Biden Sets Agency Transition Teams

November 12, 2020

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by Kelsey Tamborrino (Politico's Morning Energy) — The Biden transition named members of the teams that will guide the transfer of power inside federal agencies. — World leaders piled on the congratulations to President-elect Joe Biden this week, with many pledging to work with the U.S. on tackling climate change. — A Federal Reserve official told lawmakers he expects the agency will join the Network for Greening of the Financial System next year to help ensure the financial sector is prepared for climate change.

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The who's who: Patrice Simms, vice president of litigation at Earthjustice, will lead the EPA team. Arun Majumdar, the first head of the Energy Department's Advanced Research Projects-Energy arm, will lead the Energy Department team. The Interior Department team will be led by Kevin Washburn, a University of Iowa law professor and member of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma who served in the Obama administration as assistant secretary of Indian Affairs. Cecilia Martinez, a veteran environmental justice advocate, will head the Council on Environmental Quality team.

Other notables: The DOE team includes several Obama-era alumni, including Kerry Duggan, a longtime ally of Biden, and Jon Elkind, now at Columbia University, who spent the entire Obama administration at DOE working on international issues. The EPA team includes Matt Fritz, who was chief of staff from 2015 to 2017 and now at firm Latham & Watkins; Cynthia Giles, a former EPA enforcement chief now at the Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program; Joseph Goffman, a top air adviser who now runs that Harvard program; and Ken Kopocis, a top water official now at American University's law school.

At Interior, there's Bret Birdsong, a University of Nevada law professor who served as Obama's deputy solicitor for Land Resources; Janie Hipp, who led the Agriculture Department's work with tribes under Obama; Kate Kelly, who led outreach work on public lands issues for Obama's Interior Secretary Sally Jewell; Elizabeth Klein, now at New York University's State Impact Center and an associate deputy Interior secretary under Obama; and Shannon Estenoz, a long-time Everglades restoration advocate who headed the Obama administration's work on the River of Grass at Interior and now works at the powerful Everglades Foundation.

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The names also suggest the Biden administration will look to address climate change and stick to the promise to create "good-paying" jobs in the transition away from fossil fuels. For example, Brad Markell, the executive director of the AFL-CIO's industrial union council, will serve on the DOE team.

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Read the full list.

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Some left-leaning groups are still pushing for Mary Nichols for EPA, even though she would almost certainly be rejected by a GOP-controlled Senate. But progressive groups are still adamant that Biden nominate her or other progressive-backed nominees. "We're absolutely pushing to get the folks we need in there, forcing the Senate to vote down qualified candidates," said Collin Rees, senior campaigner at Oil Change International.

But it wouldn't be as if the Republican senators would take a hit at home in rejecting progressives' wish list, the oil and gas lobbyist noted. "It would be very easy for anyone in the [election] cycle for 2022 to fall in line" and vote against Nichols, the person said. "They'll all say California couldn't keep the lights on" and handily reject her nomination if it came to that.

Toney Toney Toney? One person that Rees and others say could make it through: Heather McTeer Toney. Nominating Toney would all but dare Republican senators to reject a former EPA regional head, current senior director of Moms Clean Air Force and a woman of color, sources said. A spokesperson for MCAF declined to comment on whether the transition team had reached out to Toney.

Iowa energy? Bloomberg reports the Biden transition team has contacted former Iowa Gov. Chet Culver about possibly helming the Energy Department. As governor, Culver helped create the Iowa Office of Energy Independence and Iowa Power Fund to invest in renewable energy research and development. Culver declined comment to ME.

ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE: International leaders pledged to work with the incoming administration on climate change in phone calls congratulating Biden on his win.

