Last month, WV Senator Joe Manchin heroically stopped "Build Back Better" legislation that would have ruined America's and above all WV's economy.
Now The @NYTimes and others are pressuring Manchin to reverse his stance via the false narrative that coal miners support BBB.
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In an effort to undermine Joe Manchin’s opposition to Build Back Better, the @nytimes recently published a "news" article trying to portray @Sen_JoeManchin’s rejection of BBB as opposed to the interest of coal miners by citing a union that represents a small minority of miners.
The @nytimes article by @jonathanweisman, entitled "Manchin’s Choice on Build Back Better: Mine Workers or Mine Owners," cites certain unions supporting BBB, but neglects to mention that less than ¼ of WV’s coal miners are associated with unions. This is journalistic malpractice.
The reason that certain coal miner unions support BBB is not because they have an answer to the obvious truth that BBB would destroy the WV economy. It is because these unions overwhelmingly represent retirees, not workers, and are seeking BBB handouts. alexepstein.substack.com/p/why-build-ba…
A key fact evaded by the "coal miners support BBB" narrative is that the UMWA must pay out dozens of times more dollars to retirees than its limited coal miner members pay in: in 2017, it was $600M out vs. $15M in. Hence the UWMA prioritizes BBB handouts over miners and WV.
BBB would be an unmitigated disaster to WV energy in 3 ways:
1. It would make WV electricity much higher cost and much less reliable. 2. It would sabotage WV's growing would production. 3. It would sabotage WV's growing natural gas production. alexepstein.substack.com/p/why-build-ba…
While supporters of BBB portray coal as inevitably dead, that is not true. While BBB would kill coal, without BBB coal has many decades left. Last year global coal demand rose faster than for any other form of energy. And in WV, coal is crucial to the state's industrial economy.
Low-cost, reliable electricity is one of WV's great assets. Thanks to its overwhelmingly coal-fired electricity, West Virginia has some of the lowest electricity rates in the country—second only to coal-heavy Kentucky on the East Coast.
Low-cost, reliable electricity saves everyone money and makes WV a hub of industry. The industrial sector uses over 40% of WV’s electricity.
Low-cost, reliable electricity also makes WV a major exporter of electricity to its regional grid, meaning more money from other states.
If BBB passes, WV will suffer the same fate that Germany, California, Texas, and many others have: prematurely shutting down many reliable power plants at great cost, paying for massive new unreliable solar/wind infrastructure at great cost, and facing huge reliability risks.
While every state will be harmed by BBB’s imposition of high-cost, unreliable electricity, WV will suffer especially—whether from fleeing industry or from deadly winters when the power goes out and over 50% of the population is relying on electric heat.
Contrary to claims that Joe Manchin has destroyed America's (and WV's) future by opposing BBB, he has protected our future by preventing an unprecedented destruction of our energy industry--the industry that powers every other industry. alexepstein.substack.com/p/intellectual…
All the media organizations spreading disinformation about Build Back Better being good for WV coal miners--by ignoring the devastating consequences to WV's economy, and by pretending that the handout-seeking leaders of retiree unions represent most coal miners--should apologize.
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If you ever hear anyone favorably compare solar and wind to coal, gas, or nuclear by citing a low LCOE—"Levelized Cost of Energy"—you are being scammed.
LCOE explicitly ignores "reliability-related considerations" and is therefore a garbage metric. 🧵👇
You've heard it over and over: "Solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels."
You might suspect something is wrong here, because if solar/wind were so cheap their developers wouldn't always be asking for subsidies, or claim the sky is falling when subsidies are taken away.
The suspicious claim that "Solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels" is usually justified using an intimidating-sounding metric called LCOE: "Levelized Cost of Energy."
LCOE is used all the time in prestigious publications and in government.
Our “knowledge system”—the people and institutions we rely upon to research, synthesize, disseminate, and evaluate expert knowledge—consistently ignores the massive, life-or-death benefits of fossil fuels.
A summary of Fossil Future, Chapter 1 🧵👇
Save the World With…Fossil Fuels?
I am going to try to persuade you of something that might seem impossible: that one of the best things you can do to make the world a better place is to fight for more fossil fuel use—more use of oil, coal, and natural gas.
Questioning the “Expert” Moral Case for Eliminating Fossil Fuels
We're told rapidly eliminating fossil fuels is the expert consensus, but consider: 1) sometimes the alleged “expert” view is wrong, and 2) eliminating fossil fuels is a radical and potentially disastrous change.
