Media Won't Report That Renewable Energy Subsidies Dwarf Fossil Fuel Subsidies
On April 11, The New York Times ran an article titled, “Why Are Taxpayers Propping Up the Fossil Fuel Industry?” in which the author claims, “Around the world, taxpayers are helping to support fossil fuels through subsidies when their money could be funding green energy transitions instead.”
This article should have been printed 10 days earlier, on April 1, under the heading: “April Fool’s Joke!”
In reality, taxpayers are not propping up the fossil fuel industry, however, they are propping up the renewable energy industry.
According to the World Economic Forum, “Government spending on clean energy has risen by more than $500 billion since March 2022…This brings the total amount allocated to clean energy since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic to more than $1.2 trillion.”
In the United States, under the Biden administration, green energy subsidies have increased substantially as well.
For example, thanks to Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act, the U.S. government will spend more than $400 billion on renewable energy subsidies over the next decade. This includes a $7,500 tax credit for the purchase of an electric vehicle (EV) and a $14,000 tax rebate for the purchase of “heat pumps and other energy efficient home appliances.”
Biden also packed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law with more than $100 billion in green energy subsidies, which includes $7.5 billion towards EV charging stations and $5 billion for electric school buses.
According to Biden, “This moment demands urgent investments the American people want and our nation needs – investments that will bolster America’s competitiveness, resilience, and economy all while creating good-paying jobs, saving people money, and building an equitable clean energy economy of the future.”
Make no mistake, renewable energy subsidies are not a new phenomenon by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, the United States has been “investing” in renewable energy technology since 1979, when it began offering tax credits for wind and solar power.
In 2009, President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which allocated more than $87 billion in green energy subsidies. At the time, Al Gore praised the law, claiming it would create, “critical investments in energy efficiency, renewable energy and a unified national smart grid. By accelerating America’s shift to a clean energy economy, this bill lays the foundation for a true recovery and is an important first step in dramatically reducing our carbon emissions.”
Fourteen years after the fact, we now know that Gore (as per usual) wildly overstated these claims. We also know that many of these subsidies, such as the $570 million guaranteed loan the government gave to Solyndra, turned out to be a total waste of taxpayer money.
Yet, despite the hundreds of billions in taxpayer funds that have flowed to green energy projects over the past few decades, the industry still represents only a fraction of total power generation in the United States. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), “In 2021, renewable energy sources accounted for about 12.4% of total U.S. primary energy consumption.”
Since 2010, according to EIA data, subsidies for renewable energy have dwarfed subsidies for fossil fuels.
Per the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), “since the mid-2000s, new legislation has expanded the scope of federal energy policy, and the share of total financial support provided through energy-related tax incentives that goes toward the production of fossil fuels has decreased.”
How much has this decreased? The CBO notes, “Roughly three-fourths of the projected cost of tax preferences for energy in 2016 was for renewable energy and energy efficiency. An estimated $10.9 billion, or 59 percent of the energy-related tax preferences, was directed toward renewable energy; $2.7 billion, or 15 percent, went to energy efficiency or electricity transmission. Fossil fuels accounted for most of the remaining cost of energy-related tax preferences—an estimated $4.6 billion, or 25 percent.”
Keep in mind, that was all the way back in 2016, well before the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law added $500 billion more to the left’s renewable energy slush fund.
And, that was five years before President Biden signed an executive order that “directs federal agencies to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies.”
Clearly, a trend is occurring in which the U.S. government, and governments around the globe, are picking energy winners and losers.
However, unlike the Times article would have you believe, these governments are not pouring billions into “propping up” fossil fuel companies. Instead, they are villainizing fossil fuels as they stubbornly continue to throw good money after bad.
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Residents Erupt After Michigan Dem Approves CCP-Backed Green Energy Deal
Michigan residents erupted angrily after state Democrats approved funding for a Chinese-backed green energy project.
During the Michigan State Senate Budget Committee hearing, Democrat lawmakers granted the final approval of $175 million in taxpayer money in a 10-9 vote to Gotion, a Hefei-based, China-based Gotion High-Tech subsidiary building electric vehicle (EV) battery factory in Big Rapids.
However, almost all of the residents in attendants were less than thrilled about the plan, slamming the Chinese-backed deal.
