American energy policy is finally getting back on track, after the Biden administration's ill-named Inflation Reduction Act, which did not reduce inflation, enshrined a bunch of "Green New Deal" horse squeeze into law. Now the Trump administration has issued a stream of executive orders to undo a lot of this, but Congress has to enshrine the undoing of the Green New Deal nonsense into law.
That's what has to be done if we are to make it, at least, more difficult for any future Democrat administration to return to this same old well.
Some of that undoing of the Green New Deal can be found in the "Big, Beautiful Bill" currently making its way through Congress. Some of those provisions will have Democrats and climate scolds - but I repeat myself - squawking, but it has to be done. An editorial from Tipp Insights has some details.
Buried within the 1,100-page bill recently passed by the House of Representatives—the "One Big, Beautiful Bill" that reflects President Trump's priorities—are several provisions that, if enacted into law, could return the U.S. energy sector to a more capitalistic model.
President Joe Biden, with strong backing from environmental lobbyists and a last-minute defection from West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, pushed through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Bill. These measures allocated billions of dollars in federal credits and loan guarantees to favored industries, all under the banner of environmental protection.
What followed was a Soviet-style industrial strategy in which a handful of Washington bureaucrats determined the winners and losers of America's energy future.
Why was that done? Why would any administration, any majority in Congress, so handicap our energy sector? We hear talk of protecting the environment, mostly from people who rarely, if ever, actually see the environment, but most of the arguments for this hooraw are based on the notion that we need to hamstring our technological lifestyle to prevent the planet's temperature from rising a couple of degrees.
The Inflation Reduction Act contained a number of big-government whoppers. It was a catalog of wasteful spending, forking over billions in borrowed taxpayers' dollars to fund green energy hogwash that couldn't make it in the free market without a subsidy. That's a danger sign in and of itself, the government picking winners and losers. But the Inflation Reduction Act set up just such a system to subsidize things like solar panels. Many of those solar panels are made in - you guessed it - China.
The Big, Beautiful Bill may not be the ideal picture of fiscal responsibility, but it does focus on growth and practical energy policy.
The new House bill aims to dismantle this entire framework in one stroke. It eliminates the trading of green credits between corporations, revokes low-interest green loans, and entirely phases out subsidies for renewable energy initiatives.
To those who claim this approach is irresponsible, we pose a simple question: How many more decades should the green energy sector rely on government aid to stay afloat? Sustainable energy and transition projects are essential, but they must prove their viability in the open market—just like oil and gas companies do every day. This is classic Adam Smith-style capitalism: let competition and innovation—not government favoritism—determine success.
President Trump, we should note, is also seeking to unshackle the nuclear energy sector. Last week, the president signed four executive orders aimed at unleashing nuclear reactor development and construction, those being titled:
- Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base
- Reforming the Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy
- Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
- Deploying Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technologies for National Security
As I'm constantly saying and writing, we solve today's problems with tomorrow's technology. Nuclear power is an essential part of tomorrow's technology. It's an essential part of our current energy policy. The Biden administration clearly didn't get that. President Trump does.
See Also: The Energy Transition That Isn't - Growth of Renewables Just Isn't There
Lisa Murkowski Joins the Climate Scolds in Advocacy for Biden's Inflation Reduction Act
It's a fine pass we've come to when a large part of what the Trump administration finds themselves doing is unraveling the mess the Biden('s autopen) administration made of not only energy policy but education, immigration, and much more. What they've gotten done in only the first few months has been nothing short of remarkable, but Congress has to codify much of this. Fortunately, they seem to be finally moving in that direction.
The Big, Beautiful Bill will, hopefully (The Senate still has their oar in the water), eliminate most if not all of the Biden-era Green New Deal. Energy policy should be driven by practical considerations and by the market; whichever means is more economically viable should be the primary consideration, not the howling of climate scolds. The BBB, at least in its current form, is taking us in that direction.
