Gas, greens and brownouts: The energy war is boiling over

President Joe Biden’s signature climate law is nearly two years old, and the tug-of-war over its future is only getting more fierce.

The Biden administration is facing election year pressure from progressives to move more quickly to phase out fossil fuels, at a time when the U.S has become an oil and natural gas superpower.

At the same time, conservatives and former President Donald Trump are threatening to gut the law and its hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy spending if they take back power in Washington — though more than a few Republicans are coming to its defense.

And supporters of the law, including a growing number of businesses and communities that stand to benefit, are anxious for the administration to spend the money faster.

The push-and-pull was on display Wednesday at the POLITICO Energy Summit in Washington, where lawmakers, Biden administration officials and industry executives debated the future of the Inflation Reduction Act and the president’s clean energy policies in what could be his last year in office.

Here are the takeaways from the day:

Biden’s billions are having an impact — but supporters say it’s happening too slowly

Businesses are eager to take advantage of the IRA’s clean energy cash, but permitting challenges and delays in implementing the law’s programs have prevented them from doing so, industry representatives told the summit audience.

“We have all this money that’s ready to flow and can't flow because we can’t build things fast enough in this country,” which could leave investors “holding a bag of money,” said Sam Mar, senior adviser for the philanthropy Arnold Ventures.

A recent POLITICO analysis found that less than 17 percent of the $1.1 trillion in direct spending that Biden’s climate, infrastructure, technology and pandemic relief laws provided for climate- and energy-related needs had been spent as of April — with six months until the election. A gusher of private investments triggered by the IRA’s clean energy tax breaks has also faced headwinds.

“I think it hasn’t been implemented fast enough,” George Bilicic, managing director at the asset management firm Lazard, said of the IRA, though he acknowledged the difficulty in rolling out major legislation that requires new regulations guiding its deployment.

Even Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm acknowledged that the pace of the rollout has been slower than some would like, though she argued more progress will be visible soon.

“We may have gone to a few groundbreakings, but we haven’t gone to a huge number of ribbon cuttings yet,” Granholm told attendees. “Because it takes a while to build the actual factories.”

Some Republicans want to keep parts of Biden's climate law — but Trump probably won’t

North Dakota GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer advocated for taking a “surgeon’s scalpel and not an ax” to the Inflation Reduction Act, acknowledging that Republicans and their districts are benefiting from many of the law’s programs.

“I will be involved pretty strongly in advocating that we not just repeal the IRA,” Cramer said, specifically praising the tax credit for carbon capture and storage — a technology that has stirred particular interest in the oil and gas industry. “There are some things we like, some things we don’t like, obviously.”

Republicans in the House “are seeing the investments that are happening because of these tax credits and the benefits,” said Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), who co-chairs the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus.

“I think a lot of [the credits] should stay,” he said, noting that “you’re seeing a lot of companies spend a lot of money in red states” to get the tax credits for projects such as electric vehicle manufacturing, new nuclear power plants and clean energy research and development.

But a member of Trump’s 2016 transition team indicated the former president might not be so surgical — especially when presented with a pile of cash that could fund his own agenda.

“If Donald Trump wins the election he’s going to take a look at the revenue, the potential revenue you can generate from funds in the IRA that haven’t been spent, to fund his priorities,” said Tom Pyle, president of the conservative American Energy Alliance.

Trump has repeatedly attacked Biden’s green initiatives, especially the spending on wind power and electric cars. In a recent campaign appearance, he vowed to “impose an immediate moratorium on all new spending, grants and giveaways” contained in “socialist bills like the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.”

Granholm stood firm Wednesday against repealing any part of the law, saying the “proof will be in the pudding” as investments continue to flow into GOP districts.

“It would be political malpractice to undo the benefits that are happening in communities all over the country,” Granholm said.

Republicans’ message: Biden’s policies will cause ‘brownouts’

Republicans leaned into an argument that Biden’s transition to clean energy will threaten the reliability of the power grid, putting Americans at risk.

“The United States is not going to put up with brownouts when we know that we have energy that can go online and go online today,” said Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), who chairs the House’s Conservative Climate Caucus.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) accused the Biden administration of harming red states with its fossil fuel policies, particularly singling out its proposal last month to end new coal leases in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana, the nation’s biggest coal field.

