Climate science, policy, politics, and action
Subcommittee hearing on the $7.9 billion foreign operations budget request for Africa.
Witnesses:
On Wednesday, May 15, 2024, at 10:15 a.m., in Room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Subcommittee on Federal Lands will hold an oversight hearing titled “Examining the President’s FY 2025 Budget Request for the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service.” The BLM budget request is $1.56 billion and the NPS discretionary budget request is $3.58 billion.
The FY 2025 BLM budget request proposes $53.1 million for the Renewable Energy Management program to support siting, leasing, processing rights-of-way applications, and oversight of renewable energy projects and transmission lines on BLM-managed public lands. In addition, the request for the BLM includes $2.1 million in Deferred Maintenance and CapitalImprovements for Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEVs)to support vehicle fleet lifecycle replacement, fleetrequirements analysis, charging infrastructure planning and deployment, and fleet capabilities assessments.
Subcommittee hearing. The Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 Budget provides $7.2 billion for the Civil Works program of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The fiscal year 2025 proposal for the Bureau of Reclamation is $1.6 billion.
Chair Patty Murray
Witnesses:
Civil Works FY 2025 budget justification information
The President’s Budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 for the Army Corps of Engineers Civil Works program reflects the administration’s priorities to grow the nation’s economy, decrease climate risk for communities, increase ecosystem resilience to climate change, and promote environmental justice in disadvantaged communities in line with Justice40.
In developing the Budget, consideration was given to advancing three key objectives: 1) decreasing climate risk for communities and increasing ecosystem resilience to climate change based on the best available science; 2) promoting environmental justice in underserved and marginalized communities and Tribal nations in line with the Justice40 Initiative and creating good paying jobs that provide the free and fair chance to join a union and collectively bargain; and 3) strengthening the supply chain. The FY 2025 Budget investments will work to confront climate change by reducing flood risk, restoring ecosystems, and promoting community resilience across the nation. The Corps is working to integrate climate preparedness and climate resilience planning in all of its activities, such as by helping communities reduce their potential vulnerabilities to the effects of climate change and variability.
The climate crisis is challenging Reclamation’s ability to both produce energy and sustain reliable water delivery. The Nation faces undeniable realities that water supplies for agriculture, fisheries, ecosystems, industry, cities, and energy are confronting stability challenges due to climate change. Reclamation’s projects address the Administration’s conservation and climate resilience priorities through funding requests for the WaterSMART program, funding to secure water supply to wildlife refuges, and proactive efforts through providing sound climate science, research and development, and clean energy. To address these challenges, Reclamation has implemented its Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, which affirms Reclamation will use leading science and engineering to adapt climate-based situations across the West.
Reclamation’s FY 2025 budget for Research and Development (R&D) programs includes $22.6 million for the Science and Technology Program, and $7.0 million for Desalination and Water Purification Research—both of which focus on Reclamation’s mission of water and power deliveries. Climate change adaptation is a focus of Reclamation’s R&D programs, which invests in the production of climate change science, information and tools that benefit adaptation, and by yielding climate-resilient solutions to benefit management of water infrastructure, hydropower, environmental compliance, and water management.
Reclamation owns 77 hydroelectric power plants. Reclamation operates 53 of those plants to generate approximately 14 percent of the hydroelectric power produced in the United States. Each year on average, Reclamation generates approximately 40 million megawatt hours of electricity and collects over $1.0 billion in gross power revenues for the Federal Government. Reclamation’s FY 2025 budget request includes $4.5 million to increase Reclamation hydropower capabilities and value, contributing to Administration clean energy and climate change initiatives and enhancing water conservation and climate resilience within the power program. Reclamation’s Power Resources Office oversees power operations and maintenance, electric reliability compliance, and strategic energy initiatives.
Full committee hearing.
Witnesses:
On Wednesday, May 15, 2024, at 10:00 a.m. (ET) in 2123 Rayburn House Office Building, the Subcommittee on Environment, Manufacturing, and Critical Materials will hold a hearing entitled “The Fiscal Year 2025 Environmental Protection Agency Budget.”
