How ‘Green’ projects are looting the treasury

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

All that money is wasted. Wind and solar and the various battery projects have not managed to support the electrical grid in any substantial way, hovering, on average, around 4 percent.

The most egregious theft of collective wealth and well-being — and it is flat-out theft — is the churn on “alternative” forms of energy production. Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama said last week in an interview with Steve Bannon that the U.S. has spent some $7 trillion over budget in the last three years, and 25 percent of that went to “climate change” projects. They are all like Solyndra, massively subsidized and within a decade, massive failures. “The investors take a tax loss,” said Tuberville, “then move onto the next effort where they again loot the public.” This is salted through all the investment banks, retirement accounts. It represents all putative growth.

In June of 2023, the Department of Energy admitted that it had allocated $1.3 trillion for “clean energy” investment support since 2020, and that spending rose 25 percent from 2021-23. This is a fraction of what was really spent. Further, this money is not only based in debt, thus raising inflation, but it is also raising energy prices. It is the principal reason that almost 25 percent of us, according to economist Peter St. Onge, have been forced to choose between heat and food this winter.

What a choice.

$1,750,000,000, in an annual gift to the rich. The World Economic Forum projects that climate spending in the U.S. will triple over the next ten years. Biden’s “climate” budget is $5.7 trillion. Triple that to $20 trillion. No wonder the market is booming. The U.S. has pledged another half a trillion in “low carbon electricity” under this year’s Paris Climate Accord. And further:

Among all measures tracked since 2020, direct incentives for manufacturers aimed at bolstering domestic manufacturing of “clean” energy now total to around $90 billion.
Since the start of the global energy crisis, governments have also allocated $900 billion to short-term consumer affordability measures, additional to pre-existing support programs and subsidies. Around 30 percent of this “affordability” spending has been announced in the past six months, and despite calls to better target households and industries most in need, only 25 percent of affordability measures are targeted towards low-income households and most-impacted industries.

Much of this last $900 billion is direct subsidy to the wealthy in annual subsidies for clean energy. This is again, annual subsidy, so look at the last twenty years. President Obama started this program, therefore, we are looking at a $10 – $ 20 trillion gift to the rich since the Lightbringer took office. What is not counted in these budgets are the losses that accrue from the failure of “green energy” projects, which is the taxpayer’s loss.

Last year, investors in Spain’s green energy collapse took the government to court to claw back subsidies from a dead industry in a country with a debt 400 percent larger than GDP. No wonder millions on the street want to outlaw socialism. As is clear from Spain, when the government runs out of money the first thing to go is the subsidy to green energy, after which the enterprise fails immediately.

In my neck of the Canadian woods, you can install a solar system for $20,000, and get a 25 percent subsidy, as does the installer whose business the government created via “free” “investment.” I live in a rain forest. Which means solar is not available during winter rains and not needed during the summers. Recently everyone with a few extra bucks has taken up the government offer to install heat pumps, also subsidized by between 50 percent and 75 percent. Rain forests mean hydro power, which is essentially, greenhouse-gas-free, and the most inexpensive “fuel,” but an almost-free heat pump? Again win/win for the upper-middle-class because no one in Canada’s increasingly massive working class can afford it.

This model was invented by politicians in power. The first person to notice it was Peter Schweizer; in Throw Them All Out, he details the billionaire investors who funded Obama and who were cashed out via various solar and wind projects. Hundreds of billions of dollars went missing on Obama’s various “clean energy” projects.

This year, every government department is “investing” in clean energy, vis, a quick Google search, will show. Pages and pages of boastful press releases follow. Every agency is in on the boondoggle. NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Patent and Trade Mark Office have signed a collaborative agreement to advance climate technology. Putting aside the fact that “climate change” is neither imminent nor dangerous, the government should not be creating patents. Innovation should be carried out by the private market, where there are controls.

As we discovered during Covid, government patents on both the virus and the vaccine were not subjected to court challenge, double blind testing, or feasibility. There is no number attached to NOAA’s “initiative,” but this is representative of ten thousand such projects salted through every government bureau. All that money is wasted. Wind and solar and the various battery projects have not managed to support the electrical grid in any substantial way, hovering, on average, around 4 percent. Despite this mind-boggling waste of money, in September last year former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg pledged another $500 billion to shutter the equivalent of 40 percent total electricity use of nine states, including California, Florida, New York, Illinois and Texas.

What has been the result of trillions of public money shunted into “clean” “green” “energy” on the actual energy grid? Robert Bryce, an acknowledged expert, shows that it is failing. A speech he gave at the winter meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners showed astonishing, across the-board failure in every metric you can imagine.

“Climate Policy” is considered the most significant risk. As Bryce describes, “green energy” has meant Europe is deindustrializing, Ford lost $64,731 for every EV it sold, and the IEA states that global coal use will hit another new record of 8.5 billion tons. Coal use increased 35 percent in last summer’s heat wave. Wind dropped by 21 percent.

Climate policy breaks everything. It breaks communities, it encourages widespread theft of public money, it starves productive work and manufacturing, it has punched down on the less advantaged, and it is destroying the fabric of our lives. And for what?

