When President Biden departs the White House on January 20th, he will leave behind a nuanced and divisive legacy on climate and energy policy.
On one hand, his Administration passed the momentous Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the CHIPS and Science Act, which have collectively stimulated massive investment and jobs creation.
Yet IRA funds were slow to get out the door. Americans remained unaware of its impact and opportunities. Much of Biden’s work could be undone by President-elect Trump. To some of his supporters’ chagrin, Biden also oversaw record oil and gas extraction during his term.
In today’s episode, the hosts discuss Biden’s successes and misses. In particular, they consider some of his Administration’s final decisions: doling out huge LPO grants, instituting an offshore drilling ban and more.
Later in the show, the hosts dig into a swan song report from Biden’s Department of Energy; it cautions that a further expansion of liquified natural gas could hurt consumers and the environment alike. What will the Trump Administration make of its warning?
The episode wraps up with our rapid-fire segment, the Mark-Up.
Credits: Hosted by Julia Pyper, Emily Domenech, and Brandon Hurlbut. Produced by Max Savage Levenson. Edited by Anne Bailey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor.
Political Climate is co-produced by Boundary Stone Partners, a leading bipartisan climate change strategic advisory and government affairs firm. Their mission-driven approach combines innovative solutions with expertise in technology, finance, policy, federal funding, and advocacy. Learn more and get in touch today at BoundaryStone.com.
Concerned about how the 2024 election might impact the programs, policies, and incentives that matter most to you? Let Boundary Stone Partners’ Climate24 service help you navigate the political landscape with their policy navigator tool, resources, and bespoke services. Learn more at BoundaryStone.com/Climate24.
Transcript
Julia Pyper: Well hey guys, happy New Year. Although, man, if you live in the LA area, it does not feel so happy today. Brandon, how you doing over there?
Brandon Hurlbut: It’s pretty wild, we could see the fire from our office. It’s hitting close to home for us here in LA. Somebody that is very close to me may have lost their home in this wildfire. They’re saying it is attributed to climate change. We had a really hot summer, we didn’t get any rain. We had extremely high winds, so it was a perfect cocktail for this destruction.
Julia Pyper: Yeah, this is the Palisades Fire on the north side of Los Angeles. Last I heard there were 30,000 people required to evacuate possibly more now. Woke up to the headlines that the winds kept up overnight and the firefighters couldn’t keep up.
Brandon Hurlbut: Yeah, and that’s just our part of town. You have in Pasadena and other parts of the city, now there’s other wildfires as well.
Julia Pyper: Well, I know we’ve had guests on the show in the past who are tackling this issue. It’s going to be more relevant now than ever. Emily, how are you doing?
Emily Domenech: I’m saddened to see the situation in California, for sure. I think it’s part of why it’s so important to actually manage our forests in a responsible way. Because once these fires start, it’s incredibly difficult to stop them. So I think this is a really tough issue.
Julia Pyper: When President Biden departs the White House on January 20th he’ll leave behind a nuanced and divisive legacy on climate and energy policy. On the one hand, his administration passed the Momentous Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the CHIPS and Science Act. He limited offshore drilling and pushed various industries to decarbonize, yet IRA funds were slow to get out the door. Americans remained unaware of its impact and opportunities, and much of Biden’s work could be undone by President-elect Trump. To some of his supporters’ chagrin, Biden also oversaw record oil and gas extraction during his term.
In today’s episode, what did Biden do right and wrong? How will his administration’s 11th hour actions on loans, drilling, and more impact the future of clean energy in America? And later in the show, we’ll dig into a Department of Energy report, cautioning that a further expansion of liquefied natural gas could hurt consumers and the environment alike. Will the Trump administration heed its warnings? Then we’ll end with our rapid fire segment, the markup. That’s all coming up on Political Climate.
As always, I’m joined by my wonderful co-hosts, Brandon Hurlbut and Emily Domenech. They’re true pros. Brandon served as chief of staff in President Obama’s energy department and went on to found Boundary Stone Partners and Overture VC. Brandon, I know it’s a mixed new year to you, but any bright spots on your 2025?
Brandon Hurlbut: I’m excited, there’s going to be a lot of activity in D.C. There’s a lot we can do with the podcast and our listeners together, got an aggressive schedule to kick off the year. We’ll be all over the country. And we have some ideas for some live shows that we might be bringing to all of you, so excited for the work this year.
Julia Pyper: Awesome. And Emily, she served as senior energy advisor to Speakers of the House, Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson, and is now a senior vice president at Boundary Stone. And I must say media darling, we’re glad to have you here because I feel like I see you on TV all the time, Emily. How are you doing?