"Why are we even considering, why would the county, the township, the state of Michigan even consider a Chinese-based company if, in fact, there is an American company willing to build this type of plant," Russ Jennings, a resident, said.
Another resident expressed frustration and anger, criticizing the state for rushing a lucrative decision that would impact everyone.
"I am angry. I'm angry that this vote slipped into the agenda today with as little information as possible so people like me wouldn't know it's happening," she said. "I am furious that you, our elected officials, have ignored requests from my community to submit this ballot until a small semblance of due diligence can be conducted."
Furthermore, a community member accused the Chinese government of having a broader plan to "overthrow the United States without firing a shot."
She said that the whole state should be concerned and that the Chinese Communist Party is dangerous and a "threat to our way of life and our God-given and constitutional freedoms."
Last year, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich) announced that Gotion would invest $2.4 billion to build two 550,000-square-foot manufacturing facilities on 260 acres in northern Michigan. Praising the proposal, the Democrat claimed it would boost the state's status as a "global hub for mobility and electrification."
The supervisor of Barton Township, a jurisdiction near the proposed site, Kyle Luce, said 85 percent of its residents were against Gotion's CCP-funded project.
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NYC exposes its own folly on climate change
City Comptroller Brad Lander no doubt thought he was helping the climate war (and scoring points with warriors) when he boasted of his “dashboard” on climate progress last week, in advance of Saturday’s celebration of Earth Day.
Instead, he wound up exposing the utter folly of New York’s pricey efforts to lower Earth’s temperature.
Start with Lander’s revelation that the city’s reliance on fossil fuels for power has grown since 2019 — from 75% to 89%.
That’s largely thanks to the closure of the Indian Point nuclear plant, which accounted for 25% of the city’s juice.
The city plans to make up for that by expanding solar, with 72 megawatts installed last year, putting Gotham on pace to meet its 2030 goal.
Yet that goal,1,000 MW, is just half of the 2,000 MW Indian Point could put out.
And just a fraction of the 13,000 MW the city needs.
Lander’s term for the goal, “modest,” is the understatement of the century. (And Indian Point didn’t need cloudless skies to generate power.)
There’s more: The city is “committed” to limiting its greenhouse-gas emissions to 12 metric tons a year, an 80% cut by 2050, the dashboard notes.
Yet over the decade since 2011, it brought them down by less than 4%, to 53.9 metric tons in 2021.
And added cuts will only get harder as low-hanging fruit vanishes.
Lander’s dashboard also brags of a $3.8 billion divestment from fossil fuels, in pursuit of “net zero greenhouse gas emissions,” by companies in the city’s pension funds by 2040.
Yet divesting from an entire economic sector will inevitably narrow the funds’ diversity, boost risks and preclude the opportunity for greater returns. (Remember: Taxpayers must make up any pension-fund shortfalls.)
And the greenies continue to demand ever more pain, including a push for all-electric buildings that’ll require vast infrastructure upgrades — and spell the end of gas stoves — without actually reducing emissions, since fossil fuels still generate the most electricity.
Meanwhile, the left’s Climate Change Superfund Act aims to make fossil-fuel companies pay for their past, perfectly legal business operations.
If it actually became law and survived court challenges, it might help cover the monster tab — as much as a half trillion dollars — of meeting the state’s emission goals.
Then again, New York consumers would get socked with hefty new costs as the firms pass along that charge.
And the big picture is all about futility: Even if the city and state somehow meet their goals (at enormous pain and expense), it won’t budge global temps one bit, especially as nations like China and India continue to increase their greenhouse-gas output.
Yet if the entire world stopped doing anything more to combat it, climate change would still have a negligible impact on worldwide GDP by 2100, per the UN’s own climate-change panel.
Lander’s inadvertent admission about the failures of the city’s climate agenda, in short, is just a case study of the futility of the entire global campaign
https://nypost.com/2023/04/22/nyc-exposes-its-own-folly-on-climate-change/
************************************************How liberal politicians steer trillions of public funds via ESG
It’s no surprise that liberal politicians have been some of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies’ strongest proponents.
ESG-friendly politicians often co-opt pension fund money for political ends.
However, that’s not the only power they have.
