it was a different start for this Trump administration compared to the last one on energy and other issues. In a recent story, you quoted Myron Ebell the chairman of American Lands Council and a supporter of Trump as saying, quote, they’re just more ambitious and getting started much earlier this time around.

Jennifer Dlouhy: Oh, yeah, no, I think we absolutely saw that on day one and really in this first week where, you know, out of the gate, they had orders ready and not just drafted. That was the case a little bit last time. But lawyered, in this case, right? They are avoiding some of the legal pitfalls that we saw in the first week of the Trump term last time around — by, you know, just very precisely initiating actions without telling an agency exactly what to do, things like that —  but [this time] they’ve done their homework. They spent the last many months getting ready. I mean, the emergency order declaration itself was the product of an army of Washington lawyers that were kind of scouring, you know, the law books looking for any obscure emergency authority that could be put to use to enable energy infrastructure construction. And so we’ve just really seen that borne out in these early days. They know what they’re doing. They are prepared to do it and, and they’re going to move with haste to enact their agenda.

Bill Loveless: Well, yeah, there certainly is a lot to watch here and energy security is taking precedence in this administration, particularly as it applies to the electric grid, building more baseload plants with natural gas seems to be one priority. Maxine, how is the administration likely to pursue this goal? What options does it have at its disposal?

Maxine Joselow: Yeah, well, I think you’re right, Bill, baseload is going to be a buzzword under Trump 2. 0. I don’t know if you got to watch Doug Burgum’s confirmation hearing to be Interior Secretary, but I think if you had a bingo card and you had the word baseload on it, then you would have just been check, check, check, check! So I think they use that word, you know, to refer primarily to fossil fuels, but also to nuclear, you know, Chris Wright, the nominee to lead the Energy Department, is a strong supporter of nuclear energy as well. And I think that the rhetoric we’re seeing out of Wright and Burgum and other Trump appointees or nominees is largely about this need for more energy to shore up national security and to help us compete with China. It also, I think, largely relies on concerns about rising electricity demand from AI and data centers, which is something that the Biden administration was very concerned about, too, but for climate reasons and not quite as much national security reasons.

Jennifer Dlouhy: You know, one thing that was really interesting to me about,   the discussion that we’re hearing on baseload is just how much renewable is being left out of the picture. The emergency order very clearly defines energy as almost everything but wind, solar, and storage. It’s geothermal. It’s nuclear. It’s oil, gas, and coal, but it is definitely not wind and solar and batteries in the view of this administration.

And at that Burgum confirmation hearing, you know, we heard Senate Democrats kind of push him, push the likely incoming Interior Secretary, to say that renewables, when they are combined with battery storage, can be considered baseload. That they can be considered 24/7 power, always-on power.

And clearly that’s just gonna be a point of tension and friction for the years to come.

Bill Loveless: Yet, even at that hearing, Jen, as I recall, Burgum, under questioning from Democratic senators,  did acknowledge wind energy. In fact,  there’s a substantial amount of wind energy generated in his home state of North Dakota. 

And when pressed by Senator Angus King of Maine, seemed to say, when it comes to existing offshore wind projects, they’ll probably be okay.

Maxine Joselow: Yeah, I, just to jump in here, I caught that exchange with Senator King and I think it was illustrative of Burgum, and really all these nominees, just trying to walk a fine line and be careful and not make news in their hearings. Which I think they all managed to do and are on the glide path towards confirmation.

But I don’t know that I would place as much stock in that response as I would in, you know, what Trump ultimately wants and is telling Burgum and others to do on that.

Bill Loveless: Yeah. And as you note, the president is no fan of wind energy.  When it comes to offshore wind, he says he doesn’t want any turbines built during his administration. Yeah. Yet along the U.S. East Coast, there are a number of projects underway. Jen, what’s in store for offshore wind in the United States, both in terms of what’s being built and what’s in the pipeline?

