Big oil spent big on the 2014 elections.This week in CIB.

Campaign Watch: Big Oil Spent Big on 2014 Elections

At least four of the newly-elected U.S. Senators coming into office in January won their races with heavy financial support from the oil and energy industry sector. They will make up part of the new Senate majority that is bringing into power a leadership aggressively hostile to action to address the threat of climate change.

Those four Senate newcomers are Thom Tillis (NC), Cory Gardner (Colorado), Joni Ernst (Iowa), and Tom Cotton (Arkansas). Their victories will enable Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) to become Senate Majority Leader, and James Inhofe (Oklahoma) to resume his previous post of Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. McConnell said on November 6 that his top priority was to force the EPA to drop its regulations on carbon emissions, and Inhofe calls climate change a “hoax.” See more here.

From an environmental standpoint, the Senate’s anticipated strong hostility to action on climate change may be the single most alarming consequence of the 2014 election cycle. It surely stands out as a demonstration of how fundamentally important the outcome of elections can be to environmental protection.

Legislative Watch: Conservationists Call for Continued Renewable Energy Incentives

Clean energy advocates last week pointed to big gains in North Carolina’s clean energy industry as a reason to maintain our state’s renewable energy incentives laws. Representative Pricey Harrison (D-Guilford) attributed the 127% growth in North Carolina’s solar power capacity since 2010 primarily to the 2007 passage of the “Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard” (REPS) and clean energy tax credits. REPS requires 12.5 percent of the state’s electricity to come from renewable sources by 2021. Read more about the report here.

The same report containing the growth figures also estimated that solar energy could exceed that target by providing 20 percent of the state’s electricity within 15 years. It was released last week by Environment North Carolina’s Research and Policy Center.

Administrative Watch: Officials Predict Rates Will Rise for Ash Cleanup

State and local officials predicted last week that Duke Energy electric ratepayers will pay the costs of coal ash cleanup. That assessment came from sources ranging from NC Mining and Energy Commission (MEC) member and former chair James Womack to Lee County Manager John Crumpton.

MEC commissioner (and Lee County Commissioner) Womack said, “As a businessperson, you never want to pass things on to your shareholders that you don’t have to. They’ll be trying to minimize the amount of impact the coal ash disposal has on their shareholders, which means rate increases.”

Coal ash legislation passed by the 2014 General Assembly session failed to include any provision limiting Duke’s ability to recover from ratepayers the costs of cleaning up its extensive coal ash pits around the state.

That’s our report for this week.