Kate Aronoff <https://newrepublic.com/authors/kate-aronoff>
New Republic, September 15, 2020
The Biden Adviser Who Gives Climate Activists Nightmares
Ernest Moniz served as Obama’s secretary of energy. His ties to the
fossil fuel industry have only deepened since then. Will Biden give
him his old job back?
Former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz speaks during the National Clean
Energy Summit in 2017.
ISAAC BREKKEN/GETTY IMAGES
Former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz speaks during the National Clean
Energy Summit in 2017.
If you haven’t heard of Ernest “Ernie” Moniz, there’s still a good
chance you’ve seen a picture of him. The 75-year-old nuclear
physicist,**MIT professor emeritus, multimillionaire, and former energy
secretary for the Obama administration sports longish silver hair that
looks fit for a daguerrotype. His aesthetic sensibilities have turned
him into a lovable meme among energy wonks, who for the most part regard
him as a slightly quirky but eminently competent, whip-smart technocrat,
credited as a central figure in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal.
In the last few weeks, this once-improbable figure of controversy has
become a symbol of just how much climate politics have changed since the
Obama era—a flashpoint in a growing fight over what energy policy should
look like in a potential post-Trump government that won’t just be
fighting to re-establish the rules and programs he gutted, but transform
the country’s energy system in time to avert runaway climate
catastrophe. Moniz, a “good friend
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb50FbAuiUc>” of Biden’s, has been
informally advising his campaign since at least last May
<https://uk.reuters.com/article/usa-election-biden-climate/exclusive-presidential-hopeful-biden-looking-for-middle-ground-climate-policy-idUKL2N22J1PU>,
and his Energy Futures Initiative’s partnership with certain unions has
been an influential voice in crafting the former vice president’s and
the party’s approach to climate issues. Sources tracking transition
talks say he could even be in the running to take back his old job as
energy secretary.
That’s a prospect that worries climate watchers. Earlier this month, 145
progressive groups sent aletter
<http://oilchangeusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Letter-to-VP-Biden-%E2%80%94-No-Fossil-Fuel-Representatives.pdf>to
Joe Biden’s campaign, urging the candidate to “ban all fossil fuel
executives, lobbyists, and representatives from any advisory or official
position on your campaign, transition team, cabinet, and
administration.” Many of them say Moniz fits the bill.
Moniz has**had several lucrative relationships with fossil fuel
companies during his career, including as an adviser to BP. The Energy
Initiative he founded at MIT—like many such initiatives in academia,
quietly run on oil money
<https://newrepublic.com/article/158086/pernicious-influence-big-oil-americas-universities>—brought
in sizable donations from some of the world’s largest fossil fuel
producers, and produced research that made the case for their growth. He
disclosed his full financial holdings and industry ties when first being
considered to head the Department of Energy in 2013, and resigned from
any posts that might carry conflicts of interest. Since leaving
government in 2017, though, he’s accepted a paid position with a fossil
fueled utility whose work he supported at the DOE. Through it all he’s
proudly maintained his commitment to an Obama-era energy strategy
climate advocates say belongs in history’s dustbin: the “all of the
above” approachfirst
outlined<https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/05/29/new-report-all-above-energy-strategy-path-sustainable-economic-growth>in
a 2012 speech, which pairs renewables investment with fossil fuel
growth. A representative for Moniz said Moniz would not be available to
comment on this story.
The typical defense of a once-and-future political appointee’s
between-administration industry work is to normalize it. But “it’s not
true that everyone came out and worked for fossil fuel companies or that
there are not experts on climate without fossil fuel ties,” said Collin
Rees of Oil Change International, one of the groups that signed the
letter to Biden opposing fossil fuel appointees. Taking money from the
fossil fuel industry was a choice, he said—one taken by**Moniz as well
as fellow Obama administration alums Amos Hochstein, Jason Bordoff and
Heather Zichal, who have accepted jobs, payment, or research funding
from fossil fuel companies since leaving government.**It wasn’t a
universal choice, though: “This is not an indictment of all Obama
staffers,” he added.