Jennifer Dlouhy: Well, 11 projects have been approved for construction off the U.S. East Coast in federal waters some of those were actually kind of teed up during the original Trump administration under lease sales at that time. While the initial actions focus on future permitting and future lease sales, it’s clear that the permitted projects face a whole heap of political risk and jeopardy. And if we didn’t think that was true, Trump made it very clear in a social media post on Thursday when he went after one of the wind farms planned off the coast of New Jersey and said, hopefully it’s dead and gone. It is of course still permitted, this particular project, Atlantic shores. Litigation is ongoing on that project and others. Each of those lawsuits really provide an opportunity for this administration, the Justice Department, and the Interior Department, to agree to a voluntary remand to settle those cases and say we’re going to take another look at that project approval.

So you know what’s really interesting here is despite the platitudes from Governor Burgum at the hearing at his confirmation hearing and despite what that initial wind order looked like this really could mean a lot of chilling of activity even for projects that got the green light years ago and are putting turbines in the water soon, if not already.

Bill Loveless: You know, actually, we’ve talked a bit about Governor Burgum and his hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.  You know, what did we learn from the hearings, for these principal energy and environmental nominees, you know,  Burgum, Chris Wright at DOE, Lee Zeldin at EPA, were there any surprises?

Maxine Joselow: You know. I’m sorry if this is a disappointing answer, but I actually don’t think we learned a ton. I think they’re all pretty guarded and careful and fairly circumspect in their responses under questioning, both at the hearings and then in some of the responses to questions for the record and writing after the fact. 

I’m sorry I don’t have, like, a big revelation for you, Bill. But, you know, one thing that did stick out to me as a common throughline at all three hearings, for Lee Zeldin, the EPA nominee, and Chris Wright and Doug Burgum was the fact that all three men under questioning did acknowledge that climate change is real, which in 2025 shouldn’t be a terribly controversial viewpoint to articulate.

But President Trump has in the past, although not quite as recently, called climate change a hoax and he hasn’t, you know, embraced the scientific consensus on climate change. So I thought it was notable at least that his three nominees for these environmental positions did all acknowledge that.

Bill Loveless: These hearings are often so scripted, but that stood out to me as well, because they were pressed on that and, and, there wasn’t any flat out denial going on there. There was in fact, some acknowledgement. You know, we’ll see what, what happens with that. The other thing of course we look for on the Hill these days is the reconciliation bill. It’s a top priority of the Trump administration and the Republican Congress. Jen, you know, first for those who may not understand the term, what, what is a reconciliation bill?.

Jennifer Dlouhy: I struggle to explain it to my friends and family outside the beltway who probably don’t want to know, usually the mechanics and how the sausage is made in Washington. But the important part is, this is a budget mechanism. It’s been used in recent years to implement policy, even though it’s got to be policy, tied to financial, and budgetary considerations relatively quickly. It can move through the process without higher levels of votes, without filibusters. And it is a way for the president to execute his agenda pretty quickly,  you know, on narrow party-line votes, on simple majorities. But Maxine can probably explain it far better than I.

Maxine Joselow: Well, Jen, I think you’re probably one of the most popular people at parties when you’re explaining reconciliation.

Jennifer Dlouhy: Oh yeah.

Maxine Joselow:  I would just, I think that was a great explanation. I would just add that, you know, Democrats use reconciliation to pass President Biden’s and their signature climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, and now we’re seeing Republicans with complete control in Washington using it to advance extended tax cuts.

Bill Loveless: And, and, Maxine what might it mean for Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act?

Maxine Joselow: I think that is the big question right now, if you’re a lobbyist or DC insider,  and you’re trying to figure that out,  you know, it’s uncertain as to the fate of these lucrative tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act for clean energy and electric vehicles. And, there are some Republicans, President Trump included, who have called the entire bill the Green New Scam and called for getting rid of all of these subsidies. There are also many Republican lawmakers who have projects and investments and jobs flowing to their districts and states as a result of these credits and are reluctant to get rid of some, maybe not all, of them.

I think the prevailing wisdom in D.C., the general expectation, is that the tax credit for electric vehicles is particularly vulnerable given how incredibly politicized that’s become and given how many on the right view it as sort of a handout to the wealthy and to folks in California. I think there are some credits that may be more safe, like those for carbon capture technology, since that’s a technology that typically has garnered bipartisan support on the Hill. Nuclear may be also a little bit more safe — although, it’s kind of interesting because the way these credits are structured, they’re supposed to be technology neutral.

