Adherence to the Green New Deal hurt more than bottom lines as the more-than-predictable disastrous results had one former lawmaker sounding off about what he’d “warned.”
For years, the leftists in California have led the once-Golden State in a race to the bottom with increasingly radical legislation and regulation, all but removing every semblance of a free market economy. Now, as the 2024 Energy Information Administration report reveals Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) “Commiefornia” has the second-highest electricity prices in the nation, former California state assemblyman Chuck DeVore sounded off on how they got there.
Harkening back to his days in office from 2004 to 2010, the executive with the Texas Public Policy Foundation wrote in an op-ed for Fox News, “At the time, the Democratic majority in Sacramento was pushing bill after bill mandating greater reliance on renewable energy, assuring everyone that these policies would make us look like ‘geniuses’ when the price of fossil fuels inevitably soared.”
“I warned that these laws, regulations and subsidies would instead drive up electricity costs for Californians, making the grid less reliable and California’s economy less competitive,” he went on, as the EIA report listed the state only behind the remote island of Hawaii with costs.
“The Golden State’s misguided energy policies have steadily increased the price of electricity as green energy mandates, grid instability and regulatory burdens have taken their toll,” asserted DeVore who drew attention to cap-and-trade laws and a mandated Renewable Portfolio Standard that has set a goal requiring 60% electricity come from renewable sources by 2030. “Meanwhile, states with more balanced energy policies — natural gas, coal and nuclear power — have fared better.”
While the Lone Star State proved a more inviting locale for tech companies to thrive, both because of less regulations and energy prices coming in at an average of 6.26 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2023 compared to the 21.98 cents in California, enticing companies like Apple, committing $500 billion in U.S. investments to expand their enterprise in Texas, the former assemblyman pointed to similar agenda-driven legislative problems harming residents in the Northeast.
Noting that Connecticut and Massachusetts are third and fourth on the list of states with the highest electricity costs, DeVore decried New England for importing liquefied natural gas (LNG) when natural gas was prolific in nearby Pennsylvania.
“Because environmental activists and politicians in New York have blocked the construction of new pipelines that would transport affordable natural gas to the region. Instead, New England has been forced to import LNG from overseas, including from the Caribbean and, at times, even Russia,” he wrote.
Talk of the White House overturning then-President Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding that allowed a ruling permitting the agency to regulate greenhouse gases as “pollutants” has the potential of righting many of the wrongs from climate zealots that have led to skyrocketing energy costs and lost job opportunities.
In the meantime, DeVore concluded, “The evidence is clear: Green energy policies imposed on energy markets have made life harder for working families and businesses in states that have embraced the Green New Deal.”
“If policymakers in California and the Northeast truly cared about affordability and reliability, they would rethink their hostility to natural gas, allow new pipeline construction, and reconsider their blind push for intermittent renewables and the costly backups they require,” he added. “Instead, they continue doubling down on the same failed policies.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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