We spend a lot of time talking and writing about the green energy subsidies included in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. This is a reasonable number, given that the CBO estimates that the bulk of the bill’s numerous incentives and subsidies will amount to $369 billion over 10 years; We estimate that it is only a fraction of the bill’s real final price.
What doesn’t get much attention is Similar subsidy system These are included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 (IIJA), one of which is to provide grants to the Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Transportation (DOT) to assist with the installation of fast chargers. Allocated a huge amount of $5 billion to. EV charging stations located all over the country. In late February, Nick Pope reports According to an article in the Daily Caller, more than two years after the bill was passed, only two locations have opened as a result of the government program, one in Ohio and one in New York, including It is said that only eight stations are included.
The slowness of the process should come as a surprise to no one, given that the grant program incorporates the extensive bureaucracy of two branches of the federal government. It is in the nature of government agencies to find ways to slow down, rather than speed up, the processes for which they have the power. This is not to blame the people who staff these agencies, but rather to blame their actions on the complex laws they are asked to enforce (of which IIJA is just one). It simply acknowledges the reality we face when trying to adapt.
The tension between the nature and complexity of Western law and the need for speed that President Biden hopes to achieve with the setting of ultra-aggressive goals and timelines related to the adoption and implementation of his Green New Deal policies. has been and continues to be. The central challenge of America’s energy transition. The pace of his multifaceted $300 trillion transition is already well behind schedule in the U.S. and around the world. There is little hope that the pace will catch up with the desired schedule in the future.
This reality is not unique to the world of large-scale, hugely expensive electric vehicles and their associated infrastructure needs. We also need to dramatically expand the grid that powers all aspects of society, not just the transition. Even before the rise of power-hungry AI on an unprecedented scale, the need was already unimaginably huge.
While the IRA and IIJA included incentives and subsidies that addressed a subset of the thousands of moving parts in the integrated energy transition, many key elements, such as the huge transmission expansions needed for the grid, were not fully addressed. Omitted. (Related: David Blackmon: In an election year, will the Biden administration finally get serious about natural gas?)
When the IRA was passed, I warned that the Biden White House was viewing it not as a standalone grant bill, but as just a down payment on what I see as a series of even larger grant efforts to come. . If we accept that the climate is truly a state of emergency, as the climate lobby’s propagandists claim, then ultimately the moral imperative is to pass a series of possibly endless debt-financed subsidy bills. .
One of the great dangers therein is that the momentum behind this fear-based desire for speed will justify limiting or even abolishing guaranteed rights for all stakeholders. It’s about starting to be used to do things. This is already starting to happen in states such as California and Massachusetts, where Democratic governors Gavin Newsom and Maura Healey are encouraging local governments to permit new wind projects and other “green” energy priorities. Efforts are underway to override the right to refuse.
The slowness of the federal bureaucracy only heightens this alarm, providing the worst incentive to justify the allocation of trillions of dollars in debt funds. It is the worst of all possible worlds, a world in which politically driven policies drive investment decisions that free markets would not produce on their own, and where outcomes allegedly do not begin to solve the problems at hand. It is. In a word: confusion.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent his 40 years in the oil and gas business, specializing in public policy and communications.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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