DV Journal

The energy landscape in Pennsylvania is rich.  We’ve taken advantage of our huge coal and natural gas resources for more than a century.  More recently, prolific gas production has ensured low heating and power generation costs in Pennsylvania for years.  But the transition to a ‘green’ economy could stop this progress with clean coal and gas-fired generation, and could mean giving up our natural gas appliances too.

The energy industry in Pennsylvania has served us well.  Pennsylvania homes and businesses enjoy energy low prices and good energy jobs.  But now this is being threatened with bad science and misguided politicians.

First, some facts –

• Pennsylvania is the nation’s second-largest natural gas producer after Texas, producing more than 7½ trillion cubic feet each year.
• Pennsylvania is the third-largest coal-producing state, and it’s the second-largest coal exporter to foreign markets.
• Pennsylvania ranked second after Illinois in electricity generation from nuclear power. And since 2019, natural gas has surpassed nuclear energy as the largest source of in-state electricity generation.
• Over half of Pennsylvania households use natural gas as heating fuel; and the state’s 49 gas storage sites — the most for any state – help meet winter demand for the Mid-Atlantic and New England.
• Pennsylvania is the second-largest net supplier, after Texas, of total energy to other states.

Pennsylvania’s fossil fuel industry has been important to our nation – in the past, now, and in our nation’s future.

Today, we also demand that we are better stewards of the environment.  Industry has delivered with improved manufacturing methods and more efficient infrastructure.  The EPA reports that, since 1980, carbon monoxide emissions are down by more than 74%.  Nitrogen dioxide emissions have been reduced by more than 70%.  Sulfur dioxide emissions are off 93%.  And carbon dioxide emissions – CO2 – for all vehicles during the same period – have fallen by 31% – and still trending down .

President Biden is pushing a transition to a green economy.  But the EPA says we are getting greener without borrowing trillions of dollars.  I was always taught If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  Don’t force Electric Vehicles on us.  Let us choose what works best now, while we improve on technology for the future.

Biden says green industries can deliver jobs.  But running gas-fired power plants and refineries requires many workers.  How many jobs would Pennsylvania lose under Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which, by the way has only increased inflation?  Biden’s plan hopes to create more than 200,000 jobs over the next ten years in Pennsylvania.  What Biden doesn’t tell you is that the good jobs in natural gas and coal go away, to be replaced with taxpayer-subsidized energy justice jobs and environmental justice jobs, whatever that means.

President Biden visited the Philadelphia shipyard to talk about energy jobs, and one particular ship’s components will be built by nine unions across the country.  How do temporary jobs in Philadelphia help develop energy jobs across Pennsylvania?  Biden hopes that workers who lose their jobs in the transition will find a place in the green economy.  But the EV industry, as an example, is a net job loser for us, and a net job gainer for China.

Can Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act produce as many jobs as those we’ll lose?  If your job that is connected with natural gas or coal, or if your job depends on Pennsylvania minerals for manufacturing, then you can understand the damage that will be done if Mr. Biden phases out gas and coal.  You see, after the equipment is built and installed, solar and wind almost runs itself.  Job losses naturally follow.

According to the DoE, energy jobs in the U.S. grew by 3.8 percent in 2022, half of them being green energy jobs.  But remember – once it’s installed, most of the work goes away.  The green economy can’t replace job losses from refineries and power plants that require 24-hour, 365-day staffing.  And it cannot deliver the same reliable energy!  The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun isn’t always shining.

Thousands of Pennsylvania families have, for generations, made a living in oil and gas and coal.  Now Joe Biden wants to end these jobs and tell workers to find jobs elsewhere.  This delivers serious headwinds to energy with the green transition.  American companies cannot compete with cheap labor in China, which dominates the solar panel business.

I said in the beginning that I would tell you what we need to best develop energy here in Pennsylvania.  We need Donald Trump.  Donald Trump understands energy and real job creation.  He understands competition, and American ingenuity that produces energy from all sources – in a cleaner, and less expensive way.

