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Floor Speech

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Mr. HOEVEN. Madam President, I join my colleagues today to discuss the Biden administration's onslaught of energy regulations that will make electricity more expensive and less reliable for homes and businesses across the country.

In April, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized four new regulations specifically targeting our coal-fired electric powerplants--certainly the coal-fired powerplants in my State of North Dakota--including an expensive, unachievable new mercury and air toxics standards, or MATS, rule, despite the EPA's own regulatory analysis-- their own regulatory analysis--stating that the previous rule was adequately protecting public health; the Clean Power Plan 2.0--so- called Clean Power Plan 2.0--requiring existing coal-fired and new gas- fired plants to reduce CO2 emissions by 90 percent when the technology is not yet commercially viable. They can't do it. That just puts them out of business, meaning less baseload electricity.

And also they put forth a new coal ash management rule and water discharge rule, imposing costly, unachievable requirements on power generators, all at a time when we need more electricity.

Now, the Biden administration's regulatory blizzard comes at a time when the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC, continues to raise concerns about elevated risks of blackouts and brownouts.

The Presiding Officer comes from a State where you know how important it is, in these really hot days--100-plus degrees--that we have power to power people's air-conditioning. It can be a life-threatening situation if we don't.

Further, multiple independent grid operators are warning that EPA's power sector rules will further threaten reliability. We need this baseload for reliability of the grid nationwide. That includes the Southwest Power Pool, which covers part of my State of North Dakota, which stated that it, meaning the Southwest Power Pool, ``remains concerned . . . about the impact the Final Rule''--the findings of these final rules--``may have on the region's ability to maintain resource adequacy and ensure reliability.''

Again, this is about that baseload electricity that we need for stability and reliability of the entire grid nationwide.

The PJM Interconnection, which serves 65 million Americans, noted that ``the Final Rule may work to drive premature retirement of coal units that provide essential reliability services and dissuade new gas resources from coming online.'' Again, less power when we need more.

ERCOT, covering Texas, stated that EPA's rule poses an unacceptable risk to the reliability of the ERCOT system.

So, in all cases, these are examples where, across the country, the very institutions required to make sure that that grid is stable, the baseload power is there on the hottest day or the coldest day for reliability, they are sounding the warnings--very clear. They are sounding the warnings.

These regulations will drive up the cost of operations and force powerplants to prematurely close. This approach is in direct conflict with our Nation's energy reality. We need more energy, not less. Multiple forecasts show that electricity demand is projected to rise in the coming years as much as 27 percent in some parts of the country. Fast-growing areas, again, like the Presiding Officer's State, probably are going to see that 27 percent and maybe more as a function not only of growth but the fact that we are using more electricity in so many ways.

Much of the demand is coming from things like data centers, for example, that support cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Dispatchable resources like coal, gas, and nuclear powerplants remain critically important to meet demand, precisely because of their ability to operate regardless of weather conditions.

That is why, in North Dakota, we have been working for over a decade to crack the code on carbon capture technologies, allowing us to continue leveraging over 700 years of fuel supply in the form of coal supplies with the best environmental stewardship. We have worked to bring regulatory certainty, and, as a result, our State became the first one to be granted regulatory primacy for class VI wells to ensure that CO2 is safely and securely stored below the surface. Wyoming and Louisiana are the only other States in the Nation that also have this authority.

We also recently secured $350 million in a demonstration grant from the Department of Energy to advance Project Tundra, which will enable the coal-fired Milton R. Young facility to capture and store 4 million metric tons of CO2 per year.

We also have proven that we can lead the way in preducing SOX, NOX--sulfur oxides, nitrous oxides--and mercury emissions, and now we are working to lead the way forward on CO2.

However, the Biden administration's regulations are adding these costly regulatory burdens at the very time we are working to deploy these new technologies. So think about it. Think about it. We are deploying these new technologies to produce more energy more reliably, baseload electricity that will stabilize the grid; and we are putting new technologies on that will enhance our ability to reduce emissions-- not only SOX, NOX, and mercury, but CO2 as well. But the regulations the administration is bringing forward are going to impede our ability to do exactly that: produce more energy more cost-effectively, more dependably--right--with better environmental standards.

And that means not only deploying those technologies here, but then other places around the world will follow our lead on this. I mean, that is the solution, and it is being impeded by these regulations that go so far that they prevent the industry from deploying the new technology. That makes no sense. That is not common sense. That is not the way to solve a problem.

So, again, Congress needs to push back against the EPA's regulations that go too far, undermining the reliability and affordability of the grid.

I am working with 12 of my Senate colleagues on a congressional review resolution of disapproval to overturn the MATS rules, and we will have CRAs to overturn other of these rules as well. For example, Senator Capito is leading the effort to overturn the Clean Power Plan 2.0 rule, and Senator Mullin has also got a CRA to overturn the EPA's coal ash rule.

Our Nation is a global energy powerhouse. We have vast resources with its coal, oil, natural gas--many different sources, many different types of energy. We need to use them all. And we have the best environmental standards in the world. We lead in terms of those technologies and, again, environmental standards. It only makes sense, for all those reasons as well as national security reasons, to produce that energy here at home rather than forfeit that energy production to other parts of the world that pose either a security threat to us or, at the same time, produce energy with vastly inferior environmental standards. Again, common sense.

Blackouts and brownouts are simply unacceptable in an energy-rich nation such as ours. And, again, it is about global competitiveness. Almost everything we do requires energy. If we are going to compete in a global economy, we need low-cost, dependable energy so that we can outcompete the rest of the world.

Instead of overregulation and Green New Deal-style mandates, we need to take the handcuffs off our energy producers, and we need to allow American ingenuity to continue to do what they can do better than anyone else in the world: produce more energy more cost-effectively, more dependably, with the best environmental standards. That is the right approach--not an approach of overregulation that handcuffs our energy producers.

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