Overnight Energy: ‘No deal’ after senators, Trump meet on ethanol mandate | Green group flunks Trump on annual report card | Judge rules for Trump in border wall case

NO DEAL ON BIOFUELS: Four Republican senators representing oil and farm states failed to come to an agreement on changes to the nation’s biofuel mandate during a White House meeting with President Trump on Tuesday.

The senators met with Trump, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt to discuss changes that oil-state senators want made to the country’s Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).

“There was no deal made,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has been defending corn and ethanol interests in recent months amid pressure to change the ethanol mandate or how it is enforced.

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“We reminded President Trump of his commitment to maintaining the 15 billion gallons per year of ethanol under the RFS, his commitment to biofuels, ethanol and rural America.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who for months had held up the nomination of Bill Northey to a top Agriculture Department post in order to force the meeting, called the discussion “vigorous and positive.”

“I believe we are likely to reach a win-win outcome. One that is a win for Iowa corn farmers, that results in Iowa corn farmers being able to sell more corn than they can right now, and at the same time that saves the jobs of tens of thousands of union [refinery] members,” Cruz told reporters.

Although no agreement was reached, the Senate did approve Northey’s nomination by voice vote.

Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) also attended the meeting.

The RFS requires refineries to mix transportation fuel with a certain level of ethanol or buy credits called Renewable Identification Numbers (RIN).

Cruz has been pushing in recent months for the EPA to put a cap on the price of RINs, which are sold on a market and subject to price increases and decreases, to count exported ethanol toward the mandate total, or to forgive RIN obligations for certain refineries.

Read more here.

 

GROUP GIVES TRUMP, CONGRESS FAILING GRADES ON ENVIRONMENT:  President Trump and congressional Republicans scored record lows on an annual analysis of pro-environment voting records, released Tuesday.

The 2017 League of Conservation Voters (LCV) Scorecard gave Trump a failing grade and handed GOP Senators a 1 percent average score for positions they’ve taken on energy and the environment in the past year, the lowest scores in the history of the organization’s rankings.

“There’s no getting around it: at the federal level, 2017 was an unmitigated disaster for the environment and public health with President Trump and his Cabinet quickly becoming the most anti-environmental administration in our nation’s history,” read the report.

The findings compiled by LCV, an environmental activist and lobbying group, also highlighted increased differences on environmental policies in Congress.

The highest rankings went to members from mostly blue states, with the lowest rankings handed largely to Republicans in red districts.

The results come at a time when science policy changes are increasingly under the microscope.

As the Trump administration moves to consolidate Environmental Protection Agency offices, remove environmental regulations and bring more industry voices into fact-finding processes, environmentalists are accusing the government of putting science on the back burner.

Read more here.

 

JUDGE RULES FOR TRUMP IN BORDER WALL CASE: A federal judge in California ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration followed the law and the Constitution when it waived numerous environmental laws to build Trump’s border wall.

The ruling means that the Department of Homeland Security will be able to continue waiving the regulations to build barriers on the border.

Judge Gonzalo Curiel wrote in his ruling that he did not have “serious constitutional doubts” about the administration’s use of the waivers.

“In its review of this case, the court cannot and does not consider whether underlying decisions to construct the border barriers are politically wise or prudent,” he said.

The lawsuit, filed by the state of California last year, argued that the department had improperly waived the National Environmental Policy Act and other immigration and environmental rules to speed up the construction of the wall.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement Tuesday that the state is “unwavering in our belief that the Trump Administration is ignoring laws it doesn’t like in order to resuscitate a campaign talking point of building a wall on our southern border.”

“We will evaluate all of our options and are prepared to do what is necessary to protect our people, our values, and our economy from federal overreach,” he said. “A medieval wall along the U.S.-Mexico border simply does not belong in the 21st century.”

Trump famously attached Curiel during the 2016 president case over his Mexican heritage, saying he was too conflicted to oversee a lawsuit regarding Trump University. Curiel, who was nominated to the bench by former President Barack Obama, is a native of Indiana.

Read more here.

 

SENATORS QUESTION DOE OVER WHISTLEBLOWER POLICIES: The Department of Energy (DOE) appears to have reimbursed one of its contractors millions of dollars for legal expenses from fighting whistleblower retaliation claims, a pair of Senate Democrats say.

Sens. Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) asked about the situation in a Tuesday letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry, citing documents that appear to show that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) paid more than $24 million to the partnership of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for costs from a series of whistleblower cases.

Rules generally prohibit contractors from recovering such costs from federal agencies.

“Whistleblowers are an invaluable resource for weeding out waste, fraud and abuse — the last thing the government should be doing is paying the legal fees of contractors who’ve retaliated against whistleblowers,” McCaskill, the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement.

“The Department of Energy needs to justify why it spent taxpayer dollars on reimbursing this contractor. And if it can’t, it needs to get that money back now.”

DOE and the Lawrence Livermore partnership did not return requests for comment on the senators’ letter.

The documents Wyden and McCaskill cite came from ongoing litigation involving a whistleblower, and they did not disclose the litigant in the case.

Read more here.

 

ON TAP WEDNESDAY: The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s subpanel on water and power will hold a hearing on five bills in its jurisdiction.

 

AROUND THE WEB:

A federal judge blocked California officials Tuesday from requiring cancer warnings on Roundup and other products containing glyphosate, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Duke Energy and other owners of a coal-fired power plant in Ohio sold the plant for undisclosed terms, the Associated Press reports.

Malibu, Calif., has banned straws and other plastic utensils from restaurants, CBS Los Angeles reports.

 

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

Check out Tuesday’s stories …

-Senators say DOE may have reimbursed contractor for fighting whistleblower claims

-‘No deal made’ as GOP senators meet with Trump on ethanol mandate

-Mexican-American judge who Trump attacked rules in favor of border wall

-Power companies pull workers from Puerto Rico as many remain without power

-Group gives Trump, Congress lowest grades in annual environment scorecard

-Rick Perry planning nuclear energy talks with Saudi Arabia: report
-US forecast to be world’s top oil producer by next year

-German court rules cities can ban diesel cars

-EPA reorganization will merge science office