Witness:
The proposed FY 2025 budget for the EPA provides $11 billion and 17,145 full-time employees to support the Agency’s mission of protecting human health and the environment. This includes more than 2,000 new employees to address the Agency’s priorities and work with our partners across the Nation.
The FY 2025 Budget prioritizes tackling climate change with the urgency that science demands. EPA’s Climate Change Indicators website presents compelling and clear evidence of changes to our climate reflected in rising temperatures, ocean acidity, sea level rise, river flooding, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires. Recent natural disasters, like the devastating wildfire in Maui, Hawaii, the hazardous smoke and air pollution stemming from summer wildfires, and the catastrophic flooding in the West, reinforce the significance of EPA’s role in addressing and mitigating effects of climate change nationally and in our local communities. Resources in the Budget support efforts to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis while spurring economic progress and creating good-paying jobs. Both climate change mitigation and adaptation are essential components of the Agency’s strategy to reduce threats and impacts of climate change. The Budget empowers EPA to work with partners to address the climate crisis by reducing GHG emissions, building resilience in the face of climate impacts, and engaging with the global community to respond to this shared challenge. In FY 2025, EPA will drive reductions in emissions that significantly contribute to climate change through regulation of GHGs, climate partnership programs, and support to tribal, state, and local governments. The Agency will accomplish this through the transformative investments in the IRA, IIJA, and our annual appropriation. In FY 2025 and beyond, EPA will ensure its programs, policies, regulations, enforcement and compliance assurance activities, and internal business operations consider current and future impacts of climate change.
The Budget includes an increase of $77.5 million and 40.6 FTE above the FY 2024 ACR, for a total of $187.3 million and 256.7 FTE, for the Climate Protection Program to tackle the climate crisis at home and abroad through an integrated approach of regulations, partnerships, and technical assistance. The increase would enable EPA to take strong action on CO2 and methane, as well as high-global warming potential climate pollutants, such as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), restore the capacity of EPA’s climate partnership programs, and strengthen EPA’s capacity to apply its modeling tools and expertise across a wide range of high priority work areas including supporting U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement and the Climate-Macro Interagency Technical Working Group. Resources also are requested for EPA to continue to implement regulations in FY 2025 to enhance reporting of GHG emissions from U.S. industrial sectors, including methane emissions from the oil and natural gas sector.
Also included in this increase is $5 million for EPA to provide administrative support to implement a historic $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, enacted through the IRA. EPA recently released funding opportunities for three grant competitions: the $14 billion National Clean Investment Fund, the $6 billion Clean Communities Investment Accelerator, and the $7 billion Solar for All competition.4 With enhanced administrative support provided by the additional funding request, EPA will be able to more effectively and efficiently administer competitive grants to mobilize financing and leverage private capital for clean energy and climate projects that reduce GHG emissions with an emphasis on projects that benefit low-income and disadvantaged communities.
The Agency is requesting an additional $68.5 million and 46.8 FTE for a total of $185.9 million and 370.3 FTE for the Federal Vehicle and Fuels Standards and Certification Program. This includes the development of analytical methods, regulations, and analyses, to support climate protection by controlling GHG emissions from light-, medium-, and heavy-duty vehicles. In FY 2025, EPA will begin implementing a final rulemaking under the Clean Air Act to establish new GHG emissions standards for heavy-duty engines and vehicles beginning with Model Year (MY) 2027. EPA will invest significant resources to address a myriad of new technical challenges to support two sets of long-term rulemakings, which will include added light-duty vehicle and heavyduty vehicle testing and modeling capabilities at the National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory (NVFEL). EPA also will begin implementing the multi-pollutant emissions standards, including for GHG emissions, for light- and medium-duty vehicles beginning with MY 2027 and extending through and including at least MY 2030.
