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 Nick 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 this month of Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and their allies.

• We were thinking about this one during yesterday'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, Nick spotted him in the Speaker's Lobby talking to Chair Bruce Westerman, so he 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 X posts.

🎶 10. Most surprising last song: Sen. John Barrasso

• When we asked Barrasso for his 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."

The bipartisan spending agreement's demise leaves an uncertain path to funding the government by tomorrow and likely dooms hundreds of pages of year-end policy agreements, Nick writes.

Why it matters: The CR agreement was carrying legislation to allow year-round sales of high ethanol fuel, as well as disaster relief and aid for farmers.

Driving the news: Republican leadership may now try to move a clean CR that extends spending through mid-March and perhaps includes disaster relief.

• But President-elect Trump is demanding that Congress pass a debt-limit bill — which wasn't part of initial CR negotiations — on "Biden's watch."

Between the lines: The original deal would have allowed year-round sales of E15, a major priority for Midwestern lawmakers and the ethanol industry.

• E15 is blended with 10.5% to 15% ethanol, but under current law, it's often not sold in the summer to limit smog. 

What's next: We'll keep you posted on where things go from here as Congress barrels towards a holiday shutdown.

🚗 1. Hitting the brakes: Congressional Republicans panned the EPA's move to back California's plans to phase out gas-powered cars starting in 2035.

• Capito pledged to reverse the "extreme EV mandate" that "imposes unrealistic, stringent requirements."

💻 2. Data center caution: Senate Democrats urged the White House to reconsider a potential executive action to fast-track data center buildout.

🎉 3. Officially official: Senate Democrats made announcements yesterday on committee ranking member slots: Sheldon Whitehouse for Environment and Public Works, and Martin Heinrich for Energy and Natural Resources.

🗳️ 4. WRDA-ful news: The Senate passed the final Water Resources Development Act yesterday 97–1, sending it to President Biden's desk.

🎯 5. Targeted: The Biden administration today put out new and further-reaching national greenhouse gas reduction goals just a month before Trump's inauguration.

• Read more here from Axios' Andrew Freedman.

"The president-elect will be around when there are ribbon-cuttings for these new facilities and these investments, and so I would think he would want to participate in that celebration — and perhaps take credit."