“Any State that has built and relied on WINDMILLS and SOLAR for power are seeing RECORD BREAKING INCREASES IN ELECTRICITY AND ENERGY COSTS,” said President Donald Trump in a Wednesday Truth Social post. “THE SCAM OF THE CENTURY! We will not approve wind or farmer destroying Solar. The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!! MAGA”
This message came on the heels of a Monday X post from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins that said: “American farmland will NO LONGER use taxpayer dollars to build solar farms.” She added that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will also stop “the use of panels made by foreign adversaries like China.”
These aren’t the first instances of the Trump administration going after renewable energy. A February executive order from the president called for a temporary withdrawal of certain offshore wind leasing. Last month, Audacy reported on rising energy prices and the administration’s decision to terminate pending $4.9 billion loan guarantee for the Grain Belt Express project focused on wind power.
The Guardian also noted that Trump has made some unsubstantiated claims about wind power, including that it is “the most expensive” and drives whales “loco.” So, is his claim that states that rely on windmills and solar power are seeing energy prices rise true?
According to the Associated Press, states with the highest share of clean energy production have seen prices decline in the past year, based on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. This data shows that prices have gone up in states with the least renewable energy use.
However, there are some complications with wind and solar energy, as explained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2023.
“Yes – wind and solar are cheap and getting cheaper, but they do make the grid more complicated in ways that, today, would make electricity more expensive if we relied on them exclusively,” said the MIT Climate Portal.
While wind and solar have the advantage of being nearly unending fountains of energy, they are also sporadic sources of energy, it added. To be useful to our grid in the way that coal and other sources of energy are, we have to store wind and solar energy, which costs money. Some methods of storage include pumped storage hydropower and batteries. In the future, these batteries could help balance the energy grid, but using mostly renewable energy would be a more complicated scenario than out current setup.
There are also costs to get wind and solar infrastructure up-and running, but plant maintenance costs are typically low, according to the International Energy Association. Renewable energy is also easier on the environment and MIT said that, when averaged over their lifetime, the price of solar or wind energy per kilowatt-hour is lower than coal or gas power.
Regarding recent price hikes in energy (Bureau of Labor Statistics data reported an increase in June but a decrease in July), experts cited by the Associated Press said that they have little do with renewable energy. Still, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said this week that renewable energy policies supported by former President Barack Obama and former President Joe Biden were to blame for recent energy price spikes.
“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,” Wright told POLITICO during a visit to Iowa last week.
There, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley actually backs wind power and has moved to protect it. Democrats have also criticized the Trump administration’s moves against renewable energy.
Energy analysts have instead pointed to a strain on the power grid due to the growing artificial intelligence field, as well as aging infrastructure and extreme weather events that are exacerbated by climate change, as the reasons why prices are going up, said the AP. It also noted that a report from the non-partisan think tank Energy Innovation found the recent GOP tax law expected to increase the average U.S. family’s energy bill by $130 annually by 2030.