Overnight Energy & Environment — Presented by ExxonMobil — FEMA restores climate role in strategic plan

by Rachel Frazin and Zack Budryk - 12/09/21 7:02 PM ET

Welcome to Thursday’s Overnight Energy & Environment, your source for the latest news focused on energy, the environment and beyond. Subscribe here: digital-stage.thehill.com/newsletter-signup.

Today we’re looking at FEMA’s strategic plan for the next few years and particularly its inclusion of climate change, which was dropped by the Trump administration. We’ll also examine Virginia Gov.-elect G Youngkin’s (R) plans to leave a regional climate agreement and a Pentagon official’s defense of the agency’s handling of PFAS.

For The Hill, we’re Rachel Frazin and Zack Budryk. Write to us with tips: rfrazin@digital-stage.thehill.com and zbudryk@digital-stage.thehill.com. Follow us on Twitter: @RachelFrazin and @BudrykZack.

Let’s jump in.

Climate returns to fed’s strategic planning

Conservative states along the coast prepare for sea level rise without mentioning climate change.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is once again considering climate change in its strategic planning after a plan released during the Trump administration did not include it.

FEMA, the country’s disaster preparedness agency, made resilience to climate change one of the three main goals of its new strategic plan for the years 2022 through 2026 released on Thursday.

The new plan calls for the agency to build an understanding of climate science and use it to help make communities resistant to the damage it can cause.

So what happened under Trump? The agency’s plan for 2018 through 2022, released during the Trump administration, doesn’t have a single mention of climate change.

Instead, it said it would consider “new pathways to long-term disaster risk reduction, including increased investments in pre-disaster mitigation.”

At the time, an agency spokesperson told NPR that “it is evident that this strategic plan fully incorporates future risks from all hazards regardless of cause.”

And what is team Biden saying? The Biden administration argues that the country needs to plan for climate change since it has implications for emergency preparedness.

“We must recognize that we are facing a climate crisis and educate ourselves and the nation about the impacts our changing climate pose to the field of emergency management,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell wrote in a letter accompanying the plan.

The Biden administration’s plan calls for FEMA to use grant programs to help communities make investments in protecting themselves from climate-related disasters and endorses projects like disaster-resistant building codes.

A MESSAGE FROM EXXONMOBIL

Carbon capture and storage. One way we’re helping reduce emissions.

Industry and power generation account for nearly two-thirds of global CO₂ emissions. At ExxonMobil, we’re collaborating on some of the world’s largest carbon capture and storage projects to help reduce industrial emissions at scale.

Youngkin pushes to exit climate program

Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin (R) on Wednesday pledged to withdraw the state from a regional carbon market comprising 10 coastal and New England states.

In a speech at the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce, Youngkin denounced the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) as a “carbon tax that is fully passed on to ratepayers” and said he would remove Virginia from the program by executive order after taking office in January, according to a recording shared with The Hill.

Youngkin specifically cited a request by the state’s primary electric utility, Dominion Energy, seeking to recover RGGI costs from customers.

“I promised to lower the cost of living in Virginia and this is just the beginning,” he added.

The backstory: Virginia joined the RGGI as part of an amendment by Gov. Ralph Northam (D) to the Clean Energy and Community Flood Preparedness Act, which the state General Assembly passed in 2020.

Utilities in states participating in the market pay the state for credits to offset emissions past a ceiling. The revenues are used for energy assistance to low-income residents.

Pushback from Dems: In a statement Wednesday night, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) maintained this means Youngkin cannot unilaterally exit the market.

“The Virginia Clean Energy Economy Act is law which cannot be undone by executive fiat [and] our Commonwealth should and legally must meet these important clean energy targets,” Beyer said in a statement.

Official defends military’s handling of PFAS

An official testifying before a Senate panel on Thursday defended the Pentagon’s handling of toxic chemicals after a watchdog report this summer said the military’s inaction had exposed people to “preventable” risks.

Testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, defense official Richard Kidd said that the agency was alerted about the chemicals, known as PFAS, in the 1990s, when manufacturers issued health notices.

But, he said during the hearing, the department was justified in not taking actions to manage PFAS-related risks until 2016.

“The Department of Defense learned about the health hazards posed by PFAS basically at the same pace as the rest of America,” said Kidd, the deputy assistant secretary for environment and energy resilience at the Pentagon’s sustainment office.

“The manufacturers of PFAS issued health notices in the 1990s, which sort of triggered initial reviews of the chemical, but it was not until 2016 where we had a final health advisory from the [Environmental Protection Agency] that we were able to take objective, measurable actions,” he said.

They figured the companies would take care of it… Kidd said that the military had presumed that chemical companies would take action to mitigate the risks from their own products.

“Industry started to express concerns about these chemicals in the 1990s and the presumption of the country at the time was that industry would voluntarily fix by replacing or removing PFAS in [firefighting] foam,” he said.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) met the response with skepticism, asking the official, “You defer to industry the health and safety of service members and their families and surrounding communities?”

Kidd said that this was “the accepted practice at the time for this chemical,” citing regulatory agencies.

A quick refresher: The hearing comes after a report this summer from the Defense Department’s inspector general found that in 2011 defense officials issued an alert describing risks to human health and the environment. But the report said the agency didn’t take action to manage the risks until 2016.

The report determined that because of the military’s inaction, “people and the environment may have been exposed to preventable risks from PFAS‑containing [firefighting foam].”