In 2026, Congress can predict our energy future by creating it
January 13, 2026
By Gary Abernathy
For American energy consumers – everyone living in the United States – this decade got off to a
rough start with the election of Joe Biden as president. Every new year during the Biden administration brought to mind something the “Peanuts” character Charlie Brown said: “You know how I always dread the whole year? Well, this time I’m only going to dread one day at a time.”
The Biden administration’s goal was to usher in a new era built around what many called the
Green New Scam, a philosophy devoted to destroying our most reliable and affordable energy sources
and propping up “alternatives” like wind and solar with billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies.
The result was predictable – runaway inflation, rising heating and cooling costs and skyrocketing
prices at the pump. On top of that, U.S. energy security was compromised daily by mandates and
dictums limiting the energy choices while our main competitors – especially China – threatened to
become the world leaders in the coming AI boom.
Then, hope returned.
In November of 2024, voters rejected the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris energy agenda.
Throughout 2025, Donald Trump and his new administration engaged in a two-pronged energy
approach – reversing as much of the Biden administration’s disastrous subsidies, mandates and
misguided “renewable” projects as possible while simultaneously implementing Trump’s “drill, baby,
drill” and “America First” philosophies.
By necessity, Trump’s first year was dedicated more to laying the groundwork than reaping the
benefits. Only now, at the dawn of 2026, does the U.S. stand ready to fully unleash the energy
renaissance promised by both the Trump administration’s pro-energy policies and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Congress to codify affordable, reliable energy as a legacy for all Americans.
The year 2026 is a significant milestone for our nation. On July 4 th of this year, we will be
celebrating the 250 th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence – the document
making known to the world the original colonies’ formal break from Great Britain.
But our independence is so much more than any particular date on the calendar. The United
States, despite its flaws, is an idea, a grand experiment in self-governance that is still unfolding. Among great nations, the U.S. remains among the younger set, its two-plus centuries of existence paling beside the long histories of our European cousins.
And yet, it is to America that the rest of the world looks for leadership, even if they sometimes
deny it. The United States sets the agenda and the example and, more often than not, other nations
follow.
That holds true when it comes to our energy policies. Under the Biden administration, the world
fell in lockstep on a march toward an energy cliff, everyone lined up to fall into the abyss like lemmings to the sea. At “climate conferences” and through agreements signed by nations and companies, unrealistic and dangerous goals were set to discontinue the use of our most affordable energy resources, often with end dates that guaranteed both failure and economic catastrophe.
Today, much of Europe and other nations still pay lip service to their worship at the altar of the
climate cult, but their actions bely their declarations of faith. We need look no further than the recent
United Nations global climate conference, which was boycotted by the U.S. and which failed to set any firm targets for phasing out fossil fuels, instead coming up with “only modest progress on international efforts to curb global warming,” as PBS reported.
As most people have learned, the catastrophic climate predictions that routinely come from
alarmists are as reliable as an ink pen at a bank counter, from John Kerry warning in 2009 that the Arctic would be “ice free” by 2013 (it actually gained ice from 2012 to 2013) to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicting last May an “above-normal 2025 Atlantic hurricane season” only to have no hurricanes make landfall in the U.S. for the first time in a decade, and only 13 named storms in the Atlantic basin, compared to 30, for instance, in 2020.
Increasingly free from the scare tactics of the radical left and reassured by new energy policies
that deal in facts and practicalities, the national stage is set for spectacular energy development and
expansion.
President Trump is doing his part by his bold use of executive authority. It’s up to Congress to
put the ribbon on the greatest gift Americans could receive for our historic birthday – passage of the
Affordable, Reliable Energy Security Act (ARC-ES), introduced last October by Rep. Troy Balderson (R-OH).
Abraham Lincoln said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” By passing ARC-ES in
2026, Congress would codify affordable, reliable energy into law, protecting it from future climate
zealots and creating a future that guarantees abundance coupled with low heating, cooling and pump
prices for generations to come.
Our semiquincentennial celebration will make 2026 memorable. Passage of ARC-ES could make
it truly historic.
Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing
columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation.