We must abandon reckless wind, solar subsidies

By Frank LaRose
Ohio Secretary of State
 
In 2012, Ohio farmer David Brandt became internet famous for his phrase “It ain’t much, but it’s honest work.” Those of us who have been around the agriculture community know the truth behind the clip; agriculture is honest work and despite the emblematic humility it IS much more – Ohio farmers provide the food, fuel and fiber a modern economy needs.
 
My first job as a kid was working the fields on a small family farm in Copley, Ohio on an old IH Farmall M. It’s hard work from sun-up to sun-down. Family farmers throughout this country break their backs each and every day to feed the world and protect their businesses, families and way of life.
 
Their greatest threat is no longer just bad weather, pests or ever-changing commodity markets. Now, they share a common threat with coal miners, natural gas workers, and everyone who goes to the gas station or heats their homes: the Biden Administration and their relentless Green New Deal policies.

Ohio farmers and landowners are facing an onslaught of solar and wind projects impacting their land and pressuring an abandonment of their cherished way of life. The main cause – the dramatic increase in green energy subsidies.
 
The Biden Administration and liberals in DC like Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown doubled down on the problem with their reckless and grossly misnamed Inflation Reduction Act. The so-called IRA gives an estimated $369 billion for energy credits over a ten-year period targeted at what the liberals claim to be clean energy “solutions”.
 
Before passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, Washington was already spending more than $100 billion a year on renewable credits for electricity production. We should fully expect that figure to double but with little to no increase in Ohio’s or America’s energy reliability or affordability. 

Richer wind and solar credits will be joined by incentives for solar panels, wind turbine parts, facilities, and energy storage projects. Compounding the problem this administration continues to champion ever more burdensome regulations on the reliable forms of base load energy such as gas, coal and nuclear.
 
The IRA is nothing less than the Democrats’ partisan attempt to turn America’s globally dominant energy sector into Europe’s decrepit energy sector. Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a true European crisis was well underway. Energy prices shot up 70% during 2021, largely due to the EU’s carbon prices rising 334%. 

When prices shot up even more after the invasion, plant closures gripped the EU as “de-industrialization” arrived. One EU diplomat admits, “Our industry is bleeding to death.” 

Europe is staring into an economic abyss due to policies, like the IRA, being implemented here and now by Biden and Brown.
 
The most glaring hypocrisy in the left’s crusade for solar and wind is that their phony policies are costly to the environment. The constant need for redundant energy sources speaks to the underlying problem of solar and wind sources: reliability. In Europe one day 12 years ago, wind power produced nearly a third of Germany's electricity. Four days later, it produced zero, zilch, nada. 

Because the wind dies down and clouds block the sun, utilities need to keep nuclear or fossil fuel systems running and at the ready for cloudy or windless days. Consumers are now paying higher rates for the redundancies that these utilities must build and operate to meet demand. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, electricity prices in Ohio are up nearly 23% since the beginning of the pandemic.
 
The components that comprise the federally subsidized green energy economy envisioned by the IRA come primarily from China which dominates the solar and batteries industries and is a significant part of the wind industry. The IRA’s wind and solar subsidies deliberately weaken America’s electrical grid and our global energy security at the very same time wars are raging in two of the planet’s energy-producing regions. 

The subsidies push our economy toward more expensive and less reliable energy sources with dependence on Chinese supply chains. Why would we deliberately squander our hard-earned American energy advantage? Why would we intentionally replace reliable domestic energy with unreliable and expensive foreign-controlled energy?
 
When I’m elected to the U.S. Senate, I’ll introduce legislation to immediately reverse the radical Green New Deal policies including the extreme and wasteful subsidies for wind, solar and electric vehicles. I will advance legislation to open federal land and offshore areas for exploration and drilling; promote the export of LNG to help grow our industry and protect our allies; work to keep the commitments in the Fiscal Responsibility Act to bring NEPA into the current century; and eliminate the 50% subsidy for wind and solar energy projects.
 
Liberal energy policies tied to fake and unjustified outrage over the environment lack any humanity or common sense. We must recapture American energy dominance, protect farmers, lower fuel prices for hard-working Americans and abandon green energy subsidies.
 
Frank LaRose is Ohio's secretary of state and a candidate for the U.S. Senate.