Trump is shockingly dumb about (electric) power

It's not too soon to start working the politics of people's power bills

The next two elections should be decided on the great questions of democracy versus authoritarianism, openness versus racism, science versus ignorance. But my guess is that electric bills may play at least as large a role.

And that should be a good thing for the forces of virtue, because team Trump has mishandled American energy policy in every possible way literally since day one—they’re setting up a debacle. But as we should know by now, Democrats are particularly good at turning debacles into nothingburgers. So let me try and lay out the script right now.

Let’s go back to Trump’s first day in office. He declared an “energy emergency” because the production and “generation capacity of the United States are all far too inadequate to meet our Nation’s needs. We need a reliable, diversified, and affordable supply of energy to drive our Nation’s manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, and defense industries, and to sustain the basics of modern life and military preparedness.” If we didn’t get more electricity in particular, the White House said, we would fall behind China in the AI race, with disastrous consequences.

You can debate whether or not we need new AI data centers (My guess is that the technology has been oversold, and that we’re actually going to see fewer of them developed than people think). But you can’t debate two things.

One, the obvious way forward for this country was to develop more sun, wind, and batteries. We know this because it’s what this country, and every other country around the world, had been doing for the last two years. More than ninety percent of new electric generation around the world last year came from clean energy, momentum that continued through the first quarter of the year. This was not because everyone in the energy business had “gone woke.” Texas, after all, installed more renewable capacity than any other state last year. It was because you could do it cheaply and quickly—we live on a planet where the cheapest way to make power is to point a sheet of glass at the sun.

But, two, the Trump administration immediately began to do absolutely everything in in its power to stop this trend and to replace it with old-fashioned energy—gas, and coal. They have rescinded environmental regulations trying to control fossil fuel pollution, ended sun and wind projects on federal land, cancelled wind projects wherever they could, ended the IRA tax credits for clean energy construction and instead added subsidies for the coal industry. Again—short of tasking Elon Musk to erect a large space-based shield to blot out the sun, they’ve done literally everything possible to derail the transition to cheap clean energy.

And as a result, electricity prices are starting to skyrocket. If you don’t believe me, listen to this excellent recitation of a power bill in the style of Faulkner from a fellow with an excellent beard. And they are skyrocketing because our power systems are not moving into the new world.

For example: Trump issued an executive order designed to “reinvigorate America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry” which explained that

Our Nation’s beautiful clean coal resources will be critical to meeting the rise in electricity demand due to the resurgence of domestic manufacturing and the construction of artificial intelligence data processing centers. We must encourage and support our Nation’s coal industry to increase our energy supply, lower electricity costs, stabilize our grid, create high-paying jobs, support burgeoning industries, and assist our allies.

This is nonsense on a cracker, of course, and a new independent report last week found that consumers will be paying an extra three to six billion dollars a year for the privilege of keeping coal-fired power plants open past their expiration dates.

Forcing utilities to continue to operate unneeded and costly coal-fired power plants past their planned retirement increases the electric bills paid by homeowners and businesses. It also undermines the competitiveness of U.S. businesses such as manufacturing by raising electric rates.

Anyone who pays an electricity bill in any region outside the Northeastern U.S. could be footing the bill. Electricity costs could increase by tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars per year in most states.

If you want more detail on this topic, by the way, David Roberts has a very fine interview with the (very fine name) Frank Rambo, who also points out that the coal-fired power plants they’re trying to keep open are not just the most expensive possible source of electric but among the least reliable

Now, the thing about coal, as it’s been circling the drain, the coal plants that are left are running much less. They’re not running as these baseload where you run it, you might dial it down at night when demand for electricity is lower, but you’re basically always running it.

They are now running much less. They’re running more where they’re having to cycle through, to cycle on and off. And a coal-fired boiler is not built to operate that way. Again, it’s a 20th-century resource for a 21st-century grid, and that causes a lot of maintenance issues. So that they have to — all of a sudden it’s called a "forced outage." They have to take it offline. So it’s somewhat ironic they are relying on — the DOE is relying on — the one, one of the resources that’s becoming less and less reliable.

Anyway, this level of corruption and incompetence—remember, all this is happening because candidate Trump literally told the fossil fuel industry they could have anything they want if they gave massive contributions to his campaign, and then they did—should open up his party to scrutiny and to scorn. At some level Democrats are figuring this out—as the Washington Post said last week, they have lots to work with, beginning with Trump’s promises that electric bills would fall.