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FED TO JOIN CLIMATE COALITION: Federal Reserve Vice Chair of Supervision Randal Quarles said on Tuesday the U.S. central bank has requested membership into the Network for Greening the Financial System, a global coalition of central banks and regulators that is dedicated to making sure the financial system is prepared to deal with risks posed by climate change, Pro's Victoria Guida reports. "I suspect we could probably join before the spring," Quarles said at a hearing. READ MORE

How Biden aims to amp up the government’s fight against climate change (Washington Post)

Biden Transition Team Signals Commitment to Climate Action (Our Daily Planet)

GREENS LAY OUT PREREQUISITES FOR BIDEN: (Politico's Morning Energy)

Contender to lead Biden EPA says agency should focus on environmental justice (Reuters)

Climate 21 Project Memos (Climate 21 Project)

Kansas Biofuels Head Offers Post Election Views (Energy.AgWired.com; includes AUDIO)

Biden stocks landing teams with climate experts (E&E News)

PATHS OF LEAST RESISTANCE: (Politico's Morning Energy)

580 WIBW / KAN Podcast: Robert White, VP For Industry Relations, Renewable Fuels Association (WIBW News; includes AUDIO)

Farming and Politics (Alton Daily News)

Guebert: November winds are blowing big change (Globe Gazette)

GREENS SLAM RICHMOND HIRE: (Politico's Morning Energy)

DWS APPROPS CLIMATE PLAN: (Politico's Morning Energy)

Why is Joe Biden considering this man to help fight the climate crisis? The Biden transition team is facing pressure not to hire people with fossil fuel ties, like Obama’s energy secretary Ernest Moniz (The Guardian)

President-elect Biden’s EPA could bring major ag changes (Feedstuffs)

An Unlikely Alliance of Farm and Environmental Groups Takes on Climate Change (Inside Climate News)

Bill Gates calls for new federal energy agency (E&E News)

Excerpt from Our Daily Planet: Also this week, a group of Obama-era alum, climate policy experts and members of Biden’s transition team released a blueprint through the Climate 21 Project to help guide the new administration in achieving its goals of expanding scope of climate policy across the executive branch. Part of their recommendations include the issuance of an executive order to create the White House National Climate Council (NCC) that is co-equal to the Domestic Policy Council and the National Economic Council.

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The Climate 21 Project explains in its aim that “every agency in the federal government—and every policy council in the White House—has some degree of opportunity and responsibility for addressing climate change.”

As E&E News reported, the project’s recommendations include guidance for 11 White House offices and federal departments and agencies, drawing on input from more than 150 experts.

There are memos for the executive office of the president, the Office of Management and Budget, EPA, Interior, the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Transportation, the Department of State, the Department of Justice and the Department of the Treasury, and one on “attracting and hiring climate change talent.”
The group called for the publication of a new four-year Climate Ambition Agenda detailing actions agencies can take to reduce emissions and support a green energy transition.

The bottom line message: the next administration will need to act quickly to confront four crises simultaneously: The COVID-19 pandemic, economic devastation, racial injustice, and the accelerating threats of climate change. Climate should be fully integrated into economic, racial justice, and foreign policy, national security, trade and other areas of the president’s agenda. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: GREENS LAY OUT PREREQUISITES FOR BIDEN: A coalition of more than 130 environmental, progressive and Wall Street watchdog organizations laid out their criteria to determine whether the incoming Biden administration financial regulators and Treasury Department appointments are committed to "shifting at full speed into economic principles and practices which completely support renewable energy and fully divest from the fossil fuel industries."

The letter to President-elect Joe Biden from Stop The Money Pipeline, a coalition that includes Sierra Club and 350.org among others, comes as environmental groups home in on how the financial sector funds fossil fuels and the risks climate change poses to the broader financial system.

The coalition wants nominees to agree that financial companies should be required to commit to an emissions pathway that will keep average global temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, and to publish their plan for achieving it. The group also wants nominees to support excluding fossil fuel companies from federal bond-buying programs, such as the one offered under the Federal Reserve's pandemic relief effort this year.

Biden also should avoid nominating people who were recently a "corporate executive, lobbyist, or prominent corporate, consultant, particularly in financial industry firms, fossil fuel companies, or their industry association."