One of Moniz’s connections that’s come under scrutiny is Southern
Company—a mammoth integrated electric utility that got$407 million
<https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2017/02/28/kemper-southern-clean-coal-trump/> in
financing from the Department of Energy (DOE) during Moniz’s tenure for
a “clean coal” plant that was never completed. After championing the
doomed project and leaving office, Moniz joined the company’s board in
March 2018. According to Southern’s Proxy Statements, he accepted a
combined $486,668 worth of fees and stock awards from Southern in2018
<https://s2.q4cdn.com/471677839/files/doc_financials/2018/annual/Proxy_Statement_2019.pdf>and2019
<https://s2.q4cdn.com/471677839/files/doc_financials/2019/annual/2020-Southern-Company-Proxy.pdf>.
Southern was among the first companies to sue the Obama-era
Environmental Protection Agency over the Clean Power Plan, claiming that
its compliance timeline was too short and would cost them too much
money. Itssubsidiaries
<https://www.energyandpolicy.org/strings-attached-how-utilities-use-charitable-giving-to-influence-politics-increase-investor-profits-southern-company/>have
spent considerable sums lobbying against climate-friendly policies at
the state-level withlittle transparency
<https://www.energyandpolicy.org/southern-company-lobbying-disclosures-obscure-information/>.
Like many other utilities, Southern helped fund outright climate denial
on its own and as a member of theEdison Electric Institute
<https://www.energyandpolicy.org/utilities-knew-about-climate-change/>(EEI)
and the Global Climate Coalition. In 1991, Southern teamed up with EEI
to form the Information Council on the Environment, an ad
campaignintended
<http://www.climatefiles.com/denial-groups/ice-ad-campaign/>to
“reposition global warming as theory (not fact).” AFreedom of
Information Request
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1531939-foia-response-willie-soon-2012.html>filed
by Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center found that between
2006 and 2015, Southern spent $400,000 funding the largelydebunked
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/02/the-soon-fallacy/>research
of climate skeptic Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon, complementing donations from
ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute. In exchange, Soon
allowed Southern to review his work, which focuses mainly on the idea
that the sun—rather than greenhouse gas emissions—is to blame for global
warming. Southern CEO Tom Fanning has echoed this denial of human-driven
global warming in recent years. “Is climate change happening? Certainly.
It’s been happening for millennia,” Fanningtold
<https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/28/like-the-new-epa-chief-southern-companys-ceo-doesnt-see-co2-as-main-reason-for-climate-change.html>CNBC
in 2017. Speaking together at a Bipartisan Policy Institute event in
2016, Fanning said he and Moniz were “kind of a tag team
<https://climateinvestigations.org/southern_company_department_of_energy_kemper_securities_and_exchange_investigations_fraud/>,”
and the two traveled together on multiple occasions during Moniz’s time
at DOE.
Moniz defended his ties to Southern last week after being asked about
progressive**criticism. “I do not agree with the characterization of the
Southern Company as a fossil fuel company,” hetold
<https://www.axios.com/obama-energy-secretary-blackouts-campaign-scrutiny-bc3abfa1-ea36-4ffa-b730-c2e5da69a06b.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosgenerate&stream=top>Axios’s
Amy Harder, likening the assertion to the idea that “anybody who drives
an internal combustion car is a fossil fuel company because they use them.”
This notion that utility companies are not in fact fossil fuel
companies, because the energy they provide can theoretically come from
anywhere, is not particularly convincing in Southern’s case. Southern
generates just 12 percent of its power from renewables, getting more of
its power from fossil fuels (72
<https://www.southerncompany.com/corporate-responsibility/environment/energy-mix.html> percent)
than thenational average
<https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3>(63 percent). One
subsidiary, Georgia Power, generates only 3 percent of power from
renewables.
But Moniz**has ties to bona fide fossil fuel companies, too. And to
understand the full extent of them, one has to go back to before he
joined the Obama administration.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
From 2005 to 2011, Moniz served on BP’s Technology Advisory
Council. Although it’s not known whether Moniz was paid for his
position, at least one member received
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/617215-bp-directors-remuneration-report-2012#document/p4/a95431> a
nominal sum of $6,200 for their role. Former BP CEO Lord John Browne is
the chair of the non-profit Moniz founded after leaving office, the
Energy Futures Initiative (EFI), which launched the same day as Moniz’s
for-profit firm, EJM Associates, Inc. EJM, in turn—a “strategic
consulting firm that helps clients navigate the transition to a global
clean energy economy by advising on a range of energy policy,
innovation, and security issues,” per onejob description
<https://ieor.berkeley.edu/job/analyst-at-energy-futures-initiative/>—has
apartnership <http://g2net-zerolng.com/about.html>with G2 Net-Zero LNG
<https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/event/energysource-innovation-stream-the-worlds-first-net-zero-lng-export-and-industrial-gas-production-complex/>,
a gas export company that Moniz’s Energy Departmentauthorized
<https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/04/f50/G2%20LNG%20SAR%20April%202018.pdf>to
export natural gas for 30 years in 2015, when the company was called “G2
LNG.”
