Electricity prices will be a campaign issue. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has expressed concern that the Administration will be (rightfully) blamed for the increasing burden.
But what’s really happening?
Trump on Truth Social, Aug. 20: “Any State that has built and relied on WINDMILLS and SOLAR for power are seeing RECORD BREAKING INCREASES IN ELECTRICITY AND ENERGY COSTS. THE SCAM OF THE CENTURY!”
The facts: The four states where wind and solar produce the greatest share of electricity — Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas and New Mexico — are among the 20 cheapest states for electricity, according to federal data. Despite the upfront cost, wind and solar are immune from price spikes on the gas market, and the rapid drop in battery prices means pairing them with storage is increasingly competitive with fossil fuel plants.
In fact, analysis of federal data by University of Oxford scientist Hannah Ritchie showed there’s not much correlation between a state’s resource mix and prices. Most renewable-heavy states have lower rates, but California has some of the costliest electricity, in part because of utility spending on wildfire prevention.
Senate Democrats on X, Sept. 8: “Prices are up on groceries, utilities, healthcare … This is all a result of the Trump administration’s chaotic policies.”
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Aug. 7: “The big ugly bill is going to mean a lot of big ugly energy bills arriving in the mail for Americans around the country.”
The facts: Today’s Consumer Price Index report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that electricity prices are up 6.2 percent from last year, rising faster than inflation.
But that can’t be pinned directly on Trump’s policies. According to the Energy Information Administration, electricity prices have been outpacing inflation since 2022. Utilities set those rates in advance, reflecting factors like the cost of new infrastructure, pressure from data centers and wildfire prevention.
Trump’s policies to block clean energy and increase tariffs are likely to increase rates further, forecasts show. Princeton University models predict that the average household could pay $165 more for electricity per year by 2030 and $280 more per year by 2035.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Fox Business, Sept. 2: “Denmark today has the most expensive electricity in the world. …That’s the result as you grow offshore wind. That’s not a race the U.S. wants to win.”
The facts: Danes do pay steep electricity bills, but that’s because of taxes. European Union data shows that before taxes, Denmark’s prices are actually lower than the EU average.
The U.S. government estimates that offshore wind is more expensive than most other sources, when taking into account the cost of both construction and operations using a metric known as the levelized cost of electricity. That metric, however, doesn’t reflect the role wind would play on the grid by offsetting other fuels. An analysis by the state of Connecticut, for example, found that the Revolution Wind project (recently put on hold by the Trump administration) could save ratepayers up to $500 million over 20 years.
Many factors can influence the price of electricity, such as fuel prices, power plant costs, weather conditions like extreme temperatures, transmission and distribution system, as well as unregulated and regulated prices, according to the EIA.
In some regions, the increase in electricity bills is also due in part to a spike in natural gas prices, which a number of power plants use to generate electricity. Utility companies then pass costs on to customers as fuel adjustment charges, according to the Louisiana Public Service Commission.
Additionally, increased coal prices also contribute to higher overall fuel costs for power generation, which impacts customers’ bills, says the Louisiana Public Service Commission.
Beyond natural gas and coal, electrical grids could have aging transmission and distribution lines that lack efficiency and can waste power. While some improvements have been made, the costs of less efficient systems are passed on to customers, Louisiana Illuminator reported.
“Generation is not what’s driving up bills. It’s really the transmission and distribution piece.” – Charles Hua
Utilities are pouring capital into poles, wires, and substations. Much of it is necessary, but some isn’t. And because utilities earn profits on capital expenditures, they’re incentivized to build more; they are not incentivized to find cheaper alternatives.
The data is striking: wholesale electricity prices have been flat, or even declined, over the past 15 years. Nationally, retail prices for households, meanwhile, have jumped from about 12¢ to 16–17¢ per kWh. And gas utility bills have been rising faster than electric bills. Those gaps are revealing.