Emily Domenech: I’m good. I’m definitely in the circuit a little bit these days. It’s funny, people want to hear from Republicans, so that’s part of what makes this podcast fun is that we get to get both sides of stuff.
Julia Pyper: What’s the number one question you get asked, you’ve been asked right now as a Republican who knows these issues?
Emily Domenech: “What is happening with reconciliation; are we doing two bills or one?” And unfortunately that’s a question we’re going to have to see play out in the next month or so.
Julia Pyper: Well, that’s a perfect segue. That is indeed our first topic of the show. I feel like it’s going to be something we just check in on probably every episode given it is the topic of the hour. So before we talk all things Biden, let’s check in on reconciliation. Our listeners may know that newly re-elected Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, shared a big update with his caucus. President-elect Trump wants to see a border and defense funding as well as tax cut planning wrapped into a single reconciliation bill. Some Republicans had floated the idea of splitting that package into two bills, most notably Senate Majority Leader, Senator Thune. What do you guys make of this new shift to now packaging it in one bill? Emily, let’s go to you. You’re the spokesperson on this so far.
Emily Domenech: Well, I would just note that President Trump added some nuance to this statement even as recently as this past week, where he said, “One bill, two bills, we just want to get these things across the finish line as quickly as possible.” So I actually still think this is not at all a settled issue, and a lot of that is going to come down to what Republicans can include in that budget resolution they pass if they’re able to get enough folks to the table to actually negotiate these things and get things moving quickly. I think the number one thing we know about President Trump coming into this administration is they want to move quickly and decisively on a number of key issues. Energy is certainly one of them, but the border and immigration is a big piece of his agenda. I think there are some places where, and I’ll give Majority Leader Thune some credit here, I think his thought process in this two-bill approach was we can move some things quickly to get some wins on the board.
That’s really hard to do in the reconciliation process when you’re trying to do everything at once. Now, the counter to this, and I think this is where Speaker Johnson frankly is right and fair to push forward this opposing view, is that if you don’t include the things Republicans really want to vote for, like energy leasing and perhaps some areas of permitting reform, and funding the border wall and all of these carrots that bring Republicans to the table, it’s way harder to move a big expensive tax package where you got to throw a debt limit increase in there. So I can see both sides of this argument, and I really think because our majority is so narrow, you’re going to have to see this play out in real time a little bit.
Does it start to take too long to a point where President Trump says, “You know what, actually two bills is fine. Move that first thing that gets some of our stuff done so that then we can go back to hashing out this tax stuff later.”
Brandon Hurlbut: Emily, yesterday President Trump said he wanted a policy so we don’t build any more windmills. Does that change your thinking at all on the durability of some of these tax credits and reconciliation?
Emily Domenech: I think the wind, again, I think particularly offshore wind has taken a lot of heat from a big range of stakeholders, from environmentalists on the left to folks on the right who just don’t want to see things in their line of sight, to people who think it’s too expensive. So I’m not surprised to see it continue to get some barbs. I do think that the legacy tax credits, restoration of pre-IRA levels, for example, is something that’s a pretty reasonable position that doesn’t involve full repeal. Those are probably the places these things need to land just because of these narrow majorities.
But I’ll tell you, I think Jason Smith, who’s the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, has said pretty clearly to folks that they’re going to take a run at every piece of the IRA that they can. And it is going to require individual champions for individual parts of that bill within the Republican caucus and they can’t all be the same guy. So I think this is really going to come down to very old-school direct engagement with members to see whether those members really do care about this stuff, sometimes it doesn’t move the needle in the same way people assume that it will.
Brandon Hurlbut: And what about the technology neutral guidance that came out from Treasury? How do you think that shakes out in reconciliation?
Emily Domenech: I’ve rolled my eyes at all of the guidance that’s come out post-election, we’re so late in the game for the Biden Administration to be rolling things out, and I know we’re going to talk a little bit more about what that means for his legacy. These things are all things that could be rolled back by the incoming administration. I don’t know that the guidance that has been put out so far does any favors to people who are trying to lobby to protect these credits. And I think it frankly just once again shows how complicated it is when you’re trying to throw some tax credits on the table in the statute and then you leave a lot of deference to the agencies. The most robust way to keep policies in place is to pass them through Congress, and we have seen folks frankly try to work around that many, many times and it’s not very successful.
Julia Pyper: I have a more tactical question here. I don’t know if you have insights on this, Emily, but we’re seeing this discussion around current policy versus current law. The concept here, this has been put forward by Senator Crapo, who is the top Republican on the finance committee in the Senate, he’s the chair. He’s talked about using this current policy approach. He said that Republicans shouldn’t offset the roughly $4 trillion it would cost to extend the provisions in the 2017 tax law due to expire at the end of this year, 2025, because it would simply continue current policy, adding that pro-growth tax policies don’t need to be paid for. So this is the current policy approach versus current law.
