Today’s Key Takeaway: The Biden Administration, Industry and Academia all agree – if the U.S wants to achieve its energy transition, we need to fix the permitting process and strengthen our domestic mineral supplies.
U.S. mineral supply chain vulnerabilities and broken U.S. mine permitting process were topics of an event hosted by the National Mining Association and CQ Roll Call November 15. The event featured speakers from the Biden administration, industry and academia. All agreed that, for the U.S. to achieve its energy transition goals, we must address the permitting process and secure more domestic mineral supplies to reduce our dependence on imported minerals.
In his opening remarks, Mitch Krebs, President and CEO of Coeur Mining and Chairman of the Board for NMA, said permits for Coeur Mining projects have taken anywhere from six to 17 years but said, “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
Sameera Fazili, Deputy Assistant to President Biden and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council said President Biden remains supportive of Sen. Manchin’s permitting reform legislation and that electric vehicle adoption won’t be limited by consumer demand but rather by the availability of mineral supplies. Speakers from the event’s panel agreed.
Joe Britton, Executive Director for Zero Emissions Transportation Association (ZETA), explained that, with regards to permitting, “we’re still stuck in 10 years ago.”
Jigar Shah, Director of the Loan Programs Office for the U.S. Department of Energy, agreed an exponential increase in minerals is necessary to meet the energy transition, adding “the processing capacity we need to make the 2030 goals is at least 10x of what we are doing today.”
S&P Market Intelligence’s Director of Pricing and Purchasing, John Anton, said according to their research, to achieve net zero by 2050, the country needs everything in place by 2035. That means infrastructure and supply chains for materials to build the energy and transportation infrastructure. As an example, Anton said we need to double global copper production by 2035; however, according to current estimates, we’ll face a 20% shortfall for the mineral in 2035.
Nick Snowdon, Head of the Industrial Metals Research sector of Goldman Sachs’ Global Commodities Team said the good news is that there is a growing amount of capital waiting to be deployed in the energy transition. According to Snowdon, the biggest issues the West will face are the permitting process and the skilled labor and workforce the industry will need to bring these minerals to market.
National Mining Association President and CEO Rich Nolan concluded the event by highlighting the need for bipartisan support of permitting reforms to get our country’s supply chains back on track. “We’re on the cusp of – or perhaps already even in – a breakthrough moment for reshoring these essential supply chains and doing so at the speed and scale that’s required.”
The 2022 election results are finally coming into focus, which now leads to the question everyone is asking: what will energy and climate policy look like in the next Congress? The picture being painted at this point is that Republicans will have a narrow majority in the House of Representatives and Democrats will retain the Senate and potentially even pick up a seat for a 51-49 majority. In 2021, we wrote on the challenges to President Joe Biden’s energy agenda under the narrow majority his party held and the need to win Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.V.) support on all matters; we now follow this up by highlighting the challenges for energy policy in the next Congress.
Manchin is still important, but might be less important
Sen. Manchin will continue to play a key role in any energy-related legislative efforts, both as a swing vote and as the likely returning chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. But his importance may be somewhat diminished. Last Congress, with Democrats having a narrow majority in both chambers, they could pursue “budget reconciliation” to circumvent the Senate’s usual 60 vote requirement and pass legislation via simple majority. With a Republican House, budget reconciliation is a less viable vehicle for any energy policy agenda, so Sen. Manchin will not be the only show in town when it comes to energy legislation. However, without budget reconciliation, Democrats will likely need 60 votes for legislation, meaning Manchin’s vote and approval of legislation will likely still be a requirement. In fact, Senate Democrats’ ability to pass more party-aligned legislation is lessened under the next Congress rather than expanded, despite the potential for a larger Senate majority.
Sen. Manchin will continue to play a key role in the confirmation of the president’s appointment to energy-related positions. These appointees have significant power to implement the president’s agenda, which, given the difficulty President Biden faces in getting his agenda through a Republican-controlled House, means that the bulk of the president’s policy will likely come from his agencies—and by extension his political appointees. Traditionally, these appointees are nominated by the president, and then the Senate holds hearings to evaluate the candidate. Finally, the Senate votes to confirm the appointment. In the past, this vote required 60 votes and was usually bipartisan, but ever since the “nuclear option” was used, nominations now only require a simple majority vote. Here is where it gets complicated.
