- The Supreme Court denies an effort by state attorneys general to prevent the Biden Administration’s power plant rules from going into effect, but the story is far from over.
- This winter could once again see extreme cold, and NERC is worried about natural gas supplies.
- A House bill would send projects that improve grid reliability to the head of the regulatory queue.
- In the Mid-Atlantic and other states, solar projects – with power that is not dispatchable – are dominating.
- Tech firms such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google are making innovative efforts to secure their own power to provide electricity for AI data centers.
- Where does candidate Kamala Harris stand on key energy policies?
Supreme Court Declines to Block Biden’s New Power Plant Emission Rules – For Now
The Supreme Court on Oct. 16 ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can go ahead with its new regulations on power plants fueled by natural gas and coal. CNN said the court handed President Biden “a surprise victory.”
The court “rejected emergency requests brought by Republican states led by West Virginia and various industry groups seeking to block the regulation,” reported NBC News. The states had argued that responding to the EPA regulations would not be feasible, given the current state of technology, so power plants would have to close, jeopardizing U.S. energy security at a time when demand for electricity is increasing.
The Administration was pleased. An EPA spokesman said, “We look forward to implementing this rule, which is based on proven and cost-effective control technologies, to secure up to $370 billion in climate and public health net benefits over the next two decades.”
But the regulations remain in doubt. In a short brief, the Supreme Court merely denied the request for an emergency stay. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that, in his view, “the applicants have shown a strong likelihood of success on the merits,” but because the new rules won’t go into effect until June 2025, the plaintiffs “are unlikely to suffer irreparable harm” before the U.S. Court of Appeals—which has fast-tracked the case—decides on the merits.
Thus, wrote Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court “understandably denies the stay applications for now.” But the plaintiffs can come back if there is an adverse ruling. Justice Samuel Alito concurred with Kavanaugh.
“This is not the end of this case,” said West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey in a statement. The new EPA rule “strips the states of important discretion while forcing plants to use technologies that don’t work in the real world.”
Politico noted that the court’s ruling echoed “similar decisions in early October when it declined to stay a rule limiting mercury and other air toxics from coal-fired power plants and a separate regulation imposing sweeping methane reduction requirements on the oil and gas industry.” Those matters are proceeding in lower courts as well.
But the Supreme Court’s stay on the power-plant case will have an effect. To ensure the grid’s reliability for years to come, investment in dispatchable resources like natural gas is a necessity, and it will be impaired – or certainly held in abeyance – until the appeals court makes a ruling. That ruling itself may go up to the Supreme Court, delaying a resolution further.
In a May report, the Bipartisan Policy Center concluded that “the retirement of coal plants and potentially older nuclear power plants is contributing to the shifting energy landscape, creating a significant need for new ‘firm’ generation capacity, meaning power that is available 24/7 and can be dispatched by grid operators at any time.” These dispatchable resources are “critical to balance the variability that comes with wind and solar.”
The BPC cited the Long-Term Reliability Assessment forecasts of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC), showing a serious “capacity deficit over the next decade, with generator retirements outpacing available replacement resources.”
The BPC continued:
NERC estimates that while power generation will grow by 4% through 2032, electricity demand, or load, will grow by 10%. Other studies warn that recent projections are likely underestimating load growth from new manufacturing facilities and data centers and have not accounted for the growing use of artificial intelligence. Utilities, power companies, and grid planners are struggling with how to rapidly bring new generation online as retiring power plants roll off the system and new demand for electricity surges.
We have reported on the Biden Administration’s power plant rule many times in the past, going back to Issue No. 24 in May 2023. At the time, we quoted two think tank scholars, Rea Hederman Jr. of the Buckeye Institute in Ohio and Wayne Winegarden of the Pacific Research Institute (publisher of this newsletter), who wrote:
The Biden Administration, eager to revive the Obama era’s Clean Power Plan, wants America to run largely on green energy—and is prepared to pay, prod, and punish to get what it wants. No matter that federal green energy subsidies may cost three times their original estimates, which inevitably will fan the flames of inflation and demand higher taxes. No matter that letting newer, cleaner natural gas plants replace the country’s retiring fossil fuel plants will steadily reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Washington prefers regulation to innovation.
A key problem with the rule, according to critics, is that the EPA wants to require emission reductions through green hydrogen and carbon capture. Without this mitigation, many plants powered by fossil fuels will have to close. But these technologies do not appear to be ready for prime time.