I guess we’re getting into the weeds a little bit here, but it has to do with how you benchmark, and what you’re trying to offset and how much you need to offset, if at all. So do these tax policies pay for themselves, I think is the fundamental concept? In which case you don’t need to find pay-fors, what’s your read on that?
Emily Domenech: So I would say this is the tip of the iceberg in a long-standing debate on both sides of the aisle about how we actually calculate the costs of various legislation. We rely almost entirely on the Congressional Budget Office, which includes some elements of things that people I think would argue don’t reflect the economic growth side. I think you heard that from folks when we were doing the IRA, where they said, “Hey, we’re not seeing the savings from these investments or the potential revenue we’re getting from these investments along the way.” I tend to see it as when you try to mess with the way that we score things, it’s really hard to make it work out in a way that it’s always going to be in your favor. There’s always going to be a scenario where it’s not.
I’ll again go back to the IRA, where CBO had to aggressively revise their original estimate for the cost of that bill, because they didn’t originally take into account a bunch of Biden administration policies that drove people to take advantage of those tax credits. It tripled the cost on paper of that bill. So we have a long history of members of Congress saying, “Isn’t there a better way for us to do this?” And we have yet to nail down what that better way is.
Julia Pyper: Yeah, I’m definitely going to be getting smarter on this part of the debate to figure out, yeah, where does the truth lie? I also know that some of the scoring is just not grounded in reality, if you will, they use EIA numbers and they’re really divorced from reality.
Emily Domenech: Congressional Budget Office looks at a 10-year window for the policies put in place, that’s it. So that means if you’re projecting growth out beyond the 10-year window, you can’t account for it. That’s just the way that it works. If you’re projecting frankly growth in spending outside of that window, it’s a way that Congress has often worked around huge skyrockets in policies in the future because they shift them outside of that 10-year window. So there’s a lot of gimmicks that go into playing with this budget score. And again, I think it comes down to the fact that if you are a party that says that you care about spending, like Republicans tend to be, then you should care about how you evaluate this. Democrats frankly don’t always care about spending, so that’s part of why Republicans will say it puts us at a disadvantage to not include that dynamic scoring.
Brandon Hurlbut: Two things. I’m old enough to remember when the first George Bush called this voodoo math. Second, spending has been lower under Democrats when Democrats are President, full stop. Absolutely.
Emily Domenech: That is not accurate.
Brandon Hurlbut: That is 100% accurate.
Emily Domenech: That is not even remotely accurate.
Brandon Hurlbut: 100% accurate.
Julia Pyper: We got to dig up the link. I remember seeing a breakdown that spending under the past Republican and Democrats administrations was roughly on par. When you put in wars and you put in economic policies, they were on par effectively. The spending is high regardless of who’s in office.
Emily Domenech: We have a spending problem on both sides of the aisle, and I will absolutely agree with you on that one.
Julia Pyper: Good to start getting into the details of reconciliation because I think that’s what a lot of our listeners will be tuning into, is how exactly is this going to work? How are they benchmarking? What metrics are they using? I know on the residential solar side, something like NEM 3.0 in California, a policy that vastly reduced volume, is not accounted for in the CBO scoring. So they actually have much higher volume numbers than even the industry expects. So it’s interesting, how do you get more nuanced and provide the right information to them so they have real numbers so that Congress can make more accurate decisions? Something we’ll certainly follow more and more going forward.
The other top issue I want to run by you, Emily, is permitting. Where are we at on any permitting progress? What’s your read here in early January?
Emily Domenech: So I think a lot on what happens in permitting is going to be determined by how much can be included in the reconciliation bill. From what we’ve put in this permitting bucket, I’ve said this before on the podcast, where major pieces of the Manchin-Barrasso legislation that include energy development on federal lands, for example, is one where we will see that stuff covered in reconciliation because it has a budgetary impact. When it comes to things like how do we actually deal with NEPA, which tends to be, in my mind, the biggest hurdle for permitting reform, you got to get a lot more creative to show a real budget impact from the NEPA reforms that we’ve worked on.
However, in H.R.1 last Congress, Republicans did have some conversation with CBO about there being a budget impact there. So that’s a long way of saying that we’re going to have to wait and see what the Senate parliamentarian says is going to pass muster for that budgetary impact to get into reconciliation, and then we can look at what’s left. And that gives us the ability to see what are we negotiating on going through the rest of this Congress. I think there’s still going to be plenty on the table to talk about, so this issue isn’t going anywhere.