“Under my administration, we will be slashing energy and electricity prices by half within 12 months, at a maximum 18 months,” he told an audience in North Carolina in August 2024.

Trump’s first 12 months aren’t over yet. But so far, the data show prices trending in the wrong direction. And Democrats are keen to make Trump pay for that.

They are crafting an argument that not only have prices not come down but the sweeping tax and spending law Trump signed into law in July will make energy costs worse.

In fact, as NPR reported recently, electricity costs are now climbing twice as fast as inflation, which should give the Dems a huge opening. And indeed the Senate Dems have put together a bill that would cut those costs. But take a look at the press release from Senator Schumer—really, just look at the headline—and ask yourself if the Dems have really figured out the snappy rhetoric they need to take advantage of the situation.

I’d say the real danger is the GOP will go on the attack instead, blaming electricity price hikes on their favorite target, Joe Biden. You can already see it happening—here’s Murdoch’s New York Post trying to blame Biden (and New York governor Kathy Hochul and New Jersey governor Phil Murphy) for being Green New Dealers. (Ironic, since they’ve actually done much to disappoint enviros in their states). And here’s Trump’s energy secretary (and former fracking exec) Christ Wright yesterday moaning that it’s all Joe Biden’s fault.

“The momentum of the Obama-Biden policies, for sure that destruction is going to continue in the coming years,” Wright told POLITICO during a visit to wind- and cornrich Iowa. Still, he said: “That momentum is pushing prices up right now. And who's going to get blamed for it? We're going to get blamed because we're in office.”

This is all inane. Wright was standing in Iowa, which has some of the lowest electric rates in the country—the average Iowan will spend 39% less on electricity than the average American. Why? Because it produces 57 percent of its electricity from the wind, the second-biggest wind state in the country. The same thing is true across the country. Here’s Stanford professor Mark Jacobson, explaining the math in the Wall Street Journal

How do the 12 highly renewable states rank in terms of electricity prices? Ten of them are among the 19 states with the lowest electricity prices. Seven are among the 10 states with the lowest prices. South Dakota, with renewables supplying 95% of demand, has the ninth-lowest electricity price. North Dakota (52% renewables) has the lowest. More renewables mean lower prices.

Only California and Maine have high renewables and high prices. Why? California’s industrial price of natural gas, needed for electricity backup, is routinely the third-highest in the U.S. and twice the U.S. average. Plus, utilities have passed to customers the costs of wildfires from transmission-line sparks, undergrounding transmission lines, the San Bruno and Aliso Canyon gas disasters, retrofitting gas pipes following San Bruno, and keeping the Diablo Canyon nuclear-power plant open.

California’s use of more renewables and batteries in 2024 than in 2023 increased grid reliability, however, as evidenced by 52% lower spot electricity prices this March to June, versus the same period in 2023. This slowed retail electricity-price rises.

More renewable electricity generators and batteries reduce energy prices. Even in states with high electricity prices caused by other factors, renewables and battery storage keep prices lower than they otherwise would be.

So Democrats need to get good at saying this. They need props—solar panels, batteries. They need sound bites. They need lots and lots of solar installers speaking up, and lots of people with solar on their roofs holding up their teeny tiny bills for the camera. The Dems need to be on the offensive, and sometimes they need to be offensive. The basic line: Trump’s crusade against clean energy is obviously idiotic—windmills don’t cause cancer. But it’s more than idiotic—it’s the reason you’re paying more for electricity.

The Department of Energy literally put out a tweet last month with a picture of a hunk of a coal and the legend “She is the moment.” But in fact coal is 18th century technology, and gas is 19th century technology, and now we’re in the 21st century where people know how to intercept the rays of the sun and the breeze in the air and turn them into the cheapest electricity the world has ever seen. And Trump’s getting in the way of that.

In other energy and climate news:

+New Jersey activists are working hard to see that the Garden State follows the lead of New York and Vermont and passes a Climate Superfund bill that would charge the oil companies for damage from extreme weather. (Given that Exxon was once Standard Oil of New Jersey this would be particularly resonant!) Here’s how the Climate Revolution Action Network put it:

“The Climate Superfund Act is our real chance to rebuild New Jersey—union jobs, resilient infrastructure upgrades, grid modernization—without burdening everyday working people or ratepayers,” said Ben Dziobek, Executive Director of the Climate Revolution Action Network. “Young people have coalesced a broad coalition: labor, advocacy groups, and even most of Speaker Coughlin’s own colleagues support this. It's time Trenton fights for young people and everyday New Jerseyans to ‘Stay in NJ’ by Making Polluters Pay.”

