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ACCORDING TO LIZ - California was booming in the early move to renewables, leading other states in adding large-scale solar and wind turbines to augment its energy portfolio.
Over the past decade, federal incentives drove green energy expansion down to individual investment in solar and electric vehicles starting to apply the brakes on global warming, generating good careers locally, and helping small businesses find niche marketing opportunities.
However, with the passage of the Bloated Betrayal Bill, the growth of renewables has come to a screeching halt. In fact, the gutting of many common-sense energy provisions seems as much a vengeful retribution against California as a payday for the Petty Potentate’s Big Oil sponsors.
The United States used to be a net importer of oil. At least until a series of oil embargos by OPEC, motivated by the United States’ support for the 1973 Yom Kippur War and, subsequently, spinoff from Iranian Revolution fallout, goosing transformational planning.
Ultimately, it was the military’s need to protect national interests that led to robust policy changes to actually ensure American energy independence from hostile foreign powers.
Aided by the dramatic expansion of hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking, over the past quarter century, the United States has become a powerhouse oil and gas producer, exporting 60% of production.
However, the advent of this administration’s politically motivated tariffs will escalate energy costs for American businesses and consumers as well as threatening the profitability of its own oil and gas sectors by encouraging other countries to rapidly invest in alternate energy, to themselves become self-sufficient.
The Betrayal Bill not only lavishes tax cuts on millionaires, but it also pulls the rug of American prosperity out from under small businesses and jeopardizes families by lumbering them with higher expenses. Directly for energy and the cost of imported goods, and indirectly for domestic products that will cost more to make.
And the repercussions of resultant job losses. Mounting competition for fewer jobs will be aggravated by cascading effects from the Musk-mania government layoffs.
Anger will certainly continue to rise since the Billionaire Benefits Bill also shreds the social net intended to keep people afloat in times of economic peril.
The pressure to ramp up cuts to those services will only increase with fewer Americans making middle-class money to take up the slack of reduced taxes from top earners.
While an out-of-control oligarch is unwilling to offend the billionaire class he is jonesing to join, and revels in vastly expanding the military propping up his ego as Commander-in-Chief.
In total disconnect from reality, the White House touted: “The One, Big, Beautiful Bill will turbocharge energy production by streamlining operations for maximum efficiency and expanding domestic production capacity, which will deliver further relief to American families and businesses.”
Huh?
Disemboweling tax incentives for wind and solar will send electricity bills across the country soaring. Republican-dominated states with fewer local incentives will see some of the sharpest increases.
A senior analyst at Energy Innovation predicts Oklahomans’ electricity rates could skyrocket as much as 350% by 2035, with rates in Kentucky rising at least 48%, Missouri 39%, and Kansas 30%. In fact, the overall victims of Trump’s signature bill will be the Americans who voted Republican.
Nationally, rates will increase by 9% to 18% on average over the next decade, and the country could lose billions in planned investment and hundreds of thousands of jobs, further tanking the economy.
Anyone cognizant with climate change understands how green energy makes economic sense; the cost of wind and solar projects has fallen dramatically making solar is cheaper to produce than fossil fuel energy. While a major shift to renewables will limit further global warming and the attendant costs of climate-driven disasters from more intense storms, floods and wildfires.
Following a reduction of demand due to innovative efficiencies, this administration’s mandate is winding it up again, combining expansion of raw material extraction with a push to grow American manufacturing.
This, on top of the already accelerating growth of energy-intensive A.I. and cyber mining, will cause a ripple effect of rising rates across the supply chain thrusting power costs through the roof.
Loss of economies of scale will mean what plants do come online will cost more, diminishing their ability to reduce consumer prices.
The abandonment of renewables projects will force a return to carbon-fueled plants which are increasingly more expensive to operate. Hobbled by an existing dearth of gas turbines, forcing prices sharply higher.
Trump-dissonance was further on display when he called wind and solar energy a blight on the country: “They hurt our country very badly… And smart countries don't use it.”
Like China… which, in addition to its escalating technological dominance, is enjoying explosive growth in exporting the green energy components which contributed more to global power generation last year than any other source.
While the rest of the world, albeit shockingly slowly, is getting on board renewables as the new normal, the out-of-touch Trump coterie is jerking the United States back into the 19th century.
Its Sharpie-emphasized “facts” show how much this administration is embracing its inner child as leader of the new Robber Barons.
Gas and oil export facilities will flourish, with tax subsidies giving them an unfair advantage over less-blessed domestic businesses… and consumers.
As gas demand rises, prices will also rise – not fall.
Last Wednesday in a decision that could have profound legal ramifications, the 15-member International Court of Justice identified climate change as an “existential problem of planetary proportions that imperils all forms of life and the very health of our planet” and ruled unanimously that everyone – worldwide – is entitled to a habitable planet.
Continued and expanded tax incentives and subsidies propping up the fossil fuel industry along with accelerated climate change are promising Americans, if not the globe, a devastating future.
With renewables being the cheapest source of new energy, even without subsidies, as more renewable energy plants come online, investing in things like batteries and an updated power grid becomes more important so that electricity can be stored and delivered when it's needed.
Instead, this administration has eviscerated innovation and the support for science necessary for America to keep up with its competitors.
Furthermore, the gutting of support for the sciences and science-based government jobs is sending the best and brightest over the border, devastating the cutting-edge technical creativity on which the prosperity of the past century was built.
Not to mention again that the country is currently struggling with an old, vulnerable and cost-intensive distribution grid that desperately needs a foundational make-over.
New power generation is expected to fall by more than 30% over the next decade, mainly due to wind and solar projects that won't come online.
Electric vehicle sales as a share of the total American market could contract as much as a third with the end of the credits.
Renewables in California had created thousands of well-paying jobs supporting economic development. And, until now, had attracted investment pulling in desperately needed tax dollars.
Across the country, companies that opened factories here employing Americans to make solar panels and other components based on energy tax incentives that encourage companies to buy American will be bankrupted, throwing thousands out of work.
As a recent headline in the New York Times posited: “Is Decarbonization Dead?”
More importantly, are the actions of this administration writing the death warrant for American prosperity?
Frozen now: funding for high-speed EV-chargers on highways
Disappearing at the end of September: the tax credit worth up to $7,500 for buying or leasing a new EV, and up to $4,000 for a used vehicle, as a cash rebate at the time of purchase
Disappearing at the end of this year: the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit for up to $2,000 off heat pumps, water heaters, biomass stoves or biomass boilers; and up to $1,200 off home upgrades like new insulation, doors and windows on people’s tax returns
Disappearing next year at the end of June: the credit covering 30% of the installation cost of EV chargers
Rewiring America and another nonprofit called The Switch is On have online tools that can help people in most states, plug in their ZIP codes and incomes to search for the federal, state, local and utility company incentives for which they're qualified. Consumers can also check for incentives at an online database from the N.C. Clean Energy Technology Center.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno now living in Vermont and a regular CityWatch contributor. She writes on issues she’s passionate about, including social justice, government accountability, and community empowerment. Liz brings a sharp, activist voice to her commentary and continues to engage with Los Angeles civic affairs from afar. She can be reached at [email protected].)
