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A WAY TO GET AROUND PERMITTING LAWS: As Congress works out how to speed up environmental reviews and permitting, it’s using a trump card of sorts to overrule environmental stewardship laws and court rulings for specific energy-related projects.

Many Democrats seem to support reforming environmental review laws to make it easier to permit energy infrastructure, and green energy projects in particular. Republicans support reform, too, although the differences between the parties could be enough to tank reform efforts this Congress.

But in the meantime, Congress is wielding its power to override laws and rulings that have stood in the way of project completion, and the big winners so far are oil and gas.

Lease Sale 257: Interior reinstated Lease Sale 257 last Wednesday, the only offshore lease sale to be carried out last year, in compliance with directions from Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act. The IRA directed Interior to reinstate the sale within 30 days of passage, notwithstanding an ongoing legal battle over whether the environmental review underpinning the sale was deficient.

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled that it was, at the request of environmental plaintiffs. He invalidated 257 in January, vacating its record of decision and remanding it to the Interior Department, on the grounds that its underlying environmental impact statement violated NEPA and the Administrative Procedure Act. Interior arbitrarily excluded foreign consumption from the greenhouse gas emissions calculation in its EIS for 257, he ruled.

Oil and gas interests appealed the ruling, and litigation was still ongoing when the IRA was passed, directing Interior to accept bids “without modification or delay.”

Hallie Templeton of Friends of the Earth, the leading environmental plaintiff in the case, argued in the days after the IRA passed that Congress flouted NEPA on 257 and suggested the possibility of litigation over the issue.

Whatever happens there, the government made clear its view that Congress mooted the active 257 litigation.

Interior “ordinarily has discretion regarding whether and when to hold lease sales, the terms of the sales, and whether to accept bids and issue leases received in the sales,” the department said in a filing on Friday.

However, Congress’s direction “has prospectively changed existing law as to the tracts at issue in Lease Sale 257,” and the IRA “withdraws Interior’s discretion to do anything other than issue these leases on the terms specified by Congress, irrespective of NEPA.”

The MVP: It’s not final yet, but the Manchin-Schumer permitting reform outline, which according to Manchin’s office represents what’s been agreed to between the senator and leadership, ostensibly wants to do the same kind of workaround for the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

It proposes to “require the relevant agencies to take all necessary actions to permit the construction and operation of the Mountain Valley Pipeline and give the DC Circuit jurisdiction over any further litigation.”

Republicans’ permitting counter proposal does, too. It implicates more of the U.S. code governing environmental stewardship than just NEPA, and also proposes to preempt judicial decisionmaking.

The bill would direct the secretary of the Army to issue permits or verifications to complete the MVP across the waters of the United States (Clean Water Act). It also directs the agriculture secretary to reissue the biological statement for the MVP (Endangered Species Act) such that it’s “substantively identical to the biological opinion” issued during the Trump administration.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals just vacated that biological opinion in February.

Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers Jeremy Beaman (@jeremywbeaman) and Breanne Deppisch (@breanne_dep). Email [email protected] or [email protected] for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.

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EU PLANS TO UPGRADE ITS PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT TARGET: The European Union is planning to raise its target to tackle global warming under the Paris climate agreement, Reuters reports, upping the bloc’s already-ambitious “nationally determined contribution,” or NDC, that pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2030.

The bloc has already pledged a 55% emissions reduction by 2030, one of the most ambitious goals set by major economies. But EU officials are hoping to bump that number up by a “few percentage points,” as the document indicates.

The EU "stands ready to update its NDC in line with the final outcome of the 'Fit for 55' package in due time,” the document says, referencing the EU’s package of new climate policies, which are still being finalized by negotiators in the bloc.

Since “Fit for 55” is unlikely to be finalized before next year, officials said it is unlikely that the ambitious pledge can be made before the COP27 summit in November.

GERMANY NEARING LONG-TERM LNG CONTRACT WITH QATAR: Two of Germany’s largest utility companies, RWE and Uniper, are close to striking a long-term deal to purchase liquified natural gas from Qatar, Reuters reports, ending a months-long negotiation process to help offset Russian supplies, even if the deal is unlikely to alleviate Germany’s deep supply crisis in the near-term.

Though the two sides reportedly reached consensus on the length of the contract (which one source told Reuters is expected to last 15 years, and could be signed “within weeks”), it will still not help Germany deliver on its goal of replacing all Russian energy imports before the end of 2024.

That’s because the negotiations center around LNG from Qatar’s nearly $30 billion North Field Expansion project, which is not expected to come online until 2026.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is expected to sign the LNG contracts with Qatar during his two-day visit to the Gulf region later this week.

