President Donald Trump is desperately trying to quell public anxiety about the cost-of-living crisis as he faces similar inflation woes that former President Joe Biden did through his term — but one former Republican official is warning that his energy policy is only making it worse.
According to NOTUS, “Increases in residential electricity prices were as high as 25%in some parts of the country over the last three years, in large part due to increased demands from data centers and investments in upgrading the aging electric grid. Democrats on the campaign trail this fall seized on these price increases with success. Voters even ousted Republicans from Georgia’s utility board, a surprise upset in a little-watched local election.”
But even as Trump tries to sell himself as an affordability president, he has walked away from the GOP’s traditional “all of the above” energy policy. Republicans before him have generally embraced renewable energy, but simply argued it should not be subsidized over oil and gas and should compete with them on even footing. Trump, however, has outright tried to shut down green energy projects, including several offshore wind installations that are nearly finished.
This has multiple Republicans warning him that he’s sabotaging his own economy — even arguing that they find his relentless picking of winners and losers in energy as destructive and harmful as how they perceived Biden’s energy policy to be.
“The rhetoric went from ‘renewables shouldn’t be subsidized’ to outright hostility towards certain energy types. That caught me off guard a little bit, and that was frustrating,” said former GOP Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner Neal Chatterjee.
“If the Trump administration doesn’t reverse course, they’re doing the exact same thing the Biden administration did, just for different resources,” Chatterjee continued. “So the Biden administration propped up clean energy and, you know, tried to enforce the retirement of fossil fuels. Now these guys are going after clean energy projects and trying to promote fossil fuels at a moment in time where we need every available electron.”
This comes at a moment when Trump’s own supporters are bitterly divided over his administration’s support for artificial intelligence buildout, which has become a key driver of rising electricity prices.
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