Well, this isn’t as big a deal as the 250th anniversary of American liberty, but it’s worth raising a glass to; on Saturday, July 4th, federal subsidies for wind and solar energy projects will end. To date, these have cost the American taxpayers around $141 billion.
That’s good news.
The Trump administration is set to cut subsidies for new solar and wind power projects on Saturday. Estimates suggest the subsidies have cost taxpayers more than $141 billion over the past 16 years, more than any other energy source.
The Working Families Tax Cuts, a signature piece of President Trump’s tax legislation signed a year ago, set Saturday as the deadline for federal tax credit subsidies on any new solar or wind projects not currently under construction.
U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright touted the subsidy deadline and criticized solar and wind energy projects in a video posted to social media Thursday.
“The wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun doesn’t always shine,” Wright said. “They drive up the system costs and increase Americans’ electricity prices.”
That much is certain. This has always been one of the primary problems with these alternative energy sources; they are intermittent, in addition to being low energy density sources. Moving from a high-density source to a low-density one never did make good sense. Subsidizing it made even less.