House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., recently announced he will hold a full committee hearing titled “Oversight of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.”

 

“The hearing will conduct oversight and gather information from [EPA] Administrator Michael Regan on the Biden Administration’s push of excessive environmental regulations and abuse of environmental protection authorities,” states the committee’s press release.

“The [EPA] has worked hand in hand with the White House to implement sweeping executive orders and burdensome regulations in an effort to advance a radical climate agenda,” Comer said. “The Biden Administration is overreaching its environmental protection authorities extensively, flouting the limits the Supreme Court set upon them just two years ago in West Virginia v. EPA. The EPA is not, and should not be, immune to congressional oversight. The Committee looks forward to holding the agency accountable for its efforts to cement Green New Deal and other misguided priorities that have hurt Americans across the country.”

Comer has previously expressed displeasure over the current administration’s push for its “anti-fossil fuel climate rule,” which he says ignores the costs and “illegality of the rule.”

Comer’s committee obtained documents from an interagency review of the EPA’s proposed emissions rule that suggest the Biden administration questioned the cost and legality of the proposed rule.

“The documents contain anonymous comments from federal agencies, potentially including the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the Energy Department, National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi, the Justice Department, and the White House general counsel,” the committee’s press release continues.

According to the press release, key excerpts from these documents include:

• The Biden administration is aware of the costs, consequences, and illegality of its anti-fossil fuel policies but chooses to disregard them.
• The comments show that experts and lawyers at other agencies raised serious concerns about the rule.
• One commenter noted that “hydrogen combustion has not been adequately demonstrated nation-wide for utility scale power generation.” The same commenter stressed that “there are issues regarding the integrity of hydrogen supply and whether a consistent and reliable marketplace for hydrogen will emerge,” and “a specific compliance date is not appropriate.” 
• Another hurdle is overcoming the physics of hydrogen’s steep energy penalty. This energy could be “better used directly serving load and maintaining grid reliability.”
• Power shortages are becoming more common as government force-feeds green energy onto the grid while coal and nuclear plants close. The EPA’s rule would curtail power from reliable gas generators at the same time as the Agency’s electric vehicle (EV) mandate ramps up and increases electricity demand.
• The EPA knows these technologies aren’t close to being feasible or cost-effective, but it plans to mandate them anyway to force fossil fuel plants to shut down. It’ll worry about the consequences later.