EnviroPolitics Blog

The gas tycoon and the vice president’s son

Hunter Biden, then-Vice President Joe Biden and his sister Valerie Biden Owens attend a ceremony to name a national road after Joe Biden’s late son, Joseph R. “Beau” Biden III, in Kosovo on Aug. 17, 2016. (Visar Kryeziu/AP)

Paul Sonne, Michael Kranish and Matt Viser – Wash. Post
September 28, 2019 at 8:08 p.m. EDT

When then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son joined the board of an obscure Ukrainian gas company half a decade ago, it was a stunning coup for its owner, a former Ukrainian minister working to remake the company’s image as he faced a money-laundering investigation.

For Hunter Biden, the job came with risks: Ukraine was in the throes of political upheaval, and there was building scrutiny of former government officials profiting in the lucrative gas industry. His father was the face of the Obama administration’s effort to get Ukraine to crack down on corruption.

The region was so unsettled that one of Hunter Biden’s investment firm partners at the time — former secretary of state John F. Kerry’s stepson — believed that joining the board of Burisma Holdings was a bad idea and ended his business relationship with Biden and another partner, his spokesman told The Washington Post.

Now, more than five years later, with Joe Biden running for president, Hunter Biden’s decision to get involved with the Ukrainian firm is the backdrop of an extraordinary whistleblower complaint against President Trump that is reshaping the 2020 political landscape.

Staring down impeachment, Trump sees himself as a victim of historic proportions

Revelations that Trump, along with his personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, pressed the Ukrainians to pursue investigations into Burisma and examine the role of the Bidens have triggered an impeachment inquiry in the House, with allegations that Trump withheld U.S. support for Ukraine to ensure Kiev investigated his potential rival in the presidential election.

No evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the Bidens has surfaced. Giuliani’s primary allegation — that Joe Biden pushed for the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor to quash a probe into the former minister and Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky — is not substantiated and has been widely disputed by former U.S. officials and Ukrainian anti-corruption activists.

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Still, Hunter Biden’s decision to associate himself with the company has raised an uncomfortable question the Biden campaign is struggling to explain: Why didn’t the vice president take steps to head off a perceived conflict of interest between his efforts to crack down on corruption in Ukraine and his son’s work for a gas tycoon investigated for abusing his position as a government official?

“Why didn’t Joe Biden tell Hunter, ‘Come off it. What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ ” said Oliver Bullough, a British journalist on the advisory board of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, or AntAC, a nonprofit in Ukraine.

For some Ukrainians, Hunter Biden’s association with Burisma undermined his father’s calls to end corruption in Ukraine. It also raised concerns that prosecutors would avoid pursuing alleged wrongdoing by Zlochevsky out of fear that the former minister had high-level connections in the United States — the critical backer of the Ukrainian government at the time.

Ukrainian businessman and founder of the Burisma Holdings company, Mykola Zlochevsky, during a media conference in February 2012. (Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/Sipa USA via AP)

Inside the vice president’s office, there was discussion about whether Hunter’s position on the board would be perceived as a conflict of interest, according to several former aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

One former adviser was concerned enough to mention it to the vice president, according to an adviser, but the conversation was brief, and other aides said they didn’t want — or see a need — to raise the issue.

Former U.S. officials who worked with Biden maintain that his son’s activities in no way influenced his actions regarding Ukraine as vice president.

“Is there an appearance issue?” a former adviser said. “Of course there’s an appearance issue. But did it actually create wrongdoing? No.”

At the time, the White House said that Hunter Biden was a private citizen and that the vice president didn’t endorse any company in Ukraine. While vice president, Joe Biden did not comment publicly on his son’s role at Burisma.

What specific duties Hunter Biden carried out for Burisma are not fully known. A lawyer for Hunter Biden, George R. Mesires, declined to say how much his client earned, or whether the vice president’s son knew the company’s owner was in the crosshairs of authorities when he joined.

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Message From a Proud Island: ‘We Need Your Help’

Dorian devastated this place, but hope keeps washing ashore.

By Kelley Shinn in the New York Times
Ms. Shinn is a writer.

