Here are Biden’s new plans on gas and oil
Biden moves to ban new oil and gas extraction contracts on federal land. Its climate agenda is broad and ambitious, and it won't be easy to get congressional approval. The New York Times insight
President Biden on Wednesday will give instructions to federal agencies to determine how expansive a ban on new contracts for the extraction of oil and gas on federal land should be, part of a series of executive orders that will effectively launch his agenda to combat climate change. Two people with knowledge of the president's plans said Monday, the NYT writes.
A possible ban on new drilling contracts would deliver on a campaign promise that has infuriated the oil industry and has become a central theme in the struggle for the critical state of Pennsylvania, where the method of extracting natural gas known as hydraulic fracturing, fracking has become big business.
The move is the most important of many that Biden announced on Wednesday, the two people said. The president will also order the government to conserve 30% of all federal land and water by 2030, create a task force to assemble a government-level action plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, publish a memorandum. that elevates climate change to a national security priority. Biden will also create several new commissions and positions within the government focused on environmental justice and creating environmentally friendly jobs, including one to help communities that have lost the coal business.
Programs and proclamations should signal that climate change is back on the government's agenda, bigger than ever. What they will fail to achieve, at least for now, is a rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
A White House spokesperson declined to comment on the orders, and two people close to the administration noted that final decisions on them are still being finalized.
The likelihood that Congress will pass large parts of Biden's $ 2 trillion agenda on climate change is only slightly higher now that Democrats hold the thinnest possible majority in a 50 percent Senate. There is little hope of passing a carbon tax or other mechanism to put a price on greenhouse gas pollution, which would push cost-conscious companies to emit fewer emissions.
Without legislation, the administration will have to rely on the regulatory process to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and improve the fuel efficiency of vehicles, but even that takes time. It cannot be done by executive order.
“The tons of carbon pollution in the air is what matters in the end,” said Tim Profeta, director of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University.
Prophet said Wednesday's orders were an important first step.
"The Biden administration can do a lot to start putting the country on the right path with its own authorities," said Prophet. Wednesday, he said, "the trial begins."
The anticipated crackdown on new concession contracts for oil and gas extraction goes beyond Biden's actions on inauguration day, which stopped the Department of the Interior and other agencies' authority to issue contracts leasing or drilling permits for 60 days, while the administration examined the legal and political implications of the current federal mineral lease program.
The new policy will ask agencies to consider how much land and how much federal water needs to be preserved from mining and drilling or set aside for renewable energy production, according to two people familiar with that order, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Mining fossil fuel on public land and water is responsible for nearly a quarter of all US carbon emissions, and Biden has campaigned to end new drilling as a key to tackling climate change.
"It is vitally important that President Biden definitively ban all new fossil fuel extraction, including fracking, on federal land and waters," said Mitch Jones, political director of Food & Water Watch, an environmental group.
Throughout the campaign, the Democratic Party's left wing pressured Biden to demand a national ban on fracking, even on private land, where most fracking is practiced. Biden refused, but the oil and gas industry remained skeptical. His move on inauguration day led to condemnation of the sector and some landowners.
"His order is a direct attack on our economy, sovereignty and our right to self-determination," the Ute Indian tribe of Utah wrote to the Department of the Interior in a letter released by the American Petroleum Institute.
The climate task force Biden is expected to create will come up with a plan for what administration officials like to call a "government-wide" approach to climate change, and it will focus on two main areas: environmental justice and job creation.
Experts said every agency will need to take climate change into account in government decisions, from federal procurement to financial regulation to legal settlement.
It will also create a number of councils and committees to try to ensure that poor and minority communities, as well as Americans living in coal areas, see the economic benefits of clean energy policies.
Biden is also expected to re-launch and strengthen an Obama-era presidential memorandum in 2016, elevating climate change to a national security priority and requiring intelligence agencies to incorporate climate change into their national security threat analyzes.
Alice Hill, who oversaw climate planning for the National Security Council during the Obama administration, said leadership from the president is needed because the senior policy makers who demand such analysis, and the intelligence officials who prepare, often have no experience in thinking about climate risks.
She and others said Biden needed to go further, potentially converting the memorandum into an executive order that has more authority to direct agencies to take measures such as defining strategies and policies to address climate-related threats.
(Extract from the press review of Eprcomunicazione )
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/joe-biden-gas-petrolio/ on Sun, 31 Jan 2021 07:00:33 +0000.