The appointees that Biden wants to implement his energy, climate and regulatory agenda usually need a confirmation hearing from the relevant committee in the Senate. In this case, that means Sen. Manchin gets to decide if and when those nominees receive a hearing, potentially preventing appointments that Sen. Manchin views as unfavorable. This has been prominent in recent days as Sen. Manchin has refused to have a reconfirmation hearing for the current chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, presumably in response to President Biden’s derogatory claims about coal energy. If President Biden selects nominees that Manchin views unfavorably, they may not get appointed at all.
The wild card, though, is the last undecided seat in the Senate which will be determined in Georgia. If Democrats take a win here, then they will hold 51 seats in the Senate, which means that if Sen. Manchin refuses to hold a hearing for a nominee, the Senate Majority Leader could force a floor vote where 50 Democrats vote to confirm and Vice President Kamala Harris could be the tie-breaking vote. Alternatively, if Republicans win in Georgia, and the Senate remains in a 50-50 split, Sen. Manchin’s vote would still be required to confirm appointees even without a hearing and the president would have to select energy-related nominees that meet Sen. Manchin’s approval. It should be noted, though, that the political optics of circumventing a Senate committee chairman’s traditional role in the confirmation process would be bad, and even though the president could get around Sen. Manchin, it may not be the ideal choice.
Republican energy and climate agenda may depend on election lessons learned
Under Former President Donald J. Trump, the story of the Republican energy agenda was a tale of two perspectives. When it came to policy and legislative issues, Republicans were largely unified, with votes aimed at keeping energy costs down and promoting energy innovation. But the way in which Republicans talked about energy and environmental issues was bifurcated, with more vulnerable Republicans like Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) or Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) taking a more moderate approach and pushing for a role for small-government climate policies, while President Trump and his closely aligned supporters eschewed any focus on climate change.
The varying rhetoric on climate from Republicans reflects a political challenge for the party. Winning—and holding—a majority requires that Republicans have policy ideas that are amenable to moderate voters in swing states and districts, which propels some Republicans to want to embrace a positive climate agenda consistent with Republican principles, even if it is not a popular topic with their base.
Where Republicans in the next Congress go on a climate and energy agenda will largely depend on their evaluation of why the 2022 midterms went so poorly. If Republicans view turnout as the problem, they may double-down on rhetoric more aligned with former President Trump’s efforts to galvanize their base. It should be noted, though, that pro-Trump voters do not seem to be reliable voters in midterms, with only 16 percent of voters saying their vote was intended to “express support for Trump.” Generally, candidates that were backed by Trump performed poorly, and the 2022 race represented an important bucking of a midterm trend, which is that independent voters did not vote in opposition of the incumbent party. In almost every midterm election, independent voters tend to vote in opposition to the party that holds the presidency by a margin of 10 points or more, but in 2022 independent voters favoredDemocrats, albeit by a narrow margin.
If Republicans conclude that they need to pursue a grow-the-party strategy rather than relying only on energizing the base, they may want to build on their budding small-government climate agenda. When Democrats took the House of Representatives in 2018, they formed the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis to investigate climate policies. While this was a boon to Democrats’ ability to elevate the profile of climate-related issues, it also was a surprise benefit to Republicans that were able to use the committee to promote their own vision of how to address climate change with smaller government and less intrusive policies. Every Republican on the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis except for Rep. Anthony Gonzalez—whose district will be eliminated in 2023 and could not be reelected—won their races by large margins. While these seats were always safe districts for Republicans, it highlights that the growing Republican climate movement exemplified by the Republicans’ Climate Task Force and Climate Caucus is likely helping Republicans gain moderate voters without hurting their views with their base.
