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More on the Biden Administration net zero freight sector plans

Biden Administration appears to lack an understanding of what it takes to power an industrial economy

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This is a longer version of my previous video on Biden Administration plans for a net zero freight sector.

I take a little more time to dig a bit deeper into the facts and figures on how BEV trucks compare with clean diesel trucks. Again, the facts show that the Biden Administration lacks a clear understanding of what it takes to power our industrial economy.

You can also view this video on the Mackinac Center’s YouTube channel.


Transcript:

The Biden administration just released its latest standards for what they're calling a zero emissions freight sector.

Just like they did with tailpipe emissions, they did with trucking, they did with the energy industry, it's clear that the people in the Biden administration lack even a basic understanding of what it takes to power a modern industrial economy.

Because they're imposing unrealistic timelines, unrealistic cost expectations, unrealistic supply chain expectations, and unrealistic expectations for the capacity of these industries to actually achieve what they're calling for.

And we saw the same sort of thing in the city of Edmonton when it tried to transition to electric buses. The city of New York had the same problem with trying to transition to electric snow plows. Both cities had to pull back and say, this is just not possible to do.

Andrew Boyle with the American Trucking Association said the same sort of thing when he testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee in April last year. Boyle testified…He said, remember that the American truckers deliver food, medicine and baby formula. So failure for truckers is not merely inconvenient. It's catastrophic.

So in his testimony, Boyle described the difference between fueling and range for a clean diesel-fueled truck versus a battery-electric truck. And he started off by saying these clean diesel trucks have a 99% reduction in emissions from the models that were sold in the 1980s.

So we're already doing much better there in terms of air quality. But he said that it takes 15 minutes to fuel the diesel truck and it can then go 1200 miles the battery electric truck can take 10 or more hours to charge and then it can only go 150 to 300 miles and on top of that Boyle said that battery electric truck costs as much as three hundred thousand dollars more per truck.

Now, the Biden administration has only set aside $1.5 billion. But Boyle said that it would cost more than $1 trillion to transition the American trucking fleet.

Boyle closed out his testimony saying that a friend of his with an Illinois trucking company put in a permit to electrify their trucks. They said that it would...The city rejected their permit, saying that it would take more electricity than the entire city uses to just charge those 30 trucks.

So over and over again, we're seeing that these mandates and these new standards being imposed by the Biden Administration are demonstrating they lack even a basic comprehension of what it takes to power this society.

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Jason Hayes |  Forests, Fuels, and Freedom
Jason Hayes | Clarifying Conversations on Free-Market Environmentalism
My name is Jason Hayes. I think, write, and speak about energy and natural resource management — free market environmentalism. This podcast is all about bringing you balancing information on the environmental challenges we face and reasons you can be optimistic about the future.