As the country enters winter, the Biden administration is working on how to take easily available and affordable heating away from American households. To push electric heat pumps over gas heating, Joe Biden invoked wartime powers to pour millions of taxpayers money into projects making those pumps.
As reported by The Washington Examiner (November 18), Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act of 1950 to allocate $169 million for electric heat pump projects. The taxpayer money under the Inflation Reduction Act, originally aimed at fighting inflation that rose significantly under Biden, will be directed to 15 sites for manufacturing electric heat pumps. The story noted:
This is the first time a president classified climate change as an emergency by utilizing the Defense Production Act, which was established during the Cold War.
Members of Biden’s political entourage, like Biden’s National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi and senior adviser for Clean Energy John Podesta, were more than ready to laud the move of funding the electric pump projects using emergency powers.
But conservatives see it as another wrong move by the administration that has brought many failures to the country. Steve Gruber of Real America’s Voice responded to the news on his show, calling Biden’s claim of climate crisis as the greatest threat to America a “complete fallacy.”
Critics on Twitter/X also called Biden’s move a total misuse of presidential emergency powers.
Karen Harbert, CEO of American Gas Association, expressed her disappointment over the Biden administration’s use of the Defense Production Act that is meant to advance national security and not for pushing a “policy agenda contradictory to our nation’s strong energy position.”
The Biden administration’s efforts to push Americans out of gas-powered appliances over debatable climate change science has been meeting reality checks in more than one place. Recently, the electric vehicle (EV) producers were reported to pull back on production because of a sharp rise in the price of minerals needed for making EV batteries. The Western Journal cited Anthony Milewski, CEO of Nickel 28, calling the situation “dangerous”:
“This situation is a bit dangerous because the mines aren’t going to get built. We should be building those mines now and we’re not.”
The story wrote that it can take years between a mineral discovery and getting to use it in manufacturing EV batteries.
Fox News reported on Tuesday (November 21) that Ford Motor Company is “dramatically scaling back” its Michigan-based EV-battery plant, reducing its scope by more than 40% of the original production target.
Clean or renewable energy is also seen as less reliable by critics of the climate change narrative pushed by the left. In an opinion piece in The Washington Times (November 21), Jason Isaac wrote that the left’s narrative fails in the face of harsh winters or any weather for that. In his words:
“…it doesn’t help the grid when wind turbines freeze, and the sun isn’t shining, which is exactly what we encountered in Texas almost three years ago.”