The Energy Initiative Moniz founded at MIT counted ExxonMobil, Shell,
and Eni among itsfounding members
<http://energy.mit.edu/membership/#current-members>, a title that came
with aminimum $5 million commitment
<http://web.mit.edu/fnl/volume/202/moniz_armstrong.html> to “support
sponsored research projects aligned with their strategic interests.” As
of 2012—the year before Moniz left MIT to become Energy Secretary—BP had
granted $50 million to the Energy Institute. Moniz was also afounding
trustee <https://saudigazette.com.sa/article/176872>of the Saudi
Aramco-backed King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center, among
several other industry posts heresigned from
<https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/291083-energy-nominee-moniz-details-bp-ties-and-other-affiliations>in
advance of his DOE appointment.
A specific concern cited by critics is Moniz’s role championing natural
gas and fracking, which is now believed to be behind aspike
<https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/8/15/20805136/climate-change-fracking-methane-emissions>in
atmosphere-warming methane emissions. Prior to joining the Obama
administration in 2013, Moniz led the team
<https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/06/25/25climatewire-mit-researchers-see-natural-gas-as-the-choic-68486.html?pagewanted=1> behind
an influential 2011**study from MIT’s Energy Initiative entitled “The
Future of Natural Gas,” mapping out an extensive role for natural gas in
reducing the country’s emissions. “The analysis in this study provides
the confirmation. Natural gas truly is a bridge to a low-carbon future,”
Moniz said at a press conference announcing the report. In essence, the
study argues that gas is an essential bridge as nuclear power, carbon
capture, and renewables become economical in the coming decades.
While presented as independent research, the report itself was sponsored
by several fossil fuel companies and front groups. Among the most
generous was the American Clean Skies Foundation, founded in 2007 by the
late Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon, who was instrumental in
helping to sell fracking to Wall Street investors. The report called the
environmental impacts of fracking—including methane emissions, which are
shorter-lived but 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide—“challenging
but manageable.”
While many in his party moved away from Obama-era comfort with fossil
fuels, Moniz appears to have doubled down.
Study co-chair Anthony Meggs joined the gas company Talismen Energy
before the report was released, just as Moniz took**a paid position with
ICF International, an energy consultancy that the American Petroleum
Institute hired
<https://www.api.org/news-policy-and-issues/lng-exports/lng-exports-impacts-on-energy-markets> to
study the economic benefits of liquified natural gas exports. By the
time he resigned from ICF and other other industry posts to become
Energy Secretary, Moniz had received $305,648 in compensation from ICF.
Another study group member, former CIA director John Deutch, was at the
time serving on the board of Cheniere Energy. The same year the report
was released, Cheniere became the first company in the Lower 48 states
approved to export liquified natural gas after receiving a final
greenlight
<https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cheniere-receives-additional-doe-approval-authorization-to-export-natural-gas-as-lng-to-all-lng-importing-nations-concluded-122346893.html> from
the DOE.
“It’s hard to under-state the importance of Moniz and Deutch’s
report,” Public Accountability Institute researcher Rob Galbraith, who
authored an extensive report
<https://public-accountability.org/report/industry-partner-or-industry-puppet/> on
the MIT study, tweeted
<https://twitter.com/RobGalbraithLS/status/1304459383422713856> recently. “Beyond
creating the architecture for the Obama administration’s fracked gas
export regime, it was deployed in media and in Congress to counter
popular opposition to fracking in the United States.”
