Congressional Republicans spent four years opposing the Biden administration’s energy policies, asserting that they raised prices from the gas pump to our utility bills. Now it’s the Democrats’ turn to hit President Donald Trump on energy affordability, and they can point to the boost in the price of gasoline since the start of the Iran war as well as still-rising electric rates. But Trump is doing the one thing absolutely essential to affordability over the long-term, and that is dismantling the climate change agenda.
Despite the rhetorical pivot to affordability, supporters of climate policy can’t help but take us in the opposite direction. Their entire agenda is based on the premise that fossil fuels – the coal, oil and natural gas that provide about 80% of America’s energy needs – are far too cheap for our own good because the price we pay fails to account for the environmental damage they inflict.
For those supporters, preventing the apocalypse starts with making these energy sources more expensive, if not unavailable at any price. Of course, this viewpoint is at odds with the vast majority of Americans who want access to the cheapest sources of energy.
Everything this agenda touched was becoming less affordable. The regulatory crackdown on coal-fired power plants added to retirements of existing facilities while discouraging construction of any new ones. This undoubtedly contributed to the upward pressure on electric rates.
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Natural gas was also a regulatory target, including its use in home appliances like furnaces and water heaters (a similar assault on gas stoves in 2023 met with a strong public backlash and was shelved). Ironically, the same Biden Department of Energy cranking out the rules discouraging natural gas appliances in favor of electric versions admitted that using gas costs only a third as much as electricity on a per-unit energy basis.
Even today’s gasoline prices are a better deal for drivers than a return to the climate agenda. President Joe Biden was curtailing oil leasing on federal lands and offshore areas while blocking much-needed oil pipelines.
At the same time, he was raising sticker prices for gasoline-powered cars via regulations – now being repealed by Trump – designed to push us towards electric vehicles that most people reject due to high overall costs as well as range and charging issues. The temporary jump at the pump from the Iran war is harmless compared to the permanent pain that would be imposed by these climate measures.
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In addition to strangling conventional fossil energy sources with regulations, taxes, permitting roadblocks and other price-hiking measures, Washington’s climate crusaders also heaped big handouts on wind, solar and other favorites of the so-called clean energy transition. They now tout this transition as a means to reduce electric bills as well as emissions – and criticize Trump for opposing it.
But how can alternatives too expensive to compete without hefty subsidies be the solution to affordability? Good question. They can’t, unless you ignore the fact that the subsidies are also coming out of our pockets – and that the vast sums already spent on green energy just to buy them a small share of the electricity mix are a mere down payment on what it would take to complete the hoped-for transition away from fossil fuels.
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The new transmission lines needed to incorporate more wind- and solar-generated electricity come with cost estimates into the trillions of dollars. And since these electricity sources don’t work 24/7 like coal, natural gas or nuclear can, they will necessitate investments in battery storage that may tack on trillions more. And that’s on top of the cost to build all of these new green power plants, none of which have ever moved forward without generous taxpayer contributions.
The misleadingly named Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 included up to $4.7 trillion for this stuff. But three years later, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act cut back on many of the giveaways.
Even if the subsidies are fully restored and wind and solar generation is greatly expanded, would it actually lead to lower electric bills for homeowners and businesses? That hasn’t happened anywhere it has been tried – not in the U.S., where California and other states with the most aggressive climate policies also have the nation’s highest electric rates, nor in climate-obsessed Western Europe, where costs are higher still.
Swapping out the energy sources that have succeeded in the marketplace with those favored by government for their supposed climate friendliness is a recipe for higher costs, not lower ones. We can have affordable energy, or we can have intrusive climate change policy, but we can never have both. Trump has chosen the former, and doing so may prove to be the most important part of his legacy.