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For an alternative viewpoint see: Point: Nuclear Fusion Is the Energy Source of the Future

“Still decades and hundreds of billions of dollars away.”

That was the sobering refrain from the recent nuclear fusion announcement that has already taken decades and cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars to get to this point of—wait for it—still being decades and hundreds of billions of dollars away.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is thwarting domestic energy development and Congress can’t pass bipartisan permitting reform to make energy siting and transmission more predictable. All this while the nation suffers from the imperfect storm of gasoline and natural gas costs, increasing frequency of blackouts and brownouts, and a greater reliance on foreign energy sources.

Considering the genuine challenges our nation is facing, the U.S. should focus its resources on tangible solutions that are available now.

Around the world, more than 2 billion people live in energy poverty, and millions of Americans struggle to pay for electricity and transportation fuels. Separately, the war in Ukraine has highlighted an over-reliance on Russian natural gas in European countries — a gap that U.S. natural gas could help fill. In fact, the administration has promised more U.S. gas to England and other allied nations despite a history of making it more difficult for U.S. energy companies to extract and transport those resources domestically.

And not only is the federal government an obstacle, but some political and business leaders, like Michael Bloomberg, are underwriting public relations campaigns to end the use of traditional energy sources while they fly on private jets, sail on yachts, and live in mansions. They do not appreciate the struggle for affordable energy, potable water, and good jobs that most citizens of the country, and the world, seek.

The International Energy Administration and the U.S. Energy Information Administration acknowledge petroleum and natural gas will be among the most widely needed fuels for at least the next 50 years, and likely longer. Fuels that are necessary to drive vehicles, heat homes, and cook food.

In addition to leveraging North American petroleum and natural gas supplies, the U.S. has an opportunity to promote the advancement of traditional renewable energy sources. To his credit, President Joe Biden has presided over the largest deployment of solar and wind in U.S. history. Continued investment, coupled with a robust natural gas industry, is the best way to keep our economy strong, reduce carbon emissions and expand our electricity generation capacity.

Biden, working with Congress, secured record investments to accelerate renewable energy sources through landmark laws like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. Through his Cabinet, departments have established important goals to build America’s budding offshore wind energy industry and increase the generation capacity of solar to help us reduce carbon emissions by the end of this decade. It is a challenge, but one that is within reach.

It is important that the United States, and specifically the Department of Energy, support new and innovative technologies to help us reach a clean energy future. A future that nuclear fusion may be a part of.

However, it is critical that we leverage our current resources to meet the energy demands of today—both domestic and global—by allowing U.S. energy companies to develop and transport the traditional energy resources that we have domestically. This will help lower the cost of energy, grow our economy and support our allies while greening our environment — all without waiting decades and spending hundreds of billions more dollars hoping for the best possible result from a cool science project.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bloody and unhinged campaign to topple a democratic nation once subjugated by the former Soviet Union has resurrected the threat of global conflict from its deep, dark Cold War-era grave.

It’s easy to paint the invasion of Ukraine as the delusions of a narcissistic despot desperate to cement his legacy as the man who muscled Russia’s way back to the top of the world superpower list. In doing so, we ignore the uncomfortable truth: Putin spent years bolstering Russia’s economy with oil and gas exports, knowing full well the West’s race to renewables left them vulnerable and dependent.

As a natural consequence, any imposed sanctions meant to cripple Russia’s energy sector will reverberate across the globe, cutting countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) the deepest.

This is what I, and many others, mean when we say energy independence is a matter of national security. And this is why short-sighted climate policies – like forcing Pennsylvania into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and cancelling natural gas infrastructure, the Keystone XL pipeline chief among them – are so very dangerous. People across the world, not just in Ukraine, will die from the leverage Russia holds over global energy exports.

How much control does Russia have, exactly? The EU is the largest importer of natural gas in the world and 53 percent of their supply came from Russia in 2020 alone. In the United States, about 11 percent of our crude oil imports came from Russia last year – a smaller, albeit significant chunk that will cause financial pain stateside as the war against Ukraine escalates.

