Biden wants his turbines and his oil exports, too

This is a tale of two coastal energy projects. In one, off the coast of central and northern California in the Pacific Ocean, five companies will develop $757 million worth of offshore wind turbines. Spanning 373,268 acres, these turbines will deploy 30 gigawatts of energy by 2030, enough to power 10 million homes.

In the other, off the coast of Freeport in the Gulf of Mexico, roughly 50 miles south of Galveston, a corporate pipeline developer received federal approval to build the nation's largest oil export terminal. The project includes two 36-inch underwater pipelines that would transport crude oil from a pipeline network in Houston under Surfside Beach before connecting to a new deepwater port 30 miles offshore. Once completed, the terminal would add 2 million barrels per day to the U.S. oil export capacity.

At face value, an offshore wind farm in the Pacific and an oil export terminal in the Gulf are staggeringly contradictory. The former is a major down payment toward meeting our nation's goals of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030; the latter would prop up a fossil fuel that contributes heavily to those emissions.

The simultaneous development of these two projects, 2,500 miles apart, embodies the delicate balance that President Joe Biden is attempting to strike and one which his successors will have to maintain for years to come as the world slowly transitions away from fossil fuels that contribute to climate change.

It's both a political problem — frustrating voters who care deeply about the environment as well as those whose livelihoods are tied to oil and gas — and a practical one.

It was difficult enough for Biden to spend significant political capital modernizing the American energy economy and advancing decarbonization goals through a narrowly Democratic congressional majority. Now add in a global energy market suddenly shunning Russian oil due to the war in Ukraine, gas prices that peaked at an average of $5 per gallon this year, and a domestic economy reeling from soaring inflation. Suddenly, “drill baby, drill” looks quite a bit more appealing, to the point where Biden is threatening to penalize companies that don't reinvest in increasing domestic oil production to keep prices at the pump stable.

“If they don't, they're going to pay a higher tax on their excess profits and face other restrictions,” Biden said in October.

Of course, this approach means Biden often looks like he's speaking out of both sides of his mouth on energy. Consider that both of these coastal projects were approved with wildly different levels of publicity. The offshore wind project was announced Wednesday through a press release, featuring a glowing statement from Interior Secretary Deb Haaland touting the latest example of the administration's commitment to renewable energy. The oil export terminal approval by the Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration was quietly filed in the federal register on Nov. 21 and spotted by Earthworks, an environmental nonprofit.

This is the challenge the federal government faces in trying to legislate demand for clean energy in a global economy still largely fueled by oil. The fact is, as long as most cars and trucks on our roads are powered by petroleum products, oil will remain a sizable element of our energy sector. A recent story from the Chronicle's James Osborne illustrated this paradox: electric vehicle sales have doubled in the past two years, but still represent only 7 percent of total U.S. car sales. In Texas, where oil and gas are practically religion, just 4.3 percent of car sales were electric models.

For those of us who accept the scientific consensus that climate change could lead to widespread global catastrophes such as food shortages, extreme droughts and rising sea levels, this reality is difficult to accept. The Maritime Administration's environmental impact statement for the oil export terminal in Freeport said it would create greenhouse gas emissions equal to 233 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, about 4 percent of total 2020 U.S. emissions. It would increase the risk of a major oil spill in Gulf waters, potentially putting local drinking water supplies at risk as well as endangered sea turtle species.

We can't force the public to accept these trade-offs without also holding oil and gas producers accountable. None of these projects exists in a vacuum. The U.S. is both a buyer and supplier in the global energy market, and ramping up our domestic oil and gas production means buying less oil from nations such as Saudi Arabia, Russia and Venezuela, where human rights abuses are rampant. It also means we can supply developing nations that are decades away from developing renewable energy infrastructure with oil and gas that is refined more responsibly. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm described Russian natural gas as “the dirtiest on Earth” and the International Energy Agency's methane tracker found that oil and gas produced in Russia resulted in 30 percent higher methane emissions compared to the U.S. In Iran, another global competitor, methane emissions are 85 percent higher from oil and gas production.

That doesn't mean blindly trusting the private sector to be responsible in their production methods. Petroleum was the source of 46 percent of total energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in 2021, while natural gas accounted for 34 percent. There is still a lot of work to be done to clean up these industries, and the Biden administration must continue to adopt world-class environmental standards, including cracking down on methane emissions that warm the planet more than 80 times as much as carbon dioxide. For every oil export terminal or natural gas pipeline the federal government approves, there should be roughly an equivalent number of wind, solar and battery storage projects coming online to offset the emissions.

Yet given the myriad geopolitical headwinds Biden has had to navigate in his first term, he should be commended for how much progress he's made. Through the Inflation Reduction Act, his administration has developed tax credits, loans and grants for clean energy manufacturing, electric vehicles and environmental justice initiatives, all while increasing U.S. oil and gas production. The transformation of our energy economy will always have to negotiate the divergent priorities of short-term energy security and aggressive long-term net zero goals. If future administrations can maintain this balance as well as Biden has, we will have a clean, sustainable energy economy sooner than we think.

To get to net zero emissions, the U.S. needs to accept uncomfortable energy trade-offs.