Elected officials can also wield influence through executive orders, agency directives, and letter writing to pave the way for ESG asset managers to access the back door of corporate America and sometimes even shove those managers through.
That’s exactly what President Biden has done.
The first thing he did when he took office was pick up his executive order pen.
He used it to direct his federal agencies to revisit their rules with an eye toward making them more ESG-friendly.
There was no need for messy bipartisanship, congressional compromises, or involving the legislative branch at all.
Why bother with the tedious, constitutionally approved method of making new laws when there is an army of federal bureaucrats at your disposal?
On day one of his presidency, he lamented “the unbearable human costs of systemic racism” and mandated an “ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda.”
To that end, he instructed every federal agency to “assess whether, and to what extent, its programs and policies perpetuate systemic barriers to opportunities and benefits for people of color,” among other things.
He gave the agencies 200 days to do so and report back.
The same day, he rejoined the Paris Agreement, and simultaneously issued another order directing that all federal agencies “immediately commence work to confront the climate crisis.”
This time, the agencies had 30 days to respond.
Within a week, he issued yet another order, promising “bold, progressive action that combines the full capacity of the Federal Government with efforts from every corner of our Nation, every level of government, and every sector of our economy.”
He charged every federal agency with appointing an “Agency Chief Sustainability Officer” and announced that the United States would be “promoting the flow of capital toward climate-aligned investments and away from high-carbon investments.”
By May, his executive orders became even more specific, focusing federal climate efforts on the financial sector in particular.
Through strokes of the executive pen, a Green New Deal that would never be approved by Congress would be pushed on corporate America through Wall Street, guided by the heavy hand of federal agencies at every turn.
Following the orders of the new climate commander-in-chief, the government joined the ESG battle. For the most part, federal agencies were pleased to be conscripted into service.
The Department of Labor was one of the first agencies to respond.
At the time Biden took office, the department had regulations that made it harder for retirement fund managers to do ESG investing.
The existing Trump-era rule memorialized the DOL’s long-standing requirement that private pension fund managers consider only pecuniary factors when making investment, engagement, and proxy voting decisions.
Less than two months after President Biden took office, the department announced that it would not enforce the rule.
As a department representative explained at the time, the DOL sought to replace the existing financially focused rules with ones that “better recognize the important role that environmental, social and governance integration can play in the evaluation and management of plan investments.”
And replace the rules it did. In October 2021, the Biden administration proposed a new regulation that repealed the Trump-era rules and replaced them with one that encouraged ESG investing with retirement and pension fund money.
The proposed rule pushed retirement fund managers to consider ESG factors such as “climate change” and “collateral benefits other than investment returns” when investing employees’ money. Indeed, it said that consideration of ESG factors was “often require[d].”
The enacted version was slightly less radical; it says that investment managers “may” consider ESG factors, rather than requiring them.
The overall message is still pro-ESG. It still represented a departure from the strict financial focus of the Trump-era rules.
The Department of Labor, of course, is not supposed to be in the business of making environmental policy; it’s supposed to be protecting workers — their working conditions, their safety, their wages, and, in this instance, their retirement funds.
The very reason Congress had asked the Department of Labor to oversee pension and retirement accounts was to ensure that the funds would have as much money as possible — not just because American workers are depending on it but because taxpayers will end up on the short end of the funds fall short.
Now, if a company’s pensions are underfunded or a company goes bankrupt, taxpayers will make up the shortfall.
But in return, companies providing retirement benefits are required to fund their pensions and invest the assets “solely in the interest of the participants and beneficiaries.”
Allowing plan managers to invest for “collateral benefits” doesn’t just run afoul of this statutory language; it runs counter to the justification for allowing the Department of Labor to regulate pension funds in the first place.
That’s not just my opinion, but the opinion of 25 state attorneys general.
In January, a coalition of 25 states and a handful of private businesses sued the Department of Labor.
They alleged that the rule change allows large asset managers to “leverage ERISA plans assets for nonpecuniary ESG purposes,” which violates ERISA and exceeds the department’s authority.
In this case, the rule change isn’t just bad, but likely illegal.
Only time will tell if the Texas court decides to use the Wite-Out on the presidential pen
https://nypost.com/2023/04/22/how-liberal-politicians-maneuver-trillions-via-esg/
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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