Ohio GOP Rep. Troy Balderson, with Jack Fowler on the Victor Davis Hanson podcast, discussed several pieces of legislation that would streamline energy production and regulation. Balderson is a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, chairman of the House Energy Action Team (HEAT), and the author of the Affordable, Reliable, Clean Energy Security Act, which would clarify definitions of “affordable,” “reliable,” and “clean” energy in federal law so regulatory standards remain consistent across administrations, including defining natural gas as “clean energy.” He also pitches the Guaranteeing Reliability through the Interconnection of Dispatchable Power (Grid) Act to secure regional power grids, and the Curtailing Litigation Excess and Abuse Reform Act of 2025 (CLEAR) Act to remove legal hurdles to energy infrastructure. “How do we change the narrative when we talk about energy dominance?” he said. “It’s more than just ‘drill, baby, drill.’ There’s a whole lot more to it than just that phrase.” “All the data centers-the Googles and Microsofts of the world-kept saying: We want clean energy. Well, we’re giving them clean energy: natural gas,” he said. “We can say we want ‘all of the above.’ That’s great. But what the bottom line is: we need 24/7 baseload energy, and natural gas has changed all that.” “Nuclear is now also becoming part of that conversation-and the reduction that we have dropped in the United States from carbon is three times the world combined, of what we’ve dropped,” he said. “We need to talk about that and share that story.” “When the heater needs to kick on for this very extreme cold weather that we’re dealing with-making sure that heat comes on for our elderly. My mother’s on oxygen. She needs that oxygen tank to kick on 24/7.” “The Affordable, Reliable, Clean Energy Security Act aims to restore common sense to American energy policy,” he said. “This is a four-page bill.” “It just clarifies everything, and that’s what people need,” he said. “They need that understanding of what those definitions of ‘affordable,’ ‘reliable,’ and ‘clean energy’ are.” “The Grid Power Act is something that we introduced last Congress. It passed the House with bipartisan support,” he also said. “It’s, again, a very simple piece of legislation. The regional transmission operators-the RTOs-are in charge of distributing the power. Their concern was that the interconnection queue to get this power out is plugged up, and it averages anywhere from six to eight years of projects. Nothing’s moving. It’s just stagnant sitting there.” “The Grid Power Act says your project goes in the queue. If you are financed, it is planned, everything is ready to go-if that project does not get released and put out there within one year, you’re out, and you’ve got to go back and start over again.” “They were saying like, we’re trying to eliminate renewable energy. No, I’m not. There are renewable projects in that interconnection queue that need to get moving forward also,” he said. “And the CLEAR Act-Senator Cotton is carrying it in the Senate version of that,” he explained. “We have so many processes for infrastructure projects, pipeline projects. It’s lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit. We’re trying to eliminate all these frivolous lawsuits that happen with these projects.” “And this isn’t just in energy projects-it’s in highway projects. There are a lot of things that happen during this process.” Balderson said these pieces of legislation reflect the need to scale energy infrastructure with growing electricity demand while avoiding the policy whiplash we’ve seen in the Trump-Biden-Trump era.
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