FORD WARNS OF AN EXTRA $1 BILLION IN SUPPLY CHAIN COSTS DURING Q3: Ford Motor warned its investors yesterday that it expects to see an extra $1 billion in costs during the third quarter of 2022 due to supply chain issues and resulting parts shortages that have squeezed automakers for the better part of two years.

Ford said the parts shortages have affected between 40,000 and 45,000 of its vehicles—primarily high-margin trucks and SUVs— that cannot be shipped to dealers. That amount is higher than the company had expected, and could portend more supply chain woes for the industry in 2023, when automakers had anticipated the shortage would begin to ease.

Ford said it expects to deliver the delayed vehicles during the fourth quarter, and did not adjust its full-year adjusted earnings projection of between $11.5 billion and $12.5 billion.

Executives said they will “provide more dimension about expectations for full-year performance” next month in their third-quarter earnings report.

HURRICANE FIONA LATEST: FEMA chief Deanne Criswell is slated to travel today to Puerto Rico to meet with local officials and assess the damage caused by Hurricane Fiona, the year’s first major hurricane, which brought wind speeds of up to 115 and dumped more than two feet of rain on some parts of the island. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said it expects Fiona to strengthen into a Category 4 storm as it travels towards Bermuda, where it could make landfall later this week.

Fiona killed at least two people and unleashed “catastrophic” destruction across Puerto Rico, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said yesterday, overflowing rivers and canals and causing hundreds of thousands of people to lose power. (As of this morning, power had resumed for 19% of residents and businesses on the island, according to Puerto Rico’s Luma Energy.)

A sobering reminder: Today also marks the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Maria, the Category 4 storm that tore through Puerto Rico in 2017, killing thousands of people and destroying the island’s power grid.

Maria also exposed the deep deficiencies of emergency response efforts—in the five years since the storm made landfall, the government has completed just 21% of more than 5,500 official post-hurricane projects, the Associated Press notes. More than 3,600 homes battered by the storm still have a blue tarp serving as a makeshift roof.

FOUR DEAD AND DOZENS MISSING IN JAPAN’S 14TH TYPHOON THIS YEAR: Four people died and dozens remain missing after Typhoon Nanmadol pummeled Japan with heavy rain and gale-force winds of roughly 110 mph. The typhoon is the fourth-strongest to hit Japan, and the 14th to make landfall so far this season alone.

At least 286,000 residents remained without power late Monday, officials said, down slightly from 340,000 households at the height of the storm. In preparation for the typhoon, officials had called for the evacuations of some 8 million residents. Heavy rainfall and flash floods are expected to last through Wednesday in some areas.

SENATORS SEEK SECONDARY SANCTIONS ON RUSSIAN OIL BUYERS: Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Pat Toomey are proposing to direct the Biden administration to put secondary sanctions on countries that increase purchases of Russian fossil fuels.

A legislative framework released by the two this morning would give the president new sanctions authority, including authority over the imposition of a price cap on Russian oil, on the basis that the U.S. and allied effort to punish Russia financially over the war has yet to “effectively cut off funding to Putin’s war machine by diminishing Russia’s revenues from energy sales.”

Biden administration officials have been down on the prospect of secondary sanctions so far, which could end up hurting friends, such as India. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said earlier this month that he "[doesn't] think you need secondary sanctions for this to work,” speaking of the price cap.

The Rundown

Associated Press Drought in Western US heats up as a Senate campaign issue

Utility Dive Electric vehicle ‘range wars’ could boost V2G potential, say Rivian and other automakers

Bloomberg Europe gas swings as efforts to ease crisis counter winter risks

CBS News Millions are displaced each year by climate change. José Andrés, Leon Panetta and others are teaming up to try to help

Washington Post Scientists have calculated how many ants are on Earth. The number is so big it’s ‘unimaginable.’

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Calendar

TUESDAY | SEPTEMBER 20

The 39th annual International Pittsburgh Coal Conference (PCC) continues. PCC focuses on all aspects of coal utilization and sustainable development both in the U.S. and internationally, and brings together key stakeholders from industry, government, and academia. See the full agenda and sign up to watch virtually here.

WEDNESDAY | SEPTEMBER 21

10:00 a.m. 310 Cannon The House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on the preparedness and resilience of water infrastructure in the U.S., amid extreme drought conditions in the West and incidents of severe flooding. Learn more and register here.

MONDAY | SEPTEMBER 26

The 6th annual, five-day National Clean Energy Week kicks off in Washington, D.C.