The Green New Deal Is Anything But Good Politics in Pennsylvania Where It Can Only Raise Energy Costs for Consumers

Guest Post by Don Ritter, Former Lehigh Valley Congressman.

Sen. John Fetter­man has in­di­cated that en­ergy would not be in the fore­front of Penn­syl­va­nians’ vot­ing de­ci­sions this year, but he may not be ac­count­ing for its re­la­tion to in­fla­tion. In­fla­tion ranks as cru­cially im­por­tant, a top con­cern of the vot­ing pub­lic in the 2024 elec­tion.

While the en­ergy is­sue had a mar­ginal ef­fect in Penn­syl­va­nia’s 2020 elec­tion cy­cle, its con­nec­tion to higher prices could be de­ci­sive in 2024. In the spring, a Com­mon­wealth Foun­da­tion sur­vey of 800 Penn­syl­va­nia reg­is­tered vot­ers found that more than two-thirds named in­fla­tion as an im­ped­i­ment to main­tain­ing their stan­dard of liv­ing.

The Costly Green New Deal

Mean­while, by pri­or­i­tiz­ing a “cli­mate emer­gency,” the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion has ren­dered en­ergy pro­duc­tion more dif­fi­cult and cost­lier and has in­jected 400 bil­lion of Green New Deal dol­lars into the econ­omy. Both are in­fla­tion­ary, as seen at the gas pump and in the prices of gro­cer­ies and man­u­fac­tured goods.

In any event, the is­sue isn’t go­ing away, be­cause the Re­pub­li­cans will raise it. Don­ald Trump will high­light the link be­tween en­ergy pol­icy and in­fla­tion.

Like­wise, Re­pub­li­can Senate can­di­date Dave McCormick is at­tack­ing Sen. Bob Ca­sey’s ac­qui­es­cence to Biden en­ergy pol­i­cies. Ca­sey did make a po­lit­i­cally ex­pe­di­ent elec­tion year ex­cep­tion in ob­ject­ing to a Biden ban on ex­ports of liq­ue­fied nat­u­ral gas, which was since over­turned by a court.

The McCormick cam­paign re­fers to sup­pressed gas pro­duc­tion in Penn­syl­va­nia as a re­sult of fed­eral pol­icy im­ped­ing pipe­line con­struc­tion, say­ing that “un­der Biden’s en­ergy pol­i­cies, rub­ber-stamped by Bob Ca­sey, we ha­ven’t been able to ac­cess clean nat­u­ral gas. ... Ca­sey sup­ports pol­i­cies that are costing us jobs and driv­ing up en­ergy prices even more.”

Com­pound­ing the Biden ef­fect in the Key­stone State are the “green” lean­ings of Josh Sha­piro, the Dem­o­crat gov­er­nor. His pro­pos­als for a $499 mil­lion car­bon tax and an ex­pan­sion of ex­pen­sive wind and so­lar en­ergy would add to the al­ready con­sid­er­able bur­dens of fam­i­lies and busi­nesses.

Sha­piro of­fers “not just di­sas­trous en­ergy pol­icy” but “ex­pen­sively di­sas­trous en­ergy pol­icy,” says David Tay­lor, CEO of the Penn­syl­va­nia Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, which lob­bies on be­half of 550,000 work­ers in the fifth-largest man­u­fac­tur­ing state.

The Loss of En­ergy

In a state where coal’s share of elec­tric gen­er­a­tion has dropped to less than 20% from more than 50%, both state and fed­eral pol­i­cies have been blamed for the clo­sure of many coal-fired plants. Penn­syl­va­nia’s larg­est such gen­er­a­tor at Homer City closed a year ago, and two more have an­nounced early re­tire­ments within a few years.

Cooling Towers of Homer City Generating Station, Source: By Hepcat748 (talk) - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=117579947

Nat­u­ral gas now pro­duces more than half of Penn­syl­va­nia’s elec­tric­ity, but gas gen­er­a­tion, too, has suf­fered un­der gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion and with the threat of more to come.

In the 10 years prior to 2019, when a car­bon tax first was pro­posed, $14 bil­lion worth of gas-fired plants were built in the state, re­ported Shawn Stef­fee, a Boil­er­mak­ers union busi­ness agent. How­ever, none have been built since and two $1 bil­lion pro­pos­als were can­celed. “It is highly un­likely that we will build an­other,” he says.

Whether it’s gas plants not be­ing built or coal plants be­ing closed, re­li­abil­ity of the power grid and em­ploy­ment take a hit.

Govern­ment and in­dus­try over­seers of the high-volt­age trans­mis­sion sys­tem have warned of en­ergy short­ages re­sult­ing from ill-timed clo­sures of fos­sil fuel plants that in­crease the share of less re­li­able wind and so­lar. A sig­nifi­cant re­gional black­out is not out of the ques­tion and would dim the elec­toral out­look of pol­i­ti­cians sup­port­ing green en­ergy.

As for the ef­fect of job losses, one need only to read a Wash­ing­ton Ex­am­iner ac­count of fed­eral of­fi­cials meet­ing with Homer City cit­i­zens af­fected by last year’s plant clos­ing: “The vast di­vide be­tween the gov­ern­ment’s un­der­stand­ing of the needs of the peo­ple they serve and the peo­ple them­selves was never more ex­cru­ci­at­ingly ap­par­ent than at the meet­ing,” the ar­ti­cle be­gan.

The rest of the story told of un­kept prom­ises to fur­loughed work­ers whose lives were “up­rooted for­ever.” The meet­ing in­cluded a slide show ex­tol­ling the good in­ten­tions of fed­eral agen­cies.

The Stakes

The case for re­di­recting fed­eral pol­icy away from the green agenda and to­ward more tra­di­tional en­ergy pro­duc­tion will be made by Trump, par­tic­u­larly in en­ergy states like Penn­syl­va­nia, which would be one of the ul­ti­mate prizes in No­vem­ber. McCormick will fol­low suit, add­ing to the force of Trump’s cam­paign.

At stake are the House, Senate and Pres­i­dency, and the de­cid­ing votes, at the mar­gin, could very well come from Penn­syl­va­nia en­ergy con­sum­ers.

This post republished from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette with permission of the author, Don Ritter, a former Republican Congressman from Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. Ritter also led the National Environmental Policy Institute.

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