First published in thepipeline.org, March 24, 2024.

Elizabeth Nickson is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Related Topics:#ElectricalGrid #ElizabethNickson #FrontierCentreForPublicPolicy #GreenProjectsAreLootingTheTreasury #SolarPower #WindPower

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Energy security matters more than political rhetoric

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Canada’s sudden rediscovery of energy ambition has been greeted with a familiar charge: hypocrisy

Energy

Energy security matters more than political rhetoric

Published on December 16, 2025

Todayville

From Resource Works

By Stewart Muir

If we force a transition that increases the cost of living, threatens grid reliability, and denies developing nations the dense energy they need to rise out of poverty, what have we actually achieved?

Finance expert warns that political timelines for transition defy the laws of physics and economics while threatening living standards.

In the polarized world of energy policy, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find conversations that prioritize practical reality over political idealism. We are often presented with a binary choice: either you are for the planet, or you are against it. But as I often find when digging deeper into these issues on the Power Struggle podcast, the real world is far too complex for such simple narratives.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Jerome Gessaroli to strip away the rhetoric and look at the hard numbers. For those who don’t know him, Gessaroli is a finance professor at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and a valued member of the Resource Works Advisory Council. He is a thinker who deals in data, not daydreams.

Stewart Muir with Jerome Gesaroli on Power Struggle Podcast

Our conversation focused on a topic that makes many policymakers uncomfortable: the widening gap between our energy transition targets and the physical capacity to meet them.

The Fundamental Equation

We began with a premise that should be obvious but is frequently forgotten in the halls of government in Ottawa or Brussels. Gessaroli laid it out as a fundamental fact that underscores every economic decision a nation makes.

“There is a direct link, a direct correlation, between energy consumption and living standards,” Gessaroli told me. “And so if we expect to improve our living standards in the future, then we will likely be expending more energy.”

This is the inescapable equation of modern life. In the West, where we have enjoyed stable grids and abundant fuel for a century, we sometimes delude ourselves into thinking we can maintain our prosperity while shrinking our energy footprint. But globally, the trend is moving in the opposite direction.

Gessaroli pointed out that while we debate carbon taxes and caps here, the majority of the planet is focused on survival and advancement.

“A lot of the growth in energy consumption will be through the Third World,” he explained. “They’ve just got a huge population, and they want to pursue economic growth, have a better standard of living, and that will require a lot more energy.”

The View from the Developing World

To illustrate this, Gessaroli drew on his observations from India. He described seeing farmers burning dung to create heat and energy—a practice born of necessity, but one that traps populations in poverty and creates localized health hazards. The path out of that poverty isn’t found in wishful thinking; it’s found in density.

“Now, if they expect to have a better standard of living in the future . . . they’re going to be looking at more intensive sources of energy, like coal, natural gas, nuclear, whatever,” Gessaroli said. “They need to use more energy in order to raise their living standards.”

This brings us to one of the most contentious points in the global climate dialogue. We often hear Western politicians ask, with a mix of confusion and frustration, why nations like China and India are still building new coal-power plants. If the technology for wind and solar exists, why aren’t they leaping straight to it?

I found Gessaroli’s answer to be a necessary dose of realism. It isn’t that these nations hate the environment; it’s that they love stability.

“They know how to do it extremely efficiently. They have the local domestic sources,” Gessaroli noted, referring to coal reserves. “There’s a source of energy security in that they don’t have to import the product.”

In an era of geopolitical instability, energy security is national security. Relying on domestic coal provides a safety net that imported fuels or intermittent renewables cannot yet match. As Gessaroli put it: “The type of power that is generated by a coal plant, for instance, is stable, reliable power.”

The Timeline Mismatch

This doesn’t mean the world isn’t changing. It is. Gessaroli was quick to acknowledge that the green energy sector is booming. Innovation is happening. But there is a massive disconnect between the pace of engineering and the pace of political promises.

“There is a lot of growth in terms of other types of energy production. They’re growing quite rapidly and they’re improving over time,” Gessaroli said. “But it’s just not in line with the time frames that our politicians and policymakers are telling us that the targets have to be met by.”

This is the crux of the “power struggle.” We are being sold a vision of the future with a delivery date that defies the laws of physics and economics.

The EV Challenge and the Scale of Site C

Perhaps nowhere is this disconnect more visible than in the push for electric vehicles (EVs). Governments are setting aggressive target dates to ban the sale of internal combustion engines. On paper, it looks like a victory for the climate. But as a finance professor, Gessaroli looks at the balance sheet of power generation.

“What they don’t realize is the activity, the investment, required to actually make that happen,” he said. “Where is all that extra power going to come from?”

This is not a rhetorical question. It is a logistical nightmare. To put it in a local context, we looked at British Columbia. We have just spent years and billions of dollars completing the Site C hydro dam, a massive engineering project designed to secure our grid for the future.

However, Gessaroli’s calculations suggest that the new power demand from a full EV transition alone means we would need two times the amount of power currently generated by the new Site C hydro dam.

