Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) is warning President Joe Biden’s latest Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules will cripple the nation’s steel industry, particularly in Ohio and Indiana, as similar measures did in the European Union last year amid an energy crisis.
Vance sent a letter to Biden on Thursday regarding the administration’s sweeping EPA rules on United States power plants. The letter was first reviewed by Breitbart News.
According to Vance, Biden’s EPA is unable to cite a single domestic power plant that is able to meet the green energy standards set out by rules, suggesting the agency “has failed to consider fully the impact of the standards to industrial consumers of fossil-fuel generated electricity.”
Most notably, Vance writes that the rules would devastate the U.S. steel industry:
The impact of the rule would be especially hard on a backbone of the nation’s industrial base: the steel industry. The country’s top two steel producing states of Ohio and Indiana are especially reliant on fossil fuels for electric power generation—80 percent in Ohio and 91 percent in Indiana. When the new standards drive up energy costs and undermine the electric grid, steelmakers in the Heartland and throughout the country will suffer. The steel industry has already warned that the “increased costs, along with potential base load generation and grid reliability issues from the premature closure of fossil fuel-fired power plants, will have a dramatic impact on the viability of steel plants in the Unites States.” [Emphasis added]
Vance points to what has occurred with the European Union’s (E.U.) steel industry due to the continent’s energy crisis.
“My concerns are hardly speculative. Last year’s energy crisis in the European Union devastated the region’s steelmakers,” Vance writes. “Rising energy costs, including for electricity, made steel production unprofitable. Several European steel mills were fully or partially idled.”
The nation’s steel industry, particularly in Ohio and Indiana, is under pressure and faces crippling setbacks. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty)
Industry experts warned last year the energy crisis, where E.U. leaders demanded rationing among Europeans, may spur a “permanent deindustrialization.” Specifically, hundreds of steelworkers in Wales and England were laid off as a result
“This administration may tout its public subsidies for electric vehicles and investments in infrastructure, but those near-term demand shocks cannot resolve the long-term strain of climate alarmism and unworkable environmental regulations,” Vance writes. “I urge to withdraw the proposed rule.”
As Pennsylvania-based U.S. Steel is weighing offers to the highest bidder amid news of its sale, Vance has urged the company not to accept any offers from foreign bidders.
“The board of U.S. Steel must reject any bid from a foreign acquirer. If the courts attempt to block them, then Congress should intervene,” Vance wrote in the Washington Post last week. “We must ensure that corporate transactions such as the sale of U.S. Steel advance our nation’s power and prosperity. If we do, we might rescue 600 Grant St. from becoming yet another rusty memorial of American decline.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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