Issue No. 25 - The Energy Reality Report

In today’s issue:

Congress is raising concerns that the Biden administration’s proposals will harm the reliability of America’s power grid and raise costs for consumers.
At a House hearing, members and witnesses raise questions about EPA’s authority, a weakened grid, and whether new technology can be deployed quickly.
A new assessment of the Christmas cold snap shows power plants are still vulnerable. Acting FERC Chairman Phillips cites a “reliability gap,” with no clear lines of responsibility.
In Texas, a “predictable development”: weather (heat, this time) is crippling the grid, in part because of a lack of on-demand, dispatchable energy.
Permitting reform finally passes as part of debt ceiling legislation. But the changes aren’t complete.
As the movement to ban gas-powered stoves gains momentum in states like New York and California, Congress responds.
Rules to limit tailpipe emissions would speed the transition to electric cars, causing a cascade of negative consequences, critics say.
The Bureau of Land Management proposes changes in its priorities, in an apparent effort to reduce energy production on federal lands.

Reliability of Grid Is Questioned in Hill Hearings After EPA Proposal That Would Shut Power Plants

Committees in both the Senate and the House recently heard experts warn of threats to the reliability of the grid.

At both hearings, concerns were raised about the rule proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on May 11 that would require most fossil fuel power plants – including those powered by natural gas – to cut their emissions by 90% between 2035 and 2040 – or else shut down. (We reported extensively on the rule in edition No. 24 of this newsletter).

The rule, said Politico, “would break new ground by requiring steep pollution cuts from plants burning coal or natural gas, which together provide the lion’s share of the nation’s electricity. To justify the size of those cuts, the agency says fossil fuel plants could capture their greenhouse gas emissions before they hit the atmosphere — a long-debated technology that no power plant in the U.S. uses now.”

At the hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on June 1, the Chairman, Sen. Joe Manchin (R-WV) r ecognized that “our electric grid is undergoing a transition, both in generation sources and in the types of demand the grid is called on to serve.” However, he said, “the speed of this transition must be balanced against the reliability and affordability of electricity.” He added:

We know much larger portions of our grid would have experienced blackouts during Winter Storms Elliott and Uri if our coal fleet was retired prematurely…. But this EPA won’t let electric reliability inconvenience their anti-fossil agenda. Within six months of Winter Storm Elliott, EPA’s response was to roll out four new regulations poised to shut down 50,000 megawatts or more of coal power over the next decade—whether the grid is ready for it or not. EPA is not hiding their strategy—it’s death by a thousand unreasonable cuts for fossil.

Among the witnesses was Jim Robb, president of the North American Reliability Corporation (NERC), who worried that new policies could force dispatchable natural gas off the electricity system. “It’s highly troubling,” Robb said, “because we are retiring these plants before their attributes are being replaced. . . The important thing [dispatchable sources] provide for the grid is the ability to maintain voltage, and to maintain frequency, and resist disturbances. Other resources can’t do that nearly as well as a large spinning mass generation.”

Manu Asthana, president of PJM Interconnection, a large regional transmission organization (RTO) that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in 13 states and the District of Columbia, endorsed as a “great idea” a requirement for “reliability impact statements to inform policy before it is made.”

Asthana was responding to a question from Sen. Manchin, who asked: “We have NERC, we have FERC [the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission], we have EPA. EPA seems to trump everything with policy,…and it seems like there’s not much input. Do you all believe it’s necessary that NERC and FERC should have input as far as reliability when EPA is making these policy changes?”

“Absolutely,” responded David J. Tudor, CEO of Associated Electric Cooperative, Inc., a 60-year-old organization that serves 51 co-ops in Iowa, Missouri and Oklahoma.

Sen. Manchin added, “We’re seeing more dispatchable resources shut down faster than new dispatchable resources are being added. We’ve seen over 90 gigawatts of coal power retire in the last decade, and we could see twice as much dispatchable capacity retire over the next decade on the path we’re heading down. And by dispatchable, I mean controllable and flexible to meet supply and demand. Right now, that includes coal, gas, nuclear, and hydropower.”

