Select Committee Report Delayed

The expected month-end report by the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis has been delayed indefinitely as legislators have turned their attention to dealing with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. There has not yet been any indication about when work on the report officially will resume.

Here are some possible areas of focus, based on the hearings that the Committee conducted over the past year:

  • Climate resilience in agriculture, built infrastructure, and emergency preparedness

  • Increasing renewable energy use

  • Transportation emission reduction

  • Industrial emission reduction

  • Expansion of ‘green’ innovation in manufacturing

  • Nature-based solutions to mitigation and adaptation

  • Targeted federal financing to improve climate resilience

  • State and local clean energy action

  • Endorsing measures that expedite the transition to a low-carbon economy

  • Assessing public health impacts associated with a changing climate

  • Engagement with the private sector to assess climate-related risk

  • Engagement with young environmental leaders

In addition to the hearings, there have been a number of introduced bills that may point to the sort of recommendations that will be offered. This includes sweeping legislation addressing economy-wide net-zero greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., H.R.5221) and global climate change resilience (e.g., H.R.4732), and more narrowly tailored bills focusing on issues as diverse as climate risk disclosures (e.g., H.R.3623), protection of the natural environment (e.g., H.R.1921), and climate-resilient fisheries (e.g., H.R.4679), among others. For the more ambitious efforts – such as carbon neutrality and transportation electrification – specifics have not yet been outlined.

On the Senate side, the bipartisan American Energy Innovation Act stumbled mid-March after an amendment was added by Senators Tom Carper (D-DE) and John Kennedy (R-LA) to phase down the use of hydrofluorocarbons, a group of chemicals used for cooling and refrigeration, over the next 15 years. The bill, coauthored by Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Joe Manchin (D-WV), highlights several issue areas – affordability, emission reduction, security, and competitiveness – and aims to stimulate energy innovation and workforce development by investing in a variety of low-carbon technologies. Like most other bills, the Senate Energy legislation has been temporarily sidelined as lawmakers respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The counterpart of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, the Senate Democrats' Special Committee on the Climate Crisis, has focused on investigating the effects of climate change and ways to minimize its associated risks, with an eye towards taking a more aggressive legislative approach following the upcoming election.

The rapid escalation of the COVID-19 virus and its subsequent response has shelved other legislative priorities, and the House Select Committee’s report is no exception. At the same time, some congressional Democrats pressed for inclusion of airline emission reductions and renewable energy tax credits in the stimulus package. No such ‘green’ provisions were ultimately a part of the final legislation, though the bill does preserve existing levels of funding for energy-related departments like Interior, Energy, the EPA, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Administration’s requested funding for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was also absent from the bill. As Congress continues to react to the uncertainty caused by the spread of the virus and considers ways to stabilize the economy, expect a push to tie the clean energy sector and emission reduction commitments to broader growth strategies.

Already, trade groups like the American Wind Energy Association have released statements outlining their priorities for future COVID-19 legislation, calling for tax relief provisions that will help minimize disruption to existing and future renewable energy projects. In Congress, Representative Debbie Dingell (D-MI-12) has indicated that she will be pushing for the creation of a national climate bank, and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have called on House leadership to address infrastructure spending in future relief bills, with passage of America's Transportation Infrastructure Act (S. 2302) or reauthorization of the expiring FAST Act (H.R.22) both serving as potential blueprints.

As the situation develops and additional bills are considered by Congress, Plurus will continue to provide updates as they arise.

Claire WashburnLitke, Eppler, Leiter, House Select Committee, Climate, climate crisis, COVID-19, COVID, resilience, resilient, transportation, renewable energy, emissions, emission reduction, GHG, innovation, manufacturing, mitigation, adaptation, clean energy, low carbon economy, public health, climate risk, environment, energy, climate risk disclosure, carbon, carbon neutrality, CO2, electrification, PFAS, Murkowski, Manchin, Special Committee on the Climate Crisis, House, Senate, House Democrats, Senate Democrats, Republican, Trump, Epa, EPA, DOE, Transportation, Interior, SPR, NRC, AWEA, climate bank, Congress, Administration, infrastructure