Hageman says Biden's 'radical climate agenda' reason Americans can't access affordable energy

With the cost of energy weighing on Americans, a GOP-led House panel considered a bill Tuesday that takes aim at the Biden administration’s green energy agenda, blaming it for rising energy costs.

“I believe that this administration is furthering energy poverty as an affirmative policy for the purpose of controlling human behavior and pursuing a radical climate agenda," said Wyoming GOP Rep. Harriet Hageman, who is sponsoring the bill in the House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources.

Hageman's bill, the Energy Poverty Prevention and Accountability Act of 2023, would, if passed, require all federal agencies to include an “energy poverty statement” on the first page of each proposed rule detailing how it would not create more so-call energy poverty – essentially defined as the lack of access to modern energy services like electricity. 

The measure also calls for a federal agency proposing a rule to include a statement that the rule will not increase energy poverty for lower-income Americans.

Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., said that the average monthly electric bill in the U.S. increased 13% from 2021 to 2022, which was the largest increase since 1984.

‘Not too far from propaganda’

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the subcommittee's top Democrat, argued that the bill's real purpose was to enrich fossil fuel companies and their executives, and that it would do nothing to help the poor.

The bill “basically says the more we produce fossil fuels, the more gas and oil that we extract, the lower energy prices Americans will have to pay,” she said.

Ocasio-Cortez also said that with oil and gas production now at record levels, energy bills should be declining. And she argued that provisions in the bill that call for agencies to conduct studies on the impacts of their rule-making on energy poverty were aimed at presenting the benefits of fossil fuels without calculating all the impacts of pollution and climate change.

“It's really not too far from propaganda at that point, how they over-promise on the benefits of extractive projects,” she said.

Dr. Mijin Cha, assistant professor of the University of California, testified that the main cause of energy poverty was the 2015 repeal of the ban on crude oil exports.

She called for the ban to be reinstated and expanded to include natural gas, which she referred to as “fracked gas.”

Cha also said that the studies the bill would require look only at individual impacts of oil and gas projects, which wouldn’t account for cumulative effects of these projects.

This includes, she said, “unabated climate change,” which would “lead to an uninhabitable planet.”

Cha also proposed fighting energy poverty with more federal assistance programs to provide energy efficiency projects and help the poor pay their energy bills.

‘Bad economics’

It wasn’t clear what the source of Cha’s claim about global warming causing the planet to be uninhabitable.

According to the International Disaster Database, the number of climate-related deaths has fallen roughly 99% since 1920.

Research by Roger Pielke Jr., professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, shows the trend in disaster costs as a share of GDP is declining.

Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, said that exports of oil and gas reduced the price of petroleum products globally, which has helped lower costs in the U.S.

"Besides the nationalization and the socialization of energy that that [a ban on exports] involves, we don't ban exports of other products. It's simply bad economics,” Sgamma said.

In response to Ocasio-Cortez’s point about record-high oil production not correlating with lower energy costs, Sgamma pointed to electricity rates in California, which are some of the highest in the country, as well as the rates in Germany, considered a world leader in renewable energy.

German energy costs are so high, its economy is faltering as industries shut down, said Hageman, whose state is considered the biggest coal producer in the U.S. 

Hageman told Just The News that the world cannot exist without fossil fuels, and that the United States produces oil and gas cleaner and safer than other oil-producing countries.

“For the Biden administration and many Democrats in Congress, there is no higher authority than the climate change god,” Hageman said.

Keep the lights on

Other witnesses argued the Biden administration’s restrictive policies on oil and gas production were hurting the poor.

Derek Hollie, founder of the Energy Poverty Prevention Project, testified that the administration's energy policies, such as shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline, was driving energy poverty.

He blamed “overzealous” and “paternalistic lawmakers who think they know what’s best for everyone.”

“By destroying America's energy independence, the Biden administration directly is making black Americans more poor and less independent than ever,” he said.

Hageman asked Hollie whether lower income families expressed concerns about climate change.

“I would say they’re for wanting to keep the lights on in their home,” he replied.

Hageman said in an interview the administration’s policies intentionally increased the cost of coal, oil, and gas to make wind and solar appear to be more cost-effective and feasible.

The end result is lower income Americans and businesses are struggling with their energy costs.

“AOC is not a serious person on this issue and the policies that she and other climate change fanatics support have proven to be unserious, as well,” Hageman said.

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, introduced a companion bill into the Senate.