Former vice president and Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden’s energy platform, if enacted, would end using hydraulic fracturing technology to harvest oil and natural gas that has allowed the U.S. to become energy independent while creating millions of American jobs.
During his presidential campaign, Biden has said he would “phase out” and eliminate fossil fuels, including getting rid of fracking.
His running mate, Democrat vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris said: “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.”
Biden has come under scrutiny for his anti-fracking stance and has since said he is not against the practice, but it is unclear how this claim of a change of heart from him would play out in a Biden administration.
Real Clear Energy explained what ending fracking would mean for Americans from coast to coast:
Struggling through such an extraordinary time, where demand and prices have both unexpectedly plummeted, 2020 has been perhaps the most difficult year in the history of the U.S. oil and gas industry. Yet we have no choice but to rebound. Oil and gas meet 65% of America’s energy demand and remain simply irreplaceable at scale. So much so, that a lack of investments in new supply today could easily begin to spike prices in just a few years as demand inevitably rebounds: “$190 Oil? J.P. Morgan Thinks It’s Possible.”
In the fracking and shale-era from 2008-2019, for instance, U.S. crude oil production was up 160 percent, and gas increased 70 percent. Fracking now accounts for 80 percent of our oil and gas output and has transformed the U.S. into an energy powerhouse, producing more oil than Saudi Arabia and more gas than Russia.
Banning fracking would also make it nearly impossible to export oil and gas. In 2019 alone, the U.S. exported over 3 million b/d of crude oil and increased gas exports by almost 25%. From basically nothing in 2016, the U.S. is now the third largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), deemed the fastest growing commodity in 2019 – and essential to net-zero goals. This explains why the U.S. Department of Energy projects: “global natural gas consumption increases more than 40 percent between 2018 and 2050.” America’s oil and gas exports mean rising economic prosperity, but perhaps most importantly we can now help meet the desperate needs of energy-poor nations across the world.
Real Clear Energy noted five significant problems with the Biden-Harris energy plan: (1) a direct threat to U.S. national security, (2) morally unjust, (3) works against climate change goals, (4) increase energy prices, and (5) put millions of Americans out of work.
In the battleground state of Pennsylvania alone the impact of fracking is staggering, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute and the Marcellus Shale Coalition.
The Institute for Energy Research reported on the serious issues in the Biden-Harris plan:
Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s $2 trillion climate plan is supposed to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from the electric sector by 2035. In 2019, 62 percent of U.S. electricity generation was produced from natural gas, coal, and petroleum products—the energy sources that will need to be replaced if Biden’s plan goes into effect. Assuming that Biden’s plan allows for nuclear and hydroelectric power to be part of his clean energy standard (something environmentalists have fought against in the past), only 38 percent of current generation would count toward that mandate.
The Energy Information Administration, in its Annual Energy Outlook 2020, forecasts that market forces would only get the Biden “clean energy” share to reach 46 percent. All of the increased generation would be from renewable energy, which almost doubles over the 16-year period since new nuclear power is too expensive to compete on a market basis. By 2035, wind generation doubles and solar generation increases by 348 percent assuming the wind production tax credit is phased out next year and the investment tax credit for solar is decreased to 10 percent for commercial, industrial, and utility solar farms in 2022, as current law requires.
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