Hill Heat

Subcommittee hearing on the Fiscal Year 2025 request for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Witnesses:

• Michael S. Regan, Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency
• Faisal Amin, Chief Financial Officer, Environmental Protection Agency

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.

Full committee hearing.

Witness:

• Janet L. Yellen, United States Secretary of the Treasury

Full committee hearing.

Witness:

• Jason Miller, Deputy Director, U.S. Office of Management and Budget

Full committee hearing on the $25.38 billion request for NASA.

Hearing charter

Witness:

• Bill Nelson, Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration

This request proposes $2.4 billion to fund Earth science and observations that enhance our understanding of the Earth system and continues efforts to make data more accessible and useful to a wide range of stakeholders, including scientists and policymakers. This request also includes over $500 million in Aeronautics to improve aircraft efficiency and reduce the climate impact of aviation.

Rules Committee Hearing on H.R. 3397, 6285, 3195, 2925, 615, 764, 6090.

Related Legislation

• H.R. 3397 – [Western Economic Security Today Act of 2024]
• H.R. 6285 – Alaska’s Right to Produce Act of 2023, to reinstate oil and gas leases in the Arctic Refuge
• H.R. 3195 – Superior National Forest Restoration Act, to reinstate the Twin Metals mine
• H.R. 2925 – Mining Regulatory Clarity Act of 2024, to overturn the Ninth Circuit’s Rosemont decision protecting sacred sites from mine waste, allowing mine operations to use, occupy, and conduct operations (including construction of roads and other mining infrastructure activity) on public land regardless of whether a mineral deposit has been discovered on the land so long as the claimant makes timely payments of required claims maintenance fee
• H.R. 615 – Protecting Access for Hunters and Anglers Act of 2023, to bar the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture from prohibiting or regulating the use of lead ammunition or tackle on federal land or water
• H.R. 764 – Trust the Science Act, to delist the gray wolf from the Endangered Species Act
• H.R. 6090 – Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023

Subcommittee field hearing entitled “Drilling Down: Oversight of the Challenges and Opportunities Facing U.S. Energy Production”.

At The Nature & Retreat Center at Oak Point Park, 5901 Los Rios Boulevard, Plano, Texas 75074.

Witnesses:

• Tim Tarpley, President, Energy Workforce & Technology Council
• Ron Gusek, President, Liberty Energy
• Bill desRosiers, Manager of External Affairs, Coterra Energy

On Earth Day, please join the Biden for President Campaign for an Earth Day Grassroots Call featuring Gina McCarthy, former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Representative Ayanna Pressley, and Senator Brian Schatz.

On Monday, April 22, 2024, at 12:00 p.m. (MDT), the Subcommittee on Federal Lands will hold an oversight field hearing titled “Empowering Local Voices and Stopping Federal Overreach to Improve the Management of Utah’s Public Lands.” The hearing will examine the variety of challenges facing local, Western communities surrounded by significant footprints of federal land.

This hearing will be held at The Rock Bowl, 5665 West Clubhouse Drive, Hurricane, Utah.

Hearing memo

Witnesses:

• Adam Snow, Commissioner, Washington County, St. George, Utah
• Eric Clarke, County Attorney, Washington County, St. George, Utah
• Carlos Braceras, Executive Director, Utah Department of Transportation, Taylorsville, Utah
• Zachary Renstrom, General Manager, Washington County Water Conservancy District, St. George, Utah
• Darcy Stewart, President and CEO, SunRiver St. George Development, LLC., St. George, Utah

On the 80th anniversary of the World Bank and IMF, people from around the world are coming together to say that it’s time to put people and planet first and decolonize and decarbonize our global economy.

While finance ministers from around the world meet inside the World Bank, we will be on the streets, joining forces with allies from the Global South to amplify calls for an end to fossil fuel finance, debt cancellation, and climate justice.

JOIN US!

FOR PEOPLE FOR PLANET

RALLY AND MARCH

MEET AT 12 NOON ON FRIDAY, APRIL 19

Tell IMF & World Bank: 80 years of financial colonialism is enough! On Friday, April 19th, the Debt for Climate movement is mobilizing around the world to demand debt cancellation for the Global South during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington, DC. Support the fight for global economic & climate justice; join our direct action bringing our message straight to the delegates going into one of the most central sessions of the IMF & World Bank meetings.

Meet us at 7:30 am on Friday, April 19th at 1700 K St NW, Washington, DC 20006.

Email: [email protected]