Julia Pyper: Yep, and we’ve got the expert here that will surely bring it up again as you continue to work on these issues with lots of others. Yeah, a permitting pod, and we’ll be back in 2025. Great, well let’s turn now to President Biden’s complex legacy on climate and energy policy. There’s a lot to unpack, but first let’s focus on some of his administration’s final attempts to get money out the door. Brandon, first to you. So in the waning days of the Biden administration that we’re in here now, the Loan Program Office has finalized billions of dollars of loans to companies including PG&E, big California utility, definitely part of the wildfire discussion, to Rivian and the Ford-linked BlueOval SK, what do you think about these 11th hour investments? Could they have a ripple effect? Do you think they’ll actually get done? What are the risks here that we’re looking at in these final hours? So would love to get your read on these loan program office mobilizations.
Brandon Hurlbut: The Loan Program Office is near and dear to my heart and has been an excellent government tool to catalyze entire industries, like utility scale solar, like the EV industry. Again, I was there at the DOE when Elon Musk came and said, “There is no Tesla without the DOE loan program.” And so I’m excited about these investments that they’re making. They’ve issued these conditional commitments, it doesn’t mean the money has been dispersed, so it has been obligated. So that gives it a little bit more of a legal standing, but the applicants have to meet the conditions to get the money. And if they don’t, then they’re vulnerable to having that money clawed back. So we’ll have to see how this all plays out over the next several months with the incoming administration.
But on the question of Biden’s legacy, I think let’s take a step back and we can talk about what that means. First of all, he passed the most impactful climate legislation in the world between the three policies we’ve been talking about on the show a lot, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act. It’s unlocked extraordinary investment into manufacturing into this country. And he’s made it in a durable way, because most of the money has gone to red states. I think it’s two-thirds to three-fourths, depending on which study you’re looking at.
So I’m not sure the other party would’ve done that. That’s an incredible legacy for him, but it’s mixed. Because they did get a lot of the money out, 80% of the discretionary money, which is about $100 billion dollars, so that’s not the tax credits, we’re talking about the grants and such. 80% of that money did get obligated, so that’s a pretty good achievement. But some of this was really slow. You look at the EV program, the seven and a half billion dollars for EVs, I think only 50 of those stations have been built so far. So it’s been coming along slow. There’s been a lot of criticism about the broadband money that hasn’t done as much as people hoped.
So I think this is a larger thing for Democrats. I think this is where we paid the price in the last election, is that the voters see the Democrats as the party of government, and that means government has to work for them. And they have to see it being responsive and they have to see outcomes. And I think one of the things that we’re debating amongst Democrats is there has been too much emphasis on the process and not enough emphasis on the outcomes. You think in California, a great example is high-speed rail, we’ve been talking about this forever. Spent a bunch of money, and if we can’t build high-speed rail in California with all that money, how can we build stuff in this country? So I think that means his legacy is a little bit mixed.
Julia Pyper: Can I ask you a quick follow up to that? What does that mean, focus on the outcomes? What would Democrats have to shift in the way they make policy to have that happen?
Brandon Hurlbut: It means people are seeing the deployments and it’s touching them and they’re feeling it, and it moves faster and it’s more responsive. We talk a lot about the money, seven and a half billion dollars for EVs. Great, where are the stations?
Julia Pyper: Do you think it was possible for them to move faster given they had to go through rulemaking processes and they had to do it the way the government dictates? My understanding was they moved quite fast given the procedural hurdles you have to go through to do this legally, but I also agree with you that it didn’t reach the voters in ways that they perceived. So both are true, I’m just wondering what else could they do?
Brandon Hurlbut: Yeah, I think this is where I am interested in what they’re going to do with some of the DOGE stuff, because we got to hire and fire better in the U.S. Government. That’s part of the process, is you pass all this money in the Inflation Reduction Act. The DOE had to hire thousands of people. The hiring process in the federal government is torturous, but we have to look at these things. I was reading an article about the subway line in New York, and it’s two and a half billion dollars per mile for the Second Avenue subway line. And that is eight to 12 times more expensive than building a subway line in other countries. Why is that? And it’s because in some of these grants and whatnot, we put unnecessary process into it and restrictions on it, and there’s all this inertia and agita in it.
And so yes, there is legal stuff that you can’t avoid. You can’t just issue a rule, write it out and send it. You do have to go through notice and comment. These new laws required guidance to interpret the laws, and they moved at a pretty decent pace on that. But I think we have to revisit how we’re executing on these things to go faster. And if we have to change some laws to enable that or take a new look, is how can we use AI in the grant-making process to speed up some of the reviews or whatnot? That’s the stuff that I’m excited for DOGE to look at, is using modern technologies to make government work in a modern way.