In government, Moniz continued**to make the case for natural gas. The
fateful 2010 fracking study would even appear
<https://news.littlesis.org/2017/08/03/frackademia-study-enshrined-in-official-portrait-of-obama-energy-secretary-moniz/> in
his official White House portrait. Shortly after taking office,
Moniz pledged to move “expeditiously
<https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2013/06/17/moniz-department-of-energy-will-move-expeditiously-on-lng-exports/>”
on liquified natural gas export permits. His office opened up key
markets for U.S. fossil fuel producers, and approved
<https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2013/05/17/obama-administration-approves-second-gas-export-facility/> its
second ever export terminal justice after his appointment in May
2013. Moniz appointed
<https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/Industry-veteran-to-head-Energy-Department-s-oil-4769845.php> the
American Gas Association’s Paula Gant to serve as Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Energy for Oil and Natural Gas.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Questioned by reporters over the years, Moniz hasdefended
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4878125-Energy-Futures-Initiative-response-to-questions.html>his
various industry ties on the grounds that “industry is an essential part
of the climate mitigation solution,” as his spokesperson told the Center
for Public Integrity’s Jie Jenny Zou. This was a more widely accepted
assertion during the Obama administration, whose flagship, unsuccessful
legislative fight on climate was premised on a compromise with
polluters. As the fullemissions toll
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/12/climate/methane-natural-gas-flaring.html>of
extraction has come into sharper view and the climate crisis has grown
more unavoidable, those attitudes have changed amidst demands from an
increasingly muscular climate and anti-corporate movement.
Jeff Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project, which tracks ties
between corporations and government officials, worries that Moniz’s
industry ties make him a poor fit for a cabinet position, in particular.
“Moniz is chummy with industry leaders who need to be wiped out if the
planet is to be saved. This is not a time for amiable people who get
along with everyone. That’s particularly true in the executive branch,
where we need someone committed to exercising all existing powers,
including little-used ones, to avert the climate crisis,” Hauser said.
“Collegiality and dealmaking may well be necessary in Congress. Within
the executive branch you are going to need someone who pushes lawyers,
scientists and policy professionals to get every last bit of carbon and
methane reduction that is possible out of the system under current law.”
If anything, while many in his party moved away from Obama-era comfort
with fossil fuels, Moniz appears to have doubled down. In April,**EFI
announced the formation of a partnership with the AFL-CIO Energy
Committee known as the Labor Energy Partnership (LEP), whose
representative, Austin Keyser, got a lengthy speaking spot during this
year’s DNC Platform Committee meeting. One member of the group,
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) President Lonnie
Stephenson, was recently added to Biden’s transition team, and was
already a member of the campaign’s Climate Engagement Advisory Council.
IBEW, and Stephenson specifically, hasopposed
<http://www.ibew.org/Portals/22/IBEW%20Letters/2019/IBEW%20UMWA%20Letter%20on%20Climate.pdf?ver=2019-02-13-102354-593> any
fossil fuel phaseouts as part of a comprehensive climate plan.
Unsurprisingly, then, one of LEP’s principles is that climate policy
“must be based on an ‘all-of-the above’ energy source strategy that is
regionally focused, flexible, preserves optionality, and addresses the
crisis of stranded workers,” rather than targeting any particular fuel
source for phase-out. The position conflicts with current scientific
consensus on necessary steps to avoid catastrophic global
warming: According to the2019 Production Gap Report
<http://productiongap.org/>, the world’s governments are on track to
produce 50 percent more coal, oil and gas than can safely be burned to
keep cap warming at 2 degrees Celsius, and 120 percent
<http://productiongap.org/> more than is consistent with a 1.5 degree
target—in line with the “well below” 2 degrees threshold outlined by the
Paris Agreement. Fossil fuel use, in other words, would need to
decrease, and rapidly.
Moniz, meanwhile, has continued totout
<https://www.power-eng.com/2019/10/07/entergy-tulane-clean-energy-forum-moniz-touts-nuclear-and-gas-as-part-of-road-to-green-real-deal/#gref>gas
as “a critical element” in changing the country’s energy mix, crediting
the fuel source for having “caused a revolution that has led to a
majority of our carbon reduction” at an event at Tulane University last
October. “The transition to a deeply decarbonized economy may not
necessarily require the elimination of fossil fuels,” states anEFI
report
<https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58ec123cb3db2bd94e057628/t/5d41c61878b170000194e2af/1564591645307/EFI+Green+Real+Deal.pdf>outlining
its Green Real Deal, which Moniz launched
<https://energyfuturesinitiative.org/news/2019/8/1/press-release-moniz-reveals-framework-for-a-green-real-deal-nbsp>as
a counter to the Green New Deal at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce summit
last year. “Natural gas, in particular, will continue to play an
important role in providing dispatchable electric power generation and
high-temperature industrial process heat—applications that are not
readily amenable to non-fossil fuel options.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Controversy over Moniz’s role in the Biden campaign comes as the
campaign attempts to show it’s serious about climate change. In recent
months, the campaign has incorporated both proposals and staff members
from the farther left and more climate-ambitious Sanders, Inslee, and
Warren campaigns. Michelle Deatrick, National Chair of the DNC’s Council
on the Environment and Climate Crisis and a Sanders supporter during the
primary, says she’s been “very encouraged” by her talks with the Biden
campaign during and since the DNC Platform was agreed to in August.
