Concerns have been raised by experts in the heating industry after President Joe Biden unilaterally used the Defense Production Act of the war to pour taxpayer funds into the hands of electric heat pump manufacturers, giving them an unfair advantage over producers of home heating systems that run on natural gas or propane.
Fox News claims that the White House and the U.S. According to the Department of Energy, nine projects across fifteen states will receive a “historic” $169 million award from the Biden Administration to expedite the production of electric heat pumps under the 1950 Defense Production Act (DPA).
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Deputy Secretary of Defense Dr. Kathleen Hicks dutifully described the disastrous Energy policy and direct meddling in the economy as a National Security issue in a DOE press release.
“Reducing America’s dependence on gas and oil is critical to U.S. national security,” Hicks said. “In conflict, fossil fuel supply lines are especially vulnerable. The actions President Biden announced today will help strengthen our supply chains and ensure that the United States is a leader in producing the energy technologies that are essential to our future success. They will also help accelerate DoD’s transition toward clean energy technologies that can help strengthen military capability while creating good jobs for American workers.”
“Today’s Defense Production Act funds for heat pump manufacturing show that President Biden is treating climate change as the crisis it is,” Democratic operative John Podesta, Biden’s purported “clean energy czar,” said to Fox. “Using his wartime emergency powers under the Defense Production Act to turbocharge U.S. manufacturing of clean technologies and strengthen our energy security,” said Ali Zaidi, Biden’s National Climate Advisor.
“The Defense Production Act is the primary source of presidential authorities to expedite and expand the supply of materials and services from the U.S. industrial base needed to promote the national defense,” the Federal Emergency Management Agency explains.
Ben Lieberman, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, voiced concern over Biden’s action.
“This corporate welfare is utterly abhorrent. But we’re supposed to think that everything is OK because it’s for the benefit of climate change. It seems absurd to me.
This might be the most absurd of the Biden administration’s purported climate emergency declarations, he went on. Heat pumps are in plentiful supply; nonetheless, not every homeowner desires one. Customers should make their own decisions. Tipping the scales in favor of one energy source over another is not the responsibility of the government. It is evidently the case in this instance.
President and CEO of the American Gas Association Karen Harbert told Fox News, “Energy security is a top priority for AGA. We are deeply disappointed to see the Defense Production Act, which is intended as a vital tool for advancing national security against serious outside threats, being used as an instrument to advance a policy agenda contradictory to our nation’s strong energy position.”
“Increased use of natural gas has been responsible for sixty percent of the electrical grid’s CO2 emissions reductions,” Harbert added. “This vital tool for emissions reductions and energy system resilience should not be unfairly undermined through misuse of the Defense Production Act.”
WRENews reports that the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) chairman chastised President Biden. “The purpose of the Defense Production Act is to expand the supply of materials and services to protect the American people, not to advance a political agenda,” Alicia Huey said. “Therefore, it is extremely disappointing that President Biden has elected to invoke the Defense Production Act in a blatant move to promote a policy agenda seeking to push American households towards electric heating in lieu of gas heating.”
She went on to say that the administration has ignored a real crisis affecting the US home construction industry in favor of responding to a manufactured “climate crisis.” Disaster recovery is one of the actual intended use cases for the Defense Production Act, according to Huey, who also explained that there is an ongoing “extreme shortage of distribution transformers that have prevented the construction of badly needed housing developments, exacerbated the nation’s housing affordability crisis, and frustrated recovery efforts in communities hit by natural disasters.”
“NAHB has been calling on the administration to utilize the Defense Production Act to boost transformer output at existing facilities to address the growing supply chain crisis for distribution transformers that threatens the nation’s housing sector.” She concluded that she hopes Biden “will reassess his priorities and provide funding under the Defense Production Act to jumpstart the production of badly needed transformers across the nation.”