Julia Pyper: Yeah, it’s going to be really interesting to see what happens with DOGE, they seem to have a very broad mandate, if you will. Because there’s government and its operations, which I think can tackle several billions, hundreds of billions of dollars, but not the trillions they need to maybe pay for tax cuts. So then you get into other programs, and that’ll be a much thornier discussion I’m sure.
Since we’re on the topic of speeding up and slowing down in government roles here, I think let me throw this one out to you, Emily. Last week, President Biden banned offshore drilling on 625 million acres of ocean on both coasts. Yet according to Politico, many of those regions hold little interest for oil and gas. Does this ban feel substantive to you, is it more of a nothing burger? How does this factor into your calculus?
Emily Domenech: I think it doesn’t surprise me at all that the Biden Administration would try to do some last minute, “Hey, look, look at us and our environmental legacy.” But I think any of these things that happen at the last minute are things that we should expect the incoming administration to work to undo. I think we should expect the Congress to work to undo these steps. And I think also it highlights the challenge that the Biden administration had and that Vice President Harris had on the campaign trail, where on one hand we saw the Biden administration taking federal land and waters off the table for oil and gas leasing or for mineral development, and on the other hand she said, “No, no, I’m pro-fracking, I’m pro oil and gas. Look at all this oil and gas we produce.” It doesn’t make sense, those two things together don’t make sense. So I think it shows a disconnect in the administration.
Also, I just want to follow up on something Brandon said here. I think you’re exactly right about if your whole message as Democrats is we’re the party of the government, and the government is going to work better and it’s going to help solve these problems, and then at the same time you’re passing a regulatory agenda that makes it 10 times harder to actually implement any of those things, it doesn’t make sense. And that’s the kind of thing that a normal, regular American can read an article about and say, “Yeah, that doesn’t make any sense, and why would I want to support somebody who supports those policies?”
So I think the silver lining here for people who want to build things in America is that broadly, Republicans believe you should make it easier, you should get the government out of the way and the government should not be the impediment to you building things in America. And that helps everybody from clean energy to oil and gas.
Julia Pyper: On the approval side, shortly before Christmas, the Biden administration approved California’s plan to require all new cars be gas-free by 2035. Trump said he would roll back the policy. Brandon, going to you, how do you see this tug-of-war playing out?
Brandon Hurlbut: Yeah, we’ve talked about this a little bit on the show. I am very nervous about our auto industry’s competitiveness with this technology. We see what’s happening in China with the Ford CEO, and the Ford team going over there and saying they were blown away. And anytime any country lets these Chinese EVs into their country, they eat the market. And so we should be moving faster to embrace this. And I’m nervous that the incoming team is going to go the wrong direction and it’s going to be like trying to preserve candlelight when the electric light bulb is out there, or DVDs over streaming.
This is the best technology out there and other countries are moving aggressively. They’re building cheap, amazing cars and we’re still stuck in this debate over here. And so we will see how this plays out in the process with the California waiver, California has a special waiver under the clean air law that allows them to do things differently than the government, the federal government. And so there’ll be a legal process about whether they can use this waiver or not.
Julia Pyper: All right, so leveling up again. Since Brandon shared at the outset his vision of how President Biden did overall on climate, Emily, I’d love to see if you got something you could point to where you think President Biden actually achieved on climate and energy.
Emily Domenech: I think achievement is a tough word here. I think the Democrats were very successful when they had united government in moving forward their policies. I think they tried to learn from the lessons of the Obama administration on the regulatory side to move the policies they support forward through the rulemaking process, those things seem to have a little bit more legal legs than they’ve had in the past. I think if your goal is to have a federal government that dictates your energy policy for the whole country, I think they moved steps forward there. I just don’t share that goal, and I don’t think it’s the best way to meet our energy needs in the future.
So my take would be I think they had some legislative success, but the American people said, “Hey, look, this isn’t the way we want our country run, and now we’re going to do it a different way and see how it turns out.” But the flip-flopping is hard for industry to adjust to, and I think the jury is out a little bit. Obviously the Trump administration is just getting started, but I think we’re going to see a really different approach than this top-down mentality going into the next four years.
Brandon Hurlbut: Just one counterpoint to it all is that it’s undeniable the amount of investment and jobs created from these policies. If you look at before the IRA and after the amount of investment into the space, the amount of manufacturing and the job creation is extraordinary. You think back to the Recovery Act, which I was involved in, and in the aggregate, that law invested about $90 billion into this industry. And you saw the cost declines from solar, wind, lithium-ion batteries, LED lights. After that law was passed, the cost curves went down dramatically over the next decade to get to cost parity, many cases.
