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Daily Caller

Biden’s Signature Climate ‘Boondoggle’ Might Be On Chopping Block After Trump Win

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By David Blackmon

In the wake of the election of President Donald Trump to serve a second term in office, along with presumptive Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, many are now asking about what the future will hold for the oddly named Inflation Reduction Act.

Trump made it repeatedly clear on the campaign trail that he is not a fan of that law, which was passed on straight party-line votes in both houses of Congress, or of the hundreds of billions of dollars in green energy subsidies contained in it.

In a statement sent out in a post-election memo, Sierra Club President Ben Jealous took on a pessimistic tone, saying: “Donald Trump was a disaster for climate progress during his first term, and everything he’s said and done since suggests he’s eager to do even more damage this time.” Given the major role played by the Sierra Club and other climate-alarm groups in writing the IRA, that is exactly the kind of comments we might expect.

But a full repeal of the IRA seems unlikely to succeed, even with GOP control of the House and Senate. Republican majorities will be slim and the GOP has never shown an ability to hold all its members together when voting on controversial issues. Thus, a more scalpel-like approach seems more likely to succeed.

I asked Karr Ingham, a respected petroleum economist who serves as the president of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, if he thinks Trump and his administration would seek to repeal the Inflation Reduction act in full. Ingham said: “I certainly hope so.” Specifically, Ingham pointed to a need to repeal “the methane tax [waste emissions charge] in the IRA, and frankly, much of the spending boondoggle that is the IRA should simply be eliminated.”

Tom Pyle, president of D.C.-based think tank the Institute for Energy Research, said he believes President Trump “absolutely should” pursue a full repeal of that law. “The vast array of subsidies embedded in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is already destabilizing our electricity grid, while the spending further fuels inflation and contributes to soaring government deficits.”

Pyle further notes that Trump has promised an array of tax cuts for working Americans and families and will need to find budget offsets for those. Pyle believes the IRA offers such an opportunity. “Getting rid of subsidies for big corporations in exchange for tax relief on working families is both good policy and good politics,” he adds.

But American Petroleum Institute President Mike Sommers said his group favors retaining at least some major pieces of the IRA, specifically pointing to subsidies for carbon capture and storage (CCS) and hydrogen development. “We’ll advocate for provisions that we support, and we’ll seek repeal of provisions that we think don’t line up with continued production in the states of oil and gas,” Sommers told Politico. This is no surprise given that some of API’s biggest members have already made big bets on both CCS and hydrogen projects.

It is also important to remember that, since the IRA was signed into law in September 2022, renewable energy companies have invested hundreds of billions of dollars into wind, solar and electric vehicles projects, and a big portion of those investments are happening in key Republican states and counties.

Jason Grumet, CEO at the American Clean Power Association, said in a statement that, “Private sector clean energy investment is bringing jobs and economic opportunity to small towns and rural communities across the nation, while hundreds of new factories have come online in states that have seen far too many good jobs move overseas.” Grumet also pointed to the fact that quite a lot of investment into both wind and solar took place during Trump’s first term in office even without the added incentives from the IRA subsidy and tax incentive regimes, adding that ACPA and its members are “committed to working with the Trump-Vance administration and the new Congress to continue this great American success story.”

There is little question the Trump administration will take a hard look at many of the IRA provisions, but political realities combined with the billions already invested based on the continuation of these programs makes a full repeal seem highly unlikely.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

 

Daily Caller

‘It’s Gonna End On Day One’: GOP Lawmakers, Fishermen Urge Trump To Keep Promise To Axe Offshore Wind

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Adam Pack

Critics of the offshore wind industry are calling on President-elect Donald Trump to keep his campaign promise of ending federal support for offshore wind on his first day in office.

Trump’s return to the Oval Office may deal the problem-riddled offshore wind industry another blow if his administration follows through on his pledge to scrap federal support for offshore wind projects during his second term. Republican lawmakers, opposed to heavily subsidized green energy, and commercial fishermen, who view the industry as an existential threat to their livelihoods, are calling on the president-elect to follow through on his campaign’s promise, which could imply ending federal subsidies and lease sales for the industry.

“We are going to make sure that [offshore wind] ends on day one. I’m gonna write it out in an executive order,” Trump told a crowd of his supporters at a campaign rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, on May 11. “It’s gonna end on day one.”

Since January 2021, the Biden-Harris administration has approved ten offshore wind projects at commercial scale and conducted six offshore wind lease sales, including one held just last week in the Gulf of Maine that was criticized by the commercial fishing industry as part of President Joe Biden’s wider climate agenda. Offshore wind has notably suffered from inflation headwindsproject cancellations and souring public opinion despite the Biden administration’s embrace of the industry.

“I have no doubt that a second Trump administration will do the right thing for Americans by scrapping the Biden-Harris offshore wind agenda,” Republican New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a vocal critic of the offshore wind industry, told the DCNF. “These projects are a burden on our economy, harm local communities and are nothing but a political payoff to special interests. President Trump understands that true energy independence and prosperity come from American oil, gas, solar and especially nuclear energy, through a balanced energy policy — not from wasteful wind projects that put our economy and environment at risk.”

