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Economy

Heritage Foundation president tells Davos: Future Trump admin must reject all WEF ideas

Published

4 months ago

6 minute read

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos

From LifeSiteNews

By Andreas Wailzer

The Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts said that everyone in the next administration must ‘compile a list of everything that’s ever been proposed at the World Economic Forum’ and object to ‘all of them, wholesale.’

The president of the conservative Heritage Foundation in said in his appearance at Davos that the next Republican administration needs to reject “everything that’s ever been proposed at the World Economic Forum.”

Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation, the leading conservative think tank in the U.S., said during a panel discussion called “What to Expect from a Possible Republican Administration?” that “the kind of person who will come into the next conservative administration is going to be governed by one principle and that is destroying the grasp that political elites and unelected technocrats have over the average person.”

“And if I may, I will be candid and say that the agenda that every single member of the administration needs to have is to compile a list of everything that’s ever been proposed at the World Economic Forum and object [to] all of them, wholesale.”

“Anyone not prepared to do that and take away this power of the unelected bureaucrats and give it back to the American people in unprepared to be part of the next conservative administration.”

Trump admin will ‘trust the science’ and reject push of gender ideology

Roberts said that the idea that the WEF is defending “liberal democracy” and the suggestion that Trump would be a “dictator” are both “laughable.”

“Whoever is the next conservative president is going to take on the power of the elites,” he declared.

“Political elites tell the average people on three or four or five issues, that the reality is X, when in fact reality is Y.”

Roberts went on to list five things as examples that President Trump will take on if he is elected:

“Take immigration: elites tell us that open borders and even illegal immigration are okay, the average person tells us in the United States that both rob them of the American way of life.”

“Thirdly, I guess the favorite at the World Economic Forum, is climate change. Elites tell us that we have this existential crisis with so-called ‘climate change,’ so much so that climate alarmism is probably the greatest cause for [the] mental health crisis in the world. The solutions, the average person knows, based on climate change are far worse and more harmful and cost more human lives, especially in Europe during the time that you need heating, than to the problems themselves.”

“The fourth: China. The number one adversary not just to the United States but to free people on planet Earth. Not only do we at Davos not say that, we give the Chinese Communist Party a platform. Count on President Trump ending that nonsense.”

“And fifth, another supernational organization, the World Health Organization, is discussing foisting gender ideology upon [the] Global South. These are practices that are under review if not being rejected, by countries in Northern Europe.”,

“The new president, especially if it is President Trump, will, as you like to say, ‘trust the science.’ He will understand the basic biological reality of manhood and womanhood.”

“I think President Trump, if in fact he wins a second term, is going to be inspired by the wise words of Javier Milei, who said that he was in power not to guide sheep but to awaken lions,” Roberts concluded.

Roberts: ‘I’ll probably never be invited back’ to the WEF

In a video published on his X account shortly before his appearance in Davos, Roberts said that “for too long, the self-appointed globalist elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland have lorded over you and me.”

“And you’ll never guess, the president of the Heritage Foundation was invited this year to go, and against my preference, I’m going, on your behalf, to read those people the riot act.”

“Their time of lording over us has come to an end, whether it’s COVID lockdowns, riding over there in their beautiful fancy private jets while lecturing us at the same time, sometimes while on the plane, that climate change is an existential threat.”

“I’m going to talk about all of it. I’ll probably never be invited back, but considering I never wanted to go in the first place, I look forward to it.”

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‘Gambling With The Grid’: New Data Highlights Achilles’ Heel Of One Of Biden’s Favorite Green Power Sources

Economy

‘Gambling With The Grid’: New Data Highlights Achilles’ Heel Of One Of Biden’s Favorite Green Power Sources

Published on May 4, 2024

By

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By NICK POPE

 

New government data shows that wind power generation fell in 2023 despite the addition of new capacity, a fact that energy sector experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation demonstrates its inherent flaw.

Wind generation fell by about 2.1% in 2023 relative to 2022 generation, despite the 6 gigawatts (GW) of wind power capacity that came online last year, according to data published Tuesday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). That wind power output dropped despite new capacity coming online and the availability of government subsidies highlights its intermittency and the problems wind power could pose for grid reliability, energy sector experts told the DCNF.

The decrease in wind generation is the first drop on record with the EIA since the 1990s; the drop was not evenly distributed across all regions of the U.S., and slower wind speeds last year also contributed to the decline, according to EIA. The Biden administration wants to have the American power sector reach carbon neutrality by 2035, a goal that will require a significant shift away from natural gas- and coal-fired power toward wind, solar and other green sources.

A table depicting the decrease of wind power generation in 2023 relative to 2022. (Screenshot via U.S. Energy Information Administration)

“Relying on wind power to meet your peak electricity demands is gambling with the grid,” Isaac Orr, a policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment who specializes in power grid-related analysis, told the DCNF. “Will the wind blow, or won’t it? This should be a moment where policymakers step back and consider the wisdom of heavily subsidizing intermittent generators and punishing reliable coal and gas plants with onerous regulations.”

Between 2016 and 2022, the wind industry received an estimated $18.6 billion worth of subsidies, about 10% of the total amount of subsidies extended to the energy sector by the U.S. government, according to an August 2023 EIA report. Wind power received more assistance from the government than nuclear power, coal or natural gas over the same period of time.

“This isn’t subsidies per kilowatt hour of generation. It’s raw subsidies. If it were per kilowatt hour of generation, the numbers would be even more extreme,” Paige Lambermont, a research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the DCNF. “This is a massive amount of money. It’s enough to dramatically alter energy investment decisions for the worse. We’re much more heavily subsidizing the sources that don’t provide a significant portion of our electricity than those that do.”