I looked at ‘The four states where wind and solar produce the greatest share of electricity — Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas and New Mexico’ on the @EnergyMaps website, which colours each grid according to the aggregate emissions of the power sources used there – either moment by moment, or averaged over periods up to a year, and usually covering the last eight years. Green is clean = low carbon, shading up to black = all coal. Only Kansas is all within one grid supplier, the others are split between several ‘Independent System Operators’. None of those are very green. Kansas is part of the Southwest Power Pool, which last year got 30% of its power from renewables (wind 26%, solar 0.8%, hydro 2.7%), 5% from nuclear, and nearly 65% from fossil fuels – about equally coal and gas. Average emissions for 2024 were 537 grams CO2/kWh, 10x higher than Quebec, for example (80% hydro), and 20x higher than France (71% nuclear, 27% renewables.) All the suppliers to the other three states are worse, except for the Public Service Company of New Mexico, which covers roughly half of NM by area, plus small areas of Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas. They managed 54% renewable last year (solar 16%, wind 34%), but nearly half their CO2 came from the 7.4% still provided by coal. Gas, with 18% of the power, made most of the rest, to total 320 g/kWh. That’s about half the average from eight years ago, but still a dirty grid.
Southwest Power Pool was the second most widespread ISO, with about 425 g/kWh, about 46% fossil power, nearly half of it coal.
“That’s about half the average from eight years ago, but still a dirty grid.”
It really is surprising that when someone spends tens of billions of dollars and gets 2/3 of the political establishment to go along with a few score lies, what they’re trying to do works. And of course what they’re trying to do is stop renewables.
If you eliminate the subsidies (more than $7 trillion a year globally, and historically 100 times what renewable energy has gotten) and externalities (IMF’s $6 trillion a year is a huge understatement, leaving out lots of things) it’s even more clear that fossil fuels are a deadly civilization-threatening scam and renewable energy is cheaper and getting more so. Cleaner, faster, healthier, more ecological, more reliable and resilient, water-wiser, better in every way.
Fossil fuels are the absolute bedrock of our civilisation, and have been for over a century. If we ‘Just Stop Oil’ (+ coal & gas), we’d also stop the food supply for much of humanity, and many of the other things they need to live and thrive. We’d also immediately stop the manufacture of glass and polysilicon for solar panels, concrete and steel for wind turbines, copper and aluminium for power cabling, and the mining of lithium for batteries. Plus of course the ships that transport them. Some of these uses can be substituted, but there’s a long road ahead before they all can be, at sufficient scale. Nor do you, or I, have God-like omniscience on how that will be done (though I sure hope it will be, looking at some of the climate change markers coming our way.)
No, John, we wouldn’t have to do without any of those things. There are excellent substitutes for every one.
Confusing fossil fuels with energy is an endemic condition among denying delayalists and ARFS—anti-renewable fanatics. We get energy from other sources, and it’s been mostly a tragedy and horror that for 2 centuries we subjected humanity and the rest of the biosphere to such deadly poisons because they’re both symbols and reality of domination, sadism, and destruction.
Roman concrete gets stronger with age and exposure to seawater. There are 800 year old buildings made of cob in wet environments, and 5000 year old building remains. Skyscrapers and wind turbines have been built with wood, which could be used far more efficiently if turned into durable goods instead of crap that ends up in a landfill in a few weeks or months.
Electric arc furnaces are taking over—too slowly, for sure, but like everything else, not for any technical reasons, just moronicinsane recalcitrance and lies like yours. Switching to renewables will reduce mining by hundreds or thousands of times. Solar panels take 1/5th of some of the materials they used to, and the CEO of CATL says by 2040 its batteries will be supplied entirely by recycling. In keeping with overwhelming experience, it will almost certainly be sooner.
There are electric mining machines and vehicles of every kind already; increasingly, mines are being powered by solar and wind. Lithium can be extracted as a low-impact by-product of geothermal energy. There’s a limestone-carrying electric dump truck in Switzerland and a mine-bound train in Sweden and others that never need to be recharged—rare but indicative of a growing ability of renewables and electrification to do everything fossils do, and more, better and cheaper.
