All that money is wasted. Wind and solar and the various battery projects have not managed to support the electrical grid in any substantial way, hovering, on average, around 4 percent.
The most egregious theft of collective wealth and well-being — and it is flat-out theft — is the churn on “alternative” forms of energy production. Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama said last week in an interview with Steve Bannon that the U.S. has spent some $7 trillion over budget in the last three years, and 25 percent of that went to “climate change” projects. They are all like Solyndra, massively subsidized and within a decade, massive failures. “The investors take a tax loss,” said Tuberville, “then move onto the next effort where they again loot the public.” This is salted through all the investment banks, retirement accounts. It represents all putative growth.
In June of 2023, the Department of Energy admitted that it had allocated $1.3 trillion for “clean energy” investment support since 2020, and that spending rose 25 percent from 2021-23. This is a fraction of what was really spent. Further, this money is not only based in debt, thus raising inflation, but it is also raising energy prices. It is the principal reason that almost 25 percent of us, according to economist Peter St. Onge, have been forced to choose between heat and food this winter.
What a choice.
$1,750,000,000, in an annual gift to the rich. The World Economic Forum projects that climate spending in the U.S. will triple over the next ten years. Biden’s “climate” budget is $5.7 trillion. Triple that to $20 trillion. No wonder the market is booming. The U.S. has pledged another half a trillion in “low carbon electricity” under this year’s Paris Climate Accord. And further:
Among all measures tracked since 2020, direct incentives for manufacturers aimed at bolstering domestic manufacturing of “clean” energy now total to around $90 billion.
Since the start of the global energy crisis, governments have also allocated $900 billion to short-term consumer affordability measures, additional to pre-existing support programs and subsidies. Around 30 percent of this “affordability” spending has been announced in the past six months, and despite calls to better target households and industries most in need, only 25 percent of affordability measures are targeted towards low-income households and most-impacted industries.
Much of this last $900 billion is direct subsidy to the wealthy in annual subsidies for clean energy. This is again, annual subsidy, so look at the last twenty years. President Obama started this program, therefore, we are looking at a $10 – $ 20 trillion gift to the rich since the Lightbringer took office. What is not counted in these budgets are the losses that accrue from the failure of “green energy” projects, which is the taxpayer’s loss.
Last year, investors in Spain’s green energy collapse took the government to court to claw back subsidies from a dead industry in a country with a debt 400 percent larger than GDP. No wonder millions on the street want to outlaw socialism. As is clear from Spain, when the government runs out of money the first thing to go is the subsidy to green energy, after which the enterprise fails immediately.
In my neck of the Canadian woods, you can install a solar system for $20,000, and get a 25 percent subsidy, as does the installer whose business the government created via “free” “investment.” I live ina rain forest. Which means solar is not available during winter rains and not needed during the summers. Recently everyone with a few extra bucks has taken up the government offer to install heat pumps, also subsidized by between 50 percent and 75 percent. Rain forests mean hydro power, which is essentially, greenhouse-gas-free, and the most inexpensive “fuel,” but an almost-free heat pump? Again win/win for the upper-middle-class because no one in Canada’s increasingly massive working class can afford it.
This model was invented by politicians in power. The first person to notice it was Peter Schweizer; inThrow Them All Out, he details the billionaire investors who funded Obama and who were cashed out via various solar and wind projects. Hundreds of billions of dollars went missing on Obama’s various “clean energy” projects.
This year, every government department is “investing” in clean energy, vis, a quick Google search, will show. Pages and pages of boastful press releases follow. Every agency is in on the boondoggle. NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Patent and Trade Mark Office have signed a collaborative agreement to advance climate technology. Putting aside the fact that “climate change” is neither imminent nor dangerous, the government should not be creating patents. Innovation should be carried out by the private market, where there are controls.
As we discovered during Covid, government patents on both the virus and the vaccine were not subjected to court challenge, double blind testing, or feasibility. There is no number attached to NOAA’s “initiative,” but this is representative of ten thousand such projects salted through every government bureau. All that money is wasted. Wind and solar and the various battery projects have not managed to support the electrical grid in any substantial way, hovering, on average, around 4 percent. Despite this mind-boggling waste of money, in September last year former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg pledged another $500 billion to shutter the equivalent of 40 percent total electricity use of nine states, including California, Florida, New York, Illinois and Texas.
What has been the result of trillions of public money shunted into “clean” “green” “energy” on the actual energy grid? Robert Bryce, an acknowledged expert, shows that it is failing. A speech he gave at the winter meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners showed astonishing, across the-board failure in every metric you can imagine.
“Climate Policy” is considered the most significant risk. As Bryce describes, “green energy” has meant Europe is deindustrializing, Ford lost $64,731 for every EV it sold, and the IEA states that global coal use will hit another new record of 8.5 billion tons. Coal use increased 35 percent in last summer’s heat wave. Wind dropped by 21 percent.
Climate policy breaks everything. It breaks communities, it encourages widespread theft of public money, it starves productive work and manufacturing, it has punched down on the less advantaged, and it is destroying the fabric of our lives. And for what?
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A majority of Americans say it is more important for the U.S. to establish energy independence than to fight climate change, according to new polling.
The poll from Napolitan News Service of 1,000 registered voters shows that 57% of voters say making America energy independent is more important than fighting climate change, while 39% feel the opposite and 4% are unsure.
Those surveyed also were asked: Which is more important, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change, or keeping the price of cars low enough for families to afford them?
Half of voters (50%) said keeping the price of cars low was more important to them than reducing emissions, while 43% said emissions reductions were more important than the price of buying a car.
When asked, “Which is more important, reducing greenhouse gas emissions or reducing the cost and improving the reliability of electricity and gas for American families?”, 59% said reducing the cost and increasing the reliability was more important compared to 35% who said reducing emissions was more important.
