https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...cretaries-plot-next-phase-of-dominance-agenda
Trump energy secretaries plot next phase of 'dominance' agenda
by
Josh Siegel
| December 02, 2019 07:30 PM
New Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, and the man he replaced, Rick Perry, are ready to claim success for their "exporting freedom" agenda. They claim to have diminished Russia's influence by helping European countries diversify their energy imports.
"Competition works," Perry said. "The Russians had everybody held hostage. And now, everybody in Europe understands ... that is not necessarily a good thing."
This claim, more than anything, is representative of the "energy dominance" policy that Perry started and Brouillette is set to continue after being confirmed as energy secretary. While the duo insists their agenda is about promoting "all of the above" energy production and exports, it's really about expanding consumption of American fossil fuels, a concept that runs counter to calls for greater urgency in the effort to shift to renewable energy to combat climate change.
As Perry's deputy before replacing him, Brouillette, 57, has been a primary driver of the policy, albeit in a less front-facing and political way. Perry is the backslapping former Texas governor and two-time presidential candidate who reveled in being the salesman for the Trump administration's pro-fossil fuel policy. Brouillette is an insider who previously worked at the Department of Energy, focusing on legislative affairs in the Bush administration from 2001 to 2003, and a former chief of staff for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the panel that oversees the agency he now leads.
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Perry and Brouillette, who both reside in Texas and are veterans, stressed their similarities more than their differences in an exclusive joint interview with the
Washington Examiner at DOE headquarters before Brouillette's confirmation.
"Dan and I always laugh at people telling folks here's what conventional wisdom says: Fifteen years ago, they told us we found all the fossil fuels. Remember peak oil?" Perry said, prompting a laugh from Brouillette, before declaring that it's "drastically wrong" for "very shortsighted individuals [to] say coal is done, it's over with."
Despite his independent background, Brouillette is entirely on board with the Trump agenda and ushering it to its next stage, and that starts with outmaneuvering Russia in European energy markets.
When asked for evidence that the United States is successfully combating Russia, Brouillette noted the experience of Lithuania, one of the prime subjects of his and Perry's push for liquified natural gas exports.
Russia's energy company Gazprom has been forced to cut the price of the gas it sells to Lithuania 40% because Lithuania has "a diversity of supply and options available," he said, instead of relying chiefly on Moscow.
Lithuania's state-owned gas trader, Lietuvos Duju Tiekimas, in 2017 signed a deal to buy LNG directly from the U.S. for the first time.
The U.S. now exports LNG to 36 countries, double the 18 destinations at the beginning of the administration, an increase aided by the work of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to ease a backlog in permitting approvals for Gulf Coast export facilities. DOE has also streamlined approvals for U.S. companies to export LNG and created a new rule allowing for small-scale exports of natural gas.
Brouillette and Perry hope increased diversification will compensate for what critics say is the Trump administration's failure to deliver on one of its promises: stopping construction of the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would carry natural gas from Russia to Germany.
The Trump administration has failed to stop the project, despite having the power to do so through sanctions under existing U.S. law and executive authority, and Nord Stream 2 could now become operational in January after recently receiving an essential permit.
"The real key was making sure that we laid as much LNG into the European theater as we could," Perry said. "Whether or not Russia finishes Nord Stream 2 or not is going to be not as consequential as our being able to be a supplier. Because I know this: American LNG can be delivered to Europe as cheap if not cheaper to what the Russians are going to be able to deliver there. At that particular point in time, the market will be our great friend."
Brouillette insisted it's not too late for the U.S. to sanction Nord Stream 2, but that the State and Treasury Departments handle primary decision-making.
"Whether the pipeline happens or not, as long as we see them continue the diversity of their supply, that is a good thing for Europe," Brouillette said of Germany. He noted Germany is planning to build two new LNG import terminals to provide alternatives to Russia's pipeline-delivered gas.
Yet, on another agenda item of top importance for the Trump DOE — rescuing uneconomic coal and nuclear plants — Perry, and now Brouillette, is working to fight against market forces.
As Perry has, Brouillette will prod federal energy regulators to allow for higher payments to keep alive coal and nuclear plants that are losing out to cheaper gas and renewables.
FERC, an independent agency, rejected a proposal in 2018 from Perry to provide special payments to coal and nuclear plants that could store 90 days of fuel on-site.
The Trump administration argues that closing coal and nuclear plants, which run around the clock, could leave the power grid vulnerable because pipelines that deliver gas could be targeted in cyberattacks, and renewables such as wind and solar produce power intermittently.
Brouillette denied whispers that the Trump administration could act alone to help coal plants using executive authority and said the president had not requested any specific action ahead of the 2020 election.
But he supports FERC's efforts to change the rules for paying power plants by giving added consideration to the ability of coal and nuclear plants to provide reliable and resilient power to the electricity grid.
Brouillette rejected the notion that Perry's original bid to FERC failed, crediting it with helping establish the importance of "resilience" to the power grid, which relates to the grid's ability to bounce back from extreme weather or even a cyberattack.
"To that extent, it has been successful," Brouillette said. "The fact of the matter is they are addressing that issue, and that's what we intended when we started that process."
Brouillette also insisted there is a "bright future for coal," despite the fact that coal's portion of the electricity generation mix, which was nearly 50% a decade ago, is now below 30%. More coal plants shuttered in Trump's first two years than were retired during Barack Obama's first term.
Brouillette is counting on DOE investments in carbon capture to limit plants' emissions, placing faith also in the agency's work with private industry to develop cleaner products using carbon and other critical materials from coal, such as its use in battery storage.
"What the president has directed us to do is to look for different ways to utilize coal," Brouillette said.
Despite their fondness for fossil fuels, Perry and Brouillette insist they want the best for clean energy, even if critics say that approach is insufficient to combat climate change, with U.S. emissions rising in 2018 after years of steady declines.
The duo highlighted the agency's work to boost zero-emission technologies such as small modular nuclear reactors.
DOE is using its national labs to develop fuels that can be used in small nuclear reactors, an unproven technology designed for greater safety and easier construction than today's massive plants.
At his confirmation hearing, Brouillette also said he considers energy storage a "breakthrough technology" that DOE is helping grow by using the national labs to produce magnesium ion as an alternative to lithium-ion batteries.
That will help wind and solar become a "bigger and bigger" part of the electricity mix, which is "a great thing," he said.
"What we have done from day one is adopt the policy of all of the above energy dominance," Brouillette said. "None of that is going to change. What we might do is apply different technologies."
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