Via Robert Bryce: Electrifying Everything Means Higher Energy Costs For Consumers. These DOE Numbers Prove It (Again)
For nearly four years, the Biden-Harris Administration has put forth failed economic and energy policies, bringing dire consequences to working families across the United States. Activists like Stacey Abrams continue to maintain that electrification will “bring benefits to environmental justice communities.”
However, Robert Bryce, a former Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and energy policy expert, notes that the push to “electrify everything” has burdened Americans with higher energy costs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American family is paying a whopping $1,700 more per year on energy costs.
Word on the Street:
Robert Bryce, Via Substack:
- “Last year, Stacey Abrams, a prominent Democrat who served in the Georgia House of Representatives for 10 years, joined Rewiring America as a “senior counsel.” Abrams said she was excited to join [Rewiring America’s] electrify everything agenda and to ‘share the benefits of electrification.’ She also claims that families ‘across the country live too close to the economic edge [and] few understand how much money they can save with a little help to upgrade their homes and vehicles.’”
- “Abrams is one of many activists, NGOs, and politicians who contend that trying to electrify everything will save consumers money. In 2022, the White House claimed that electrifying everything would ‘lower energy costs.’ One of the richest climate NGOs in the US, the Natural Resources Defense Council (annual revenue: $193 million), claims that ‘done right,’ electrifying everything will ‘bring big benefits to environmental justice communities,’ including ‘lower energy costs.’”
- “Except it won’t. The Department of Energy’s own numbers show that natural gas is far cheaper for consumers than electricity.”
- “Last Thursday, after months of stonewalling and delay, the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy finally published the representative average unit costs for residential energy sources in the Federal Register. Those figures show, yet again, that natural gas continues to be the cheapest form of residential energy, and electricity is the most expensive. The agency determined that on an energy equivalent basis, electricity will cost consumers 3.5 times more than natural gas this year. [The] Energy Information Administration [recently] released its ‘Winter Fuels Outlook 2024-25,’ which also shows that natty is the cheapest form of energy for homeowners.”
- “The DOE says electricity will cost residential users about $47 per million Btu this year, and gas will cost about $13 per MMBtu.”
- “It took seven weeks, but the agency finally did its job. Montoni and his colleagues were stalling because electricity is far more expensive than natural gas. That reality [that electricity is far more expensive than natural gas] undermines the narrative pushed by the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate-complex about the supposed benefits of electrification. Every year, the DOE’s numbers have shown that electricity costs at least three times more on an energy equivalent basis than gas.”
- “It was also true in 2009 when electricity cost three times more than gas, and it has been true every year since.”
- “The EIA expects that for the entire US, residential consumers who rely on electricity for heating will spend 75% more this winter than those who can burn natural gas in their homes.”
- “The cost disparity is even more apparent in the West, where consumers will pay 87% more to heat their homes with electricity than they would by burning natural gas.”
- “The punchline here is obvious: the effort to electrify everything will mean higher energy costs for the poor and the middle class. It will reduce our energy security by concentrating our reliance on a single energy network. Further, it will require putting massive new energy loads on an electric grid that’s already faltering under existing demand. In short, the NGOs, politicians, and activists who are trying to ban the direct use of natural gas are, in reality, pushing a regressive energy tax in the name of climate change that will hurt consumers and will have no impact — none — on the trajectory of global CO2 emissions or climate change.”
- “The US produces more gas, by far, than any other country. And because the US produces so much of it, the fuel is super cheap, which gives American industry and American consumers a price advantage over nearly every other country on the planet.”
- “Low-cost natural gas is one reason the US economy continues to be so strong. The electrify everything effort is an execrable energy policy. Unless it is stopped, it will undermine the affordability, reliability, and resilience of our energy and power networks.”
The Bottom Line:
The Biden-Harris Administration's policies have obstructed U.S. energy independence, raised prices, and hurt financial mobility for low- and middle-income families by blocking access to affordable energy. Many of these families will struggle to pay these needlessly high energy costs and some will slip into “energy poverty” and seek relief from federal welfare-style programs such as the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).
By cutting unnecessary spending on unproven green initiatives, we can reduce the deficit and inflation, increase economic growth, reclaim America's energy future, and protect our national security.
The House Budget Committee is committed to leading this charge and restoring American-made energy to secure jobs, strengthen our economy, and solidify our position as a global leader.
More from the House Budget Committee:
Read about the House Budget Committee’s hearing on “The Cost of the Biden-Harris Energy Crisis” HERE.
Read Chairman Arrington’s opening remarks from the House Budget Committee’s hearing on “The Cost of the Biden-Harris Energy Crisis” HERE.
Read more about “The Cost of California Policymaking” HERE.