He continued:

Our markets have allowed renewables to receive the same payments as dispatchable resources without providing the same benefits to the grid. I want to acknowledge that PJM and other markets have recently taken initial steps to begin appropriately compensating the reliability benefits of different types of power plants, but much more is needed.

Sen. Manchin discussed the need for FERC to have the authority to ensure that critical power plants aren’t “prematurely retiring and to issue regulatory exemptions as necessary so that ratepayers aren’t being penalized just to keep the lights on. Because the impact of these collective EPA regulations is also a fairness issue.”

He cited the “tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars on environmental upgrades” for power plants, which now “could be required to spend tens or hundreds of millions more, or else shut down.”

Sen. Manchin noted that the investments made in such plants still have “useful lives of decades, and ratepayers are going to be on the hook paying for them for decades whether the plant is shut down or not. Is this administration, which claims to be focused on equity, blind to the fact their policies are going to harm low-income ratepayers in a state like West Virginia by saddling them with unaffordable power while stripping them of reliable energy?”

To watch the Senate hearing in full, click here.

In the House, Concerns That EPA Is Exceeding Its Authority with the Power Plant Rule

Separately, the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Environment, Manufacturing and Critical Materials on June 6 addressed the EPA power plant rule and the implications for grid reliability. A report by E&E Daily said the hearing “served as yet another example of the political challenges inherent in addressing the climate crisis,” with Republicans highly critical and Democrats defending the administration’s position.

The subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), cited experts who contend that the EPA timetable is “infeasible and technologically unattainable if the grid is to remain operational.”

Todd Snitchler, president of the Electric Power Supply Association (EPSA), the trade association that represents competitive power suppliers, echoed Johnson’s statement: “Some who dismiss concerns about the loss of dispatchable generation cite advancements in long-duration battery storage and carbon capture and sequestration [CCS] technologies. As of June 2023, no commercial power plants in the United States use CCS technology.”

Patrick O’Loughlin, president and CEO of Buckeye Power, Inc. and Ohio Rural Electric Cooperatives, said that more than 80 percent of Buckeye’s yearly energy requirements come from coal-fired power plants.

Should EPA’s proposed rule be enacted, he said, “[we] will be required to shut down all of our coal-fired units by 2030 with no hope of nearly replacing this energy within that time frame.” Snitchler agreed: “Shifting demand from other forms of energy … to power provided by the electric grid without concurrently working to ensure grid reliability is not sound public policy.”

The E&E report summarized the argument the critics: “The result of driving traditional energy producers out of business would be less reliable energy going to consumers and the potential for more blackouts and brownouts during extreme weather events.”

Democrats at the hearing backed the EPA. Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), the subcommittee’s ranking member, called the proposed rule “reasonable” and “a far cry from a government takeover for our power sector.”

In addition, Tonko said, if Republicans are so concerned about grid reliability and resiliency, they should consider taking another shot at legislation to overhaul the permitting system for energy projects that would prioritize transmission deployment.

GOP negotiators ultimately left transmission out of the permitting rewrite included in the recently-passed debt ceiling agreement (see the separate section below). Tonko said the compromise was tantamount to “miss[ing] a huge opportunity.”

A recurring theme at the hearing was whether the EPA was exceeding its statutory power. The E&E report noted that “Republicans said they expected the Biden administration to face litigation on the subject and endure a fate similar to that of former President Barack Obama, whose 2015 Clean Power Plan was ruled as overreach by the Supreme Court in June 2022.”

Said Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), the full committee chair:

The EPA has sought to use the Clean Air Act to restructure the American power sector. These efforts to transform the nation’s electricity system would have damaging and lasting effects on reliability for Americans across the country and would go well beyond the EPA’s congressionally mandated authority.

She and fellow committee Republicans sent a letter June 6 to EPA Administrator Michael Regan “demanding the agency extend its comment period for the proposed greenhouse gas and power plant rules” from 60 days to “at least 120.”

The letter pointed out that the EPA proposal’s “full published name is an indicator of complexity: ‘New Source Performance Standards for Greenhouse Gas Emissions From New, Modified, and Reconstructed Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units; Emission Guidelines for Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Existing Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units; and Repeal of the Affordable Clean Energy Rule.’”

