The Biden administration is racing to finalize major regulatory actions that are likely to affect the pace of decarbonization in the U.S. for decades to come.
Coming agency decisions will determine which public lands and waters open up for oil and gas drilling and how the Biden administration cracks down on violators of emissions regulations, like those in place to ensure captured carbon dioxide stays in the ground.
Federal agencies also will soon determine how many greenhouse gas emissions are produced by appliances used by industry and households every day.
November’s election could lead to a U-turn with energy policy. Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is expected to continue President Joe Biden’s low-carbon policies if elected, but former President Donald Trump could refocus the Department of Energy on fossil fuels if he returns to the White House.
While energy and climate has not been the top focus on the campaign trail, both candidates have signaled starkly different approaches on how they would oversee federal rules and spending.
In an economic speech last month, Harris touted U.S. clean energy manufacturing, which has boomed since the 2022 passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law the year before. Trump has attacked Harris for rising energy costs and vowed to curtail regulations and IRA spending that he calls the “green new scam.”
Here are three energy issues to watch at federal agencies as the Biden administration pushes to finalize rules by the end of the year:
Interior oil sale
Interior is mandated to hold an oil auction by year’s end in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, continuing a contentious program to explore for hydrocarbons in the nations’ most remote public lands.
But the department has yet to release a final environmental analysis on the potential impacts of drilling, or announce an auction, leaving some Alaskan leaders concerned the agency will buck its commitment.
“They have shown in Alaska that they’re unequivocally not interested in following the law,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) about the Biden administration. Sullivan helped create the ANWR oil program via a rider to the Republicans’ 2017 tax overhaul.
If Biden holds the congressionally mandated oil sale, it could revive criticisms from environmentalists about his climate record. Despite securing historic investments in climate and clean energy, the president approved the $8 billion Willow oil and gas project in the Arctic in 2023 over the protests of climate activists.
Interior declined to answer questions about the ANWR sale. It previously has said it will “follow the law” regarding the auction. Most experts anticipate a sale late in the year, after the presidential election.
“The Department of Interior has a legal obligation under the tax act to hold a lease sale by the end of this year, so that’s what we expect,” said Kristen Miller, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League Action, a political advocacy arm of the environmental group that opposes oil development in the refuge.
ANWR could hold more than 10 billion barrels of crude oil and tapping its resources has been a long-time goal of state leaders. Biden follows a long line of Democratic presidents opposing development — then-President Bill Clinton vetoed a budget bill in 1995, citing the opening of ANWR to drilling as one of the reasons.
The 2017 tax law required at least two oil sales in the refuge, with the second sale occurring no later than Dec. 22, 2024. The Trump administration held the first sale Jan. 6, 2021, but it was a disappointment. Just three bidders won leases, including a state-established public corporation for Alaska.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland later canceled the leases from the Trump-era auction, citing “legal deficiencies” in the environmental analysis. Interior released a new draft “supplemental” environmental review in late 2023. But it has not finalized the analysis, which must take place before the sale.
The Bureau of Land Management is also required to publish a final notice of sale at least 30 days before the ANWR auction.
Miller said she hopes the Biden administration includes greater protections for the Porcupine caribou herd and other wildlife compared with the Trump-era program. The herd is sacred to — and is a key food source for — the Gwich’in people. Other wildlife in the plain include a vulnerable population of polar bears that nest with their cubs during the winter.
“It really makes no sense that you can have an area set aside for the sake of protecting wildlife resources … and [have] a purpose for oil and gas development,” Miller said. “Those two things naturally don’t go together.”
Erik Grafe, an Alaska-based attorney for the environmental legal group Earthjustice, said although BLM was mandated to hold a sale, other laws give the administration authority to restrict drilling.
“The BLM retains wide discretion to condition any lease sale to lessen the harm,” Grafe said in an email.
Sullivan said he is worried about new restrictions from the administration that could make drilling more difficult. The administration aims to scare away oil investors with delays and restrictions, he said.
If Trump is reelected as president in November, Sullivan said he would encourage his administration to conduct additional oil sales in the refuge.
In the case of victory by Harris, Sullivan said he would hold up the Senate confirmations she would need to lead her agencies until she “follows the law” on ANWR.
Trump said in a town hall last month that the ANWR oil program would be generating significant revenue if he were president.
“We would have been now having so much money coming out of the energy,” he said.
Harris — who as a senator representing California supported legislation to permanently protect ANWR’s coastal plain from drilling — has not commented on plans for the refuge during her campaign.
The Congressional Budget Office has projected that the oil program in ANWR could earn $1.8 billion over 10 years in auction income, a figure that’s overestimated the region’s financial returns for federal and state coffers to date. The first sale garnered about $12 million.
EPA and a CO2 leak
EPA is expected to finalize actions in coming months that agricultural company Archer-Daniels-Midland, or ADM, will take to address a carbon dioxide leak in Illinois.
The leak is under scrutiny as the company operated the country’s first carbon dioxide wells for permanent storage before a temporary pause in injections.
CO2 storage is a major priority for the Biden administration, which is funneling billions of dollars toward industrial projects that are able to capture carbon at a project site like an ethanol facility or remove carbon directly from the atmosphere. Successful CO2 capture and storage projects aim to capture the vast majority of a given facility’s emissions.
A proposed enforcement order from EPA last month on the leak would “require ADM to take compliance measures at its well, including implementing provisions of the permit’s emergency and remedial response plan.”
