The Patriot Post® · The Disastrous Biden/Harris Clean Power Plan 2.0

Does the Biden/Harris administration even want Americans to have access to electricity? One has to ask, given the Environmental Protection Agency’s latest energy efficiency rule, dubbed the Clean Power Plan 2.0. Under this new rule, all newly constructed fossil fuel-based power plants will need to capture 90% of their carbon emissions.

According to the EPA’s calculation, the fully implemented rule will reduce CO₂ emissions by 1.38 billion metric tons by 2047. EPA Administrator Michael Regan touted the rule, saying it was “a defining moment” for the EPA, which he says is building “a cleaner and healthier future for all of us.”

And according to the reality of the inherent inefficiency of renewable energy sources like wind and solar, it also promises a future of costly and unreliable electricity for Americans.

Take the recent experience of New Jersey residents with Democrat Governor Phil Murphy’s “Energy Master Plan.” The plan, launched in 2020, sought to lean into the climate cult’s green energy dream and increasingly embrace renewable energy production, primarily via wind farms. Indeed, Murphy’s Energy Master Plan envisions the Garden State powering 100% of its electric grid with green energy by 2050.

Thus far, all Murphy’s plan has produced for New Jersey residents is higher electrical bills and ballooning construction costs for the government-subsidized offshore wind farm projects.

“New Jersey is already one of the most unaffordable states in the United States of America,” observed Republican State Senator Mike Testa. “Now people are being hit with energy bills that are essentially doubled. And look, I get it that it was a hot July, but it wasn’t that hot that your energy bills should have doubled.”

One homeowner in suburban Morris County, whose monthly electric bill recently hit $782, blamed the high electricity cost on Murphy. “Quite frankly,” he said, “what I think happened is, via the Murphy Energy Master Plan that I’ve often called the energy disaster plan, it seemed that the BPU (New Jersey Board of Public Utilities) and the Murphy administration are working in tandem chasing this green energy dream.” He added, “It’s what I call the energy disaster plan. It’s a green energy nightmare.”

But like an ostrich with its head in the sand, Murphy’s office responded by saying, “Making our state more affordable for New Jersey families has been the top priority since day one.”

New Jersey simply serves as a microcosm of what Americans across the U.S. will be living with under the EPA’s CPP 2.0.

As aging fossil fuel-based power plants eventually go offline, prohibitive costs and onerous regulations will prevent new ones from coming online. Thus, in the name of “saving the planet,” Americans are trading low-cost, reliable fossil fuel-based energy production for high-cost, unreliable renewable energy production. In other words, Americans will be spending more for less and trading a superior product for an inferior one.

“Even experts within the Biden administration described CPP 2.0 as shortsighted and devastating to electric reliability,” noted Senator Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV) and Congressman Troy Balderson (R-OH) in a recent op-ed, adding, “Power generators and nonpartisan grid operators have testified before Congress that the less than eight-year timeline to comply with the rule will force generators to retire their facilities prematurely, and without replacement, the grid will lack dispatchable resources necessary to keep the lights on.”

So, why is the Biden/Harris administration so boneheadedly moving forward on such a bad energy plan, especially at a time when the country’s tech-heavy economy demands exponentially higher energy production?

Because they are climate cultists committed to radical leftist ideology over practical reality, even at the expense of the American people.