So you look at, we talked about the $100 billion dollars that’s already been invested just in the grants, the discretionary, we’re not talking about the tax credits and all that stuff. This is going to have a massive impact on the industry going forward, even if there are changes under the new administration. So I think that will be incredible for his legacy. Now, people will always debate what happened in the big picture because he shouldn’t have run again, and the voters were saying that for a couple of years in every poll. And so this is a consequence of not listening to voters, because this wasn’t a new thing at the end. It was pervasive in every poll for years and it was ignored. And then at the last minute we made the switch, and Kamala walked into a very tough situation to have to run that campaign in the last few months, being tied to some of the stuff, being tied to Joe Biden who was not popular.
Julia Pyper: Any final thoughts for him on energy? Brandon, as you think of how Democrats regroup and move forward here. We’re going to talk lot about Republican policies. We’ve heard a lot from Emily, but it is a moment of reflection for the Democrats. So just to pick up on your final thought there, where do they go forward following the Biden administration?
Brandon Hurlbut: We’re having those conversations and I’m excited about some of the new leadership. We have friend of the pod, Senator Heinrich, he’ll be a part of those, a friend of the pod, Mike Levin is on the Appropriations Committee now, so that’s great. There are these conversations happening about what’s next, because we do know when there’s been unified control of the US government like the one coming on January 20th—every time since Jimmy Carter—that party has lost control in the midterms, every time. So if the voters give us a chance again to have power we better be ready for it, and we better have some new ideas and fresh ideas and different approaches. And I think we’re having those conversations behind the scenes, and I’m excited to bring people onto the show and have those conversations on the show here too.
Julia Pyper: Let’s move on to the final major topic of the show. One of the last things Biden’s DOE did was release a long awaited report assessing the environmental impacts of liquefied natural gas, LNG. Proponents of LNG argue it releases less emissions than coal and that American exports reduce other nations’ dependency on dirtier fuel coming from Russia. Yet the report concludes that LNG could result in a dramatic increase in greenhouse gases as well as a price hike for consumers. Emily, what’s your takeaway on this DOE report? Do you think certain components of it carry more weight than others, is there some validity to this? How do you think about the role of LNG here?
Emily Domenech: I think most Republicans looked at the LNG export pause and the corresponding report as an effort to simply politicize this issue and to push back against exports or production of natural gas. I found it interesting that the original discussion was really, really heavy on emissions and the follow-up was much heavier on price and availability of LNG here in the United States. But if you look at the report, the first key finding is that across all the scenarios they modeled, U.S. domestic natural gas supply was sufficient to meet all of the modeled global demand for U.S. LNG and continuing to meet domestic supply and demand here. So I find the, “Oh yes, this is a big surprising conclusion,” as a little bit of an eye roll, and I don’t think this report carries any weight with the incoming administration.
Julia Pyper: Brandon, how do you think about democratic priorities here, because let me bring in the geopolitical elements? You’ve seen the Biden administration support Ukraine and try to find ways to counter Russia. And one of the tools in the toolkit is providing U.S. gas to our allies so they can get off of Russian fuel. And yet we have Democrats with this environmental agenda, which is very real, and they want to address emissions. And we know that there are emissions from LNG, and we can talk about the relative ones against other fuel sources. And of course there’s methane and other factors we have to layer in here, but how do you think about the tension between Democrats’ geopolitical aims, and then the reality of what they’re trying to do on tackling climate change? And how those two things have to feed together, because it feels like LNG is right at the heart of that?
Brandon Hurlbut: We dealt with it when I was at the DOE, Secretary Clinton, when she was Secretary of State, was always calling Secretary Chu to discuss this. And there’s not an easy answer, because the science is pretty clear about the emission profile, it’s bad. But we do have these geopolitical interests. But my understanding is that Europe is reducing its dependence on fossil fuels, they’re going the other way. And so most of this LNG, the market is likely Asia.
Emily Domenech: Which is even better if you’re talking about global emissions because in Asia they’re using coal.
Julia Pyper: Emily, under the Trump Administration, what’s the thing listeners should know about their LNG export policies? You affect a full ban reversal, where do you think they take it from here?
Emily Domenech: Yeah, I think the ban is toast. There’s no scenario where an incoming Trump administration is banning LNG exports. I actually think you could see an effort to negotiate more agreements on LNG so that we can see more of U.S. natural gas, displacing Russian gas wherever it’s possible, and frankly, looking for ways to support our allies. Asia is a great example, with making sure we can help them meet their energy needs with U.S. natural gas.