Acting domestically to reduce GHG emissions is an important step to tackle the climate crisis; however, environmental protection is a shared responsibility that crosses international borders, and climate change poses a threat that no one government can solve alone. The Budget includes an additional $18.1 million and 16 FTE to support tackling the climate crisis abroad. Through a collaborative approach with international counterparts, EPA will enhance capacity building programs for priority countries with increasing GHG footprints, to enable stronger legislative, regulatory, and legal enforcement. To this end, President Biden has ambitiously laid out a path, by 2030, for the United States to cut GHG emissions by at least half from 2005 levels showing our international partners that America is doing its part to reduce global emissions. In FY 2023, EPA implemented 10 international climate engagements resulting in individual partner commitments or actions to reduce GHG emissions, adapt to climate change, or improve resilience in a manner that promotes equity, building on the work of eight engagements in FY 2022. The Agency will continue to engage both bilaterally and through multilateral institutions to improve international cooperation on climate change. These efforts help fulfill EPA’s commitment to Executive Order 14008: Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.
Tackling the climate crisis depends not only on the Agency’s ability to mitigate GHG emissions but also the capacity to adapt and deliver targeted assistance to increase the Nation’s resilience to climate change impacts. As part of a whole-of-government approach, EPA will directly support federal partners, tribes and indigenous communities, states, territories, local governments, environmental justice organizations, community groups, and businesses as they anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to the impacts of climate change. In FY 2022, EPA assisted 110 federally recognized tribes and 242 states, territories, local governments, and communities in taking such actions. The FY 2025 Budget includes an additional $19.3 million and 14.5 FTE for climate adaptation efforts to increase resilience of EPA programs and strengthen the adaptive capacity of tribes, states, territories, local governments, communities, and businesses. In FY 2025, EPA will continue to implement the updated version of its Climate Adaptation Action Plan as well as 20 Climate Adaptation Implementation Plans developed by the EPA program and regional offices. These plans focus on five priority actions the Agency will take by FY 2026 to increase human and ecosystem resilience as the climate changes and disruptive impacts increase. To support the economic revitalization of coal, oil, gas, and power plant communities (Energy Communities), the Budget requests an additional $5 million and 3 FTE for stakeholder engagement and cross-agency coordination, including resources to increase the number of Rapid Response Teams (RRTs) from three in FY 2023 to at least 10 by the end of FY 2025.
To advance work on climate change modeling, an additional $3 million is requested across multiple programs to support the Agency’s participation in the Climate-Macro Interagency Technical Working Group and the Assessments of Federal Financial Climate Risk Interagency Working Group. Further, the Agency will continue development of open-source data and economic models, including sector-specific cost models, that assess the macroeconomic and fiscal impacts of climate change and the risk of extreme weather events.
The purpose of this hearing is to examine the President’s budget request for the National Park Service for Fiscal Year 2025 and to receive testimony on the following bills:
Witness:
First Street’s Chief Science Officer, Dr. Ed Kearns, explains how we created our climate-driven flood risk model and how it provides the most accurate view of flood risk.
Register to learn:
On Monday, May 13, 2024, at 2:00 p.m. (CDT), the Subcommittee on Federal Lands will hold an oversight field hearing titled “Improving Access and Opportunities for Hunting, Fishing, and Outdoor Recreation on America’s Federal Lands.” The hearing will examine barriers that sportsmen and women face to accessing our federal lands and commonsense solutions that promote greater hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation opportunities.
This hearing will be held at The Steakhouse and Lodge, 15860 T Bone Lane, Hayward, Wisconsin.
Witnesses:
A subcommittee hearing on the FY 2025 budget for the Department of Labor. The budget request is $13.9 billion, $10.3 billion of which is for the Employment and Training Administration.
Chair Tammy Baldwin
Witness:
The Department of Labor is not directly funding the Climate Corps program. However, the Budget provides an increase of $50 million in apprenticeship programs, for a total of $335 million. This funding would expand access to existing Registered Apprenticeship programs in support of clean energy and climate-related industries and occupations.
The Budget provides $50 million as a set-aside within the Dislocated Worker National Reserve to launch the SECTOR program, which would seed and scale a comprehensive approach to sector partnerships, needed wraparound services, and training programs for underserved workers, with a particular focus on clean energy sectors, in support of Inflation Reduction Act implementation.
Nomination hearing.
Nominees:
Kris Sarri, former president and CEO of the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, consulting firm Go Blue
“To address the climate crisis, we must build partnerships and coalitions across diverse stakeholders and sectors, find shared interests, translate policy into impact and effectively communicate why it matters.”