https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2021/10/26/bidens-climate-agenda-dies-in-the-senate/
By Paul Homewood
Wall Street Journal’s podcast on Biden’s Clean Electricity Plan is well worth a listen:
You may recall how Biden’s green agenda was gutted back in June, which I posted on here. In short, he had planned to spend $2 trillion on his clean energy plan, including massive subsidies for wind and solar.
However his attempts to include all of this in his Infrastructure Bill earlier this summer collapsed in the face of opposition not only from Republicans but also moderate Democrats.
His fall back plan was the Clean Electricity Performance Program. This would provide grants to utilities that increase the amount of clean electricity they use by at least 4% a year and penalize utilities that do not meet that standard.
The Program, worth $150 billion, was incorporated in the massive green, socialist $3 trillion spending bill, currently working its way through Congress. However, it seems like the Clean Electricity part of the bill is dead in the water, thanks to the resolute opposition of Joe Manchin, the Democrat Senator for West Virginia.
West Virginia is coal country, and Manchin knows that Biden’s Green Agenda would wipe out their economy. With the Senate split 50/50, Biden needs every Democrat vote to get his bill through.
What does all this mean?
It is all very well Biden pledging to reduce emissions, but actually managing to do it is another matter entirely.
Without that system of subsidies and penalties, utilities are not going to radically change the way they operate now. And even if electric cars grow in market share, the electricity they run on will still be primarily fossil fuel based.
Biden may have have other options at hand, including regulation, but these are just fiddling around at the edges.
This may be Biden’s last chance to force his Green New Deal through. The spending bill now being fought over only needs a majority of one in the Senate, as it is being processed as what is known as a Reconciliation Bill. But only one of these is allowed each year.
Next year, the Democrats face losing their majority in the House, along with their 50/50 tie in the Senate, given Biden’s catastrophic ten months at the helm so far.
They will have better things to worry about then than Sleepy Joe’s Green New Deal.