The great news here is that this is a really significant resource in the United States, and that U.S. LNG is lower emissions intensive than certainly the LNG produced in Russia. That’s something the Department of Energy national Labs have modeled many times. So we have to be thinking about this again as a global problem. And the answer can’t always be all the fossil fuels have to stay in the ground, because that’s not the universe we live in. To Brandon’s point, we have to be looking at what the rest of the world uses, and how the United States can best meet that need in a way that protects our national security and our economic growth, and hopefully also reduces emissions at the same time.
Brandon Hurlbut: And I think people also see this pipeline, this queue of projects for LNG to get the export licenses, but most of those projects won’t get built. So it’s one thing, it’s almost like the queue for electricity generation where you see the terabytes of power and the queue. And a lot of those projects don’t get built, because the economics have to be there. So some of these developers throw in this application to get the permit, hoping that they’ll raise the capital, hoping that a lot of things will come together. But when people look at those pipelines and queues for LNG terminals, many of them don’t get built.
Emily Domenech: And that’s a great example of, again, back to this idea that the federal government shouldn’t be the thing that stops you from building. If economics don’t make sense for your project or you can’t raise financing, that’s a totally different environment. But if the federal government just arbitrarily saying no is the reason you can’t build your renewable project, your LNG export terminal or what have you, then that’s where I think Republicans particularly say, “Hey, wait a minute, that’s a problem, that’s something we should fix.”
Julia Pyper: Yeah, there’s the ban and then of course there’s the other policy related friction that can still drive up costs, some of which is needed, like environmental reviews. But as we’ve discussed before, maybe not the same judicial level of oversight we’ve had in the past. So there’s a lot of policy factors is all I just wanted to call out. But yes, an outright ban obviously sends a very clear market signal. I do think it’s interesting though that this report, it lays out information. It’s not a decision-making report. And so it’s I think to help people make better decisions now and in the future, so it’s just another piece of data.
To your point, Brandon, speaking of the dynamics with Russia, I thought there was an interesting quote from the British Energy Advisor, Jan Rosenow, on X. He said, “Let’s not kid ourselves, Europe still buys a lot of Russian gas. Russian LNG accounted for 20% of the EU’s overall imports in 2024. The only way to sustainably drive out Russian gas is to accelerate renewable energy build out, electrification, and energy efficiency.” So it gets at the heart of your point there, but we’ve got a transition still to go in Europe and elsewhere on actually getting off of gas, but he level set on where they’re at today.
Brandon Hurlbut: Yeah, the interesting thing will be the effect on price too. If we start exporting all of this, what does that mean for gas prices here? What does that mean for consumers? And I’m interested in Emily’s take on one of the arguments in repealing parts of the Inflation Reduction Act is that it could increase electricity costs for people, and so how much will Republicans be thinking about? Emily, you’ve said on this show many times, being cost sensitive. How are these policies going to affect costs for consumers?
Emily Domenech: Yeah, absolutely. The one point I’ll make on the export argument is that I was working in congress when we lifted the crude oil export ban, and there were decades of people saying, “If you lift the crude oil export ban we’re going to see price increases here at home,” and that simply did not happen. Because frankly, we have a supply that can meet those growing demands. And that’s certainly true in the natural gas market and I expect it would be true in this forward-looking scenario for many years to come. But you’re right, I think, again, this is going back to this same issue, I feel like I’m a broken record here, but the federal government shouldn’t be the deciding factor on whether or not something is cost-effective. Let’s go let things compete in the market and see what wins. I think that’s the way that we should be approaching our energy policy.
Julia Pyper: All right, well, I think we leave it there. Now, let’s close out this first episode of 2025 with our rapid fire segment, The Mark-up. For anyone tuning in for the first time, at the end of the show, Emily, Brandon, and I each bring a story, anecdote, or observation to discuss and debate. Let’s see what we got this time. I can go first. I’ll share an article in Canary Media that had the top 10 charts for 2025. There’s some great stats in there. They’re from sources like the International Energy Agency and others. A couple I’ll just rattle off here. One in five new cars sold in 2024 will be battery powered, that’s according to the IEA. We’ve got the world could triple renewable energy by the end of the decade. Solar power is shattering global records and installation growth. Solar and wind could overtake fossil fuels on the EU power grid. And heavy industry is the world’s biggest decarbonization challenge, that’s not exactly new news, but something I think we’ll have to continue to watch here, including on the pod, is how do we get at those hard to abate sectors?
So point everyone to that news article, it was a great roundup of where we’re at, where we’re going, but of course going to be a lot of change in the years to come. Emily, how about you next?