This stretch of Highway 12 in Ocracoke, N.C., was destroyed by Hurricane Dorian.
CreditCreditJulia Wall/The News & Observer

OCRACOKE, N.C. — I write this from a barrier island 26 miles off the mainland coast, accessible only by boat or plane. It has been about three weeks since Hurricane Dorian blew through, tore up and submerged the place that my 1,000 or so neighbors and I call home. While it might seem from a distance that the storm has passed, we are all as shellshocked as we were on Day 1.

I first came to Ocracoke as a 17-year-old who’d just lost her legs to meningitis and sepsis. The topography was overwhelmingly beautiful — and one night on the beach with a full moon, I found a reason to live again after tragedy. Nearly seven years ago, I came again for a 10-day vacation with my children and never left. I didn’t stay because of the geographical beauty, I stayed because of the village.

Many natives are descendants of the quartermaster of Blackbeard the pirate and still speak with a Hoi Toide brogue, a reference to the way the natives pronounce “high tide.” It’s a magical village where barters of bourbon for fresh fish take place with ease between bicycle baskets. Neighbors help neighbors, and newcomers who stay live by the motto of the native Ocracokers: We don’t ask for help, we give help. But that has changed. America, we need your help.

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The Ocracoke Village Fire Department was used as a command center after Hurricane Dorian struck.CreditConnie Leinbach/Ocracoke Observer

About one-third of the island are native Ocracokers, one-fourth are Hispanic, two people are African-American and the rest, like me, are varying degrees of driftwood. We have Democrats, Republicans, Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, agnostics and Buddhists. When a storm hits and the ferries can’t run and a plane can’t land, we are on our own. It is that exact nature of isolation that makes this place so special. We don’t care who you voted for, or who you pray to, or what color your skin might be, when stuff hits the fan, we need each other, and if I have something you can use, then take it. When you live in vulnerability, you find out what matters most.

The island averages five feet above sea level, but Dorian inundated us with an unprecedented seven-foot storm surge that, according to the head of North Carolina Emergency Management, flooded over hundreds of our homes with anywhere from a few inches to four feet. Neighbors had to be rescued from their attics by boat, folks axed down their doors and swam through the surge to higher ground. At the Village Craftsmen, a native-owned gift store in operation for 40 years, lines are marked with the names of previous hurricanes. Hurricane Matthew from 2016 is there, one of the worst anyone can remember. The line for Dorian is 27 inches higher than Matthew. It is a miracle, that unlike our friends in the Bahamas, no one here died.

Our daycare center, briefly reopened, has been closed because of septic issues; our historic library has been closed. Our post office was reopened on Sept. 18, but our only bank remains closed. Currency is bartered goods. Most local businesses lost all of their merchandise. Our health center is now a series of mobile emergency units. Instead of surge, our island is now inundated with relief workers. Immediately after the storm, local watermen from neighboring islands came into our harbor, skiff after skiff, filled with water, food and supplies. Our schoolchildren, exhausted and anxious, and whose school may not be habitable for a year, helped those coastal kin unpack the boats and load the goods into the few trucks that were operable on the island, and then hauled them to our fire department, which has been the base of operations and distribution since disaster struck. We now call it FireMart.

We still have not been declared a federal disaster, hence we have no assistance from FEMA. Hundreds of my neighbors and friends have been displaced, matriarchs of our village are sitting on piles of debris waiting for good Samaritan crews to help clean out their homes, while the walls are bowing and the mold is growing daily. Last week, I began making phone calls from Raleigh to Washington to speak with my representatives and leaders about our current state of disaster.

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Northern lights possible tonight in New Jersey

The northern lights, or aurora borealis, are predicted to extend as far south as the Delmarva Peninsula, putting New Jersey within range to catch the glimmering lights.

By JOE MARTUCCI Atlantic City Press Meteorologist

The Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a geomagnetic storm watch for Saturday night, and that means a spectacle in the sky will be possible in New Jersey, as long as the clouds clear out.

The northern lights, or aurora borealis, are predicted to extend as far south as the Delmarva Peninsula, putting New Jersey within range to catch the glimmering lights. On Saturday night, a G1, or minor, geomagnetic storm alert will go into effect.

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EPA air quality science panel refuses to be dismissed

Jordan Davidson reports for EcoWatch
Sep. 27, 2019 12:44PM

A group of 20 scientists charged with reviewing the nation’s air quality standards plans to convene and to issue a report on the country’s air pollution regulations, even though the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) disbanded their panel.

