You pay for Trump's love of coal
Brett Wilkins for Common Dreams
Energy Innovation, a San Francisco-based energy and climate
policy think tank, said in its report that “federal policy changes since January 2025
will increase energy prices, slow economic growth and job creation, increase
air pollution and healthcare costs,
and worsen grid reliability.”
The analysis examines seven major policy shifts during the
second term of President Donald Trump, who—for
the third time—ran on an aggressively pro-fossil fuel and anti-clean energy
platform:
- Passage
of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA);
- The
Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) reconsideration and repeal of Clean Air Act
Greenhouse Gas Standards, Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, and Clean Water Act Effluent
Limitations Guidelines for electric power plants;
- EPA’s repeal of the endangerment finding and federal
tailpipe emissions standards;
- Passage
of Congressional Review Act resolutions overturning approvals for
state-level tailpipe emissions standards;
- Actions
to limit renewable
energy development—especially onshore and offshore wind
plants—including limitations on issuance of new permits;
- Department
of Energy cancellations of hydrogen hub funding and easing of 45V tax
credit qualification for natural gas-based hydrogen; and
- EPA’s cancellation of
the $7 billion Solar for All grant program.
According to the analysis, “Households will pay an
additional $650 billion for energy—an average of $460 per household in 2035 and
$490 in 2040.”
Additionally, the report states that “cutting policies that drive innovation and efficiency in the transportation sector will inflate gasoline prices 14% in 2035 and 26% in 2040, atop near-term upward pressure from the Iran War and other market forces.”
“OBBBA and reduced federal support for domestic
manufacturing and innovation will cost the US economy 820,000 jobs per year on
average over the next decade, in addition to the 144,000 clean energy jobs lost within the past 18
months,” the publication forecasts.
“Slowing down electrification and domestic energy
manufacturing will lower [gross domestic product] in all years, totaling $2.3
trillion cumulative lost GDP, with effects flowing into other economic
sectors,” the study warns. “The US economy will lose $150 billion in GDP in
2030, peaking at a $250 billion net loss in 2032, then reverting to losses of
$200 billion in 2035 and $120 billion in 2040.”
Furthermore, “worsening local air pollution will raise
healthcare costs by $43 billion, with annual increases of $4 billion in 2035
and $4.5 billion in 2040, contributing to rising household costs alongside
rising energy prices and goods inflation.”
Energy Innovation stressed that states must act to mitigate
the costs and harms of federal inaction. The report recommends helping wind and
solar projects qualify for expiring tax credits under safe harbor rules, removing barriers to additional clean
energy development, boosting electric vehicles,
supporting energy efficient electrification, and stimulating investment in new
clean industries.
The new analysis—whose findings are disputed by the Trump
administration—comes amid an unabated affordability crisis that Trump vowed to
tackle, and as electricity prices soar in much of the nation as a heat dome,
fueled by human burning of fossil fuels, broils
large swaths of the country in what many experts warn is the new normal in a
worsening climate
emergency.
Responding to the analysis, Candice Fortin, US campaigns
manager at the climate action group 350.org, said: “This report puts numbers on something households are
already feeling in their bills and their blackouts. We were told cutting clean
energy would lower costs. Instead, we’re seeing the opposite: rates spiking,
grids failing under record heat, and households paying more while data centers’
electricity use explodes.”
“You can’t fix an affordability crisis by blocking the
cheapest, fastest power we have to build,” Fortin added. “The fossil fuel
industry and this administration’s policies are adding fuel to the
fire, and ordinary ratepayers are the ones getting burned.”