Biden, fracking and the Green New Deal

No New Fracking??

Back on March 15, during what turned out to be the final debate of the Democratic primary, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders went back and forth on fracking. Biden got in the final line: “No more … no new fracking”.

Not unreasonably this was interpreted to mean that if elected, Biden would ban fracking. If true, this would have been a big deal and a major victory for progressives who were hoping that by staying in the race, Bernie Sanders could push Biden further to the left on a number of key issues. With more debates, rallies and primaries to come, Sanders supporters were hoping to get more out of Biden – more money for renewables, a faster roll out of electric vehicles and more importantly for some a stronger commitment to the full Green New Deal vision.

So, what happened? Within days the Biden camp clarified the comment, explaining that the candidate was only talking about banning new fracking permits on federal lands. A few days later COVID-19 effectively put an end to a Bernie Sanders primary squeeze play on climate change and the Green New Deal

March 15 now seems like an eternity ago and the fact that Joe Biden was so easily rattled into confusing his own position on fracking was lost in the maelstrom of the pandemic. But we should expect to hear it again as a sound bite in Republican election material.

Fracking is a big deal

Biden’s slip on fracking is probably not that big a deal in and of itself – after all he does seem to make a few verbal missteps. Fracking, however, is a big deal and could be a big deal for the election. As shown in the map below, fracking’s physical footprint covers a significant part of the United States. Once the province of speculative junior drillers, fracking is now employed by most major oil and gas corporations and is the nation’s dominant fossil fuel extraction technology. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, collectively known as fracking, is a uniquely American development. Not only was the technique perfected in the United States, but globally the best fracking reserves appear to be in the United States too. Supporters, such as the US Chamber of Commerce, claim that it employs over 1.7 million Americans, has made the nation energy self-sufficient and boosted local manufacturing in a number of key states.

Opposition to fracking is based on the argument that it is incompatible with meeting the Paris commitment of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and hence pushes the world closer to a catastrophic climate outcome. The involvement of major oil and gas companies adds to the depth of opposition, being emblematic of the profit driven disregard for environment damage and the stranglehold the fossil fuel industry has over government at all levels.

From the perspective of not just the local economy and the electoral college but perhaps also from the viewpoint of future industrial hegemony, Pennsylvania and Ohio are at ground zero. Both are among a handful of states (that also includes Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida) on [JM1] which the 2020 election will be won or lost. They also lie over three major shale formations including the massive Marcellus deposit, one of the largest and most productive fracking regions in the country. The size of the Marcellus fracking operations means more than just lots of local jobs, it also means significant lobbying power and funding for pro fracking candidates. Significantly, fracking in Pennsylvania and Ohio mostly takes place on private land, outside the scope of a Biden position focussed only on federal land.

What will Biden’s position on fracking achieve?

Biden’s current position is a compromise. Federal land in states like Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota and Wyoming are responsible for a relatively modest share of the nation’s oil and gas production (26 percent of oil and 13 percent of gas[JM2] based on Department of the Interior data (1)). While not unimportant, it is also fair to surmise that these states are far less likely to play a pivotal role in the presidential contest than swing states further east.

Unlike some of his primary opponents, Biden has opted to avoid a major battle over fracking. He is on the record saying “you can’t ban fracking right now; you’ve got to transition away from it.” This reflects a view that the nation still needs and values cheap oil and gas (as well as the jobs and economic activity that come with fracking). It also implies that Biden feels renewables are not yet ready to supply the lion’s share of US energy needs. This is a pretty standard centrist position supported by facts such as those provided by the Department of Energy estimating oil and gas supplies 69 per cent of total US energy needs compared with only 11 per cent coming from renewables (including hydro).

Democratic pragmatists will be happy that Biden has escaped having Sanders publicly pressuring him on topics like fracking. The debates that never happened could have seen Sanders explaining to the audience that while he was committed to ending the nation’s reliance on oil and gas and striking a blow for reduced corporation influence on government, Biden was giving the industry a free pass in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio where they would be free to makes massive profits while damaging the environment.

