WRAP UP

Lindsay Kalter and Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
4/12/13

AT DOE

Acting Under Secretary of Energy David Sandalow announced this week that he is leaving the Department of Energy to take a fellowship at the new Center on Global Energy Policy at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. Sandalow, who has also spent the last four years as Assistant Secretary for Policy & International Affairs at the Department, will be focusing on U.S.-China energy relations, clean energy finance and advanced vehicle technology beginning in June, the University said in a press release. “David is one of the leading energy experts in the country, and we are thrilled to welcome him to Columbia,” Robert Lieberman, dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, said in a statement. In his role as acting Under Secretary, Sandalow oversees the Office of Fossil Energy, as well as DOE’s other applied energy programs. Prior to DOE, Sandalow served stints at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the State Department and the National Security Council, as well as at the Brookings Institution, the World Wildlife Fund the Clinton Global Initiative.

A former senior staffer on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is starting a new job at the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, POLITICO reported this week.  Bob Simon, who until recently served as Democratic staff director of the energy committee for 14 years, is heading to DOE to be an adviser in the Department’s Office of Science. Simon had stepped down from his position on the Committee late last year after this longtime boss Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) retired after 30 years in the Senate. Simon worked at DOE between 1991 and 1993, when he served as principal deputy director for the predecessor program to the Office of Science.

IN CONGRESS

The Senate confirmed Sally Jewell to be the next Secretary of the Interior April 10, installing the first member of the Obama Administration’s second term energy and environment team. Lawmakers confirmed the REI executive’s nomination 87-11, two months after Obama sent her nomination to the Senate. All of the votes against Jewell’s nomination came from Republicans. The Interior Department, which oversees energy production, conservation and recreation on federal lands, has taken heat from many in the party who have argued that the Obama Administration has put too much red tape in front of oil and gas drilling on public lands. Jewell won early support from a diverse group of stakeholders given her experience in the oil industry and her personal outdoor conservation efforts. However, Jewell’s candidacy hit a snag after the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s Ranking Member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) threatened to put a hold on the nomination until the Interior Department agreed to reexamine a preliminary decision not to allow a road to be built through Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. A breakthrough occurred late last month in committee, allowing Jewell’s nomination to go to the floor.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and a majority of the 25-member House Safe Climate Caucus signed a letter this week challenging the Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to a debate on climate change. The April 10 letter, addressed to Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky), asked Republicans to engage in a debate over climate change policy on the House floor. Members of the caucus—which was formed in February—have given daily speeches on the House floor about climate-related topics. “We are not aware of any Republican member who has spoken on the House floor about the dangers of climate change or the need to reduce emissions and prepare for the impacts,” the letter says. “In fact, no Republican member of the House has even said the words ‘climate change.” The letter was released a day after Waxman and Energy and Power Subcommittee Ranking Member Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) sent a separate letter to Upton and Whitfield renewing their request for a hearing about climate change science. The pair said they have sent Upton and Whitfield 24 letters over the past year and have only received one response stating that the committee “frequently addressed climate change.” “We respectfully renew our requests for hearings into the science of climate change and the likely impacts of rising temperatures so that members can understand the nature of the threat we are confronting,” the April 9 letter from Waxman and Rush says. 

IN THE STATES

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) this week finalized a linkage proposal between the state’s new carbon market and Quebec’s recently developed cap-and-trade scheme. Brown’s approval means that companies that participate in California’s program can also trade into Quebec’s beginning early next year. Brown sent California air pollution regulators a letter on April 8 stating that Quebec’s market is not more lenient than California’s—a finding that state law required Brown to make before finalizing the plan. The two systems will likely join on Jan. 1, 2014. California Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols said in October of last year that the two schemes would be linked if Brown signed off on the plan, despite a recommendation from one of the board’s advisory committees to hold off until 2015, when the schemes were more established. “It’s very much our hope to be part of a larger system,” Nichols said at the time. There are 75 companies currently participating in Quebec’s cap-and-trade program, and 430 in California’s.