The Senate Caves on IRA Wind and Solar Subsidies – David Blackmon

The Senate Caves on IRA Wind and Solar Subsidies – David Blackmon [[“value”:”

ENB Pub Note: This article from David Blackmon’s Substack is spot on – and RINOs are at it again… We need some huge primaries, and this is just disgusting. The RINOs in Congress, not David Blackmon. David is a true energy hero, and we recommend subscribing to his Substack:

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Don’t look now, but the RINOs in the U.S. Senate are in the process of caving to the climate alarm lobby on the repeal of subsidies for wind and solar contained in the IRA. The version of the One Big, Beautiful Bill reported out by the Senate Finance Committee proposes to extend the deadline for ending the subsidies passed by the House of Representatives in a way that will almost certainly allow the provisions to remain available to intermittent, unreliable power generation sources for well over a decade, and perhaps even permanently. Share

The Republican majority on Senate Finance approved language that extends the deadline for a gradual phasing-out of the economically ruinous subsides from the 2028 hard target passed in the House version to a soft target of 2030, with a hard end to the provisions not coming about until 2040.

Specifically, the Senate does away with the hard House provision that a wind or solar project must be “placed into service” by 2028 with softened language requiring only that developers “begin construction” on a site by 2030 to continue benefitting from the subsidies. As we have seen a thousand times in the past, it is incredibly easy for corporations to interpret such vague language to render it essentially meaningless.

Naturally, the climate alarm propagandists in the legacy media reported this major shift as if it were really no change at all:

In reality the Senate version would allow big wind or solar companies like Orsted to make a minimal down payment by 2030 so they could claim to have “started construction” on their sites, then benefit from the IRA subsidies and tax breaks through 2040 without having to turn a yard of dirt. That means, absent any further amendments in future years, the subsidies would remain in effect until Donald J. Trump is 94 years old.

But you can be sure that, in the 15 years between now and 2040, the wind and solar companies and their associations who most likely drafted this revised language and handed it to a friendly RINO on Senate Finance, will continue to spend millions of dollars on well-connected lobbyists on efforts to remove even this absurdly soft, fake deadline.

For those inclined to make calls in to their elected representatives in Washington, DC, here are the rosters of both the full Senate Finance Committee and of the Subcommittee on Energy, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure, which is where this language would have originated:

If you’re looking for the likely RINO sellouts on this issue, I’d rank them as follows:

Texas Sen. John Cornyn

Oklahoma Sen. and subcommittee Chair James Lankford

Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall

Montana Sen. Steve Daines

Senators Cornyn and Lankford are notorious wind shills, less so shills for the solar industry. Both of their states are covered up in grid-destabilizing wind projects and those two have never been shy about taking big money from the developers of them. Roger Marshall’s state is also covered up in windmills.

Fortunately, it looks fairly likely that Cornyn will lose his re-election effort next year to a primary challenge by current Texas attorney general Ken Paxton. Marshall is also up for re-election in 2026 but does not currently have a strong primary opponent.

Sadly, Lankford is not up until 2028.

Don’t shoot me, I’m just the messenger.

That is all

David Blackmon