Despite the early end to the primary process, Biden is still facing pressure from progressives wanting more. Soft on fracking means being soft on the most egregious sector of US big business. The fossil fuel industry stands accused by progressive Democrats of forcing higher levels of pollution and a cycle of poverty and despair onto the residents living in the shadow of their operations. If this weren’t bad enough, they then funded sophisticated climate disinformation campaigns that held back action on decarbonisation for decades. Activists who want disadvantaged communities, often heavily African American or Hispanic, to be compensated by the industries that made them suffer have coalesced around a vision captured in the Green New Deal (2). These are the voters who aren’t happy with Biden’s pragmatic stance on fracking and want him to go further.

The Green New Deal

Green New Deal (GND) is a non-binding resolution co-authored in early 2019 by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA). In addition to establishing a net zero carbon target by 2050, it seeks to link climate with action on reducing wealth inequality and making sure that the benefits of a new low carbon economy are more equally shared. The GND appeals to activists whose vision goes beyond achieving net zero carbon emissions. The vision includes a retrospective that both recognises and makes whole communities they believe were penalised under the carbon economy as well as punishing the companies who have pushed the earth to the edge of climate obliteration. It also includes a post net zero thinking that seeks to prevent the sins of the past being repeated and ensures the profits of a post fossil fuel economy are shared more equally.

The GND is generously cited on the Biden campaign website (3). It is described as “a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face” and Biden promises to both “take action against fossil fuel companies and other polluters who put profit over people and knowingly harm our environment” and to avoid leaving “ any workers or communities behind” as the economy transitions to a new energy future. This prose is clearly not enough. The Sunrise movement, which came to prominence in 2017 with climate demonstrations inside the offices of establishment Democrats Speaker Pelosi and Senator Feinstein only rates Biden a 35 out of 100 when it comes to his commitment to the GND vision (4).

Needless to say, Sanders and Warren both achieved much higher vision scores, setting the Biden team the same challenge Hillary Clinton had in 2016 – can I get young progressives to vote?

Climate Unity Task Team

Trying to take a different path to Clinton, Biden has set up a number of Unity Task Teams notionally comprised of equal numbers of moderate Biden nominees and more progressive figures affiliated with the Sanders/ Warren campaigns. These teams are charged with making recommendations to the Democratic party Platform Committee in the lead up to the August Democrat Convention. The climate unity task team (CUTT) is co-chaired by former Secretary of State John Kerry and GND co-author Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and includes congressional members of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis as well as some with a less establishment background including Varshini Prakash, leader of the Sunrise Movement.

While strong support for the GND position will be represented on the CUTT, there are also those in team Biden (and the Democratic party more broadly) who don’t share the full panorama of the GND vision. The pushback to accusations of lukewarm support for the GND is that getting to net zero carbon by 2050 and averting a global climate catastrophe is an enormous technical and political challenge on its own. Adding additional requirements to solve wealth inequality and destroy the power and influence of corporate America makes this task almost impossible. This GND lite approach wants to focus the debate on practical issues like improved battery storage technologies, more energy efficient buildings, investment in carbon capture and storage, accelerating deployment of electric vehicles, green hydrogen and potentially small scale modular nuclear. All of these are textbook decarbonisation strategies and all feature in the Biden campaign literature as examples of where federal investment is needed for the country to decarbonise.

Compromise on Fracking

The CUTT team will inevitably deal with fracking and there will be divergence. A federal versus nationwide ban is the headline item but there is scope to both delve deeper into the technicalities of fracking as well as looking at fracking in the context of stronger action on environmental justice and penalising those responsible for historic environmental damage and impeding climate progress.

Even the most pragmatic members of the Biden climate team are not in favour of fracking – so the question is not about support for fracking but about the practicality of a strategies like a nationwide ban and the strategic necessity of not trying to fight to many battles simultaneously. The moderates behind the current Biden climate plan and it seems the candidate himself, accept that oil and gas will be needed for the foreseeable future and that having them produced cheaply and locally is a good thing. They will see some short term value in the fact that fracking and low-cost gas (along with renewables) are driving coal plants out of existence and might even recognise a faint possibility that gas with carbon capture and storage could be needed in the future to support a grid reliant on wind and solar.

