Progressives' push for renewable-energy measures in Biden policy worries moderate Democrats from major oil states

Progressive Democrats are urging President Biden to include in his infrastructure agenda steps to encourage use of renewable fuels, but "The more the progressives succeed, the more moderate Democrats in energy-producing states become vulnerable to losing seats that are crucial to the party’s hold on Congress, current and former House members say," Siobhan Hughes and Aaron Zitner report for The Wall Street Journal. 

Last week Biden announced he had made a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure deal with a bipartisan group of centrist lawmakers. However, "on a separate track, Democrats are advancing a second bill—without Republican input—that among other goals aims to eliminate greenhouse-gas emissions from electric power generation by 2035," Hughes and Zitner note. "The Democrats have a similar target of 2050 for other emissions sources, including factories, trucks, automobiles and homes. That is a political headache for moderates such as Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D., Texas), who in 2018 flipped a Republican-held House seat. Ms. Fletcher’s Houston-area House district ranks second in the nation for employment tied to the oil and gas industries, according to the American Petroleum Institute."

In January Fletcher and three other House Democrats from Texas wrote to Biden asking him to nix an executive order suspending new petroleum leases on federal public lands and waters. "Texas is the nation’s top producer of natural gas, according to U.S. government statistics, and gas production is a key economic driver in the country as a whole," Hughes and Zitner note. "A fracking boom in recent decades enabled the U.S. to tap into vast new sources of domestic energy. Gas displaced coal in 2016 as the biggest source of U.S. electricity and helped the U.S. become a net fuel exporter for the first time since the 1950s. Natural gas not only fuels power grids but is used in factories and homes by businesses and consumers alike. Revenues from natural gas production contribute to federal, state and local government budgets. And gas industry jobs pay about twice as much as the U.S. average."