In February, as we noted in our Issue No. 38, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board cited comments requested by the House Oversight Committee from experts and lawyers at federal agencies. One commenter noted, “Hydrogen combustion has not been adequately demonstrated nation-wide for utility scale power generation.”
Implementing carbon capture and storage (CCS), which separates out carbon dioxide and then stores it where it can’t escape into the atmosphere, is also premature. One commenter noted that the EPA has issued permits for only two wells to store CO2 underground. The permitting time for both was about three years, though “the entire permitting process can take up to six years including time for geologic investigation.”
These comments recall a statement by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. As we noted in Newsletter No. 34, the association complained that the EPA proposal “hinges on the widespread adoption of nascent technologies: clean hydrogen and carbon capture and storage,” adding:
Electric cooperatives are involved in the development five carbon capture projects and are national leaders in the development of the technology. And while both technologies are promising, they are not yet widespread or commercially available and have not been “adequately demonstrated” as required by the Clean Air Act. Requirements for some coal units to co-fire natural gas are similarly flawed.
Despite decades in development, there are only 30 commercial CCS projects globally, reducing 0.2% of the necessary emissions needed to close the targeted gap by 2030.
An analysis by the Clean Air Task Force of the report of Working Group III’s 2022 Contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which weighs in at 2,913 pages, found that “challenges for a robust carbon capture scale-up exist primarily in the power sector.” The obstacles include high costs, implementation barriers and transportation difficulties.
The new mandates under Clean Power Plan 2.0, as it’s called by critics, “will impose an effective moratorium on new natural gas plants and force existing natural gas and coal plants to shutter prematurely,” we wrote in Issue No. 34. “Meanwhile, electric ratepayers, mostly families, will bear the brunt of this dual attack on electric reliability and affordability.”
In an article in the New York Times in February, reporter Lisa Friedman related the history of attempts to slash emissions from power plants, which began with President Obama, “His 2015 Clean Power Plan was put on hold by the Supreme Court and later rolled back by President Donald J. Trump. Then, in 2022, the “Supreme Court restrained the way E.P.A. could regulate emissions from power plants, ruling the government could not force a wholesale transition away from coal-fired electricity.”
The Biden Administration has tried to make its power plant rules hew closely to the restrictions imposed by the Supreme Court, which, despite its stay, has not pronounced on the important question of whether the EPA has overstepped its authority.
At any rate, Clean Power Plan 2.0 could not be coming at a worse time, with the imminent electricity deficit from increased demand and plant closures that are happening even without the new EPA rules. Throw in extreme weather (see below), and there is a clear crisis brewing. Unless the EPA amends its regulations, concerns are deepening that a reasonable stance on traditional energy is sacrificed in pursuit of other goals.
With Winter on the Way, NERC Sounds the Alarm on Natural Gas Supplies
NERC, the non-profit whose mission is “to assure the effective and efficient reduction of risks to the reliability and security of the grid” in North America, on Sept. 13 issued this statement on the “Criticality of Natural Gas This Winter”:
As energy producers accelerate their preparations for the upcoming winter season, NERC and the Regional Entities remain concerned about maintaining sufficient natural gas supplies to address extreme winter conditions. Of particular concern is the fuel supply to the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic areas, where reliable natural gas service has been compromised in the past and is at elevated risk of disruption during periods of extraordinary cold weather stress.
NERC continued, “As the electric system increasingly relies on natural gas, more gas infrastructure, including pipelines and storage, is needed to enhance deliverability,” adding that it is especially worried about “the potential formation of a La Nina weather pattern,” which makes it “critical for entities across the value chain to prepare for the increased risk of extreme cold temperatures.”
The NERC statement recalled Winter Storm Elliott in 2022, which, as Robert Walton reported in Utility Dive, produced the “largest recorded manual load shed in the history of the Eastern interconnection.” (Load shedding is defined as “rotating power outages or reducing power consumption from primary sources until demand decreases and more capacity becomes available.”)
