Soon after completing the nation's first Quadrennial Energy Review, which focused on transportation, US Sec. of Energy Ernest G. Moniz said the results basically revealed a need for greater resilience. The same might be said for developing energy and environmental policies in the Trump administration's early days.
A solid Republican majority in the US Senate has left little doubt that US Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) will become Secretary of the Interior, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) will become Energy Secretary, and Oklahoma Atty. Gen. Scott Pruitt (R) will become Environmental Protection Agency Administrator.
All three appointees said that global climate change is real, that it's at least partly caused by human activity, and that a discussion on how to address it without causing economic hardship should be the next step. That obviously wasn't sufficient for some Democrats, but it may have been enough to begin to blunt charges that Republicans don't believe there is a climate problem.
Perry may have started with the biggest approval obstacle since he was chosen to lead a department he had campaigned to eliminate 5 years earlier when he sought the GOP presidential nomination. He quickly repudiated his earlier stand at his Jan. 19 hearing, and expressed strong support for DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratories and the basic research they undertake.
Perry also looked best prepared of the three nominees to make a budgetary case for his department's needs in the new administration because of his years of experience governing Texas. This could prove crucial to DOE's energy research efforts during the next 4 years.
Pruitt probably received the harshest criticism of the three from Democrats for his suing EPA several times as Oklahoma's attorney general. Jeff Merkley's (Ore.) visual comparison of a letter from Devon Energy Corp. to one that went out under the AG's letterhead undercut Pruitt's insistence that his litigation was on behalf of the entire state and not just its oil and gas industry.
Working with states
The nominee, however, also made an important point that many Oklahoma agencies have their own authority to enforce environmental rules, and the AG's office acts as their legal counsel. Pruitt appeared ready to consider where EPA can work more effectively with states in addressing environmental matters.
As the next Interior Secretary, Zinke could see a precedent in Ken Salazar's action 8 years earlier as he came into office when he canceled federal leases issued the previous November in Utah.
Zinke similarly could find a way to reverse the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's early January denial of permits for the first seismic surveys in 30 years off the US Atlantic Coast. It only seems fair.
