Is The "Climate" Agenda Poised For A Comeback In The U.S.?

In multiple posts over the past year, I have expressed the opinion that the “net zero” climate/energy agenda will have a very hard time reviving at the national level after the devastation inflicted by the second Trump administration and the recent Republican Congress.

Where we are now is that most of the regulatory support for “green” energy has been eliminated — most particularly the so-called “Endangerment Finding,” determining that greenhouse gases “endanger” human health and welfare — and also, Congress (in the OBBB) has zeroed out the subsidies and tax credits that enabled uneconomic wind and solar generators to get built. But could the recent Democratic sweep of Congress change all of that?

Certainly Big Enviro has wasted no time in getting their energy transition demands back in front of the public. Among many other examples, consider this release from the Sierra Club, just issued in the aftermath of the election. Excerpt:

Tackle Skyrocketing Energy Prices and Get More Clean Energy Online. Congress can address the affordability crisis facing American families by getting more clean energy on the grid. . . . Pass the Energy Bills Relief Act or a similar energy package that would restore the clean energy tax credits and grants cut in the 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill” law, provide immediate relief to households, and support the longer-term transition to clean energy.

There’s a lot more (e.g., blaming oil producers for bad weather and opposing data centers), but that’s the most important piece. Their fundamental and most important point is that the route to “tackling skyrocketing energy prices” is to “get more clean energy on the grid.” And by “clean energy,” they mean wind and solar generation.

The assertion that “clean energy,” meaning wind and solar energy, is a way to lower energy prices for consumers is a factual assertion subject to disproof. This assertion has been repeated so endlessly that many people, perhaps most people, appear to believe it. But it is clearly wrong, and to an extent that is beyond dispute. It has been able to survive so far because of the dozens of government deceptions used to hide the costs from consumers. These schemes range from tax credits to subsidies to grants to priority grid dispatch, and many more such. But even with literally trillions of dollars of such schemes designed to keep the costs of wind and solar generation from appearing on consumer bills, plenty of costs remain to make the comparison completely obvious.

The reasons why generation from wind and solar lead to more expensive electricity are also obvious. An electrical grid as an engineering matter must balance supply and demand minute by minute. Obtaining intermittent production from wind and solar may be cheap, but it won’t run the grid without much more; and the additional resources needed to transform the intermittent production into something that matches demand are not cheap at all. These resources include backup, storage, and additional transmission. And don’t forget “overbuild.” Since wind and solar average production at only about 30% of nameplate capacity over the course of a year, a grid operator must have at least 3+ times as much of them (as a percentage of capacity) than of dispatchable generators like fossil fuel or nuclear, in order to produce over a year the amount of electricity that will be consumed. Kaching!

For a recent presentation to the CO2 Coalition, I collected data from some of the jurisdictions that have gone the furthest in trying to power their grids with wind and solar generation. These jurisdictions include Germany and the UK in Europe, and California and New York in the U.S. The good news is that over the past few years, AI has made collecting these data much easier than it was previously.

For comparison purposes, the U.S. Energy Information Administration provides monthly data on average residential electricity prices. The most recent month of data is August 2026. The average residential price across the 50 states (plus D.C.) was 18.16¢/kWh. Here are some comparisons from the “climate leader” jurisdictions:

Germany

Germany perhaps more than any other country has been obsessed with achieving an “energy transition” and “net zero” emissions of greenhouse gases. Germany’s average demand for electricity (that is, dividing total consumption for the year by the number of hours in a year, which is 8760) is about 57 GW. To attempt to match this demand, Germany has built total capacity of wind and solar generators of some 210 GW — that is, almost a 4x “overbuild.” With that 4x overbuild, it managed to supply only 44% of its electricity demand in 2025 from wind and solar generation.

According to European Commission data, Germany’s average household electricity price was € 0.3618/kWh, which is about 40.5¢/kWh — some 2.3 times the average U.S. price. Germany’s high electricity costs have been widely blamed for its ongoing de-industrialization.

United Kingdom

The UK is almost as obsessed with “net zero” as Germany. Average UK electricity demand is about 37 GW. To attempt to meet that, they have built some 32 GW of wind generators, and 24 GW of solar, for a total of about 56 GW between the two. This represents an “overbuild” of about 1.5x. The percent of its electricity that the UK was able to obtain from its wind and solar generators in 2025 was about 37%. Note the BBC at the link desperately trying to spin this result as somehow something positive.

Data from the UK’s regulator Ofgam gives the average consumer electricity rate as 26.32p/kWh, which at current exchange rate translates to about 35.26¢, or just less than double the average U.S. rate. Again, high energy prices are driving a substantial de-industrialization.

California

California claims the U.S. title as the most obsessed among the states with the climate religion. It has average electricity demand of about 30 GW, and total wind and solar generation installed capacity of about 31 GW — just over a 1x overbuild. In 2025 it obtained about 35% of its electricity supply from the wind and solar generators.

According to the EIA data, California’s average residential cost of electricity in the most recent month (August) was 29.75¢/kWh, about 64% above the U.S. average. As recently as July, California had the highest electricity prices among the contiguous 48 states, but somehow in August a couple of almost-as-obsessed New England states (Massachusetts and Maine) managed to pass it.

New York

Although New York talks a good game with its so-called “Climate Leadership” Act, in fact it has lagged well behind Germany, the UK, and California in actually building wind and solar generation. According to the latest data that I found, New York has average demand of about 15 GW, and installed wind and solar capacity of about 10 GW, for well less than a 1x “build.” New York as of now gets only about 11% of its electricity from the wind and solar generators.

As you would then expect, New Yorkers pay unjustifiable premium prices for electricity, but not as big of premiums as Germany, the UK and California. New York’s average residential electricity price in August (EIA data) was 28.65¢/kWh, or 1.58 times the U.S. average.

It is not difficult at all to see what is going on here. As wind and solar generation increase, the ratepayers must pay the costs of capital of the wind and solar generators. But at the same time, they cannot get rid of any of the dispatchable fossil fuel plants, because on calm nights the wind and sun generate nothing and the grid operators must have capacity to fulfill all demand. So the ratepayers must pay the capital cost of two full generation systems. Or, in the case of Germany, of five full systems; or in the UK of 2.5 full systems.

None of these jurisdictions has yet taken the step of starting to eliminate dispatchable generation. As soon as a state or country starts down that road, then it must turn to energy storage as the backup. That path could multiply the cost of electricity by a factor of 5 or 10 or more. But so far there are no examples to cite, and the cost is so completely absurd, there may never be any.

Meanwhile, the best we can hope for is that the U.S. states take their different approaches with mostly unsubsidized wind and solar. That will reveal the cost differentials more and more over time, which will force the recognition of reality. And by the way, if someone can figure out how to make wind/solar electricity economical, I would be the first to applaud.