With help from Kelsey Tamborrino, Annie Snider, Alex Guillén and Sam Mintz

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Quick Fix

— National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy told POLITICO some of President Joe Biden’s loftiest climate change proposals might not make it into final infrastructure legislation, but said Biden’s still "going for it."

— The White House has pressed for actions both big and small to fight climate change, but Biden's legacy on the issue is largely up to Congress and whether it will put the power of the purse behind the effort.

— Infrastructure talks with Senate Republicans collapsed on Tuesday, but Democrats are signaling they’ll pursue a dual-bill plan to move priority bills, including those dealing with climate change, through the Senate.

IS THIS THING ON? I'm your host, Anthony Adragna, back in the host chair for this beloved newsletter for the rest of the week. Bracewell’s Frank Maisano was the first to know Elgie Rousseau Stover, who is heard in “What’s Going On?” opening chatter, also catered for former President Bill Clinton and Secret Service. For today: Who preceded Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) in the Senate following Sen. Robert Byrd’s death in 2010? (Perennial reminder: No Googling!) Send your tips, energy gossip and comments to [email protected].

Check out the POLITICO Energy podcast — all the energy and environmental politics and policy news you need to start your day, in just five minutes. Listen and subscribe for free at politico.com/energy-podcast. On today’s episode: Colonial Pipeline’s CEO in the congressional hot seat.

Driving the Day

FACING (POLITICAL) REALITY: National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy acknowledged in an interview with POLITICO that some of the climate change provisions like a clean energy standard might ultimately fall out of eventual infrastructure legislation, but that the administration would be “going for it” to deliver the loftiest climate package possible, Pro’s Zack Colman reports.

"I think a lot of people have concerns," McCarthy told Zack. "We have concerns about whether we're going to meet the moment in the kind of bold way in which President Biden knows we have to."

McCarthy made clear the administration would fight tooth and nail for all of its climate change provisions, even if they don't all make it into the legislation. "While every piece like a clean electricity standard may not end [up] in the final version, we know that it is necessary, we know that the utilities want it, we are going to fight like crazy to make sure that it's in there. And then we're going to be open to a range of other investment strategies," she said.

Key quote: “[Biden] continues to support everything that he's put on the table. I just don't want people to think that a loss of any one thing, or a reduction in the cost, is going to be the end of the discussion."

The comments come as climate hawks, like Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, are growing publicly anxious about prospects for significant climate change legislation. The Rhode Island Democrat told ME in a brief interview on Tuesday he’d received outreach from the White House after airing his worries in a Twitter thread Monday, but said there’s called it a “longer conversation” to be had about what the Biden team needs to do to address his concerns.

BIDEN'S CLIMATE VISION IN CONGRESS' HANDS: It's no secret that Biden wants to be the climate president. He's stocked his administration with climate heavyweights, set ambitious goals, issued a spate of executive actions and called for huge investments in his infrastructure proposal. But so far Congress hasn't put it to paper, and climate hawks are growing nervous that what emerges in any infrastructure bill may be underwhelming.

The administration has rolled out actions both big and small to help speed a transition to clean energy and slash carbon emissions, but the hundreds of billions Biden wants from Congress would be the most important achievement — if the White House can thread the needle on Capitol Hill, Michael Grunwald writes.

“Look, no one ever thought this would be easy,” said Jamal Raad, executive director of Evergreen Action, an influential group formed by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s former climate aides. “But we’ve got to get this done if we’re serious about meeting the commitments we just made to the international community, and right now is make-or-break time.”

On the Hill

MUDDLING THROUGH THE MALAISE: The White House said Tuesday it will continue to negotiate with a bipartisan group of senators. But barring a breakthrough, Democrats are hinting they’ve changed strategies: They may now pass one package of bipartisan measures and push through more controversial provisions, like ones on climate change, via reconciliation.

“We will just pursue two paths and at some point they will join,” Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters.

Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Tom Carper told reporters he had spoken with his House counterpart, Rep. Peter DeFazio, and expected a bigger bill with more climate provisions to emerge from the House. “The more traditional stuff — roads, highways, bridges, rail, ports, safety, all that stuff, broadband — that would be handled through regular order,” Carper said. “Then if we’re unable to also do the other issues that the president has characterized as infrastructure, [we’d] come back and do those in a different way.”

AND YET: The House Transportation Committee will mark up the bill put forward by DeFazio in a hearing today that is likely to stretch into Thursday, extended by either extensive amendments or Republican frustration. Dozens of amendments have already been posted to the committee website, with many more expected; Pro Transportation’s Tanya Snyder has a preview.

The committee will also mark up H.R. 1915, Democrats’ sweeping bill to pour $40 billion into the Clean Water State Revolving Fund and authorize a series of grant and assistance programs, allowing the chambers to go to conference alongside the Senate’s bipartisan water infrastructure bill (S. 914). (Drinking water issues fall under the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is advancing its own legislation for those programs.)

Although the House bill has won backing from two moderate Republicans, GOP leaders on the committee have criticized Democrats’ move to advance it as-is, rather than return to bipartisan negotiations. “There was common ground to be found, both on providing robust but practical funding levels, and finding ways to relieve some of the burdens that communities face,” ranking member Sam Graves (R-Mo.) will say in opening remarks obtained by ME.

