By Isaac Orr
Michigan families, businesses, and manufacturers are already feeling pain at the plug. According to our recent report, Blue States, High Rates, Always On Energy Research, and the Institute for Energy Research, Michigan’s electricity prices are the highest in the Midwest, and it is worth considering how the policies supported by Congressional candidates will shape energy policy in the coming years.
In the race for Michigan’s 10th Congressional District between Republican Mike Bouchard and Democrat Christina Hines, the candidates’ proposed energy policies have fallen along predictable ideological lines.
For example, Ms. Hines has stated that she supports “Fighting climate change while creating American jobs.” Hines has also stated that she will “support legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that helps bring clean energy manufacturing back to the U.S. while reducing carbon emissions and strengthening our domestic supply chains.”
While these types of campaign promises sound good in theory, in practice, they carry as much weight as promising that spending this money will cause the Detroit Lions to win the Super Bowl.
According to an analysis from the Cato Institute, the IRA would have lavished $935 billion to $1.97 trillion in taxpayer dollars on wind, solar, and electric vehicles from 2025-2034. Data from the Rhodium Group show that the vast majority of the tax subsidies that were actually distributed under the law went to more conservative states, like Texas, Georgia, and Tennessee, which have lower taxes and more reasonable regulatory regimes.
On the other hand, Michigan did manage to secure projects, but many of them were heavily subsidized using additional state taxpayer dollars. An analysis from the Mackinac Center found IRA-linked projects received $873 million in subsidies and created just 194 jobs so far, a cost of $4.5 million per job.
One Michigan electric vehicle (EV) project receiving these subsidies has already abandoned the EV market because the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t want to buy them. Even with federal tax credits available, EVs accounted for just 8.1% of new-vehicle sales in 2024. After the credits expired, their market share fell to just 5-6% by July 2026.
Furthermore, IRA subsidies for wind and solar projects are essentially energy bailouts for blue states with high renewable energy mandates, like Public Act 235, which was signed into law by Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) and established aggressive renewable energy mandates of 50% by 2030 and 60% by 2035. The law also requires an 80% “clean energy” standard by 2035 and 100% by 2040.
In contrast, Mr. Bouchard has stated he supports energy independence to rein in fuel prices and reduce regulatory barriers to building more power plants as part of a broader energy dominance agenda.
Energy dominance in the Trump administration’s second term has consisted of boosting natural gas and oil production, financing new nuclear power plants and reforming our permitting process for nuclear plants to facilitate their timely and cost-effective production, facilitating more geothermal energy production, and keeping existing coal plants online to bolster the grid as demand for electricity surges to power data centers and a reshoring of American manufacturing.
In our recent report, Blue States, High Rates, Always On Energy Research and the Institute for Energy Research found that 86% of the top ten states in the continental U.S. with the highest electricity prices have voted for the Democratic candidate in each of the last two presidential elections, while 90% of the 10 states with the lowest electricity prices have voted for the Republican candidate.
Pro-energy policies make the U.S. the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas, help facilitate a revival of our environmentally friendly nuclear energy industry, and recognize the importance of keeping existing coal plants online to keep the lights on. Repeating the same energy policy mistakes of the IRA and expecting different results will end poorly for Michiganders and America.
Isaac Orr is the Vice President of Research at Always On Energy Research.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
Michigan uses mostly fossil energy to produce electricity. This explains why it costs so much in Michigan. Domestic fuel sources, like wind and solar, reduce costs to consumers and increase national security
When he was president, Joe Biden had legal authority to declare a climate emergency and to impose a fossil fuel lockdown on the American economy, including the adoption of a regulatory system of EPA carbon pollution ‘fines’ which are the functional equivalent of a legislated tax on carbon.
Please explain to us why Joe Biden didn’t use his legal authority as president to declare a climate emergency, and then to go just as far as he was allowed to go in using his Article II powers to quickly reduce America’s carbon emissions.
Why did you expect President Biden to do these things?
“Why did you expect President Biden to do these things?”
