Trump and Harris spar over fracking amid America's soaring energy needs

By Chris Matthews

Harris' running mate Tim Walz scheduled to campaign in energy-rich Pennsylvania on Wednesday

The economy is the top issue on American voters' minds heading into the November election, as households continue to deal with the fallout from the recent surge in the cost of living that has only recently begun to abate.

Donald Trump has made lowering costs a centerpiece of his campaign, and is arguing that the best strategy to achieve that goal is to ramp up production of fossil fuels.

The political debate over energy policy has become epitomized by the issue of fracking, a controversial method of extracting oil (CL00) and natural gas (NG00) that has led the U.S. to become the world's largest producer of fossil fuels for the first time since the 1960s.

Trump has accused his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, of wanting to ban fracking - a potent attack in the swing state of Pennsylvania, where fracking has led to a boom in natural-gas production that has benefitted some economically disadvantaged parts of the state.

Harris' vice-presidential running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is touring through central Pennsylvania on Wednesday in an attempt to win over voters in what is perhaps the most crucial swing state in the November election.

Fracking as a red herring

"There is no question I'm in favor of banning fracking," Harris said during a 2019 CNN town hall, suggesting that she would urge Congress to pass legislation enacting a total ban on the practice.

She has since reversed her position on the issue, telling CNN in August that she has now understands "that we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean-energy economy without banning fracking."

Climate activists argue that banning fracking is an important step toward reducing reliance on fossil fuels that cause climate change.

For the tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians who earn their living in the natural-gas business, a federal ban on fracking may be a troubling prospect, even if Democrats in Congress supporting the ban have also called for job-training programs to transition those workers to other industries.

A recent study by Pennsylvania State University economist David Latzko estimated that per-capita income in Pennsylvania counties with a high level of fracking activity is more than 19% higher than similar counties with no significant natural-gas extraction.

At the same time, the fracking ban has only drawn support from a small minority of congressional Democrats, and the Biden-Harris administration has been fearful of taking actions that obviously raise the price of fossil fuels for consumers.

And while the president has authority to restrict the practice on federally owned lands, the vast majority of natural-gas extraction in Pennsylvania is on state and private lands, where the president wouldn't have the power to ban it.

"The president would only be able to truly ban fracking on federal lands, where [the government] can fully control land and resource use," Penn State University geography professor Jennifer Baka told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week. "On state and private lands, where most fracking occurs, fracking is regulated by the states."

The real debate

The president's views on topics like fossil-fuel production and the relative importance of cheap energy versus combatting climate change are very important, and could lead to the U.S. economy taking fairly divergent paths.

"The president doesn't have the authority to ban fracking," wrote Philip Rossetti, energy researcher at the conservative think tank R Street Institute. "But the president can still make life difficult for energy producers if they choose."

He noted that a president can direct agencies to "slow-walk permitting decisions, try to claw back permitting authority granted to states for wells, restrict leasing, or impose any number of other policies to build a wall of red tape."

The Biden administration and its allies have touted its historic record on fighting climate change, both through Inflation Reduction Act subsidies for green-energy production and electric cars, as well as through regulations meant to limit carbon emissions.

For instance, in April, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule requiring 90% carbon capture at existing coal plants by 2032. And in June, the Transportation Department published new rules that will ramp up fuel-efficiency standards for new cars and light trucks.

The government estimates these rules will cost businesses billions of dollars in compliance costs, and economists say that they increase the costs consumers pay for new and used cars, as well.

Increasing the cost of burning fossil fuels to reflect its environmental and social consequences is an essential step for Democrats to achieve their ambitious climate goals of cutting U.S. carbon pollution to half of peak levels and reaching a level of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Where Trump and Harris stand

Donald Trump has repeatedly labeled climate change a hoax, and his energy policy plans reflect this view.

"Pretty much every significant regulation Biden has made is subject to being undone by a second Trump term," analysts at Beacon Policy Advisors wrote in an August report. "In fact, if he's re-elected again, you should pretty much count on it."

During his first term, Trump undid more than 100 climate regulations, which the independent economic-research firm Rhodium Group estimated would have had the potential to increase U.S. emissions by 1.8 gigatons of carbon dioxide by 2035 had Trump been re-elected.

Meanwhile, Republicans will be tempted to repeal parts of Inflation Reduction Act spending in order to pay for the $4.6 trillion needed to make the 2017 tax-reform law permanent.

If Harris wins, her administration "will have her hands full between making new rules, finishing half-crafted ones, and defending them in court once they're done," according to Beacon analysts, who noted that a Harris administration's first priority on new rulemaking could be enacting new emissions standards for existing natural-gas plants.

Events and economic trends can often scuttle the best-laid plans of politicians - and what neither candidate is addressing is what TS Lombard researcher Grace Fan has called the "U.S. postelection energy conundrum" of unlocking new sources of energy to power what analysts predict will be an intense increase in energy needs driven by new technologies.

"No matter who wins the 2024 presidential race, the next U.S. President will face surging aggregate energy supply-side challenges," Fan wrote in a recent note. "These are a result of inertial forces, longstanding permitting bottlenecks and a jump in electricity demand supercharged by new AI-related data-center load growth."

-Chris Matthews

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10-02-24 0752ET

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