Federal bureaucrats don’t need to be in charge of the energy source Americans use, Rep. Ron Estes, R-Kansas, told Newsmax TV.
President Joe Biden has set a goal of 100 percent renewable energy in the power sector by 2035. Renewable energy sources accounted for about 20 percent of total U.S. energy consumption in 2020, according to the Energy Information Administration, compared with 11 percent in 2019.
The EIA tracks kilowatts used in the energy industry. Renewables include wind, hydropower, solar and biomass energy.
Fossil fuels, including natural gas, coal and petroleum accounted for 60.3 percent in 2020.
“I’m a big advocate that we have free and fair markets and that we make sure people have the option to choose,” Estes said Thursday during an appearance on Newsmax TV’s “American Agenda.”
“And in some cases, you may want to heat your home with natural gas. Some cases you won’t even heat your home with electricity. In some cases, you may want to pay, even if it’s a little bit more, to guarantee that you get renewable, wind or solar, and folks are making that choice. We don’t need federal bureaucrats in Washington to make those decisions for us.”
When asked about the Texas winter storm that caused at least 57 deaths and left millions without power for days, sometimes weeks, Estes said he would have pushed for an insurance policy.
Managers of Texas’ power grid have been heavily criticized for not winterizing the grid. A federal report after the 2011 outages urged hardening electric generators against extreme cold, but ERCOT ignored the suggestion.
“I think the piece that was missing there was what’s the insurance policy when everything goes to the extremes,” said Estes.
“You have to plan for the worst-case scenario even if you don’t want to pay for it.”
When pushed by host Bob Sellers on how a free and fair market would help in that situation, Estes responded: “What they’re seeing now is the consequences of higher energy bills. A smart way to operate that, and some of the discussions that are coming out, particularly in Texas and with ERCOT there is looking at how do you make sure you do have that support on an ongoing basis when you get that extreme swing.”
He also said scaling wind or solar will be tough.
“It’s a whole lot easier with natural gas to be able to produce more electricity and to have it available on demand and unfortunately the push that we have had in so many cases of, ‘Let’s expand our use of renewables’ and ignore some of the base and peak load production that we can use and rely on is hurting us,” he said.
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