The Senate bill *looks like* it has a 2027 "placed in service" cutoff for new solar/wind subsidies.
But one last-minute paragraph makes it worthless—because projects making a recoverable 5% investment in the next 12 months are exempt!
The idea of a 2027 "placed in service" cutoff was that new subsidies would actually end during the Trump administration.
But under the last-minute carveout, Big Green has 12 months to initiate as many subsidized projects as it wants using the insanely-easy-to-meet "construction" threshold. (All you need to do is commit 5% of expected project cost to buying re-sellable assets like solar panels.)
Once they declare "construction"—e.g., in July 2026—they'll have 4 years (e.g., July 2030) to "place in service." And then some of those projects, e.g., most wind projects, will get 10 years of subsidies.
So we'll still have wind subsidies on Donald Trump's 94th birthday!
Here's how much worse the Senate bill just got:
* Two days ago: "Placed in service" by 12-31-27—with new subsidized solar/wind projects stopping very quickly, and Trump being able to let subsidies truly end.
* Today: "Placed in service" by JULY 2030—with new subsidized solar/wind projects absolutely spamming the rid and ripping off taxpayers like never before, and Trump having no control over whether the subsidies end.
The current Senate bill is arguably worse than the original Senate Finance one. At least that bill decreased solar/wind subsidies starting in 2026 to 60%. The current bill just increased them to 100%.
The current bill is a solar/wind lobbyist's dream. It does not terminate the Green New Scam in any way, shape or form. It absolutely perpetuates it. And offensively so, I might add, by keeping the "placed in service" cutoff language so many people courageously fought for, then totally undoing it with a single last-minute paragraph that makes it worthless.
If the Senate wanted to extend the Green New Scam it should have said so, not insulted our intelligence by trying to bury the extension in one sneaky little paragraph.
PS Several Senators have already told me they didn't know about or understand this last-minute paragraph. If that's the case they should do whatever they can to fix the situation.
And just to be clear, NOTHING good will come out of extending the Green New Scam.
More on how a "construction" cutoff—e.g., the Senate's new "construction" by July 2026 "cutoff"—is not a cutoff but an extension.
Lobbyists love “construction” by a certain “cutoff” because they get 4 more bonus years of eligibility: a 4-year "safe harbor."
E.g., a solar/wind developer can just put a small amount of money down (5%, most of it recoverable) and it gets 4 more years to cash in the subsidy.
With the earlier Senate 2027 “placed in service” cutoff—no exceptions—new subsidized solar/wind projects would slow to a crawl by early 2026. And President Trump could ensure that subsidies would terminate during his term.
But under the final Senate bill's exemption for projects in "construction" by July 2026—which TOTALLY EXEMPTS PROJECTS FROM "PLACED IN SERVICE" BY 2027—these new unreliable projects will spam our grid at least through 2030 (4 years after the "construction" pseudo-cutoff).
Using the 10-year PTC (Production Tax Credit) subsidy, wind farms will still be collecting subsidies on President Trump’s 94th birthday in 2040!
This disaster for our grid and our budget is unfortunately the best-case scenario for the Senate bill.
Realistically, by extending eligibility for new subsidies well beyond President Trump’s term, the proposal makes it likely that future administrations and Congresses will extend solar and wind subsidies yet again—just as previous ones have done for over 30 years!
Here is a refutation of every lobbyist lie that more solar/wind subsidies are good for electricity.
FACT: SUBSIDIES HAVE PROVABLY REDUCED CAPACITY + RELIABILITY—AND INCREASED PRICES.
More subsidies can only make things worse.
Vote against extending them!
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Senators are deluged by lobbyists who say solar/wind subsidies have been great for America—and that the Senate needs to pass @joniernst's amendment to extend them.
But the Administration's top experts know the truth: these subsidies are a disaster the Senate needs to terminate.
@SecretaryWright @SecretaryBurgum Chris Wright, Secretary of Energy, this year called IRA solar and wind subsidies “lunacy,” “a big mistake,” and “political posturing that results in higher costs and less reliable electricity.”
Republicans ran on a pledge to "terminate" the trillion-dollar Inflation Reduction Act subsidies, aka "the Green New Scam."
But their proposed budget keeps almost all the subsidies, while falsely claiming to save money through easily-reversed “phaseouts” starting in 4 years!
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If you’re just joining the conversation about the IRA subsidies, here’s what you need to know: they are subsidies for inferior forms of energy that cost a fortune, raise energy costs, and make our grid unreliable—especially the solar/wind subsidies.