One witness, Michael Nasi, a partner at Jackson Walker LLP, a Texas-based law firm, testified that “this rule proposal is yet another example of a recent trend of the agency departing from its statutory role of environmental regulator…and becoming an arm of the White House that mandates energy policy.” Nasi described himself during his opening testimony as “an environmental lawyer over the last three decades who has celebrated the success of the Federal Clean Air Act…in courts, companies and classrooms alike.

U.S. Power Plants’ Vulnerability to Cold Is ‘Laid Out in Technicolor’

At a five-hour forum on June 15, FERC and NERC officials presented evidence that U.S. power plants remain vulnerable to bitter cold.

According to a presentation at the session (see chart below), over a five-day period around Christmas last year, “Peak winter electricity demands, coupled with significant unplanned electric generation supply losses exceeding 70,000 MW, occurred during the coldest weather across the Southeastern, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, and Northeastern U.S.” The FERC staff said that the majority of plant outages were caused by problems with freezing, fuel supply, and mechanical and electrical issues. These three sets of problems occurred in the last five major extreme cold spells that have happened in the U.S. since 2011.

“We’re seeing the same three causes, so therefore we think that it makes all the sense in the world to continue full steam ahead on implementing prior recommendations,” Heather Polzin, reliability coordinator for FERC’s enforcement office, said about power plant outages.

According to a Utility Dive news report, “Like in Winter Storm Elliott, there was a sharp drop in natural gas production and electric use was higher than forecast in some areas during some of those cold events, according to the presentation.”

The need to weatherize power plants and other recommendations issued after previous cold weather events remain valid. If the upgrades had been fully implemented, they would have eased the problems during Winter Storm Elliott, FERC staff said.

Anticipating grid vulnerabilities is becoming harder in the face of extreme weather, said FERC Commissioner Allison Clements.

“It shows that reserve margins are an increasingly inadequate tool to predict winter sufficiency,” she said. “Two of the regions that suffered rolling outages during Winter Storm Elliott — TVA and Duke [Energy] — were not even identified in NERC’s 2022-23 winter assessment as anything more than a low risk of load shed.”

The presentation pointed not only to problems with the grid and power plants but to the natural gas system. According to Utility Dive:

NERC oversees grid reliability, but no entity is responsible for making sure the gas system is reliable, FERC acting Chairman Willie Phillips said. “I believe this is a reliability gap,” Phillips said during a media briefing. “I, once again, call for some entity to have responsibility for the gas system’s reliability. It doesn’t have to be FERC, but someone needs to have responsibility for that.”

Some FERC commissioners pointed to the role of capacity markets to address reliability concerns. Politico noted that Acting FERC Chair Willie Phillips and Clements “also argued that capacity markets are critical to maintaining reliability — even if tweaks are needed.”

“These markets are not an end to themselves,” said Clements. “They have to evolve as the market changes and it’s changing at an unprecedented pace. So it’s time for evolution.” (Capacity markets provide a kind of insurance policy. Providers pay for resources to be available to meet demand when needed.)

The forum highlighted the growing consensus among FERC commissioners that grid reliability concerns have to be paramount. However, there is a lack of obvious solutions to advance that reliability. At the very least, these concerns demonstrate that federal policy should not be jeopardizing what consumers count on most: getting the electricity they need, when they need it.

Once Again, Weather Is Crippling the Texas Grid. This Time, It’s Heat.

It’s not just the cold that threatens the power grid. “This week,” reported CNN on June 22, “it was a heat wave – triple-digit temperatures – and a tornado that had the state’s power authority, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), asking residents to cut power consumption and turn up their thermostats.”

The weather “left hundreds of thousands of people without power,” reported The Guardian.

Texas was not the only state hit hard. The Guardian stated:

Emergency crews in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, region have responded to a record number of calls owing to the heat and lack of power, according to the New York Times. In Jackson, Mississippi, residents reported not having power and air conditioning for nearly 100 hours, NBC reports.