METHANE CRA ON THE MOVE: The House Energy and Commerce Committee announced it would hold a markup Thursday on a Congressional Review Act resolution H.J. Res. 34 (117) axing a Trump-era methane rule, indicating Congress is inching closer to nullifying its first Trump regulation. “The methane rule rollback helped no one except a small group of the worst corporate polluters and sold out Americans’ right to clean air in the process,” Chair Frank Pallone said in a statement. The panel will also mark up four energy cybersecurity measures.

BUDGET HEARINGS GALORE: EPA Administrator Michael Regan will be on the Hill this morning for a budget hearing with the Senate Appropriations Interior-EPA subcommittee. Top officials from the Army Corps of Engineers are also set to appear before that committee’s energy and water subcommittee today to defend the Biden administration’s plan to transform the Corps as it takes up the task of implementing climate and environmental justice policies.

BEFORE A SKEPTICAL SENATE: Colonial Pipeline CEO Joseph Blount, in his first appearance since a ransomware attack shut down the key fuel artery for five days in early May, defended his decision to pay hackers a $4.4 million ransom, telling skeptical lawmakers he was trying to avoid even more disastrous consequences, Pro Cyber’s Eric Geller reports.

He’ll be back: Blount testifies before the House Homeland Security Committee today at noon.

NEW WAVE OF INTEREST IN OCEANS BILL: House Natural Resources Committee Chair Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) led a group of House Democrats in introducing a massive bill modernizing federal ocean management policy to account for the effects of climate change. This version incorporates 1,600 public comments from the bill offered last Congress and includes a 5-cent tax on new, unrecycled plastic in manufactured single-use products.

Hot docs: Bill text. Section-by-section. Changes from prior version.

Around the Agencies

HERE SHE BLOWS? The Biden administration this week will take the first step toward bringing offshore wind power to the Gulf of Mexico's Outer Continental Shelf, Pro’s Kelsey Tamborrino reports, a notable development in an area that’s traditionally produced oil and gas, not renewables. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will publish a request for information on possible leasing locations off the coasts of Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama.

What We're Reading

IEA: CLEAN ENERGY INVESTMENT NEEDED IN DEVELOPING ECONOMIES: The world's climate future is dependent on the decisions made in emerging economies in Africa, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia, the International Energy Agency argued in a new report today, released in collaboration with the World Bank and World Economic Forum. According to the report, annual clean energy technology investments in these economies need to increase to more than $1 trillion by 2030 to put the world on track to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Those same investments declined by 8 percent to less than $150 billion in 2020, with only a partial rebound in 2021, the report said.

RESEARCHERS MODEL VEHICLE POLLUTION IN ACELA CORRIDOR: Tailpipe-related pollution caused an estimated 7,100 premature deaths in 2016 in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, with much of that pollution crossing state lines, according to a new study published in Environmental Research Letters. The authors said this new, detailed modeling of the damages from specific pollutants and classes of vehicles could help policymakers target regional efforts to curb interstate transportation pollution. Among other things, the study found that electrifying buses in the New York City region would provide the biggest “biggest bang for the buck” in terms of health benefits, while curbing ammonia emissions — a byproduct of catalytic converters — would offer 75 to 90 times more health savings per ton than reducing nitrogen oxide emissions.

FOR YOUR RADAR: U.S. liquefied natural gas produced from Rocky Mountain basins and exported from the West Coast could slash net life cycle emissions by 42 to 55 percent if used to replace coal-fired power generation in Asia, according to a study released Tuesday by the Western States and Tribal Nations Natural Gas Initiative. At the high end, displacing coal in South Korea and Japan could reduce their emissions by 54.8 percent and 52.1percent, respectively.

Mail Call

FIRST IN ME — ‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH’: The League of Conservation Voters for the first time is calling for the Senate to abolish the filibuster in order to pass sweeping voting rights legislation S. 1 (117). “While the filibuster has been used for good in the past, today the filibuster is not a tool to foster compromise on Capitol Hill,” Gene Karpinski, the group’s president, writes in a letter obtained by your host. In an unusual move, the group is guaranteeing the vote will be included in its annual scorecard. (The last vote the group promised would appear on the scorecard was senators’ vote on the confirmation of Trump-era EPA Secretary Scott Pruitt.)

WALLED OFF: More than 90 environmental and community groups wrote to Senate Appropriations leaders on Tuesday to use upcoming spending bills to “begin to remediate the devastating harms that border wall construction and militarization have inflicted on communities and wildlife in the borderlands.”

DESPERATELY SEEKING FUNDING: A group of nearly 50 environmental groups are asking congressional appropriators to provide “at least $3.3 billion to be appropriated for direct international climate change programs” in a letter released this morning.

AGAINST THE GRAIN: Two dozen New Mexico state legislators wrote Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland a letter in “strong support” of the administration’s pause on new oil and gas leases. “Planning for economic diversification and reducing the volatility of boom-and-bust cycles on our budget making is in the best interest of our state’s priorities such as education and health care,” they write.

The Grid

— “As Biden’s BLM pick awaits confirmation, its Grand Junction headquarters sit empty,” via Colorado Newsline

— “Mine along Pa.-West Virginia border to close with hundreds of jobs lost,” via Pittsburgh Business Times

— “Alaska Native corporation to protect its land, dealing blow to massive gold mine project,” via Washington Post

— “Advanced nuclear tech in 'early innings' but essential to widespread decarbonization, utility execs say,” via Utility Dive

— ”One Oil Company’s Rocky Path to Renewable Energy,” via Wall Street Journal.

THAT'S ALL FOR ME!

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