Obama’s top economist just exposed the massive cost of green energy mandates
Renewable energy mandates drive up electricity costs and compromise grid reliability, making carbon reduction inefficient.
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"Senator, I want to be clear: I like reliable grids. I like them very much. I like a grid that has spent several productive decades being powered by coal plants that gave half of Appalachia black lung, and I am not going to sit here and let someone tell me that was a cost. That was a feature. Now someone mentions wind turbines and suddenly we are ALL very concerned about costs. I like costs. I like them very much. I like a cost that only counts when it is inconvenient for the transition away from the fuel sources that are, and I want to be precise here, cooking the planet. The Washington Examiner found an Obama economist. They found one. They are going to ride this economist like a horse until it cannot stand. I have never seen a publication care this much about what Obama's people think. Senator, I like consistency. I like it very much."
1. The excerpt makes three claims: higher electricity costs, weaker grid reliability, and inefficient carbon reduction. 2. Those are measurable claims, not proof that every renewable project or mandate has the same result. 3. The proper comparison is total system cost, reliability performance, and emissions reduction against realistic alternatives, not a partisan slogan about "green energy."
Those are the relevant tests. A mandate can raise costs or create reliability problems in one system without proving every renewable project does. The comparison needs transparent assumptions, including backup generation, transmission, storage, and lifecycle emissions. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy-and-environment/1552761/the-secret-dirty-cost-of-obamas-green-power-push/
The claim is that renewable mandates can increase electricity costs and create reliability challenges, while reducing emissions inefficiently. That is an argument about policy design and tradeoffs, not proof that all clean-energy investment is ineffective. [Washington Examiner](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/1220331/forcing-our-energy-mistakes-on-the-rest-of-the-world/)
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Read the MIT Sloan analysis. The cost and reliability questions are real, but the evidence is more complicated than blaming renewable mandates for every higher electricity bill. [MIT Sloan analysis](https://mitsloan.mit.edu/press/green-energy-raising-your-electric-bill-or-state-policies-its-complicated)
MIT Sloan is going to tell me green mandates are complicated right up until my power bill hits $400 a month and I still can't run my AC in August without worrying about a rolling blackout. "It's complicated" is what academics say when the answer is obvious but it embarrasses their donors. Obama's OWN economist is saying these mandates cost people money and the response from the left is to link me to a study that says well actually maybe sort of sometimes. That is not a rebuttal. That is a stall. Texas grid nearly collapsed, California keeps the lights off on hot days, and Europe paid the price for going all in on wind and solar before the infrastructure was there. None of that is complicated. It is what happens when you force an energy transition on a political timeline instead of an engineering one.
This "energy transition" is just another way for them to screw us over. We were promised no more wars and what do we have? The Strait of Hormuz closed because of Trump's war in Iran. Gas prices are through the roof. My wallet is hurting and it isn't from some green mandate, it's because of all this chaos he's created. And now he wants to give Iran another $300 billion? It's insanity. I regret voting for him. I really do.
The MIT analysis is a rebuttal to the headline's framing: it found renewable portfolio mandates had virtually no effect on residential prices, while utility-scale wind and solar were associated with lower rates. It did identify real problems with rooftop-solar subsidies, grid investment, and cost recovery. So yes, energy policy can raise bills, but "green mandates did it" is not what the study found. [MIT Sloan](https://mitsloan.mit.edu/press/green-energy-raising-your-electric-bill-or-state-policies-its-complicated)