Peak Absurdity In Energy Policy: As Prices Soar, The Biden Administration Goes Full Speed Ahead In The War On Fossil Fuels

Dr. Benny Peiser, Director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and I are about to kick off our U.S. and Canada speaking tour. The first event is next Tuesday March 15 at the 3 West Club in New York, hosted by the Federalist Society. Check the side-bar at right for full details of the event and a link to register if you are able to attend.

When we began planning the tour a couple of months ago, energy prices had already started to spike in Europe and to a lesser degree in the U.S. But we could not have foreseen how quickly things would accelerate to peak absurdity. Add a war in Ukraine to the mix of pre-existing fossil fuel suppression in the U.S. and Europe, and we suddenly have serious shortages causing, for example, gasoline prices at the pump to soar to an average of over $4/gallon for regular in the U.S. ($6/gallon in California!).

Clearly, the correct approach to alleviate the immediate crisis is to call on operators of wind turbines and solar arrays to step up their production to fill the gaps. Just kidding. In case you didn’t know — and you would have to be living under a rock not to know this — wind and solar have no ability at all to ramp up in a time of energy shortage. We thus have the spectacle of our President going begging to some of the worst actors on the world stage, like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, to seek some more of the otherwise-hated fossil fuels.

But meanwhile the true peak absurdity is going on out in our own vast federal bureaucracy. There, the war on fossil fuels continues as if the real world did not exist. Indeed, in case you have forgotten, President Biden from the inception of his reign made the suppression of domestic fossil fuels effectively priority number one of his administration, and directed every agency, whether their statutory mission has anything to do with fossil fuels or not, to get to work on the suppression project in every way they could think of. From Biden’s “Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad,” January 27, 2021:

It is the policy of my Administration to organize and deploy the full capacity of its agencies to combat the climate crisis to implement a Government-wide approach that reduces climate pollution in every sector of the economy. . . .

And thus it’s not just agencies you think might have something to do with energy, like maybe the Department of Energy or the EPA, but all kinds of others like even the Federal Reserve and the SEC, who have been deputized to figure out ways to make production and use of fossil fuels more difficult to impossible and thereby send the American people into energy poverty. And even as the war in Ukraine proceeds, and energy prices spike, and the people are watching their paychecks get annihilated, in the bureaucracies it’s full speed ahead on crushing use of fossil fuels in every way possible and as quickly as possible.

For today, let’s consider just one of the dozens (or hundreds) of initiatives currently moving forward out in the bureaucracy to suppress fossil fuels. On February 18 — even as Russia amassed its tanks on the Ukraine border, and just days before the invasion was launched — an agency called the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued something it called “Docket PL21-3-000 Consideration of Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Natural Gas Infrastructure Project Reviews.” The document is some 102 pages long, not including two lengthy dissents by the two Republican commissioners. Here is the document’s own summary of what it is:

This interim policy statement describes Commission procedures for evaluating climate impacts under NEPA and describes how the Commission will integrate climate considerations into its public interest determinations under the NGA.

So what exactly is this thing in the crazy mess of bureaucratic directives to the people? Is it a “law”? Clearly not — Congress has not enacted it, or even considered it. Is it a “regulation”? Again, no — it has not gone through any of the procedures for “rule making” specified in the Administrative Procedure Act. Is it “guidance”? Maybe, although agency “guidance” has no official legal status. FERC’s own term is that this is an “interim policy statement,” whatever that means. A fair view is that this is no more than some handful of unelected bureaucrats telling you how they intend to transform your life, and daring you to try to stop them.

The main statute under which FERC operates with respect to natural gas is called the Natural Gas Act. Read it if you want (I would not recommend it), and you will learn that FERC’s principal statutory duty is to evaluate proposed natural gas infrastructure projects as to “public convenience and necessity.” I can assure you that the NGA does not mention the subjects of “greenhouse gases” or “climate change.” Nevertheless, our handful of bureaucrats at FERC have determined that addressing greenhouse gases and climate change are the very most important things that they can do right now, and by God they are going to do that by making it as difficult as possible, if not completely impossible, to develop any further natural gas infrastructure in this country. From the Introduction to PL21-3:

Climate change poses a severe threat to the nation’s security, economy, environment, and to the health of individual citizens. Human-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including carbon dioxide and methane, are the primary cause of climate change. GHG emissions are released in large quantities through the production, transportation, and consumption of natural gas. Accordingly, to fulfill its statutory responsibilities, it is critical that the Commission consider and document how its authorization of infrastructure projects under the NGA, particularly natural gas transportation facilities, will affect emissions of GHGs.

And it goes on from there for 100 plus pages. The gist is, every natural gas infrastructure project going forward will be evaluated based on its “GHG” emissions, not only from the construction of the project, but also from the “downstream” emissions of the burning of the natural gas itself. Huh? Isn’t the whole idea of building a natural gas project to deliver the gas to be burned, and thus turned into “GHGs”? And because there are going to be GHG emissions, we’ll make you produce an Environmental Impact Statement in almost all cases. (EISs that I have seen are 1000+ pages long and cost millions of dollars to produce.). And when you’re finished investing your millions into planning and engineering for the project and producing the EIS, then we completely reserve the right to say hey, this project is going to lead to the burning of natural gas and the production of GHGs, and therefore we reject it.

With this document in place, it’s hard to see how any new natural gas projects, most significantly pipelines, can possibly get built as long as Biden remains President and Democrats maintain a majority on this Commission.

And thus we will just have to beg for oil from places like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. I find it almost impossible to believe that people working for the U.S. government could act in a manner so completely contrary to the interests of the people, let alone completely without Congressional authority for their actions. But there you have it.