And so everyone kind of sinks or swims together.  They can’t just target a credit for just solar or just wind. They’re tech neutral by design, which Senator Wyden has sort of taken credit for crafting in that way to make them more durable.

Jennifer Dlouhy: You know, what strikes me about that — I love that idea that they all sink or swim together. That’s what’s going to make this so incredibly difficult for House Republicans in particular to get something through that really pares down the IRA and is passable. You know, pares down the IRA and offsets the cost of extending Trump’s tax cuts, but, but actually can get through the chamber.

 You’ve got Midwest Republicans who really like wind power. You have a whole bunch of Democrats and Republicans who like nuclear power. You know, that’s a different coalition than the folks who like solar and some of the other technologies that benefit all from the same credit. And so that kind of creates a political dynamic that’s going to be really tough for leaders.

I also think just the narrow margins in the chamber are just going to make all of this incredibly difficult to execute, but also incredibly difficult to predict. You know, I’ve heard that there are assurances being made about the tech neutral production tax credit being relatively safe. And yet  I’ve also heard caution from, from some folks on the Hill saying, yeah, but what happens when a Republican who’s worried about keeping this, who wants to keep this, gets the call from the president, gets squeezed by the president, what happens in that situation? So, you know, it’s just going to be a really tumultuous time and a really challenging thing to cover, but also for House Republicans and Senate Republicans to try to execute.

Bill Loveless: Yeah, I’m thinking about how, how, how energy politics has changed. You know, I covered, you know, for years, covered energy politics on the Hill. And it was basically producing and consuming states, right? The producing states were those who produced oil and gas, right? And the consuming states were the ones that consumed whatever, you know, whatever came through the pipe or across the power line.

But now it is really complicated. A state like Texas, for example, an oil and gas leader, particularly with the Permian Basin, is also a leading state for renewable energy these days. And, you just see those sorts of combinations of, energy options, and interests, sort of mixed up among states.

 It’s a very different picture today than it was. And of course, given the approach of the Trump administration these days, it only makes it that much more difficult to sort of see how it plays out, in, in the time ahead. And Maxine, the. Trump’s executive order does, in fact, pause disbursements of funds under the IRA and the infrastructure bill.

Maxine Joselow: It does, although I think it’s important to note that the Biden administration did as much as they could to get money out the door before leaving office. And so when you look at the loans, for example, that were flowing out of the Department of Energy’s loan programs office for climate technology that really ramped up in the final days of the Biden administration because the Biden officials knew that this would be a target of the Trump administration on day one.

Similarly, the Environmental Protection Agency was authorized to stand up this $27 billion program to provide more financing, primarily through grants, solar and other clean energy projects. And they were able to allocate all $27 billion before Biden left office, so, I’m not trying to minimize the significance of, you know, pausing the ongoing disbursement of these funds, but just to say that a lot has already gone out the door.

Bill Loveless: What becomes of this loan program,  over the long term?

Maxine Joselow: TBD? I mean, I think that’s something that we’ll all be eagerly watching in this space to see what Chris Wright, once he is likely confirmed as Energy Secretary, does to the Loan Programs Office. I think it wouldn’t be surprising if there were a long pause in the issuance of any loans and obviously this is an office that has historically been politicized dating back to the Obama administration when they made a loan to Solyndra and that became a scandal and something that Republicans like to point to as an example of a failure from that office to do due diligence. So I think we’re going to, have to wait and see what their long term plans are. But in the short term, I would expect a pause on all activity out of that office.

Jennifer Dlouhy: There are a lot of projects that would fit into a Trump  energy dominance bucket that are going through or trying to get through the loan programs office and win a guarantee. But it does remain to be seen whether the forces wanting to pause activity altogether — to kind of shut this office down — if those went out versus the forces inside that say, “let’s just use this program to benefit carbon capture and nuclear and some of our favorite industries.”

Bill Loveless: Yeah. I was just thinking, though, some of the most recent loans that were finalized by that office were ones that get at this whole issue of reliable supplies of electricity, which seems to be the dominant energy security issue of the day. There was a $6. 6 billion package to help, well, in this case it was Rivian, build a major manufacturing plant in Georgia.