“I think it’s a very wise decision,” Republican Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, told the DCNF. “We are wasting money, and the worst part is that all that money is going to foreign wind companies because there are no American wind companies. They’re all foreign companies that are making billions of dollars off the American energy ratepayer.”

The Vineyard Wind energy project, jointly owned by a Danish investment firm and a Spanish utility, earned Republican lawmakers’ ire in July when debris from one of the project’s turbine blades — which stretches longer than the Statue of Liberty — washed up on Massachusetts’ beaches after breaking apart and falling into the ocean.

“We should never allow foreign owned companies to control our energy supply — much less harm our environment while doing it,” Harris wrote on X.

The New England Fisherman’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA), a commercial fishing industry group that organized a “flotilla protest” at the site of the broken Vineyard Wind turbine in August, is calling on the Trump administration to walk back on Biden’s goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. The group is also advocating for the incoming Trump administration to “delist unleased wind energy areas” off the coast of New England and the mid-Atlantic.

NEFSA CEO Jerry Leeman told the DCNF that he’s optimistic that the Trump administration will be “a voice of reason” on offshore wind, which he claimed would be a welcome departure from the previous administration, whom he accused of prioritizing green energy goals over fishermen’s livelihoods and the health of the marine environment.

“The incoming administration has an historic opportunity to save American workers from foreign developers, reinvigorate iconic coastal towns, and improve America’s food security,” NEFSA CEO Jerry Leeman said in a press release following Trump’s election win.

The Trump administration may also seek to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies that offshore wind projects are eligible for, which could make the industry’s continued growth off the Atlantic coast not as economically viable, according to Travis Fisher, director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute.

“I would expect the prospects of offshore wind to dim once the subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act are repealed,” Fischer told the DCNF. “The high cost of offshore wind is unavoidable. State and federal subsidies can mask the cost by shifting it to the tax base, but ultimately either ratepayers or taxpayers will bear the significantly above-market cost of offshore wind in the states that mandate it.”

Offshore wind developers and wind turbine makers’ stock prices substantially decreased on Wednesday following news of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ defeat the previous night.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request to comment from the DCNF.

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Daily Caller

Trump Is Back And Foreign Leaders Are Taking Notice

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Morgan Murphy

That didn’t take long.

Less than a week after the landslide election of former President Donald J. Trump, America’s enemies are running for cover.

A Hamas spokesman told Newsweek it seeks an immediate end to the war.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin remarked to reporters that Trump’s desire to end the Ukraine crisis “deserves attention at least.”

China’s Xi Jinping congratulated Trump on Thursday, expressing the pair would “find the right way to get along in the new era.”

World leaders know that the past four years of U.S. dithering, insecurity, and shame are over.

America is back with the gusto of a “USA, USA!” chant.

The world sees exactly what a majority of Americans see in their president-elect: strength.

“His behavior at the moment of an attempt on his life left an impression on me. He turned out to be a brave man,” Vladimir Putin said.

Damn right.

It is a fact as old as human nature that strength, bravery and resolve create peace. Weakness invites war.

We’ve lived the latter half of that adage for the past four years.

Madam vice president thought her boss was “capable in every way,” and willfully ignored President Joe Biden’s declining faculties as he struggled to climb the stairs of Air Force One, remember the names of other world leaders or stay awake during global summits.

The Biden-Harris administration shamed the nation with its disgraceful retreat from Afghanistan. After the world watched that fiasco, deterrence collapsed like a Dollar-General beach chair under Chris Christy. Enter, stage left, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Chinese spy balloons and a Middle East in flames.

Is it any wonder that military recruiting dropped under Biden, our enemies began moving pawns across the chessboard and America’s trust in its military plummeted to the lowest point in decades?

Trump’s new national security team will inherit a Middle East engulfed in violence, China marching towards Taiwan and the largest war in Europe since 1945.

The first order of business? A return to the Trump 1.0 policies that worked.

That is bad news for host of malign actors, but at the top of the list likely sits Iran and its proxies. The mullahs are probably regretting their plot to assassinate Trump.

Expect Trump’s legendary “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran to snap back in place. That plan drained billions from their despotic death cult. Sign number one: recent reports say the maximum pressure campaign architect, Brian Hook, will lead the transition team at the U.S. Department of State.

On Friday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin called a meeting of all political appointees at the Pentagon — let’s hope they simply discussed the orderly and lawful transfer of power and authorities and not ways to stymie the incoming administration.

With two months of Biden remaining at the helm, most Americans are holding their breath that he won’t stumble the nation into yet another conflict before leaving the Oval Office for good.

Morgan Murphy is military thought leader, former press secretary to the Secretary of Defense and national security advisor in the U.S. Senate.

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