Policies that stimulate the economy and share security and protect the nations health. It is already taken steps to limited regulatory obstacles on the energy industry, focus on Domestic Energy production and revive the coal industry. What can we expect from the new administration Going Forward . How will potential changes in Energy Policy and production impact u. S. Foreignpolicy . Where does this leave global experts to discuss all Things Energy please welcome our moderator for this panel jason grumet, the founder president of the Bipartisan Policy Center and his pedals to the stage. Sarah ladislaw, director and senior fellow, energy and National Security program at csis. Katharine macgregor, Deputy Assistant secretary for land and Mineral Management at the department of the interior. And joseph stanko, parker at hunton and williams partner. [applause] good afternoon everyone. Thanks for taking in here with us. Terrible, training, its awful out there. Good to be with you. Im delighted to be here. I will just do what about the Bipartisan Policy Center, the essence of our mission is a constructive collusion ideas. We are not nonpartisan or postpartisan who dont believe in abstract objectivity. We believe in having professional practitioners, republicans and democrats with strong personal spiritual, emotional and economic interest coming together and hash it out. Some with a good set of ideas and have a good fight for the register i feel like im in good company with the panel i will introduce. Immediately to my left, sarah, someone ive known for a long time, is a director at csis, center for strategic and international studies, one of the real anchors here in the washington thinking community. Next to sarah, Kate Macgregor is a recent appointed Deputy Assistant for land and minerals at the department of interior. And theres really no, it else appointed there so sarah can pretty much say everything you want to know about our nations interior. Joe stanko, also a longtime friend, partner at hunton and williams, tremendous expertise in all things regulatory and we will press him a little bit today on the power sector. So i will just set the stage in about 60 seconds which is to Say Something very obvious which is we have an incredible dynamic political and policy moment on Energy Policy. A discussion where having right now is pretty remarkable. We also have an incredibly Dynamic Energy system. For those of you who follow this even a little bit if you remember back a dozen years, the story of American Energy was the story of cold showers and warm beer. It was despair. Natural gas was 1 13 a cubic foot. Manufacturing was fleeing the country. The dependence on foreign and imported products, getting larger of you. Our Climate Emissions could only be imagined to go out. It was a pretty bleak time around 2003, four and five. Congress came together at the urgency in past a pretty good energy legislation. If you fastforward to 2017, the Trump Administration comes in a pretty solid footing. Andy prices have been relatively low and relatively stable the last several years. Tremendous amount of technological breakthrough. Some of it driven by good public policy, as fundamentally reoriented the American Energy posture from one of dependence to one of abundance. We are now the largest producer of hydrocarbons on the floor. We are an Energy Superpower. It is fundamentally restructure our imagination about manufactured, i foreignpolicy footprint. Weve seen incredible breakthroughs in energy efficiency, renewable technologies, the natural gas boom has dramatically shifted the industry both in terms of manufacturing and the power sector. Our gas emissions are going down. Pretty good moment to have a pretty good conversation. I guess i will try to do three things to do a little bit of a big picture, talk a bit about abundance, what can actually the government due to capture, embraces benefit. We will talk like energy and climate change, had we managed to sustain and capture the benefits and strengthen Americas Energy resources while being good stewards of the environment and the climate . Im going to take it off with kate in the hot seat. President has put out some pretty polished executive orders really focus on capturing this Energy Abundance. How do you see the moment . Do you think the way i framed it is reasonably similar to what you are thinking about it . What is the process of your 18 8 hour days as you think about how to make good on the president commitments . I think you are characterizing it perfectly correctly. I think that its an exciting time especially for the department of the interior to play a strong will and what the president would like to achieve. And with you sent Energy Dominance and Energy Strength, i think that derives from energy diversity. And when you look at federal lands which is what the department of the interior has an expertise in, obligation and jurisdiction and, we have a quite diverse array of Energy Wealth that we can bring to the table. It already is a part of our Nations Energy dynamic. I think federal lands right now are accountable for 21, maybe a little more than that, about 21 of our nations Oil Production company and 60 of our nations natural gas. Coal leasing on blm lands alone is 40 of coal produced in the United States. All of this is at the department of the interior when the president questioned as to take a hard look at what we can bring to the table, i think will be ready to