Gas Prices Force Biden into An Unexpected Embrace of Fossil Fuels


WASHINGTON — President Biden took office by pledging to tackle the planet’s climate crisis. But partly because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, rising gas prices prompted the environmentalist president to do the unlikely thing: embrace oil.

On Tuesday, Mr. Biden traveled to Iowa, where he announced that the Environmental Protection Agency would temporarily lift regulations banning the use of an ethanol-gasoline mixture known as E15, which contributes to smog during the warmer months, during the summer months. Mr Biden said his government would waive the regulation to lower the price of gasoline at the pump for many Americans.

“Some people are going to help and I’m committed to doing everything I can to help, even if they have an extra penny or two in their pockets, they make a difference in people’s lives when they fill it up,” Biden said. A tour of a facility that produces 150 million gallons of bioethanol per year. He later added: “When you have a choice, you have competition. When you have competition, you have better prices.”

The ethanol announcement is the latest move by Mr. Biden’s White House, contradicting his promises as a presidential candidate to turn the US off of fossil fuels. It seems that the price of gas changed his account. Last October, the average cost of a gallon of gas was $3.32; In March it was about $4.32.

Last month, the president proposed a new policy that aims to pressure oil companies to explore unused land, and said the companies have thousands of permits to extract oil if they want to. Why don’t they pump oil?” Mr. Biden also announced that 180 million barrels of oil were sold from the country’s strategic oil reserve in the next six months, the largest release in history.

“It will provide historical amounts of supply for a historic period,” Mr. Biden later said.

Mr. Biden has walked a cautious tightrope in the weeks since US sanctions on Russian oil and gas have pushed energy prices up. Even as the president pleaded with oil producers to pump more crude, he sought to reassure his political base that meeting the needs of the present crisis would not distract from the long-term goal of moving away from fossil fuels that cause dangerous climate change. .

The president’s embrace of oil underscores his awkward position between two competing priorities: America’s imperative to reduce its use of fossil fuels and the pressure to respond to rising gas prices.

“When his term began, Joe Biden didn’t think he was going to spend his second year exploiting the strategic oil reserve or flying to Des Moines to approve E15 exemptions,” said Barry Rabe, professor of political science and environmental policy. University of Michigan.

With the broader climate change agenda and investments in wind, solar and electric vehicles largely stagnating in Congress, the president’s allies say his short-term, pro-oil actions may further disappoint environmentally-focused voters that Democrats need to get out of for Congress. elections this fall

“Climate voters are likely not to be sufficiently affected as it hinders major legislative success,” Mr Rabe said.

Mr. Biden’s recent actions have drawn criticism from many in the environmental community. Mitch Jones, policy director for the lobbying arm of the nonprofit group Food & Water Watch, said in a statement that the decision to waive the summer ban on E15 “pushes us even deeper into the pit of dirty fossil fuel mixes.”

White House officials objected to the idea that Mr. Biden had begun to adopt fossil fuels. They state that environmental policies always foresee continued dependence on oil and gas as the country transitions to cleaner energy sources for years to come.

And they said the current energy crisis is a clear example of why they believe Congress and Republicans should support switching to alternative forms of energy and reducing the US reliance on oil.

“Families need to get their kids to school and work, get food and get on with their lives — and that sometimes requires gas today, this month and this year,” said White House spokesman Vedant Patel. “But we also need to accelerate our transition to clean energy — not slow it down.”

In recent weeks, Biden administration officials announced funding to make homes energy efficient, launched a new conservation program, and said the president will launch the Defense Production Act to encourage local extraction and processing of minerals needed to make batteries for electric vehicles.

Republicans and lobbyists working for the oil and gas industries have sought to blame higher gas prices on Mr. Biden’s climate agenda, arguing that prices would have been lower had the White House not pursued programs aimed at moving the country to other forms of clean energy.

“Don’t put gas prices on Putin,” Republican leader Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told Fox News earlier this month.

He added: “A reaction to the shutdown of the fossil fuel industry. They’re going after them in every conceivable way.”

In reality, however, Mr. Biden has had limited success in delivering on his climate agenda – largely due to opposition from Republicans and the energy industry. So experts say it’s hard to blame high gas prices for the effects of these yet-to-be-enacted proposals.

For example, Mr. Biden has proposed $300 billion in tax incentives to stimulate markets for wind and solar power and electric vehicles. If enacted, it could reduce the nation’s emissions by roughly 25 percent by 2030. This bill passed the House but stalled in the Senate amid opposition from Republicans and West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin.

Mr. Biden has also sought to suspend new oil and gas leases on federal land and waters, a move that the oil industry continues to undermine production. Yet that policy has been stopped by the courts, and Mr. Biden auctioned more than 80 million acres of land in the Gulf of Mexico last year – the largest lease sale in history.

Authorities estimate that allowing the ethanol blend to be sold during the summer months would result in a 10 cent discount on every gallon of gasoline purchased at the roughly 2,300 stations in the country that offer it, and they describe the decision as a move towards “energy independence.”

That’s a small percentage of the 150,000 gas stations nationwide, according to NACS, the trade association that represents grocery stores.

Mr. Biden also faces increasing pressure to lower energy prices in March, which helped deliver the highest rate of inflation since 1981. Gas averaged $4.10 a gallon on Tuesday, according to AAA.

Ethanol is made from corn and other crops and has been mixed with some types of gasoline for years to reduce dependence on oil. However, the higher volatility of the mixture may contribute to smoke formation in warmer weather. For this reason, environmental groups have traditionally objected to the lifting of the summer season ban. Oil companies, which fear further use of ethanol, will also reduce their sales.

How much the presence of ethanol keeps fuel prices down has been a matter of debate among economists. Some experts said the decision would likely bring greater political benefits than financial ones.

“This is still very, very small compared to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Release,” said David Victor, a climate policy expert at the University of California, San Diego. “This is a much more transparent political move.”

Some energy experts argue that the environmental benefits of biofuels are diminished by the way they are driving up the prices of corn and food.

Egyptian state lawmakers and industry leaders are urging Mr. Biden to fill the void created by the US ban on Russian oil exports with biofuels. Emily Skor, CEO of biofuels trade association group Growth Energy, called the decision a “big win” for energy security.

“These are tough elections and I don’t think they’re something they like,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president of government affairs for the Conservative Voters Union, a nonprofit group. “I believe they’re trying to do this in a way that doesn’t lock up any more fossil fuel infrastructure or pollution over the next decades, and I think they’re as determined as ever to seize the climate moment.”



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