Next Congress, Republicans will have to decide whether to retain—and likely rename—the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, which could be a vehicle for generating policies that help Republicans in moderate districts, or to eliminate the committee, which would be a more appealing vote to Republicans who have opposed the committee. We do not yet know what Republicans in the House will do, but the 2022 election results show a vindication for the climate Republicans, and we could see more climate focus from Republicans next Congress than ever before.
The biggest energy issues are bipartisan and likely to see progress
The energy policy topic that has dominated attention since passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has been permitting reform. At R Street, we estimated that at least two-thirds of electricity subsidies under the IRA will go to clean energy that would have been constructed anyway and will deliver no additional climate benefit. An analysis of the IRA from Princeton University estimates that 80 percent of the potential climate benefits are locked behind transmission growth, which will require permitting reform. Both Republicans and Democrats have been outspoken supporters of permitting reform, and the last major permitting reform happened under Former President Barack Obama when Republicans held both chambers in Congress.
The fact that the next Congress is looking divided is a boon, rather than a harm, to many of the major energy policy issues on the horizon. This is because the preferred policy vehicle of the current Congress, budget reconciliation, is limited to budget-related matters and cannot address issues like permitting reform. The fact that the 118th Congress is likely going to force policymakers into bipartisanship to address these issues makes both compromise and legislative success more likely.
If permitting reform happens, it will probably end up as a combination of Democrat and Republican proposals, with changes to permitting laws that will likely accelerate clean energy and related infrastructure while potentially green lighting major oil and gas-related projects that Republicans—and Sen. Manchin—have prioritized in their concern of energy prices.
Other major energy policy issues, such as innovation, have always been reliable bipartisan winners and are unlikely to be slowed by the next Congress.
One major potential issue, though, is the worsening budget outlook. Interest payments on debt in 2022 are expected to be $635 billion, 25 percent higher than last year. This reflects increased spending during the pandemic, as well as rising interest rates, which make financing additional spending or energy subsidies from debt increasingly untenable. It is not yet clear how much pressure this will put on both Democrats and Republicans to cut spending and raise taxes, but it should be noted that the historic energy policy paradigm of subsidy expansion cannot continue forever. Republicans traditionally have used their majorities under Democratic presidents to criticize spending, and this dynamic is likely to be politically rewarding under the nation’s current fiscal conditions.
Republicans will be able to put a spotlight on unpopular Biden policies
An underappreciated aspect of holding a majority in either chamber of Congress is the ability to decide what hearings are held, and the privilege of inviting more witnesses to testify. Typically, the minority party only has one or two witnesses at hearings, and carefully selects them to try to counter the narrative of the hearing. With Republicans poised to hold the House, they will be able to hold hearings on topics they view as politically important, and they will be able to invite more witnesses to represent a broader array of views on policy topics. This may be problematic for President Biden, whose energy and climate policy agenda since he took office has largely gone unchecked by Congress.
Many of President Biden’s energy policy moves have garnered little media attention but are politically unpopular. For example, even before President Biden could appoint a secretary for the Department of Interior, his acting secretary issued an order that suspended all oil and gas leases and drilling permits on federal land. Given the current environment of high energy prices, Americans may be surprised by, and disappointed in, the administration’s handling of energy production. Additionally, Congress has largely given the president a pass on moves that would normally be considered highly controversial, such as requesting foreign authoritarian regimes to increase their own energy production while simultaneously threatening action against domestic producers. Republicans will also be able to scrutinize the executive branch’s permitting processes and causes of delays, as well as potential waste from the president’s implementation of subsidy programs implemented by Congress. The IRA in particular, which allocates hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidy for energy and environment programs, will likely face more scrutiny under the next Congress than it did when it was news.
Conclusion
The outlook for climate and energy policy is mixed under the next Congress. Those hoping for the passage of large bills in the vein of Build Back Better or the IRA are likely to be disappointed. But many of the big policy issues likely to come into play in the near term are generally bipartisan, and issues like permitting reform may be helped rather than harmed by the composition of the next Congress. Sen. Manchin will continue to play an important role, but depending on the outcome in Georgia, he may no longer be the deciding vote for all things related to energy policy in the president’s agenda.