answer that call. Just a quick followup. So every agency is supposed to come up with a specific set of measures, recommendations, activities. Can you say a little bit about how that is going . Sure. I mean, right now without giving too much away, because thats why they are all here. However, think we take a look at what doi can do its going to break into several different buckets. We are going to be talking about access to federal lands. We are also talking about regular toy certainty which is a part of that executive order. And on top of that we will also be talking about time frames, which he and i talked about a little bit. As we look at that now, thats how we are organizing some of the directives in the executive order and taking a hard look at some of the regulations from the past administration, what should stay, what should go, whats the smart choice to make sure that we achieve a good balance between providing an accident scene our Energy Abundance without sacrificing i see you put your purple tie on, which i appreciate that. My partisan for you, jason. Before we could keep on Clean Power Plan and other items, where d. C. The moment, speak about the mood. You were with a lot of big energy producers. Is there whiplash between last year this year . How are people taking this opportunity . In the Energy Community theres optimism and we have a pro production, pro infrastructure president , and as you know, the executive branch and the president are found in authority by statute in the criteria that are passed by congress. There are many who think on a number of key programs that the last administration went right up to the edge, made outside of the swim lanes on some of the interpretations that would push certain policies in energy distribution, and i think if you look at whats going to go on, i think the near term is going to be reexamination of some of those prior policies. And probably some proposals to move them back within the zone that arguably Congress Granted the agency to act. That is probably going to take a fair amount of time. And then after that, then youre going to see the administration applying the existing statutes i think in a way that will try and balance a number of issues, but still get the increase production in the infrastructure that has really created a lot of manufacturing an additional activity in the past couple of years. I want to ask you to speak about the process to those here who do not have at initiation procedure act under their pillow like you do. Oftentimes president s come to town and are surprised to realize that there are these rather laborious, deliberate activities that are required before one can change the direction of national policy. Walkthrough, you said it will take some time. What its not flipping the switch. The way that the Administration Procedure act works, which is a procedure for any significant major regulatory action under statute, is the agency has to develop a proposal. They published it for comment. Be open at docket and receive they open at docket and receive tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of comments, many of them putting speedy they are obligated to read . They read, you know, one of the most exciting things in the world of administering law is the response to comment documents. Looks like about eight manhattan yellow pages put together. And then the develop a final rule. And that will can be challenged and litigated through the appellate courts. So a rule of thumb that we use in any significant rulemaking is, its about a year if you do it quickly from proposal to final rule. Sometimes longer if its a tough issue. And the litigation of that rule going through in some instances the d. C. Circuit and the potentially a supreme court, can be two to four year adventure. That industry hasnt issues with certainty, but i think if agencies stay more or less down the middle, they end up with a product that even if it is challenged industry has got a pretty good idea if its not, and the states and stakeholders have a pretty good idea if its not going to swing too far one way or another. Sera come for purposes of this bill your all things international. Csis has a lot of expertise in this regard. How would you situate the moment anin that broader context of the Global Energy . Its interesting. Jason, you characterized it so well as were both in Energy Superpower which weve always been influential and Global Energy markets but we are in different in new ways Going Forward. And i think whats interesting is we are finding that much of the world is in a state transition. The Global Energy will be coming from fundamentally different places than it used to. And if you were to ask the normal person on the street who are the Biggest Oil Producer in the world, they probably would not have the use in the top three but there are three producers in the world that produce over 10 Million Barrels a day and we are one of them. We have a massive refining industry, tons of gas, tons of coal. So we are pretty influential in a lot of Energy Market dynamics right now, and not least of which are leadership on Energy Innovation and Clean Energy Technologies is also pretty profound. We carry a lot of weight in that global arena. A lot of people ask these days if the United States is changing its course on energy, how much is it going to matter to other countries around the world. From a Market Dynamics perspective it always met with the assistant income