“Policy that just focuses on installed capacity, rather than the reliability of that capacity, fails to understand the real needs of the electrical grid,” Lambermont added. “This recent disparity illustrates that more installed wind capacity does not necessarily correlate with more wind power production. It doesn’t matter how much wind you add to the grid, if the wind isn’t blowing at peak demand time, that capacity will go to waste.”

Wind power’s performance was especially lackluster in the upper midwest, but Texas saw more wind generation in 2023 than it did in 2022, according to EIA. Wind generation in the first half of 2023 was about 14% lower than it was through the first six months of 2022, but generation was higher toward the end of 2023 than it was during the same period in 2022.

In 2023, about 60% of all electricity generated in the U.S. came from fossil fuels, while 10% came from wind power, according to EIA data. Beyond generous subsidies for preferred green energy sources, the Biden administration has also aggressively regulated fossil fuels and American power plants to advance its broad climate agenda.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) landmark power plant rules finalized this month will threaten grid reliability if enacted, partially because the regulations are likely to incentivize operators to close plants rather than adopt the costly measures required for compliance, grid experts previously told the DCNF. At the same time that the Biden administration is effectively trying to shift power generation away from fossil fuels, it is also pursuing goals — such as substantially boosting electric vehicle adoption over the next decade and incentivizing construction of energy-intensive computer chip factories — that are driving up projected electricity demand in the future.

“The EIA data proves what we’ve always known about wind power: It is intermittent, unpredictable and unreliable,” David Blackmon, a 40-year veteran of the oil and gas industry who now writes and consults on the energy sector, told the DCNF. “Any power generation source whose output is wholly dependent on equally unpredictable weather conditions should never be presented by power companies and grid managers as safe replacements for abundant, cheap, dispatchable generation fueled with natural gas, coal or nuclear. This is a simple reality that people in charge of our power grids too often forget. Saying that no doubt hurts some people’s feelings, but nature really does not care about our feelings.”

Blackmon also pointed out that, aside from its intermittency, sluggish build-out of the transmission lines and related infrastructure poses a major problem for wind power.

“Wind power is worthless without accompanying transmission, yet the Biden administration continues to pour billions into unreliable wind while ignoring the growing crisis in the transmission sector,” Blackmon told the DCNF.

Another long-term issue that wind power, as well as solar power, faces is the need for a massive expansion in the amount of battery storage available to store and dispatch energy from intermittent sources as market conditions dictate. By some estimates, the U.S. will need about 85 times as much battery storage by 2050 relative to November 2023 in order to fully decarbonize the power grid, according to Alsym Energy, a battery company.

The White House and the Department of Energy did not respond to requests for comment.

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Alberta

Alberta government should eliminate corporate welfare to generate benefits for Albertans

Published on May 2, 2024

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Spencer Gudewill and Tegan Hill

Last November, Premier Danielle Smith announced that her government will give up to $1.8 billion in subsidies to Dow Chemicals, which plans to expand a petrochemical project northeast of Edmonton. In other words, $1.8 billion in corporate welfare.

And this is just one example of corporate welfare paid for by Albertans.

According to a recent study published by the Fraser Institute, from 2007 to 2021, the latest year of available data, the Alberta government spent $31.0 billion (inflation-adjusted) on subsidies (a.k.a. corporate welfare) to select firms and businesses, purportedly to help Albertans. And this number excludes other forms of government handouts such as loan guarantees, direct investment and regulatory or tax privileges for particular firms and industries. So the total cost of corporate welfare in Alberta is likely much higher.

Why should Albertans care?

First off, there’s little evidence that corporate welfare generates widespread economic growth or jobs. In fact, evidence suggests the contrary—that subsidies result in a net loss to the economy by shifting resources to less productive sectors or locations (what economists call the “substitution effect”) and/or by keeping businesses alive that are otherwise economically unviable (i.e. “zombie companies”). This misallocation of resources leads to a less efficient, less productive and less prosperous Alberta.
And there are other costs to corporate welfare.

For example, between 2007 and 2019 (the latest year of pre-COVID data), every year on average the Alberta government spent 35 cents (out of every dollar of business income tax revenue it collected) on corporate welfare. Given that workers bear the burden of more than half of any business income tax indirectly through lower wages, if the government reduced business income taxes rather than spend money on corporate welfare, workers could benefit.

Moreover, Premier Smith failed in last month’s provincial budget to provide promised personal income tax relief and create a lower tax bracket for incomes below $60,000 to provide $760 in annual savings for Albertans (on average). But in 2019, after adjusting for inflation, the Alberta government spent $2.4 billion on corporate welfare—equivalent to $1,034 per tax filer. Clearly, instead of subsidizing select businesses, the Smith government could have kept its promise to lower personal income taxes.

Finally, there’s the Heritage Fund, which the Alberta government created almost 50 years ago to save a share of the province’s resource wealth for the future.

In her 2024 budget, Premier Smith earmarked $2.0 billion for the Heritage Fund this fiscal year—almost the exact amount spent on corporate welfare each year (on average) between 2007 and 2019. Put another way, the Alberta government could save twice as much in the Heritage Fund in 2024/25 if it ended corporate welfare, which would help Premier Smith keep her promise to build up the Heritage Fund to between $250 billion and $400 billion by 2050.

By eliminating corporate welfare, the Smith government can create fiscal room to reduce personal and business income taxes, or save more in the Heritage Fund. Any of these options will benefit Albertans far more than wasteful billion-dollar subsidies to favoured firms.

Authors:

Spencer Gudewill
Policy Analyst, Fraser Institute
and
Tegan Hill
Associate Director, Alberta Policy, Fraser Institute
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