by Michael Shellenberger at Michael Shellenberger Substack
Democrats are furious with Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia for refusing to support climate change legislation. “It seems odd that Manchin would choose as his legacy to be the one man who single-handedly doomed humanity,” said John Podesta, the founder of the Center for American Progress, and point man for the Democrats’ effort to pass climate legislation. “Rage keeps me from tears,” said Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts.
But Democratic leaders have only themselves to blame. They counterproductively sought legislation that would have sharply increased energy prices, and added to the deficit, at a time of skyrocketing inflation, with energy as a major if not main cause. While Democrats pitched their bill as aimed at solving climate change, it was at heart a massive, $300 billion subsidy package for producers and consumers of wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles.
Supporters of the legislation insist it would have reduced deficits and energy prices. They point to the fact that the cost of electricity from solar panel projects and wind turbines declined by 88% and 68%, respectively, between 2010 and 2021, and the price of electric cars declined by 16% annually between 2007 and 2020. In 2020, the International Energy Agency concluded in 2020 that solar power is “cheapest…electricity in history.” And a 2020 Consumer Reports study concluded that the lifetime ownership costs of electric cars were “thousands of dollars lower than all comparable ICE [internal-combustion engine] vehicles’ costs.”
But if solar, wind, and electric vehicles were truly cheaper than fossil fuels and ICE vehicles then Democrats wouldn’t have had to seek $300 billion to subsidize them. Promoters of renewables, including many Democrats, use sleight-of-hand to deceive journalists, advocates, and the public into confusing the actual “system cost” of electricity from electric grids that use a lot of solar and wind with the “levelized cost” of electricity from solar panels and wind turbines when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing.
The high cost of managing unreliable,…
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