The Democrats energy fiasco

 James Freeman:

Congressional Democrats and the White House seem to be planning to engage in a rare and fleeting moment of deferred gratification this week. John Wagner and Mariana Alfaro of the Washington Post report:

President Biden remains on vacation on South Carolina’s Kiawah Island. He plans to sign the Inflation Reduction Act into law on Tuesday and deliver remarks, but the White House is preparing for a much larger celebration on Sept. 6, after Labor Day, when Americans are expected to pay more attention to what’s at stake in the fall midterm elections.

But what if Americans are already paying attention? They may have noticed the Friday update from the Penn Wharton budget modelers:

The Act would have no meaningful effect on inflation in the near term but would reduce inflation by around 0.1 percentage points by the middle of the first decade. These point estimates, however, are not statistically different from zero, indicating a low level of confidence that the legislation would have any measurable impact on inflation.

Democrats might want to go ahead and party now before they draw further attention to themselves. The Penn Wharton crew expects the act to make the U.S, economy slightly smaller over the next decade.

Like so many Washington budget plans, the Democrats’ new tax-and-spending frenzy promises little or nothing to reduce deficits in the early years but is officially projected to improve the federal fisc and boost the economy in the more distant future, by which time some of its most ardent champions will have retired and therefore won’t have to accept voter consequences.

If the act works as intended, there will also be an immediate flurry of carbon-dioxide emissions before the promised glorious future of carbon restraint. Most of the climate provisions take effect immediately or within a year or two, and the principal goal is to drive the production and deployment of solar, wind and battery power, all of which involves heavy use of fossil fuels.

The Journal’s Allysia Finley explains why much of this activity is bound to happen in a place that is already the world’s largest emitter of CO2 and is ruled by people who are not particularly concerned about greenhouse gases:

The U.S. has become the world’s top oil and natural-gas producer owing to its abundant natural resources, hydraulic shale fracturing and other technological advances. The Inflation Reduction Act, however, effectively concedes American energy supremacy to China by turbocharging the government’s green-energy transition with $370 billion in climate spending.

Renewable energy requires vast amounts of critical minerals such as cobalt, nickel, manganese, lithium and graphite. China controls a large share of the world’s supply of each and also maintains a chokehold on their refining. Its near-total global monopoly extends to the manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries, cells and components as well as solar cells.

Ms. Finley adds:

Democrats might reply that their bill’s tax credits would encourage electric vehicle and renewable manufacturers to “on-shore” supply chains. But subsidies that encourage mineral extraction in the U.S. won’t help if the Biden administration continues to block projects such as a lithium mine in Nevada and a massive nickel, cobalt and copper mine in Minnesota.

Even if some of the mining surge is permitted to occur in the U.S., it will still rely heavily on fossil fuels. In theory, Democrats’ big bonfire will be offset by future CO2 reductions, but what if it isn’t? What if intermittent solar and wind power can never be counted on to reliably and efficiently replace the fuels we need today? Even those inclined to believe in the more pessimistic climate forecasts, even those who think that upending economies now is more sensible than relying on future technologies to address potential challenges, should consider the costs of expensive environmental belief.


James Meigs writes for City Journal:

Because of their low energy density, wind and solar developments require enormous tracts of land, compared with other energy sources. New York’s now-shuttered Indian Point nuclear power plant sits on just 240 acres. Replacing its power entirely with wind power would require more than 500 square miles of turbines. That’s a massive amount of land and habitat lost to energy production.

People upset about carbon footprints may not realize just how large the allegedly non-carbon footprints can be. And when inefficient alternative energy sources fail, people have to come back to the efficient sources that environmentalists have shunned....

...

Wind and solar energy are the least efficient and least reliable sources of energy and expanding their use from niche areas is a big mistake.  If they were serious they would expand the use of nuclear energy and work on bringing fusion reactors online.  What they are doing now is a waste of money and harms US national interest and national security.