The White House reiterated its support for transitioning the U.S. economy away from oil and gas dependency on Friday despite the U.S. suffering from record-high inflation.
The Biden administration supports using inflationary market pressures as a vehicle to push for ‘”green” energy solutions while Americans endure combustible inflationary pressures, White House director of the National Economic Council, Brian Deese, told CNBC financial specialist David Farber on Friday.
Deese dodged the CNBC host’s question on whether Americans should expect high prices to continue to plague the U.S. household, opting to blame the high gas prices on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
“If you really isolate what’s going on here, it’s because Vladimir Putin decided to take on this irresponsible war, and we have created all of these perturbations in the global energy markets,” Deese said. “We have to deal with that, and yes, we have to stand with Ukraine and we need to fight his aggression, and yes, that creates serious global challenges in our energy market.”
The NEC director told Farber that the U.S. should use the global crisis affecting our market to help “transition” into the “green” energy market. Deese said the high gas prices are a sign the market is ready for the U.S. to move away from its dependence on oil and gas. (RELATED: Consumer Prices Reach Highest Rates In Four Decades)
“But I don’t think we should confuse that with the transition that the market is driving and that we can accelerate while actually lowering costs for consumers,” said Deese. “I mean, the thing that people often miss out on is that if we provided technology-neutral, long-term incentives to produce lower-cost, cleaner energy in the United States, American utility companies would go out and lower people’s utility bills.”
WATCH:
Deese called on the Democratic Party-controlled U.S. Congress to pass legislation to push companies into transitioning toward using “green” energy over oil and gas, promising it would lower the costs for Americans.
“If Congress passed that legislation, American utility companies would actually lower utility bills,” said Deese. “So, there’s actually a pathway here to reduce the cost of energy for American families while also helping accelerate the transition that the market is driving.”