And there was a $1.6 billion loan guarantee for plug power. But, also on, again, back on that electricity side of things, there was  $22.9 billion in loan guarantees to help eight electric utilities around the country modernize their grids and add large amounts of renewable energy,  and pass along the savings to customers. Again, it was renewable energy, but it did seem to address, again, at that,  energy security issue, that we hear so much about these days. 

The regulations. They’re certainly in the crosshairs for this administration — especially those that have been implemented during the Biden administration, that affect power plants and vehicles. Maxine, what’s in store for them in coming months? How easy will it be to eliminate them? Or difficult?

Maxine Joselow: Yeah. Funny you should ask. I have a long piece that was published I think last week that delved into how easy or difficult it will be to unwind. Biden’s climate legacy writ large, but also looked individually at each of the major environmental regulations. And the consensus from environmental lawyers and other experts that I interviewed for that article was that it’s going to be difficult in a lot of cases, and easy in just a few cases.

So, I think it’ll be fairly difficult and time consuming for the folks at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department to unwind what was arguably the biggest climate rule of the Biden era, which was the greenhouse gas emissions limits for cars and light duty trucks coupled with the fuel economy or gas mileage rules that DOT puts out in concert with EPA and those together really aim to accelerate the nation’s transition to EVs, which, as we’ve talked about, Trump and Republicans are no fan of.

So I think, you know, Trump has called that an EV mandate. He’s promised to end it on day one. I think the reality is that there is a pretty lengthy technical and scientific record that career scientists and bureaucrats at EPA have spent a long time putting together, showing that under the Clean Air Act, technology like EVs is generally accepted as a technology that reduces emissions from cars and trucks.

And so it’s going to take them a while to replace that. And that’s just one example. I could go on, but it’d probably be really boring.

Bill Loveless: You see it as a tough road to hoe, Jen? 

Jennifer Dlouhy: Yeah, I agree with everything Maxine just said. The challenge is in writing these rules and building up a record that can support a reversal in an era when the Supreme Court has whittled away at, at deference to agency power and, and in general that is probably likely to, enhance deregulatory efforts, not impede them, but there are times where, it is going to provide obstacles or create obstacles to what the Trump administration wants to do. And it also will force them to make choices. I mean, as just a practical reality, you know, the Trump team at EPA and at Interior and DOE, they’re going to have a limited number of political appointees and just time and bandwidth to devote to these rules.

They’re going to pick their targets and their priorities, of course. But we’ve seen how the process of rewriting these rules can take a very long time. Even the Biden administration, which tried to, you know, hit the gas on day one, was putting out its marquee rules on climate,  you know, involving methane from oil wells and, and the tailpipe pollution standards and the power plant greenhouse gas standards in the last two years of the administration.

So unwinding it could take just as long and be just as legally fraught. And of course Trump has got basically only four years to get this done.

Bill Loveless: What about this so-called endangerment finding? Trump ordered a review of EPA’s 2009 finding that greenhouse gases are a danger to human health and the environment,  it’s sort of the basis for the legal actions that EPA has taken under the Obama and Biden administrations to regulate greenhouse gases.

Now the Supreme Court has declined to overturn this ruling in the past, but you wrote recently that this order by Trump for review sets the stage for a vast policy upheaval. What did you mean by that?

Jennifer Dlouhy: Well, I mean, this is, as you say, it’s this 2009 conclusion that,  greenhouse gases, six of them in particular, carbon dioxide and methane and four others, endanger public health and welfare. It basically provides the legal foundation for a host of greenhouse gas regulations that have come forward from EPA since 2009.

This finding is a, and has been a, target for conservatives for a very long time who really just want to see it wiped away. Whether the administration actually chooses to do that hard work of trying to upend this conclusion about the threat that climate change and these greenhouse gases pose is, is a bit of an open question.