“There’s listening going on, and we’re moving toward a bolder plan that
approaches what we need to do,” she told me.
“Who we put into positions of power are going to have a huge impact on
whether or not we escape the worst parts of the climate crisis.”
Moniz’s proximity to the Biden campaign, however, makes her nervous.“The
country’s on fire,” Deatrick said. “Who we put into positions of power
are going to have a huge impact on whether or not we escape the worst
parts of the climate crisis. We just cannot have people who have a
financial interest in continuing our reliance on fossil fuel extraction
and emissions.”
In his address to the DNC platform committee in July, Moniz once again
emphasized the need for an “all of the above” approach. Thefirst goal
<https://aflcio.org/sites/default/files/2020-04/Final%20LEP%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf>of
the LEP, moreover, is to “create a national action plan for the
deployment of carbon capture, utilization and sequestration technology.”
It’s a strategy similar to the one outlined in Southern Company’s goal
<https://investor.southerncompany.com/information-for-investors/latest-news/latest-news-releases/press-release-details/2020/Southern-Company-announces-transition-to-net-zero-carbon-emissions-goal/default.aspx>announced
in May of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, largely through negative
emissions technologies, maintaining hearty investments in gas and coal.
“The economics pretty much just don’t work in any situation,” Collin
Rees, Senior Campaigner with Oil Change International, says of carbon
capture technologies. “The only way they conceivably work is if it’s
massively subsidized by the government. It’s incredibly important to the
fossil fuel industry that they can hold onto this facade of CCS.”
Meanwhile, Lonnie Stephensontouted
<https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063713317>the benefits of “clean coal”
at a virtual campaign event last week, citing union’s work with Moniz on
all-of-the-above energy strategies. That clean coal will power the way
to decarbonization has been a common fossil fuel industry talking point
with little basis in reality, and climate scientists havewarned
<https://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6309/182>about the dangers
of relying too heavily on that and other still prohibitively expensive,
largely unproven carbon removal technologies to mitigate the climate
crisis.
As a board member at Southern Company and former Energy Secretary, Moniz
should know the limits of carbon removal better than most: The
utility’sKemper Project
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/05/science/kemper-coal-mississippi.html>was
intended to showcase their potential, converting coal to gas and
removing the majority of the power plant’s carbon dioxide emissions.
Visiting
<https://www.energy.gov/articles/energy-secretary-moniz-visits-clean-coal-facility-mississippi>the
Kemper site as Energy Secretary in 2013, Moniz said his department was
“committed to advancing technologies that make coal more efficient,
economical, and environmentally sustainable—securing its place in
America’s clean energy future while fighting the effects of climate
change.” The facility received generous support from the DOE after it
got underway in 2010. Following years of ballooning budgets,
mismanagement andalleged fraud
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/02/clean-coal-america-kemper-power-plant>,
Southern announced in 2018 that the plant would run on conventional
natural gas, with costs having ballooned from $2.4 billion to $7.5
billion. As Steve Horn has reported
<https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/05/24/ernest-moniz-labor-fracking-clean-coal-geoengineering>,
Southern Company also runs a DOE-backed National Carbon Capture Center
that could stand to gain from further federal investment.
“If you’re Moniz, it’s not psychically satisfying to believe you failed
to utilize executive branch powers in ways that would avert
catastrophe,” said Jeff Hauser, making the case for newer voices in the
administration. “You’re much less likely to think that if you come into
government relatively fresh, and without an emotional connection to the
policies of the past. A clear eyed, science driven view of what’s
happening would suggest the policies of the past are insufficient.”
Last time around, Moniz encountered little resistance from lawmakers
during his Senate confirmation and was sworn in by a 97-0 vote. Should
he get the nod this time, progressives hope that’ll be different. “If
you’re Merkley or Markey or Whitehouse,” Demand Progress Executive
Director David Segel said, referring to the senators from Oregon,
Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, respectively, “and want to maintain
credibility on climate and somebody like Moniz is put before you then
you are going to have to oppose confirmation.” The simpler solution—and
the one progressives signing the letter hope for—is that the Biden team
will avoid Moniz and similar fossil-fuel enthusiasts altogether.
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