Biden squanders US energy dominance

 Epoch Times:

...

In 2019, the United States became energy independent for the first time since 1957, according to the Institute for Energy Research. U.S. energy production in that year was higher than U.S. energy consumption for the first time in 62 years. Total U.S. energy production increased by 5.7 percent in 2019, the institute said, while U.S. energy demand fell by 0.9 percent (pdf).

Panelist speaker Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) said half her state is on federal land, as are many others are in the country. She said these states will be left guttered after Biden’s signed a 60-day moratorium on new oil or natural gas leases and drilling permits on federal land.

Beauprez said it is not only “dangerous” but ignorant to believe that clean energy can somehow reliably replace what the oil and gas industry has done. He said it’s wrong to “put that aside and go down this other path and hopes it all works out.”

“We are sitting on an abundant supply of energy; now we have the technology to harvest that energy safer, cleaner than humankind has ever been able to do in existence,” he said.

“I have a wind turbine on my ranch it works great .. but I always make sure there is propane. This quest to be 100 percent renewable, we are going to wind up some day exactly like Texas,” Beauprez added. “On those critical days we need it, we don’t have what they call capacity energy, energy storage.”

TC Energy, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline project that was shut down by Biden on his first day in office, announced in a Jan. 17 statement that it would “achieve net zero emissions across the project operations” when the pipeline is in service in 2023. TC said they committed to operations being “fully powered by renewable energy sources no later than 2030.”

The panelists also talked about the economic impacts of Biden’s climate agenda and energy policy. Beauprez said that if you limit the options and sources of energy, for example by only focusing on solar and wind, it is going to drive prices up because the competition is eliminated.

Kelly said the people that always get hurt from things like increased electricity prices are the low-income people.

“The idea that this will all somehow be an advantage to them is ridiculous,” he said. “If you live in the rural areas, this is absolutely insane.”

“Why would we penalize the hardest working American’s with this foolish agenda and tell them that somehow it will work in the future,” he added. “I’m asking people if you haven’t been there, don’t tell them how to live.”

Biden and other leftists are fervent believers is something that is not so. They believe in the stuff that did not work during the Texas deep freeze and think that just because federal regulators would not allow thermal sources to use a maximum effort that it failed too.  There is also something really insane about worrying about short-term pollution during one of the deepest freezes in centuries is going to cause global warming.