Trump, Biden come to blows on energy policy

The first presidential debate saw Biden talking up a Green New Deal but Trump saying the cost of such plans would exceed the benefits, writes Chris Knight

The dream of unencumbered US oil and gas growth, with no qualms about climate change, lives on in President Donald Trump. His Democratic rival Joe Biden instead seeks to wean the country off fossil fuels and turn to renewable energy.

These competing visions met head on this week in the first US presidential debate, where the two candidates laid out their ideas on energy policy and climate change during a raucous and chaotic exchange.

The debate gave Biden a chance to make the pitch for his version of a Green New Deal that would give hundreds of thousands of people jobs, get the government out of the oil business and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Trump in contrast used the debate to say the costs of such policies — in dollars, lost jobs, more expensive cars and even the elimination of cows — will far exceed the potential benefit.

Trump says he repealed limits on power plants' carbon emissions because they were "driving energy prices through the sky", and scrapped fuel-economy rules because they would "take a lot of cars off the market". He dwells on immediate regulatory costs but disregards long-term effects such as air pollution or the lifetime cost of operating a fuel-guzzling vehicle. His views align with those of some smaller oil producers that see the cost of reducing methane emissions or complying with other federal regulations as an existential threat.

But Trump will constrain some oil and gas production opportunities when it serves his political goals. The 10-year moratorium he imposed last month on offshore leasing in the eastern US Gulf of Mexico and half of the US Atlantic are meant to protect voter support in Florida and other battleground states. But the overarching administration view has been to maximise fossil fuel production and shun international initiatives such as the Paris climate accord. "There is no reason to ban a single fuel that we have," US energy secretary Dan Brouillette says. "We must continue to use every one of them so America remains competitive."

Biden time

Biden's promise to spend $2 trillion on a climate programme and pursue aggressive limits on methane emissions could prove appealing to some oil majors that have laid out ambitious climate plans and support government controls on methane. The more predictable hand of a Biden administration could also offer comfort to oil executives who for four years have feared a Trump tweet that launches a new trade war.

Trump's laissez-faire management of Covid-19 has shown a "lack of real concern and lack of effective leadership", one unnamed oil executive told the US Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in a survey last month.

Although Biden has vowed to halt new drilling on federal lands, he has rejected a ban on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on private and state land. "I am not banning fracking, no matter how many times Donald Trump lies about me," Biden said in August during a visit to Pennsylvania. That commitment offers a path where producers could shift their spending towards private land and avoid a sudden plunge in production that would cause prices to spike.

Biden overstates the ease with which the US can reach net-zero emissions and downplays the harm of such a policy on oil workers, who on average enjoy higher wages than those employed in renewable energy. The focus, in contrast, has been on the benefits of creating jobs and the high costs of inaction. "We can create hard, good jobs by making sure the environment is clean," he says. "We spend billions of dollars now — billions of dollars — on floods, hurricanes, rising seas. We are in real trouble."