And then Joe Biden was elected and did exactly what he said he would do: begin the steps to take the U.S. into the post-carbon world, just like Europe. Russian oligarchs and Arabian princes celebrated.

They know that even with Europe and the U.S. moving into wind and solar energy, all of their planes, transoceanic cargo ships, trucks, trains, and most cars – even electric vehicles — depend on fossil fuels.

On January 27, Biden’s pick for Energy Secretary, ex-Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, faced a mostly pleasant Senate hearing. The times she was not being praised or fielding questions on battery-powered cars were when senators from fossil fuel states took her to task over Biden’s decision to cancel phase four of the Keystone XL pipeline connecting the midwestern U.S. to Alberta, Canada, and over a 60-day moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal land.

In 2016, Granholm said, “We need to do everything possible to keep fossil fuel energy in the ground.” That’s a Greenpeace slogan.

“That makes no sense for America,” Sen. John Barasso (R-WY) told her. “The Biden administration seems to be making affordable energy more expensive.” Natural gas generated around 477 gigawatts of electricity in the U.S. in 2019. Coal was in second at 239 gigawatts, followed by wind and solar at 157 gigawatts. That will eventually replace coal, but it won’t replace natural gas anytime soon.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) asked Granholm if she cared about energy independence and asked for her commitment to get the U.S. “to use all available forms of energy.”

Granholm said we should “absolutely” be “energy secure,” but recognized being an oil and gas exporter gave us some leverage internationally. Like the Europeans, Granholm said she wants to power the country “in the cleanest way possible.”

She mentioned new technologies like carbon capture. These are pipe dreams in prototypes. You can drive a car on the moon before carbon capture is to scale.

Granholm prefers wind and solar, a supply chain that is dominated increasingly by Chinese companies. Now we will have OPEC and China as the Green OPEC.

Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow of The Atlantic Council and director of the program on energy, growth, and security at the International Tax and Investment Center, said the U.S. abandoned nuclear power back in the 1970s by killing fast-breeder reactors that take spent fuel and recycle it. Nuclear power was taken over by China, Russia, France, and, to a lesser extent, South Korea.

Biden’s energy policy is a serious warning to fossil fuels.

The coal industry thought they were too big to fail. The Greens couldn’t take them out until they convinced students the Earth had 12 years left. Coal was complacent. Now, they might as well be Three Mile Island.

The oil and gas industry needs to explain why they are important, not only to the baseload energy supply but also as a tool of foreign policy and economic strength.

On February 9, Manchin, the new head of the Senate Energy Committee, asked Biden to reconsider Keystone.

Natural gas helped lower our greenhouse gases to their lowest levels since the 1990s. Granholm says that’s a good thing. LNG, oil, and even coal exports make the U.S. influential suppliers of energy. “It is good to be influential suppliers,” Granholm told Barasso during her hearing.

America is the world’s largest hydrocarbon producer. Oil imports are down six-fold. Increased energy independence is a foreign policy win. With independence comes the liberty to take moral stances otherwise viewed as bad for business, something Democrats should remember if they intend to confront Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. At a minimum, natural gas should expand, not contract.

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There had been some trade disputes over domestic environmental regulations, some of which had included provisions that discriminated against foreign products in favor of domestic ones, and environmental groups were concerned about the impact of adverse rulings by WTO “panels” (i.e., quasi‐​judicial courts) on their ability to adopt such regulations.

While that debate has been overshadowed recently, it came back yesterday after a WTO panel ruling on various U.S. state measures that discriminate against foreign products in the renewable energy sector. In reaction to this ruling, Todd Tucker of the Roosevelt Institute wrote the following:

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is back in the news, with a Thursday ruling against seven U.S. states’ renewable energy policies. The WTO is already unpopular with right‐​wing nationalists like Donald Trump. By siding with India against the U.S., the WTO is likely to make left‐​leaning politicians and the burgeoning global environmental movement unhappy.

States Are Acting on Climate because the federal government won’t

The WTO is acting against state level policies intended to improve the environment, stepping into the void left by the federal government. In 2009, the U.S. Senate refused to vote on what was at that time the most ambitious climate change legislation: the Waxman‐​Markey Act. Concluding that federal action might never be forthcoming, U.S. states (especially those than lean Democratic) began enacting climate policy of their own.

The measures range from biodiesel incentives in Montana, through nudges for Michigan‐​made clean energy manufacturing, to other schemes in California, Delaware, Connecticut, Minnesota and Washington State. The common denominator of these policies is an attempt to soften the inevitable economic dislocations of moving away from the carbon economy.

The Michigan policy was typical: electricity providers get a renewable credit when they generate one megawatt of green energy. However, they get another tenth of a credit when that energy uses Michigan‐​made equipment or Michigan laborers.

…

The WTO sees “Buy Local” politics as protectionist

When India complained about these green schemes, they did not have to show that Indian companies tried to qualify for any of them, or that they had been denied access, or that they lost any money to make a case at the WTO. Under the rules of the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT), Michigan’s energy credit was invalid, because Indian solar panel exporters in theory would have not qualified for that extra tenth of a renewable energy credit if they had tried to sell them in Michigan.

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This is a Problem for the Green New Deal

The WTO decision collides with a groundswell of progressive interest in a Green New Deal — a plan that looks a lot like the state policies that the commercial body just ruled against. The Green New Deal resolution by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio‐​Cortez (D‑N.Y.) and Sen. Edward J. Markey (D‑Mass.) outlines five goals, 14 projects and 15 requirements to help evaluate those projects.

Instead of just going ahead with carbon taxes (which would likely be unpopular), it gives groups that might be expected to oppose a carbon tax — front line communities, manufacturing workers — a stake in the deal’s success. It uses Buy Local or Hire Local requirements to make its proposed climate solutions politically sellable and viable. These are the sorts of provisions that India and other countries can be expected to challenge if and when a Green New Deal ever gets through Congress.

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