Democratic presidential candidate Jay Inslee introduced a plan Monday to end all federal government subsidies for fossil fuel companies and stop production of oil, gas, and coal on federal lands as a step toward banning it everywhere.
Inslee, the governor of Washington, projects that fossil fuel companies earn around $20 billion per year in subsidies.
“To build a clean energy economy, we must transition off of fossil fuels, and we will need a president who is willing to stand up to the fossil fuel corporations,” Inslee said. “They have polluted our air, our water, with impunity, raking in huge profits, all while taking huge subsidies from our federal government.”
Inslee’s plan would permanently ban all new leases of coal, oil, and gas on federal lands, including offshore. Other presidential candidates such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, have proposed the same thing.
Nearly a quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from energy production on public lands.
But Inslee would also “restrict” drilling and mining under existing leases by increasing the royalty rates companies pay to the government. He also pledges to “end” fracking, the drilling technique that created the oil and natural gas production boom in America.
Inslee says he would work with Congress to enact an “outright national ban” on fracking.
And he promised to restrict fossil fuel production on non-public lands by requiring production to occur a certain distance away from places such as schools, hospitals, and parks.
Inslee says he would move to stop fossil fuel exports as well. He wants to reinstate the crude oil export ban that President Barack Obama and Congress revoked in 2015. He’d set similar restrictions on the export of coal and liquified natural gas (LNG).
Inslee also seeks to make it more difficult for federal agencies to approve infrastructure projects that deliver fossil fuels to consumers, including pipelines and export terminals. He would require federal agencies to apply a “climate test” to infrastructure proposals, rejecting “climate-unsafe” projects.
He vows to create a “Presidential Commission on Energy Transition,” to help oil, gas, and coal workers harmed by his plan to obtain new work and secure benefits.
Inslee’s proposal is a direct contrast to the Trump administration, which has expanded oil and gas drilling on federal lands, and proposed opening nearly all federal waters to drilling. The U.S. is the world’s largest producer of oil and gas. It is set to become a top-three exporter of LNG, and increasing exports of gas is a key plank of President Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda.
This is the fourth climate change plan proposed by Inslee, who is running a single-issue campaign to tackle the problem. His overall agenda has an overarching goal of reducing carbon emissions 50% by 2030, and achieving net-zero emissions economy-wide in the U.S. by 2045.
He is formally announcing the latest plan later Monday morning in Florida, ahead of the first Democratic primary debates this week, where climate change is expected to be a major topic.
