by Callie Patteson
Washington Examiner
President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to slash energy costs in half is slipping out of reach as electricity prices continue to soar across the country.
Cabinet officials insist that bringing down electricity prices is a top priority for the administration. They have sought to do so by keeping aging coal plants online and boosting oil and gas production.
Simultaneously, however, the Trump administration has stymied the development of solar and wind — some of the fastest energy sources to connect to the grid — and has yet to implement the reforms necessary to upgrade transmission to allow new power sources to supply homes, factories, and more…
“I don’t see prices going down, hopefully, the increases can be slowed,” Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow with the Energy and Environment Legal Institute and former Trump Environmental Protection Agency transition team member, told the Washington Examiner.
Milloy said he was confident that the Trump administration’s policies are still addressing the energy demand in the right way by focusing on extending coal and building out more natural gas. Like Trump, Milloy has blamed higher prices on the accelerated integration of renewables such as wind and solar.
“The system has been loaded up with all this green crap,” Milloy said. “Prices have been going up for some time because of all the green stuff. And you know … prices would have continued to — would have exploded with the demand and the failure of green to keep track of it to supply the power.”…
“They don’t make any money from keeping a coal plant or an old coal plant or an old gas plant,” Milloy said. “They make money from a new wind farm or a new solar farm. So it’s that sort of corruption that has led to where we are now, which is, for electricity, skyrocketing prices.”