During the December 2022 storm, temperatures fell as much as 30 degrees below normal, increasing electricity demand and forcing emergency operations. Walton reported, “Unplanned outages reached 90,500 MW, and transmission operators in the Southeast ordered firm load shedding that exceeded 5,400 MW,” as NERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and grid operators concluded in a joint assessment of the event published a year ago.” The Sept. 19 Utility Dive report continued:
Elliott marked the fifth event in the last 13 years where gas supply disruptions played a role in cold weather-related generation outages that jeopardized bulk power system reliability, NERC said. And heading into this winter, some weather forecasts are calling for a colder-than-average December across much of the U.S. northern tier. Elliott was “by no means an isolated example of the link between natural gas supply and electric reliability,” NERC said.
In their post-mortem on Elliott, issued in November 2023, NERC, FERC and the grid operators agreed that a lack of natural gas supply was a key reason for the preparedness problems – a condition also seen during Winter Storm Uri in 2021, an event especially devastating to Texas.
“In the wake of massive natural gas production declines, and to a lesser extent, declines in natural gas processing, the natural gas fuel supply struggled to meet both residential heating load and generating unit demand for natural gas, exacerbated by the increasing reliance by generating units on natural gas,” the report said of Elliott.
The Natural Gas Supply Association released a fact sheet in September pointing to the “multitude of proactive measures” their members are taking “to prepare extreme winter weather.” Among the steps: “stringent self-inspections,” assisting customers in finding alternative market options, and mitigating weather exposure with “additional supplies and enhanced protections.”
Grid operators are also preparing for extreme cold that could come as early as December. They are also stressing the importance of maintaining high levels of natural gas supply.
The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) “is currently conducting the annual winter readiness surveying cycle,” Brandon Morris, a spokesperson said in an email. MISO’s territory covers 15 central U.S. states and the Canadian province of Manitoba.
Utility Dive also reported that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is conducting weatherization inspections of generating and transmission facilities, “being more transparent in grid operations, and continuing ERCOT’s conservative approach to operations.”
In the coming months, all the grid operators will be working closely with natural gas suppliers to be certain that weatherization measures are in place. In a report in April, FERC concluded that, during Winter Storms Geri and Heather, which had taken place a few months before, the “nation’s electric grid and natural gas system largely operated without any major incidents.”
But FERC emphasized the crucial need for cooperation between gas supply and grid operation – a partnership that keeps the flow of electricity safe and secure in times of secure stress.
Congressional Legislation Would Fast-Track Power Projects That Improve Grid Reliability
On Sept. 25, U.S. Rep. Troy Balderson of Ohio introduced legislation that would enable grid operators to fast-track consideration of power-generation projects that improve the reliability of the electric grid.
The bill, called the Guaranteeing Reliability Through the Interconnection of Dispatchable (GRID) Power Act, “would allow certain projects, at the request of the grid operator, to bypass the overwhelmed interconnection queue,” said a press release from the Congressman’s office. “The queue is where proposed projects wait before grid operators begin conducting their feasibility and system impact studies. In 2023, the median wait time grew to five years, delaying critical projects from being built and connected to the grid.”
Said Rep. Balderson, a House Energy and Commerce Committee member and a Republican: “Our interconnection queue is buckling under its own weight,” He noted that 70% of transmission lines are over 25 years old and approaching the end of their typical life cycles, according to DOE. The bill, he said, will “protect our grid and energy security going forward.” The Congressman added:
Transmission providers are tasked with ensuring we have enough electricity to keep the lights on, but the growing backlog of projects is adding years to an already time-consuming process. This legislation would give grid operators the authority to identify and expedite the consideration of essential projects that will protect our grid’s reliability and provide the power needed to meet America’s growing demand.
Under the bill, FERC would have 60 days to review proposals from regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) to designate specific projects that would be pushed to the head of line.
The queue for interconnection has become lengthy in recent years because of subsidies to encourage green energy projects under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and other legislation. In his press release, Rep. Balderson noted that these “weather-dependent, renewable projects, which now make up 97% of all projects in the queue, cannot be dispatched at a moment’s notice to meet consumers’ day-to-day and hour-to-hour energy needs.”
Rep. Balderson added, “As power demand in Ohio and across the nation grows at a historic pace, the grid will require more dispatchable baseload energy to avoid rolling blackouts and power shortages.”
Because of new rules, such as the Clean Power Plan 2.0, (see the first newsletter item, above), the retirement of fossil-fuel-driven power plants, currently responsible for providing the majority of the U.S. baseload power, is accelerating. “The GRID Power Act would bring more baseload power generation online in a timely manner, leading to the long-term stability of the American electric grid,” said Balderson’s release.
