“Green” Energy: It’s Just a Bribe

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 16, 2024

“’I’m a businessman. I’ll take the [government green] money, that’s all I care about… I will move heaven and earth to get projects done over here’.” – James Quigley, quoted in Politico ‘s “Power Switch” (below)

In the mid-19th century, Claude-Frédéric Bastiat, a political economist, wrote:

Government is the great fiction through which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else. Every one is, more or less, for profiting by the labors of others. No one would dare to express such a sentiment; he even hides it from himself.

The Frenchman added:

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

Correct. Government does not create wealth; it redistributes it (after a large cut). Who wins and loses? The winners are government, the lobbyists, and the rent-seekers, with concentrated benefits to them and diffused costs for the rest of us. Plunder, Bastiat would say.

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I was reminded of this by a news item reported in Politico‘s “Power Switch” newsletter (August 16, 2023).

“Not all Republicans want to repeal the climate law that turns 1 today,” reported Josh Siegel. “In fact, my colleague Kelsey Tamborrino and I spoke to dozens of people from all corners of the country and discovered that many GOP officials in rural areas are welcoming the billions of dollars in clean energy incentives coming from President Joe Biden’s signature legislation.”

So do you think they found Republicans that feared “climate change” and welcomed “green” energy as cheaper and better? No, the interviewed were financially captured rent-seekers, enjoying a wealth transfer from taxpayers (via Biden) to their pockets. Here is the rest of the story.

In Rogers County, Okla., Republican Commissioner Ron Burrows looks at the Inflation Reduction Act and sees jobs — 1,000 of them to be exact. At least once the Italian giant Enel opens its $1 billion solar manufacturing plant there in 2025.

Burrows is not alone. Other political and economic leaders in Oklahoma, including Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, are glad to receive the major investments they say they’d never have attracted without the climate law.

“You can imagine being in a small rural community and trying to get economic development to come — it’s a challenge,” said Rosalie Griffith, a board member of the Rural Economic Development of Inola. “But unless you develop, you’re going to die.”

Burrows said Enel’s decision to locate in his tiny town east of Tulsa — population 1,500 — would not have happened without local buy-in. “I just don’t see a company making that sort of investment without some level of comfort that it’s not adversarial, it’s not split,” he said.

By contrast, his local member of Congress — GOP Rep. Josh Brecheen — views the Inflation Reduction Act through the prism of most national Republicans. Brecheen told me he opposes the use of “taxpayer subsidization” to bolster Democrats’ favored green industries and is seeking to repeal the law.

Kelsey and I found that same disconnect between state and local GOP officials in rural areas and their federal representatives across the country.

There’s even a similar, but less dramatic, dynamic unfolding in upstate New York. GOP Rep. Marc Molinaro voted to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy incentives, and that’s made him a top target of Democrats in the 2024 election. His district is one of 18 that voted for Biden but are held by Republicans.

Inflation Reduction Act money catalyzed Canadian company Zinc8 Energy Solutions’ decision to locate a planned battery factory in Molinaro’s purple district. The project is expected to bring up to 500 new jobs to a Hudson Valley region still suffering from the loss of its manufacturing base in the 1990s. That’s exciting James Quigley, a Republican who drives a Tesla and is the supervisor for the town of Ulster, where Zinc8 plans to locate.

“I’m a businessman. I’ll take the money, that’s all I care about,” Quigley said. “I will move heaven and earth to get projects done over here.”

Final Comment

Gosh Josh, what did you really find our here? Are you proud of this? Did you and Kelsey Tamborrino ask the same parties if they liked the federal deficit and inflation? The present level of taxation? The wisdom of the few over the energy verdicts of the masses?

The Wall Street Journal‘s “Bidenomics and the New Political-Subsidy Economy” spoke to this issue:

Money for these subsidies has to come from somewhere, and that means the private economy in higher taxes and more government borrowing…. The IRA [Inflation Reduction Act] is the heart of Bidenomics, which is about creating a new political-subsidy economy. Perhaps all of this will effloresce into a brilliant green future. More likely hundreds of billions in misallocated investment will reduce future productivity gains and translate into slower economic and income growth. Let’s hope President Biden’s subsidies don’t boomerang like pandemic transfer payments, leaving all Americans poorer.

What a waste, what a shame. The next President needs to issue an emergency declaration that the U.S. is out of money and cease all subsidies of the Inflation Reduction Act in order to pause wind, solar, and battery subsidies. Ratepayers and taxpayers will be thankful.