President-elect Donald Trump caused quite a stir this week with his comments about the wind industry during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. Trump compared wind farms to “dropping garbage in a field” and said wind developers are “getting rich” off of government subsidies that the projects receive.
Trump also argued that wind energy is the most expensive form of energy, far more expensive than “clean natural gas.” Experts doing full analyses of all the costs associated with putting wind and solar farms on the grid tell Just the News that Trump is correct.
Electricity rates
The New York Times called the press conference “meandering” and, though Trump made no mention of the amount of wind energy the U.S. has on the grid, the Times reporters stressed that wind accounted for 22% of the electricity generated in Texas and 59% in Iowa.
The Times reporters also claimed that wind power is one of the “lowest-cost sources of electricity in the United States,” citing the Department of Energy. While they provided figures of the growth of wind energy in the U.S., the Times reporters never discuss electricity rates, which would be expected to be falling if increased wind was producing cheaper electricity.
A Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report released this week finds that between 2019 and 2023, the average U.S. retail electricity prices, which includes costs to homes, businesses and industries, increased in line with inflation. But the rates for residential customers rose higher than inflation. Some states, such as renewable-powered California, saw rates increase more than 8% compared to the national average of 4.8%, and there was no decrease in electricity prices anywhere. […]
— Read More: justthenews.com