The survey was conducted online by pollster Scott Rasmussen on March 18-19. Field work was conducted by RMG Research. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points
Dan McCaleb is the executive editor of The Center Square. He welcomes your comments. Contact Dan at [email protected].
Canada has set ambitious climate goals, aiming to cut its greenhouse-gas emissions by 40 to 45 per cent by 2030, and to hit net-zero emissions by 2050.
Now a senior fellow at Resource Works, Jerome Gessaroli, argues that Canada is over-focusing internally on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, when we should “look at cooperating with developing countries to jointly reduce emissions.”
He continues: “And we do that in a way that helps ourselves. It helps meet our own goals. That’s through Article 6 of the Paris Accord, allowing countries to share emission reduction credits from jointly developed projects.”
Reduction on a global scale
Article 6, says Gessaroli, means this: “We can work towards meeting our own emission goals, and can help developing countries meet theirs. We can do it in a way that’s much more efficient. We get a lot more bang for our buck than if we are trying to just do it domestically on our own.”
The point is that, in the end, emissions are reduced on a global scale — as he stressed in a five-part series that he wrote for Resource Works last November.
And in a study for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (where he is a senior fellow) he wrote: “The benefits could be large. Canada could reduce emissions by 50 per cent more if it carried out methane reduction projects both internationally and domestically, rather than solely in Canada.”
But is Ottawa interested?
Gessaroli says the federal government expressed interest in Article 6 in 2019 — but has not moved since then.
“They barely looked at it. Since this requires government-to-government coordination, it needs Ottawa’s initiative. But there doesn’t seem to be too much interest, too much appetite in that.”
All Ottawa has said so far is: “Going forward, Canada will explore these and other similar options to strengthen international co-operation and generate incentives for further emission reductions.”
Gessaroli on Resource Works
Gessaroli has been working with Resource Works since he first spoke with our Stewart Muir, following a letter that Muir wrote in The Vancouver Sun in 2022: ‘Gas has key role to play in meeting 1.5C climate targets.’
Gessaroli saw in Resource Works advocacy for responsible resource development “for the people, the citizens of BC, in an environmentally responsible manner and in a manner that’s efficient, driven by the private sector.”
And: “Resource Works supports responsible resource development, not uncritical expansion. We have these resources. We should develop them, but in a way that benefits society, respects nature, respects the local peoples, and so that wide elements of society can benefit from that resource development.”
Gessaroli on electric vehicles
Gessaroli hit a shared interest with Resource Works in a 2024 paper for its Energy Futures Institute, critiquing BC’s plan to require that all new vehicles sold in the province must be electric zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) by 2035.
For one thing, he wrote, BC would need to spend $1.8 billion to provide electric charging points for the vehicles. And billions more would be required to provide expanded power generation and transmission systems.
“The Government of BC should adjust or rescind its mandated targets for new minimum zero-emission vehicle sales.”
And on ZEV subsidies
Stewart Muir and Barry Penner, chair of the Energy Futures Institute, wrote a guest column last October in Business in Vancouver. They cited Gessaroli’s paper above, and noted: “According to Gessaroli, meeting BC’s ZEV targets will require an additional 2,700 gigawatt hours of electricity by 2030, and 9,700 gigawatt hours by 2040—almost equal to the output of two Site C dams.”
Gessaroli has also looked at the subsidies BC offers (up to $4,000) to people who buy an electric vehicle.
“The subsidies do help. They do incentivize people to buy EVs. But it’s a very costly way to reduce carbon emissions, anywhere upwards of $600, $700, even $800 a tonne to eliminate one tonne of carbon.
“When you look at the social cost of carbon, the government uses a figure around $170 a tonne. That’s the damage done from every tonne of carbon emitted into the atmosphere. So we’re paying $800 to remove one tonne of carbon when that same tonne of carbon does damage of about $170. That doesn’t sound like a very cost-effective way of getting rid of carbon, does it?”
Gessaroli on Donald Trump’s policies
Gessaroli says tariffs on imports are not the only benefit that Donald Trump plans for U.S. industry that will hurt Canada.
“He also wants to reduce tax rates, 15% for US manufacturers, and allow full deductibility for equipment purchases. You reduce regulations and red tape on companies while lowering their tax rates. They’re already competitive to begin with. Well, they’re going to be even more competitive, more innovative.”
For Canada, he says: “Get rid of the government heavy hand of overtaxing and enforcing inefficient and ineffective regulations. Get rid of all of that. Encourage competition in the marketplace. And over time, we’d find Canadians can be quite innovative and quite competitive in our own right. And we can hold our own. We can be better off.
“And there’d be more tax revenues being generated by the government. With the tax revenue, you can build the roads, build the hospitals, improve the healthcare system, things like that.
“But without this type of vibrant economic type activity, you’re going to get the stagnation we’re seeing right now.”
About Jerome Gessaroli
Gessaroli leads the Sound Economic Policy Project at the B.C. Institute of Technology. He is the lead Canadian co-author of Financial Management: Theory and Practice, a widely used textbook. His writing has appeared in many Canadian newspapers.
Stewart Muir, CEO of Resource Works, highlights Gessaroli’s impact: “Jerome brings a level of economic and policy analysis that cuts through the noise. His research doesn’t just challenge assumptions—it provides a roadmap for smarter, more effective climate and energy policies.
“Canada needs more thinkers like him, who focus on pragmatic solutions that benefit both the environment and the economy.”
Gessaroli and Karen, his wife of 34 years, live in Vancouver and enjoy cruising to unwind. In his downtime, Gessaroli reads about market ethics and political economy — which he calls his idea of relaxation.