I mean, at this point, Trump is directing the EPA to study it for 30 days and report back with recommendations. But a real consideration for them has to be this bandwidth question, this question of: do you want to spend however many man hours it’s going to take to try to rewrite this scientific conclusion that may not hold up in court? Environmentalists would say there’s no way it would hold up in court.  And maybe that detracts from some of your immediate short term targets in terms of rewriting the individual climate regulations. And, just to think about how Herculean a task this might be… we knew a lot about climate science in 2009 and what greenhouse gases were doing and how they acted in the atmosphere. Think of how much we’ve learned in the intervailing 16 years, you know, there’s a lot of scientific evidence that would have to be rebutted and they basically have to flip the script on this — and hope that they could convince courts that they were pursuing the right path.

Maxine Joselow: And just to jump in after what you were saying, Jen, I mean, I would agree with all of that, but just to add, I think there was a sort of telling or interesting exchange during the confirmation hearing for Lee Zeldin to be EPA Administrator, where Senator Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, was really pressing Zeldin on whether he would commit to upholding or not trying to revoke the endangerment finding. And Zeldin didn’t exactly commit to that.

He pushed back on Senator Markey’s assertion that the endangerment finding obligates EPA to take actions to fight climate change. And he said, well, it’s not an obligation. It’s an authorization. Don’t quote me on that. But I think that was his general point. So I thought that was potentially telling.

Bill Loveless: Yeah, but a lot for this new administrator to digest, right, in just 30 days.

Maxine Joselow: I think Lee Zeldin has a lot to digest. He has a background as a lawyer and as a House member from New York, but he doesn’t have a background leading an environmental agency at the state level. So, I think he’s probably getting up to speed on the endangerment finding and a whole bunch of other issues. 

I had a chance to very briefly interview him, when he was on his way to some meetings on the Hill, before his confirmation hearing, and he told me that he had spent his Thanksgiving break getting up to speed on all of these issues and watching footage of the testimony of past EPA administrators at their confirmation hearing. So, I thought that was an interesting and funny little detail.

Bill Loveless: Yeah, you know, you talk about the court, the Supreme Court and as well as other courts. But the Supreme Court has played a very significant role in regulatory matters, over the past year or so. Among its decisions, of course, was striking down the Chevron Doctrine, which had given discretion to agencies in deciding how to implement laws passed by Congress. Maxine, does this play into or against regulatory actions by the Trump administration?

Maxine Joselow: You know, I’m not an environmental lawyer, but I talked to a lot of them, and I think a lot of them were reluctant when this decision first came down from the Supreme Court to acknowledge any silver lining insofar as that this could make it harder for the Trump administration to roll back environmental rules because courts would be less likely to defer to their interpretations of the underlying statutes, whether it’s the Clean Air Act or the Endangered Species Act.

That being said, I still do think that’s a really interesting space to watch for us policy wonks, right? It’ll be really interesting to see what happens when EPA or any of these environmental agencies finalizes a rollback that inevitably gets challenged by environmental groups, Democratic Attorneys General, and other plaintiffs, and a court, maybe doesn’t need to defer to the agency’s interpretation of the underlying statute anymore. Is that an obstacle for the Trump administration? I think TBD, but I’ll be watching that space.

Bill Loveless: Yeah, how about you, Jen?

Jennifer Dlouhy: Yeah, I think it is absolutely a space to watch and it’s a little bit unpredictable and a lot will depend on what courts are hearing some of these cases from the get go. But, I take Maxine’s point and agree with it. You know, environmentalists were reluctant to see the silver lining here, but they may actually find it in the next four years.

Bill Loveless: Yeah, so much that’s unpredictable right now, huh? Hey, the Treasury Department, complicated agency. One, that I know, you know, again, looking back in my days as a reporter, I’ll always find it very difficult to sort of see through and understand what was happening there. But it plays a big role in these issues, these energy markets these days, particularly its role in tariff decisions, sanctions and, and, and tax credits.

 I know you probably haven’t been focusing specifically on [the] Treasury in terms of these hearings in recent days, Jen, but what should we look for, from,  Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and his department on these types of energy considerations?

Jennifer Dlouhy: One thing to think about Scott Bessent is how he has clearly seen oil and gas production as a source of revenue for the federal government. And I think that’s just an important framing for how we look at what happens at the Treasury over the next four years. But in our space, you know, what I’m really watching is what they do with the implementation of IRA tax credits. Of course, you know, Congress is going to do its thing and may very well give haircuts to a lot of these tax credits, and change the way they’re implemented as a means of paying for the extension of the Trump tax cuts.

