As Republican Pres. Donald Trump enters the third week of his second term in office, Louisiana grifters – including a state representative – aggrieved at Trump’s turning off the firehose of taxpayer benefits to them have started complaining.
Perhaps taking a cue from a recent Associated Press article about Trump’s suspension and review of wind energy permits, the Baton Rouge Advocate pounded out a Louisiana version. Both discussed the presumed economic benefits from allowing wind power construction and generation, while the AP piece added this constituted a rebranded strategy from hyping the alleged threat of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming to stressing jobs and economic development from wind power.
The Advocate article echoes the development angle. It parades several individuals involved in or advocating for support industries, including Republican state Rep. Joseph Orgeron, to complain how not only would am embargo on wind power development curtail a nascent Louisiana industry but also in doing so potentially cost the state tax revenues from it.
Which potentially would be to the benefit of taxpayers. Simply, non-dispatchable renewable energy sources, solar and wind both onshore and offshore, are horrendously expensive and are not economically viable without government subsidization, whether indirectly through favorable tax treatment or directly with transfer payments, or mandates forcing the use of renewable sources. The Advocate article tries to sidestep this by claiming, while admitting offshore wind is extremely uncompetitive, that onshore wind is as competitive if not more so than combined cycle natural gas.
But it lazily or deceptively doesn’t explain that the metric used, levelized cost of electricity, is a flawed measure as it makes a dispatchable assumption – that is, either the wind blows constantly or there’s enough battery storage to substitute (there isn’t, as the U.S. has enough storage for only a few minutes every 24 hours) – nor acknowledges this includes generous tax subsidies. Using a more accurate metric, the cost of wind is several times that of fossil fuels, not including subsidies. The latest data showed wind received $3.5 billion, or just over $10 per American, in subsidies in the U.S. in fiscal year 2022.
Then there are the states that have renewable portfolios built into their utilities production, which because of the higher real costs of renewable sources artificially increases prices. Fortunately, the Louisiana Legislature and Public Service Commissions have refused to do the same. Moreover, some other states actually provide their own subsidization to renewable sources, which, again, wisely Louisiana doesn’t allow.
Still, Louisiana consumers might suffer from the federal government and other state governments’ subsidization and mandates. As the state’s power utilities buy and sell energy within a regional system as well as possibly from other systems given conditions at any given time, as well as almost all Louisiana power consumers collect their energy from utilities that voluntarily have adopted some renewable source generation, a continued overemphasis on trying to roll out renewable sources needlessly drives up energy costs for Louisiana households.
Even if state policy so far hasn’t fallen into a trap of subsidizing wind power, Louisianans suffer enough through federal policy. By placing a moratorium on wind power permits, Trump prevents that draining from perpetuating by cutting off the dollar pipeline that Louisianans, along with all Americans, must supply to keep the grifters in business. If they can’t stay in business without government intervening in their favor – making the costs to Louisianans and Americans generally outstrip any alleged economic activity generated from being juiced by them – they need to stop whining about that plug being pulled.
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