perry2 bak

818

age of trump

capt 818

pension plan?

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-trump-energy-secretary-rick-perry-says-criticizing-oil-and-gas-industry-unpatriotic

DANA PERINO (CO-ANCHOR): Let's show everybody this graph here of what it has been like over the past year.You are paying at the pump, you kind of know, you can go back to March of 2021 and look at the steady increase in gas prices all the way up to then you see the big spike and that is when Russia invaded Ukraine. Just practically, sir, if you look in Texas, the number of oil and gas wells there that are not perhaps producing right now.Just practically, how long would it take to start getting more domestic energy production into the system?

RICK PERRY (FORMER SECRETARY OF ENERGY): I think it would probably take a year to get more production in but I think, Dana, the more important thing is what I said earlier about if they sent the messages that we're going to stop the war on fossil fuels, then the market would correct,I think, in a very short period of time and we would see -- I want to bring up one other thing that's offensive to the people out here putting a lot of Americans to work in the oil and gas industries, certainly in my home state and across the country. And that is this not even lightly veiled attack on the oil and gas producers in this country when the day before yesterday, President Biden basically said that they were the cause of the problem, that they weren't out there doing their part.

And nothing could be more offensive to me. That's a pretty unpatriotic thing to say, Mr. President, about the oil and gas producers which are basically our national defense. If you want to talk about a defense policy, have an energy industry that is vibrant, that is delivering oil and gas not just to the American military but to our allies as well. So, you know,take the foot off of the neck of the oil and gas industry. Quit using them as your scapegoat to dog whistle to the left and get America back on track by sending the message that we are going to open up our oil and gas industry. We're sitting on a hundred-plus years of energy in this country and using the climate as your existential threat,I happen to think, is pretty poor not only public policy but it's also pretty bad politics.

BILL HEMMER (CO-ANCHOR): Looking for oil anywhere but here at home. Talking to Venezuela, et al. Sir, thank you for your time. Rick Perry down there in Round Top, Texas.

pension plan?

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-trump-energy-secretary-rick-perry-says-criticizing-oil-and-gas-industry-unpatriotic

BILL HEMMER (CO-ANCHOR): Looking for oil anywhere but here at home. Talking to Venezuela, et al. Sir, thank you for your time. Rick Perry down there in Round Top, Texas.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/01/evangelicals-are-anticipating-the-end-of-the-world-and-trump-is-listening/

no lnx

Evangelicals Love Donald Trump for Many Reasons, But One of Them Is Especially Terrifying

End Times.

Stephanie Mencimer January 23, 2020

Mother Jones

The enemies of Israel have unleashed a massive air attack on the Promised Land. Hundreds of fighter jets streak across the sky. But before Israel can be destroyed, fire rains from the heavens and the enemy jets explode in mid-air with no explanation. Hailstones the size of golf balls follow the fire. The ground shakes. Birds pick clean the bodies of the fallen attackers. The enemy is vanquished without a single Israeli casualty, and the country is saved.

These are some of the opening scenes of the bestselling 1995 book Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days, by Jerry B. Jenkins and the late evangelical minister Tim LaHaye. But don’t mistake this scenario for a mere action sequence: It’s based on the war of Gog and Magog, a biblical conflict prophesied in the Book of Ezekiel. In the Bible, Gog is the leader of Magog, a “place in the far north” that many evangelicals believe is Russia. According to Ezekiel’s prophecy, Gog will join with Persia—now Iran—and other Arab nations to attack a peaceful Israel “like a cloud that covers the land.” LaHaye, like many evangelicals, believed this battle would bring on the Rapture, the End Times event when God spirits away the good Christians to heaven before unleashing plagues, sickness, and other horrors on the unbelievers remaining on Earth. Meanwhile, the Antichrist reigns supreme.

The story of Gog and Magog is central to the bloody eschatology long embraced by millions of American evangelicals. In recent years, End Times has gained special political currency as believers have seen any number of Middle East conflagrations as fulfilling Ezekiel’s prophecy, notably the US invasion of Iraq and the war in Syria. Gog and Magog took on fresh relevance earlier this month, when the Trump administration assassinated Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force.

On many levels, President Donald Trump’s self-created crisis in Iran seems to have no relationship to any sort of coherent foreign policy or geopolitical plan for the future. The assassination has yielded few if any tangible rewards for the US. But there is an eager constituency for Trump’s improvised policy toward the Middle East and Iran in particular: the evangelical Christians who see it as a means of ushering in the return of Christ. Lured by the promise of conservative Supreme Court justices, anti-abortion measures, and a commitment to Christian supremacy under the guise of religious freedom, white evangelicals voted for Trump in higher numbers than any other group—more than 80 percent.

He desperately needs them if he’s going to be reelected. And while some have expressed concern about the administration’s inching toward war with Iran, many of those with what were once fringe beliefs have cheered the killing of Soleimani. “Iran has this big part to play in biblical history,” says religious historian Diana Butler Bass, who grew up in the evangelical church, attended an evangelical college and seminary, and wrote her Ph.D. thesis at Duke University on American fundamentalism. “There are these particular prophecies from Ezekiel, where there is talk of a war that will happen at a very important moment in Israel’s history. And that war is going to kick off the End Times. People in this prophetic community believe Iran is going to be one of these aggressors.”

“When Iran gets into the news, especially with anything to do with war, it’s sort of a prophetic dog whistle to evangelicals.”

Bass thinks this worldview may be central to understanding Trump’s foreign policy. “When Iran gets into the news, especially with anything to do with war, it’s sort of a prophetic dog whistle to evangelicals. They will support anything that seems to edge the world towards this conflagration,” she says. “They don’t necessarily want violence, but they’re eager for Christ to return and they think that this war with Iran and Israel has to happen for their larger hope to pass.”

Not all or even most evangelicals believe in the literal truth of these sorts of prophecies, though nearly 60 percent of white evangelicals, according to one 2010 poll, believe Jesus is definitely or probably going to return by the year 2050. But those who do subscribe to this apocalyptic world view seem to be overrepresented among Trump’s religious supporters and advisers. In October, a host of influential evangelical pastors came to the White House to pray with Trump to protect him from impeachment. Among those who laid hands on the president as he stood, head bowed, in the Oval Office, was repeat visitor Greg Laurie, pastor of a California megachurch. A few days after the killing of Soleimani, Laurie made a YouTube video with Don Stewart, author of 25 Signs We Are Near the End, to discuss Iran and the End Times. “The scenario that the Bible predicted, seemingly so impossible,” Stewart promised, “is now falling into place.”

From the outset, Trump has surrounded himself with people who hail from the fringes of the evangelical community that is steeped in the language of biblical prophecy, and his administration regularly reflects that language back to them in its messaging. In March 2017, for instance, Trump issued an official White House statement recognizing the Persian New Year in which he misattributed a quote to Cyrus the Great, the libertine pagan leader of the ancient Persian empire who was anointed by God to free Jews in Babylon. Ordinary Americans probably wouldn’t have even noticed the announcement, but evangelicals knew that Trump was speaking their language. Many of them believe Trump is like Cyrus, a flawed nonbeliever who nonetheless is chosen by God to work his miracles on Earth.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was reportedly instrumental in pushing for the killing of Soleimani, is also a master of such messaging. In March, during an interview in Jerusalem with the Christian Broadcasting Network (founded by another apocalyptic preacher, Pat Robertson), Pompeo showed his familiarity with another Iran-centric Bible story popular with End Times evangelicals. In the story, a Persian king is urged to slaughter the Jews in his kingdom at the urging of the evil adviser Haman. But his Jewish Queen Esther convinces him not to and saves her people. Asked whether he thought Trump could be a modern-day Esther, saving the Jews from Iran, Pompeo replied, “As a Christian, I certainly believe that’s possible.” The secretary of state’s End Times beliefs made headlines again after the Soleimani killing, as meme-makers circulated a quote from a speech he made in a Kansas church in 2015. A few days after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, Pompeo said: “We will continue to fight these battles. It is a never-ending struggle. … until the Rapture.”

The State Department did not respond to questions about how Pompeo’s religious views may affect his foreign policy decisions. But it’s not hard to see how apocalyptic evangelicalism might be influencing the Trump administration as it seeks to mobilize the millions of evangelicals reached by televangelists and megachurch pastors preaching the End Times. The most blatant appeal to this constituency came when Trump made the controversial decision to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a long-desired goal of evangelicals who see it as fulfilling a biblical prophecy necessary in securing the Second Coming. What may be less obvious is how Trump’s disdain for international governing bodies like NATO also dovetails almost perfectly with End Times theology, whether he realizes it or not.

