A billion dollars here, a billion dollars there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.
On Friday, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright announced some real money; the Department of Energy is cancelling $3.7 billion in “green” energy and infrastructure boondoggles initiated by the Biden administration (autopen?) And get a load of this: Almost three-fourths of these grants were issued after the November 5th election and before January 20th.
The Trump administration has canceled $3.7 billion worth of grants for multiple climate-related infrastructure projects, the majority of which were approved in former President Joe Biden’s lame duck period after he lost the 2024 election.
Secretary of Energy Chris Wright made the announcement on Friday and said the 24 projects failed to advance the energy needs of the American people, were not economically viable and would not generate a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.
The department said that after a “thorough and individualized financial review of each award,” it found that nearly 70% of the awards (16 of the 24 projects) had been signed between election day on Nov. 5 and Biden’s last day in office on Jan. 20.
You don’t say.
Here are a couple of examples of what went on the chopping block:
The cuts include nearly $332 million pulled from a project at ExxonMobil’s Baytown, Texas, refinery complex, $500 million to Heidelberg Materials in Indiana and $375 million to Eastman Chemical Company in Longview, Texas.
Carbon capture, often referred to as carbon capture and storage (CCS), is a climate change mitigation technology designed to prevent carbon dioxide emissions from entering the atmosphere or from the pollution streams of facilities, including refineries and plants that burn coal and make ethanol, for storage underground.
That’s a lot of boondoggle on the taxpayers’ dime.
See Also: Budget-Busting Climate Provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act Must Go
Of course, the climate scolds and environmental activists are already claiming that these cuts will actually cost money. The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions is claiming a loss of $4.6 billion in economic output, along with the loss of thousands of jobs, and it would be roundly interesting to see them show their work on that estimate. That loss of economic output, of course, requires that there is some profit somewhere along the way. If any of these enterprises were profitable, if any of them actually generated any economic output, they wouldn’t require millions or billions in taxpayer subsidies.
There is also a storm of whining about how these cuts and others like them under President Trump “stifle innovation.” Horsefeathers. If there is a profit to be made in any of these technologies, someone will go to the effort to develop them. If there is not, then throwing more taxpayer money at them won’t help, and as a nation, we have 37 trillion reasons to put these items on the block, and plenty more besides.
Consider this a good start. The end goal, of course, should be eliminating the federal Department of Energy altogether. There’s no constitutional justification for it to exist; we got along perfectly well without it until 1977. If we’re ever going to start making any inroads into the nation’s debt problem, Washington is going to set aside the scalpel and pick up an axe.
DOGE is finding billions of dollars in wasteful spending, and the Democrats are losing their minds as they realize their gravy train and woke projects are coming to an end.
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