These numbers aren’t real.
Over the last few months, you may have heard proponents of Biden’s massively expensive Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) legislation claiming that a repeal of green energy subsidies in the bill will have dire effects. Among those claims, they say that repealing green energy handouts will drive up electricity bills on American families. They say the spending cuts will kill jobs across the nation. They say eliminating the handouts will lower our national GDP. They even say the cuts will cause thousands of “premature deaths.”
One frequently cited “study” comes from an organization called Energy Innovation. They used a proprietary tool they call the “Energy Policy Simulator” to project outcomes they think will come if the IRA’s green energy components are left in place. They claim the IRA “could also create up to 1.5 million new jobs.” They also project that consumer energy bills will be $9 billion higher by 2035 if the green energy IRA handouts are repealed, which they say will translate into an increase of $68 per year in the average American household.
The problem though is hidden in the words that groups like Energy Innovation use to make their claims. Their numbers come from a “simulator” based on “models.” These jobs “could” be created. The rise in energy prices is “projected.”
What does all that mean? It means their numbers aren’t real.
Green energy subsidies have been spiking for years.
So, what do the real numbers say? As we’ve discussed before, the Inflation Reduction Act was certainly not the beginning of exponentially higher federal subsidies going to renewable energy sources over traditional energy sources like natural gas, nuclear and oil.
According to the Institute for Energy Research, even before the IRA, federal subsidies to support renewable energy formed nearly half of all federal energy-related support between fiscal years 2016 and 2022. Traditional fuels (coal, natural gas, oil and nuclear) received just 15 percent of all subsidies between FY 2016 and FY 2022, while renewables, conservation and end use received a whopping 85 percent. Renewable subsidies more than doubled between FY 2016 and FY 2022, increasing to $15.6 billion in fiscal year 2022 from $7.4 billion in fiscal year 2016 (both in 2022 dollars). Federal subsidies and incentives to support renewable energy in fiscal year 2022 were almost five times higher than those for fossil energy, which totaled $3.2 billion in subsidies.
After the IRA, those numbers grow even more. As energy expert Robert Bryce points out, from 2015 to 2024 the 10-year cost of wind and solar subsidies called the investment tax credit (ITC) and production tax credit (PTC) increased from just under $20 billion in annual spending to $421 billion. Bryce states: “Between 2025 and 2034, the agency expects the ITC to cost $131.4 billion and the PTC to cost $289.6 billion. That $421 billion total is a 21-fold increase since 2015 and a nearly seven-fold increase since 2021, the year before the IRA became law.”
And, they haven’t lowered your electricity bill one bit.
So, based on the projections from organizations like Energy Innovation, all those tax breaks (that come out of the pockets of American taxpayers) for wind and solar energy over the last decade should have resulted in savings on our energy bills, right? Not so much.
According to the Energy Information Administration, the retail price of electricity in the United States has risen at a consistent pace over the last two decades. In 2001, Americans were paying an average of 8.58 cents per kilowatt hour for residential electricity. In 2024, that price was 16.48 cents per kilowatt hour, nearly doubling in just over 20 years. The biggest uptick on the graph can be seen starting in 2021—just before the IRA became law. From 2021 to 2024, there was a 21 percent increase in the average price American families paid for electricity, and that happened during the exact same period that Biden’s IRA green energy slush fund went into place.
Of course any energy project—especially one flush with no-strings-attached taxpayer dollars—is going to “create” some jobs, but let’s talk scale. According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, renewable energy supported 546,630 American jobs in 2022. The U.S. oil and natural gas industry supports almost 11 million. There is no comparison. It is frankly unconscionable for the green-at-all-cost crowd to be accusing leaders of cutting made-up jobs based on their magical clean energy simulator machine, when they have been trying to kill traditional energy industries that employ millions of Americans with very real, stable, good-paying jobs.
If quantity isn’t your thing, let’s talk about quality. Jobs in nuclear, natural gas, coal and oil all pay more than jobs in wind and solar. In 2020, North America’s Building Trades Union (NABTU)—far from a right-wing source—conducted a study that found, “Oil and natural gas construction jobs provide workers with better pay, health and pension benefits than other industries.”
The Empowerment Alliance (TEA) is a 501(c)(4) organization founded in 2019 that advocates for U.S. energy independence, according to EmpoweringAmerica.org. TEA supports using American innovation and free-market principles to ensure affordable, reliable, and clean energy.
