What To Watch At Politico's Energy Summit

The U.S. is facing an energy crossroads in November, with voters set to give President Joe Biden four more years to finish his clean energy transition — or bring back former President Donald Trump to unleash oil and gas.

POLITICO’s Energy Summit today will examine the stakes of those divergent paths and examine how the Biden administration’s climate policies are rewriting the rules for the energy future — and the effect they are having on the United States’ growing role as one of the world’s top fossil fuel exporters.

Trump has blasted Democrats’ signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, and called for rolling back the core electric vehicle and clean power policies that Biden says are driving a new manufacturing boom.

Biden’s push to transform the energy economy is spending a historic amount of federal money in a bid to shift the U.S. away from oil, gas and coal, whose pollution helped make last year the hottest in recorded history. But much of that money has yet to be spent, and polls show many voters are unaware of the landmark laws Biden has signed.

At the same time, a majority of the clean energy investments announced to date are going to Republican states and districts. Increasingly, GOP governors and lawmakers, business groups and even the oil industry have reasons to hope some portions of Biden’s climate law survives. (And so does at least one member of Trump’s family.)

At the summit in Washington, starting at 11:45 a.m. EDT, reporters from POLITICO will question top Biden administration officials about the state of the president’s climate agenda — and why many voters are in the dark about the president’s biggest green initiatives.

Featured speakers include Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm; White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi; Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel; and Willie Phillips, chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has a major role in deciding the future of gas exports and the electric grid.

POLITICO will also get the pulse from Capitol Hill, with sessions featuring Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.); and Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus, and Andrew Garbarino (R-.N.Y.), chair of the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus.

Attendees will also get the view from Wall Street on the IRA’s incentives, hear from the chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and get a read on the electorate from some of the political strategists hoping to bring home victory in November.

Here are four things to watch for at the summit.

The state of Biden’s climate agenda: Biden’s hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy incentives are driving a surge in manufacturing activity. Zaidi, the top White House climate official, has previously told the POLITICO Energy podcast that Biden’s policies are delivering a job-creating economic transformation — which could be squandered if a succeeding administration or Congress guts those policies.

But polls show many voters are unaware of the sharp growth in manufacturing and renewable energy deployment spurred by the IRA and the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law. And most of the projects haven’t been built yet, meaning many communities are not yet fully feeling the benefits.

Meanwhile, Biden is drawing criticism from the left, with climate activists complaining he’s been too soft in phasing out fossil fuels by approving a handful of large oil and gas infrastructure projects.

What’s the congressional Republicans' approach on energy — and does it differ from Trump’s? Trump has promised to repeal the IRA, a stance that’s at odds with the more nuanced position advocated by many congressional Republicans. Those lawmakers call for a targeted approach to eliminate policies that raise costs for fossil fuel companies, but leave in place most of the incentives driving clean energy and manufacturing investments in their states and districts.

For Republicans in Congress — Cramer, Lummis, Miller-Meeks and Garbarino — that means carefully threading the political needle to stay in sync with Trump’s messaging on the IRA while safeguarding the parts that are helping their constituents and the big GOP campaign donors.

Does a surge in energy demand threaten climate goals? Republicans predict that the combination of Biden’s clean energy push with aggressive regulations on fossil fuel power plants and gasoline-powered vehicles will backfire. Power companies are facing surging demand from energy-intensive data centers, new manufacturing plants and electric vehicles, so curbing existing sources of fossil fuels is a recipe for a crisis, they say.

How are utilities prepared to respond to this problem? Do they keep fossil fuel plants alive to provide “baseload,” around-the-clock energy? Or do they continue to lean into renewables and new battery storage technology to power the economy?

Phillips, the FERC chair, may also discuss how the commission’s recent actions to help build new interstate power lines could help respond to rising demand and a shifting resource mix.

How far to go on fossil fuels? The political pain from rising gasoline prices after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine — as well as pressure from West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who was the Senate’s key swing vote before announcing his retirement — has prompted the White House to make some compromises on its effort to speed the transition away from fossil fuels. Environmentalists have been particularly peeved by the administration giving a green light to the massive Willow oil project in Alaska, approving the Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline in West Virginia and continuing to auction off leases to drill on federal land and water.

The administration also postponed an expected rule regulating climate pollution from thousands of power plants fueled by natural gas — the nation’s dominant power source — potentially leaving its fate up to who wins the election.

Would a second Biden term free up the president to take more action on fossil fuels? How much could Trump’s promise to “drill baby drill” undercut Biden’s efforts to move off fossil fuels, given the U.S. is already the world’s top oil and gas producer?

Examining the global trade picture: The summit will also explore the growing tensions around trade, particularly whether the IRA and other government incentives are succeeding in developing U.S. supply chains to wean companies off imports from China.

Republicans contend that Biden’s clean energy push is increasing the U.S. dependence on China — since Beijing is the world leader in producing many of the critical minerals and components the new tech requires. Democrats counter that the U.S. must speed the rollout of clean energy to slow climate change, while also laying the groundwork for developing the critical minerals to supply the domestic industry.

And there are already burgeoning bipartisan conversations occurring in Congress around injecting climate change policy into U.S. trade rules by imposing a fee on products imported from high greenhouse gas-emitting countries.

Such a policy would protect U.S. manufacturers from competition from China and other countries with lax environmental standards — but it could provoke a backlash and raise prices.