A Day One Energy Agenda For The Next Republican President

With or without Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidates have much to talk about during their first debate Wednesday night. One key topic that should not be omitted but normally receives short shrift in these debates is energy, and what steps related to energy any new Republican president should take upon assuming office in January 2025.

Joe Biden felt energy policy so important that he had his Day 1 promise to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline despite the operator, TC Energy, not being found in violation of any U.S. law or regulation related to it, and he carried it out. A new GOP president should promise to reverse that order even though TC Energy has said it would not try to renew the project, simply on constitutional and symbolic grounds.

Further, a new GOP president should have a Day 1 agenda of his or her own, an extensive one that would move fast to end the worst excesses being imposed in the energy policy realm by the Biden regime, and to shore up U.S. energy security which is being greatly diminished by Biden’s failure to compete for resources and secure supply chains currently dominated by China.

In case some don’t want to go to the link:

Here are some humbly-offered suggestions for actions that should be included in this Day 1 agenda:

1. A promise to force a return to the equal enforcement of the rule of law related to “green” energy projects as they have been applied to all other energy-related projects. Too many such projects favored by Biden officials are being green-lit right now without proper performance of environmental impact studies and consideration of other conditions of approval that have always been applied to all oil, gas, coal and nuclear projects. This must end.

2. A promise to mount a real “whole-of-government” effort to secure and onshore production and supply chains for critical energy minerals that are vital to the expansion of renewable energy and electric vehicles. This is a promise Biden made and has failed to carry out in any real way.

3, An executive order calling for an immediate suspension of all offshore wind projects until impacts on sea life have been properly assessed. With more than 60 whales, including endangered right whales, having now washed up dead on beaches adjacent to wind development, this should be made a matter of national priority. Wind farms’ known impacts on migratory birds and sea birds must also be properly assessed before any further development is allowed to continue.

4. An executive order invoking the Defense Production Act to focus national resources on promoting the domestic production and international securing of high-capacity electric transformers that are integral to all transmission projects. The U.S. power industry has been begging administration officials for years now to act in the face of a dangerous shortage of these transformers amid supply chains that are currently backlogged for up to 4 years.

5. An order revoking immediately the U.S. Fish & Wildlife’s politically-motivated decision to list the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard as an endangered species, a move being made despite the success of a conservation plan run jointly by the state of Texas and federal government. This listing threatens to hinder oil and gas production in the Permian Basin, the nation’s most prolific resource, one that is vital to U.S. national energy security.

6, An order authorizing the Department of Energy to immediately refill the U.S. Strategic Petroleum reserve on an emergency basis, to rebuild this key element of U.S. energy security after Biden drew it down to dangerous levels during 2022 for purely political reasons.

7. An order directing DOE and other relevant agencies to strictly interpret and enforce the domestic content language contained in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, especially as such language applies to electric vehicles and their batteries.

This list could and should be much longer, since the maintenance of energy security remains absolutely vital to the maintenance of true national security. This is a reality that the current President and his appointees have too often chosen to ignore in favor of crass political motivations.
A new GOP president must end that practice as soon as possible. His or her first day in office would be a great time to begin.

I'd add:

8. End all subsidies and requirements for EV's and solar and all alternative energy sources. All the subsidies do is artificially inflate prices anyway. Also get rid of taxpayer funded chargers or tax breaks for setting up road-side chargers (and the Volkswagen settlements forcing Volkswagen to set up Electrify America chargers and making deals with new EV owners to charge for free there for the first year or two of owning an EV). All that does is limit potential entrepreneurs from setting up new chargers at their restaurants and such (to bring customers into their business while they wait for a 10-15 minute charge) because everybody is worried that their capital investment will be wasted by a govt mandated new "free" EA charger set up a mile away.

9. Get the government out of the way of both mining coal and drilling for natural gas. Let people have cheap access to either or both.

10. Get the government out of the way of mining and processing rare-earths. Not only are they needed for non-EV and non-solar items now as we become more and more technical. More and more of us conservatives in the south are making households more energy independent with decentralized solar and doing most of our driving in an EV.

During a Republican's years in the WH (with the Dim restrictions on mining rare-earths lifted) those of us in the south could cheaply make our homes more self-reliant (because supply will be higher making solar equipment prices lower, and there would be no govt incentives artificially inflating prices). Then later when a Dim is in the WH again and makes power, natural gas, and gasoline more expensive and sometimes harder to come by, it won't matter as much to the people who have to buy only 10% or 20% of their energy. Besides, it's best to let Americans have alternatives to choose from. By having home solar compete with power and natural gas we might see power and natural gas rates go down (benefitting the people who'd choose to keep buying all of their home's energy). The same for ICE car prices and gasoline prices going down if they have to compete with a sizeable portion of Americans choosing (on their own will) to do most of their driving in an EV because EV materials and power rates go down (due to the govt getting out of the way). If the govt gets out of the way with all of our options for energy and transportation, everybody benefits except the cronies.

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