Some analysts believe crude oil prices may reach $150 per barrel this summer, up from roughly $50 just two years ago when American energy policy prioritized independence.

President Trump, love him or hate him, cautioned western Europe about the risks of relying on Russian natural gas. Germany ignored those warnings and closed much of its nuclear and coal generation facilities in an effort to reduce carbon emissions. Unfortunately, Germany now finds itself in a very serious dilemma of failing to recognize the importance of natural gas in its decisions.

Germany isn’t alone in its shortsightedness. Democratic leaders in western nations, acting on behalf of wealthy green energy donors, fail to see the big picture time and time again. It doesn’t matter how many countries signed the Paris Climate Agreement if all of them also allow China to ramp up its emissions over the next decade.

Pollution knows no borders. Renewable energy accounts for less than one third of global energy supply and remains notoriously unreliable. That’s why, in addition to fueling the EU, Russia made a lucrative deal to supply China with 100 million tons of coal.

We can attack Putin’s assets and Russia’s banks all we want, but so long as he’s cornered a sector of the energy market, his imperialist ambitions will not subside.

But all is not lost. The United States can change course. We can ramp up energy production with the same urgency we experienced when manufacturers pivoted to make masks and ventilators at the onset of the pandemic. We can ease Biden-era policies meant to restrict oil and gas production and exports. We can greenlight Keystone and other pipelines. And we can unleash our plentiful gas supply right here in Pennsylvania to help with that mammoth effort.

Pennsylvania, according to the Energy Information Administration, remains number two in natural gas production nationwide and became the largest supplier of electricity in the United States in 2020. In Pennsylvania alone, more than half of households use natural gas to stay warm. Our 49 underground storage sites also remain key to meeting regional demand in winter.

That’s why Gov. Tom Wolf must abandon policies meant to hamstring the industry, like his devotion to RGGI or his alignment with New York on halting infrastructure that could supply New England with cleaner, cheaper Pennsylvania natural gas instead of – you guessed it – Russia’s inferior product.

But Wolf isn’t the only one standing in the way. Our country still bans liquified natural gas (LNG) cargo ships from delivering between domestic ports unless registered in the United States. Of the more than 400 existing LNG carriers, none fly the U.S. flag.

This law, known as the Jones Act, was enacted in 1920 and leaves us entirely dependent on foreign transports to deliver LNG when pipelines aren’t feasible. The same law prevented production facilities in the southern U.S. from delivering to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island in 2017.

Think of how much the world has changed in a century, let alone from just a year or two ago. Where is the logic in buying from a hostile nation instead of adopting policies that make it easier to use what we produce ourselves? Is there any recognition of the common good – or are we just nuts?

Russia has now weaponized its natural gas supply and soon it will squeeze ancillary industries like fertilizer manufacturing and ultimately, food production. If you control the food supply, you control the people. It’s a brutal tactic Russian dictators of decades past know all too well.

Our elected officials must set aside their allegiance to green energy lobbyists and turn up gas production so that we can crush Putin’s war machine without setting a single foot on foreign soil. As a nation that prides itself on its staunch defense of liberty, we must not undermine Ukraine’s fight for freedom by bankrolling their aggressor. And natural gas is the most valuable commodity Russia has – for now.

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The soundbites and images were startling. Blackouts. Burst pipes. People dead from extreme cold and carbon monoxide poisoning. This week marks one year since the coldest weather in generations hit Texas.

A year later, energy policy experts in Pennsylvania and across the nation are looking for lessons to be learned from those failures.

“There were multiple errors, but green energy failed at a critical time, and we no longer had fossil fuels and baseload power systems to back them up,” says H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., a Texan serving as senior fellow on environmental policy for the Heartland Institute.

