Joe Biden has big plans for green energy in the United States as promised in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) [sic], which passed Congress last week. Massive incentives for wind and solar power and other green initiatives make up about half of the bill’s $744 billion cost.
But what’s not in the bill is the answer to this question: who is going to make all these new wind turbines, solar panels, and car batteries to power us into a green future?
They’re going to be made where they’re being made now: in Communist China. They’re made in China because China has cornered the markets for the rare earth minerals and specialized manufacturing processes to make all this green stuff.
It’s also worth pointing out that the massive increase in manufacturing green products is being done in a nation that relies on burning coal for 55% of its electrical energy needs.
Not very green at all.
Renewable energy requires vast amounts of critical minerals such as cobalt, nickel, manganese, lithium and graphite. China controls a large share of the world’s supply of each and also maintains a chokehold on their refining. Its near-total global monopoly extends to the manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries, cells and components as well as solar cells.
Despite the presence of provisions in the IRA to encourage domestic exploitation of minerals and manufacturing, the Biden administration can’t get out of its own way when it comes to finding American sources for these minerals.
Democrats might reply that their bill’s tax credits would encourage electric vehicle and renewable manufacturers to “on-shore” supply chains. But subsidies that encourage mineral extraction in the U.S. won’t help if the Biden administration continues to block projects such as a lithium mine in Nevada and a massive nickel, cobalt and copper mine in Minnesota.
Check out the irony: in order to manufacture carbon-reducing products, we have to use carbon-intensive energy sources. Not very green after all.
Another hidden cost of the IRA is the immensity of land that generating solar or wind power would require compared to the coal, gas, and oil-burning plants that will be torn down. One source of clean energy that is also being mothballed is nuclear energy. James Meigs of City Journal writes of replacing one nuclear plant which will require an incredible amount of land to produce the same amount of energy.
Because of their low energy density, wind and solar developments require enormous tracts of land, compared with other energy sources. New York’s now-shuttered Indian Point nuclear power plant sits on just 240 acres. Replacing its power entirely with wind power would require more than 500 square miles of turbines. That’s a massive amount of land and habitat lost to energy production.
The Chinese have us by the short hairs, and they know it. And Biden and the Democratic Congress just did them a huge favor by passing the IRA.
With a single legislative act, Democrats have increased Beijing’s geopolitical leverage, reduced American living standards and global economic competitiveness, and assisted Mr. Xi’s ambitions to dominate biotech. The kicker is that Democrats have told Americans their bill will deal a blow to China. Americans will be in for a rude awakening when they discover the truth.
What happens if China uses its monopoly on rare-earth minerals and lithium-ion batteries the same way that Russia is using its oil and natural gas monopoly against Europe? Americans will discover very quickly that becoming reliant on green power carries costs that the politicians and green advocates neglected to mention.
There’s no quick fix. And it doesn’t matter that we’re not ready for the kind of transition to solar and wind power that the greens desire. One look at California, whose problems with overestimating its renewables capacity have resulted in brownouts and blackouts, will tell you that the downside to going green has been hidden or lied about.
Trying to force a green revolution won’t work. Vending machine technology — where you put a couple of billion dollars in and expect solutions to come out — is an empty policy, more political than anything. Technology is largely evolutionary, not revolutionary. And putting money in the pockets of favored corporations is no guarantee that anything useful will ever be created.