Recent events in American politics, including the attack on Donald Trump, the Republican convention and the Democrats’ need to sell an entirely new candidate to replace Joe Biden, make a Republican victory in the November elections more likely.
Among advocates of the energy transition, this scenario is causing a lot of concern. At their recent rally in Milwaukee, Republicans said little about climate change and what they should do to combat it.
We hear from them a profession of faith with regard to fossil fuels and attacks on technologies in favor of the energy transition. Their motto, proudly displayed, is: drill, baby drillSuch an “all fossils” approach runs counter to American interests.
While the United States is a dominant player in oil and gas, it has also embarked, in 2022, with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), on a race for proclimate investments. These should enable the country to become a leader in technologies related to the energy transition within ten years and a major energy power, all energies combined.
On the fossil fuel side, more oil and gas has been produced in the United States than ever before. Under Biden-Harris, the country has become the largest producer of all time, with 13 million barrels of oil per day.
It took only a few years for the United States to rise to the top. From 2006-2008, by mastering so-called shale production, American exploiters became the world’s leading producers of black gold.
When it comes to gas, so much is produced in the United States that prices have been very low for months. In 2022, the Americans even surpassed Qatar as the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, helping Europeans cover their pressing energy needs, with gas supply disruptions from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.
On the renewable energy side, with the IRA, more than 300 billion dollars have been invested in decarbonized energy: solar panel and battery production plants are multiplying across the United States, creating more than 300,000 jobs.
These investments are being made in particular in regions of the Midwest, in states such as Georgia, Michigan and Tennessee, where many sympathizers of the Republican Party live. There is even talk of a battery belt to discuss what is happening among our southern neighbors.
Chinese competition
The IRA also targets a strategic objective dear to Republican supporters: reducing the United States’ dependence on China. Because China launched, 30 years ago and at an impressive speed, into the production of renewable electricity to meet its growing energy needs.
It has thus acquired decisive control over the supply chains linked to renewable energies: for example, more than 80% of the world’s solar panels are produced in China. This supremacy extends to the minerals on which the functioning of decarbonized technologies depends.
In a world that must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, the countries that act first in these new industrial niches give themselves the chance to take strategic shares of a market expected to grow exponentially.
It is irresponsible to want to reduce the sails on this American breakthrough, as the Republicans envisage. The United States is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases and it must make efforts in the fight against climate change.
The Republicans’ stance on climate also leaves the field open to China, which would take advantage of it to consolidate its central position as an exporter of these technologies sought after by all countries. The competitiveness of the United States would be jeopardized in an international economy that is built around the objective of decarbonization.
Republicans want to make the United States a country that energy dominant “, according to their own slogan. They should rather encourage this beautiful entrepreneurial momentum that has been instilled in them for two years with renewable energies.