+Once you start looking, there’s energy everywhere. Miguéla V Thornton reports that in New York City a company is trying to transfer the heat in the subway tunnels to neighboring buildings

Enerdrape’s panels affix to concrete infrastructure, which can hold large stores of heat. (Think of how hot a subway station gets in the summer, for example.) Enerdrape taps that heat using a system of prefabricated panels that absorb geothermal energy from the ground or the air. Even when underground spaces aren’t sweltering, the ground temperature, at several feet of depth, stays relatively constant throughout the year.

During the summer, Enerdrape’s system uses the underground as a heat sink to absorb a building’s heat and cool it. In the winter, it does the opposite, using the ground like a battery to warm things up.

The system requires installing one panel for roughly every 110 square feet (10 square meters) of a building’s floor area. The panels are connected to heat-transferring fluid, working in tandem with one or more heat pumps.

“Enerdrape moves heat from where it’s not needed to where it is,” co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Alessandro Rotta Loria said.

Rotta Loria likened it to an underground solar panel that feeds on heat rather than the sun’s rays. Enerdrape says its panels can meet 100% of the space heating, cooling and hot water needs for buildings up to 10 stories in height.

+Industrial manufacturing creates an awful lot of pollution, and as Matt Simon reports in Grist there’s something to be done about that. Heat pumps, like in your house, but a lot bigger

A new report from the American Lung Association finds that replacing 33,500 conventional, combustion-based boilers nationwide with this electric alternative could avoid 77,200 premature deaths, 33 million asthma attacks, and more than 200,000 new asthma cases by 2050. It would also save $1.1 trillion in health costs in that period, and prevent $351 billion in climate damages.

“A lot of people may not think about the role of industrial manufacturing in local air pollution, or in terms of climate change, but it can be a significant factor and cause real health harms,” said Will Barrett, assistant vice president for nationwide clean air policy at the American Lung Association. “By shifting to zero-emissions technologies that aren’t burning fuel — but they’re producing the same heat, steam, and boiling water that’s needed to fulfill these manufacturing needs — we can see these massive public health benefits.”

+I’ve been writing a lot about instant permitting for solar—the SolarApp+ is the best-known solution, but not the only one. Something similar comes from a company called Symbium, and indeed their system allows for permitting all kinds of good stuff, like heat pumps, batteries, and EV chargers. Bakersfield California became an early customer this month:

What makes Bakersfield’s achievement truly historic isn’t just the speed–it’s the unprecedented scope. While other instant permitting solutions focus narrowly on a very limited type of solar and battery storage installations, Symbium’s platform handles the full spectrum of clean energy projects that matter most to homeowners and contractors. The system enables instant permits for retrofits, solar installations (new and additions to existing systems), energy storage, EV charging stations, new service panels, reroofs, and more, making Bakersfield the first jurisdiction anywhere to offer this comprehensive instant permitting coverage.

+The Public Power NY Coalition is doing a great job of trying to pressure the always slow and recalcitrant New York State government to up its energy game. They’ve already forced the state’s power planners to double their proposals for clean energy by 2030, but there’s a new public comment period underway now, and a chance to get Gov. Hochul to really start catching the Empire State up to California and Texas. My colleagues at Third Act Upstate New York have all the details, and the links to send your comment

Meanwhile, Hochul’s dynamic lieutenant governor Antonio Delgado—who is challenging her in the Democratic primary—accused her of “climate betrayal” last week.

New Yorkers have good reason to be outraged. The Hochul Administration is considering approving a new gas pipeline – one that New York regulators rejected in 2018, 2019, and 2020 – that would pollute our waters, exacerbate climate change, and lock our state into further dependence on fossil fuels for decades to come.

Now we know why this zombie project is back from the dead. On May 19, Governor Hochul announced that the Department of the Interior would drop its opposition to an offshore wind project near New York City. In that same statement, the governor pledged to “work with the [Trump] Administration and private entities on new energy projects.” Just 10 days later, the pipeline was back on the table. After a shortened public comment period, the project is now in the final stage of review.

President Trump demanded a climate ransom, and Governor Hochul paid it. New Yorkers must make it clear: we won’t be extorted, and we won’t let dirty deals decide our future.

