How much do solar, wind and electric vehicle companies get in federal handouts and tax loopholes in President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill? Well over $100 billion in taxpayer largesse. If all the tax credits are included, that number could reach half a trillion dollars. No other industry in American history has ever received this lucrative a paycheck.
The folks at the Institute for Energy Research calculated that this is on top of the more than $150 billion in subsidies these industries received from Uncle Sam in the last 30 years.
The umbilical cord to taxpayer wallets never gets cut. Yet, laughably, the left says all these subsidies to “green energy” are necessary for an “infant industry.” Really? Does Big Wind or Big Solar ever grow up? Incidentally, our ancestors were using windmills and solar panels during the Middle Ages.
So why do these renewable energies get so much money from Congress, and why do Democrats want to give them the biggest payday in the history of the Washington favor factory? Not because renewable has great promise. Thirty years after the handouts started, wind and solar accounted for less than 8% of our total energy production. It’s inconsequential.
If we taxpayers are “investors” in green energy, we’d be wondering where our return is at this point. Wind and solar costs are going down, but not nearly as fast as the cost reductions in natural gas, thanks to the shale revolution.
But now the left is trying to save its latest round of gargantuan welfare checks by arguing that the higher costs of oil and gas at the pump show that these energy sources prove that we can’t rely on fossil fuels.
It is reminiscent of the story of the boy who kills his parents and throws himself at the mercy of the court for being an orphan. Oil and gas prices are rising because Biden and the left have declared war on American fossil fuels. They aren’t allowing drilling. They instead are passing new “methane” taxes and not building pipelines.
Now liberals shake their fingers at the producers and accuse them of gouging consumers as they assault the added American oil and gas supply that would lower the prices to fill up your tank and heat your home. They are now starting a multimillion-dollar ad campaign in Washington, paid for by taxpayers, telling us that the high gas prices the Biden administration wants mean we have to stop using gas.
The irony of all of this is that the reliance on green energy subsidies is one good reason for so little technological progress in renewable energy. We’d perhaps see more innovation if the industry had to fight on a level playing field.
Democrats in Congress keep doling out the dollars because the green energy industry gives 90% of its contributions to Democrats. It is nothing more than a pay-to-play gambit.
If wind and solar are the low-cost energy sources of the future, why do they need so much government aid? Will they ever take the training wheels off?
After three decades, maybe it is time to admit the obvious: Wind and solar are niche energy sources that will not anytime soon, and probably never, provide anywhere near the energy we need for our $22 trillion industrial economy.
Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at FreedomWorks. He is also a co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity and a Washington Examiner columnist. To find out more about Stephen Moore and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
“Wind and solar are niche energy sources that will not anytime soon, and probably never, provide anywhere near the energy we need for our $22 trillion industrial economy”. The communists on the left do not want a “$22 trillion industrial economy”, they want an economy like Venezuela, in the United States, where we citizens will starve to death.
That is exactly right!
IF THEY can’t survive as a business, ON THEIR OWN MERITS, let them die off…
“If all the tax credits are included, that number could reach half a trillion dollars. No other industry in American history has ever received this lucrative a paycheck.”
Remember; PinocchiObama did the same thing for $$$ kickbacks and campaign contributions from the solar energy companies (like Solyndra) that PinocchiObama had given federal grants and tax exemptions.
Now PinocchiObama’s puppet F. Joe Biden is trying to pull the same Lie and Con. We know “Let’s go Brandon” likes to get his 10% kickbacks.
Solyndra solar power company accepted a loan of half a billion taxpayer dollars that would never be repaid. Now one industry expert says he’s not sure any lessons have been learned in the years since.
On March 20, 2009, then-Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced Solyndra would be the recipient of a $535 million loan from his department under the Obama administration’s revamped loan guarantee program.
“Even though President Trump has submitted very responsible budgets, including eliminating the loan program, Congress continues to fund it… even more generously,”
And again the Democrat Party and their puppet president “let’s Go Brandon” is trying to pull the same Con and Deception and to be paid for by all tax payers.
YEa, what ever happened to that supposed investigation INTO THE whole Solyndra debacle?
This is how so many are duped by government. All of the handouts, loopholes are intentional. They know this “Green New Deal” will never work, but they are using the taxpayer’s money to entrap corporations, and bring about a Godless, communistic society, and as usual, the consumer gets absolutely nothing, but higher bills, no energy, and a very messed up country. In the end there will be nothing but a blame game, pointing of fingers to each other and a country which God gave us in a very entangled mess. And of course there will always be the promise of another election. But when the country never righted AZ, then expect more of the same in the future. Our children and children’s children will suffer just as those in Cuba, Venezuela, China etc. and will be under authoritarian control for many, many years unless people stop being enticed by the dollar. But, I don’t look for that to happen any time soon.