Climate alarmism raised average household energy costs more than $2,300
It is with no pleasure that I found a media outlet recently acknowledge what The Heartland Institute has long argued: President Biden’s energy and climate policies have increased Americans’ energy costs.
The Dallas Express, an online alternative news outlet, published a story headlined “Energy Prices 30% Higher Under Biden Admin.” Unlike so much of the mainstream media, the Dallas Express didn’t try to con voters into believing that the economy and their lives are better despite the higher prices or that the costs Mr. Biden and company have added to people’s power bills are justified as a means of fighting climate change. Rather, the Express stuck to the facts.
“Energy prices in the United States are wreaking havoc on budget-sensitive households, making it harder for families to save money or get ahead financially,” the Express wrote. “Since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, Americans’ electricity bills have skyrocketed nearly 30%, or 13 times faster than in the previous seven years, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of the latest consumer price index data.”
The Express blamed the policies that deserve it, noting: “Part of the reason for the surge in energy prices is the push to replace fossil fuels and nuclear power plants with renewable subsidies and green-energy mandates.”
Of course, The Heartland Institute has been on top of this story since Mr. Biden took office. We produced Energy at a Glance articles in 2021 and 2022 detailing how Mr. Biden’s energy policies have increased electricity, heating and transportation fuel prices, and how much they went up. By our calculation, after less than two full years in office, Mr. Biden’s climate and energy policies increased average household energy costs by more than $2,300.
My colleague Linnea Lueken interviewed Gary Stone, executive vice president of engineering at Five States Energy, for an Environment & Climate News story covering the lingering high prices of energy prices recently.
“The Biden administration has been a continually growing disaster for the domestic oil and gas industry,” Mr. Stone said. “Using the ‘New Green Deal’ as a basis, they have halted or delayed drilling on federal lands, attempted to restrict drilling because of allegedly endangered species, canceled pipelines, and restricted exports of crude and processed gas liquids.
“Gas prices, for instance, were far lower under the Trump administration, crude oil prices were about $30 (per barrel) lower, and gasoline was around $2 per gallon less than now, all of which immediately rose under Biden,” he continued. “Instead of encouraging domestic production as Trump did, the current regime is now implementing onerous methane-emission regulations and taxes that some sources estimate will result in the abandonment of as much as 30 percent of domestic wells and greatly increase the operating costs, and reduce the life, of the remaining producers.
“The Biden administration will serve the ‘green gods’ even if it bankrupts much of a major industry and greatly reduces the energy available to the country,” Mr. Stone concluded.
Keep in mind those are just the direct energy costs to drivers, businesses, renters and homeowners. They do not include higher energy prices’ ripple effect on energy-intensive goods like food production and delivery, chemical production, and manufacturing.
Other rarely accounted-for costs of Mr. Biden’s climate obsession stem from government spending on the Biden administration’s climate and energy policies. The costs of these programs are borne by taxpayers and future generations, who will inherit the costs Mr. Biden’s energy policies are adding to the nation’s annual deficit and national debt.
How much are we talking about? Well, in early April, the Biden administration granted outright more than $20 billion to unaccountable climate, finance, and community activist nongovernmental organizations to promote green energy adoption across the country.
Author and energy analyst Robert Bryce has calculated that the subsidies and tax credits for wind and solar power alone have ballooned from an estimated $19.9 billion in 2015 to commitments of more than $425 billion by 2033, based on newly installed, approved and anticipated wind and solar construction projects.
Last December, at a conference in Dubai, Vice President Kamala Harris bragged about the administration’s commitment to spending more than $1 trillion fighting climate change — less than the country spent on Social Security in 2023 but more than we spent on defense. This is likely an underestimate, as past estimates of spending on these programs have repeatedly proved to be.
Government spending and regulations drag the economy — basically, they are a hidden tax — because they divert money to goods and services that consumers likely wouldn’t have freely chosen to spend their money on. This results in malinvestment and politically driven loans, with companies investing in and banks financing projects that don’t make economic sense in a free market.
These investments and financing efforts are driven by federal mandates or influenced by federal incentives. Replacing market assessments of how to balance the concerns of climate change, energy security and economic progress with spending decisions dictated by political overlords, their crony capitalist allies, and climate scolds is a terrible idea.
Any way you measure it, Mr. Biden’s climate change program is bad for our economy in general and devastating for hardworking Americans in particular.
• H. Sterling Burnett (hsburnett@heartland.org) is the director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization based in Arlington Heights, Illinois.