The vast majority of ship journeys are short high capacity-factor coastal hops that can be easily electrified and thus renewablized, as (of course) Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are doing with ferries and others, and as (of course) China is doing with container and other ships—inland and sea-going—and ports.
Fossil fuels are 40% of global shipping, inefficient because of low capacity factor and soon to be eliminated anyway. Wealth-concentrating and unecological (and phenomenally stoopid) shipping—eg. shipping of 2 or 3 varieties of apples from Australia and Chile to New York—that AFAIR, used to grow a hundred kinds—and shipping of raw materials at 100 times the bulk of finished products that could instead be made mine- and forest-adjacent by people educated and made richer in the process, happen because of corrupt, corporate-controlled trade agreements and corrupt and also stoopid government policies that penalize small and family farms and poor people of color. Those policies and agreements exist because of horrific and worsening inequality.
Sailing ships, sail-assisted, electric and electric-assisted ships and the realization that much of what we do can be done perfectly well at speeds that have satisfied 99.999% of humanity can help a lot.
All the things people on the lunatic denying delayalist far right have said are impossible for renewable energy are being done. Most are being done vastly faster than even their biggest boosters predicted. They could be done even faster without the right wing lies, manipulation, and corruption driving expensive, destructive, and deadly fossil fuels despite far better choices being available and ready.
With a wise, brilliant, and compassionate leader the u.s. overwhelmed 1940s fascism with industrial production in less than 4 years, from a standing start as a military power ranked about even with Portugal, and even though an enormous pile of men, women, children, and machines were simply thrown into the fire and burned up. Now, with a mentally ill moron ruling, and weak, scared, psychologically vulnerable sycophants emerging everywhere, u.s. fascism IS the fire. We need to restore faith in science and truth to put it out.
You’re very fond of the ‘liar’ label, J4Z. No manners taught at your kindie?
The US under Roosevelt swept away the Axis nations in WW2 on a flood of OIL.
China has about 400 electric powered ships for mainly river, and some coastal use, including one 700 container vessel on the Yangtse, with a range of about 1000 miles. There are about 10,000 Chinese ships altogether, including hundreds of 24,000-container ships and bulk carriers. Distance to Europe via the Cape of Good Hope is 13,800 miles. Don’t expect any battery powered vessels to be plying those waters any time soon – or ammonia powered.
Coastal/river is about half of world shipping- not ‘the vast majority’ – and a much smaller proportion of distance logged.
My great grandfather arrived in New Zealand, after a two month journey in a sailing ship, 140 years ago, and built a cob house on the farm he broke in. I visited it recently. Must say I prefer the place I’m in now – these high-CO2 windows and corrugated iron roofs are nice to have! He upgraded as soon as the (coal-powered) train allowed him to export cream to the coast.
I have never understood this illogic. Reality dictates that we will never “Just Stop Oil”. There is a saying, can’t remember it, where people say that statement and then seem to think that justifies saying renewables will never work because then you can’t build the renewables. This is a decades long process for renewables to be the largest generator of electricity. Then more decades for manufacturing.
Also, you use another tactic which I don’t understand the rationality of. Yes, oil (fossil) fuels enabled the industrial revolution, won some wars, and so on. That is inconsequential to the future direction. If it was in any way logical, and I use that word very closely, we should have never switched to oil from coal, coal from wood, ICE vehicles from horse power, fossil fuel ships from wind (the british empire won a lot of wars, land, and commerce without fossil fuels).
‘..after two centuries of energy transition Britain, which is of course the leading countries of energy transition, the first industrialized country and the first country getting out of fossil
fuels (I mean they pretend actually) Britain used four times more wood to produce their energy now than in the 18th century, and just to produce 1.5% of their energy’
You might be interested in this podcast on whether there is an energy transition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxsZtwIhFw&t=7s
Over the last twenty years ‘other renewables’, ie nearly all wind and solar, have been growing fast, to now match either hydro or nuclear, but the absolute growth in each fossil category- oil, gas, and coal – was greater on its own than the growth in those three non-fossil energies combined.