Joe Biden claimed that climate change was an existential threat to humanity; he and his top administration officials said that American leadership in reducing our own carbon emissions was crucial to convincing other nations to follow suit; and that a whole-of-government approach was necessary to quickly reduce our carbon emissions.
So if we were to take Joe Biden at his word, we would expect that he would indeed use the full power at his command under his Article II powers as president to go just as far and as fast as he was legally allowed to go in reducing America’s emissions.
But Joe Biden didn’t do that. He didn’t come anywhere close to doing the kinds of things he could have done to throttle the use of fossil fuels and to promote the adoption of wind and solar backed by batteries as a replacement for coal, gas, and nuclear.
And yet in spite of his lack of truly effective action in keeping his environmental promises, he was never called to account by the environmental activist community. Tell us Eric …. why was Joe Biden never called to account?
Because Biden was a dottering old fool and even the Dems realized this. His selection of Harris as a running mate was about the only brilliant thing he did during his 4 year tenure as it kept him from being removed using the 25th amendment. He was nothing but a figurehead for President Otto Penn and the committee behind it.
Biden and Harris were chosen by the Democratic Party Powers that Be even before the 2020 primary season began. See my response to SxyxS here for the reasons why.
Everyone figured out that Biden’s otto-pen had very little working mental capacity..
Biden was incapable of acting a rational or sane way to anything.. and his otto-pen group was probably even worse.
You are pushing a false narrative based on strange expectations you set for everyone else. Somehow because President Biden didn’t act in an exact way you believe he should have, it means other, unnamed people should have been angry. I’m really not sure what you are on about
Eric Flesch, you may think of yourself as being an expert at blowing smoke in order to dodge the tough questions.
For example, the question about why the Biden administration didn’t implement a credible Net Zero program in the way, and to the extent, that those who voted for a Biden presidency expected.
The readers of this forum know that smoke is being blown. That said, I encourage you to keep on blowing your smoke, and to do this in ever more creative ways.
Your presence here gives us an ongoing insight into the left’s most current style and approach for selling snake oil and for blowing rhetorical smoke. And it’s quite entertaining to boot.
Your expectations as a climate denier weren’t met and you think that says something about the current high cost of fossil energy. Your expectations are on you, not others. You are reduced to insults because you have nothing of substance to offer
Why is it that true believers never expect those they choose as leaders, to let their actions match their words?
Which words?
“Which words?”
Well, these ones, for starters: “The climate crisis doesn’t care if you’re in a red or blue state. It’s an existential threat.” – State of the Union Address, February 7, 2023
Did Biden’s actions as President of the USA, the most powerful country in the world, match those words, or not? Please explain.
Eric, you started out with false narratives:
“…like wind and solar, reduce costs to consumers…”
Wind and hydro are probably the world’s oldest energy producers. Hydro was kept and implemented without hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies and government coercion. Wind and Solar needed hundreds of billions in subsidies, tax deductions and coercion. Instead of in your utility bill, its in your tax bill and eats at the purchasing power of your dollar.
If Wind & Solar are naturally cheaper to produce energy, explain why outside hydro, and the odd-ball geothermal, every energy producer in a competitive market all chose thermals either with hydrocarbons or nuclear? Coal is still the cheapest of all forms.
With 15 minute auctions for energy, the low-bidder wins, and can only underbid everyone else if they can afford to. The problem is, that wind and solar are no where to be found after the sun goes down and energy usage creeps up. So that means that on short occasions, given the right circumstances, wind and solar are cheaper but the rest of the time, we need the Old Faithfuls.
“…and increase national security”
Which is another false narrative. Most solar is manufactured overseas—primarily Communist China. While 80% of the nacelle assembly and 70% of tower assembly is domestic, the drivetrains, rare earth magnets and a substantial portion of the blades and electrical equipment come from China.
Relying on China is NOT an increase of national security.
“Michigan uses mostly fossil energy to produce electricity….”
Natural Gas ~45-50%, Coal ~15-20% at most its 70% Which leaves the remaining 30-40% from nuclear, wind, solar, hydro and biomass.
Majority of its energy is hydrocarbons, yes. Mostly, no.
