Energy News Beat Publishers Note: In order to elevate people from poverty they need access to clean, reliable, and affordable energy. While going green is a good thing, it needs to be done with a fiscal, and environmentally, correct methodology. The swift actions taken appear to have devastating impacts to the economy and ultimately the disproportionately impacted communities. Listening to all sides of the discustion and having a “Balanced Diet of Power” to include renewables, nuclear, and fossil fuels will get the job done.
Oil and gas companies knew they would face a fight with President Joe Biden, who had campaigned on tackling climate change. Nobody expected fossil fuel to come under such an immediate attack.
Biden didn’t quietly sidetrack the Keystone XL pipeline with legal maneuvers. The new president yanked the permit on his very first day in office, blocking a project that would have delivered crude from Alberta’s oil sands before even speaking to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
He didn’t simply rejoin the Paris climate pact, as he promised during the campaign, but had his climate advisor, Gina McCarthy, commit Wednesday to “the most aggressive” carbon cut the U.S. can make. That came just before Biden signed a climate-related executive order suspending new oil and gas leases on public lands, directing federal agencies to purchase electric cars by the thousands and seeking to end fossil-fuel subsidies.
Next Biden wants to eliminate net greenhouse gas emissions from power plants by 2035, a timetable some utility executives consider too difficult and expensive to meet. Climate activists are now waging a “ war on gas,” fighting pipelines and pushing cities to ban the fuel’s use in new buildings—and Biden’s early moves align with these goals.
“In my view we’ve already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis,” Biden said in his speech Wednesday that elevated global heating to an “existential threat” with national security consequences. His immediate actions will make easier the job of his climate envoy, former Secretary of State John Kerry, as the U.S. seeks to regain the respect and trust of world and re-establish itself as a climate leader. On Wednesday, Kerry expounded on the new administration’s policies in a video address to members the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, warning that gas pipelines risk becoming “stranded assets” in three decades or less.
While some executives may balk at Biden’s timeline, large utility companies have been making their own public plans to neutralize their carbon emissions by mid-century. This group includes Duke Energy Corp. and Dominion Energy Inc., giant companies with much at stake under Biden’s climate agenda.
Biden is also weaving climate considerations into decision-making across the federal government, not just a handful of departments, under an order signed Wednesday that makes global warming a pillar of U.S. policy in both foreign and national affairs. His directives established a National Climate Task Force, with members drawn from 21 federal departments and agencies. The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions nonprofit group, said Biden’s order demonstrate a “whole-of-government approach to tackling the climate challenge.”