The Electric Power Supply Association (EPSA), a trade group for independent power producers, and American Electric Power (AEP), which provides power in several states in the center of the nation, including Ohio, both endorsed the legislation.
“Demand for electricity is growing at a pace our nation hasn’t seen in decades,” said EPSA’s CEO Todd Snitchler. “EPSA is a staunch supporter of the benefits of competitive markets; however, no economic model or structure can overcome inefficiencies in the interconnection process that can significantly delay critical investment in new dispatchable generation.” Snitchler added
This legislation appropriately creates a process that recognizes when reliability concerns require that certain investments be prioritized in the interconnection queue. The proposal is designed to recognize when reliability may be at risk and respond in a prudent and targeted manner.
AEP issued a statement saying that, alone, the company “has requests from large customers that would more than double the peak demand we serve on our system today. Ensuring we are able to reliably serve new and existing customers will require us to rapidly expand our power generation fleet and grid capabilities. AEP supports Rep. Balderson’s efforts to improve and streamline the generator interconnection process.”
Backing for the legislation also came from the Ohio Oil and Gas Association, whose president, Rob Brundrett, said, “Queue reform is important to energy producers and consumers alike by prioritizing abundant, reliable and easily dispatchable energy such as natural gas.”
Ryan Augsburger, president of the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association (OMA), stated:
As the debate over generation adequacy continues within the 13-state grid region served by PJM Interconnection, Ohio manufacturers believe competitive markets will best respond to future load growth and demand. OMA supports queue reform to more quickly and efficiently interconnect generating resources to the grid. Representative Balderson’s bill is a good first step toward reform.
Under the legislation, grid operators would still be required to conduct feasibility and impact studies on projects that take priority. The bill promotes transparency by requiring the operators to provide a process for public comment and stakeholder engagement before proposals go to FERC.
Under the bill, grid operators can consider acceleration for projects that “provide new dispatchable power and improve grid reliability and resource adequacy; address power shortages caused by retiring or offline dispatchable power; and support increased power demand.”
Solar, With Low ‘Load-Carrying Capability,’ Is Dominating New Power Projects in PJM Territory
PJM Interconnection, the RTO that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in all or part of 13 states and the District of Columbia, has added only 2,000 megawatts (MW) of power to its footprint this year (through Sept. 13), nearly all of it solar-generated. That is a reduction of about 40% in total power compared with last year.
In six of the preceding seven years, natural gas made up the majority of projects coming into service in the region. Solar, by the contrast, has a relatively low “effective load-carrying capability” – a measure of its value when the grid is stressed. So, the solar added this year represents only a few hundred megawatts of capacity, “which is nowhere near where we need to be,” Paul McGlynn, PJM vice president of planning, said a meeting of PJM’s Markets and Reliability Committee on Sept. 25.
A presentation at the meeting pointed out that 448 projects, with 37 gigawatts (GW) of generating capability, are on the books in the PJM region, based on executed agreement. The lion’s share comprises solar projects (23 GW), compared with 5 GW of natural gas, 3 GW of wind, another 3 GW of offshore wind, and 2 GW of storage.
Said McGlynn, “While PJM continues to execute against the [interconnection] transition plan, concerns are growing that the construction build-out from the volume of applications has not yet materialized.”
PJM, whose coverage area includes much of the Mid-Atlantic and parts of more distant states like Illinois and North Carolina, is working on a possible approach to fast-track dispatchable resources, mainly natural gas, to ensure reliability.
A Utility Dive piece on Oct. 21 reported on a PJM proposal to stakeholders that would allow “shovel ready’ projects to jump into an interconnection study process early next year in an effort to meet grid reliability needs.”
A formal plan will be presented next month, followed by a filing with FERC. “Some stakeholders at the meeting said the plan may face challenges at FERC and in courts for giving preference to certain generating projects at the expense of those that are already in the grid operator’s interconnection process,” said the media report.
PJM has been struggling with resource adequacy issues for years, said an official of the RTO at a meeting on Oct. 16. The problem was highlighted when base-rate capacity prices jumped at an auction in July, a reflection of tight supply-and-demand conditions. Consumers in the PJM region will pay $14.7 billion for capacity in the 2025-26 delivery year, up from $2.2 billion in the last auction (see our report in Issue No. 39).