Massive government subsidies to fossil energy over decades has tilted the markets.
Majority yes
Mostly yes
Massive?
bwahahahaha
You’re question is spot on.
How can anyone expect a demented president who has been fighting with every single word he was trying to read from the TelePrompTer
to do anything ?
Yet this president, who wasn’t mentally there, had the very same policies
and made the exact same “mistakes” as his counterparts in the western world – conflicts, energy,open borders, war on farmers, minorities including his sudden obsession with gays, trans etc he never had in the first 70 years of his life;
a transformation as miraculous and impossible as the MSM’s total ignorance of Joes Alzheimer after 4 years of trying to tell the world how demented Trump was.
Now – there is an answer why Joe/Blinken never went full climate emergency.
He knew he’d had no chance to win the reelection if he’d have hit the economy even harder than he already did.
+ the renewable replacement capacities are limited.
Shutting things down without a phony replacement would have totally enraged the masses.
In reality, Joe Biden was a figurehead controlled by a central committee of advisors operating behind the scenes who formulated all the Biden policies and made all the Biden decisions.
So when I say that Joe Biden could have done this, or Joe Biden could have done that, what I am saying here is that it was the behind-the-scenes Biden puppet masters who could have walked the Biden talk of Net Zero by 2050, had they decided to do so.
Anyway, what is now known is that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were the Chosen Ones for the 2020 Democratic Party nominations even before the 2020 primary season began. Spring 2020 on the Democratic Party side was mere kabuke theater.
Those two were chosen by the DNC Powers that Be in part because they gave the outward appearance of being weak candidates to a Trump campaign which was (a) clearly overconfident in success; and which (b) paid no attention whatsoever to the warning signs emerging in the summer and fall of 2020 that massive election fraud was in the works.
Says much about you that you think a speech impediment is a sign of mental ability and Alzheimer’s
Eric Flesch reply to SxyxS: “Says much about you that you think a speech impediment is a sign of mental ability and Alzheimer’s”
As someone who has been active in Republican politics for most of my adult life, I’ll offer my opinion as to what happened in the summer of 2024 with Joe Biden and the Democrat’s decision to replace him as their 2024 candidate for president.
My opinion goes like this:
When Joe Biden was offered the presidential nomination in early January of 2020, before the 2020 spring primary season even began, he made an informal agreement with the Party Powers that Be that he would serve one-term as president and then step down.
But something happened between January 20th of 2021 and June of 2024 which the Party Powers that Be hadn’t counted on.
Joe Biden got very comfortable with being president; and more important, Jill Biden and Hunter Biden got even more comfortable with Joe Biden being president.
Jill and Hunter convinced Joe to renege on the agreement he made in January of 2020, and now the Party Powers that Be had a serious problem on their hands. How do they handle the Slow Joe problem?
Someone in the Democratic Party’s higher circles must have realized that an early debate with Donald Trump would expose Slow Joe as a candidate too far gone to run.
So with help from other party functionaries, they somehow managed to convince Joe, Jill, and Hunter that Joe Biden could deliver an early knock-out blow to the Trump campaign by having an early season debate with Trump.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
A Republica who supports a child rapist is also a climate denier. No surprise. Many studies have shown most pedophiles are also climate deniers
Kitty got lies.
That counts as what Carl Sagan would have called “an extraordinary claim”.
I therefore call on you to make the “extraordinary” effort to copy (at least) three references / citations from the “many” scientific studies that you have in your memory backing up your bald assertion.
Good analysis-don’t leave out that the Dems probably figured they could easily get away with another stolen election. My, weren’t they surprised and still crying about it; hopefully to no avail ‘cuz now people are watching. Oooops.
Nobody said anything about a speech impediment.
Are you ever going to actually answer the questions presented to you, or are you going to continue with these lame attempts at diversion?
Try reading again. Someone sure did. Why lie? What makes you so dishonest that you have to lie?
If you think that Biden wasn’t showing multiple signs of severe mental decline… you are only being dishonest to yourself.