Less certain at this point is the agenda Republicans will pursue in the House, as the more Trump-aligned Republicans performed poorly in the election while the climate-Republicans all performed very well. This could breathe new life into Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s budding climate agenda, but such efforts may be unpopular with less climate-concerned Republicans whom McCarthy will need the support of to secure speakership.
More certain, though, is that Republicans in the House will have a vehicle to draw attention to moves by the Biden administration that they oppose, and President Biden will face more scrutiny under the next Congress than he has enjoyed during his term so far.
Overall, we can expect major policy issues like permitting reform to continue to move, Republicans to use hearings to draw attention to President Biden’s more contentious policies, and confirmation of nominees to contentious issues largely focused on Democrats. And the direction we see Republicans move on issues like climate change may depend largely on the results of election autopsies.
Offshore wind was a very expensive technology even before the supply chain issues from the COVID pandemic started and inflation increased its cost even more. These wind farms are very capital and labor intensive and rising interest rates make them even more so. Despite the cost and already increasing electric bills for American consumers, President Biden wants 30 gigawatts of offshore wind off the Atlantic coast by 2030. That may not happen as New Jersey utility Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. recently said it is deciding whether to pull out of Ocean Wind 1, a proposed project off New Jersey’s coast with a capacity of 1.1 gigawatts. Less than two weeks earlier, New England utility Avangrid Inc. (a part of the Spanish Iberdrola Group) said its similarly sized Commonwealth Wind project was no longer viable due to higher costs and supply chain issues. Avangrid would push back the start dates of both the Commonwealth and another wind project, Park City, by a year due to headwinds including inflation and higher interest rates, supply chain shortages, resource problems and rising prices of raw materials.
Not only is the Atlantic coast slated as a haven for offshore wind in the President’s mind, but California Governor Newsom sees 2 to 5 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030 and 25 gigawatts by 2045, which will be part of Newsom’s plan to achieve 90 percent renewable energy by 2035. Despite the cost and California’s already skyrocketing electricity prices, the Biden Administration announced the first offshore wind lease sale off the central and northern coasts of California set for December 6, 2022. The lease sale is also the first U.S. sale that could support commercial-scale floating wind development. But, developing utility scale floating wind energy off the California coast is projected to be eight to ten years away. The five California lease areas to be offered by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management have a capacity potential of more than 4.5 gigawatts. The lease sale announcement follows California’s agreement with the federal government in May 2021 to open up the West Coast for offshore wind development.
Some Offshore Wind Projects Are Continuing—for Now
Vineyard Wind, a 62-turbine project planned in federal waters 12 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, and six projects along the East Coast by Danish developer Orsted are still in play. Cable work began in Barnstable, Massachusetts, last year to connect Vineyard Wind to the New England grid and, after pausing construction to accommodate the summer tourist season on Cape Cod, it is to continue construction again this fall, including underwater work in the ocean. The Prysmian Group, a cable-maker, finished manufacturing two high-voltage export cables at factories in Europe for Vineyard Wind. One is being shipped mounted on a barge positioned atop a semi-submersible vessel to accelerate the trip across the ocean. Vineyard Wind workers surveyed the cable area for potential obstacles, ranging from old lobster traps to unexploded bombs from World War II. A remote-controlled submersible was used to clear the path of a WWII bomb. The project also needs a certificate from federal regulators to begin laying the cable and a legal challenge to its environmental permit from a group of landowners and fishermen is expected, but Vineyard sees current federal permitting rules in its favor, especially since Biden has placed a priority upon the U.S. following Europe into offshore wind.