Matthew Avery Sutton, a Washington State University history professor and author of American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism, says evangelicals who believe the end is near have always been hostile to any sort of international organizations. That’s because they believe biblical prophecies that say that in the last days, a world leader who preaches peace will emerge and move toward a one-world government. In fact, the prophecy goes, that leader will be the Antichrist who will force the world to accept a false religion and persecute people who don’t accept him as a Messiah. (In Left Behind, the Antichrist is a Romanian UN secretary-general.) Evangelicals love Trump’s talk of pulling out of NATO, his attacks on the UN, and his trashing of the Paris climate change accord. “They hate the UN,” Sutton says. “Trump’s unilateralism is also music to their ears.”

Trump is not the first president to surround himself with evangelical Christians with an apocalyptic bent. Ronald Reaganwas advised by Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell, andpersonally believed in the End Times and the coming apocalypse, writing about it in his journals. He appointed people like Interior Secretary James Watt, a Pentecostal fundamentalist whose disdain for environmental conservation seemed to be informed by his belief that the end of the world was nigh. In an appearance before Congress, he told stunned lawmakers, “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.”

Apparently George W. Bush was also part of this apocalypse-now group. When Bush was trying to convince French president Jacques Chirac to support an invasion of Iran in 2003, he reportedly told Chirac: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled.” Chirac had no idea what Bush was talking about and had to consult a biblical scholar.

George W. Bush: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled.”

Trump, who seems unable to distinguish between the New and Old Testaments, doesn’t seem particularly fluent in the prophecies of Ezekiel. But he has brought into the White House a host of people who are.Quite a few also hail from what Bass delicately describes as the “not respectable charlatan wing” of evangelical Christianity. They’re the prosperity preachers and prophets of the sort depicted by Sinclair Lewis in Elmer Gantry. “I have no doubt at all that those people are sitting right next to [Trump], giving him these Bible verses, telling him about these prophecies,” Bass says, “which means that they are kind of egging him on, [telling him] that he’s part of God’s prophetic fulfillment for these last days.”

Many of those who have become White House regulars are associated with something known as the New Apostolic Reformation, what Christianity Today describes as “a loosely connected group of Pentecostals and Charismatics.” They’re the ones who speak in tongues, scour the news for clues to biblical prophecies, engage in faith healing, and preach prosperity gospel—the notion that faith in God (or, usually, the preacher) will make people wealthy (or at least enrich the preacher). These apostles tend to embrace “dominionist” theology that implores Christians to take over of all levels of government, media, and education as a way of preparing for the End Times and return of Christ. Influential politicians like former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who has made several visits to the Trump White House, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and former Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry fall into this camp.

Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow at the liberal nonprofit People for the American Way who has tracked the religious right for many years, says that the network of preachers who come from NAR and Pentecostal media operations “are telling people over and over again that Trump was ‘chosen,’ that God intervened in the election. Some of them say very explicitly that Trump is playing a role in God’s End Time plans to bring about the return of Christ.”

One of the most prominent representatives of the Left Behind wing of the evangelical movement is San Antonio televangelist John Hagee, who has been calling for a war with Iran for more than a 15 years. In 2005, Hagee wrote a best-selling book, Jerusalem Countdown, that claimed the Bible predicted a war with Iran. (In2011, it was turned into a movie of the same title, starring Bionic Man Lee Majors and Randy Travis.) Shortly after the book was published, Hagee created Christians United for Israel, a Christian Zionist organization that now claims to have 8 million members. It lobbies for support for Israeli settlements, military aid to Israel, and for the US to join with Israel to launch a preemptive strike on Iran.

He has said that gays caused Hurricane Katrina, referred to the Catholic Church as the “great whore,” called Hitler a “half-breed” Jew, and said that Hitler was part of God’s plan to get the Jews back to Israel.

Hagee, now 79, had once been popular with powerful Republicans during the George W. Bush administration, despite some of his more controversial statements. Among other things, he has said that gays caused Hurricane Katrina, referred to the Catholic Church as the “great whore,” called Hitler a “half-breed” Jew, and said that Hitler was part of God’s plan to get the Jews back to Israel. His star began to fall in 2008 after he endorsed Sen. John McCain for the GOP presidential nomination. McCain rejected his support, calling Hagee’s views “crazy and unacceptable.”

The election of Barack Obama consigned Hagee to his megachurch in San Antonio. But Trump has restored him to the corridors of power in Washington. Hagee endorsed Trump early in 2016. Once Trump was elected, Hagee met with the new president for two hours in 2017 to discuss moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Foreign policy experts feared the embassy relocation would destabilize the region and hamper peace talks, but Trump moved it anyway in May 2018. Israeli troops killed more than 50 people in the protests that followed.

Hagee attended the opening ceremony alongside notables such as Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner, and he gave the closing benediction.“Let every Islamic terrorist hear this message: Israel lives,” he announced. “Let it echo down the marble halls of the presidential palace in Iran: Israel lives.” He later told the Texas Observer that he was looking forward to Trump confronting Iran, explaining, “The sum of Iran’s evil is greater than the whole of its parts.”

When Christians United for Israel held its annual DC confab and lobbying day last summer, Trump sent no fewer than five top administration officials to address attendees, including Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence (both evangelicals themselves), then–national security adviser John Bolton, a special envoy to the Middle East, and the US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. Pompeo opened the speech by telling the crowd of more than 5,000 people, “This is what it must have looked like to be part of the crowd for the fishes and the loaves. What a miracle that was.” Once more the story of Queen Esther came in handy, this time as Pompeo compared it to modern-day Iran.

Hagee is one of the most prominent of Trump’s evangelical supporters who see a war with Iran as a necessary step towards the End Times, but he’s far from the only one. The White House has hosted a steady stream of dominionists and NAR apostles since Trump took office, including Lance Wallnau, author of God’s Chaos President.An evangelical leader with a consulting business in Dallas, Wallnau has become famous as one of the few evangelicals who accurately prophesied Trump’s election after receiving divine inspiration to read chapter 45 of the Book of Isaiah. That’s the story of King Cyrus, whom Wallnau and many other evangelicals think Trump resembles.(For $45, Wallnau and ex-con televangelist Jim Bakker now sell a Trump/Cyrus coin that people can use to pray for Trump’s reelection.) Dr. Lance, as he’s known, has made several visits to the White House, including for a private briefing on Jared Kushner’s Middle East peace plan.

Facilitating many of these visits is Paula White-Cain, the controversial televangelist associated with the Trinity Broadcasting Network who became Trump’s spiritual adviser after he saw her preach on TV in the early aughts. White led a 20,000-strong megachurch in Tampa that was investigated by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) in 2007 for lavish spending on private jets and big houses and possible violations of its tax-exempt status. His report did not find any wrongdoing—church leaders refused to cooperate with the investigation—but in 2012, White’s church declared bankruptcy. She went on to lead a mostly African American church in Florida where she remained until last spring, when her son took over the ministry.

Now on her third marriage, White has long been at odds with more elite, mainstream evangelicals because of her particular self-help brand of prosperity gospel. Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore called White a “charlatan” and “heretic.” Nonetheless, in late October, Trump installed her in an official post at the White House office of public liaison to do outreach to evangelicals, formalizing access for some of the more extreme members of that group. She has referred to Trump as a modern-day Esther and called his enemies “demonic.”

Bass says that evangelical elites of the sort who associated with President George W. Bush have long looked down their noses at populist preachers like White and her crowd, but Trump has elevated them to positions of power. It’s a win-win situation. The evangelicals are at last in the influential positions those who disparaged them once held. And Trump’s narcissism is receiving special nourishment by their insistence that he was chosen by God. “I think that Trump likes it when people think he’s close to God—he called himself the ‘chosen one’—and to think that all of this has some sort of divine backing,” Bass says. “I don’t think there’s ever been a president who was quite influenced by this stream of evangelicalism as Trump has been.”

Naturally, there are political benefits to all of this. The administration has struggled to provide evidence of any imminent threats from Soleimani, but the timing for the assassination was certainly fortuitous for someone looking to mobilize evangelicals. Not only was Trump embroiled in impeachment hearings, he was still chaffing from a recent editorial in the evangelical publication Christianity Today, founded by Billy Graham, calling for him to be removed from office on moral grounds. Trump announced the killing of Soleimani just hours before appearing at the launch of his campaign’s Evangelicals for Trump coalition in Miami.