But the Treasury has a lot of opportunity and latitude to rewrite some of the rules of the road. The rules for claiming, you know, the carbon capture tax credit, the hydrogen production tax credit.  Even the E.V. tax credits. You know, in that space, we could see very easily the Treasury Department revisit the rules that were written by the Biden administration, those policies, and rewrite them so that the tax credit For E.V. purchases are much harder to get, that cars have to have much more domestically sourced materials, don’t have ties to foreign entities of concern to qualify. So we really could see, you know, a lot of rulemaking there that limits the reach of some of these clean energy tax credits that have been so powerful over the last couple of years.

Bill Loveless: Yeah, there’s a lot to delve into their Maxine. I know things like issues on hydrogen perhaps could stand to benefit. I mean, you know, I’ve read where there’s interpretation regarding while there has been determinations made by the Biden administration on hydrogen, the types of hydrogen that qualified for tax credits. You know, hydrogen produced with natural gas, for example, might benefit under the new administration. But, the Treasury is the one to watch for. Maxine, would you agree?

Maxine Joselow: I would agree. I like to joke that all of us on the climate and environment beat unfortunately had to also become tax reporters starting in 2022 when Democrats passed the IRA because that really was a huge tax bill in many ways and made Treasury — an agency that we had previously largely overlooked on our beat — one central to the beat going forward.

Bill Loveless: Yeah, speaking of another complex agency, let me just throw out the other Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. We don’t need to dig too deeply into rate design and those sorts of things here. But, you know, I always like to remind folks in days past that whereas people tend to think of Congress. and perhaps, the other agencies when it comes to energy policy, so much of what’s done in Washington that affects energy markets takes place in the regulatory agencies. You know, we talked about EPA, but the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is a place there as well. 

The FERC will certainly play a role when it comes to things like natural gas pipelines, transmission lines, and exports of liquefied natural gas. And we haven’t mentioned so far, Maxine, the decisions the Department of Energy will have to make on liquefied natural gas. So these regulatory issues are going to take on substantial importance on these matters.

Maxine Joselow: Yeah. You know, I guess we haven’t really mentioned that Trump in his early executive orders did with the Biden administration’s pause on approving new facilities that export LNG to countries that the U.S. doesn’t have a free trade agreement with. And that’s something that, obviously, climate activists had really pushed for under Biden and LNG export companies had really pushed to undo under Trump. FERC and DOE both have a role in granting permits to those facilities so they can start operating. So that will certainly be something to watch. And Trump did just name Mark Christie, a Republican, as the new chair of FERC to replace Willie Phillips, a Democrat, under Biden.

Jennifer Dlouhy: And, you know, beyond FERC, even there are, you know, 10 years ago, there was a point in the past decade where FERC suddenly became transitioned from being, you know, a somewhat sleepy, obscure agency to one that we all had to pay attention to and really understand, you know, its importance. It began playing a central role in a lot of key decisions that we care about.

But right now, I feel like the next agency to face that kind of change and overhaul is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I mean, this is an agency whose job is to make sure the nation’s nuclear fleet is safe, and operating safely. And for years, you know, we’ve seen the decline in nuclear power. Nothing was being built, or very little was being built. And really it was about safeguarding the existing fleet. But right now with the demand coming from artificial intelligence, the demand that’s coming for electricity, there’s obviously a clamor for, for more nuclear power, restarting old reactors, bringing on small modular reactors online.

And, so this agency is, you know, its mission might change a little bit. Is it ready to be in the limelight and, and kind of be in the middle of all of these really big decisions that are to come?

Bill Loveless: Yeah. That’s a good point, Jen. And,  nuclear has certainly taken a turn, in terms of public sentiment and market interest  given the needs of the electricity demand over in coming years. You know, we had been talking so much in recent years about if there’s any future for nuclear, it’s probably the small modular reactors. But as you know, now we’re talking about restarting big nuclear plants, one gigawatt plants, that have been shut down in recent years. So that’s certainly one to watch for. 

