The EPA isn’t here to fight climate change (with Lee Zeldin)

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Presented by AHIP. Health plans work every day to shield Americans from high and rising costs by negotiating lower prices from providers and drug makers and protecting consumers against unexpected medical bills. Learn more at ahip.org.

**Lee Zeldin** (0:15)
I'm passionate on behalf of all the Americans who feel like there hasn't been common sense applied enough with agencies over the course of the year. I'm speaking on behalf of the Americans who don't feel like the federal government is heating their economic demands.

**Dasha Burns** (0:36)
Hello, hello, and welcome to The Conversation. I'm Dasha Burns. And every week on this show, I talk to the most compelling and sometimes unexpected power players in Washington and beyond.
This week, I sat down with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin during a live taping of our show at Politico's Energy Summit. Now, Zeldin has been a lightning rod as Environmental Protection Agency head. His EPA is less interested in reduced, reuse, recycle and more focused on cutting regulatory red tape.

**Lee Zeldin** (1:05)
EPA will be reconsidering many suffocating rules that restrict nearly every sector of our economy and cost Americans trillions of dollars.

**Dasha Burns** (1:15)
Between the rapid rise of data centers supporting artificial intelligence and the ongoing war in Iran, energy usage on the national grid and at the gas pub is at the core of some of the most relevant challenges facing the United States.

**Lee Zeldin** (1:28)
What we won't do is say that protecting the environment and growing the economy is a binary choice and that we have to choose one or the other.

**Dasha Burns** (1:37)
I asked Zeldin how he sees the EPA's role in this changing energy landscape and as part of that, if he thinks his agency has a responsibility to address climate change. But before we get into the interview, please take a moment to subscribe wherever you're listening or watching. Your support really helps the show. And now Lee Zeldin joins The Conversation.
Thank you, everyone, for being here. Thank you, Lee Zeldin, EPA Administrator. Thank you so much, Mr. Zeldin, for joining The Conversation live here at the Politico Energy Summit. Always love doing a podcast live, it adds a little excitement, doesn't it?
I do want to start with the war in Iran because you are a member of the President's Energy Dominance Council, so I have to ask about the impacts there. You know, oil inventories are running dangerously low due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, gas prices are up 40%, inflation is up 4.2%, that just came out today. It's the fastest pace in over three years, largely due to energy prices. You've talked a lot about US energy dominance and independence, but if a conflict thousands of miles away can add a dollar to the price of a gallon of gas in the US., does that suggest we're a long way away from that?

**Lee Zeldin** (2:53)
You know, our focus in the EPA, I'm a member of the National Energy Dominance Council, we have some important regulatory oversight, opportunities, ways that we're able to help bring down prices, and that's been our primary focus. For example, we have the Quanto BC oil and gas regulations.
We've gone through a multiple phased process, first with extending the Quanto BC deadlines that were coming into fruition this year, but then also reconsidering Quanto BC.

**Dasha Burns** (3:26)
For those who don't know what that is, can you explain in layman's terms?

**Lee Zeldin** (3:29)
Sure, for flaring, methane, the operations for producers and for the wells, it's a regulation that in 2024, there was some changes made, but clearly the agency wasn't engaging with the regulated community, so there were various unintended consequences. I'll give the benefit of the doubt to those who had drafted the last rule. So we received that feedback. We go through a public comment period. We want to be deliberate and smart with how we do it.
And so we're going through multiple phases of a reconsideration to be able to get Quanto BC right.

**Dasha Burns** (4:09)
But I do want to understand, sir, has the Iran war sort of changed the thinking or changed the understanding of energy dominance and independence here in the United States?

**Lee Zeldin** (4:20)
I was in Tokyo with the National Energy Dominance Council, 17 Indo-Pacific countries.
And this was going on in March. We had energy ministers there from most of these countries, as well as other leaders in their government. And they're looking at the future of their country. They want to diversify their supply chain. They're looking at how long it takes them to be able to get their energy supplies from the Middle East, where they haven't had freedom of navigation. And for some of these countries, they already have the experience of tapping into US energy exports. Others have been watching, and they're realizing it takes less time, far less time, with total freedom of navigation. For example, in Japan, the Japanese are saying it takes them 28 days to get their supplies from the Middle East without total freedom of navigation. They've been getting their supplies from Alaska for decades. It takes eight days, and they've always had total freedom of navigation. So impacts of what's going on in the Middle East, there is a much greater desire for so many other countries to be able to look to US supplies. So unleashing energy dominance is not just big for Americans to tap into American supplies. Unleashing energy dominance is also big for the United States to be able to export. Better for our economy, better for our national security.