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MINNESOTA CLIMATE PLAN: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) introduced a 69-page Climate Action Framework this month outlining six “areas of action” to help the state deliver on its climate goals—which, under Minnesota’s bipartisan Next Generation Energy Act, call for a 30% reduction of its 2005 greenhouse gas emission levels by 2025, and an 80% reduction in 2005-level emissions by 2050.

The plan is based on input from thousands of residents and local governments, tribes, and businesses, and outlines broad six goals: Clean transportation, improved natural and working land use, creating communities resistant to climate change, promoting clean energy and efficient buildings, protecting health in the face of climate change, and the creation of a clean, carbon-neutral economy.

Farming provisions: Minnesota is the fifth-biggest agricultural state in the U.S., and generates roughly 4% of the nation's total agricultural receipts.

But the plan calls for sweeping overhauls in the industry in particular. The framework calls for 50% of farmers to use cover crops by 2030–up from just 4% who use them now. Cover crops are soil-healthy crops such as cereal rye, radish, and barley grown during the offseason to protect the ground from wind or water erosion.

It also seeks to increase other soil-healthy practices, such as increasing the minimum of “conservation” tillage, and incentivize efforts to mitigate fertilizer-based nitrogen and methane emissions.

But how, exactly, the state plans accomplish much of that—especially on such a quick timeline— remains unclear.

Karin Schaefer, the executive director of the Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation, told Breanne the plan “doesn’t necessarily say how we’re going to achieve that action,” whether it’s going to be through legislative efforts or education and public outreach programs.

Another key challenge for enacting these regulations is its size: Minnesota is a large state, and as such has different climates, topography, and soil types that are conducive to different types of growing.

As such, a one-size-fits-all approach isn’t feasible, Schaefer said.

She said the state should employ a “carrot approach” rather than an “enforcement stick.”

“It takes a really long time to change soil, literally decades,” Pat Lunemann, a central Minnesota farmer who served on the governor’s advisory council, told the news outlet Sustainable Farming. “And you can ruin soil in a short period of time with the wrong crops and the wrong practices. So as the state looks forward, we’re hoping to do a whole lot more research to figure out what creates better soil health.”

Electric vehicles: The plan also calls for a 20% reduction in vehicle miles traveled per capita by 2050, and seeks to have 20% EV adoption in the state by 2030. (Currently, just 1% of drivers in the state own EVs.)

That’s in line with the California clean car standard, which Minnesota adopted in 2021. But that standard has also attracted criticism from some manufacturers and industry interests in the state, including the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, which said last month that the standard could hurt its large biofuels production center and agricultural economy.

“Ethanol and biofuels are proven to reduce carbon emissions,” Minnesota Corn Growers’ Association President Bryan Biegler said in an August statement. “California’s decision is not the right direction for Minnesota, which has a significant biofuels production sector and an agricultural economy that is vital to the economic health of the state.”

Schaefer, however, was more optimistic: “I think there's a place for agriculture” in the changes to Minnesota’s clean transportation standards, she told Breanne. “And we're excited about, hopefully, more opportunities for ethanol, biodiesel, and biofuels.” What will be key, she added, is “testing the waters and making sure that this works—[determining] whether to lead with a carrot or stick” to spark change at the local level.

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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MILLIONS WITHOUT POWER AS IAN MOVES NORTH : Hurricane Ian tore into Florida’s coast yesterday as one of the strongest hurricanes ever to hit the U.S.

Though the extent of the damage remains unknown, with some of the hardest-hit areas still inaccessible to first responders, it is expected to be significant. More than 2 million residents remain without power in the state, and President Joe Biden this morning approved a “major disaster” declaration for the state.

Gov. Ron DeSantis said today that Ian has brought “historic” damage to Florida. “We’ve never seen a flood event like this,” he said.

What’s next: High winds and flood risks continue as Ian, now a tropical storm, continues its trek up Florida and along the East Coast.

Forecasters warned that those still in Ian’s path, including Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, should brace for intense storm conditions, including heavy rainfall and potentially “life-threatening” floods and storm surge for those along Ian’s path.

NATO VOWS TO RETALIATE FOR NORD STREAM ATTACKS: NATO vowed today that it would retaliate to attacks on the Nord Stream Russian natural gas pipelines, saying in a statement it believes the explosions were carried out as an act of sabotage.

“Any deliberate attack against Allies’ critical infrastructure would be met with a united and determined response,” NATO ambassadors said.

The statement added that “all currently available information indicates that this is the result of deliberate, reckless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage.”

“These leaks are causing risks to shipping and substantial environmental damage,” ambassadors said.

MEANWHILE, SWEDEN CONFIRMS A FOURTH LEAK: The Swedish coast guard said today that it has discovered a fourth gas leak along the Nord Stream pipelines—making it the second leak to be reported near its waters. (The other two were discovered off Denmark.)

"There are two emission sites in Sweden's exclusive economic zone, the bigger one above the Nord Stream 1 and a smaller one by Nord Stream 2," the coast guard said in a statement.