“It’s a terrible policy,” Lummis said. “Until we have sources of base load to replace coal, we still need coal in this country.”

But it wasn’t just Republicans who raised concerns over grid reliability.

Data centers and artificial intelligence, as well as a rise in the electrification of homes and vehicles, are all “putting pressure on our system, so we have to act now if we’re going to have a reliable system in the future,” Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chair Willie Phillips told the summit.

“This is a life or death issue. We lose lives when we don’t focus on reliability,” he added.

Granholm said there is “no doubt” the strain on the grid is increasing, but called the fears “a little over-hyped.” She said existing technologies can add capacity to the grid and that AI has the potential to unlock new solutions to the problem.

Greens ‘want Biden to do better’

The administration is struggling to convince young, climate-minded voters that he’s serious about transitioning away from fossil fuels — and it could hurt Biden at the polls this November. The youth-led environmental group Sunrise Movement, which mobilized young people who were key to his election four years ago, signaled Tuesday it is withholding its endorsement of Biden, even as it vowed to “fight fascism at the ballot box” by defeating Trump.

Besides his fossil fuel policies, the group criticized Biden’s support for Israel’s military during its war in Gaza and his recent moves to limit asylum seekers at the U.S. border.

“We want Biden to do better,” Betamia Coronel, senior national organizer for climate justice at another progressive alliance, the Center for Popular Democracy, said at the summit. “We know he wants to secure his climate legacy and be the climate president, and that really means sitting with the emergency moment that we’re in.”

Jon Krosnick, a professor of communications and political science at Stanford University who conducts polling on climate change, warned that the administration needs to do more to inform voters of the president’s accomplishments on the issue.

“The youngest adults are always at the most risk for not voting. And if those individuals are not enthusiastic about President Biden’s agenda and accomplishments in this area, they may well stay home,” Krosnick said. “The president hasn’t really been talking to the country to explain on a regular basis why he has done what he's done … He’s gotta say more on the issue.”

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a leading climate hawk, downplayed the possibility that young people disappointed with Biden’s approach to fossil fuels won’t show up to vote for him in November.

“The polls miss the intensity — the generational intensity — among younger people in our country,” Markey said. “Ultimately we’re fighting for the same climate agenda. That’s where there is agreement.”

White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi said he understood the impatience of younger voters, but warned that Biden’s opponents weren’t just planning to freeze his clean energy transition — they want to roll it back.

A reversal of Biden’s policies “actually puts us on a U-turn trajectory. A U-turn to [a] less competitive economy. A U-turn to unsafe communities, a U-turn on jobs,” Zaidi said. “That’s a really big deal. It's very problematic.”

U.S. natural gas exports will still flow — and grow

Both Granholm and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel pushed back on fears that one major move by the administration — a pause on new licenses for natural gas exports — would leave U.S. allies short of energy.

The pause is being accompanied by a study of whether the rapid rise in gas exports is in the U.S. national interest, including the impact on climate pollution and domestic gas prices.

Granholm noted that the department has already authorized permits for far more gas exports than the country is actually carrying out. (In fact, the nation’s export capacity is expected to double by 2028.)

“Nobody who is exporting is affected by this pause,” she said. “Nobody whose project has been authorized is affected by this pause. Those can all go forward.”

U.S. companies have the ability to export 14 billion cubic feet per day of liquefied natural gas, she said, the largest capacity in the world — and that figure could jump to 48 billion cubic feet with projects that have permits but have yet to be built.

Still, Republicans have hammered the administration over the pause, which they have framed as a ban on new shipments. Granholm said the assessment will be completed by the end of the year.

Emanuel also sought to calm fears that Japan, one of the biggest buyers of U.S. gas, would be left high and dry.

Asked whether Japan could still count on the United States for natural gas despite the pause, Emanuel responded: “Yes, emphatically, yes.”

"We know energy security is important for our No. 1 ally, not only in the region, but globally, and we’re going to be a partner in that transition and work through the issues,” Emanuel added via a video feed from Tokyo.

Josh Siegel, Ben Lefebvre, Zach Bright and Andy Picon contributed to this report.