OPINION:
The campaign trail is wearisome, and politicians frequently attempt to take shortcuts to victory by making promises they cannot possibly keep. Few have the gall to utter nonsense, but President Biden clearly does. His pre-election statements about the future of U.S. energy, made while promoting fellow Democrats, have been sheer lunacy. Though Election Day has come and gone, Mr. Biden’s fantastical musings mustn’t remain untouched by reality.
Mr. Biden let fly with rhetorical folly on Sunday while stumping for Democrats in New York. Responding to a sign amid the crowd reading, “5 more years of drilling is a lose-lose!” the president waved off the apparent criticism of his energy policy, retorting, “No more drilling. There is no more drilling. I haven’t formed any new drilling.”
Did the president let slip his true intentions for the nation’s fossil fuel future, or did he slip into untethered reverie? He has indeed curtailed leases for oil and gas drilling on federal land, and his administration released a five-year offshore leasing proposal in July that contains an option that, if enacted, would ban new offshore drilling leases. The proposal explains “a roadmap to net-zero emissions by 2050 for the global energy sector would require no new investment in fossil fuel supply projects.”
If Mr. Biden is sincere about “no more drilling,” he has been deceiving Americans by claiming to “work like the devil to bring gas prices down.” A bit of devilry could explain how he has presided over a surge in the price of gas from $2.39 to the current level of $3.80.
No matter the president’s musings over drilling, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) fully expects U.S. electricity generated from natural gas to slip only slightly from the current 37% to 34% by 2050.
Earlier on Friday, Mr. Biden told a receptive audience in California that coal-burning power plants are too expensive to operate and that “no one is building new coal plants because they can’t rely on it, even if they have all the coal guaranteed for the rest of their existence of the plant.”
To be sure, government regulations meant to clean smokestack exhaust can be expensive, but U.S. industry is adept at coping with environmental requirements. Vows of destruction hurled by the president of the United States are another matter. New coal plant construction has not suffered due to a lack of reliability but rather a loss of viability — owing to the pledges to kill coal made by Mr. Biden, and Barack Obama before him.
Aside from its dictatorial nature, the White House war on coal is, in the words of Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin from coal-country West Virginia, “divorced from reality.”
Coal currently generates 23% of the nation’s electricity, according to the EIA. In 2050, coal is forecast to still produce a 10% share. If there is a reliability problem, it stems from the president’s inability to keep it real.
Americans should simply tune out President Biden’s silly energy pronouncements and count on fossil fuels to play a central role in the nation’s energy future.
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