July 12, 2025

Will The OBBB Put An End To Heavily Subsidized Wind And Solar Generation Projects?

July 12, 2025/ Francis Menton

What does the future hold as to large additions to heavily subsidized wind and solar electricity generation capacity in the U.S.?
For those paying attention, the legislative back-and-forth of the One Big Beautiful Bill, as it made its way through Congress, has been something of a roller coaster ride. At this point, I am betting that the utility-scale wind and solar industries are near the end of their line.
This post reports on the latest development, which is an Executive Order signed by President Trump on July 7. But count on the wind and solar subsidy farmers to keep fighting to the last dollar of their government handouts.
Note that it is my view, from extensive study of the subject, that wind and solar generators of electricity are essentially useless, not to mention dangerous and costly, for a modern grid that needs reliable generation 24/7/365. Nobody will invest private capital in them without huge government subsidies.

July 06, 2025

Green Energy Provisions In The One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Unfortunately, A Mixed Bag

July 06, 2025/ Francis Menton

On July 4 President Trump signed what everyone is now calling the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” (Doesn’t it cease being a “Bill” when it becomes an “Act”? Not this one, apparently.).
The Act is a compendium of dozens of provisions relating to all aspects of the federal budget and taxation. As a result, many summaries that you may read focus on things like income tax rates and deductions, and other such matters directly relevant to individuals. That leaves some other important subjects of the Act getting short shrift, particularly the provisions dealing with various aspects of the ongoing green energy scam. So I will try to hit the highlights on that subject here.
I previously had a post on May 24 covering the provisions on this subject in the version of the Bill that had just been passed by the House. That post was highly optimistic that the House’s language, if it could survive wrestling with the Senate, could essentially put an end to almost all of the green energy subsidies. Unfortunately, as you might expect from the swamp of Washington, the final language will likely let some of the scam continue.
But let’s start with the positive news. For your reference, in case you want to read the actual provisions of the Act, here is a link to the Table of Contents, with ongoing links to each section.

June 24, 2025

June 24, 2025/ Francis Menton

In case you missed it, here is New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s breathless announcement from yesterday: “Governor Hochul Directs New York Power Authority to Develop a Zero-Emission Advanced Nuclear Energy Technology Power Plant.”
Does something here seem like it doesn’t quite fit? Yes, it was just four years ago, in April 2021, that New York completed the forced closure of the two perfectly functional Indian Point nuclear plants, with combined generating capacity of about 2 GW, for no other reason than relentless opposition from environmentalists and NIMBYs. And yet now the Governor is saying that the plan is to start over and build a new nuclear plant at some unspecified place.
Before getting to a few of the problems, let’s start with some of the excited language from the Governor’s press release:

June 16, 2025

June 16, 2025/ Francis Menton

Now coming into view are the specifics of EPA’s strategy to end the Obama/Biden efforts to strangle the energy sector of the economy in the name of “saving the planet” from climate change.
A document released by EPA last week on June 11 lays out the plan for repeal of the absurd (and dangerous) regulation that would have ended use of fossil fuels to generate electricity by some time in the 2030s.
This EPA document is particularly interesting for the way it treats — and effectively sidelines — the so-called Endangerment Finding, the 2009 regulatory action that is the basis for all of the Obama/Biden fossil fuel suppression efforts.
President Trump made it clear from the first day of his new administration that he intended to undo as many as possible of the Obama/Biden era burdens and restriction on American energy production and use.

June 04, 2025

June 04, 2025/ Francis Menton

New York State has officially ordained the destruction of its electricity system and its economy with a mad dash to energy utopia, as prescribed by a 2019 statute called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). The Climate Act mandates a completely unachievable 70% of electricity generation from “renewables” by 2030, with even more draconian mandates following in quick succession thereafter.
New York City has piled on with its own fantasy energy statute called Local Law 97, mandating, among other things, forced conversion to electric heat by 2030 of most residential buildings over 25,000 square feet.
A so-called “Scoping Plan” on how to do all this, issued by the State in 2022, contains no bona fide feasibility analysis, and equally no bona fide cost analysis.
Everybody with over a sixth-grade education who has taken any time to look at this knows that it can’t possibly work. The only question is how much destruction will befall us before the whole thing crashes to the ground.
Can anyone save New York from the coming self-inflicted climate and energy disaster?

May 24, 2025

May 24, 2025/ Francis Menton

On Thursday (May 22) the House of Representatives passed, by a narrow margin of 215-214, what is referred to as the “Big Beautiful Bill” — a massive compendium of taxing and spending measures that can now seek to avoid the filibuster in the Senate on grounds of being a “budget reconciliation.” The BBB is well over a thousand pages long (go here for full text), and covers a huge range of subjects.
Most summaries of the BBB that I have seen never get to the important subject of subsidies for so-called “green” energy — wind turbines, solar arrays, grid-scale batteries, hydrogen production, and so forth.
That is understandable given the large number of important issues covered in the bill. However, the green energy subsidies are a gigantic issue. They consist of generous tax credits for wind and solar facilities that have been around for a long time, plus a barrage of subsidies and handouts created by the so-called Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
In a post that I wrote at the time of enactment of the IRA, I linked to an analysis that estimated the green energy handouts of just the IRA alone at approximately $370 billion (although I noted that the IRA handouts were un-capped and could end up being far more than that).