No, hell, they didn’t suddenly start believing in science. They don’t care about the planet, or their children.
They just want to make sure the price of electricity doesn’t spike to the moon before the ’28 election.
I’ll take it.
Newt Gingrich in the Daily Caller:
Solar and wind power are popular, with 80 percent and 74 percent respectively backing local construction. In the right areas, they make a ton of sense. Further, these technologies grow cheaper and more reliable every year. They have their place in a comprehensive energy-abundance strategy—but they can’t work alone.
America’s energy future demands a bold, diversified plan emphasizing natural gas, clean fuel technologies, nuclear, and renewables. Diversification reduces supply disruptions and ensures economic stability. Modern grid technology improves reliability and affordability. Securing abundant energy is vital for economic growth, innovation, and global competitiveness.
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Washington Post took note of White House resident racist maniac Steven Miller’s wife Katy posting a note favorable to solar energy.
“Solar energy is the energy of the future,” Katie Miller posted recently. “Giant fusion reactor up there in the sky — we must rapidly expand solar to compete with China.” Another of her posts suggested solar is more vital to the U.S. than coal power, contradicting White House messaging and policy.
Trump has been blunt about his distaste for solar panels, calling them a “blight” on the landscape, “very inefficient, and very ugly too” and — along with wind turbines — “THE SCAM OF THE CENTURY.” His administration has blocked hundreds of projects from final approval as it prioritizes fossil fuels.
Yet Katie Miller is no outlier in her willingness to buck MAGA orthodoxy on energy from the sun.
A growing number of prominent Trump allies — including former House speaker Newt Gingrich, veteran strategist Kellyanne Conway and GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio — are promoting solar as electricity demand surges and energy affordability climbs the list of voter concerns.
Their clean energy advocacy may be having an impact, as the White House signals it is reconsidering power from the sun. The tone of Trump himself has even changed.
In an interview, Miller said solar is crucial to delivering on the right’s energy and AI dominance agenda. “Look at what Australia did,” she said. “Solar solved their rolling blackout issues. President Trump has prioritized lowering the cost of energy for the American people … I am simply advocating that solar can and should be a driver of the solution.”
It reflects a realization taking hold more broadly among Republicans that solar power — long embraced by liberals — is increasingly indispensable to America’s bid to dominate AI, close a yawning “electron gap” with China and contain runaway residential electricity costs. These conservatives describe it as crucial to U.S. competitiveness, the grid’s reliability and their own movement’s political survival.Climate change rarely enters the conversation.
The United States is in the midst of the largest increase in electricity demand in decades, driven by the explosive growth of data centers, giant warehouses of computers built to power AI tools and other software. Tech companies have warned that their ability to expand is increasingly constrained by a lack of available power.
Solar is one of the few options for bringing new electricity generation online quickly — projects can often be planned and connected to the grid in a fraction of the time required for new fossil and nuclear energy sources.
Together with battery storage, solar will account for 79 percent of the new capacity added to the U.S. power grid this year, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. Most of it is destined for Republican states, with 40 percent going to Texas alone.
While the Trump administration’s work to delay permits, cancel projects, gut federal clean energy programs, eliminate climate rules and attack state clean energy targets puts solar power at a disadvantage compared to gas, coal and nuclear energy, it is under increasing pressure from its political base to consider leveraging solar panels to address the U.S. energy crunch and affordability crisis.
Signs the White House is yielding to it emerged last week when the Interior Department revealed it is allowing several large-scale projects it had blocked to resume moving through the permitting process, acknowledging such installations align with Trump’s energy agenda. In a call with reporters last week, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who has called solar power “just a parasite” on the power grid, also changed his tone.
“Is there a commercial role for solar power that can add to the grid affordable, reliable energy?” he said. “Certainly there is.”
(Elon)Musk is now throwing his influence behind a moonshot effort to wrest solar manufacturing away from China. His company, Tesla, is planning to build factories that would manufacture 100 gigawatts of solar cells annually in the United States — which the billionaire says will be a linchpin of the U.S. data center boom.
In Virginia, a coalition of conservatives pushing for more solar power is printing “Make Solar Great Again” hats. In Wisconsin and other states, legislative Republicans are leading a push to allow farmers to generate power from solar installations on underutilized acreage.
In Nevada, Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo has been boasting about his ability to talk the Trump administration into advancing three industrial solar projects it had blocked: Libra Solar, Dry Lake East and Boulder Solar III. The projects would sprawl across thousands of acres.
Some Republicans are more comfortable embracing solar now that the GOP-controlled Congress has dismantled tax breaks for the solar industry, which were seen by many conservatives as unfairly tilting the scale in favor of solar panels in the name of a climate crusade they did not endorse.
Nevada is going to eventually come up with solar replacement for the loss of Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon Dam. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and effectively permanently.
At least getting rid of Lake Powell and its high evaporation rate will backstop the capacity of Lake Mead behind the Hoover Dam downstream.