Harrop: Only U.S. foes could craft so damaging an energy policy

By Froma Harrop / Creators.com

President Donald Trump’s energy policy is utterly screwed up; if you assume America’s interests, and not pleasing his fossil fuel friends, is the objective.

This came to the fore when trade adviser Peter Navarro hollered at India for buying Russian oil. Navarro called the purchases “opportunistic and deeply corrosive” of efforts to isolate Russia and curb Vladimir Putin’s war machine. Oh, is Trump isolating Putin? Could have fooled us.

Navarro is right that Russia’s oil wealth is funding Putin’s savage attacks on Ukraine. If so, then wouldn’t it be in our interests to speed the move away from fossil fuels? That’s the path Western Europe took shortly after the Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine.

On the contrary, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is now demanding that projects “related to wind and solar energy facilities” go through new layers of political review. In other words, slow or kill them.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright has canceled a federal loan guarantee to build an $11 billion transmission line through the Heartland. The Grain Belt Express was to send electricity generated by Kansas wind farms across four states. The states involved — Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Indiana — had all approved the project. For reasons easy to guess, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley sided with Trump against the venture.

Invenergy, the Grain Belt Express developer, called Hawley’s opposition “bizarre.” Writing on X, the company accused Hawley of being against an infrastructure project “aligned with the President’s energy dominance agenda.”

As though Trump has an energy dominance agenda, as opposed to a slogan. Does even Trump believe that, well into the 21st century, fossil fuels are the golden-brick road to energy dominance? If he does, that would be most concerning of all.

Trump clearly hasn’t read China’s plan for “energy dominance”?

China now dominates in electric vehicles, solar, wind and batteries. Electricity now accounts for 30 percent of its energy consumption versus only 20 percent in the U.S. The Financial Times reports that China is on its way to becoming the first “electrostate.”

Electric vehicles represent both the present and future of transport. Trump is actively handing the EV market to China. He started by pushing Republicans to kill federal tax credits incentivizing Americans to buy or lease electric vehicles. (They end on Oct. 1.)

Ford CEO Jim Farley recently called China’s rise in the EV market the “most humbling experience” of his career. “Their cost, their quality of their vehicles is far superior to what I see in the West.”

Also gone are tax credits for wind and solar power. As a result, dozens of EV or clean energy projects — investments totaling $27 billion — have been canceled.

Over half of Iowa’s electricity now comes from wind power. And on sunny and windy days in Texas, wind and solar power can supply over 60 percent of the ERCOT grid’s fuel mix. (ERCOT manages about 90 percent of the electricity flow in Texas.)

Trump’s tariff mania, meanwhile, has thrown wrenches in the ability of both green and fossil fuel energy to plan their investments. Interestingly, it is hurting oil more than clean energy. Since April 2, when Trump launched his trade war “Liberation Day,” S&P’s main index for oil stocks has fallen 4 percent. By contrast, the S&P index tracking clean energy companies is up about 18 percent.

Trump continues to bellow about the “energy dominance” thing, by which he’s clearly shown means helping fossil fuels and hurting the green alternatives. He also goes on about cheaper gas, which is not what the oil business wants for obvious reasons.

Want to defang Putin and save the heating planet from environmental collapse? Trump is totally off that case. Only America’s enemies could craft a more damaging energy policy.