Yes, exponential growth is slow at first. Then it speeds up. Then it’s flabbergasting.
Of course, the insane people have spent tens of billions of dollars lying, manipulating, bribing, intimidating, threatening, smearing, arresting, prosecuting, murdering, destroying democracy, and more, to be a drag on renewables, batteries, EVs, organic permaculture, and all the solutions to the psycho-ecological crisis. If they hadn’t, all the nations would almost certainly have come together with unprecedented and heretofore, now, and henceforth unimaginable cooperative programs of development and the world would already be powered by 100% renewable energy.
For a person to be part of that campaign and then actually have the gross arrogance to ridicule renewable energy for not replacing fossil fuels is utterly unforgivably disgusting. There are times when I couldn’t come up with a convincing argument for it not to be a criminal offense.
So AGAIN, we come to the question we always come to with extremist climate denying delayalists and ARFs—anti-renewable fanatics: lying, stupid, or crazy?
It’s simply not possible for a sane, literate adult involved in this discussion to not understand exponential growth at this point. It’s not possible for that person to not understand that the fossil-fueled far right is lying. Given the stakes, anyone lying to prevent solutions to this, the most dire crisis in history, is seriously mentally disturbed. So the answer is always the same: it’s all 3.
Get into psychotherapy.
UK isn’t leading on most measures, though the abandonment of coal by the perpetrator of the Industrial Revolution is a morale booster fer sure.
Germany, the Iberian grid of Spain & Portugal, Scotland, Canada, Brazil, and the Nordic grid (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland) all have higher percentages of renewable energy. Nicaragua and 60 or 80 other countries that couldn’t be called major, do too, including at least 23 at or near 100% RE grids. Australia, Morocco, even Pakistan and Vietnam have come on strong in the last decade; Netherlands, Lithuania, Greece, Taiwan, and UAE have all made significant advances the last 3 years.
China’s coal use may have peaked. https://emp.lbl.gov/publications/has-coal-use-peaked-china-near-term
The ARFs are losing 1 of their main, though still bogus and ridiculous, arguments against the us developing renewables and implementing solutions. I’m sure they’ll keep using it anyway.
Hydrogen is yet another scam promulgated by fossil fuel corporations and the far right. Michael Barnard has written extensively about it at CleanTechnica.
Energy use is growing, largely because even though efficiency alone is replacing far more fossil fuels than nukes have, and renewables have prevented many tens of billions of tons of carbon emissions, (465 million metric tons in 2022 alone) too many countries are making no serious or honest effort with either efficiency or renewables, especially compared to the scale of the crisis.
I’ve never said we would succeed in preventing catastrophic climate change or global ecological collapse, only that we could. Because the insane people have delayed action so long, that’s no longer possible. We can still prevent worse, but the times ahead are going to be hell on Earth and there’s nothing we can do about it now. You keep arguing against a straw person.
And yet again, arguing about what renewable energy can do based on what the right wing lunatics in charge allow it to do, aided by a campaign of lies you’ve been part of, is an absurd argument on multiple levels.
Why do you keep making it? Got nothing else, I guess.
It’s easy to tell who’s lying. People can look at the facts and read what honest climate realists say vs the right wing liars and deniers.
Another report says renewables replaced more than 700 million tons in 2022.
Yes, again, in fact telling the same lie again, to confuse people about the difference between fossil fuel energy and energy.
We need the latter for industrial society to continue, survive, improve. We need to stop using the former for industrial civilization to continue, survive, improve.
I’m not sure what your perseverating point about past use of fossil fuels is. Is it implying climate realists don’t know fossil fuels were used in the past? I assure you we’re all aware. I do question the sanity of anyone who could think otherwise.
Do you or did you work for fossil fuel corporations or are you paid to be a troll for them?
Is it denial that climate catastrophe is happening, human-caused, and a dire, urgent, existential threat to civilization and nature? That’s quite insane at this point, but is obviously responsible for at least part of your hatred of renewable energy. And relentless denial against all facts on the ground and overwhelming science is obviously partly responsible.