Let that sink in. It took us decades of planning, regulatory hurdles, and construction to build one Site C. To meet the government’s EV mandates, we effectively need to build two more, immediately. And that doesn’t even account for the rest of the economy.

“If we want to decarbonize mines and other industrial projects as well, then we’re going to have to find the extra power,” Gessaroli added.

If we cannot build the generation capacity in time, the demand will simply outstrip supply. Prices will skyrocket, and reliability will plummet.

The Unintended Consequences

Towards the end of our discussion, Gessaroli posed a question that has stuck with me. It challenges the moral high ground often claimed by the most aggressive climate activists.

If we force a transition that increases the cost of living, threatens grid reliability, and denies developing nations the dense energy they need to rise out of poverty, what have we actually achieved?

It all leads to his key question: What if the green revolution is hurting the people it aims to protect?

It is a question that deserves an honest answer, not more slogans. As we look toward a future of increased energy demand, we need to listen to experts like Gessaroli who understand that you cannot legislate your way around the laws of thermodynamics.

Watch the video on Power Struggle

Resource Works News

Energy

Canada’s sudden rediscovery of energy ambition has been greeted with a familiar charge: hypocrisy

Published on December 16, 2025

Todayville

From Resource Works

By Stewart Muir

Carney didn’t betray climate ambition. He confronted reality

Playing politics with pipelines is a time-honored Canadian tradition. Recent events in the House of Commons offered a delightful twist on the genre.

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The Conservatives introduced a motion quoting the Liberals’ own pipeline promises laid out in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Alberta, nearly verbatim. The Liberals, true to form, killed it 196–139 with enthusiastic help from the NDP, Bloc, and Greens.

We all knew how this would end. Opposition motions like this never pass; no government, especially not one led by Mark Carney, is going to let the opposition dictate the agenda. There’s not much use feigning outrage that the Liberals voted it down. The more entertaining angle has been watching closely as Liberal MPs twist themselves into pretzels explaining why they had to vote “no” on a motion that cheers on a project they claim to support in principle.

Liberal MP Corey Hogan dismissed the motion as “game-playing” designed to “poke at people”.

And he’s absolutely right to call it a “trap” for the Liberals. But traps only work when you walk into them.

Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty deemed the motion an “immature waste of parliamentary time” and “clearly an insult towards Indigenous Peoples” because it didn’t include every clause of the original agreement. Energy Minister Tim Hodgson decried it as a “cynical ploy to divide us” that “cherry-picked” the MOU.

Yet the prize for the most tortured metaphor goes to the prime minister himself. Defending his vote against his own pipeline promise, Carney lectured the House that “you have to eat the entire meal, not just the appetizer.”

It’s a clever line, and it also reveals the problem. The “meal” Carney is serving is stuffed with conditions. Environmental targets or meaningful engagement with Indigenous communities aren’t unrealistic asks. A crippling industrial carbon price as a precondition might be though.

But the prime minister has already said the quiet part out loud.

Speaking in the House a few weeks ago, Carney admitted that the agreement creates “necessary conditions, but not sufficient conditions,” before explicitly stating: “We believe the government of British Columbia has to agree.”

There is the poison pill. Handing a de facto veto to a provincial government that has spent years fighting oil infrastructure is neither constitutionally required nor politically likely. Elevating B.C.’s “agreement” to a condition, which is something the MOU text itself carefully avoids doing, means that Carney has made his own “meal” effectively inedible.

Hodgson’s repeated emphasis that the Liberal caucus supports “the entire MOU, the entire MOU” only reinforces this theory.

This entire episode forces us to ask whether the MOU is a real plan to build a pipeline, or just a national unity play designed to cool down the separatist temperature in Alberta. My sense is that Ottawa knew they had to throw a bone to Premier Danielle Smith because the threat of the sovereignty movement is gaining real traction. But you can’t just create the pretense of negotiation to buy time.

With the MOU getting Smith boo’ed at her own party’s convention by the separatists, it’s debatable whether that bone was even an effective one to throw.

There is a way. The federal government has the jurisdiction. If they really wanted to, they could just do it, provided the duty to consult with and accommodate Indigenous peoples was satisfied. Keep in mind: no reasonable interpretation equates Section 35 of the Charter to a veto.

Instead, the MOU is baked with so many conditions that the Liberals have effectively laid the groundwork for how they’re going to fail.

With overly-hedged, rather cryptic messaging, Liberals have themselves given considerable weight to a cynical theory, that the MOU is a stalling tactic, not a foundation to get more Canadian oil to the markets it’s needed in. Maybe Hodgson is telling the truth, and caucus is unified because the radicals are satisfied that “the entire MOU” ensures that a new oil pipeline will never reach tidewater through BC.

So, hats off to the legislative affairs strategists in the Conservative caucus. The real test of Carney’s political power continues: can he force a caucus that prefers fantasy economics into a mold of economic literacy to deliver on the vision Canadians signed off on? Or will he be hamstrung trying to appease the radicals from within?

Margareta Dovgal is managing director of Resource Works Society.