{"id":36009,"date":"2025-09-01T06:45:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T06:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/36009\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T06:45:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T06:45:07","slug":"maga-using-laws-passed-by-democrats-to-upend-renewable-energy-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/36009\/","title":{"rendered":"MAGA Using Laws Passed By Democrats To Upend Renewable Energy Projects"},"content":{"rendered":"

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription<\/a> or on Stripe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In their book, Abundance<\/a>, Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein argue that the progressive policies so carefully put in place by progressive politicians over the past several decades \u2014 things like the Administrative Procedures Act and the National Environmental Policy Act \u2014 have fueled the furious assault on reason and rationality on display every hour of every day by the MAGA crowd \u2014 especially the full frontal assault on renewable energy.<\/p>\n

They write that progressives over the past 30 years have been more concerned with erecting barriers to right-wing policy initiatives than actually getting things done. The result of all those restrictions is the perception that government doesn\u2019t work. It is that constant drumbeat of \u201cgovernment is the problem\u201d thinking that has brought the New Fascism to prominence in the US, they suggest.<\/p>\n

In other words, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and Democrats have pretty much shot themselves in the foot with their insistence on requiring all government action be fully compliant with every jot and tittle of the progressive agenda.<\/p>\n

In a recent article by Rebecca Egan for Grist<\/a>, she suggests many of those environmental protection efforts created by progressives are now being turned into weapons against environmental action by the fossil fuel industry and its acolytes. The evidence can be seen in a statement by the failed president of the United States that he posted on his personal antisocial media channel recently in which he said the administration \u201cwill not approve wind or farmer destroying Solar. The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!\u201d<\/p>\n

Actually, the days of stupidity are just beginning, as he and his slavish minions are taking a sledgehammer to renewable energy at every opportunity. Egan says many renewable energy experts say what the president and the Interior Department are doing\u00a0is using the environmental legal playbook created by progressives against them to derail renewable energy.<\/p>\n

Laws meant to protect and safeguard wildlife and public lands from mining, drilling, and habitat degradation \u2014 such as the Federal Land Policy and Management Act\u2019s prohibition against \u201cunnecessary or undue degradation\u201d \u2014 are being used as a cudgel against wind and solar, Egan writes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are effectively trying to co-opt arguments that we have used for years to push back on fossil fuels,\u201d Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, the executive director at the Western Environmental Law Center, told Egan. \u201cBut I think it should go without saying that they are abusing those laws.\u201d Thompson and Klein would agree with that analysis.<\/p>\n

Renewable Energy & Capacity Density<\/p>\n

He pointed to the recent capacity density order by the Interior Department as a particularly troubling example. Secretarial orders are meant to function as internal guidance to agencies. \u201cThey are not intended to put in place substantive rules that dictate outcomes,\u201d he said, calling the capacity density order \u201ca de facto prohibition against the siting and permitting of renewables on federal public lands. The DOI is fixating on this one metric \u2014 capacity density \u2014 to the exclusion of a holistic understanding of costs and benefits of a particular energy technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

What is capacity density? In simple terms, it is a measure of how much energy can be created per square foot, or square yard, or acre of land. A tank of gasoline has a greater energy content than a 65 kWh battery. By the DOI\u2019s logic, electric cars would be banned on public roads unless and until their batteries reach energy density with gasoline on a per volume basis.<\/p>\n

As Egan points out, when a wind or solar farm is decommissioned, the equipment is removed and within a year or two, it\u2019s hard to tell anything was there and the land can be reused. But when a refinery or a fossil fuel plant shuts down, the ground is poisoned. Cancer-causing chemicals like benzene saturate the soil and remediation can take years, assuming it happens at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe DOI is fixating on this one metric, capacity density, to the exclusion of a holistic understanding of costs and benefits of a particular energy technology,\u201d said Schlenker-Goodrich.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe [DOI is] trying to come up with the facade of a rational reason to stop doing anything related to renewables, but this one especially is really mind-boggling,\u201d said Josh Axelrod, senior policy advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council. \u201cEverything it compares wind and solar to \u2014 none of those types of facilities are built on federal land. \u2026 There\u2019s no comparison.\u201d<\/p>\n