CNN added, “In Texas, it was a predictable development, since pretty much the same thing happened last May, and forecasters had already been predicting elevated temperatures this year.”

Part of the problem is not enough gas-generated electricity, according to Peter Lake, the chairman of the state’s Public Utility Commission. According to the Texas Tribune on May 3, Lake warned presciently that “Texas’ main power grid is at risk for outages this summer if wind turbines don’t produce enough electricity when it’s needed,” which is precisely what happened in June. “He yet again made the case that more on-demand power sources, such as natural-gas-fueled power plants or batteries, need to be built to make the grid more reliable.”

ERCOT found that “the grid might not be able to meet a very high demand for power at the end of the typical workday if it coincides with extremely low wind and an extreme number of unexpected outages at other plants,” reported the Tribune. “ERCOT also found that low winds and very high demand after sunset could also cause power shortages.”

The weather “left hundreds of thousands of people without power,” reported The Guardian.

Texas was not the only state hit hard. The Guardian stated:

CNN added, “In Texas, it was a predictable development, since pretty much the same thing happened last May, and forecasters had already been predicting elevated temperatures this year.”

The call by ERCOT for cutbacks in use were reminiscent of “the fatal 2021 freeze that left millions of Texans without power, water and heat for days as ERCOT scrambled to prevent a grid collapse when an unusually large amount of generators shut,” reported Reuters on June 20

Permitting Reform Becomes Law at Last, But It’s Only a ‘Starting Point.’

Sen. Manchin’s attempts to secure permitting reform have been a long-running drama since last year, when he made a deal with President Biden to exchange his support for the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) for a vote on legislation to modernize aspects of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to speed environmental reviews and impact statements.

NEPA is an outdated statute, first passed in 1970, that requires federal agencies to issue “detailed statements” for “major federal actions significantly affecting the quality of human environment,” according to Michael Catanzaro of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

That one line, in what was originally conceived as a fairly modest, procedural statute, was expanded by President Carter in 1978 into a far more ambitious regulatory scheme. As interpreted over many decades by different agencies, administrations, and courts, the NEPA process has become, in many respects, an obstacle to efficient permitting.

Permitting reform finally became reality as part of the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, the legislation that resolved the debt ceiling crisis, signed President Biden on June 3.

But, as Catanzaro writes, the reform was a compromise, a “first step with more to come.” A critical fix to NEPA is the establishment of firm deadlines around completing environmental impact statements (EISs). The legislation in the debt ceiling bill sets two-year time-limits for EISs, and one year for more modest “environmental assessments” (EAs). But, writes Catanzaro, “there is a catch: agencies need only ‘consult’ with permit applicants in the event those deadlines will be missed. What form such consultations will take is unknown, but it creates a significant opportunity for agencies to slow walk the process.”

Among the other changes in the legislation:

Expanding the use of categorical exclusions by allowing agencies to rely on other agencies’ exclusions to avoid the preparation of a separate NEPA environmental assessment or EIS.
Narrowing agency considerations by only requiring review of “reasonably foreseeable” environmental effects.”
Streamlining: In addition to the time limits noted above, the new law requires the designation of a “lead federal agency” for projects that involve two or more agencies. It Imposes page limits of 75 pages for EAs and 150 pages for the majority of EISs and a mechanism to seek judicial review for alleged failures to comply with these deadlines.

The law firm Jenner and Block also noted some omissions in the new law: It “does not explicitly limit or otherwise address an agency’s obligation to consider climate change impacts of federal projects.” Nor does it speed judicial reviews of energy infrastructure projects that have been used in delay-to-die tactics by environmental groups.

Nor, as we noted above, does it contain provisions on expediting electric transmission lines. White House Director of Management and Budget Shalanda Young, one of the primary Biden administration negotiators, called the deal “a starting point.”

Clearly, Sen. Manchin is not satisfied with the elements of reform that emerged in May. In his opening statement at the June 1 committee hearing (see above), he cited the need for permitting changes seven times. “More needs to be done to improve federal permitting for all types of energy infrastructure, including transmission,” he said.