As electricity demand is growing because of the boom in data centers caused by Artificial Intelligence (AI), increased use of electric vehicles, and modernized manufacturing spurred by the IRA. But renewable energy alone cannot maintain enough load-carrying capability for customers. Dispatchable sources are necessary.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that solar energy will lead growth in U.S. power generation for the next two years. As a result of new solar projects coming online, the EIA estimates that U.S. solar power generation will grow from 163 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) in 2023 to 286 billion kWh in 2025. The EIA further expects that wind power generation will grow 11% from 430 billion kWh in 2023 to 476 billion kWh in 2025.
By 2025, solar capacity in the U.S. will have jumped sevenfold from its 2018 level. At the same time, nuclear will be flat and natural gas, up only about 10%.
Still, natural gas remains the number-one source of electricity, generating more than 10 times as much electricity as solar in 2023, according to the EIA. It is critical that regulators and the private sector work to ensure that reliability is maintained as the U.S. experiences the long transition to renewables.
Big Tech Firms to Use Innovative Means to Get Power to AI Data Centers
As we reported in Issue No. 39, energy companies are in direct talks with data centers regarding building pipelines directly to facilities, particularly in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic states.
E&E News has also reported that North Dakota sees the AI surge “as a potential boon for oil and natural gas production, already the largest source of tax revenue in the state.” Developers of data center projects met with Gov. Doug Burgum, though the article did not name company names.
“The nuclear-power industry’s fortunes are increasingly getting hitched to Big Tech,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Oct. 14. “Power demand is rising in parts of the U.S. for the first time in years, much of it driven by the need to build more data centers for AI. That has sent the tech industry on the hunt for massive amounts of energy.”
Plans are developing in more concrete form. Reuters reported on Sept. 21 that Constellation Energy and Microsoft have signed a deal to “help resurrect a unit of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in what would be the first-ever restart of its kind.”
The report quickly noted, however, that “key regulatory permits for the plant’s new life… haven’t been filed.” Three Mile Island was the site of a partial nuclear meltdown in 1979, the worst such accident in U.S. history. “Constellation plans to spend about $1.6 billion to revive the plant, which it expects to come online by 2028,” said Reuters.
In addition, Amazon is investing in small-module nuclear reactors (SMRs) to power data centers that are relying more heavily on Artificial Intelligence. Amazon is “leading a $500 million funding round for X-Energy Reactor, a company that develops small modular nuclear reactors and fuel,” reported the Washington Post on Oct. 16.
“As part of the agreement,” reported the Wall Street Journal, “Amazon and X-Energy will provide initial backing for a four-unit, 320-megawatt project with regional utility Energy Northwest in central Washington state.”
Amazon is working as well with utilities in “Virginia on potential SMR projects,” according to the Washington Post. The company’s Amazon Web Services division, founded in 2006, is the world’s largest cloud computing provider (Microsoft is second, Google third).
Google signed a deal on Oct. 14 “to purchase electricity from advanced small modular reactors (SMRs) that are still under development,” reported The Verge. Google made the agreement with the “engineering company Kairos Power, which plans to get its first SMR up and running by 2030. Google agreed to purchase electricity from ‘multiple’ reactors that would be built through 2035.”
Google set a goal of running fully on carbon-free energy by 2030. “And yet, since 2019, its total greenhouse gas emissions have grown by 48 percent, according to its latest environmental report,” reported The Verge. “Obviously, the trajectory of AI investments has added to the scale of the task needed,” CEO Sundar Pichai said in an interview with Nikkei earlier this month.
Meta has been ahead of its competitors in planning large power projects. Last year, the company announced its Mesa, Arizona, data center will be supported by solar energy from Salt River Project through the contract energy provider Orsted.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has expressed concerns about energy constraints. “When you’re talking about building large new power plants or large build-outs and building transmission lines that cross public or private land,…you’re talking about many years of lead time,” he said on the Dwarkesh Podcast in April, as reported by Data Center Dynamics.
“If we wanted to stand up some massive facility, to power that is a very long-term project,” Zuckerberg said. “I think [some people will] do it, but I don’t think this is something that can be quite as magical as ‘you get a level of AI, get a bunch of capital, and put it in [a big data center]’…. There is a capital question of at what point it stops being worth it to put the capital in…. But I actually think that, before we run into that, we’re going to run into energy constraints.”