Yep. Somebody did. Doing a word search – the first one is you. 😉
I for one, never expected him to declare an emergency, precisely because he knew, as do most of us, that there is no climate emergency.
The whole scam was nothing more than an effort to divert tax from working people into the coffers of the elite.
Good for you Mark 🙄
FYI, in a modern industrial economy about 80% of energy use is thermal energy provided by the utilization of fossil fuels. The heavy industries, the heavy transportation systems, agriculture, and military and emergency vehicles will always use enormous amounts of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels will always used for space and water heating, for cooking and baking in residential houses and for personal transportation.
Wind and sunlight are not “Domestic fuel sources…”. In fact wind turbines and PV solar farms destabilizes the electrical system.
I live in Canada which has long cold and snowy winters. Fossil fuels keep 41 million people from freezing to death in winter.
Nowadays, here is much loose and ignorant talk about global warming, but there is little or no mention about winter in the social media.
BTW: How do you heat your house in winter and cool it in the hot summer?
You don’t think people talk about winter 🙄.
Is this the 3rd or 4th time today that you dodged a question rather than answer it?
Why do you think you can tell me how Inneed to respond? Is it your white entitlement? Did you know most climate deniers are racists?
That is a blatantly racist statement and you should be banned.
Yep.
In winter in cold countries, wind and solar are basically useless…
(heck solar isn’t that much use in winter even where I am in country NSW)
Fossil fuels, hydro and nuclear are the only possible sources of electricity. !
(unless you are somewhere like Iceland than can access geothermal)
Solar and wind are incapable of generating anything more than nuisance amounts of electricity in Michigan.
Fixed his sentence for him. His original one is the type of talking points that folks repeat when they’re driven by emotional response to a situation rather than by operating on critical thinking.
A denier using fake quotes as a gotcha moment. How quaint
And now the 5th dodge.
Add in a lame attempt at an insult to disguise the fact that you clearly don’t know what you are talking about.
Mark whines about how others respond. Climate deniers are entitled Karens
Hurl your side’s favorite simplistic epithet all day long if it makes you feel better, but there are two hard, cold realities you cannot escape from: First, none of us on this side ‘deny climate’ / ‘deny climate change.’ Second, the only genuine deniers of climate change in this issue are the people on your side – you’re the ones not suggesting but instead demanding that the climate be set permanently at a level you-all have chosen from around 150 years ago which you deem to be the ‘ideal’ climate, and never change from that level for the rest of eternity. When you one day look into the mirror and fully realize you are the person you accuse the rest of us as being, you’ll then realize how utterly ridiculous your accusation is, and how the rest of your emotion-driven CAGW house of cards talking points all fall down the same way after you start to critically think about them. One day you’ll thank us here at WUWT for opening your eyes to all the deception that’s been fed to you by your dear leaders which you never thought to question. Repeat what they tell you, they will love you. Dare to ask them inconvenient questions – such as why this beloved climate activist lied to the public about something that never happened – and then you become the heretic which everyone on your side demands to be silenced. See how that works?
You deny the current climate.
Any place you have an idiotic politically motivated statutory requirement to remove reliable sources of electricity and replace them with unreliable sources of electricity…
.. the supply will ALWAYS become more costly and more unreliable.
This has happened everywhere this nonsense has infected the electricity supply system.
Fossil energy sources are very unreliable. One orange idiot can drive up prices and cause shortages.
Fossil fuels are the backbone of any stable electrical grid.
The only fuel disrupted by Trump’s attempt to destroy your Islamic terrorist mates, is oil, very little of which is used for electricity.
You are talking gibberish.