That event took place at a Pentacostal Latino church headed by Guillermo Maldonado, who speaks in tongues and hosts a TV show called “The Supernatural Now.” He’s the founder of the King Jesus International Ministry, a Miami megachurch with upwards of 20,000 members and a large TV and radio presence. Maldonado is also another regular White House visitor who has preached that Trump has a role in God’s plans for the End Times. At the 2019 Global Prophetic Summit, he claimed that God told him, “America, I have prepared this time, I have raised somebody in office to open the doors for my gospels.”

André Gagné, a theology professor at Concordia University in Montreal, says the apocalyptic worldview is concerning at such high levels of power, because believers may be rather sanguine about the possibility that assassinating an Iranian general might spur an even bigger war or nuclear confrontation in the Middle East. “If it brings the end of the world, it brings the end of the world,” Gagné says. “They’re ready. They can’t wait for the Rapture to happen. For them it’s the ultimate reunion with God.”

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/mike-pence-denied-knowing-lev-parnas-then-his-lawyer-shared-a-video-of-them-together/

no lnx

Mike Pence denied knowing Lev Parnas — then his lawyer shared a video of them together

Written by Igor Derysh / Salon January 21, 2020

An attorney for Lev Parnas, the indicted former Rudy Guliani associate, shared a video of his client meeting Vice President Mike Pence after Pence denied knowing his client.

“Pence does indeed know the guy,” Parnas attorney Joseph Bondy wrote on Twitter as he published a 23-second clip of Parnas alongside Pence and his wife.

The video, set to the song “September” by Earth, Wind and Fire, shows Parnas holding Karen Pence’s hand before she says something to him and pats him on the back. Parnas is seen extending his hand toward Pence, apparently waiting for a handshake.

Bondy provided no details about the context of the video but added a quote from European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s testimony to Congress, in which he said that “everyone was in the loop” on the Ukraine scheme that led to President Donald Trump’s impeachment.

Joseph A. Bondy

@josephabondy

.@VP Mike Pence does indeed know the guy. “”Everyone was in the loop.“ -Gordon Sondland” -Lev Parnas #LevRemembers #LetLevSpeak #TheyAllKnew

Embedded video

As he urges Congress to allow Parnas to testify, Bondy has shared numerous videos, all set to catchy tunes, showing his client meeting with the president, as well as his family members, Cabinet officials and congressional allies.

Bondy published the video of Pence after the vice president denied knowing Parnas.

“I don’t know the guy,” Pence told reporters, calling Parnas’ claim that he was aware of the Ukraine scheme “completely false.”

Parnas, who was indicted on charges of illegally funneling foreign money to Republicans, told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last week that Pence was aware of the effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.

“I’m going to use a famous quote from [Ambassador Gordon] Sondland,” he said. “Everybody was in the loop.”

Parnas told Maddow that Pence canceled his scheduled trip to attend Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s inauguration after Parnas warned an aide of Zelensky that the vice president would not attend if an investigation into Biden was not announced.

“The announcement was the key at that time because of the inauguration, and I told him Pence would not show up, nobody would show up to his inauguration,” Parnas said. “It was particularly Vice President Mike Pence.”

Parnas claimed that Pence canceled the trip after Parnas spoke with Zelensky adviser Sergei Schaffer.

“It was after my phone call. The conversation that I laid out to Mr. Schafer was basically what I was told to do by Giuliani and the president,” Parnas said. “And then afterwards, I got back to them, saying he was going to get back to me later tonight.”

Parnas said that Schafer blocked his number on WhatsApp.

“I remember Rudy going, ‘OK. They’ll see.’ To my awareness, Trump called to say, ‘Make sure Pence doesn’t go [to the inauguration],'” Parnas told Maddow.

Asked if Pence canceled his trip because of the disagreement, Parnas replied, “It was, 100 percent. I know it was, 100 percent.”

Amee Vanderpool

@girlsreallyrule

Here is Lev Parnas confirming that Mike Pence knew exactly why his trip to Zelensky's inauguration was canceled and why Pence was going to Poland in place of Trump and was complicit in assisting with Trump's quid pro quo with Ukraine. #MaddowParnas

"Everybody was in the loop."

Embedded video

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham denied the allegation and called the former Giuliani associate who aided the shadow diplomacy effort in Ukraine a discredited witness.

“These allegations are being made by a man who is currently out on bail for federal crimes and is desperate to reduce his exposure to prison,” she said. “The facts haven’t changed: The president did nothing wrong and this impeachment, which was manufactured and carried out by the Democrats has been a sham from the start.”

But Jennifer Williams, Pence’s top adviser on Russia, testified to Congress that she was surprised when Pence’s trip to the inauguration was abruptly canceled and learned that the move was directed by Trump himself.

“My understanding from my colleague — and, again, I wasn’t there for the conversation — was that the president asked the vice president not to attend,” she testified.

Former Energy Secretary Rick Perry traveled to the inauguration in his stead.

Parnas told Maddow that Perry told Giuliani he would attend the inauguration and asked him what he should discuss with Zelensky. Perry told Giuliani that he got Zelensky to agree to publicly announce the investigations Giuliani had sought after the trip, Parnas claimed.

Parnas said Giuliani later “blew his lid” when Zelensky failed to mention the Bidens when he announced a wide-ranging corruption investigation.

“It wasn’t supposed to be a corruption announcement,” Parnas said. “It [had] to be about Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.”

Amee Vanderpool

@girlsreallyrule

Lev Parnas says Rick Perry played a role with Ukraine and that he and Giuliani communicated about the investigations Trump wanted and Perry was sent in to push Zelensky for the quid pro quo.

There is no doubt now that the Senate must call witnesses, including Giuliani and Perry.

Embedded video

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/06/trumps-coal-backers-energy-power-rick-perry-244535

proposal by Energy Secretary Rick Perry to alter the nation's electricity markets would provide a windfall for a small group of companies — most strikingly one owned by coal magnate Bob Murray, a prominent backer of President Donald Trump.

Perry's plan would force consumers to subsidize ailing coal-fired and nuclear power plants with billions of dollars, in what he calls an effort to ensure that the nation’s power network can withstand threats like terrorist attacks or severe weather. But his narrowly written proposal would mostly affect plants in a stretch of the Midwest and Northeast where Murray's mining company, Murray Energy, is the predominant supplier, according to a POLITICO analysis of Energy Department data.... The company and its PAC together sent $200,000 to pro-Trump election efforts last year, while Bob Murray threw an invitation-only West Virginia fundraiser for Trump in 2016. Perry’s proposal, which needs approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, is the Energy secretary's most aggressive step yet toward helping Trump reverse what he has denounced as former President Barack Obama's "war on coal." But while it would stimulate demand for coal, it would also increase power prices for millions of customers.<..."Customers get less than nothing while a few companies and their investors get a whole lot of something," Nora Mead Brownell, a Republican former electricity regulator, said of Perry's plan, noting the high cost estimates. “Money that gets spent there doesn’t get invested in doing what you really need to do, which is upgrading the grid."

Meanwhile, Bob Murray’s company has publicly acknowledged that its future depends on whether Perry’s plan flies.

“Murray Energy has a vital and critical interest in the outcome of this rulemaking proceeding," the company said last month in its comments to regulators. "Given the current threats to those resources, Murray Energy, along with other coal producers and related industries ... is threatened with bankruptcy and significant economic harm if those resources are forced out of the market by unreasonable and unsupportable market pricing mechanisms.”

The company declined to comment on its financial status or its communications with the Trump administration. But Bob Murray has been vocal in urging Trump and Perry to aid the U.S. coal industry, after he attacked Obama as "the greatest destroyer that America has ever seen."

Since Trump’s swearing-in, Murray has made personal pleas for help in face-to-face meetings with Trump and DOE officials, including Perry and Brian McCormack, Perry’s chief of staff.

At those meetings in the summer, Murray urged Trump to declare a power grid emergency and force coal-fired power plants owned by one financially troubled company, FirstEnergy Solutions, to stay open even if the company sank into bankruptcy. Those plants bought about two-thirds of their coal from Murray in 2015, according to POLITICO's analysis of U.S. Energy Information Administration data.

At DOE's urging, the White House ultimately declined to declare the emergency. But Perry’s new proposed rule would accomplish the same result by requiring the power markets to cover the costs to run the economically ailing plants, enabling them to keep producing power.

