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Copper Tip Energy Services
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Copper Tip Energy


COMMENTARY: Vance Attacks Harris on Energy by Cherry-Picking Facts


These translations are done via Google Translate

It’s dishonest to focus on affordability and ignore the risks — and costs — associated with emissions-driven climate change

A convenient selection of facts.
A convenient selection of facts. Photographer: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP

A few days before Senator JD Vance’s Wall Street Journal op-ed on energy policy and “net zero” dropped, his billionaire backer Peter Thiel was asked if climate science was real. Thiel, an investor and entrepreneur, ummed and erred extensively on Joe Rogan’s podcast before reiterating that he thought climate science wasn’t real because any science with a modifier ahead of it isn’t real (watch it here).1 This novel textual take sits oddly with the actual practice of climate science, which involves a lot of those old lab fakers, chemistry and physics. Sadly, it suggests Vance may need to look elsewhere for help fixing the glaring flaws in his own analysis.

Vance, Donald Trump’s Republican vice-presidential running mate, declares that Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic candidate, has waged war on US energy. If so, she’s not much of a general and nor is her boss. US oil and gas production has hit new records under President Joe Biden and net exports of these fuels have surged.

Leaving that aside, Vance’s main thrust — signaled by the obligatory nod to his hardscrabble upbringing and the assertion that “Kamala Harris cares more about climate change than about inflation,” — is that Americans can’t afford the energy transition. In reality, we can’t afford to avoid it.

Vance can point to big nominal increases in energy prices since Biden took office, citing a 30% increase in electricity costs and a 42% increase for gasoline. Such numbers don’t tell the full story. Pump prices, in particular, had slumped by the end of Trump’s term because of the initial wave of the Covid-19 pandemic when, you may recall, the roads were unusually clear. The biggest increases in energy prices were in 2022, spurred by the impact on commodity markets of that renewed Russian invasion of Ukraine that Vance doesn’t care about (Moscow escapes any blame in the op-ed).

Moreover, as a share of Americans’ personal disposable income, there’s barely any difference between Biden’s record on energy costs and that of Trump, if we exclude the unusually depressed pandemic year of 2020.

Gallons, Watts and Wallets

Energy expenditures as a share of US disposable income under different presidential administrations

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis

Note: Trump 2017-19 excludes the pandemic-related impact of abnormally low fuel consumption and prices in 2020. Data for Biden are through June 2024.

GLJ
ROO.AI Oil and Gas Field Service Software

Vance is correct, however, that decarbonizing the US energy system will require a lot of spending: About $1 trillion per year just through this decade, according to Bloomberg NEF. That is a huge undertaking requiring a nuanced sharing of the burden. Where I quibble is with Vance’s framing of this as an avoidable cost that stands in the way of energy “affordability.”

Saying that energy is affordable as long as you ignore the risks associated with emissions-driven climate change is about as intellectually coherent as Thiel’s prefix-test for scientific authenticity. You really can heat your home affordably by burning the furniture, folks, but you will ultimately pay a price, nonetheless; something another denizen of (pre-)Silicon Valley, Thomas Edison, figured out over a hundred years ago. The bills for cleaning up after extreme weather events, shoring up coastal cities against rising sea levels and bailing out broken insurance markets are costs. Money spent to prevent them is an investment.

And most of that investment is at home. Yet Vance claims that factories are “shutting down across the heartland.” Someone really ought to tell him about the record investment in manufacturing happening right now; a big chunk of it in cleantech factories. Perhaps that could be a job for the 18 Republican House members who just warned against repealing the Inflation Reduction Act, lest the investment and jobs it is spurring in mostly red districts disappear. As for writing that it doesn’t matter what the US does given China’s coal habit, Vance might want to peruse a plan for that very issue put forward by a fellow Republican senator.

Vance also warns that the grid is on the verge of catastrophe due to the rising penetration of renewables and regulations “stifling” investment in coal, natural gas and nuclear plants. This stance is strikingly similar to that of the “Project 2025” lobbyists from which the Trump-Vance campaign has sought to distance itself.

Like that document, Vance offers a retrograde vision for the grid that ignores the cost advantages of scalable clean technologies — which are booming — and the fact that the big enemy of coal-fired power hasn’t been wind turbines and solar panels but cheap shale gas. Electricity demand is rising, as Vance warns, but that’s partly due to the AI-dreams of Vance’s Silicon Valley chums. And rising electricity demand isn’t a bad thing in itself. Vance cites the electric vehicle mandate as a risk, but there are huge efficiency gains to be made when we swap thermal for electrical energy. The big challenge lies in streamlining the planning and approvals process for new infrastructure.

Like the factory boom, technological advances and relative costs, Vance’s argument rests ultimately on simply ignoring the inconvenient externality of climate change. It has become increasingly difficult to downplay the threat or muddy the science while also maintaining credibility. Such was evident in Thiel’s sputtering and, more strikingly, the recent attempt by fellow tycoon, and EV pioneer no less, Elon Musk to dilute his earlier warnings on climate change so as not to offend his guest of honor on X, Trump (see this). There is no war on energy, but the assault on reason is ramping up.

More From Bloomberg Opinion’s Liam Denning:



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