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Electricians working together on the electricity pole

Senator Joe Manchin in the middle of energy debate over clean electricity standards

Aug 5, 2021 by AFP

In making the case against the proposed “clean electricity standard,” a national energy mandate included in Senator Bernie Sanders’ partisan budget plan, Jason Huffman and Clint Woods invoke a memorable ad from West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin.

Manchin’s classic 2010 campaign ad became famous for his pointing a rifle at a piece of paper flapping in the wind as he committed to “take dead aim at the cap-and-trade bill because it is bad for West Virginia.”

As Huffman, state director of Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia, and Woods, AFP’s policy fellow for regulations, writes in an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, the so-called clean electricity standard is just another version of cap-and-trade – a “national energy mandate … that turbocharges the most harmful elements of the failed cap-and-trade policy and the unfair Clean Power Plan.”

And, they point out, there’s nothing especially clean about this plan.

  • One study by the Obama administration’s chief economist found that “state renewable mandates result in residential electricity price increases and represent one of the least efficient strategies to reduce emissions.
  • Since 2007, the 20 states without renewable mandates have, on average, reduced per capita energy-related carbon dioxide emissions more than twice as much as the 30 states with a mandate.”

A lot of pain, but not much – if any – gain.

Manchin is positioned, as a key swing vote in the Senate, to “take another shot at cap-and-trade” because Sanders’ national energy mandate is “holding together support for trillions of dollars in ‘infrastructure’ spending.”

Read more about the debate on the clean electricity standard in the Charleston Gazette-Mail op-ed.

Joe Manchin gets another shot at cap-and-trade op-ed screenshot

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