What makes this ordeal even more outrageous is that the new pipeline clearly violates New York’s own laws. On paper, our state has one of the strongest climate laws in the country. The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) will slash emissions and build out our clean-energy infrastructure.

Delgado’s not alone, by the way: at least 500 New Yorkers joined a rally organized by Food and Water Watch to protest those pipelines

These projects will threaten clean water, endanger frontline communities, and violate New York’s climate law. New gas pipelines also fly in the face of scientific consensus: phasing out fossil fuels is necessary to prevent increasingly catastrophic climate disasters. The Williams NESE project alone would increase climate-heating pollution annually by an estimated 8 million tons.

Massive pipeline projects will also lead to major increases in New Yorker’s utility bills. According to National Grid itself — Williams’ utility partner on the NESE project — utility bills would rise by 3.5% from just that project alone, if it is approved. That would pile an additional $150 a year onto already unaffordable utility bills, with National Grid planning yet another rate hike proposal in early 2026. Overbuilt gas infrastructure has already driven an estimated $179 billion in unnecessary investment nationwide, and critics say these pipelines would leave New Yorkers stuck with the bill for dangerous fossil fuel assets that will soon become obsolete.

+Recharging EVs gets easier all the time—a new wave of charging stations is springing up across the country, as federal funding from the Biden administration to the states continues to flow under a court ruling. Here’s a report from Suvrat Kothari about a Pennsylvania outlet

When I pulled up in the 2026 BMW iX at the brand-new Ionna Rechargery in Scranton, Pennsylvania, I expected an easy charging experience. I didn’t expect it to be this easy.

I backed into the spot, plugged in, tapped my credit card and 15 minutes later, I had more than enough range to get back on the road. So fast and so easy, your grandma will be able to do it all by herself, too.

What Ionna—the new EV charging consortium backed by eight automakers—is building is nothing short of a charging revolution. The Tesla Supercharger network democratized and normalized EV charging, but at first, for only a specific type of car owner.

All Ionna Rechargeries have amenities on site and are located in lively, visible locations, which generally tend to be safer than poorly lit and secluded areas. The consortium is either building its own sites with dedicated driver lounges or partnering with popular host sites such as Sheetz and Wawa gas stations, which tend to have all the amenities.

They all have bright, well-lit canopies, trash cans and some even have free dispensers for wiper washer fluids.

On my visit, the Sheetz station was buzzing with drivers fueling up, grabbing food and taking refreshment breaks. I plugged in the iX and went into the Sheetz store to grab a coffee and a waffle sandwich. They were both great; the WiFi was working and the store had clean, spotless bathrooms.

+In one of the unlikelier environmental efforts, the drought-hit UK government is asking Brits to help save water by…deleting old emails. As Justine Calma reports, a number of observers pointed out that reining in the expansion of data centers might be a somewhat more efficient approach

The Environment Agency didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry from The Verge about how much water it thought deleting files might save, nor how much water data centers that store files or train AI use in the UK’s drought-affected areas.

A small data center has been estimated to use upwards of 25 million liters of water per year if it relies on old-school cooling methods that allow water to evaporate.

+Australia was one of the countries planning on producing lots of “green hydrogen,” using abundant renewable electricity supplies to creat the fuel. But that bubble appears to be bursting—in large measure because the economic argument doesn’t make much sense as solar, wind, and batteries just keep getting cheaper.

Despite strong government backing and significant private sector interest, at least seven big hydrogen production projects have been delayed, scaled back, or canceled in the last year. Chief among them was BP Plc’s decision last week to exit a $36 billion facility in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, which had targeted starting production this decade.

Around the world, project withdrawals have accelerated as developers struggle to secure customers willing to pay a premium for the fuel. Costs remain persistently high, unlike the sharp price drops seen in solar and wind that have boosted their competitiveness.

+At international talks overrun by industry lobbyists, efforts to restrict plastics production have run into the usual roadblocks. As Matteo Civillini reports,

The long-standing deadlock over whether to reduce production of plastics is the result of the petrochemical industry’s influence over the talks, the Panamanian negotiator said.

“Unhinged plastic production is the petrochemical industry’s plan B – they know the world is moving away from fossil fuels and into renewable energy,” he added. “They have infiltrated these negotiations, they are trying to safeguard their interests, their profit to the detriment of everybody else.”

234 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists registered for the Geneva talks – more than the combined delegations of all 27 EU member states plus the European Union itself, according to an analysis by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL)

+A big surge in dengue fever across the Pacific. Having contracted dengue in Bangladesh myself (the sickest I’ve ever been), I wince every time I read a story like this one the Guardian

A local health official warned these outbreaks pointed to a wider public health challenge.

“It is in the vanguard of what will certainly be many types of human disease that become more common and more serious as the planet warms.”

Since declaring an outbreak in April, Samoa has confirmed six dengue-related deaths, including two siblings, and more than 5,600 cases. This year Fiji has recorded eight deaths and 10,969 cases. Tonga has reported over 800 cases and three deaths since declaring an outbreak in February.

These outbreaks underscore the region’s vulnerability to climate-sensitive diseases, which are expected to intensify as global temperatures rise.

Pacific Island countries produce just 0.03% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but face some of the most severe climate-related health threats, including vector-borne diseases.

+A new law calling for covering French car parks and other urban land with solar panels will generate as much power as ten nuclear power plants

+Scientists fear that more “ancient carbon” than previously thought may be leaking into the atmosphere as rivers transport large amounts of weathered rock

Co-author Dr Gemma Coxon, Associate Professor in Hydrology and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the University of Bristol, said: “Rivers globally release about two gigatons of carbon each year, compared to human activity that results in between 10-15 gigatons of carbon emissions. These river emissions are significant at a global scale, and we’re showing that over half of these emissions may be coming from carbon stores we considered relatively stable. This means we need to re-evaluate these crucial parts of the global carbon cycle.”

+It’s been hot as blue blazes in Japan all summer, and it’s wrecking the country’s iconic rice crop

Key rice-producing regions like Tohoku and Hokuriku saw the least amount of rain in July on record that goes back nearly 80 years, while a heat wave this month has broken multiple temperature records and scorched much of the country.

Such weather extremes may impact the harvest that typically starts in late summer, at a time when rice supplies have already been strained by adverse weather in recent years. That risks fanning prices that are already about 50% higher than a year ago, which could heap pressure on household budgets and political leaders.

+CNBC has yet another warning from the world’s top insurers that climate risk is making the entire insurance idea hard to imagine going forward.

“If we continue, however, with the policies that we have out there, we are clearly on a pathway now of 2.7 degrees or 3 degrees where adaptation is simply not doable anymore. This is just what it is. We cannot protect Amsterdam from sea level rise of three meters. This is just not doable,” Allianz board member Gustav Thallinger said.

It’s not just Allianz’s Thallinger fearing the worst. Zurich Insurance Group, Europe’s fifth-largest insurer, said in April alongside a research paper assessing climate resilience that the outlook looks “alarmingly bleak.”

The Swiss insurer cited the Los Angeles wildfires at the start of the year as a stark reminder that even the world’s wealthiest economies are unprepared for the impact of increasing climate risks.

A similar but more extended take comes from veteran activists Spencer Glendon, Carolyn Kousky, and Barney Schauble

As some risks become more likely, others become more severe, and new risks emerge. Together, these forces are shrinking the realm of insurability by fundamentally changing loss distributions. The “insurability window” is being compressed.

Take flooding and flood insurance. Some types of flooding, like coastal tidal flooding, are becoming too frequent to insure. At the same time, severe floods are getting worse. A look at flood insurance claims found that the tail may be getting fatter. Loss distributions with fat tails are problematic, as likelihood and severity don’t behave the way they used to. For example, if, in the past, the the 1-in-100-year storm in a given location (1% probability in a given year) would bring 6 inches (15 cm) and the 1-in-500-year storm (0.2% probability) would bring 9 inches (23 cm), a warmer atmosphere might make a 6-inch storm 5x more likely, a new 1% storm to drop 8 inches of rain, the 0.5% storm 10 inches, and the new 0.2% probability storm 12 inches: In other words, extremes are more likely than you might think, and the very extreme outcomes can be enormous. Fat-tailed loss distributions break the nice mathematical laws that underpin modern insurance; as the tails get fatter, insurance gets more expensive and harder to provide.

+Finally, a newly planned all-electric town in the UK will make so much solar power it will be able to send a good share back to the grid.

The developers of a new garden town in Kent have struck a deal with a leading energy infrastructure company to design and operate a “smart” energy grid, which could mean its 8,500 households act as a virtual power plant for the rest of the country.

Those moving into the Otterpool Park development from 2027 will live in homes equipped with electric hobs, heating systems and electric vehicle chargers – as well as rooftop solar panels and batteries to power their fossil-fuel-free households.