NORD STREAM 1 TO STOP LEAKING GAS ON MONDAY: Operators of the Nord Stream 1 Russian gas pipeline said it is expected to stop leaking gas on Monday, exactly one week after it and its twin pipeline, Nord Stream 2, were hit by multiple blasts, causing them both to leak unknown amounts of pressurized natural gas to leak into the Baltic Sea.

Officials said today that they will be unable to provide any assessments of the damage to the line—or begin calculating the amount of methane leaked into the sea—until the leaks stop and inspectors can safely gain access to the area.

Whether or not Nord Stream 1 can ever be brought back online remains to be seen. "Until there are some results from an assessment of the damage, no forecasts can be made,” a spokesman for Nord Stream AG said. “The damage assessment can be carried out on the spot as soon as we manage to approach the area. At the moment it is a restricted zone.”

PERMITTING FALLS SHORT BUT REMAINS TOP-OF-MIND FOR PROPONENTS: The last few weeks of politicking around Sen. Joe Manchin’s permitting reform show just how quickly alliances can realign in Congress.

Every last Democrat got behind Majority Leader Chuck Schumer when it came time to vote on the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, but enough fled when it came time to serve the other half of that deal in the permitting bill — a bill Schumer supported.

Schumer said Congress would keep at it and try to pass something this year, and it couldn’t come faster for the oil and gas industry.

The emblematic pipeline: The Mountain Valley Pipeline, to which Manchin’s proposal gives special attention (it’s a West Virginia thing) has been elevated by reform proponents as an exemplary case of a permitting regime in need of streamlining.

MVP has faced numerous streams of litigation since its stakeholders began this process in 2015 and most recently saw its biological opinion and incidental take statement, required under the Endangered Species Act, vacated by a federal court.

The Fish and Wildlife Service issued the authorizations in 2020, but the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the Trump-era FWS failed its analyses of potential effects to two endangered fish species, the Roanoke logperch and the candy darter, and remanded them to the agency.

“We recognize that this decision will further delay the completion of an already mostly finished Pipeline, but the [Endangered Species Act’s] directive to federal agencies could not be clearer: ‘halt and reverse the trend toward species extinction, whatever the cost,’” the court said.

Greg Floerke, executive vice president and COO of MPLX LP, a company that owns and manages energy infrastructure from pipelines to storage caverns, said firms “need to know what the rules are” if they are going to invest billions of dollars in new assets.

“There’s an example,” Floerke said of the MVP yesterday, speaking to the Marcellus Shale Coalition’s annual Shale Insight conference in Erie, “where a company does all the right things, follows the rules, expects a standard to be held to, regardless of changes in administration or politics, and all of a sudden, the rug is pulled out from under.”

Environmentalist challengers have been successful at utilizing longstanding laws like the ESA and the National Environmental Policy Act to disrupt completion of new fossil fuel infrastructure, as well as federal oil and gas lease sales and drilling permits, under Democratic and Republican presidents on the grounds that relevant agencies issued deficient authorizations.

INDUSTRY GETTING AHEAD OF NEXT ROUND OF EXPORT BAN POLITICS: Predicting the future isn’t our business, but the Biden administration was asked this past winter to impose restrictions on fossil fuel exports, and gas prices and market pressures are even more volatile now. It would seem to imply non-zero chances of additional requests for export limits this winter.

U.S. natural gas players are getting out ahead of any such campaign, which would seek to make gas cheaper at home by keeping it at home.

“All the molecules, whether they’re going to international markets or not, they're backfilling any molecules that are going to international markets as well,” Dave Callahan, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, told Jeremy. “So, it all works harmoniously together.”

Democratic lawmakers, as well as some environmental and manufacturing groups, have sought the export limits when prices were at their highest over the past year, arguing that domestic consumers left paying more so U.S. companies can export their product at a premium.

The Biden administration, however, has prioritized the facilitation of more shipments of liquefied natural gas to European allies who are ailing from high prices and throttled supply from Russia, and it has authorized new export capacity.

LNG exports were up by 12% for the period covering January-June, averaging 11.2 billion cubic feet per day.

SHAPIRO PLEDGES TO BE ‘ALL-OF-THE-ABOVE’ FOR ENERGY-RICH PENNSYLVANIA: Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro promised he’d be an “all-of-the-above energy governor” if voters elect him over Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano in November.

The natural gas industry has put Pennsylvania’s share of Marcellus Shale basin to use over the last three decades, making it the no. 2 gas producer in the country. Oil and gas are responsible for hundreds of thousands of jobs in the state, something that’s not lost on Shapiro.

“Energy is one of the great economic opportunities we have right here in Pennsylvania,” he told a gas industry crowd gathered in Erie this morning, adding that he “[refuses] to accept the false choice between protecting jobs and protecting the environment.”

The Rundown

Washington Post Why the defeat of Manchin’s energy bill could be a loss for the climate

E&E News Could a rail merger snarl the U.S. freight system?

Bloomberg Europe’s hunt for clean energy in the Middle East has a dirty secret

Financial Times The EV battery race: inside the struggles of Britishvolt

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Calendar

THURSDAY | SEPTEMBER 29

1:30 p.m. 210 Cannon The House Select Climate Crisis Committee will hold a hearing examining the various climate provisions included in the Inflation Reduction Act.