In a move that is consistent with the administration’s skepticism towards science and expertise, the EPA administrator, Andrew Wheeler, disbanded the Particulate Matter Review Panel, part of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, in October 2018, as The Hill reported.

When he disbanded the group, Wheeler claimed that the group — made up of some of the nation’s top scientists assigned to review the impact of soot and other microscopic air pollutants on human health — took too long to perform its task, according to Bloomberg Environment.

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Now, in a seemingly unprecedented maneuver, the scientists will meet in Arlington, Virginia Oct. 10-11, one year after they were disbanded, to issue a report on whether or not the current federal particulate matter standard is sufficient, according to Reuters.

The group, which now calls itself the Independent Particulate Matter Review Panel wants to make sure there is a documented record of scientific consensus that reaches the EPA decision-makers.

“I’m proud to say that being disbanded is not an obstacle for our panel,” said Chris Frey of North Carolina State University who chairs the panel to the NC State press office. “If anything, being told that we were unilaterally terminated has redoubled my determination to discharge the public service to which I originally agreed.”

Even though Wheeler is a former coal-industry lobbyist, Frey is hopeful that he will consider the independent panel’s recommendations.

“As a group, this panel has more experts, more breadth, depth and diversity of expertise than the chartered Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee,” Frey said, as E&E News reported.

Like Frey, most of the members of the independent panel come from universities and all are unpaid for serving on the panel.

“This is the first time in the history of EPA where the credibility of the agency’s science review process has been so compromised that an independent panel of experts has recognized the need for and will be conducting a comprehensive review,” said Chris Zarba, who will help lead the effort and once served as director of the EPA’s Science Advisory Board, another board that provides scientific advice to the agency, The Hill reported.

The Union of Concerned Scientists will host the panel since it was troubled that the EPA is operating without the scientific expertise it needs to ensure a particulate standard based on the best available science.

“Reconvening a disbanded pollutant review panel breaks new ground,” said Gretchen Goldman, a research director at the Union for Concerned Scientists, to The Hill. “Nothing like this has ever been done before. Indeed, nothing like this has ever been necessary. But we live in unprecedented times.”

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CalCom Energy’s $100M fund targets California farms for solar-battery systems

In a state facing grid outages, the agriculture sector solar-storage developer sees opportunities in on-site resilience.

JEFF ST. JOHN reports for gtm
September 26, 2019

$100 million fund marks CalCom’s first foray into owning the systems it develops. (Credit: CalCom)

In California, it’s not just vulnerable families and critical services that could use battery-backed solar systems to ride through wildfire-prevention power outages. Farms also have critical energy needs, like pumping water to crops on set schedules, or chilling them after harvest, that could face significant disruption under the state’s new wildfire prevention regime.

CalCom Energy, a long-time solar and energy services provider for California’s agricultural sector, thinks it has a solution. This week, the Fresno-based developer launched a $100 million Agriculture Energy Infrastructure Fund, aimed at combining low-cost solar power-purchase agreements with the backup power of energy storage.

The fund, developed in partnership with Symbiont Energy and Live Oak Bank, marks CalCom’s first foray into owning the systems it develops, David Williams, CalCom’s chief commercial officer, noted in Wednesday’s press release. But it’s far from CalCom’s first foray into solving the farm-specific energy challenges facing its customers in the state’s Central Valley.

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Since its 2012 founding as CalCom Solar, the Fresno, Calif.-based company has developed more than 200 megawatts of clean energy projects, largely solar projects for farms and water districts. In fact, it’s one of the largest commercial solar developers in the territory of Pacific Gas & Electric, the Northern California utility now in bankruptcy reorganization under the weight of tens of billions of dollars in liabilities from deadly wildfires started by its power lines in 2017 and 2018.

Like many California solar developers, energy storage is playing an ever-increasing role in CalCom’s projects, leading it to rebrand as CalCom Energy last year. Changes to California’s net metering regime, including time-of-use (TOU) rates that reduce the value of midday energy and increase its cost in late afternoon and evening hours, have an outsize effect on commercial solar projects like CalCom’s that rely on meter aggregation for valuing their production.

