By Robert Bradley Jr.
It never should have happened. Politics, magical thinking, and corporate rent-seeking tried to reverse the physics of energy density to transition away from consumer-chosen, taxpayer-neutral hydrocarbons.
After decades of waste, the politics have changed. So much for not-so-green energy in the U.S.
Renewable advocate George Lawrence reported on LinkedIn, quoting Canary Media:
Trump is killing the country’s clean-energy manufacturing momentum.” This is all about momentum indeed, + the few yrs we have to turn things around.
“In the first three months of this year, firms have already abandoned plans to build nearly $8 billion worth of clean energy projects—mostly factories that would have produced everything from grid batteries to electric vehicles, per new data from E2 [consulting engineers].”
This draconian reversal contrasts with the Biden era, where from 2022 to 2024 only a cumulative $2.1 billion in investments was canceled. Under the last president, ‘well over $100 billion worth of EV assembly facilities, solar-panel factories, battery recycling plants, and more [had] been announced since the passage of the law, which created tax incentives as well as grant and loan programs for domestic clean-energy manufacturing.’
Currently, the US has some 12.8 million workers in the manufacturing sector, + the projection was that an additional 109,000 permanent jobs nationwide would have been created. Under the current president, this is crumbling. “Prysmian Group, for example, which earlier this year scrapped its plan to build a $300 million offshore wind cable manufacturing facility at the site of a retired coal plant in Somerset, Massachusetts.”
Counterintuitively, there are still some new investments occurring. In March alone, $1.7 billion including a $200 million Tesla grid-battery factory in Texas [of course]. “Plus, the vast majority of announced projects have yet to be canceled, paused, or downsized.” If ‘congressional Republicans decide to rescind the Inflation Reduction Act’s manufacturing incentives, a move that’s on the table, the situation could grow even more dire.’ In the infamous words of the president who has no clothes [as even a proverbial child did note], we must all ‘fight, fight, fight’ for what is right.
—————–
More than 150 comments followed. One said much: “Well if government can kill it – then it was never a real industry to start.”
I commented:
Green energy is not affordable or green, so less government kills it. Shame that the futile climate crusade has misdirected so many people and talent that now needs a major mid-course correction. Political bubbles burst ….
Bob Armstrong shared a John Christy quotation: “If it’s not economically sustainable, it’s not sustainable.”
The last word goes to a Kevin K, principal software engineer at Honeywell Aerospace:
Yeah, it was a dream and just a dream to get rid of fossil fuels, can’t do it in today’s high energy demanding world. The majority are not complaining about fossil fuels and climate crap but the majority will be complaining when their utility bills, food bills go sky high as a result of expensive “green” energy replaces fossil fuel based energy along with lack of predictable energy. Take a look at Europe today, they are having energy problems and actually changing and going back to fossil fuel based energy. Folks who are complaining the most about climate are the grifters, those making a fortune on the fools who push “green” crap and the low information.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Green energy was always a fool’s dream. It never made sense from an energy perspective.
I like to roast marshmallows on an open wood campfire every once in a while.
I don’t particularly care for marshmallows, but I luv me some campfire!
I like ice cream.
Not all who masterminded it believed it was achievable. But they guessed that if a lot of money were invested in it, and they were in control of the investments, they could benefit from diverting some of the money flow into their pockets.
Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill, did not make it out of the Budget Committee yesterday as four Republicans on the committee voted against it.
The reason I heard for their no votes is they wanted the entire Inflation Reduction Act rescinded and apparently that is not in the bill. Yet. 🙂
Yes, they need to rescind the entire Inflation Reduction Act as it gives the EPA the right to regulate CO2, and we don’t want the EPA or anyone else, regulating CO2. CO2 needs no regulation. It is a benign gas, essential for life on Earth. And that’s all it is. It’s not the monster Climate Alarmists make it out to be.
Those 4 need to convince the 21 or so other House members who now want to keep some of the IRA provisions in place. Alex Epstein did a nice summary of what the current bill has in it, and it’s not good.
Dealbreakers to the proposal to “phase out,” not terminate, IRA subsidies
Trump will have to get involved in the matter.
Republican voters need to tell their representatives to support Trump’s agenda. Most of them are doing so, but there are a few who need a little instruction.
If Republican Representatives don’t support Trump’s agenda, then they are voting with the radical Democrats, whose aim is to create a one-party system in the United States, with them in charge, where Republicans won’t have a chance of getting elected, and the Democrat authoritarians can do what they want, which equals doing great damage to the American public. They almost succeeded in getting this done. If a Democrat had been elected president in 2024, they would have sealed the deal, and those who value their personal freedoms will watch them disappear.
No spending cut insistence. or green subsidy insistence, is worth turning over the country to the Communist Democrats, and that’s what you will be doing if you don’t support Trump.
We only have a narrow window to win back our Freedoms. Some Republicans need to wake up and smell the coffee, or we all lose, even regular Democrats because Elite, Deep State, Democrats couldn’t care less about the Little Guys of any political party because that’s how Dictators look at the world. To them, you are either a Useful Idiot, or an enemy.
If Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill passes, then the nation will have an economic boom which will be very favorable to the Republican agenda, and we could expect increases in both elected Republican Representatives and Senators, which will give Republicans enough leverage to put the United States back on track and keep it on track.
If Republicans cannot get it together, then we are all screwed. We’ll have Biden administration-type “governance” into the distant future. Four years of it just about bankrupted us. We don’t want any more of this authoritarian insanity.
‘If Republicans cannot get it together, then we are all screwed.’
That pretty well sums up the situation. It would be nice to wake up in an America that had two political parties competing ferociously to maintain the limited government described in the Declaration and established under the plain language of the Constitution.
Have you all noticed that fewer and fewer of our resident trolls have been showing up lately.
They’ll be back, like head lice or fleas. Or ticks..the blood suckers are just waiting…humor, or irony your choice : you cure those varmints with fossil fuel derivatives.
Yes indeed. Their ship is sinking, and they know it.
They were probably getting paid from USAID grift.
More good news. I have no respect for Lawrence. Just think for a minute how much reliable, affordable and dispatchable energy we would currently have if we spent our money on fossil fuel and nuclear instead of wind, solar, batteries and mandates.
Exactly. There is a huge opportunity cost to w/s/b. Had we invested in nuclear what has been wastefully spent on unreliables, our grid would be far more robust and resilient than it is now. We can only hope that republicans have the courage to rescind the Inflation Acceleration and Wasteful Spending Act, aka, the IRA.
But, but – I thought green energy paid for itself!
Gee, I thought it was free.
Announced, but has any actual money flowed into those projects?
No, just into the offshore bank accounts of a lot of “connected” people.
“What the government giveth, the government can taketh away.”
You can quote me on that.
Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
Not!.
Green energy and its advocates, with what they want, remind me of those dystopian sci-fi novels that came along when I was a youth. There would be the struggling hero wondering what happened to his part of what had been rural America as they clatter down a through way on horses, seeing empty factories, with children scrabbling in ditches. Occasionally there would be some internal combustion engine vehicle working off coal or wood gas, property of a powerful war lord. In some versions they would come up against some elites with advanced technology salvaged from the past…and wonders.
Oh how could it go so wrong?
I have one concern. When the “Green” revolution / transition dies, what will we all do with our spare time? Or will we pivot to whatever the Progressives pivot to, and debunk that as well?