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Critics are questioning the Biden administration's federal infrastructure bill that passed in early November.
The infrastructure bill will continue the federal government's multi-billion dollar subsidies for renewable energy. Anchorage Daily News reports that the bill also has an $18 billion loan guarantee for a facility in Alaska for liquefied natural gas. The project will tap North Slope natural gas deposits for shipment overseas.
California Rep. Jared Huffman, a Democrat, criticized the bill's effect on climate change.
"Take out the broadband, and that was a 1980s infrastructure bill, with some crumbs for electric vehicle charging mixed in with gray hydrogen," Huffman, told Yahoo News in November. "It's not a climate bill; it's just not."
Gray hydrogen is made from fossil fuels such as natural gas and coal.
A Nov. 4 report issued by the ranking member of the U.S. Senate's Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, John Barrasso (R-WY), compared the bill to policies in Europe. Barrasso's report states that the subsidies and other efforts to mandate renewable energy "will lead to sky-high prices, less reliability and [energy] shortages."
Labeling subsidies and mandates for renewables as “punishing 'Green New Deal' energy policies," the report compares them to what it states are similar, failed policies implemented in Europe. The report further asserted that in Europe because of low wind speeds, low natural gas supplies and related reasons, renewable energy mandates have sent "energy prices soaring to record levels."
Bill Peacock, the policy director for the Energy Alliance, says the report calls into question the harm that will be caused from the provisions providing support for clean energy in the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.
"Continuing to spend taxpayer money on policies that have been proven to fail – as they have in Europe, moves America farther and farther away from energy affordability and reliability," Peacock said.