On FirstEnergy's brazen bailout request: "The boldness is just stunning." @MWenergynews ow.ly/1kvb30jFKwF

Last week hundreds of representatives from global companies and leading NGOs met in Bentonville, AR for Walmart’s annual Sustainability Milestone Summit. The theme of the meeting was Project Gigaton, the most ambitious and collaborative effort ever to reduce a billion tons of emissions from the global supply chain over the next 15 years. At the […]

Written by Moms Clean Air Force

This was written by Martha Roberts. It originally appeared on Climate 911: This week is a crucial moment for climate progress. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is moving ahead in his efforts to revoke the Clean Power Plan, one of our most important efforts to tackle the...

FirstEnergy and the Trump administration are grasping for some rationale – any possible legal vehicle – to justify… twitter.com/i/web/status/9…

By Elgie Holstein Spring has been EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s season of scandal, with each day bringing fresh allegations of the EPA Administrator’s reckless disregard for his boss’s promises to “drain the swamp.” Worse for the country, he has adopted a sense of entitlement, which appears to have long pre-dated his arrival in Washington.  In […]

Tom Neltner, J.D., Chemicals Policy Director, and Maricel Maffini, Ph.D., Independent Consultant In May 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Food Safety and Nutrition (CFSAN) announced it had “established a Toxic Elements Working Group whose mission in part is to develop a strategy for prioritizing and modernizing the Center’s activities with […]

Tom Neltner, J.D., Chemicals Policy Director, and Maricel Maffini, Ph.D., Independent Consultant In May 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Food Safety and Nutrition (CFSAN) announced it had “established a Toxic Elements Working Group whose mission in part is to develop a strategy for prioritizing and modernizing the Center’s activities with […]

Tom Neltner, J.D., Chemicals Policy Director, and Maricel Maffini, Ph.D., Independent Consultant In May 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Food Safety and Nutrition (CFSAN) announced it had “established a Toxic Elements Working Group whose mission in part is to develop a strategy for prioritizing and modernizing the Center’s activities with […]

New Utility Plan to Advance Ohio’s Clean Energy Economy

Houston Partners Announce Launch of Post-Harvey Health Registry

Pruitt is obstructing the agency’s ability to use highly reliable scientific information, including data used to determine whether chemicals and pollutants cause cancer, heart disease, and other health problems.

Scott Pruitt’s other toxic legacy: voter cynicism

When my organization opposed the confirmation of Scott Pruitt as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year, we believed his policies would endanger America’s kids.

But even we didn’t know his legacy would be almost as much about inspiring cynicism as about increasing pollution.

When Pruitt first took office, we knew he was an ambitious ideologue for weaker environmental protections, and far too close to lobbyists. But he seemed, at least, to be focused on his public mission as he defined it.

It turns out, we were too optimistic about Scott Pruitt.

A litany of ethics violations

His actions at the EPA, and what has now been revealed about his past in Oklahoma, show a man who believes public office is an opportunity to live a more lavish lifestyle.

He sees favor-trading with lobbyists as the way government should operate – whether it’s apparently taking a $100,000 discount on a house from a telecom lobbyist, or using connections to get his electricity turned on before other citizens in a blackout. Or leasing a deeply discounted Washington condo from the family of a lobbyist as they discuss official EPA business.

All of this reinforces popular pessimism about government and politics that, ironically, helped Donald Trump get to the White House. Pruitt is now making things worse.

Not your typical public servant

Our EPA chief is perfect fodder for the easy negativity of political commentators and late-night comedians. His corruptions, small and large, are executed with such clumsy obviousness they would never be let out of the writers’ room on Scandal or House of Cards.

It’s all deeply frustrating because Pruitt is actually the exception, not the rule. His predecessors, under Democratic and Republican presidents, were almost all honorable, humble and capable public servants.

Most EPA administrators, and most public servants, are nothing like Pruitt.

Pruitt took over from Gina McCarthy, an honest, direct and public-spirited expert in her field who worked for Republican governors and a Democratic president. Most EPA administrators, and most public servants, are nothing like Scott Pruitt.

There has, of course, always been some level of cynicisms about government, and there’s no question it has grown in recent decades. But there is a difference between imperfect institutions and wholesale disregard for ethical behavior.

Pruitt gives the worst cynics all the ammunition they need to abandon principle and, remarkably, some people at the top still don’t seem to care.

As Congress ignores infractions, Americans watch

In Congress, many members are straining to look the other way as Pruitt’s ethical transgressions continue. They can’t seem to hear questions about the lobbyist’s condo, the misuse of public funds or the appointees brought directly from lobbying groups.

And they fail to see that in a democracy you can’t ignore the behavior of public officials in an attempt to get the policy outcomes you want – you only undermine citizens’ faith in government.

Pruitt’s actions have also been tolerated by his boss, whose list of ethical transgressions seems nearly endless and may help explain why he’s allowed Pruitt to stay in office.

The question now is how badly the corruption, opportunism and infractions of the Trump administration – and subsequent neglect by many in Congress – will further erode public trust in our government.