Ohio-based Murray Energy, the No. 5 U.S. coal producer, is the largest supplier to the dwindling number of coal-fired power plants in one stretch of the Rust Belt and Appalachia, overseen by an electricity market called the PJM Interconnection. The power plants in PJM account for roughly 44 percent of Murray's sales, according to POLITICO's analysis.

Murray's nearest competitor, industry leader Peabody Energy Corp., sold about 9 percent of its coal in that market. In total, Murray sold 24 million tons of coal to PJM merchant coal plants in 2015, far more than Peabody's 15 million tons.

[Perry: Fossil fuels help prevent sexual assault in Africa

By DARIUS DIXON]

"Murray is by far the largest player in the Northern Appalachian basin and de facto one of the biggest gainers if FERC acts on the DOE [proposal]," said Joe Aldina, director of coal research for the analytics and data company S&P Global.

DOE defended its proposal, and said there was a clear need for some type of action.

“There is broad and substantial support for this action beyond coal suppliers," DOE public affairs director Robert Haus said in an email, noting that even critics have called for some kind of market reform. “Filed public comments show that while supporters and critics differ on how to approach reforming the market, there is widespread consensus that FERC needs to act.”

The proposal is not Perry’s first effort to promote coal, which has seen its share of the national electricity supply slump from more than 50 percent a decade ago to about one-third now — a fall mostly caused by flat power consumption and gains by natural gas.

In August, Perry’s department issued a report that raised questions about whether coal’s decline could threaten the country's power system, and contending that coal power plants' ability to run around-the-clock and store large fuel inventories gives them advantages over natural gas or renewable power when it comes to national security. Those advantages don't help them, though, in competitive markets where power sources go head to head on price.

The DOE proposal calls for power market operators to guarantee payments to power plants that keep 90 days of fuel on site. That requirement would be virtually impossible for natural gas-fired power plants to meet — they get their fuel via pipelines — and would totally exclude wind or solar plants.

By requiring 90 days of on-site fuel, the measure would create incentives for most coal-fired power plants to increase their fuel supplies, providing a quick boost for miners.

One recent analysis by consulting firm ICF said the proposal could cost nearly $4 billion a year, while another study by Energy Innovation, a nonprofit firm that analyzes climate and energy policies, said the figure could be as high as $10.6 billion annually. Perry has dismissed concerns over the costs, asking “What’s the cost of freedom?" when pressed by lawmakers.

“It’s about the coal producers, frankly,” said Kit Konolige, a senior utilities analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. The rule might affect individual power producers differently, he added, but “you can certainly say it would definitely be a plus for coal miners.”

Players in the power business say the rule appears to focus on the PJM market, because it would only apply to electricity generators in certain types of regional power markets. It would exclude those in regions where state regulators oversee the economics of power companies.

The rule was “certainly targeted at the PJM region,” said Andy Ott, CEO of PJM, which oversees all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Among the nation’s roughly 280,000 megawatts of coal-fired power, Perry’s rule is tightly written to affect only about 40,000 megawatts, according to POLITICO's analysis. Power capacity from plants owned by the companies FirstEnergy and NRG account for nearly 40 percent of that slice, according to EIA data for 2015, the most recent year for which the information is complete. Murray provided two-thirds of the coal FirstEnergy bought for its competitive plants, and only 2 percent of NRG's.

Among those plants that would benefit from the plan are four coal power generating units at FirstEnergy's Murray-supplied Sammis plant in Ohio that are set to retire within the next three years. FirstEnergy, the parent of the troubled FirstEnergy Solutions subsidiary, could see its plants sell an additional $500 million in electricity a year if Perry's plan is enacted, but its CEO played down the notion that Perry's effort was designed to help it.

“I don’t think the DOE initiative has anything to do with FirstEnergy, despite what’s been reported in some of the media,” CEO Chuck Jones said on an earnings call with analysts. “I think it has to do with preserving critical fuel-secure baseload generating facilities — and I think that’s what it’ll do, whether FirstEnergy owns them or [FirstEnergy Solutions] creditors own them or whether FES creditors sell them to a third party that we don’t even know of today.”

The fate of Perry's proposed rule ultimately falls to the leaders of FERC, an independent agency largely made up of technocrats that have developed the power market rules over two decades. (The agency is overseen by a five-member bipartisan panel of presidential nominees.) Perry has directed the agency to take “final action” by Dec. 11, though the agency is not required to follow his timeline.

DOE's proposal has attracted vociferous opposition from power producers and trade groups representing wind, solar and natural gas energy, and has been criticized by five former FERC chairs from both parties. Dynegy and NRG Energy, two of the power companies likely to see the biggest benefits from the plan — and which have big investments in PJM competitive coal plants — also oppose the proposal as too expensive and a distortion of the market.

DOE's plan would also provide a lifeline to money-losing nuclear plants owned by Exelon Corp., NextEra Energy and FirstEnergy. But the coal industry says its situation is the more dire.

“We don’t have time to wait for regular order,” said Paul Bailey, CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, noting that DOE's plan wasn't the first to tackle problems in the power markets.

“The DOE-FERC proposal just magnifies the conversation that’s going on and made it more urgent. What DOE did was good,” he said. “Clearly, people are focusing on this right now to a degree they wouldn’t have six months ago. No doubt about that.”

desmog

Compared to many other Senate confirmation hearings for potential Cabinet members, the hearing for U.S. Energy Secretary proved much faster and less rocky for nominee and former Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry.

Perry's hearing lasted about three and a half hours and included only two rounds of questioning. That was far shorter than either Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt's nearly six hour hearing for Environmental Protection Agency head, in which he faced four rounds of questions, or the eight and a half hour hearing for Secretary of State nominee and retired ExxonMobil CEO, Rex Tillerson. Before this hearing, Perry was on the record as an enthusiastic climate change denier who previously failed to come up with either the name or the functions of the agency he could soon run.

It seems unclear why Perry, a just-departed board member of Energy Transfer Partners — owner of the Dakota Access pipeline— skated through with far less turbulence than his peers. One potential explanation: some senators from the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources found themselves busy with another task, besides questioning Perry, today. That is, they were in a rush to get to the “Leadership Luncheon” put on by the Trump Inaugural Committee, the latter funded by major corporate sponsors, including Chevron, J.P.Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and others.

READ MOR

https://www.alternet.org/trumps-department-energy-neuters-nuclear-oversight-safety-board

ProPublica Local Reporting Network.

The Trump administration has quietly taken steps that may inhibit independent oversight of its most high-risk nuclear facilities, including some buildings at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a Department of Energy document shows.

An order published on the department’s website in mid-May outlinesnew limits on the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board — including preventing the board from accessing sensitive information, imposing additional legal hurdles on board staff, and mandating that Energy Department officials speak “with one voice” when communicating with the board. The board has, by statute, operated independently and has been provided largely unfettered access to the nation’s nuclear weapons complexes in order to assess accidents or safety concerns that could pose a grave risk to workers and the public. The main exception has been access to the nuclear weapons themselves.

For many years, the board asked the Department of Energy to provide annual reviews of how well facilities handled nuclear materials vulnerable to a runaway chain reaction — and required federal officials to brief the board on the findings. It also has urged the energy secretary not to restart certain nuclear operations at various sites until work could be done safely.

At Los Alamos, the board has conducted ongoing reviews of the plutonium facility, holding hearings in Santa Fe and in recent years identifying imminent and “major deficiencies” in the building that could put the public at risk in the event of an earthquake. The lab sits on an active and complex geological fault system capable of causing a high magnitude quake.

The Energy Department’s orderis the latest effort to limit transparency and weaken the board’s ability to conduct oversight, experts and critics say. And it represents another step by the Trump administration to stall or halt the work done by advisory boards and committees across the federal government, including a scientific advisory board at the Environmental Protection Agency and several of the Department of Labor’s advisory committees established to protect worker safety and health.

“This administration is very regressive,” said Robert Alvarez, who helped draft the legislation that created the board in the 1980s as a senate staff expert for Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, and subsequently served as senior policy adviser for former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. “We shouldn’t have to wait for something to blow up or catch fire in order to pay attention to a safety problem.”

...

grid security bs coal nuke

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12062018/ferc-no-power-grid-national-security-emergency-trump-perry-coal-subsidy-energy-regulators-congress

top regulators of the nation's power grid told Congress on Tuesday that they see no immediate national security emergency to justify propping up coal and nuclear power plants with a government order, as the Trump administration is considering.

All five members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, weighed in at a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on a debate that has been roiling the industry and its regulators for months. It was the first time in many years that the whole commission had appeared before the committee together.