“What led to the crisis and the blackouts is 20 years of bad policies pushed by politicians on both sides of the aisle from Washington, D.C. and here in the state of Texas that were propping up one form of unreliable variable generation over another, which is good natural gas and clean coal thermal generation that has been diminished because of these market-distorting policies, subsidies if you will,” said Jason Isaac, a four-time Texas state representative now serving as director of Life: Powered at the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF).

“That’s why we’ve seen this incredible growth in this variable generation that’s now a third of our grid in the state of Texas in wind or solar that we’re dependent on when the wind blows or the sun shines, and there’s no backup generation requirements for those sources of electricity generation,” he said.

Solar was virtually non-existent in terms of electricity generation at the time of the storm. Wind dropped to 1.5 percent of the electric generation.

“It’s, again, 33­­ percent of our grid,” said Isaac. “That’s unbelievable, and over 90 percent was coming from the other 66 percent of the grid, natural gas, coal, and nuclear.”

“There’s a reason we never had something like this before in the middle of winter,” said Burnett. “That’s because we never had so little reliable baseload power as part of our system.”

It should serve as a wake-up call for other states, especially at a time when federal and state legislators are pushing the Green New Deal and related measures.

“The national takeaway on the crisis that we experienced in Texas, the energy capital of the world, if you will, is that we need good, reliable natural gas, coal, and nuclear,” said Isaac.

The Sunrise Movement, a youth movement to “stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process,” sees things differently. Sunrise said in an email it is “building an army of young people” to make climate change an urgent priority across America.

“(We want to) end the corrupting influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics, and elect leaders who stand up for the health and wellbeing of all people,” according to its website.

And Sunrise has its eyes on Texas, where a primary election is scheduled for March 1.

“We have an opportunity to send our own — Jessica Cisneros and Greg Casar — to Congress to fight for us and win a Green New Deal,” Sunrise said in an email to supporters. “Republicans, corporate Democrats, and Big Oil want you to forget what happened one year ago in Texas, but we’ll never forget.”

Pointing to the remarks from Sunrise, Isaac said they are laughable at best.

“The Green New Deal is about controlling everything we do in our lives and increasing the cost of energy, and expensive energy hurts the poor more than anyone else,” said Isaac. “If we had the Green New Deal here in Texas, our electric bills would be triple what they were, the reliability of electricity would be laughable, and deaths last year would have been much more horrendous than they already were.”

“Sunrise wants to double down on the policies that created the very problem,” said Burnett. “We had 200 people die last year during this weather.”

The indoor temperature of Burnett’s home was in the 50s after he lost power.

“The Sunrise Movement wants more wind and more solar, and that’s great, unless the wind stops blowing like it did last February and snow falls and covers all your solar panels,” said Burnett. “To be fair, the wind came back up, but by then, the turbines had frozen, (and) you don’t want turbines turning on and throwing icicles across highways.”

Isaac holds firm to his position on the need for natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy.

“Wind and solar is habitat and environment destroying technology that increases the cost of electricity, does nothing to improve the environment, and just winds up hurting the poor most,” says Isaac. “It increases the unreliability of our grid and the instability.”

It was a close call in Texas last year, one that should cause other states to wake up to what Isaac calls a “cult-like fascination with decarbonized electricity.”

“We were nearly four minutes away from a complete grid collapse because renewable energy was not producing any electricity,” says Isaac. “That would have been completely devastating to Texas. We would still be rebuilding today. Millions of people would have fled the state because of this, and just thousands of people would have died.”

“ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) made some terrible decisions,” says Burnett. “After the power outage, they wanted to get the lights on immediately, so they said, ‘natural gas plants, you have to ramp up,’ but then they cut off power to switching stations for natural gas and for storage for natural gas, so there was no power heating the pipelines or the switches and the plants were using gas at an enormous rate, and those pipelines and switches froze.”

“That would not have happened with a coal plant because coal typically has six months of capacity sitting around in a stockpile,” says Burnett. “They’re not going to run out if the switching stations freeze, but those coal plants had closed, so there were multiple errors.”

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