‘The Goal Is to Control How You Cook’: Congress Moves to Prevent a Ban on Gas Stoves

Remember when the media mocked Republicans for pointing to growing prohibitions on gas stoves back in January? A headline in The Wrap said, “‘Morning Joe’ Can’t Believe GOP Is Wasting Time on Gas Stove Debate: ‘It Makes Trump Republicans Even Dumber.’” Similarly, Newsweek on Jan. 11 headlined, “Republicans Mocked Over Outraged Claims Government ‘Coming for’ Gas Stoves.”

Well, it’s no hoax. As we reported in edition No. 24 of this newsletter, New York on May 2 became the first state in the nation to ban natural gas hook-ups for stoves and furnaces in new residential, as well as some commercial, buildings.

Under the law, “all-electric heating and cooking is required in new buildings shorter than seven stories by 2026, and in buildings taller than seven stories by 2029. The law largely impacts residential buildings, but there are “exceptions in place for commercial and industrial buildings such as restaurants and stores.”

We reported in edition No. 20 of this newsletter that the gas stove debate reached a boiling point nationally in January when a report said the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) was considering a ban on new natural gas stoves. The backlash forced CPSC Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. to tweet that the CPSC “isn’t coming for anyone’s gas stoves.” The White House also had to clarify that President Biden did not support banning the stoves.

While New York is the first state to ban natural gas hook-ups, many municipalities, including New York City, have already taken such steps – and have been met with legal challenges. On April 17, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that a Berkeley, California, ordinance “banning natural-gas lines in new construction illegally interferes with federal law.”

Now, by a bipartisan vote of 249-181, the U.S. House has passed the Save Our Gas Stoves Act, which, according to Energy & Commerce Committee Chair Rodgers will “explicitly prohibit the U.S. Department of Energy from issuing regulations that would effectively ban gas stoves.”

In addition on June 14, the House passed the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act, which bars “the Consumer Products Safety Commission from using federal funds to regulate gas stoves as a banned hazardous product and prohibits imposing or enforcing any consumer product safety standard on gas stoves that would result in a prohibition on gas stoves or otherwise substantially increase the price.” That one passed, 248-180 with 29 Democratic votes.

Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), sponsor of the Gas Stove Protection legislation, said of his bill: “We know the motivation of the CPSC and throughout this entire administration is a green climate push. The goal is to dictate how you live every aspect of your life — how you save and invest for the future by pushing ESG, how you drive by banning gas-powered cars, and now the goal is to control how you cook.”

Critics Say Tailpipe Emission Rules Prematurely Push Americans to Electric Vehicles, Causing Strain on the Grid and Lower Tax Revenues

Republican Members of both Houses have written letters to EPA Administrator Michael Regan, calling on him to withdraw the agency tailpipe regulations for cars and heavy-duty trucks. As Politico reported, “EPA announced separate greenhouse gas limits for cars and trucks in April. While the rules wouldn’t force companies to build electric vehicles and wouldn’t kick in until model year 2027, they’re projected to speed up the electrification of the transportation sector.”

One letter, sent May 25 by 26 of the Senate’s 48 Republican Senators, said the proposals overstep the EPA’s authority and would lead to higher costs and other unintended consequences.

The Senators pointed out that the Supreme Court last year had limited EPA’s regulatory authority in its decision on power plant emissions, West Virginia v. EPA. “If finalized, these proposals will effectively require a wholesale conversion from powering vehicles with widely available liquid fuel to charging BEVs [battery electric vehicles] off our nation’s electric grid,” said the letter, led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

A similar letter about the emissions rules went to Regan from 151 House Republicans.

The letters raised concerns about the reliability of an electric grid strained by demands from BEVs (especially at a time when experts are warning of premature power plant retirements, as we noted above), the lack of available charging infrastructure, disregard for consumer choice and affordability, harm to domestic auto manufacturing jobs and profitability, a cut in tax revenues to provide adequate roads, and an over-reliance on China for critical minerals.

