Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Joe Biden
Ocasio-Cortez takes a veiled shot at Joe Biden
01:42 - Source: CNN
Washington CNN  — 

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler took what he called a “potshot” at the Green New Deal on Thursday, saying it would reduce the reliability of the electric grid and ultimately harm the ability to restore drinking water systems after natural disasters.

“I’m going to take the opportunity to just take a potshot at the Green New Deal for a second,” he said during a question and answer session at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

“If the grid isn’t back up and running, if we don’t have the electricity, we can’t run the drinking water system in the community and we’re providing bottled water for a long time,” he continued.

The Green New Deal, a proposal advanced by Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, calls for expanding renewable energy usage, eliminating transportation pollution, and improving the nation’s electric grid, as well as reforms in the areas of labor and education.

Proponents of wind energy point to an online posting from the Energy Department’s Wind Energy Technologies Office, which says,” power grid operators have always had to deal with variability.”

“Studies have shown that the grid can accommodate large penetrations of variable renewable power without sacrificing reliability, and without the need for “backup” generation,” the post reads.

In tweets Thursday afternoon, Markey refuted Wheeler’s comments.

“The grid is in the #GreenNewDeal, page 7, subsection D. But Andrew Wheeler does know about reliability. He’s reliably been doing the bidding of the coal industry his entire career. If Wheeler wants to talk about public health, he should pick up the National Climate Assessment—which he told me in a hearing that he hadn’t even read—and learn about how climate change is public health emergency.”