From a technical standpoint there is potential to rein back fracking through stricter oversight of well construction, groundwater monitoring and particularly minimising methane leaks. Methane is a strong greenhouse gas – roughly 50 times more potent than CO2 and an important target for climate activists. Oil and gas extraction invariably involves some loss of methane through faulty pipework and inadequately sealed drilling hardware. While producers seek to reduce losses of saleable product, many environmentalists feel economic drivers set a leakage acceptance threshold far higher than is justified on environmental grounds. Furthermore, they are concerned that a lack of monitoring and reporting both conceals the potential for major methane losses and allows negligent operators to avoid being held to account for their actions.

Lisa Jackson, former head of the EPA in the Obama administration, is on the CUTT and is ideally qualified to advise on possible EPA led strategies to reduce methane losses and potentially put limits on fracking through stricter regulation. Regulation will not be popular with the oil and gas industry and is a less permanent solution than legislation but it is an easier and more flexible route and could be a compromise that hints at a nationwide reduction in fracking while avoiding putting overt focus on states like Pennsylvania and Ohio during the presidential campaign.

From a compensation and punishment perspective, anti-fracking initiatives based on, for example, higher royalties and taxes could theoretically be used to redress past environmental injustices. Equally, giving local communities greater rights to challenge and prevent activities like fracking as well as insisting on a wider distribution of profits could go some way to addressing what some regard as a power imbalance between major oil and gas communities and the communities they exploit.

This discussion highlights that there are incremental steps that, while falling short of a nationwide ban of fracking or formally seeking compensation from fossil fuel producers, could form the basis of a compromise. Moderates want to avoid a war with the oil and gas industry giving the party a better chance at winning in November. GND advocates may see value in the introduction of mechanisms that can be later ramped up to restrict fracking and the industry that lies behind it.

The unity task team concept is something of an experiment and the climate landscape includes a lot more than just fracking so there is also scope for moderates to hold firm on the current fracking position and potentially give ground elsewhere. One such area is money, how much and how it will be spent.

Federal investment in decarbonisation

The CUTT will look at the financial commitments Biden has made in pursuit of net zero carbon. During the initial stages of the primary campaign all the prospective candidates presented, in broad strokes, their plan for the United States to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The simplest measure of climate ambition was how much they were promising to spend. Biden promised a federal investment of $1.7 trillion over 10 years “leveraging additional private sector and state and local investments to total more than $5 trillion”. While government investment of $1.7 trillion is a not insignificant amount it was modest in comparison with other promises particularly from Sanders who promised to spend $16.5 trillion over 15 years.

Moderates on the Biden team will quite rightly point out that their promised level of climate expenditure far exceeds that of the Obama administration. They are also likely to highlight that promising massive expenditure on the campaign trail doesn’t necessarily translate into a value for money outcome if the planning, management and targeting of the expenditure is not done carefully. Throwing vast sums of money at a set of aspirational goals will have Republicans in congress rubbing their hands in anticipation of a Solyndra controversy on a mammoth scale.

The Biden promise of a “modest” $1.7 trillion to fight climate change is probably more attuned to a general election audience than the more expensive promises from candidates whose platforms are no longer relevant. While it seems unlikely that he will be pressured into increasing this promise between now and November, he may have more room to room on how the expenditure will be divided between incentives for big business and support for communities who will face economic pain and dislocation as the nation moves away from fossil fuels.

Who wins in the new clean energy economy?

Prakash and Ocasio-Cortez may not get all that they want on fracking or their demands for recognition, compensation and punishment but the GND vision is not just retrospective it is also forward looking. The climate debate within the Democratic party comes at a critical point in the energy transition story. While there is a sector of the climate community who remain concerned and even pessimistic about the likelihood of rapid decarbonisation, elements of the GND vision suggest a more optimistic perspective.

The optimistic view recognises that the cost of wind and solar generation is now lower than either coal and gas meaning that continued growth of renewable capacity is virtually guaranteed and that it will eventually dominate the electricity sector. Electrification of the transport sector, another key part of the decarbonisation journey, is not quite at this point but the elements needed for electric vehicles to replace the internal combustion engine are in place. More efficient and cost-effective batteries continue to be developed making it more and more likely that electric vehicles will have the power, size and range to match petrol driven cars. If, from a technical perspective, major climate victories are imminent what is still in play is how the benefits of this transition will be shared out.

GND activists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Varshini Prakash are worried that Big Oil and King Coal will simply be replaced by Big Wind and Solar and that Google and Apple will take the role currently filled by GM and Ford. This is akin to winning the battle but losing the war. This outcome would mean energy and transport remain the province of powerful corporate entities who will establish the same stranglehold over government that the fossil fuel, automotive and utility industries now have. Profits from the new economy will still flow to executives rather than workers, communities will fail to win the right to determine what happens in their local environment and opportunities for women, minorities and migrants will not improve.

Timing for this element of the climate debate is critical – it wasn’t relevant 5 years ago because the new enabling technologies weren’t fully available and proven. Arguably it can’t now be delayed too much longer because a new generation of corporate entities is emerging which will soon be strong enough to mould the new order to their own needs. This could be the area where GND supporters make their strongest stand – this is where the future is at stake.

GND supporters will want to be satisfied that the administration’s plans for its $1.7 trillion climate investment and the process of “leveraging additional private sector …..investments” doesn’t mean tax breaks and subsidies for the next generation of energy billionaires. They will be pushing for federal money to be tied to stipulations like a requirement for unionised jobs that reflect the diverse mix of the nation, capping executive remuneration at some modest multiple of the lowest paid employee and perhaps even a commitment to avoid lobbying and making financial contributions to political candidates. There could also be requests for oversight improvements like board representation from workers and the local community as well as public ownership in any intellectual property developed as a result of federal investment. Imposing these sorts of requirements is obviously far easier with new and emerging businesses than for existing corporations, a fact that might make this a more attractive place to draw a GND line in the sand.

With regard to fracking, it seems hard to imagine the GND vision allowing it to play much of a role in a future where decarbonisation is now a reality, but if it is still needed one can imagine the GND supporters of the day advocating for to be restricted to only occur on federal lands so that the appropriate level of oversight can be assured.

Is a compromise possible?

Biden isn’t obliged to reach a compromise with the progressive wing of the party on climate or any other topic and if he does decide to compromise it might be on healthcare or maybe immigration. Given, however, that he has set up the CUTT with some very high-profile players it does seem unlikely that no adjustments will be made to his climate plan. Whether what he can accept is enough for the progressives remains to be seen.

Fracking is an important issue and could be part of a climate compromise. At first pass fracking seems like a pretty binary issue – a nationwide ban or just a commitment to stop all new permits on federal lands, but as discussed above there are in fact plenty of areas where Biden moderates could work out a compromise with GND aligned progressives. The compromise could be regulatory tweaks associated with fracking itself or a trade-off to leaving a status quo for fracking in the moderates win column with progressives looking elsewhere for concessions. The somewhere else could be quasi technical such as a major initiative on electric vehicles but this doesn’t really seem like a win for the GND vision. It is more likely to be either compensating communities for historic exploitation or ensuring a new set of operating rules are laid out for new energy investments – or both.

What to watch out for between now and the convention? More discussion on decarbonisation timetables and strategies, concern over methane leads, litigation strategies for environmental crimes, anything about Exxon Mobil, criminalisation of climate denial (not sure how this gets past the First Amendment), pushback on Silicon Valley’s role in electric vehicles, direct federal investment in wind, solar or electricity storage or a nationwide ban on fracking.

[JM1]I’d add a parenthetical statement about which states these are

[JM2]Citation?