Environment & Energy Congressional Round-Up | June 15 - June 19, 2026

Highlights:

The Senate passed the Saving the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Act of 2026 (S.4822) to block the dismantling of deep-sea monitoring instruments. Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Ark.) introduced the bill as a response to the National Science Foundation’s plan to remove the OOI’s sensors, which provide real-time and publicly accessible data for fishery management and coastal communities on marine climate and weather events.

The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources advanced the America the Beautiful Act (S.1547) to strengthen the maintenance of national parks and public lands. The bill, introduced by Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Angus King (I-Maine), aims to reauthorize and bolster the National Park Service’s Legacy Restoration Fund, which provides crucial investments to maintain and support national parks and public lands. 

Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) introduced S.4827 to reauthorize the Preventing Outages With Enhanced Resilience and Operations Nationwide (POWER ON) Act. Following Winter Storm Uri in 2021, the Act was introduced to establish the U.S. Department of Energy’s Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships Program, which helps to weatherize electric grids across the country. To learn more, check out EESI’s Rapid Readout on winter storm impacts on communities and the grid.

To catch up on all of the recent environmental and energy legislation in Congress, read the pdf here.