Impacts On Public & Private Land<\/p>\n

The Interior Department\u2019s order that all wind and solar projects on federal land undergo \u201celevated review\u201d is another misuse of environmental law, experts told Grist. Routine procedures that would have previously been handled by a DOI bureaucrat will now need the secretary\u2019s personal sign-off.<\/p>\n

The restrictions will impact projects on private land just as much as on public land. A recent analysis from The American Clean Power Association<\/a> found that 27 of the new procedures requiring Burgum\u2019s sign-off \u2014 such as needing consultations around harm to wildlife and endangered species \u2014 will allow the DOI to effectively end development of renewable energy projects nationwide.<\/p>\n

The goal, it seems, is to create an impossible backlog that bleeds projects of funding before they can get off the ground, Egan writes, and the rules and regulations created by environmentalists are making such attacks on common sense possible. It\u2019s a variation on the old expression \u201cBe careful what you wish for, you just might get it.\u201d And boy, howdy, are Democrats getting it!<\/p>\n

Picking Winners & Losers<\/p>\n

Alex Klass, an environmental law professor at the University of Michigan, told Egan, \u201c[The administration] can talk about energy dominance and talk about the need for new energy,\u201d she said, \u201cbut before there was always an argument [that] you shouldn\u2019t try to prop up an industry that can\u2019t make it on its own. That\u2019s basically what they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s worse is that foreseeable environmental consequences are being ignored. Burgum has cited concerns for migratory birds and whales as justification for shutting down offshore wind projects<\/a>. Yet on August 26, the Interior Department announced plans to hold 30 offshore oil and gas lease auctions over the next 15 years.<\/p>\n

Offshore drilling has been shown to be especially harmful to marine animals. Seismic blasting can result in hearing loss, which affects the ability of whales to breed and communicate. \u201cIt\u2019s clear that actual energy development is being approached from a position of political theater, rather than practicality,\u201d Egan writes.<\/p>\n

Interior officials are working overtime to roll back environmental regulations around mining, despite local concerns about a scarcity of fresh water supplies. \u201cGiven the administration\u2019s aggressive antipathy for environmental regulations, experts say it\u2019s impossible to believe that the Interior Department\u2019s sudden conservationist concerns around solar and wind impacts are being made in good faith,\u201d Egan reports.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not like the Biden administration stopped permitting oil and gas development. There\u2019s lots of oil and gas development,\u201d said Alex Klass. \u201cThey just also tried to prioritize wind and solar. Here they\u2019re saying, \u2018Not only are we not going to prioritize [wind and solar], we\u2019re going to try to shut it down entirely.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Remember when Republicans said government should not be picking winners and losers in the marketplace? Now they are doing much more than picking winners; they are effectively banning entire industries from competing both at home and abroad<\/a>. Tyrannosaurus Don has decreed he wants renewable energy destroyed, and his minions are falling all over themselves to execute his wishes \u2014 emphasis on \u201cexecute.\u201d<\/p>\n

My colleague Tina Casey<\/a> calls the fake president \u201ca malevolently incompetent clown.\u201d She\u2019s right, although even that description may be too mild. The willfully malicious destruction of the clean energy industry is inflicting real harm on communities all across the US, many of them in red states. Trump II \u2014 The Revenge Tour is the most vicious campaign since Sherman\u2019s scorched earth policy on his infamous March To The Sea. It will take America decades to recover from the damage left behind.<\/p>\n

Sign up for CleanTechnica’s Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott’s in-depth analyses and high level summaries<\/a>, sign up for our daily newsletter<\/a>, and follow us on Google News<\/a>!<\/p>\n

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