Analysis: The Green New Deal may decide the election — in the Republicans’ favor

While the en­ergy is­sue had a mar­ginal ef­fect in Penn­syl­va­nia’s 2020 elec­tion cy­cle, its con­nec­tion to higher prices could be de­ci­sive in 2024. In the spring, a Com­mon­wealth Foun­da­tion sur­vey of 800 Penn­syl­va­nia reg­is­tered vot­ers found that more than two-thirds named in­fla­tion as an im­ped­i­ment to main­tain­ing their stan­dard of liv­ing.

The costly Green New Deal

Mean­while, by pri­or­i­tiz­ing a “cli­mate emer­gency,” the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion has ren­dered en­ergy pro­duc­tion more dif­fi­cult and cost­lier and has in­jected 400 bil­lion of Green New Deal dol­lars into the econ­omy. Both are in­fla­tion­ary, as seen at the gas pump and in the prices of gro­cer­ies and man­u­fac­tured goods.

In any event, the is­sue isn’t go­ing away, be­cause the Re­pub­li­cans will raise it. Don­ald Trump will high­light the link be­tween en­ergy pol­icy and in­fla­tion.

The McCormick cam­paign re­fers to sup­pressed gas pro­duc­tion in Penn­syl­va­nia as a re­sult of fed­eral pol­icy im­ped­ing pipe­line con­struc­tion, say­ing that “un­der Biden’s en­ergy pol­i­cies, rub­ber-stamped by Bob Ca­sey, we ha­ven’t been able to ac­cess clean nat­u­ral gas. … Ca­sey sup­ports pol­i­cies that are costing us jobs and driv­ing up en­ergy prices even more.”

Com­pound­ing the Biden ef­fect in the Key­stone State are the “green” lean­ings of Josh Sha­piro, the Dem­o­crat gov­er­nor. His pro­pos­als for a $499 mil­lion car­bon tax and an ex­pan­sion of ex­pen­sive wind and so­lar en­ergy would add to the al­ready con­sid­er­able bur­dens of fam­i­lies and busi­nesses.

Sha­piro of­fers “not just di­sas­trous en­ergy pol­icy” but “ex­pen­sively di­sas­trous en­ergy pol­icy,” says David Tay­lor, CEO of the Penn­syl­va­nia Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, which lob­bies on be­half of 550,000 work­ers in the fifth larg­est man­u­fac­tur­ing state.

The loss of en­ergy

In a state where coal’s share of elec­tric gen­er­a­tion has dropped to less than 20% from more than 50%, both state and fed­eral pol­i­cies have been blamed for the clo­sure of many coal-fired plants. Penn­syl­va­nia’s larg­est such gen­er­a­tor at Homer City closed a year ago, and two more have an­nounced early re­tire­ments within a few years.

Nat­u­ral gas now pro­duces more than half of Penn­syl­va­nia’s elec­tric­ity, but gas gen­er­a­tion, too, has suf­fered un­der gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion and with he threat of more to come.

In the 10 years prior to 2019, when a car­bon tax first was pro­posed, $14 bil­lion worth of gas-fired plants were built in the state, re­ported Shawn Stef­fee, a Boil­er­mak­ers union busi­ness agent. How­ever, none have been built since and two $1 bil­lion pro­pos­als were can­celed. “It is highly un­likely that we will build an­other,” he says.

Govern­ment and in­dus­try over­seers of the high-volt­age trans­mis­sion sys­tem have warned of en­ergy short­ages re­sult­ing from ill-timed clo­sures of fos­sil fuel plants that in­crease the share of less re­li­able wind and so­lar. A sig­nifi­cant re­gional black­out is not out of the ques­tion and would dim the elec­toral out­look of pol­i­ti­cians sup­port­ing green en­ergy.

As for the ef­fect of job losses, one need only to read a Wash­ing­ton Ex­am­iner ac­count of fed­eral of­fi­cials meet­ing with Homer City cit­i­zens af­fected by last year’s plant clos­ing: “The vast di­vide be­tween the gov­ern­ment’s un­der­stand­ing of the needs of the peo­ple they serve and the peo­ple them­selves was never more ex­cru­ci­at­ingly ap­par­ent than at the meet­ing,” the ar­ti­cle be­gan.

The rest of the story told of un­kept prom­ises to fur­loughed work­ers whose lives were “up­rooted for­ever.” The meet­ing in­cluded a slide show ex­tol­ling the good in­ten­tions of fed­eral agen­cies.

The stakes

The case for re­di­recting fed­eral pol­icy away from the green agenda and to­ward more tra­di­tional en­ergy pro­duc­tion will be made by Trump, par­tic­u­larly in en­ergy states like Penn­syl­va­nia, which would be one of the ul­ti­mate prizes in No­vem­ber. McCormick will fol­low suit, add­ing to the force of Trump’s cam­paign.

At stake are the House, Senate and Pres­i­dency, and the de­cid­ing votes, at the mar­gin, could very well come from Penn­syl­va­nia en­ergy con­sum­ers.

Don Ritter is a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, and later led the National Environmental Policy Institute. His previous article was “The world will not stop burning coal and using oil.”