Gas and oil expansion is happening around the world, as countries realise they cannot rely on oil controlled by a manic terrorist state.
https://www.gep.com/blog/mind/south-americas-offshore-oil-boom
https://energyinafrica.com/insights/oil-and-gas-projects-africa/
https://angolanminingoilandgas.com/africas-energy-sector-surges-in-2025-with-major-oil-and-gas-discoveries/
https://www.moore-global.com/news/africas-41-billion-upstream-oil-and-gas-investment-surge-in-2026/
https://www.el-balad.com/17006073
(Norway’s massive expansion.)
https://energyinafrica.com/insights/nigeria-libya-race-oil-producer/
https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/malaysia-oil-and-gas-market
https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/qld-s-taroom-trough-emerges-as-australia-s-new-oil-frontier-20260210-p5o11p
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Argentinas-Shale-Boom-Is-Rewriting-South-Americas-Energy-Map.html
https://panamericanworld.com/en/magazine/homepage-sections/guyanas-oil-boom-growth-records-and-challenges/
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Brazils-Oil-Production-Keeps-Growing.html
Poor little reality denier, actually thinks that lies and insults can cover for the fact that it is unable to actually answer the questions it is being asked.
Oh Mark, cry harder
” lies and insults”
But the moderators let him keep doing it. !
Then block or greatly delay people that reply to him.
Just you.
And your pettiness continues.
Fossil energy sources are very unreliable you say.
In reality:-
“Fossil Fuels continued to expand in absolute terms and retained their dominant position, accounting for 86% of total energy supply (TES)”
Energy Institute 2026 ‘Statistical Review of World Energy’ (June 2026)
This explains why it [electricity] costs so much in Michigan. So much means 22.01 ¢/kWh, whereas in Massachusetts it is 28.82. Eric, you are very emotional.
Massachusetts gets most of its electricity production from fossil energy
It doesn’t matter how many times a lie is disproven, the true believers cling to it, because they have nothing else.
Actual data shows that wind and solar increase cost, not reduce it.
Actual data show most climate deniers are racists. Racists tend to be idiots
Citation(s) please, highlighting the specific definition of the amorphous “climate denier” phrase used in each case.
In my experience that is indeed correct, but I have yet to come across a (peer-reviewed and published in a “serious” journal) scientific paper providing concrete numbers for that purely anecdotal “evidence”.
America needs to bring back coal, but now combust it in ways so it’s almost as clean as natural gas. The technologies are there.
Natural gas can also be consumed to near 100% energy efficiency. Our residential market and some industry is doing it. The rest of America’s natural gas consumers also need to be encouraged to utilize those ways – so we don’t waste it. Stop blowing so much up all those chimney’s.
Waste Is Not Waste If It Has A Purpose.
State and Local Dems in Michigan do what they are told by the UAW and the big three automakers. And DC Dems do as they are told by unions, eco nonprofits, and state Dems plus Bernie. That’s why you can identify all Dems by the small union logo on their printed materials and business cards. Climate change amounts to a periodic chant around the big tent, but it’s also a nedulous, low cost talking point and spending bill of other people’s money for the eco corner.
I’d already emailed several Michigan GOP candidates on the possible national leadership praise they would gain by going on full offense against Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s ‘climate damages’ lawsuit against British Petroleum. These candidates could set their Democrat opponents’ hair on fire (the new ground zero for ClimaChange™! ) by simply suggesting the lawsuit should be thrown totally out of the court system on the grounds that not only its science claims are unsupportable, but also that its accusations about ‘crooked skeptic climate scientists’ may actually stray into epic level defamation territory.
Thanks to Isaac Orr’s guest post here, I fired off this leadership tip to GOP House candidate Mike Bouchard a short time ago. Political candidates usually don’t answer these kinds of ‘tips’ emails, but as the old saying goes, “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Imagine the blistering response if just one GOP candidate nailed the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits to the wall for what they are: a backdoor means of implementing climate policy without voter approval.
Wind and solar can’t sustain the grid, not at any cost. Stop wasting our time, money and resources on stuff that doesn’t work. That is just stupid.
It’s simply a case of utilizing what works properly and dependably. No one should be shortchanged on energy just because it’s more fashionable to turn to renewables that have proved to be hit-or-miss too often, particularly when demand spikes during periods of excess heat or cold. When and if solar and wind prove they’re as consistently reliable as fossil fuels, there will be justification for more of them to be included in the power grid, but at their current pace we shouldn’t expect any of this to occur until the 2nd half of this century, and even that seems to be a long shot.