Getting back to the Hill, we’ve got new heads of committees in the Senate and the House. They are the ones that will be looked to, to carry out the president’s agenda on Capitol Hill. Maxine, what can you tell us about, some of them, say, you know, Mike Lee on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee? You know, he certainly stood out recently because he chaired a couple of big confirmation hearings.

But there’s also, in the House, Brett Guthrie of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Someone, I’ll be honest, I don’t really know very much about.  What stands out among some of these leaders on congressional committees?

Maxine Joselow: Yeah, I, I’m much more familiar with the Senate side, so I’m going to focus my answers there, if that’s okay, and, especially on, on Mike Lee, I think he has been a key player to watch on issues of energy and environment now that he’s the new chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Things got off to kind of a rocky start with his Democratic counterpart, Senator Martin Heinrich, the ranking member and Democrat of New Mexico. Because the two of them clashed a little bit quite publicly over scheduling the nomination hearings for Doug Burgum and Chris Wright. Heinrich and other Democrats on the committee were arguing that the hearing should be delayed and postponed until they had gotten all of the requisite paperwork from both nominees, including, you know, FBI background checks, financial disclosure forms, other standard ethical documents, ethics agreements, and [until] they’d had enough time to review them. Mike Lee forged ahead with the Chris Wright hearing. He did agree to postpone the Doug Burgum hearing by a day in response to the Democratic request.

But already that relationship between chair and ranking member has been marked by some quite public tensions and frictions that could sort of bode poorly for that committee being able to pass major legislation on a bipartisan basis going forward. I think you see a much more friendly and productive and bipartisan relationship between Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, and Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. That’s a committee that people have frequently called a workhorse committee, where they just pass a lot of non-controversial, must-pass legislation to reauthorize various programs. And it seems like that’s going to continue. At the beginning of Lee Zeldin’s confirmation hearing, Senator Whitehouse said, “let me just get this out of the way, I actually like the chair.” And he presented her with a plaque that I think was made in West Virginia, her home state.

Bill Loveless: That’s a good, that’s a good sign…

Jennifer Dlouhy: It was a gavel. It was really cool. It was like her dad’s or something.

Maxine Joselow: Oh.

Jennifer Dlouhy: For what it’s worth, I think we’ve seen Shelley Moore Capito, to me, is one of the more interesting or iconic members in a leadership position that we could be talking about right now because we’ve seen, you know, she’s a Republican from West Virginia, and we’ve seen what it can mean when a Senator from West Virginia is in charge of one of these committees.

Joe Manchin was in charge of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee during Biden’s administration and obviously had a big influence on legislation. And Senator Shelley Moore Capito comes from a very similar environment, right? She’s clearly very supportive of the state’s coal riches and the idea of reliable power.

And I think, you know, while she’ll work well together and we expect her to work well with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. Nonetheless, that is going to be, you know, a set of priorities that she brings to this job and to managing that committee that’s so important.

Bill Loveless: Yeah, Whitehouse. That’s an interesting combination. Whitehouse and Capito, though, because Whitehouse is the most aggressive senator when it comes to climate change issues, or certainly has been in recent years. And yet he’s also surprised me a few times by signing on to bipartisan bills on energy. Yeah, I hadn’t really thought about that combination of the two of the two of them. The Energy Committee, on the other hand, Maxine, I mean, that is a committee that, historically has, worked more or less on a bipartisan basis. Even their webpages feature both the majority, whatever party it is, and the minority. It’s a committee that’s tended to work pretty smoothly. But the man or woman who holds the gavel matters. And so therefore it’s interesting to see how they push an agenda.

Maxine Joselow: And I think when Manchin was chair and Barrasso was ranking member, they had a great relationship and things were pretty smooth by all appearances. That being said, Manchin was a very moderate Democrat who supported fossil fuels and that aligned pretty neatly with Barrasso’s worldview. I don’t think Mike Lee and Martin Heinrich see things quite the same way.

Bill Loveless: Yeah, we’ll see. Hey, at the risk of having you scoop yourselves publicly here, what are you going to be watching for in the days ahead?

