OPINION:
I was driving through my childhood home state of Maine on a rainy June day this year when I spotted a large field filled with solar panels. Not 20 minutes later, I noticed another. As I neared my destination, I spotted a third solar field, this one still under construction. “How odd.” I thought to myself.
Odd in part because Maine ranks 49th out of 50 states for the amount of sunshine it sees annually. That number may have dipped even more this year as the brief Maine summer saw more rainy days in June than any time in recent memory.
Maine, it seems, passed the Maine Solar Energy Act and has made it a key element in their feel-good, progressive, new-age save-the-world policy. A visit to the State of Maine website will tell you the following, Maine has established in law a specific goal of “ensuring that solar electricity generation, along with electricity generation from other renewable energy technologies, meaningfully contributes to the generation capacity of the State…”
What is the problem with a state wanting a better future? That all depends on how you define better and better for whom?
According to the US News and World Report 2023 rankings, Maine ranks 41st out of the 50 states for infrastructure. It ranks 38th in short-term fiscal stability. It is ranked #43 in employment and #41 in business environment. None of those are numbers to brag about. In fact, they point to a challenging standard of living for Maine residents.
That is why it’s tough to justify the progressive energy policies being pushed on Maine’s citizenry. The community solar program is already costing a fortune, and according to Maine’s Public Advocate, Bill Harwood, the costs are only going to snowball in the coming years. Community solar projects are expected to cost electricity customers $220 million a year by 2025, with more increases continuing for the next 20 years.
That’s $220 million extra for electric customers to absorb every year in one of the smallest populous states with one of the lowest average annual incomes per capita in order to harness sunshine in the state with less sunshine than every other state except one.
The Maine energy follies don’t end with solar. Maine has followed California’s lead in trying to force EVs on the consumer. Most recently, environmental activists have proposed requiring light-duty, zero-emission vehicles to make up 43% of sales for model year 2027 and to make up 82% of sales in model year 2032. Require. Consumer demand be damned. You will take your medicine, and you’ll like it. No infrastructure? No charging stations? Tough luck. EV batteries don’t perform in Maine’s brutal and long winters? Simply don’t drive for those months.
It’s crazy. It gets even crazier.
While insisting a prompt switch to EVs is necessary to save the environment, the State of Maine is refusing to allow locals to provide the materials necessary to build those very vehicles. The world’s richest known lithium deposit lies deep in the woods of western Maine. It is said to be one of the only hard-rock sources of lithium in the U.S. The State of Maine, however, doesn’t want the lithium mined there because, well, you know, the environment.
Apparently, it’s okay to “save the planet” with EVs as long as the damage done to the environment to get materials to create EV batteries is done somewhere else.
If the Maine lithium supply was mined, it is estimated to be worth as much as $1.5 billion. Those are big dollars in an economically challenged small state. It would also contribute to a shortfall of lithium. Automakers say they will need to achieve government goals for EV production. No, go, say the environmental hypocrites.
While good intentions may be part of the renewable agenda, reality seldom is. What is being proposed by the Biden administration and several liberal states in the way of energy policy is either woefully misguided or intentionally misleading.
When summer temperatures hit their annual highs in July, the EV industry issued several warnings to EV owners, including to only use your air conditioning sparingly, don’t charge your battery above 80%, avoid rapid charging and be aware that extreme heat can render your EV batteries useless.
Combine the limited summer use of your car with the fact there are nearly no charging stations, the EVs themselves are more expensive, and no one has a plan for how to dispose of the toxic batteries when the autos have lived their life, and one has to wonder, why are we headed down this path at all?
The push for EVs, despite having promised to be a boon for the jobs market, has actually had exactly the opposite effect. Automakers are facing economic challenges from electrifying their fleets as the Biden administration pushes to accelerate the EV transition. Ford has laid off thousands of employees. Volkswagen is planning to make fewer EVs. GM and Chrysler are both downsizing the number of employees. Upstart EV manufacturer Lordstown Motors filed for bankruptcy.
Where are the promised new jobs? The government (your money), not private industry, is trying to create them. The Department of Energy just gave a $9.2 billion dollar loan to Ford Motor Company to build three EV battery factories in Kentucky and Tennessee. Why is the government involved in private industry, and what if it fails? Don’t worry about it. It’s just taxpayer money.
Even the environmental lobbying community admits it’s government taxpayer-paid jobs that are being created. A recent study from the Environmental Defense Fund admitted 66% of those jobs were announced since Congress enacted the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in late 2021 and 32% since lawmakers passed the tax-and-climate spending bill last year known as the Inflation Reduction Act.
In short, the government is creating and paying for renewable energy jobs. Taxpayers, you and me, are funding these jobs, not a free market demand.
The list of environmental foolishness is much longer, of course.
A Biden administration-approved wind farm off the coast of New Jersey that will cost taxpayers nearly $1 billion in subsidies will also raise NJ utility costs.
California is well into a plan to rely solely on what they call green energy production in their state. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation has warned that an increase in green power generation and a decrease in fossil fuel power plants will likely lead to widespread energy shortages. Such warnings are ignored. During two consecutive summers, California has had rolling blackouts because it couldn’t fulfill demand. How much worse will that get as Governor Newsom and his cronies keep blindly pushing green at any cost?
Ironically the renewable power agenda has California depending on energy transfers from other regions. California is the nation’s largest importer of electricity. It relies on other states to provide up to a third of its supply. That costs Californians more money and doesn’t save the world. It simply moves the burden of energy creation to other locations.
The entire environmental agenda wreaks hypocrisy, fantasy and feel-good politics. The only thing truly green about it is that someone, somewhere, is lining their pockets. Meanwhile, you and I are in line for rolling power blackouts, less heat in the winter, less AC in the summer and cars that can’t operate whenever you need.
Brilliant.
- Tim Constantine is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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