always matters because we really are the affluent and a lot of energy sectors. That also instead interaction of policy and regulation and the multilateral framework. But i would also say that its also being absorbed by a lot of things that this new administration wants to change that are not necessarily energyrelated, but do changes that geopolitical framework. You just cant say were changing the way that we are dealing with energy to a change a lot of trade and foreign policy, tax policy things that affect energy. So i think a lot of the people that we talked to in the country who talked about the world, energy is one of the things they care about in sort of the new u. S. Persona globally but it is one of many. They are trying to get where it falls into own priority stack, visavis the United States. So that was the beginning of the Opening Night he ran. My hope that isnt going to mix it up a bit, as each other questions, and to crush into an. I want to talk about some of the symbol of the big debate. Look back at the last figures you would say Clean Power Plan and keystone were probably the two issues that became the crucible in which much broader arguments took place. And my own moderated editorial here is neither of them or that big of a deal, rightclick the got a lot of pipelines going back and forth across the u. S. Canadian border. Most of the oil is flowing anyway, that is a biggie for such a project but it was not the central issue of the future american Energy Policy. Personal editorial. You guys can hopefully dispute or engage. The Clean Power Plan, with the last epa mr. Gina macarthur speaks, she says no biggie, its all going to happen anyway. The targets will be met. The natural momentum in the system has essentially, we were riding the wave, and so whether an expresident revokes or not we will get to same place anyway. Reflections on ite items that ad where do you see those issues going . Ill pop in on the Clean Power Plan, and i think no shocker there, one of the things that are think is important to delineate is the difference between changes that are made by market or technology forces, and changes that are attempted to be super accelerated by a program in a way that is not reflective of the natural order of those two. And former administrator of the epa mccarthy is correct in saying when you look across the generation of the United States, it has shifted in a way due to the price and availability of a natural gas that has a lower Carbon Footprint than ten, 15, 20 years ago here the key word there is price and availability of natural gas. Not too long ago we were in a world of eight to 12 natural gas. It was really tough from manufacturers. I know many of you, maybe not all of you, dont know that natural gas is used to produce chemicals and pharmaceuticals, was a big terrifying hit on American Manufacturing because of that. The issue with Clean Power Plan in plain english, fortunately, is it is a mechanism by which epa is supposed to go to an existing facility and to look at the equipment that is there to reduce emissions and make judgments about what to require about existing facilities. The best system of adequately demonstrate. For 30 years this was an adventure in sin engineers add to existing plants looking at things that took air out, seeing if they worked and asking the question, can anybody else in the industry do this . With the Clean Power Plan thaad system of reduction turned into an examination of the entire Electricity Generation and delivery system. And asking not engineers but atomic model to see if the system as a whole with a number of control on it could reduce the Carbon Footprint. I would argue that that certainly is a departure from the past, and not really promoting i think the kind of adequate push of delivery of existing technology that congress intended spirit so that maybe a couple of investors in the realm, and i just want to kind of i think certainly embrace the sense that was an extension of authority that this president has decided not, it was in his interest, thats going to be rolled back or review and hopefully touch on that. But do you believe based on your sense of the availability of natural gas that when the Clean Power Plan is rolled back that is good to have a Significant Impact on the trajectory of emissions question do you think emissions will go up a whole bunch is the president follows through and repeals the i think to some extent the market is moved, and i think the portfolio of a generation and, therefore, existing emissions is really going to reflect the price and operational differences between a coal plant and power plant and some renewables. Renewables are part of a mix. One little bit on that is regardless, and have been subsidized here for quite some time with the goal of trying to deploy technology, but a lot of our states have shifted to not a regulated Utility Industry but a market industry. I think however you feel about renewables like wind power, when they fit into a competitive market at either zero cents per kilowatt hour or negative one, because you can still pay the agreed to take your electricity and make money off of the subsidies and the credits, thats a distortion that has other implications that its very tough to build baseload power in those markets. And so i think across the board renewables are definitely part of the mix. Everybody that i work for in the electric generation has some wing that does renewables. But we are going