Emily Domenech: So mine is, I don’t have a particular article, but given our conversation at the top of the show on the California wildfires, I just wanted to go back and highlight the bipartisan Fix our Forest Act, which was passed through the house last year but did not pass the Senate, so it was not implemented into law. It was sponsored by two guests of this podcast, Chairman Bruce Westerman and Congressman Scott Peters from California, that was focused on how do we solve the wildfire problem before it starts? So how do we make sure that we’re doing responsible forest management, that we don’t let the environmental review process stop us from cleaning out the brush that causes these wildfires and causes them to frankly burn out of control at levels much hotter than they ever would? Because normally the forest naturally regulates itself and we stop those small fires to protect homes, but then we don’t ever clear the brush away.
So this legislation, I really hope we’ll see a resurgence of it this Congress. I wouldn’t be shocked if they don’t reintroduce it soon, puts investment in actually managing our federal forest the way the Forest Service frankly asks for help to do so. I hope it’s something that we can see move forward this Congress so that we don’t see these huge fires in California. I obviously used to work for Kevin McCarthy and worked in the wildfire and forest management space for a really long time, so it’s near and dear to my heart. And I would hope to see us protect those forests and protect those homes in the future.
Julia Pyper: Recent news certainly puts an exclamation point on better wildfire management. Brandon, close us out here.
Brandon Hurlbut: I’m going to highlight a Bloomberg article written by energy expert Michael Liebreich, it’s called “Generative A.I, the Power and the Glory.” It’s a long piece, it’s super informative, and we know that this is going to be a big topic on our show going forward. This increase in energy demand is going to make this issue front and center for everybody. You look at some of these data centers in Northern Virginia, there’s one that’s two and a half gigawatts, it’s 20% of all the electricity in the region. There’s talk of building Stargate, a five gigawatt data center. How are we going to do this? And this is not a long-term thing, this is a surge over the next 2, 3, 4 years. So we’re excited about SMRs and nuclear and all these other solutions, but these data centers, they need to get built now to compete with China to win on Ai.
And so what are going to be the quickest solutions? What are the ones that are going to be the cleanest, lowest costs? So as we’re having this big policy debate across D.C. this year with the new administration and new Congress, this is going to be at the center of it all. And I think us getting our heads around these impacts, bringing some guests on that can help inform us and our listeners. But I’ve been looking at some interesting parts, like off-grid solar, as a way to provide power to data centers. There’s a great piece offgridai.us, written by Duncan Campbell who I think is a listener, that provides some really interesting data on how you can build these microgrids that are off-grid to provide power. And it’s faster to build smaller things than one big large thing, and the transmission process and all of that. So there’s going to be a lot of different approaches to this and a lot of different angles, and love to explore them on this show with all of you.
Emily Domenech: Yeah, I’m excited to talk about AI. I think you’re absolutely right that this is going to be the focus of one of the driving issues for growing our energy resources and meeting our energy demand, for sure.
Brandon Hurlbut: One of my favorite shows ever is Halt and Catch Fire, and it’s about that period where the internet was just starting and all these companies are trying to figure out Search, and it’s about a startup doing that. And we know that Google ultimately won. But we are in that era right now for AI, where it’s like we’re in the early innings and there’s going to be massive disruption and change. I was using ChatGPT on the show to fact-check Emily with her bullshit about the federal spending.
Emily Domenech: And I would love to see one that includes debts and deficits that wasn’t created by ChatGPT, it doesn’t include all the info, Brandon.
Julia Pyper: They’ve started to link to sources. Well, we should create a ChatGPT history for the show where we just plug in all of our fact checks.
Brandon Hurlbut: I think we could upload our voices on the ChatGPT and it could do the podcast for us.
Julia Pyper: True.
Emily Domenech: I’ll just say hard pass. It won’t be funny then, you know that.
Julia Pyper: All right, well, we’ll leave the show there. Political Climate is a co-production of Latitude Media and Boundary Stone Partners. Max Savage Levenson is our producer, happy New Year, Max. Sean Marquand is our technical director. Steven Lacey is our executive editor. You can get all of our show notes and transcripts at Latitudemedia.com, and if you want us to talk about a specific topic, please email us at [email protected]. Please feel free to also help spread the word about Political Climate on LinkedIn, X, and beyond. I’m Julia Pyper.
Brandon Hurlbut: What about Bluesky. Julia, are you on Bluesky yet?
Julia Pyper: I’m not on Bluesky yet. I can’t do social anymore, I’m tapped out. That’s my New Year’s resolution, be in the moment. Carpe diem.