However, Vineyard now says it may not be viable without changes to a power contract with the state because of escalating global energy costs and supply chain issues. The power purchase agreement filed earlier this year locks in how much Massachusetts’ utilities will pay the wind developer for the electricity it generates, which is needed for securing financing for the wind farm. In a filing with the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities on October 21, the company asked for a one-month freeze on the state’s review of its previously filed power purchase agreement, citing ‘unprecedented commodity price increases, interest rate hikes, and supply shortages as factors affecting whether the wind farm remains economic and whether it can be financed under current terms.’ The warning was also noted by Mayflower Wind, the developer of another state offshore wind project. Massachusetts chose the 1,200-megawatt Commonwealth wind project and the 400-megawatt Mayflower project last year in the state’s third round of wind solicitations. Contracts (power purchase agreements) were filed with the state regulators in May. The Mayflower contract was for $77 per megawatt-hour, and the Commonwealth contract was for $72 per megawatt hour.
Most of the components being used for Vineyard and South Fork are being manufactured abroad. Prysmian’s two cable lengths were made at factories in Finland and Italy. Vineyard’s foundations (monopoles) are under construction in Germany, and its transition pieces, which connect turbine towers to their foundations, are being built in Spain.
Europe’s Wind Development Status
While offshore wind had originally flourished in Europe, inflation, slow permitting and uncertainty around the European Union’s emergency electricity market interventions are currently delaying or stalling orders for new wind turbines. Orders for new wind turbines in quarter 3 of 2022 totaled 2 gigawatts, according to WindEurope. These orders, from 9 countries, were all for onshore wind turbines. Finland ordered the new capacity of 322 megawatts, followed by the Sweden and Germany, bringing total orders in 2022 to 7.7 gigawatts – far below what Europe needs to reach its climate targets. The European Union wants 510 gigawatts of wind energy by 2030, which means the European wind industry needs to install 39 gigawatts of new wind turbines each year up to 2030. The current rate of turbine orders is less than one-fifth of that and falls well short of the target.
Conclusion
Wind Farms are in financial trouble, particularly offshore wind farms that are very expensive and are suffering from rising interest rates, inflation and supply chain bottlenecks. Vineyard Wind off Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts wants its power contract (power purchase agreement) with the state renegotiated, New Jersey’s Ocean Wind 1 is considering whether to proceed at all, as is the Commonwealth Wind project, which is also in need of a power contract renegotiation with Massachusetts. Despite the cost increases and the anxiety of the developers, President Biden’s goal is 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030 and Governor Newsom wants 25 gigawatts by 2045 offshore California. For American consumers, it would be best to follow in Europe’s current footsteps of no offshore wind turbine orders and a significant slow-down in onshore wind turbine orders, as their intermittency means expensive back-up power is needed, which is not included in the cost estimates.
Every year the world’s leaders and their delegates convene at the Conference of the Parties (COP), which is the United Nations-hosted annual climate conference. The purpose of the conference traditionally has been to focus on the development and implementation of policy that would curtail global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. More recently, the focus of the conference has been to put a spotlight on the harms of climate change and debate on the responsibility of developed nations to pay for what is being called “loss and damage” instead of lowering emissions. While these discussions are important to issues of justice, they do not prompt policy formulation that would mitigate future climate impacts.
Much of the focus at this and past COPs has been on the United States, which as the wealthiest large emitter has received significant scrutiny. Past R Street Institute research, though, has noted that the United States is leading in emission abatement. From 2010-2020, the United States accounted for more than half of all the emissions declines among developing nations, and since 2005 has reduced its emissions more than every other developed nation combined. The United States also significantly outperformed emissions projections, even when controlling for the effects of the pandemic.
Rather, rising global emissions are explained by rising fossil fuel consumption globally. Even though alternative energy sources have been growing rapidly, they have not totally supplanted fossil because total global energy demand has exceeded expectations.
Simply, when examining the data, it is apparent that it is not feasible to reduce global emissions without concerted efforts to stabilize emissions in the developing world, and especially in China and India. While developed nations still represent a major share of emissions and need to make considerably more progress on climate change to mitigate its effects, they represent only a small fraction of projected emission increases, and a narrower opportunity for emission abatement than is offered by developing nations.