ADM detected the leak earlier this year at a carbon injection site tied to the company’s ethanol complex in Decatur, located roughly 40 miles east of Springfield. The company said the leak occurred after corrosion in a monitoring well allowed CO2 to migrate from a reservoir.
EPA’s Region 5 — which serves six Midwest states and nearly three dozen tribes — issued a violation notice in mid-August about the leak, alleging that ADM hadn’t complied with its Class VI permit, which is for carbon injection wells. The agency will collect public comments until late October on the proposed enforcement order.
The agency’s proposed order, signed Sept. 18, outlined a number of compliance measures. They include identifying and implementing “appropriate remedial actions” to repair well damage and submitting a status report around the cause and extent of the well failure.
The enforcement order, known as an administrative order on consent, becomes final after the public comment period, according to ADM.
“We have been working with U.S. EPA closely throughout this process and are committed to complying with the [administrative order on consent],” ADM spokesperson Jackie Anderson said in an email.
“We reported developments to U.S. EPA in accordance with our permit requirements when there is no potential endangerment to an underground source of drinking water,” Anderson said.
In a statement late last month, EPA spokesperson Macy Pressley said the comment period “provides the public with an opportunity to share input with EPA about the proposed order and ensures that public input is considered in EPA’s decision-making process.”
The timing of a final order depends on a host of factors, Pressley said, including the volume and type of comments and “whether EPA determines any changes to the proposed order are appropriate.”
Pressley said EPA notified “federal elected officials and state and local agencies regarding the issuance of the [notice of violation].”
“The fluid migration at ADM highlights the importance of EPA’s Underground Injection Control program, which evaluates and sets standards for using appropriate materials in the construction of wells at geologic sequestration sites and provides for proper operation and monitoring these projects,” she said.
Last month, ADM spokesperson Jackie Anderson told POLITICO’s E&E News there was never “any impact to the surface or groundwater sources or any threat to public health.”
Still, concerns around the leak have raised concerns for environmental and advocacy groups, as well as some local officials.
David Horn, a member of the Decatur City Council, said he plans to file comments to EPA around the proposed enforcement order.
“There are many unanswered questions from this incident,” Horn said in an email. “Could the corrosion of a well take place closer to the surface thereby posing a health threat to the public? Does the amount of sequestration activity influence the rate of corrosion?”
Members of Congress have also been tracking the incident.
Philip Shelly, communications director for Rep. Nikki Budzinski (D-Ill.), said her top priority has been the health and safety of her Decatur constituents.
“Initial reports suggest that drinking water has not been impacted,” Shelly said in an email. Budzinski asked ADM to reach an agreement with EPA as quickly as possible, Shelly said, and she is “encouraged by EPA’s initial proposed enforcement order.”
Budzinski “urges stakeholders [to] weigh in during the comment period so feedback can be taken under advisement,” he said.
Staff from the office of Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) have been in contact with ADM and EPA, said Durbin spokesperson Maddie Carlos, in an email.
A suspected second leak at ADM’s site was reported on Sept. 27 to EPA.
DOE efficiency rules
The Department of Energy is pushing to finalize energy efficiency regulations for industrial and household appliances that could determine whether millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions find their way into the atmosphere.
A potential final rule on industrial fans and blowers could save 318 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over three decades if DOE does not change a draft proposal issued earlier this year, while a rule on expanded scope electric motors could save 161 million metric tons of CO2 over three decades if it is finalized. A final rule on walk-in coolers and freezers could avert 29 million metric tons of CO2.
“The bigger impact rules are these ones that are commercial and industrial products that are widely used in commercial buildings and industry,” Andrew deLaski, executive director of the nonprofit Appliance Standards Awareness Project (ASAP), said in an interview. “They’re not products used in our homes.”
Other potential final rules would affect commercial refrigerators and freezers and residential boilers.
In announcing the proposals, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said DOE would move quickly to update standards “critical to innovation, more consumer options and healthier communities.”
DOE’s efficiency program, which has been in place since the 1970s, requires the department to consistently ratchet up regulations on appliances and includes an “anti-backsliding” provision that prevents standards from being weakened. It requires increased efficiency standards that cut emissions, although it does not directly mandate carbon cuts.
The Biden administration has released dozens of efficiency rules in the past three years that were stalled under former President Donald Trump, who often criticized efficiency standards on light bulbs and shower heads.
“This administration inherited something like two dozen overdue appliance standards,” said Timothy Ballo, a senior attorney with the environmental group Earthjustice. “We’re [now] pretty much on track.”
DeLaski said if Trump were reelected, “we would expect those kinds of attempts to undercut existing efficiency standards again.”
“This time around, they would act more quickly,” he said of a potential second Trump administration.
Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation-led blueprint that the Harris campaign has relentlessly attacked, calls for the elimination of the appliance program, a prospect that would require new legislation from Congress.
Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, although many of his policies echo it. On his campaign website, Trump says he would “immediately stop” regulations on DOE appliances.
The Biden administration has been “taking full advantage” of the appliance program, which will likely raise prices and limit consumer choice, Jack Spencer, senior research fellow for energy and environment policy at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate and Environment, said in an interview.
“I see no value in the program at all,” he said. “It simply acts as a tool for bureaucrats to impose their preferences on the American consumer.”
Meanwhile, the American Gas Association and other groups are suing DOE over a residential furnace rule issued last year.
But DOE is likely to avert many other lawsuits as it has largely followed an informal consensus agreement struck between ASAP and the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers on regulations for appliances such as gas stoves.
