With its July 22 announcement that it is disbursing $4.3 billion in taxpayer-funded grants for an assortment of climate projects around the country, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) secured the loot for grateful recipients before President Joe Biden leaves office in January.
The money will go to 25 projects across 30 states (some will cross state borders) and will target greenhouse gas emissions from “transportation, electric power, commercial and residential buildings, industry, agriculture/natural and working lands, and waste and materials management,” the EPA said in a press release. Funds for the grants were provided from the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants Program anchored in the 2022 misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration’s landmark climate law.
Earlier in the month, the Biden Energy Department announced it was awarding $1.7 billion to 11 factories to help finance the manufacture of electric vehicles and their components.
“President Biden understands that America needs a strong EPA,” agency Administrator Michael Regan told reporters, noting that the administration “has made the largest climate investment in history, providing billions of dollars to state, local, and tribal governments to tackle climate change with the urgency it demands,” The Washington Times reported.
Decarbonization and Its Consequences
Among the projects receiving the federal largesse are statewide decarbonization initiatives in Pennsylvania targeting cement, asphalt, and other materials; $307 million for measures in Nebraska to promote “climate smart” practices ostensibly to reduce emissions from agriculture and waste; and an effort to install EV chargers for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles along a highway on the East Coast.
An air management district in Southern California will receive $500 million to help decarbonize the region’s transportation and freight sectors, including at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. EPA’s grants to the region will provide funding for “electric charging equipment, zero-emission freight vehicles and conversion of cargo handling equipment to lower emissions.”
The EPA climate grants continue the Biden administration’s practice of throwing taxpayer money at the transition to EVs. And its timing would appear to be a bit off. Unsold EVs continue to pile up on dealer lots across the country, with Ford and GM cutting production of the vehicles, and Ford losing over $100,000 on the sale of each new EV.
Then there are the electric school buses. In affluent Montgomery County, Maryland, just north of Washington, D.C., an electric bus company that was supposed to deliver hundreds of vehicles to the biggest school district in the state “repeatedly missed delivery deadlines and made late repairs” to its school buses, which caused “millions of dollars in wasteful spending,” The Washington Post reported last week.
Some of the electric buses that were delivered had to have their batteries replaced and were plagued by high-voltage wiring problems. Citing a report by the Montgomery County inspector general, the Post reported that the school district is now shelling out upwards of $14 million to buy diesel-powered buses thanks to its vehicle deficit. In other words, instead of decarbonizing its school bus fleet, Montgomery County is recarbonizing it.
Montgomery County’s electric school bus fiasco is rooted in the same “fund or mandate it and they will come” mentality underpinning the handouts in the Inflation Reduction Act. In 2022, Maryland lawmakers passed a law aimed at reducing greenhouse gases, including boosting the number of EVs in the state. The law also requires new school buses to run exclusively on electric power — though some waivers are allowed. Those in charge always know best.
Maryland’s experience with yellow electric school buses is not unlike the giant rotor that recently broke off an offshore wind turbine polluting the beaches of Nantucket, Massachusetts. In both cases, politically favored green technologies failed to live up to their promise. The offshore wind project in New England is subsidized by the same taxpayers who are footing the bill for the grants Biden’s EPA is doling out in the name of combatting climate change. And the electric school buses in Maryland were purchased with taxes extracted from Montgomery County residents.
The ruling class repeatedly claims to protect the masses from whatever “existential threat” suits their purposes. Time and again, their follies blow up — usually not in their faces, but in the faces of ordinary people who bear the brunt of their hubris. The billions EPA is spreading around will have no effect on the climate, but it will ensure more precious resources are wasted.