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PROGRESSIVES UNVEIL DREAM CABINET: The Sunrise Movement and Justice Democrats on Wednesday unveiled their picks for Biden's Cabinet, arguing that they helped him win the White House and deserve significant representation. "Young people helped deliver this historic majority to Joe Biden," said Varshini Prakash, executive director of Sunrise Movement.

The groups say a new Office of Climate Mobilization could coordinate the federal government's efforts to combat climate change (sounds like the rumored climate "czar" position) and be led by Gov. Jay Inslee, former EPA head Gina McCarthy or John Podesta. For Interior, the groups seek Rep. Deb Haaland, who would be the first-ever Native American Cabinet pick. They favor environmental justice champion Mustafa Santiago Ali for EPA, and progressive icons Sen. Bernie Sanders as Labor head and Sen. Elizabeth Warren at Treasury. And the groups want Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota, as national Attorney General and Rep. Chuy García to lead the Transportation Department. Read their full wishlist of picks.

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WARREN CALLS ON BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE TO BACK UP ITS CLIMATE TALK: The Massachusetts senator called on the Business Roundtable, a trade association that includes the heads of some of the largest U.S. companies, to detail the concrete steps it is taking to align its public statements on climate change with its political activity. She warned against "empty rhetoric without any actual climate action."

Warren, who has previously pressured the trade group over its corporate commitments, wrote this week to BRT Chair Doug McMillon and BRT Energy and Environment Committee Chair Mark Sutton on the group's September support of a "market-based mechanism" as part of a plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Warren wrote that the BRT "lacks specific details" for what carbon pricing strategies it supports or opposes, or how it will publicly disclose its progress.

The group needs to lay out the what it plans to do and detail which policies it will support or oppose, Warren said. "Failure to do so would indicate that the new statement is yet another empty press release by the BRT, designed to boost its public image without taking any action that would merit it," she wrote. The BRT did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ME. READ MORE

Excerpt from Energy.AgWired.com: (President and CEO of Renew Kansas Biofuels Association, Ron) Seeber was asked what his perspective was on biofuels under a Biden administration, including low carbon fuel standards in the Midwest. “A lot of it will have to do with who is appointed as head of the EPA under a Biden administration, what their overall energy policy is going to be, and whether there’s a place for biofuels in that policy,” said Seeber, noting that a move toward more electric vehicles rather than biofuels would be problematic. READ MORE

Excerpt from E&E News: From the Pentagon to the General Services Administration, President-elect Joe Biden has embedded climate-minded officials throughout his sprawling transition team.

Climate experts, former Obama administration officials and green activists abound among the teams managing the transition for EPA; the Energy, Interior and Agriculture departments; and the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Unlike past transitions, officials with significant climate or clean energy experience also pop up in departments like State, Defense, Treasury and Justice.

They're even handling the transition at agencies that, so far, have been on the periphery of climate policy, like the Small Business Administration and the Federal Reserve.

Of Biden's 39 agency review teams, at least 19 have one or more officials with some climate background.

Perhaps just as telling, many of the transition officials had a hand in the 2009 stimulus, to date the largest government investment in clean energy and the model for Biden's climate plan.

The teams include a cross section of union representatives, progressive policy experts, establishment loyalists, activist scholars, corporate envoys and technocrats. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: PATHS OF LEAST RESISTANCE: If Democrats don't win both Senate seats currently up for grabs in the upcoming Georgia run-off, a Biden administration will have to choose which of its energy and climate goals it can pursue through legislation and which it will have to carry out via executive action. Senate Republicans, for their part, may allow some leeway on certain policies of mutual interest, according to one GOP Senate aide. Updates to mining laws and policies supporting production of the critical minerals needed for battery technology and electrification efforts would likely appeal to Republicans in mining states and China hawks in the caucus, the aide said. Also in the mix would be research and development money for carbon capture and storage.