I think it’s also at least partly worship of destruction, and nihilistic desire for the end of everything, which is so perfectly symbolized by the burning of fossil fuels and the smashing of atoms. Whatever your reasons, denial of climate-and-renewable reality is at the root.
Your ridiculous Cape of Good Hope bullshit is offensive. Spain to North Africa I believe is somewhat less than 1000 miles, and numerous ports along the way can and must be electrified and renewablized to recharge ships. Especially with the economic stimulus that will give those areas, there will almost certainly be enough trade at each one to make the stops even more sensible.
I was misled irt a few numbers by an article quoting poorly-defined and confused statistics on shipping. (The routes between China and Australia, eg. are not classed as coastal or inland shipping but are perfectly amenable to the same short-to-medium-hop recharging, and of course battery power and ranges are increasing incredibly quickly despite the lies and manipulation of psychopaths.
My point remains the same, as your own figures show, if they’re true. 400 ships in China alone are more than just a start to the elimination of fossil fuels in shipping as in every other sector, especially considering the headwinds all climate solutions face because of lies like yours. Having gotten this far, acceleration is virtually certain. With the necessary elimination of fossil fuel, neo-colonially-driven bulk raw material, and inequality- and corporate-trade-agreement-driven shipping like the apples, and with irrational and inefficient hyper-competitiveness being replaced by sensible computer coordination of pick ups and drop offs, inland, coastal and other short-hop shipping will predominate. I don’t know how much the insane right wing will continue to block solutions; I do know that if we don’t implement them, the chances of civilization and nature surviving another century are far worse.
Every point you try to make just reveals your refusal to be honest, with yourself or us—of course on the net, it’s hard to tell for sure which it is—but dishonesty it is, just the same. The coal train is now or soon will be renewably electric. (The us far right remains almost uniquely defiant against the science of ecology and physics in this as in many other regards.)
“Europe, China, India Can Electrify All Rail, Why Can’t the US?” https://cleantechnica.com/2023/02/07/europe-china-india-can-electrify-all-rail-why-cant-the-us/amp/
I started out being unusually polite and respectful; both have been sandblasted away by decades of having to repeat the same and different facts personally and professionally debunking the same right wing fossil-fueled corium lava over and over and over and over…
My hope of keeping the us from becoming a fascist pseudo-christian medieval theocracy, at least until the biosphere and civilization collapse together taking the country with it, of course, is fading. I do still hope that people forgive me for being impolite to mass-murdering psychotic psychopaths, at least on the internet, where it’s hard to give them proper treatment. I tried for years, but finally gave it up.
I say you’re lying because other than a possible affliction with SISS—pSychologically Induced Stupidity Syndrome—I’m pretty sure you’re not so stupid as to believe all the crap you leave here. I could be wrong, of course; you really could be that stupid or delusional. (Folie à deux or induced delusional disorder) SOMEONE here is lying; if it’s not you in the strictest sense it’s you in a broader sense because you’ve been corrected so many times it’s inconceivable that an allegedly smart person like you would unintentionally keep returning to the same lying psychopaths as sources after learning they’re lying. It can only be intentional.
And again, of course, the Recursive Prophetic Lie; lying so renewable energy and other climate solutions are slowed and then using the lack of renewables etc. to attack them, implying they can’t do what they are increasingly doing. An even more disgusting manipulative lie—excuse me, deceptive fallacy—than most of them. It’s a very low barre indeed for this boring, creepy, and sick dance.
Unfortunately, J4Z, that railway line has long gone, replaced by a bike trail – and trucks. I know a truck driver trainer involved in an experimental trial of mixing hydrogen in with the diesel fuel, but don’t expect much from it – a few years ago the Greenpeace-backed ‘Windgas’ company in Germany was ‘baptising’ piped Russian gas by adding about 1% H2, to minimal effect on the climate. The parasails supposed to cut ship emissions ‘by up to 20%’, that I was reading about fifteen years ago, have had a similar effect on the world’s oil use.
Not much point us arguing about who’s lying to himself, get outside a bit, so wiil I.
John