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As the cost of living weighs heavily on Americans, Republicans and Democrats are presenting different versions of the role energy costs are playing on grocery bills and housing. Two hearings this week highlighted those divergent views.

On Thursday, the House Budget Committee held a hearing on “The Cost of Biden-Harris Energy Crisis,” looking at how the administration’s green energy policies and regulations on the fossil fuel industries are making it harder for Americans to make ends meet.

“Whole government regulatory attacks on conventional fuels, the increased taxes on oil and gas, and massive market-distorting green energy subsidies choked the lifeblood out of this economy, the greatest in the world. It’s also crushed our working families with a cost of living crisis,” Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, said at the hearing.

Democrats on the House Energy Committee laid out a different vision for addressing high energy costs at a roundtable discussion on Wednesday, pushing the claim that American oil companies are colluding with OPEC and price gouging, which is why Americans are struggling.

“Big oil companies conspired to drive up their own profit at the expense of American families by colluding with cartels of adversarial nations like Russia and Iran. These allegations must be taken seriously and thoroughly investigated,” Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, D-Calif., said at the “Holding Big Oil Accountable” roundtable.

Mind boggling

At the Budget Committee hearing, Donna Jackson, director of membership development for Project 21, testified that the impacts of the Biden-Harris administration’s policies have hit lower-income Americans the hardest. She said that while Democrats talk about the impacts of climate change on the poor, they seem to have less concern about how wind and solar are driving up energy costs.

“Households are having to cut back on necessities in order to pay their energy bills. Studies show that 25% of households have to forgo food and medicine to pay for their energy, and that’s substantially higher for low-income minority families. It’s mind boggling,” Jackson said.

Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., disputed the claims that the Biden administration is attacking oil and gas, pointing to the record-high production the U.S. is seeing. “We are now producing more oil than ever before, more than Russia, more than Saudi Arabia, and more than any other country on Earth,” Boyle said.

He argued that the latest figures show that the average price of gasoline is down 70 cents from where it was a year ago, and inflation is slowing. Boyle also claimed that former President “Donald Trump’s Project 2025” would turn back the clock on the progress the Biden-Harris administration has made.

Project 2025 is a study and set of policy proposals produced by the Heritage Foundation, and Trump has repeatedly stated he wasn’t involved in its development and doesn’t consider it a guiding document for his campaign for reelection or a second Trump administration.

Alex Epstein, president of the Center for Industrial Progress and author of “Fossil Future,” discussed how “government-dictated green energy” is undermining “energy freedom.” Epstein argued that energy costs would have been “catastrophic,” if the Biden-Harris administration’s green energy ambitions had not been met with considerable opposition from congress and through lawsuits.

“This is very important when you hear the Biden administration has record production. That’s in spite of them, not because of them,” Epstein said.

Trevor Higgins, senior vice president for energy and environment at the Center for American Progress, also referred to Project 2025, and despite Trump’s not being associated with the document, he said that Trump’s reelection would “turn back the clock” on all the progress the Biden-Harris administration have made in improving the economy. He argued that the Inflation Reduction Act is creating jobs in green manufacturing and driving down energy prices by increasing the amount of wind and solar power on the grid.

“Declining demand for fossil fuels generally translates into lower prices for domestic manufacturers and households,” he claimed.

However, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the center for energy, climate and environment with the Heritage Foundation, testified on the impacts of subsidies and regulations on the price of electricity and transportation.

States with highest electricity rates are Democrat-controlled

She pointed out that electricity prices have risen 32% since January 2021, and she presented a chart of electricity prices across the states. The top ten states with the highest electricity rates are Democrat-controlled, she said, and have renewable energy mandates, except Alaska, which isn’t in the lower 48. The least expensive states are all Republican-controlled, with the exception of Washington, which has “vast amounts” of inexpensive hydroelectric power.

“So what we see is that most states that don’t require renewables have residential electricity rates of 15 cents per kilowatt hour or lower,” Furchtgott-Roth said. Those that do require renewables, she said, have rates of 15 cents per kilowatt hour or more. Californians pay 33 cents per kilowatt hour.

Prior to testifying Thursday, Epstein took the liberty of looking at Higgins’ previous testimonies on this topic and published a rebuttal on his Substack to claims that “government-dictated green energy is cheaper than fossil fuels.” If this were true, Epstein argues, green energy wouldn’t need enormous preferential treatment, including subsidies and mandates. Likewise, proponents wouldn’t feel compelled to penalize the fossil fuel industries by demanding divestment and making production difficult with extensive regulations. 

Brink of crumbling

At the Democratic roundtable Wednesday, the witnesses and representatives argued that, despite record-high production levels, oil companies colluded with OPEC to keep production artificially low and energy costs high. The policies of the current administration have nothing to with it, the witnesses and representatives said. According to the testimony at the roundtable, the buildout of wind and solar, as well as the green manufacturing the Inflation Reduction Act is creating, will bring down high energy prices and improve the economy.

“We are at a pivotal moment because the oil industry’s virtual monopoly on much of American energy, which has allowed them to raise prices as much as they want without consequences, is on the brink of crumbling,” said Alex Witt, senior advisor on oil and gas at Climate Power, an anti-fossil fuel group. Their “National Advisory Board” includes far-left advocates with no energy experience, including failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate and election-denier Stacey Abrams as well as president of the American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten.  

The Federal Trade Commission in May accused Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield of colluding with OPEC to lower oil production and raise gas prices. In approving ExxonMobil’s planned acquisition of Pioneer, the FTC conditioned the approval on Sheffield not being on the company’s board.

“There is no question Mr. Sheffield publicly urged Texas oil producers to limit production, all while having regular, private back-and-forth communications with senior OPEC representatives over a period of years,” FTC spokesperson Douglas Farrar told the Wall Street Journal.

Sheffield told the Journal that he never exchanged sensitive information with OPEC officials, and Pioneer says the FTC doesn’t understand international oil markets, which created a misunderstanding of Sheffield’s intentions in his communications with OPEC officials.

As for the accusations of price gouging that were brought up in the Democrat’s roundtable, Energy in Depth, a publication of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, points out that more than 9,000 independent oil and gas companies produce 83% of America’s oil and 90% of its natural gas. ExxonMobil, the country’s largest producer, controls only 3% of the global market. 

It would take a symphony of collusion between thousands of smaller companies, the industry group argues, to be able to control the price of energy.