Even though most of them were appointed by President Donald Trump, they seemed ambivalent or even hostile to his repeated attempts, along with Energy Secretary Rick Perry, to require grid operators to buy power from uneconomical coal and nuclear power plants.

Trump political supporters and influential fossil fuel companies, including the coal company Murray Energy and utility FirstEnergy, have pushed for a government-ordered bailout, while a diverse mix of environmental advocates, major grid operators and some public utility companies and natural gas suppliers have argued strongly against it.

The administration wants to keep coal and nuclear generators from being driven out of business by cheaper natural gas or carbon-free wind and solar. A few months ago, FERC rebuffed Perry's attempt to subsidize plant operators who keep 90 days of fuel on hand. Now, the White House has told Perry to use his own emergency powers under two laws to bail the industry out on grounds that plant closures are presenting a national security emergency.

But the idea that the grid is currently so frail as to present an urgent military crisis has received little support, and next to none at the commission.

FERC's chairman, Kevin McIntyre,reading a formal statement aloud, spoke of the deliberative approach the commission has adopted: opening a docket to solicit the views of all parties, especially the grid operators with the fingertip control of electricity supply. To Trump and his allies, this is bureaucratese for kicking the can down the road and risks providing too little assistance too late.

Vigilance, but No Rush to Intervene

Commissioner Neil Chatterjee, a Kentucky native and former energy advisor to pro-coal Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), was the most receptive to some kind of action, if not on an emergency basis.

"In my view, 'no action' is like driving your car without a seat belt," he said.

Other commissioners echoed Chatterjee's call for "vigilance." But while they said it was important to keep the grid resilient during storms, heat waves, cold snaps or market upheavals, they looked askance at emergency federal intervention that would favor one fuel or another.

That, said Commissioner Robert Powelson, a former member of Pennsylvania's Public Utility Commission and past president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, would be "a real step back" from the benefits that have accrued to competing fuel suppliers and to consumers alike.

It would also retreat from the climate and other environmental benefits from wind and solar, as well as from storage technologies and smart metering that are helping to clean up the grid.

Commissioners Richard Glick, a former official with energy company Iberdrola, and Cheryl LaFleur, a former executive at National Grid USA who was appointed to FERC by President Barack Obama in 2010, were most hostile to the Trump plan.

"We cannot try to stop the natural evolution of this industry by claiming that there is a national security emergency unless there is evidence that suggests that an emergency actually exists," Glick said.

GOP Senator also Skeptical of Emergency Claim

After more than an hour of testimony, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) asked the question directly:

"Do any of you believe that in the wholesale power markets we are facing an actual national security emergency at the moment?"

"I do not," said LaFleur, the most outspoken of the commission's opponents of intervention.

"Would anyone answer that with a yes?" Heinrich inquired.

Nobody did.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the committee's chairwoman, also said she was skeptical.

"As with many controversies, with so much at stake in such a heavily regulated industry such as energy, the various interests are locked in," she noted. "This is battle, this is mortal conflict for some."

Murkowski is closely aligned with the oil and gas industry. Its lobbying group, the American Petroleum Institute, has joined renewable energy advocates to strongly oppose the administration's efforts on behalf of coal and nuclear.

'FERC Does Not Pick Winners and Losers'

The committee's ranking Democrat, Maria Cantwell of Washington, said she found the idea of intervening in markets "mind-boggling."

The commissioners, in more measured words, seemed to agree with her.

"FERC does not pick winners and losers in the market," Powelson said. "Instead we create an environment where the market can pick the winners and losers." He called it a "moral hazard" to do otherwise.

"We need to be wary of people using the situation or a potential situation as a way to achieve market changes that they haven't been able to achieve otherwise," Glick said.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

https://www.ecowatch.com/coal-nuclear-bailout-trump-2574242069.html

Trump Administration Plans Costly Taxpayer Bailout of Unprofitable Energy Industries

The Trump administration is planning to bail out unprofitable coal and nuclear plants by mandating grid operators buy electricity from them in the name of national security, Bloomberg reported late Thursday.

A draft Department of Energy memocirculated before a National Security Council meeting Friday proposes invoking rarely-used emergency authorities under the Defense Production Act and Federal Power Act to force grid operators to purchase power from struggling plants. Per the memo, the move is meant as a "stop-gap measure" while the administration conducts a two-year study on "grid security challenges" facing the country.

The proposal is the latest overture by the Trump administration as it struggles to make good on a campaign promise to help the coal and nuclear industry—as well as some of the president's biggest donors.

As reported by Bloomberg:

"While administration officials are still deciding on their final strategy—and may yet decide against aggressive action—the memo represents the Energy Department's latest, most fully developed plan to intervene on behalf of coal and nuclear power plants, pitched to the president's top security advisers.

...

Opponents of the new plan contend bailouts are a solution in search of a problem. They argue there are many ways to back up the grid that won't cost ratepayers billions of dollars. A coalition of natural gas and renewable power advocates told [Energy Secretary Rick] Perry that 'power plant retirements are a normal, healthy feature of electricity markets,' and therefore there is no emergency that would justify Energy Department action."

deeper dive:

Bloomberg

Echoes of Perry's Coal Bailout Plan

Perry has repeatedly expressed sympathy for the plight of companies with stranded coal and nuclear assets. A few months ago, he told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to take steps to subsidize hard-pressed power plant operators. The commission turned his order aside, but it has opened an examination of how and whether to address the issue.

Environmentalists, including the Sierra Club, which leads a campaign to rid the U.S. grid of coal-burning power plants, a large source of greenhouse gas emissions, said they would fight any such bailout in court.

The American Petroleum Institute, a trade lobby whose members also produce natural gas, issued a sharp condemnation of the call for subsidies.

"FirstEnergy's latest attempt to spread a false narrative surrounding the reliability of the electric grid is nothing more than a ruse that will force Main Street consumers to pay higher prices," API Market Development Group Director Todd Snitchler said. "For FirstEnergy to cry wolf on the issue of grid reliability is irresponsible and is the company's latest attempt to force consumers to pay for a bailout. PJM is responsible for the reliability of the grid and if there is an emergency, PJM already has the tools to respond."

FirstEnergy's letter made the same argument for a bailout that Perry has offered.

It asked him to order PJM "to promptly compensate at-risk merchant nuclear and coal-fired power plants for the full benefits they provide to energy markets and the public at large, including fuel security and diversity."

"PJM has done little to prevent this emergency despite the numerous signs for many years that the emergency was coming," the company said. "PJM continues to claim that all is well with its system, but at the same time shows it does not have a clear view of what resilience is, how to measure it, or how to ensure it. PJM has demonstrated little urgency to remedy this problem any time soon—so immediate action by the Secretary is needed to alleviate the present emergency."

A 'Dizzying' Attack on PJM and Regulators

In a detailed thread on Twitter dissecting FirstEnergy's bid, Ari Peskoe, an energy analyst at Harvard University, said the company's argument was "dizzying" in its critique of FERC, which regulates the grid, and PJM, which operates it regionally.

The company called FERC's reliance on advice from the grid operators "misplaced" since between them they have allowed the markets to move in ways that put companies like FirstEnergy at a competitive disadvantage.

In threatening to close the nuclear plants, the company said only a policy intervention could save them.

"The market challenges facing these units are beyond their control," said Don Moul, chief nuclear officer for FirstEnergy and president of the generation subsidiaries. "We stand ready to roll up our sleeves and work with policy makers to find solutions that will make it feasible to continue to operate these plants in the future."

Coal and the Northeast's 'Bomb Cyclone'

In seeking an emergency intervention by Perry, FirstEnergy came loaded with an argument made just a few days ago in a report by analysts at the National Energy Technology Laboratory, an arm of the Energy Department.

They asserted that in the prolonged cold snap and brutal storm of late December and early January—an event that came to be called the "Bomb Cyclone"—coal fired plants had ramped up and saved the eastern grid, including PJM's territory and neighboring zones, from the risk of collapse.

The report warned darkly of an impending catastrophe if more coal plants shut down, as seems likely under current market trends.

PJM in February released its own report on the same period of cold weather. It said its systems were not stressed as badly as during the 2014 "polar vortex" period, and that its experience proved robustness, not frailty.

"Overall, the grid and the generation fleet performed well," PJM said. "Even during peak demand, PJM had excess reserves and capacity."

...

===

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/1/18/how_trumps_deregulatory_push_is_harming

...

