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Week of June 25th, 2018

Mississippi River Basin News

This Week in Washington

Trump Administration Requests Budget Cuts to Clean Energy Research for the Second Time This Year

The Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) is facing the prospect of a 71% budget cut. This became public after The Washington Post reported that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) sent out a memo last Friday "direct[ing] the department to submit a budget request that would reduce funding for all nondefense

offices by 5 percent from what the administration sent to Congress for the

fiscal 2019."

In February, the Trump administration's FY19 budget request included a

proposal to fund EERE at $696 million, a small portion of the $2.3 billion it received for FY18. Rather than going along with President Trump's large

budget cut, Congress appropriated $2.3 billion to the Office of Energy

Efficiency and Renewable Energy for FY19.

According to its website , EERE "leads a large network of researchers and

other partners to deliver innovative technologies that will make renewable

electricity generation cost competitive with traditional sources of energy."

Further, its 2016-2020 Strategic Plan , explains that its mission is to "create

and sustain American leadership in the transition to a global clean energy economy." Because the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's purpose does not align with the current administration's goal to "boost

outlays for the [Department of Energy]'s weapons program," it is included

in OMB's proposed cuts.

The Office of Management and Budget's memo means that the Department

of Energy was instructed to submit a budget request that only included a

$661 million budget for EERE. If this action of the administration is

approved by Congress, EERE would receive less than a third of its FY19

budget .

EPA Faces Criticism after Release of PFAS Report, Biofuel Proposal

Last week, the Department of Health and Human

Services officially released its report that Politico

stated, "found some [per- and polyfluoroalkyl

substances (PFAS)] chemicals can pose a danger

at one-tenth of the level EPA set as the safety

threshold."

These nonstick chemicals are present in food

packaging, food processing equipment,

contaminated water, among other things.

According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, PFAS are believed to increase the risk of cancer.

The release of the PFAS report comes after concern arose in May once news outlets reported on internal e-mails which revealed that the Environmental Protection Agency "sought to block publication of [this] federal health study

. . . . [that] would show that [per- and polyfluoroalkyl] endanger human

health at a far lower level than [the] EPA has previously called safe."

Following the disclosure of its e-mails, the EPA held a two-day National Leadership Summit, beginning on May 22, at which the agency discussed the

risks of PFAS. This did not put an end to the criticism, though. In an effort

"[t]o fully engage with communities in the weeks following the summit . . . .

[and] hear directly from the public how to best help states and communities

facing this issue," the Environmental Protection Agency plans to visit cities

in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and North Carolina this

summer.

The EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt also recently visited Kansas and South

Dakota where farmers expressed their concern and frustration over the

possibility that the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) will favor oil companies

and hurt ethanol producers. Following these meetings, "[t]he Trump administration . . . propos[ed] to modestly increase the amount of ethanol

and other biofuels that the nation's oil refiners have to blend into the

gasoline and diesel they sell," according to The Hill.

Pruitt and the EPA continue facing criticism from proponents of ethanol.

They do not believe the RFS will offset enough of the 1.6-billion-gallons-

worth of business that they lose as a result of a RFS waiver for small refiners. Oil companies, on the other hand, are not in favor of the proposal because if the RFS for 2019 changes to 19.88 billion gallons, they will need to include 3.1% more biofuel into their gasoline and diesel.