In a Washington Examiner column on May 31, economist Ben Zycher of the American Enterprise Institute wrote:

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation in its 2023 Summer Reliability Assessment estimates that all of the U.S., except for parts of the Southeast, Middle Atlantic, and Northeast, already face the “potential for insufficient operating reserves in above-normal conditions.” This is before implementation of the EPA proposals for a massive supply decrease for the power supply system and a massive power demand increase for the transportation sector. Both EPA proposals would exacerbate reliability challenges for the electric grid.

In proposing accelerated closure of dispatchable electricity generation through the power plant rule, critics say the EPA clearly didn’t take into account the implications of the tailpipe emissions rule. How will electric vehicles get their charging power with so many coal and natural gas plants forced to close?

A just released study by the Pacific Research Institute, the publisher of this newsletter, examined California’s plan to phase out natural gas and nuclear electricity generation by 2045 while simultaneously mandating that all new passenger cars and light trucks sold in California be zero-emission vehicles by 2035. The results found that total generation will fall 21.1 percent short of total electricity demand.

Other criticisms have been raised in recent weeks. The Washington Examiner reported that five Attorneys General from western states argued the proposed rules would jeopardize a critical source of funding for new transportation infrastructure and restrict necessary expansions and upgrades to America’s roads. “More EVs and fewer combustion engines mean lower fuel demand and therefore less tax revenue from retail fuel,” said the Examiner.

Lower tax revenues “would place significant downward pressure on highway and bridge investment, which already faces an investment backlog of $786 billion,” the states of Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming said in published comments to EPA last week, citing Department of Transportation estimates.

The states proposed that the EPA strengthen the emissions regulations for vehicles more slowly than proposed. “A more gradual approach,” they said, “would provide policymakers more time to consider and find ways to make up for HTF [Highway Trust Fund] revenue loss caused by EPA tailpipe emission rules so as to better fund needed highway investments that provide so much public benefit.”

And Yet Another Rule to Reduce Fossil Fuel Production, This Time Using Conservation as Leverage

It’s not just the EPA. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has proposed a rule that appears to be a backdoor method of restricting oil and natural gas leasing. The rule, proposed in April, would elevate conservation to a “use” under the Federal Land Planning Management Act (FLPMA) and thus allow for increased protection of “Areas of Environmental Concern.”

The rule, whose comment period has been extended through July 5, would put conservation on a par as a public lands use with livestock grazing, energy development and recreation.

According to a BLM press release:

The proposed Public Lands Rule provides tools for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to improve the resilience of public lands in the face of a changing climate; conserve important wildlife habitat and intact landscapes; plan for development; and better recognize unique cultural and natural resources on public lands.

Conservation goals should be encouraged, but the rulemaking takes an expansive view of BLM’s authority and lacks clarity. For example, it is unclear whether conservation and other land use issues will be equal or whether conservation is prioritized.

Currently, only about 23 million acres of the 700 million acres of federal lands are currently leased for natural gas and oil development, and tools like the National Historic Preservation Act already allow for preservation of critical areas.

Federal lands account for 11% of U.S. oil production and 9% of natural gas production. These are significant amounts. Federal onshore leasing is important; it’s not optional.

The Biden administration held its first onshore energy lease sale in May after an 11-month delay. According to a Fox Business report:

The BLM has repeatedly failed to hold consistent lease sales as required under federal mineral statutes. The Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 states that lease sales “shall be held for each State where eligible lands are available at least quarterly.”

The BLM rulemaking is facing scrutiny from members of Congress. Rep. John Curtis (R-UT) has sponsored legislation, marked up on June 21, that would force BLM to withdraw the proposal. “This rule would devastate rural economies across the West,” said Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR), the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, at a hearing earlier this month. “Under the guise of conservation, the rule would only further this Administration’s radical preservationist agenda.”

According to a report in Roll Call on June 21:

Republicans say the administration is attempting to…lock westerners out of nearby public lands. South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem and Wyoming Republican Gov. Mark Gordon opposed the rule at the hearing last week. Some livestock, fossil fuel and renewable energy groups have also expressed concerns about the proposal.

The National Association of Counties said that the “BLM would fundamentally change the BLM’s multiple-use mandate under FLPMA without input from Congress.” Sixteen Republican Senators raised similar concerns in a May 11 letter to BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning.