This is a re-post of an article from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler published on June 3, 2024.
I have an oped in the New York Times (gift link) about this. For a long time, a common refrain about the energy transition was that renewable energy needed to become cheaper before it could replace fossil fuels. That milestone has now been reached, with solar and wind power often costing less than oil, gas, and coal.
This is especially true if you add in the external costs of fossil fuels, such as the costs of air pollution that kills millions of people each year and the costs of fossil fuels contributing to geopolitical instability.
However, instead of the market naturally transitioning to these cheaper and cleaner energy sources, fossil fuel companies are leveraging their enormous political influence to hinder this shift. They employ tactics such as lobbying, spreading disinformation, and funding politicians who support fossil fuels, all in an effort to maintain their dominance and profits in the energy market.
My NYT piece focused on disinformation, but this is just a small piece of the picture — there is a lot more going on than I could fit into a 1,000-word op-ed.
For example, Texas Monthly published a fantastic article that talked about the Texas GOP’s war on renewable energy. It turns out that, at this point, the Texas legislature is basically legislating on behalf of fossil fuels rather than the citizens of Texas:
Such rhetoric, however, is undercut by the agenda relentlessly pursued by Patrick and his party during this year’s legislative session. One bill proposed a new process making it extremely difficult to set up offshore wind farms in state waters in the Gulf of Mexico. There was also a bill aimed at raising the costs involved for renewable-energy generators to sell their electricity in the state’s marketplace. “Everything Everywhere All at Once” isn’t just the title of an Oscar-winning movie; it’s an apt description of the flotilla of legislation intended to weaken renewable energy in Texas.
Perhaps the most impactful proposal comes from Senator Lois Kolkhorst, of Brenham, who is championing a bill that would require a new layer of state approval for all wind and solar farms, something that coal and natural gas plants don’t need. It would make setting up new renewable-energy projects more bureaucratic and more costly. The bill is “designed to stop renewable-energy development . . . everywhere in Texas,” says Jeff Clark, president and CEO of the Advanced Power Alliance.
At the same time, our elected officials are pushing legislation to favor fossil fuels:
Meanwhile other proposals were designed to favor the fossil fuels industry. One bill offered zero-interest loans (subsidized by Texas taxpayers) to natural gas power plants to help pay for their maintenance. It would also authorize the building of ten giant natural gas plants, at a cost of about $18 billion. (Paid for by a combination of part of the state budget surplus and, through additional fees, by anyone who gets an electricity bill in Texas.)
Finally, there are some places where they just can’t rig the market. In those places, fossil fuel interests are funding efforts to enact voter suppression laws as well as laws that criminalize protest by setting excessive prison terms for protests against fossil fuel infrastructure and using broad definitions to criminalize peaceful activities.
As far as fossil fuel interests are concerned, if the choice comes down to “pumping oil” or “destroying democracy”, democracy is toast. Thus, I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to view the battle over our energy future as literally a battle for the fate of our democracy.
Most of the efforts to entrench fossil fuels have taken place at the state and local levels, but if Trump is elected in November, we can expect the federal government to join in. A hint of what’s to come can be found in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a roadmap for a transition to a Trump administration.
While the report repeatedly talks about a “war on fossil fuels”, what it actually lays out is all-out war on climate science and renewable energy. They propose, for example, to abolish the Dept. of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy.
ARPA-E funds energy projects that are too risky to be pursued by private industry, aiming to help new technology make the jump from the lab to the market. Eliminating this office will slow down research on renewable energy, helping keep us more reliant on fossil fuels.
There also propose to axe NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, labeling it a center for “climate alarmism” — what the rest of us refer to as “climate science.” Given that climate science provides the underlying motivation for the transition to renewable energy, this is another blow to support fossil fuels.
Ultimately, the challenge of the energy revolution is really a problem with our democracy system. The neoliberal economic system that we live under today has transferred enormous amounts of power to billionaires and corporations, enabling them to slow down an energy transition that would benefit almost everyone.
To solve this, we citizens need to fight the power: ensure voting rights for all citizens, limit campaign contributions from corporations and dark-money groups, and nominate impartial federal judges. Make no mistake: failure to do so will fry the planet.
Related resources
Is renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuels?
Believe it, you are living through an energy revolution
Past time to move on from fossil fuels
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Posted by Guest Author on Wednesday, 12 June, 2024
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