SHAIKH: We’re speaking to David Cay Johnston, author of the new book, It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America. Let’s go back to February. This is President Trump speaking a month after he took office.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’re cutting regulations big league. We are really cutting them by massive amounts. The auto industry just left a week ago. They were here in the same room. And they are very happy with what—what we’re doing. And everyone is. I think just about everyone. The financial industry—we’re having a lot of the different industries in. And we’re cutting regulations in just about every industry. In fact, I can’t think of any that we’re not.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So that’s President Trump speaking in February. So, could you talk about what Trump has done to different agencies? In your book, you talk about several, but let’s start with the EPA.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, EPA is run by Scott Pruitt, who hopes to become a U.S. senator in Oklahoma, who has vowed to destroy the agency. So, staff members are not allowed to use certain words. They’re not being allowed to go to scientific conferences. So, once again, the investment the taxpayers have made in expertise and knowledge is being wasted.

In the regulatory environment, they are basically allowing polluters to get away with all sorts of stuff. There was a move by the Obama administration to stop taking the toxic residue, the coal ash, from power plants, turning it into a slurry, with water, and then you put it into a pond next to a river. And as we know, in South Carolina, I think it was, and several other places, some of these old dikes broke and ruined the drinking water, for weeks or months, and killed all the wildlife. The Trump administration basically is saying to polluters, “Go ahead and pollute.”

Well, what is pollution? Not only is it a threat to your health and safety, but it’s a way to jack up profits, by taking costs you should endure to clean up your mess and spewing them onto everybody else. So, of course, profits for companies like that will go up, because they’re being allowed to make you or your children get asthma or have other illnesses because of the pollution. How does that make us better off? That makes us worse off. The problem is, you’re not going to get asthma tomorrow. He’ll be out of office, even if he had two terms, before you get sick and die.

AMY GOODMAN: We had the headline today about the former photographer with the Department of Energy seeking whistleblower protection, saying he was fired for documenting collusion between the Trump administration and a coal company executive. Simon Edelman says he was fired after he leaked photographs of a March 29th meeting between Energy Secretary Rick Perry and coal magnate Robert Murray, showing the two embracing at a meeting. Murray said he played no role in drafting a Department of Energy rule subsidizing coal and nuclear power plants. But a photo clearly shows a letter drafted by Murray and addressed to Energy Secretary Rick Perry touting an “action plan.” And then you have the whole story of FERC, the Trump-appointed panel, that actually ruled against Trump in his subsidizing of coal.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, they did, in this particular case. But there is a chapter in my book about how the electricity markets in America, which, by design, raise prices and don’t lower them, are going to continue to worsen. Now, this example that comes from the leaked photographs is very revealing of the fact that truth is a very fungible issue in this administration. And when it comes to electricity prices in this country, I mean, everybody pays for electricity. It’s the one—one of the common things we have, like the weather. This is an administration that is all out for the people who make profits. It isn’t interested in consumers. It isn’t interested in businesses whose profits are diminished if they have to pay excessive electricity prices.

G. Michael

Brown

Department of Energy

Executive Adviser

Ben Carson campaign; Cheseapeake Energy; American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity

oil and gas; coal; fossil fuel

ENERGY HOLDINGS PERMEATE TRUMP STAFF:Six of President Donald Trump’s senior advisers together own between $3.7 million and $12.3 million in energy company stocks, Pro’s Ben Lefebvre reports. Those officials — Ken Juster, Marc Short, Chris Liddell, Kathleen "KT" McFarland, Stephen Munisteri and Greg Katsas — have holdings in energy giants Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Kinder Morgan and a host of other companies. Watchdogs say that could create major conflicts of interest for a White House that has pledged to grow the nation's fossil fuel production.

[ad: chev heart nature]

Overall, about a dozen White House officials have some stake in energy companies, according to POLITICO and Center for American Progress analysis of financial disclosure forms. And the holdings would violate conflict of interest laws if any of these Trump staff try to shape energy policy, according to Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at government watchdog Common Cause. “It becomes a legal problem if it causes a conflict of interest. They would have to say, ‘Nope, sorry boss, can’t work on that,’” he told Ben.

THE PERRYS JET OFF TO ITALY: Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s wife will join him on a trip to Rome for the G7 energy ministers meeting that kicks off this weekend, traveling as part of the official U.S. delegation, which means taxpayers are footing her bill. Anita Perry was invited to the meeting by Italian Economic Development Minister Carlo Calenda, according to Energy Department spokesman Bob Haus. She’s scheduled to speak at a Sunday side event called “Africa 2030: Empowering the continent through innovation, green tech solutions and capacity building."

The who, what, where and how: The invitation came after a conference call last month between Rick Perry and Calenda, who later sent a March 31 letter saying that the Enel Foundation, the nonprofit arm of an Italian energy company, had formally asked Anita Perry to speak. In the letter, which Haus provided to POLITICO, Calenda also invited Anita Perry to attend a "welcome cocktail" for G7 ministers and their delegations, as well as a separate "cultural program" during the meeting. "In accordance with normal travel policy Mrs. Perry’s trip will be paid for by the Department of Energy, given her invitations and speaking role," Haus said, adding that her travel as part of the delegation was approved by the DOE general counsel’s office.

Anita Perry’s attendance raised eyebrows among some former Obama administration DOE officials but on a few rare occasions, other agency chiefs have managed to take their spouses on official business. One former DOE official recalled former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz taking his wife, Naomi, on two foreign work-related trips. One was to her native Brazil, where the couple paid for Naomi's expenses out of pocket. The other was to a presidential inauguration in a South American country, which was covered by the government because there were activities specifically for the spouses of delegation members.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/department-of-energy-risks-**michael-lewis**

....

Meanwhile, inside the D.O.E. building, people claiming to be from the Trump administration appear willy-nilly, unannounced, and unintroduced to the career people. “There’s a mysterious kind of chain from the Trump loyalists who have shown up inside D.O.E. to the White House,” says a career civil servant. “That’s how decisions, like the budget, seem to get made. Not by Perry.” The woman who ran the Obama department’s energy-policy analysis unit recently received a call from D.O.E. staff telling her that her office was now occupied by Eric Trump’s brother-in-law. Why? No one knew. “Yes, you can notice the difference,” says one young career civil servant, in response to the obvious question. “There’s a lack of professionalism. They’re not very polite. Maybe they’ve never worked in an office or government setting. It’s not hostility so much as a real sense of concern with sharing information with career employees. Because of that lack of communication, nothing is being done. All policy questions remain unanswered.”

The D.O.E. has a program, for example, to provide low-interest loans to companies to encourage risky corporate innovation in alternative energy and energy efficiency. The loan program became infamous when one of its borrowers, the solar-energy companySolyndra, was unable to repay its loan, but, as a whole, since its inception in 2009, the program has turned a profit. And it has been demonstrably effective: it lent money to Tesla to build its factory in Fremont, California, when the private sector would not, for instance. Every Tesla you see on the road came from a facility financed by the D.O.E. Its loans to early-stage solar-energy companies launched the industry. There are now 35 viable utility-scale, privately funded solar companies—up from zero a decade ago. And yet today the program sits frozen. “There’s no direction what to do with the applications,” says the young career civil servant. “Are we shutting the program down?” They’d rather not, but if that’s what they are going to do, they should do it. “There’s no staff, just me,” says the civil servant. “People keep bugging me for direction. It’s got to the point I don’t care if you tell me to tear the program down. Just tell me what you want to do so I can do it intelligently.” Another permanent employee, in another wing of the D.O.E., says, “The biggest change is the grinding to a halt of any proactive work. There’s very little work happening. There’s a lot of confusion about what our mission was going to be. For a majority of the workforce it’s been demoralizing.

...

omg

https://www.ecowatch.com/rick-perry-africa-2503770911.html

Last week, one of the most senior officials in the Trump administration, Energy Sec. Rick Perry travelled to South Africa to represent the U.S. at the Africa Oil Week.

During his time at the Oil Week conference in the coastal city of Cape Town, Perry delivered the keynote address on global energy policy, telling his audience that the Trump Administration was keen on "strengthening our African energy partnerships."

It soon became very clear what he actually meant.

He quickly criticized the Obama Administration for "discriminating" against the nuclear and coal industries.

Not surprisingly, given the agenda of the Trump Administration and given that Perry was governor of oil rich Texas, Perry said they were keen for those partnerships to include fossil fuels.

Perry said he was a "big fan of fossil fuels" and it was time to break the global "culture of shame" around their use.

He was also keen on the formation of "a global clean coal alliance" including traditional coal powers such as the U.S., India, Australia and South Africa.

