Illustration: Gabriella Turrisi/Axios
Roll out the red carpet and let the trumpets sound (they're currently playing taps for the CR). It's time for the annual Axios Pro Energy Policy Awards!
1. Biggest winner: The nuclear industry
- Nuclear's Hill revival has only ramped up over the past year, especially with passage of the ADVANCE Act.
- While other energy industries are seeing partisan fights and threats to their subsidies, nuclear is seeing bipartisan legislation get floor votes — and talk of even more money to build out reactors.
2. Biggest loser: Permitting legislation
- Sen. Joe Manchin and others spent more than two years trying to get a bipartisan permitting overhaul over the finish line.
- Sure, this Congress made some changes to NEPA in last year's debt-ceiling deal. But broader legislation looks pretty dead right now.
3. Biggest surprise: Natural Resources Committee drama
- We weren't surprised to see Rep. Jared Huffman's play for the top Democratic slot. We were surprised to see just how it played out.
- Rep. Raúl Grijalva had planned to stay in the role for one more Congress and then backed another challenger — Rep. Melanie Stansbury — after he eventually dropped his own bid.
4. Best hallway interviewee: Sen. Shelley Moore Capito
- Capito is almost always willing to engage in a substantive conversation about policy, even when she's in a rush to votes. And she answers questions straightforwardly.
- When asked about nuclear after ADVANCE passed, she dived into its provisions: "We've got to get [NRC] working on this in a way that's effective, and I think that's what this bill will do.… There's also a prize in there to incentivize innovation. I think that will spark a lot of research and development."
5. Best quote: "The newbies will come to discover the deliberative process," Rep. Marcy Kaptur said earlier this month of Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and their allies.
- We were thinking about this one during Wednesday's Musk-driven spending debacle. (She's been in Congress since Musk was a preteen and two years before Ramaswamy was born.)
6. Funniest member: Huffman
- Huffman's always good for a pithy quote — even when he's being a little evasive.
- During his bid for Natural Resources, we spotted him in the Speaker's Lobby talking to Chair Bruce Westerman and later asked Huffman what they discussed. "Oh, just the weather," Huffman replied.
7. Biggest mystery: Sen. Mike Lee
- The incoming Energy and Natural Resources chair isn't keen on hallway interviews and hasn't said much publicly yet about what he wants to do with the gavel.
8. Jeopardy music award: 45V hydrogen tax credit guidance
- Tick, tick, tick.… It's been almost a year since the Biden administration issued its draft guidance for the incentive.
- Perhaps they wanted to wait until after the election for the final iteration. But do we really need to do this days before Christmas?
9. Energy expert with the most publicists (including himself): Neil Chatterjee
- The former FERC chair and Senate staffer regularly pops up in reporters' email inboxes, on far-flung panels and TV spots, and occasionally with controversial late-night X posts.
10. Most surprising last song: Sen. John Barrasso
- When we asked Barrasso for his back in April, we weren't expecting Neil Young.
- But he told us he had just been plowing snow back home in Wyoming on Casper Mountain and thinking about "Sugar Mountain."