Maxine Joselow: Well, I can’t say anything in front of Jen. She’s gonna write this story. No, I’m just kidding.Yeah, at a very high level. I would say I’m very focused on what the incoming administration is doing at each of the agencies I cover, which as we discussed is now a longer and longer list of agencies.

So not just DOE and EPA, but Interior, Treasury, and EPA. FERC, as you mentioned, Bill. And, you know what some of these early executive orders and other directives on the federal workforce are doing to both the actual, you know, policies at the agencies, but also the people because, you know, personnel is policy.

And so I think a lot of federal workers are feeling like this is an uncertain time with the federal hiring freeze. They’re getting rid of telework and requiring a return to office,  and there’s conversations about, you know, moving agencies out of D.C. or having people who work outside of D.C. return to the Capitol, so I’m pretty focused on that space right now.

Bill Loveless: Yeah. Jen.

Jennifer Dlouhy: So I’m really looking for when things get interesting, where the frictions start to show. And, you know, I think we’ll see that play out in lots of interesting ways over the next four years.

But, you know, I’m looking for the moment that the oil executives come in and say to the president, we actually can’t drill baby drill. Or this planned easing of a regulation is actually detrimental to our markets and our ability to sell our gas abroad. So I think, you know, there’s going to be moments of tension between the president’s energy dominance agenda and what the players in the energy industry actually want.

And I really am just interested in finding those moments, but also understanding them and seeing how they impact the policymaking to come. I just think that’s going to be really interesting. And of course I really am also looking at the strategic decisions that these administration officials make. What are their early priorities? How do they manage to reflect what the president wants, and yet still manage a diverse set of stakeholders and interests  that are looking to them for action?

I just think there’s going to be some interesting struggles over the rhetoric and agenda at the very top and what actually has to be done in these agencies and on the Hill.

Maxine Joselow: And I will be chasing all of Jen’s scoops on all of that.

Jennifer Dlouhy: We’ll be chasing each other.

Bill Loveless: Yeah. I’m sure I know you two will be chasing each other. Well, there’s no end to the leads and stories that you’ll follow in. And each of you certainly among the best,  when it comes to reporting on these issues. Thank you, Jen Dlouhy and Maxine Joselow for joining us today on Columbia Energy Exchange.

Maxine Joselow: Thanks so much for having us.

Jennifer Dlouhy: That’s it for this week’s episode of Columbia Energy Exchange. Thank you again, Jennifer Dlouhy and Maxine Joselow and thank you for listening. The show is brought to you by the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Bill Loveless: The show is hosted by Jason Bordoff and me, Bill Loveless. The show is produced by Erin Hardick and Mary Catherine O’Connor from Latitude Studios. Additional support from Lily Lee. Caroline Pittman and Kyu Lee. Sean Maquand is the sound engineer. For more information about this show or the Center on Global Energy Policy, visit us online at energypolicy.columbia.edu or follow us on social media @ColumbiaUEnergy. If you like this episode, leave us a rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. You can also share it with a friend or colleague to help us reach more listeners. Either way, we appreciate your support. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next week.

Last week, President Trump wasted no time in making good on a long list of energy-related campaign promises. Declaring a national energy emergency, he issued executive orders that could undo several Biden- and Obama-era climate policies. Carbon emissions standards are now in limbo, as are electric vehicle incentives and building energy efficiency standards. Trump wants to lift barriers to fossil fuel and mineral exploration and production. And once again, he has ordered the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.  

What are the likely near- and mid-term impacts of these seismic shifts in policy? How are last week’s executive orders likely to play out in the courts? What changes are afoot for the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and the Department of the Interior? What role will the Treasury Department play in energy policy, given its responsibilities with tariffs, tax credits, and sanctions? 

This week, Bill Loveless talks with reporters Jennifer Dlouhy and Maxine Joselow about the year ahead and the stories they’re chasing.

Jennifer is an energy and environmental policy reporter for Bloomberg News. Before joining Bloomberg in 2015, she was the Washington correspondent for the Houston Chronicle where she covered energy and environmental policy with a special focus on oil and gas.

Maxine covers climate change and the environment for The Washington Post, focusing on US climate policy and politics. Before joining the Post in 2021, she was at E&E News, where her investigative reporting was honored with a Dateline Award from the D.C. Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

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