Commentators see Perry's speech as a clear indication that the Trump Administration is taking its pro-fossil fuel agenda to Africa.

One press outlet reported Perry as saying, "If you admit you support fossil fuels, it's like saying you've made some huge social error. But it's in fossil fuels that you will see real growth."

He continued: "That's my message to Africa. America is truly your friend and your partner. And we're here to help Africa use fossil fuels and use them cleanly with the world's newest and best technology."

"My showing up here is about U.S. support for Africa," he said. "We will invest in African energy projects, but it's also time to let technology be your friend. We will help this continent make more power, and we will do it cleanly."

As one blogger for Platts noted, Perry "urged African producers to emulate the U.S. in its shale oil and gas revolution."

The Daily Maverick added, "His fondness for fossil fuels was one of the few things he was firm on during his press conference on the first floor of the Westin hotel in Cape Town on Tuesday. That, and that the benefits of fracking outweigh environmental concerns."

In promoting fossil fuels, Perry is persisting in the neo-Colonial attitude with which America has treated Africa for generations: Western oil companies should be able to exploit Africa's fossil fuel reserves, no matter what cost. He also forgets that Africa is one of the regions that has the most to lose from climate change, too.

You only have to ask the people of the Niger Delta, who have suffered sixty years of repression, violence and pollution due to oil, to understand how oil rarely benefits local indigenous communities. As one Niger Delta person once said, as he surveyed his polluted cropland: "What has the oilman ever done for us?"

https://www.ecowatch.com/doe-coal-nuclear-bailout-2491308467.html

DOE Proposes Outrageous, Massive Coal and Nuclear Bailout

By Miles Farmer

Department of Energy (DOE) Sec. Rick Perry just proposed a massive bailout for coal and nuclear power plants. The radical and unprecedented move is couched under a false premise that power plants with fuel located on site are needed to guarantee the reliability of the electricity system. The proposal relies on a mischaracterization of DOE's own recent study of electricity markets and reliability (discussed here), which if anything demonstrated that this kind of proposed action is not justified.

If adopted, the proposal would essentially ensure that coal and nuclear plants in regions encompassing most of the country continue to run even where they are too expensive to compete in the energy market. It would saddle utility customers with higher costs, while posing obstacles to the electricity system integration of cleaner and less risky energy sources such as solar and wind.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is still carefully analyzing the proposal, but below is a very preliminary take:

The proposal would bail out expensive and uncompetitive coal and nuclear plants

The proposal asks the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to take action within 60 days that would financially prop up "fuel-secure resources," which must have "a 90-day fuel supply on site enabling [them] to operate during an emergency, extreme weather conditions, or a natural man-made disaster." This requirement is aimed squarely at coal and nuclear power plants, which would generally be able to satisfy these criteria.

Many coal and nuclear units are very expensive and are having trouble competing in the wholesale electricity market (as discussed here). So the proposal asks FERC to bail out these power plants by essentially guaranteeing them profits and insulating them from competitive market forces. The proposal amounts to a massive subsidy that would ensure the plants continue to operate, rather than being economically retired when they are more expensive than other units (including wind and solar) that sell electricity at lower cost.

The proposal would radically reshape electricity regulation for most of the country

The rule would have a massive scope, covering regional wholesale markets where electricity is bought and sold to serve most of the nation's customers. It would apply to areas where the electricity system is operated by regional entities known as Regional Transmission Operators (RTOs) or Independent System Operators (ISOs), which administer competitive markets for electricity. The RTOs tell the more expensive plants not to operate when there's cheaper electricity available from other plants.

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

As shown in the map, RTOs cover most of California, the Midwest and southern states in the middle of the country, as well as the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is not subject to FERC jurisdiction and would not be covered by the proposed rule, if adopted.

Secretary Perry's proposal would be a radical departure from the way FERC currently regulates electricity prices in these regions. Under FERC's system, electricity prices in RTOs are governed by competitive market forces. A power plant is only insulated from this system by FERC under extremely limited circumstances, where a detailed examination of the grid reveals that the plant is needed for reliability purposes. The plant is then guaranteed its costs of operating, but only on a temporary basis, until a replacement can be constructed.

The proposal would lead to higher energy bills and more pollution

Customers across the country would ultimately foot the bill for supporting these more expensive plants. While no credible analysis has been conducted of the costs (which can't even be done given the vagueness of the proposed rule), it is safe to assume that the toll would be many billions of dollars.

The proposal also would favor more expensive and risker power plants over cleaner and safer energy sources such as wind and solar power. Coal power plants emit a massive amount of pollution. They are one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases causing climate change. Coal plants also cause an array of other problems, such as acid rain and asthma. And while low-carbon, nuclear energy poses myriad health and safety risks (discussed here).

The proposal is unjustified

The purported basis for the proposal is that "[t]he resiliency of the nation's electric grid is threatened by the premature retirements of power plants that can withstand major fuel supply disruptions caused by natural or man-made disasters."

But DOE's own reliability report found that all regions of the country have excess supply of energy resources needed to meet demand. Furthermore, while it included a brief discussion of the potential benefits of on-site fuel supply, it also highlighted examples of power plants with on-site fuel supply failing, such as coal plants that could not operate during the 2014 Polar Vortex when their fuel supplies froze in the extreme cold.

The lesson that no type of power plant is immune to weather-related disruptions was clear during the recent hurricanes. Nuclear power plants had to be taken off-line in preparation for Hurricane Irma. Natural gas plants and pipelines suffered disruptions during Hurricane Harvey, and the onsite coal pile at a W.A. Parish plant in Texas became so saturated with rainwater that the coal could not be delivered into storage silos, forcing the plant to switch to natural gas for the first time in eight years.

Nuclear Availability in Florida during Hurricane Irma.Data from SNL Energy, "Daily Nuclear Operations"

Ultimately, the proposal's justification is as flimsy as Secretary Perry's initial suggested basisfor subsidizing coal and nuclear—that "baseload" is necessary for the system, a myth that has been thoroughly debunked (as discussed here and here).

DOE is asking FERC to rush to judgment

FERC has already adopted detailed regulations to ensure the reliability of the grid, and follows established processes to consider any necessary tweaks. As DOE's own report explained, these systems have worked to meet the industry's high reliability standards even as the mix of generation serving customers' needs has changed dramatically.

DOE is asking FERC to sidestep that normal process by adopting its radical proposal in a mere 60 days, a timeline that would make it impossible to conduct any of the rigorous analysis that would surely be necessary before making such extreme changes. DOE's proposal is so vague that FERC could not possibly adopt it as is, making it hard to see how FERC could possibly advance it in a manner that complies the procedural requirements for a formal rulemaking proposal.

FERC should reject Secretary Perry's proposal

Perhaps the only silver lining in Secretary Perry's proposal is that DOE has no independent authority to adopt this proposed rule, which is already eliciting pushback from leaders like NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. As discussed here, FERC, not DOE, is the agency primarily responsible for regulating electricity markets. FERC should reject Secretary Perry's outrageous and poorly thought out request.

Miles Farmer is a clean energy attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

dance w/ stars

b43 signed wind law texas

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/4/18/1654064/-Rick-Perry-forgets-that-wind-energy-works

First Rick Perry forgot about the Department of Energy. Then he forgot what the Department of Energy did. Now that he’s actually, unbelievably, in charge of that same department, ThinkProgress reports that Perry seems to have forgotten where energy comes from.

Perry wrote in the memo, first reported by Bloomberg, that the United States is “blessed as a nation to have an abundance of domestic energy resources, such as coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric.” These sources provide a “stable, reliable and resilient grid,” he explained. Nowhere in the memo did Perry list wind, solar, or energy storage as options for grid reliability.

Rick Perry is from Texas. Texas now produces more than 20,000 MW of electricity from wind, making the state the largest producer of wind energy in the nation. Over 12 percent of power in the Lone Star State comes from the abundant breeziness that’s all too familiar to anyone who has spent time in the western part of the state. Wind power in Texas was boosted because thestate senate passed a renewable energy standard in 1999 that was actually signed by George W. Bush. In fact, the blog Knowledge Problem reports that wind power in West Texas grew so quickly that transmission capacity has been the real limiting factor and price of energy in the area has been so low that consumers were actually paid to use power.

In the first half of 2008, prices were below zero nearly 20 percent of the time.

Who was governor of Texas when consumers were getting power for less than free? That would be James Richard "Rick" Perry. But now Perry is not only carefully leaving wind out of his memos, he’s sliding in hints that he has an axe ready for windmills.