Proposed solutions so far have been impractical
A recurring theme of the COPs that is persisting through this year is that while developing nations recognize that their decarbonization is key to achieving hoped-for climate goals, they are unwilling to make commitments unless wealthy nations cover the cost. India’s climate pledge is contingent upon other countries paying for the action. This year’s COP opened with a critique that rich nations failed to measure up to last year’s promise of “$100 billion annually” of climate finance for developing nations. Given that so much of climate rhetoric in recent years has focused on legacy emissions and their impacts, rather than mitigating future emissions, it is understandable that the injustice of rich nations reaping the benefits of emissions and not paying the cost has become a focus for the COP.
But avoiding future loss and damage is not served by a nearly exclusive focus on legacy emissions and climate financing. This is because it is simply not possible for rich nations to foot all, or even a large portion, of the bill of a clean energy transition at current costs. The estimated amount of capital required for a global clean energy transition is enormous. The International Renewable Energy Agency estimates that the capital cost of global decarbonization is $45 trillion, which is consistent with an estimate from Morgan Stanley of $50 trillion. Annual costs also corroborate these numbers, with $1.5 trillion per year estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ($53 trillion from 2016-2050) and the Internal Energy Agency’s Net Zero Emission scenario estimating that capital requirements will increase to nearly $3 trillion per year by 2030. For comparison, the largest U.S. climate spending package was the Inflation Reduction Act’s roughly $370 billion on climate and energy over 10 years, or about a tenth of a percent of the estimated capital cost of a global clean energy transition.
And while we expect benefits from climate action, it is important to understand that future benefits may still require investments that entail present day costs that someone must bear. Even last year’s $100 billion promise, which rich nations have not been able to fulfill, is unlikely to be enough to alter the global emissions trajectory significantly. Quite simply, the overall expected difference in capital cost between presently available clean energy and fossil fuels currently used in developing nations is too wide to expect that a climate strategy of having rich nations furnish clean energy growth abroad will materially mitigate future emissions.
Some politicians have, correctly, understood that the sort of global energy transition they often envision is not possible to achieve without private sector investment, which represents a much greater share of overall energy investment than public dollars. But the policy mechanisms often proposed are inconsistent with steering that capital toward productive ends. As an example, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry proposed a plan similar to past efforts in which companies could claim credit for investments in emission mitigation abroad, such as covering the costs of building renewable energy in developing nations. This makes sense in theory, but a historic problem with these types of programs is that they create perverse incentives for greater emissions in developing nations so as to attract outside funding.
Given the current exacerbated economic conditions of high inflation and high debt among developed nations, there is limited potential for emission mitigation through climate financing in the near term.
To cut global emissions meaningfully, focus on costs
The per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) in a developing nation is, on average, about a fourth of the per-capita GDP in a developed one. This wide disparity of wealth means that even relatively small cost differences among technologies can be critical in determining affordability in developing nations. Even though many renewable energy sources have fallen considerably in cost, the caveat is that these energy sources can only partially satisfy energy demand due to their intermittency, while energy storage and on-demand clean energy sources are often costlier than fossil fuels. In the United States and other major economies, the policy answer to the cost differential between clean and fossil energy has always been additional subsidy—something that is not an option in poorer developing nations that must wrestle with myriad health and human development challenges that take funding priority.
To achieve widespread global decarbonization, the surest path is for the real, unsubsidized costs of clean energy to achieve parity with fossil fuels. The largest factor in U.S. emission decline in recent years has not been renewable energy growth, but rather that natural gas fell below the cost of coal while offering similar utility. Similarly, innovations that bring down the costs of clean energy and its related technology will make the choice of clean energy one of economics rather than a need for subsidy and political will.
Achieving cost reduction, though, is best served by having an energy market that is as open, competitive and free from distortion as possible. Competition incentivizes firms to reduce their operating costs to increase their profits, whereas subsidies and mandates for technological uptake can ironically increase costs because firms no longer need to reduce costs to be profitable. What subsidies do exist should, to the greatest extent possible, be technologically neutral and focus on outcomes over technological favoritism.
In an environment in which true, unsubsidized costs fall due to competition, clean energy uptake in the developing world will simply be a matter of course, as it would not make economic sense to favor fossil fuels if they are higher cost. But policymakers and advocates should be careful not to claim falsely that this technological state has already been achieved, for if it had been then the issue of developing nations’ demand for clean energy financing would not be present.
