(Headline USA) President Joe Biden is set to implement a new climate tax with just a couple of months left to go in his administration.
The new tax was born out of the Inflation Reduction Act, a sweeping bill that Biden admitted was focused on leftist environmental policy despite its deceptive name.
In that bill was a Waste Emissions Charge provision, which Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency is using to justify a new tax on methane emissions from oil and gas companies.
The fee will start at $900 per metric ton of methane emitted over a specific climate-friendly level.
That fee is set to increase next year to $1,200 per metric ton, and to $1,500 per metric ton in 2026, according to the EPA’s regulation.
“The final Waste Emissions Charge is the latest in a series of actions under President Biden’s methane strategy to improve efficiency in the oil and gas sector, support American jobs, protect clean air, and reinforce U.S. leadership on the global stage,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a press release.
President-elect Donald Trump is likely to spike the methane fee when he takes office in January.
But the new regulation is an indication that Biden’s administration may undertake a regulatory blitz over the next several weeks to bog down the incoming Trump administration’s agenda.
Trump’s chosen EPA administrator, former Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., made it clear this week that he will work to cut back the Biden administration’s burdensome climate agenda.
“I’m looking forward to serving in President Trump’s Cabinet as EPA Administrator,” Zeldin said in a statement. “Together, we will restore American energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, make the United States the global leader of Artificial Intelligence advancement, and slash the red tape holding back American workers from upward economic mobility.”