As Zuckerberg implies, if electricity holds back AI development, tech firms may eventually have to encourage the government to address permitting reform and even federal subsidies.
Technology giants have not been friendly to government mandates and picking winners and losers. Their preference is for market solutions, which means that, despite their clean-energy goals, they may adopt an all-of-the-above strategy for their AI and general data center needs.
As Mark Mills, executive director of the National Center on Energy Analytics, wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece on Oct. 1:
Over one decade, $1 billion of data centers will use $700 million of power. To compare, over that same period, every $1 billion of EVs sold will result in about $150 million of electricity consumption. Today, U.S. spending on new data centers is greater and growing faster than total spending on all EVs. Environmentalists worry that the electricity needs of data centers and AI threaten the energy transition. But never mind finding enough low-carbon energy sources—the question is whether enough power of any kind will be available.
The Cloudy Energy Policies of Candidate Kamala Harris
With the Nov. 5 general election approaching, Kamala Harris has spent much of her time campaigning in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, where energy policy is a hot topic.
One high-profile subject in the Commonwealth is hydraulic fracturing otherwise known as “fracking.” At a CNN Town Hall in 2019, she said, “There is no question I am in favor of banning fracking.” She quickly changed her mind after becoming Vice President, coming into accord with the position of President Joe Biden.
In an interview this month with a Pittsburgh TV station, Harris said, “I will not ban fracking. I did not as vice president. In fact, I cast the tie-breaking vote to open up more fracking leases. And my perspective on this is grounded in a number of things, including that we don’t have to ban fracking to do the work that we can do to also invest in a clean energy economy.”
An EnergyWire piece on Oct. 2 cast doubt on how critical the fracking issue is to Pennsylvanians. It carried the headline, “Trump is hitting Harris with TV ads about her fracking flip. But the drilling process might not be as important to voters as pundits suggest.” Support for a fracking ban in the state is greater than 40%, and “oil and gas and the rest of the mining sector rank 13th for their contribution to the state’s gross domestic product.”
Speaking to Politico Pro in a Q&A, Camila Thorndike, Harris’ climate engagement director provided some clarity – though not a great deal — on how Harris would address energy issues if she is elected.
Politico’s Josh Siegel asked, “Harris has publicly moved to the middle on certain energy issues, such as reversing her fracking ban pledge from the 2019-20 primary campaign and touting record oil and gas production in the Biden-Harris administration, along with measures in the IRA to require more fossil fuel lease sales. How are you reassuring young voters that Harris will look to push policies commensurate with global climate goals when she’s been promoting fossil fuels these last few months?”
Harris’ climate engagement director responded:
Just to be clear, Vice President Harris hasn’t said anything that the Administration hasn’t already said. She is not promoting expansion. She’s just said that they wouldn’t ban fracking and the fact that anyone could look up is that the IRA required leases, and that was not something that she promoted.
In response to another question, the director said, “If we look at the transition that’s underway because of her leadership, there are over 330,000 clean-energy jobs because of the Inflation Reduction Act. Her economic agenda, with climate woven throughout, is a massive accelerant, also into new sectors that will be decarbonized….
“That’s our new way forward. And her full-throated support for that vision is abundantly clear to everyone who looks at where Donald Trump will take us back to fossil fuels, and fossil fuels only, forever.”
David Blackmon, a Texas energy public policy expert, addressed common refrains from the Harris campaign in an Oct. 21 Forbes piece, writing, “Harris has repeatedly pointed to the fact that she did cast the deciding Senate vote for the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in 2022, and that the bill included language instructing the Interior Department (DOI) to comply with the Federal Lands Leasing Act to restart the leasing program it had kept in suspension despite several court orders to conduct sales.” He added:
But Harris has remained mum about the fact that DOI has not acted on the IRA requirement, keeping its leasing program in de facto suspension since. As a result, no one really knows what the next four years would hold in a Kamala Harris presidency on this key issue.
To many observers, Harris’s energy policy seems ambiguous.
Unfortunately, this presidential campaign has not offered an opportunity for Americans to discern clearly what the energy policy of the Democratic candidate for president will be if she is victorious. Perhaps she hasn’t worked out such a policy, perhaps she wants to keep it under wraps, or perhaps we can just assume that it will be a continuation of Joe Biden’s.