The good news is that many young people have also chosen to channel their frustration into activism. From the Defend Our Future college students working for a healthier climate, to the March for Our Lives high school kids pushing for rational gun laws, some young people are – thankfully – spurning the example of their elders.

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krives April 24, 2018 - 10:14

See comments

Scott Pruitt has no right whatsoever to be the head of an organization (the EPA) that he doesn’t even like and wants to do away with!! How’d that happen?! Oh yeah…I forgot…he was appointed by that other […]…what’s his name…?

David M. Schee… April 24, 2018 at 6:50 pm

I’m so dissatisfied with Pruitt and the rest of this administration! And disgusted! Some days it’s so depressing to watch them destroy our wonderful America! But you have to pull up them boot straps and fight for your country!

Melissa VerDuin April 24, 2018 at 11:11 pm

Remember when Trump said, “Only I can fix it?” In his sick, racist mind he truly believes that. With that said, his “fix” is to correct all that Obama created by destroying all that Obama created, so as to remove any hint of a black man’s presidency. To “fix” this he put people who have a similar belief system as himself: people like Pruitt, Sessions, DeVos et al. They are doing the dirty work here at home while he remains free to corrupt our country’s values and standing in the world community. It’s also his vision of “draining the swamp”. Har Har!

Les Lord July 5, 2018 at 4:33 pm Add new comment

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FirstEnergy and the Trump administration are grasping for some rationale – any possible legal vehicle – to justify bailouts for clunky, old, and uneconomic coal and nuclear power plants.
 
Suggesting efforts that are greedy, avaricious, and tenacious, we feel grasping is an appropriate term here.

For past newsletters and other updates, you can always visit our FirstEnergy landing page.

--> Dodo as rationale The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which oversees our nation’s interstate electric grid, already reviewed and denied the bailout FirstEnergy seeks. Yet, FirstEnergy’s grasping continues.

Recently, FERC Chair Kevin McIntyre asked what coal lobbyists often and incorrectly claim: “Should we be troubled of the prospect of any category of generating resources going the way of the dodo bird?” The “generating resources” in question are, of course, uneconomic coal and nuclear plants. Although the question may have been rhetorical, grid operators already have the answer: no, we should not be troubled.

And this coal industry line on plant retirements might benefit from a refresher on literature and evolution. From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, we find it was the dodo that encouraged everyone to run in a circle with no clear winner. The flightless bird, thereafter, has been a symbol of obsolescence.

A similar symbol is FirstEnergy and its reliance on dirty, uneconomic coal plants. The NRG chairman perhaps said it best: “FirstEnergy doesn’t want to evolve. They’d rather go to the regulators and ask for a bailout.” Put another way, FirstEnergy Solutions went belly up because it failed to modernize and relied on obsolete technologies.
 
The mandate of FERC is, basically, to make power markets work. Rather than try to preserve the obsolescent, the agency should focus on increasing access for lower-cost, innovative technologies and companies. War as rationale It seems Secretary Perry is facing pushback on FirstEnergy’s brazen request to stretch Section 202 (c) of the Federal Power Act, a rarely used provision, in ways it was never meant to be used.

So now he’s trying another legal stretch – using a Korean War-era law designed to ensure a stable supply of resources needed to protect the nation in a war. By speciously using the Defense Production Act of 1950, the Trump administration wants to try to keep struggling coal and nuclear power plants, like FirstEnergy’s, online.

Yet even Republican energy strategist Mike McKenna admits the law is “specifically premised on the idea that this stuff is essential to national security — that we’re going to war. The problem in this instance is that some might think that an approach relying on the act trivializes national security.” 

Considering the nation’s grid operators declare that the United States has an excess of power plants and many more are being built, we return to the “grasping” theme and ask: “Ya think?” Lobbying rather than rationale FirstEnergy Solutions is spending millions on lobbyists. The latest is Akin Gump, K Street’s highest-earning influence-peddling firm.

In addition to the utility giant’s own lawyers, FirstEnergy also retains Van Scoyoc Associates, Holland & Knight LLP, National Environmental Strategies, and Miller Strategies LLC, led by Jeff Miller, Energy Secretary Rick Perry's former campaign manager. Corey Lewandowski, President Trump’s former campaign manager, also has been helping out.

FirstEnergy’s lobbying team is buttressed by coal moguls Robert E. Murray and Joseph Craft of Alliance Resource Partners, who donated a whopping $1.3 million to the president’s inauguration.

It seems when you don’t have solid arguments, you hire well-paid lobbyists and make huge political contributions. What happened to draining the political swamp? Quote of the week The Trump administration keeps trying desperate legal machinations to justify bailing out uneconomic power plants.

One of the most direct commentaries on these efforts comes from former FERC commissioner Nora Mead Brownwell: 

• “I think it’s a tragedy for a capitalist society, I think it’s a tragedy for energy markets, and it’s a real tragedy for ratepayers.”

--> --> Copyright © 2018 Environmental Defense Fund |Energy, All rights reserved.


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