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President Biden’s green energy agenda has hiked gas prices, threatened the stability of the power grid and added $1 trillion in new regulatory costs on businesses and consumers, a new House committee report found.
The Biden administration has prioritized ending the use of fossil fuels and eliminating so-called greenhouse gas emissions, implementing its agenda with a whole-of-government approach that, according to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, is damaging the economy and hurting consumers already struggling with high inflation and rising housing costs.
Gas prices, for example, soared under the Biden administration from $2.39 per gallon the day Mr. Biden took office to a record-high national average of more than $5 per gallon in June 2022.
The current average price per gallon is $3.54 and, in a bid to lower prices, Mr. Biden recently tapped into the nation’s emergency oil reserves for the second time in his presidency.
The Republican-led panel blamed the high costs on Mr. Biden’s energy policies, beginning on his first day in office when he canceled the permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline and imposed a moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal land.
“The Biden administration weaponized the power of the executive branch to wage a war against American-made energy production and cement in place radical, far-left energy policies that jeopardize domestic energy development, overload America’s power grid, and raise costs on all American consumers and businesses,” Oversight Chairman James Comer, Kentucky Republican, said after releasing the 33-page report.
Mr. Biden has made implementing green energy policies a top priority, setting a 2030 target for the United States to cut in half “economy-wide” net greenhouse gas pollution from 2005 levels.
The president promised his clean energy initiatives would not only help the environment but also boost the economy along with other benefits.
“Climate change poses an existential threat, but responding to this threat offers an opportunity to support good-paying, union jobs, strengthen America’s working communities, protect public health, and advance environmental justice,” White House officials announced shortly after Mr. Biden took office.
The Oversight report concluded the Biden administration’s initiatives aimed at curbing fossil fuels have not been beneficial and are instead setting the nation on a path to economic disaster and threatening the stability of the power grid.
The report outlines a trove of documents the panel forced the Biden administration to turn over that lawmakers say show the Environmental Protection Agency and other Biden officials “willfully disregarding the cost and legality” of new power plant rules announced this year. The rules will require coal and new gas-fired power plants to reduce nearly all emissions by 2032.
The documents obtained by the panel include anonymous “critical feedback” from officials at various federal agencies questioning whether the power plant rules provide workable alternatives to coal and natural gas and expressing concerns that the rules will increase energy costs and lead to power shortages.
The Oversight report accuses the Biden administration of distorting the electricity markets by pumping hundreds of billions of dollars in federal subsidies into intermittent renewable energy generation, mainly wind and solar.
The subsidies were passed in the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed in 2022 in the Democrat-led House and Senate without any Republican support.
The bill included $369 billion to address “energy security and climate change.”
Travis Fisher, director of Energy and Environmental Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, told Congress in March the unlimited subsidies artificially manipulate the energy market for natural gas, nuclear and coal and could cost taxpayers $3 trillion by the year 2050.
The report also criticized the Biden administration’s push to electrify the nation and eliminate natural gas, gasoline and other fossil fuels even as the demand for power has strained the nation’s electrical grid.
The administration in March announced strict new caps on tailpipe emissions that would require half of all new cars sold in the U.S. to be zero-emission, electric vehicles. It’s also seeking to electrify buildings that use fossil fuels and end the use of natural gas for cooking and heating.
The additional electric vehicles, stoves and heat pumps will push up the cost of electricity, which, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has risen faster than the pace of inflation.
Rising costs are a number-one concern among voters and have contributed to Mr. Biden’s low approval ratings.
His GOP opponent, former President Donald Trump, has pledged to expand American energy production by permitting new oil and gas leases and ending the regulatory restrictions Mr. Biden imposed on the fossil-fuel sector, the automobile industry and appliance manufacturers.
Mr. Biden isn’t backing down on his green energy agenda.
Climate change is an increasing concern among the young voters Mr. Biden hopes to rally in his reelection bid.
The president has framed his actions as “historic” and aimed at countering the so-called climate crisis, which he said “is the existential threat to humanity.”
Announcing the new tailpipe emission limits in March, the Biden administration said the rule would curb more than 7 million tons of carbon emissions and provide $13 billion in health benefits due to improved air quality.
“With transportation as the largest source of U.S. climate emissions, these strongest-ever pollution standards for cars solidify America’s leadership in building a clean transportation future and creating good-paying American jobs, all while advancing President Biden’s historic climate agenda,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said.
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