Prioritize effective solutions
Delegates, advocates, politicians and other climate conscious participants at this year’s COP would be better served by a focus on the data and the nuts and bolts of what it takes to achieve a global energy transition. While a spotlight on loss and damage is an important and worthwhile effort, if the solutions demanded are impractical or unattainable then ultimately no lives will be improved. Avoiding future climate impacts is best achieved by the sort of cost reductions in clean energy that is best enabled by a prosperous and open global market where competition flourishes. If the COP attendees want to get serious on addressing climate harms, then they should look to where the best opportunities for emission mitigation are now, and not where they were in the past.
If we want to tackle climate change, we need more than cans of soup and a bad slogan.
Recent climate protests staged by a coalition of groups called Just Stop Oil have made headlines but have also demonstrated why the climate agenda is doomed.
Just Stop Oil advocates against any new oil and gas projects in the United Kingdom and is infamous for their performative protests. Their recent actions put art and climate at odds when activists defaced famous paintings by throwing soup on them in an attempt to bring attention to their cause. Yet, there’s a fatal flaw in their message: we can’t just stop oil.
It doesn’t take a lot of research to figure out that if we suddenly cut off oil and gas, Utah would lose over 90% of its energy supply, the United States would lose nearly 70% of its energy supply, and the world would lose over 80%. Beyond energy, fossil fuels are responsible for many of the products we use each day — from toothpaste to cell phones to credit cards. As of now, there are few viable alternatives for these products. We absolutely should be investing in clean, alternative energy, but we’re simply not at a place to just stop using fossil fuels.
Now, it’s true that Just Stop Oil isn’t advocating for complete and total abolition of fossil fuels. Still, the average person isn’t visiting their website to understand the nuances of their approach. Similar to how the slogan “defund the police” makes it sound like a group wants to zero-out police budgets, a name like “Just Stop Oil” suggests the group is 100%anti fossil fuels. That lack of nuance in their messaging extends to many of their activists, who told me at a recent protest in London they’re hoping for all oil to be shut down now. That’s a radical approach to the average person.
Why? Well, energy demand is expected to riseover the next few decades, not decrease. Imagining that we will be able to fuel the entire world without fossil fuels — in the short term, but even looking longer term — is irrational. Fossil fuels greatly contribute to climate change, yes, but they are also responsible for incredible strides in quality of life. When addressing climate change, we can’t create more human suffering. Ending the use of fossil fuels would do just that.
With the conversation around energy and climate change becoming a bigger priority for voters every day, it’s important we find a middle-ground between “drill baby drill” and “just stop oil.” We must decrease our reliance on fossil fuels in favor of clean energy, but we also must stop pitting energy sources against each other. The truth is we need an all-of-the-above approach to energy — renewable energy, fossil fuels, and nuclear power all working together to supply our energy needs in an affordable, reliable, andincreasingly clean way.
Diversifying our energy mix is crucial and can be cost-positive if done properly. Wind and solar have seen historic drops in cost in recent years, and although traditional nuclear energy infrastructure is expensive to build, new generation nuclear is nearly ready. Rather than relying entirely on fossil fuels to power our world, we canpursue alternatives. Still, fossil fuels will have a place for years to come, so we should work to ensure our fossil fuel production is as clean as possible. By utilizing emissions-reducing technologies like carbon capture and innovative techniques, we can reduce the emissions that current fossil fuel production creates.
While Just Stop Oil activists may have the right intentions, their message sends all the wrong signals. Climate activists should be willing to work with industry to have the cleanest practices possible while still providing much needed energy to the world. Now that the midterms are over, Republicans and Democrats should work together to ensure that our world has affordable, abundant, and increasingly clean energy. Climate-smart Republicans were victorious in the midterms because Americans want a smart, pragmatic energy strategy — but one that also protects the environment.
We need to stop rewarding radical ideas with media attention and instead incentivize the most effective policy ideas. Just stopping oil just doesn’t work.