CalCom also provides metering and billing analysis through its Energy Services management platform, to allow its customers to better manage how they consume electricity in relation to their solar-generated and battery-stored resources. For example, big Salinas Valley grower and shipper D’Arrigo Bros. of California, which has installed about 5.5 megawatts of solar PV through CalCom, has also added two 520-kilowatt batteries at its central cooling facility, to reduce demand charges, shift energy to different TOU periods, and provide backup power to critical loads.

But batteries have become even more critical under the much-expanded wildfire prevention “public safety power shutoff” regimes put in place by PG&E and other California utilities under state regulatory mandate this year. Agricultural customers are huge electricity users, largely to move water — pumping and treating water uses roughly one-sixth of the state’s electricity supply.

In fact, water treatment plants and other water infrastructure are among the classes of “critical services” that have been earmarked for special treatment under the California Public Utilities Commission’s latest revisions to the Self-Generation Incentive Program, which also included $100 million in incentives for disadvantaged or medically vulnerable customers who live in high-fire-threat parts of the state.

But farmers are also dependent on steady and reliable electricity to meet water-pumping schedules that are often fixed by law, or by the needs of its crops and the growing season. Solar-plus-storage projects that promise to reduce overall electric bills, as well as provide backup power, are becoming a far more attractive option than installing expensive and polluting backup generators to insure against a crop-ruining power outage.

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Amazon’s Move to Electric Trucks Is a Very Big Deal. Will other fleet owners follow?

Dan Gearino writes for Clean Economy Weekly

Amazon delivery vans are seen on May 14, 2019 in Orlando, Florida. On May 13, 2019 Amazon announced an incentive program that offers three months pay and up to $10,000 to its employees who quit their jobs to start their own package delivery companies. (Photo by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Sometimes a company issues a clean energy plan that is gigantic in ambition and seems to have the elements to deliver on its promises—pretty close to the opposite of greenwashing.

We saw this last week when Amazon announced that it will aim for net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. The company is the first signatory of a new initiative it co-founded called the Climate Pledg e, in which other companies are encouraged to make the same commitment.

The part of Amazon’s plan that jumps out at me is the conversion of its delivery truck fleet to all-electric models. The company will begin using electric trucks in 2021. It plans to have 10,000 electric trucks on the road by 2022 and have converted its entire fleet—projected to be 100,000 vehicles—by 2030.

The trucks will be manufactured by Rivian, a Michigan-based startup in which Amazon is a major investor. Rivian has yet to produce a vehicle for public sale; its all-electric pickup is set to debut in 2020.

This is an opportunity to deal with a stubborn source of emissions. Transportation accounts for 35 percent of carbon emissions in this country, and trucking is 25 percent of the emissions from transportation.

Amazon, one of the half dozen or so largest companies in the world by market value, is so big that its decisions can transform entire industries.

“We’re done being in the middle of the herd on this issue,” said Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, who was under intense pressure from employees to urgently take action on climate change. “We’ve decided to use our size and scale to make a difference.”

By buying 100,000 electric trucks, Amazon would single-handedly create economies of scale that will make it less expensive for other logistics companies to convert their fleets. To run all of those trucks, Amazon will need charging infrastructure, a demand that will accelerate the development of charging systems.

“If this starts the ball rolling for FedEx and UPS and the Postal Service and other logistics companies and delivery companies using electricity, it changes everything,” said Costa Samaras, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University who has written extensively about energy and climate change.

Amazon’s plan is about more than electric trucks. It calls for the company to use 100 percent renewable energy and cut its carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2030. The cut in emissions is a benchmark toward meeting the net-zero target by 2040. To keep its pledge, Amazon says it will have to offset its emissions. The company doesn’t go into detail, other than to say that the offsets will be “quantifiable, real, permanent and socially beneficial.” An Amazon spokesman had no comment on the offsets beyond what was in the company’s news release.

All of this has another major benefit: It puts pressure on other super-sized businesses to be more aggressive in reducing emissions, Samaras said.

One example I’ll note is Wal-Mart, which operates its own large vehicle fleet and competes with Amazon. The company has a plan, called Project Gigaton, to remove 1 billion metric tons of carbon by 2030 by making changes in its operations and demanding changes by its suppliers.

Amazon and Wal-Mart have deservedly attracted many detractors for their labor practices and their effects on competing retailers. And yet, if these two companies get into a sustainability arms race, that is bound to have wide-ranging benefits.

(Photo: Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

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