Speaking of resistance: Progressives at the Sunrise Movement spent some time on Twitter heckling Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), the committee's ranking Democrat, foreshadowing the kind of the relationship progressives may forge with the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. ME would note for the record that if the Georgia run-off election yields a Democratic majority in the Senate, Manchin is in line to lead the committee. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: GREENS SLAM RICHMOND HIRE: Sunrise Movement criticized President-elect Joe Biden's hiring of Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.) to a White House role that includes outreach to climate activists as a "mistake," citing the longtime House Democrat from New Orleans' history with the oil and gas industry. "Today feels like a betrayal," Varshini Prakash, co-founder and executive director for Sunrise, said in a statement that questioned the hire given Biden's pledges to aggressively combat climate change and fossil fuel industry influence.

Richmond has taken thousands of dollars from utility, oil and gas companies while representing energy-rich Louisiana. In the 2020 cycle alone, Richmond took in $112,000 from the oil and gas industry and $55,000 from electric utilities, according to Open Secrets. Contributors include Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Marathon Petroleum, along with trade groups such as the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers. Richmond carries a lifetime score of 76 percent from the League of Conservation Voters, though his 2019 rating hit 93 percent after registering 46 percent in 2018.

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WHAT WIND WANTS: The trade group American Wind Energy Association has a plan for how Biden can advance their industry. Biden may be hamstrung by not having control of Congress, but he can take actions to streamline permitting and open up more land and offshore space for lease sale to the industry all on his own. The industry would also like to see an expansion of interstate transmission, a goal it shares with the solar industry, as both groups would like to build massive generation plants in rural areas and then ship the power into population centers along the coasts. The group also joins with solar in pushing for a more renewable-friendly FERC, in particular they'd like to see changes to power markets that make life easier for renewable entrants.

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NEW GROUP EMERGES ON CARBON SEQUESTRATION: A new coalition of leading agriculture and environmental groups launched Tuesday by formally backing a suite of policies to give incentives to farmers, ranchers and foresters to sequester more carbon and cut greenhouse gas emissions, Pro's Helena Bottemiller Evich reports.

The Food and Agriculture Climate Alliance — led by the American Farm Bureau Federation, Environmental Defense Fund, National Council of Farmer Cooperatives and National Farmers Union — is aimed at organizing agriculture and green groups ahead of any action on climate by the Biden administration. Coalition leaders told Helena the alliance has been in the works for more than a year and would have been announced regardless of who won the presidential election. The group will shift toward advocacy in the coming weeks and months.

It also unveiled a 50-page memo of recommendations. The group calls for supporting and overseeing carbon credit markets, including expanding the USDA's Commodity Credit Corporation borrowing authority to create a carbon bank.

Not alone: Former Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) are co-chairing a new Farm and Forest Carbon Solutions Task Force announced Tuesday by The Bipartisan Policy Center. The task force aims to develop federal policy and program recommendations on sustainable land management practices that improve profitability, increase carbon storage and reduce emissions.

Heitkamp has long been seen as a potential Agriculture secretary pick in a Biden administration, but progressives within agriculture are vocally opposed. On Tuesday, more than 160 groups wrote to Biden to oppose Heitkamp for the role, pointing to her support of the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines and her break with Democrats to support Scott Pruitt's nomination to lead EPA, among other reasons. READ MORE

Excerpt from Polticio's Morning Energy: DWS APPROPS CLIMATE PLAN: As she competes against Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) for the Appropriations gavel, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) released a four-page plan Friday for how she would integrate climate change considerations throughout every subcommittee in the annual spending cycle.

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Among the ideas that caught ME's eye: Renewed funding for the Green Climate Fund, which aims to help developing countries adapt to climate impacts; Biden's so-called ARPA-C, which would develop new low-carbon energy technologies, within the Energy Department; prohibitions on funding for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and offshore drilling; and investments in moving the military toward adopting clean energy technologies. READ MORE