WASHINGTON — President Biden entered office promising to address the planet’s climate crisis. But rising gasoline prices, fueled in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have pushed the environmentally-minded president to do the unlikely thing: embrace oil.
On Tuesday, Biden traveled to Iowa, where he announced that the Environmental Protection Agency would temporarily lift regulations that ban summer use of an ethanol-gasoline blend known as E15, which contributes to smog during warmer months. Mr. Biden said his administration was going to waive regulation to lower the price of gasoline at the pump for many Americans.
“It’s going to help some people and I’m committed to anything I can do to help, even if it’s an extra dollar or two in your pockets when they fill up, make a difference in people’s lives,” Biden said after taking a tour of a facility that produces 150 million gallons of bioethanol a year. He later added, “When you have a choice, you have competition. When you have competition, you have better prices.”
The ethanol announcement is the latest move by the Biden White House that runs counter to promises he made as a presidential candidate to move America away from fossil fuels. The price of gasoline, it seems, has changed the calculation of it. The average cost of a gallon of gasoline last October was $3.32; in March, it was around $4.32.
Last month, the president proposed a new policy aimed at pressuring oil companies to drill for oil on vacant land, saying the companies have thousands of “permits to extract oil if they want.” Why aren’t they pumping oil? Mr. Biden also announced the sale of 180 million barrels of oil from the country’s strategic petroleum reserve over the next six months, the largest release in history.
“It will provide a historic amount of supply over a historic period of time,” Biden said then.
Biden has walked a tightrope in the weeks after US sanctions on Russian oil and gas sent energy prices skyrocketing. Even as he has implored oil producers to pump more crude, the president has tried to reassure his political base that meeting the needs of the current crisis will not distract from the long-term goal of moving away from the fossil fuels that drive the dangerous climate change. .
The president’s embrace of oil underscores his awkward position between two competing priorities: the imperative to reduce America’s use of fossil fuels and the pressure to respond to rising gasoline prices.
“I don’t think when Joe Biden entered office he thought he would spend his second year tapping into the strategic oil reserve or flying to Des Moines to pass E15 waivers,” said Barry Rabe, a professor of political science and environmental policy at the University of Michigan. .
With his broader agenda on climate change and investments in wind, solar and electric vehicles largely stalled in Congress, the president’s allies say his short-term pro-oil actions could further disillusion focused voters. in the environment that Democrats need to vote in Congress. elections this fall.
“Climate voters are likely to be disappointed, barring a major legislative achievement,” Rabe said.
Mr. Biden’s recent actions have drawn criticism from many parts of the environmental community. Mitch Jones, managing director of policy for the lobbying arm of the nonprofit group Food & Water Watch, said in a statement that the decision to waive the E15 ban over the summer “is driving us deeper into the hole of dirty mixtures of fossil fuels.
White House officials questioned the idea that Biden has switched to adopting fossil fuels. They point out that his environmental policies have always envisioned a continued reliance on oil and gas as the country makes a year-long transition to cleaner energy sources.
And they said the current energy crisis is a clear example of why they believe Congress and Republicans should support switching to alternative forms of energy and reducing America’s dependence on oil.
“Families need to get their kids to school and to work, buy groceries and get on with their lives, and sometimes that requires gas today, this month and this year,” said White House spokesman Vedant Patel. “But at the same time we need to speed up, not slow down, our transition to clean energy.”
In recent weeks, Biden administration officials have announced funds to make homes energy efficient, launched a new conservation program and said the president would invoke the Defense Production Act to encourage domestic extraction and processing of minerals needed to make batteries for electric vehicles.
Republicans and lobbyists for the oil and gas industries have tried to blame high gas prices on Biden’s climate agenda, arguing that prices would be lower had the White House not pursued programs aimed at bringing the country towards other forms of clean energy.
“Don’t blame Putin for gas prices,” Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said earlier this month on Fox News.
He added: “It is a reaction to the closure of the fossil fuel industry. They persecute them in every conceivable way.”
But in reality, Biden has had limited success in getting his climate agenda off the ground, largely due to opposition from Republicans and the energy industry. So experts say it’s hard to blame higher gasoline prices for the effects of those proposals, which have yet to be enacted.
For example, Mr. Biden proposed $300 billion in tax incentives to boost the markets for wind and solar energy and electric vehicles. If enacted, it could reduce the nation’s emissions by about 25 percent by 2030. That legislation passed the House but stalled in the Senate amid opposition from Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from W.V.
Biden has also sought to suspend new oil and gas leases on federal land and waters, a move the oil industry has kept hurting production. That policy was stopped by the courts, however, and last year Biden auctioned off more than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico, the largest lease sale in history.
Officials estimated that allowing the ethanol blend to be sold in the summer would save 10 cents on every gallon of gasoline purchased at the roughly 2,300 stations nationwide that offer it, calling the decision a step toward “energy independence.”
That’s a small percentage of the 150,000 gas stations across the country, according to NACS, the trade association that represents convenience stores.
Biden is also facing mounting pressure to cut energy prices, which helped fuel the fastest rate of inflation since 1981 in March. A gallon of gasoline averaged $4.10 on Tuesday, according to AAA.
Ethanol is made from corn and other crops and has been mixed with some types of gasoline for years to reduce dependence on oil. But the higher volatility of the mixture can contribute to smog in warmer climates. For that reason, environmental groups have traditionally opposed lifting the ban on daylight saving time. So have oil companies, who fear that increased use of ethanol will reduce their sales.
To what extent the presence of ethanol keeps fuel prices low has been a matter of debate among economists. Some experts said the decision is likely to have more political than financial benefits.
“This is still very, very small compared to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Release,” said David Victor, a climate policy expert at the University of California, San Diego. “This is much more of a transparent political move.”
And the environmental benefits of biofuels are undermined by the way they drive up corn and food prices, some energy experts argue.
Corn state lawmakers and industry leaders have been urging Biden to fill the void created by a US ban on biofuel-laced Russian oil exports. Emily Skor, executive director of the biofuels trade association group Growth Energy, called the decision “a huge win” for energy security.
“These are tough elections and I don’t think it’s something they enjoy,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president of government affairs for the League of Conservation Voters, a nonprofit group. “I think they’re working to do it in a way that doesn’t lock in decades more fossil fuel infrastructure or pollution, and I think they remain determined as ever to catch up with the climate moment.”
Reference-www.nytimes.com