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SENATE APPROVES LEGISLATION BANNING SPR SALES TO CHINA: The Senate voted today to bar China from purchasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in an effort to protect the U.S. emergency stockpile after it was drained to a 40-year low.
Lawmakers voted 85 to 14 to pass the legislation, which was sponsored by Sens. Ted Cruz, Joe Manchin, Joni Ernst, and John Fetterman as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.
The legislation would ban the sale of U.S. oil to any company under control of the Chinese Communist Party, or to Russia, Iran, North Korea or any other country sanctioned by the U.S. It comes as the Biden administration's historic sale of SPR oil—and concerns that it has not acted quickly enough to refill the reserves—have grown in recent months, sparking national security fears and concerns about structural integrity of the SPR, which consists of four underground salt caverns in Texas and Louisiana.
“The original intent of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was to ensure that America had sufficient oil reserves in the event of an emergency,” Cruz said in a statement. “We are unnecessarily and dangerously undermining our national security in any instance that we sell any part of this stockpile to the Chinese Communist Party or any company under its control. I’m proud to lead the bipartisan effort to stop this from happening in the future and unleash American energy.”
Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who opposed the bill, noted that while the U.S. currently sells roughly 83 million barrels per year of oil to China, less than 2% of that oil was SPR oil. “This amendment claims to solve a problem while mainly having the result of padding and protecting oil industry profits,” he said this afternoon in floor remarks.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm acknowledged earlier this month that the administration might not be able to refill the SPR during President Joe Biden's current term.
“The bottom line is we are going to replenish,” Granholm told CNN in an interview.
Asked whether it would be refilled during Biden’s current term, she responded: “The first term’s over in a year and a half. So, I’m not sure it’ll be fully replenished. But certainly, the plan is this term and the next term to be able to do that.”
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NDAA ALSO INCLUDES BIPARTISAN PUSH FOR NUCLEAR POWER: The text of the NDAA also includes a bipartisan bill aimed at revitalizing the nation’s nuclear power sector.
The ADVANCE Act, introduced earlier this year by Sens. Shelley Moore Capito, Thomas Carper, and Sheldon Whitehouse, seeks to prioritize U.S. nuclear power development and deployment, including by empowering the NRC to develop regulations for advanced nuclear reactors, reducing regulatory costs for companies to license advanced nuclear reactor technologies, and strengthening the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle and supply chain infrastructure. Full text of the bill can be found here.
BIDEN TO ANNOUNCE FIRST OFFSHORE WIND RIGHTS SALE IN GULF OF MEXICO: Biden is slated to announce the first offshore wind rights sale in the Gulf of Mexico today, an announcement that comes as the administration looks to deliver on its goal of reaching 30 GW of offshore wind power by the end of the decade.
The Interior Department said the sale will take place on Aug. 29, and include a more than 102,000 acre area off of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and two areas offshore Galveston, Texas, totaling nearly 200,000 acres.
Together, the administration said, the new developments will have the potential to generate approximately 3.7 GW of wind energy—or enough energy to power nearly 1.3 million homes.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said that “by catalyzing the offshore wind energy potential of the Gulf of Mexico, we can tackle the climate crisis, lower energy costs for families and create good-paying jobs.”
Biden is expected to highlight the news during a trip to Philadelphia today, as part of a broader trip aimed at highlighting the advantages of green energy for union workers in the area.
…But that trip itself could be a tough sell: Biden is expected to visit the Philadelphia Shipyard for a steel-cutting ceremony for Arcadia, a union-built ship that will help build offshore wind farms.
Ahead of Biden's visit, Reuters spoke to more than a dozen union workers in the area, who questioned whether the new clean energy industries can produce similar numbers of jobs—and at similar wages. Former Philadelphia AFL-CIO president and current treasurer Pat Eiding told the outlet that he believes the green economy will be hard-pressed to create the same number of jobs as refineries and power plants, which require round-the-clock staffing and maintenance every day.
"I believe Biden when he says that green energy jobs will be union, the question is just how many jobs will there be," Eiding said.
…MEANWHILE, KERRY SAYS MORE WORK NEEDED WITH CHINA ON CLIMATE: U.S climate envoy John Kerry said today that “more work” is needed on U.S.-China climate relations, in a sign of the roadblocks ahead as the two countries attempt to forge a working relationship on curbing their countries’ climate emissions ahead of this year’s COP28 summit in Dubai.
Recapping his three-day trip to Beijing, Kerry told reporters that the two sides agreed climate change was an urgent challenge and that they should “keep 1.5 alive,” referring to the agreement to keep temperatures from rising past 1.5 degree Celsius under the Paris climate accord.
"We—our team and the United States administration—came to Beijing in order to unstick what has been stuck since almost last August," Kerry said.
And despite top Chinese officials stressing on multiple occasions this week that their climate policies will not be determined by others, Kerry said Beijing had in fact planned further negotiations with the U.S. ahead of the COP28 summit, which begins November 29.
China has not yet issued a formal statement about the talks, however—underscoring the deeply complex political environment surrounding the world’s largest carbon emitters.
REPORT HIGHLIGHTS SCALE-UP OF MINERALS NEEDED FOR ENERGY TRANSITION: The rapid demand growth created by the clean energy transition could lead to a significant shortage of several metals within the next decade unless investments are scaled up, according to a new report published today by the Energy Transitions Commission, or ETC.
According to the report, large supply gaps are expected for metals including lithium, nickel, graphite, cobalt, neodymium, and copper as demand increases—which could touch off a major price hike and threaten the goal of reaching net-zero emissions by the year 2050.
In order to reduce that deficit, the report said more investments should be made in mining—especially given that many large-scale metals mining projects, including for lithium and copper—can take up to 20 years to bring online.
"In some key minerals—particularly lithium and copper—it will be challenging to scale up supply fast enough over the next decade to keep pace with rapidly rising demand," it said.
“There are enough resources and minerals in the world for the energy transition,” ETC Chairman Adair Turner said in a statement. “But in some key minerals – particularly lithium and copper – it will be challenging to scale up supply fast enough over the next decade to keep pace with rapidly rising demand,” underscoring the need for governments, regulators, producers and consumers to work together to help meet the challenge. Read the report in full here.
The Rundown
Wall Street Journal This Arkansas town could become the epicenter of a U.S. lithium boom
Washington Post Rich lode of EV metals could boost Taliban and its new Chinese partners
E&E; News Investigation: Texas failed to crack down on gas after grid crisis
Bloomberg Brazil’s all-powerful sugar industry is souring the country on EVs