Critics of former President Donald Trump often claim he is lying. Much of the time, however, the critics fail to recognize he is simply using hyperbole to highlight the problems Democrats and establishment Republicans are causing across our country.
Sunday night, Trump was at it again during his campaign rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden. He told the crowd, “We will achieve energy independence … We’re gonna drill, baby, drill. And I will terminate the green new scam and will cut your energy prices in half, 50 percent, within one year from Jan. 20.”
Trump was not spreading fake news. During the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, electricity prices nationwide have skyrocketed. There is hope for major reductions in energy prices — if American politicians will repent of their support for renewable energy.
As I show in a new study by the Energy Alliance, wholesale electricity prices increased 72 percent during the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration. The energy prices for the seven U.S. independent regional service areas averaged $70 per megawatt hour during that period, up from $41 from 2018 to 2020.
Texas had the highest average wholesale price, the price paid by electric retailers — at $117 over the last three years. It also had the highest three-year increase at 208 percent. California and New York had the next highest increases. All these states have heavily promoted and subsidized renewable energy.
Using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, our study found that retail prices are also up under the current administration. Retail residential prices this year are up 24 percent from the last year of the Trump administration. Retail prices for all sectors of the economy — residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation — are up 23 percent. This will cost Americans about $98 billion this year.
Causes of Increased Prices
What has caused the increase in prices? The two primary factors are the Inflation Reduction Act and the Biden-Harris war on American energy.
From 2017 through 2022, the year President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law, our research showed the average annual cost of renewable energy subsidies was $8.1 billion. However, once the IRA went into effect in 2023, the average cost of renewable energy subsidies tripled to a projected average of $24.9 billion annually. Over this decade, renewable subsidies are expected to total $245 billion.
Quico Toro and Guido Núñez-Mujica, in their article “The Problem with Solar,” explain why renewables, in this case solar, are contributing to higher prices:
For solar to serve as the backbone of a grid, it needs to be backed with storage. That can come in the form of batteries, hydrogen, or pumped hydro. All of these are expensive; none of them scale. Storing a kilowatt-hour of electricity in a chemical battery costs an order of magnitude more than just generating it in a nuclear power plant. Which is why a 100% solar grid would be insanely expensive …
Wind has the same shortcoming as solar; both are dependent on nature and the weather to generate electricity. And neither are as efficient when it comes to converting our natural resources into energy as coal-, nuclear-, or natural gas-fired electric generation.
Combined, we not only have higher energy prices but plummeting grid reliability, putting the entire county at risk of experiencing Texas-style blackouts like it experienced in 2021 during Winter Storm Uri.
War on Energy
Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., summed up the other major cause of higher energy prices when he said the administration was engaged in an “unprecedented war on American energy.” “From cancelling the Keystone XL Pipeline to revoking leases for oil, gas, and mining across the West, it is clear the president’s unprecedented war on domestic energy producers has put the United States in a vulnerable position,” wrote Newhouse.
The Biden-Harris administration also banned U.S. imports of Russian oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and coal, sought to reduce European dependence on Russian oil, and then shut down new American LNG permits that could help Europeans replace the loss of Russian oil. All of this increased energy prices worldwide.
One definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. Unfortunately, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are not alone in supporting the renewable energy policies that for more than two decades have produced only “insanely expensive” energy prices and reductions in grid reliability. Democrats and Republicans, blue states and red states, have allowed the “green new scam” to continue and prosper.
Who will rid us of this meddlesome, disastrous policy that has turned our energy markets and economies upside down?
Trump says he will. I hope Americans give him the chance.
Bill Peacock is the policy director of the Energy Alliance, a project of the Texas Business Coalition to raise awareness of the issues affecting the reliability, affordability, and efficiency of energy.
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