The Biden administration appears to have not met a regulation it didn’t like. In less than a single term, the Biden administrated has already imposed nearly $1.7 trillion in new regulatory burdens, nearly twice what the Obama administration imposed in 8 years. Ruling by executive fiat, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under a broad and overreaching interpretation of “unreasonable risk,” is using the amended Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to propose rules on 10 chemicals currently in use in the United States. Unelected bureaucrats are seeking to massively expand the government’s ability to effectively ban the safe production and use of chemicals needed to grow our economy and power our future.
Now, the EPA has its sights on two of these 10 chemicals that if banned, would significantly affect the ability of manufacturers to make as much as “half of the gasoline pool” in our country.
In the coming weeks, the EPA is expected to release its final rule on both perchloroethylene (PCE) and carbon tetrachloride (CTC). Both PCE and CTC are used in the manufacturing of refrigerants with a lower global warming potential, known as hydrofluoroolefins (HFOs). PCE is used in the production of protective skin for planes used by NASA, the U.S. military, and commercial airplane manufacturers.
Strict EPA limits on CTC will likely render domestic semiconductor manufacturing more challenging and require more imports from countries that already produce the chemical on a global scale, like China. Semiconductor lines are made with materials (like PFAS) derived from chloroform, which is a co-product of chemicals like CTC. If CTC is banned under TSCA, chloroform also cannot be produced domestically.
But there’s one application to both PCE and CTC that, if the EPA has its way, could hamper our everyday lives. According to industry experts, PCE and CTC are critical to processes that go into gas blends that make up 45% of the gasoline pool in the United States. Should the EPA effectively ban the production of PCE and CTC, it would severely impact the production and supply of gasoline.
Without both chemicals, the gasoline refining process becomes less safe. PCE is critical to safety in refining plants, allowing the processes to run at a lower reaction temperature, which reduces both dangers inherent in the process and carbon dioxide emissions. PCE also reduces benzene and sulfur content in gasoline to meet the EPA’s own fuel standards. CTC is found in trace amounts of PCE. Should CTC be banned, the oil and natural gas industry would also be prohibited from using PCE in these petroleum refineries. Furthermore, almost all the alternatives to PCE and CTC in the gasoline manufacturing process are less efficient or more hazardous, and would inevitably face the same scrutiny by the EPA in the future.
These TSCA rules could lead to higher costs, including on gas prices, a possibility raised by the EPA’s own chemical chief last year. Gas prices are projected to fall below $3 per gallon in the coming weeks, yet the EPA can unilaterally implement these short-sighted rules that would raise gas prices on all Americans for no good reason.
The effect of this rule will not only fall on the backs of hard-working Americans who rely on reliable and inexpensive energy, it would impact millions of jobs in the oil and natural gas industry, a sizable sector of our nation’s economy. The EPA squeeze on both families and industry comes at an inopportune and unnecessary time, and not only that, fails to take into account that these chemicals have led to advances in innovation that have made our lives better and safer than ever.
The EPA may not consider the economic impacts of their decisions, but these assessments carry with them devastating, far-reaching consequences that reverberate across the country.