The former Texas governor has been tasked by President Donald Trump with prioritizing fossil fuels and nuclear energy over renewables.

While jogging his memory, Perry might want to note that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that wind already accounts for twice as many jobs in America as coal, and that while coal has been trending down, wind jobs have been rising.

As the wind energy industry continues to grow, it will provide many opportunities for workers in search of new careers. These careers extend beyond the wind farm: it also takes the efforts of workers in factories and offices to build and operate a turbine.

no link

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https://www.ecowatch.com/rick-perry-protestors-2489751440.html

omfg note black death BS

Rick Perry to Climate Activists: Fossil Fuels Save Lives

Protestors showed up to the National Petroleum Council's meeting in Washington, DC on Monday to call outSecs. Rick Perry and Ryan Zinke for their controversial stances on climate change.

After an activist expressed, "climate change is killing people," the Secretary of Energy remarked in the conference room full of oil industry representatives and executives that fossil fuels save lives.

"This industry is leading the world in affecting the climate and affecting the climate in a positive way," Perry said, according to Bloomberg. "I'm proud to be a part of this industry. You want to talk about saving lives, that's what we are doing."

The former Texas governor praised Texas' efforts in reducing carbon dioxide and other pollution and that U.S. liquefied natural gas, which produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions compared to coal, is replacing dirty coal plants.

He also insisted that energy access saves lives in Africa, an industry talking point, Bloomberg noted.

"It upsets me when some guy stands up and says, 'What are you going to do, you're killing people,'" Perry said to applause. "No sir. You want to kill people, you take energy away from them and you see how those north African countries will be treated."

Some of the fossil fuel industry's biggest names, including Exxon Mobil and Shell, were present at the annual meeting.

According to Bloomberg, the protestors were removed from the hotel conference room after their remarks.

The Trump administration's environmental PR problem has been under heavy scrutiny in the wake of devastating Atlantic hurricanes that destroyed parts of Texas, Florida and the Caribbean.

Earlier this month, Perry dismissed the link between climate change and its effect on extreme weather after Hurricane Harvey wrecked Houston.

"We can line up scientists on both sides of this," he told CBS News, but "this is not the time to be having this conversation."

Rather, Perry said, the focus should be on helping Hurricane Harvey victims.

"Everyone wants to run to the climate change debate, but that is very secondary at this particular time," he said.

This week happens to be Washington's inaugural " National Clean Energy Week," an event touted to bring together "high-profile elected leaders and national clean energy organizations for substantive discussions around commonsense solutions that directly address America's need for abundant, reliable forms of energy."

Perry is one of the featured speakers at Tuesday's star event, the Symposium & Demonstration Fair on Capitol Hill.

But environmental organizations criticized the weeklong event as an "ultimate corporate greenwashing experience."

In a letter addressed to members of Congress, the groups called out some of the sponsors of National Clean Energy Week as "some of the dirtiest actors in the energy industry," such as the American Gas Association, American Petroleum Institute, Biomass Power Association, Energy Recovery Institute (garbage incineration), and the Nuclear Energy Institute.

The letter was signed by organizations including 350.org, Friends of the Earth and Oil Change International.

"The climate crisis is real, and these clean energy claims are phony," said Dr. Mary Booth, director of the Partnership for Policy Integrity, a nonprofit that applies science to inform clean energy policy. "We're writing Congress to remind it that clean energy doesn't come out of a smokestack. Congress must keep its hands off Americans' wallets when these super-polluters come asking for clean energy subsidies."

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https://www.ecowatch.com/pruitt-critique-climate-change-2450974735.html

EPA Boss Launches Program to 'Critique' Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

The ever-prescient John Oliver talked about this back in 2014. In the clip above, the Last Week Tonight host takes aim at climate change deniers who contest the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is causing the planet to warm.

"You don't need people's opinion on a fact," the British comedian said. "You might as well have a poll asking: 'Which number is bigger, 15 or 5?' or 'Do owls exist?' or 'Are there hats?'"

Well, the Trump administration is now seeking opinions.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt has launched a program to "critique" climate change science, a senior administration official told Climatewire. The government plans to recruit individuals to study the issue.

According to the report:

The program will use "red team, blue team" exercises to conduct an "at-length evaluation of U.S. climate science," the official said, referring to a concept developed by the military to identify vulnerabilities in field operations.

"The administrator believes that we will be able to recruit the best in the fields which study climate and will organize a specific process in which these individuals ... provide back-and-forth critique of specific new reports on climate science," the source said.

"We are in fact very excited about this initiative," the official added. "Climate science, like other fields of science, is constantly changing. A new, fresh and transparent evaluation is something everyone should support doing."

The EPA did not return Climatewire's request for comment.

You may have heard about the "red team, blue team" strategy of skeptics versus scientists before.Energy Secretary Rick Perry is in favor of the plan and Pruitt touted its benefits to Breitbart earlier this month saying, "The American people need to have that type of honest, open discussion, and it's something that we hope to help provide as part of our leadership."

But as Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) pointed out to Perry during his department's budget hearing last week, even the notorious oil baron Koch brothers know this strategy of trying to disprove extensive, peer-reviewed research does not work.

"You're not the first to do red team/blue team," Franken said. "The Koch brothers hired a red team of skeptics in 2012, in an effort to cast doubt on mainstream science. It was called the BEST Project, and much to the chagrin of their funders, the skeptical scientists found that mainstream climate science is correct."

Pruitt has cozy ties with the fossil fuel industry and has sued the EPA more than a dozen times over regulations as Oklahoma Attorney General. Since taking the EPA's helm, Pruitt has assisted with President Trump's systematic dismantling of critical rules that protect the environment in favor of energy development.

Environmental groups have spoken out against Pruitt's new initiative.

"Pruitt continues to push the same playbook of delay and deceit that the fossil fuel industry has been peddling for decades," 350.org U.S. campaigns director Jenny Marienau said. "This latest crusade from the fossil fuel puppets in the Trump administration is an attempt to distract from their dangerous regression on climate protections, so the already wealthy can reap even more profit. But the science is clear: we need to keep fossil fuels in the ground and transition to a 100% clean energy economy that works for all of us. It's our only shot at a safe and livable planet. Our communities are already bearing the brunt of the fossil fuel industry's lies—there's no time left for debate."

Greenpeace Climate Liability campaigner Naomi Ages also criticized the program. "Using the EPA and our tax dollars to attack scientific consensus and promote the agenda of the fossil fuel industry is hugely destructive to this country," Ages said. "We know the Trump administration does not believe that U.S. law applies to them, but rejecting heavily-scrutinized, peer-reviewed climate science is idiotic and cynical, especially when the consequences will be disastrous."

Pruitt notoriously told CNBC in March that he does not believe carbon dioxide drives climate change, and hinted that he wants to reconsider the EPA's 2009 "endangerment finding" that greenhouse gases are harmful to public health and welfare and should be regulated.

Ages explained, "In what seems like an act of comedic theater, the Pruitt EPA and the Trump Administration are actually setting up the fulfillment of the fossil fuel industry's desperate desire to obliterate the CO2 endangerment finding. You can expect the outcome of this process to echo all of Scott Pruitt strange contrivances: Some phony logic that says CO2 is essential for life and more of it will be just great for everyone."

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Head of Energy Dept. Denies CO2 Is Main Cause of Climate Change

Energy Sec. Rick Perrysaid in an interview with CNBC Monday that he doesn't believe carbon dioxide is the "primary control knob" driving climate change.

"Most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in," Perry explained to host Joe Kernen, elaborating that the "debate" over man-made climate change should be about "just how much" humans are influencing the climate "and what are the policy changes that we need to make to effect that."

Perry's comments come just over three months after EPA chief Scott Pruitt told Kernen that he doesn't believe carbon dioxide is a "primary contributor" to climate change. Pruitt and Perry's comments go against established science as well as scientific findings from multiple government agencies, and elicited widespread criticism and outrage from the scientific community. Since Pruitt's comments, the EPA webpage directly rebutting his stance on carbon dioxide has been removed.

As reported by the Houston Chronicle:

Perry's comments drew attacks from environmental groups, which called the former Texas governor a "climate denier."

"Rick Perry's outrageous comments are the latest indication that this administration will do everything in its power to put polluter profits ahead of science and public health," Sierra Club Climate Policy Director Liz Perera said.

For a deeper dive:

Washington Post, AP, CNBC, InsideClimate News, Market Watch, Gizmodo, Mashable, Houston Chronicle. Commentary: ThinkProgress, Joe Romm column)