On Electricity, the Stupid is Shocking

@jerrywaynelongmire

Electric bill in the south #comedy #faulkner #electricbill #heat #airconditioning #texas #electricitybill #electricity

♬ original sound – Jerry Wayne Longmire

Bill McKibben on Substack:

Let’s go back to Trump’s first day in office. He declared an “energy emergency” because the production and “generation capacity of the United States are all far too inadequate to meet our Nation’s needs. We need a reliable, diversified, and affordable supply of energy to drive our Nation’s manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, and defense industries, and to sustain the basics of modern life and military preparedness.” If we didn’t get more electricity in particular, the White House said, we would fall behind China in the AI race, with disastrous consequences. 

You can debate whether or not we need new AI data centers (My guess is that the technology has been oversold, and that we’re actually going to see fewer of them developed than people think). But you can’t debate two things.

One, the obvious way forward for this country was to develop more sun, wind, and batteries. We know this because it’s what this country, and every other country around the world, had been doing for the last two years. More than ninety percent of new electric generation around the world last year came from clean energy, momentum that continued through the first quarter of the year. This was not because everyone in the energy business had “gone woke.” Texas, after all, installed more renewable capacity than any other state last year. It was because you could do it cheaply and quickly—we live on a planet where the cheapest way to make power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun.

But, two, the Trump administration immediately began to do absolutely everything in in its power to stop this trend and to replace it with old-fashioned energy—gas, and coal. They have rescinded environmental regulations trying to control fossil fuel pollution, ended sun and wind projects on federal land, cancelled wind projects wherever they could, ended the IRA tax credits for clean energy construction and instead added subsidies for the coal industry. Again—short of tasking Elon Musk to erect a large space-based shield to blot out the sun, they’ve done literally everything possible to derail the transition to cheap clean energy.

And as a result, electricity prices are starting to skyrocket. If you don’t believe me, listen to this excellent recitation of a power bill in the style of Faulkner from a fellow with an excellent beard. And they are skyrocketing because our power systems are not moving into the new world.

For example: Trump issued an executive order designed to “reinvigorate America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry” which explained that 

Our Nation’s beautiful clean coal resources will be critical to meeting the rise in electricity demand due to the resurgence of domestic manufacturing and the construction of artificial intelligence data processing centers. We must encourage and support our Nation’s coal industry to increase our energy supply, lower electricity costs, stabilize our grid, create high-paying jobs, support burgeoning industries, and assist our allies.

This is nonsense on a cracker, of course, and a new independent report last week found that consumers will be paying an extra three to six billion dollars a year for the privilege of keeping coal-fired power plants open past their expiration dates. 

Forcing utilities to continue to operate unneeded and costly coal-fired power plants past their planned retirement increases the electric bills paid by homeowners and businesses. It also undermines the competitiveness of U.S. businesses such as manufacturing by raising electric rates.

Anyone who pays an electricity bill in any region outside the Northeastern U.S. could be footing the bill. Electricity costs could increase by tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars per year in most states.

MSN:

Household electricity bills have increased by 10% since Donald Trump re-entered the White House, a new report has found, with its authors highlighting the impact of the president’s datacenter boosterism and cuts to clean energy projects as part of the cause.

The analysis comes as the US energy secretary, Chris Wright, said he knows rising energy prices could be a political challenge for the GOP ahead of next year’s midterm elections, but claimed Democrats were to blame for the cost increases.

“The momentum of the Obama-Biden policies, for sure that destruction is going to continue in the coming years,” he told Politico in an interview published on Tuesday. “That momentum is pushing prices up right now. And who’s going to get blamed for it? We’re going to get blamed because we’re in office.”

Trump has repeatedly promised to lower utility bills. And in his Politico interview, Wright insisted that the Trump administration’s war on renewable energy is not inflating electricity costs.

But studies have found that Trump’s pro-fossil fuel, anti-renewable energy policies will raise prices. A July report from climate thinktank Energy Innovation, for instance, found that the Republicans’ spending megabill that the president signed last month could increase wholesale electricity prices by as much as 74%, largely due to its repeal of many Biden-era green energy incentives.