Inslee Hits Ground Running on Climate Message

by Kelsey Tamborrino (Politico's Morning Energy) Only a few days after Jay Inslee formally announced his 2020 presidential bid with a specific focus on climate change, the Washington governor preached that the United States will face "enormous cost" if it doesn't act on climate change.

"We know we can invent and create and build a clean energy economy," Inslee said on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday. "We know we can do that because we're doing it in my state where we've built a wind turbine industry from $0 to $6 billion in 12 years, we're electrifying our transportation fleet. ... But what we need is a president to do what presidents do, which is to blow the bugle and really call the country to a higher mission."

Asked how he would convince voters that acting on climate change is an "overriding issue," Inslee listed personal experience and changing polling. "Look, I really believe that the way to win this is to talk about the basic American character of who we are. We think big," he said. "... And we don't fear the world, you know, we lead it." READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: 2020 WATCH: Former New York City Mayor and climate activist Michael Bloomberg will not run for president in 2020, he said in an editorial Tuesday. Bloomberg wrote that "the best way for me to help our country is by rolling up my sleeves and continuing to get work done."

To do that, Bloomberg will expand his support for the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign to retire every coal-fired power plant over the next 11 years. He will also help launch "a new, even more ambitious phase of the campaign" dubbed "Beyond Carbon" to move America away from oil and gas and toward a 100 percent clean-energy economy.

PAC LAUNCHES INSLEE AD: The super PAC supporting Washington Gov. Jay Inslee's bid for president is out with a seven-figure ad buy today — Act Now on Climate's first of the 2020 cycle. The ad says Inslee "transformed his state into a clean-energy leader." It begins on national cable today.

REPORT: ENERGY JOBS 'OUTPERFORM' OVERALL ECONOMY: Employment figures were strong across most of the energy sector in 2018 with the exception of areas like coal-fired generation, which shed some 6,600 jobs, according to a new report from Energy Futures Initiative and the National Association of State Energy Officials. "In spite of one of the highest levels of employment in recent U.S. history, the traditional energy and energy efficiency sectors continued to outperform the economy as a whole," the report states. Meanwhile, natural gas employment in electric sector increased by more than 5,200 jobs, a growth that outstripped that for wind energy firms last year. Read the report. READ MORE

Excerpt from Washington Examiner: Inslee said last week, following a campaign stop in Iowa, that he supports a Low Carbon Fuel Standard for the nation, akin to the one currently being considered by his state’s legislature.

“What we need to do nationally is what we are doing in Washington state,” Inslee said on a climate change panel at Washington University.

But what Inslee is proposing for Washington state is at odds with what ethanol proponents want done in D.C. Low Carbon Fuel Standard advocates in Washington, such as Carbon Washington, view corn ethanol skeptically, faulting it for producing more greenhouse gas emissions than other alternative fuels.

Carbon Washington, accordingly, says that the federal ethanol mandate program, the Renewable Fuel Standard, has been a failure because it has boosted the use of corn ethanol.

The ethanol industry has experience with similar efforts. It fought a long legal battle with California over its low-carbon fuel program because of the penalties it imposed on corn ethanol.

In the end, the industry was able to change California’s use of a measure, which didn't hold up under scientific scrutiny, for assessing the carbon emissions generated by renewable fuels to get the state to act more favorably toward ethanol.

Similarly, Shaw said, the acceptability of the Washington program would depend on the measure the state uses to assess fuel carbon intensity. It could be good for ethanol if it's done correctly, he said.

Ethanol supporters point out that now, California uses a large amount of corn ethanol to meet its low-carbon goals. Without ethanol in the mix, its program would be a failure, Shaw said. READ MORE