Project 2025: Climate

Last week I wrote about climate change. A very short summary of what I said: Climate change is real. Extreme weather events are happening around the world. We seem, for the first time in decades, ready to take action to deal with the issue. It’s not too late, but we can’t waste another three decades arguing about whether its real.

Now I’d like to spend some time outlining the future of efforts to combat climate change if the recommendations of Project 2025 are implemented by a future conservative president. The first thing to note is that the words “climate” or “climate agenda” appear in many places in the report. When they do the descriptor “radical” usually precedes them. Whether it is programs that are administered by State that might be used to influence or assist other countries in adopting clean energy solutions, or programs in Energy that are intended to promote clean energy in the US, they are radical and should be halted.

“Taxpayers should not in effect be picking winners and losers—and having their dollars at risk but not gaining the economic rewards of success.”

Energy is where climate most often is cited. In the case of programs that are designed to promote clean energy or subsidize its adoption, some variation of this phrase is used: “Taxpayers should not in effect be picking winners and losers—and having their dollars at risk but not gaining the economic rewards of success.” The federal government has been picking fossil fuels as a winner since the Wilson administration. That was when the intangible drilling cost and discovery allowance, which later morphed into the depletion allowance, were enacted as tax incentives for the exploration for oil.

These are two of nearly a dozen tax breaks that subsidize fossil fuel. But the total subsidy from the US government is difficult to estimate since it is in several places in the tax code and because the indirect subsidies are arguable and difficult to estimate. The estimates range from $3.2 billion in 2022 to $662 billion. The low estimate is from the US Energy Information Administration. It includes only the direct benefits of tax deductions and credits. The larger is from the International Monetary Fund. It includes those same direct tax payments plus the indirect environmental costs.

Which of these estimates is most correct? The first is indisputable. The numbers are there, but some argue that they are low. The fact that fossil fuels cause health and environmental degradation also cannot be disputed, but is a cost incurred by society or a subsidy to the industry? What’s more how do you assign a price to it?

This chart shows an estimate of health impacts of fossil fuel power plants. Nearly 700,000 upper respiratory illnesses certainly are a cost to the people who suffer from them. They are also a cost to society in lost productivity and medical costs. A revised tax policy might charge polluters for these costs. That’s the idea behind the carbon tax, which has been debated here but never enacted. Such a tax would raise the price of fossil fuel-generated electricity (as well as other fossil fuels), reducing the demand for them and making alternatives more attractive. By choosing not to tax this impact, we are making the alternative, clean energy, less attractive. We are putting a thumb on the market scale, picking fossil fuels as a winner.

Following the logic of not interfering with the market, all programs that provide incentives to adopt clean energy are to be cut. This includes EV tax credits, solar and wind tax credits, and support for the implementation of new technologies. Federal clean energy demonstration projects would be cut and the office that administers the program would be eliminated.

The federal interest in the grid would be confined to security and reliability. Planning would fall totally to the states and innovation and implementation would be for the private sector. Funding for expansion to accommodate clean energy projects would be stopped.

Appliance efficiency standards would not longer be imposed. They constrict the choices that consumers face when making purchases.

The approval process for nuclear power projects would be streamlined to allow the private sector to build new atomic facilities more easily. It notes that spent fuel is still a problem, but it offers no suggestions for fixing it.

The agency would also focus more attention on cleaning up the legacy nuclear mess of the cold war, on modernizing nuclear weapons, and on designing better naval propulsion systems.

A major focus of the recommendations deals with energy independence and using the country’s energy primacy as an international tool. To assure that independence, it calls for an all-source energy policy. It also calls for easing permitting processes for ocean exploration and public lands oil and gas exploration—including the Artic Reserve. Easing permitting would also apply to the exporting of compressed natural gas.

The policy direction should be clear but let me summarize it: The next conservative administration should return to a drill-baby, drill approach to energy. The report makes clear that climate change is not a real danger. Therefore, no actions to combat it are needed. And no international agreements are needed since no danger exists. Therefore, the Paris Accords are gone for the US as are all UN commitments.

Obviously, the direction recommended would be a huge blow to US efforts to curb greenhouse gases and avert the catastrophic impacts of climate change in the US. It would also eliminate the US as a leader in the international effort to deal with climate. How could the world make any progress on this issue absent the world’s largest economy, the second largest greenhouse gas emitter, and the largest historical emitter?