From MasterResource

By Steve Goreham

From New York to California, state renewable electrical power dreams are collapsing. Power demands soar, while the federal government cuts funding and support for wind, solar, and grid batteries. Renewables cannot provide enough power to support the artificial intelligence revolution. The Net Zero electricity transition is failing in the United States.

For the last two decades, state governments have embraced policies aimed at replacing coal and natural gas power plants with renewable sources. Twenty-three states enacted laws or executive orders to move to 100% Net Zero electricity by 2050. Onshore and offshore wind, utility-scale and rooftop solar, and grid-scale batteries were heavily promoted by states and most federal administrations.

The New York State Climate Action Scoping Plan of 2022 called for 70% renewable electricity by 2030 and 100% by 2040. But 49.7% of the state’s electricity came from gas in 2024, up from 47.7% in 2023. A January executive order issued by President Trump halted federal leases for construction of offshore wind systems. New York, nine other east coast states, and California were counting on offshore wind in efforts to get to 100% renewable electricity, but new offshore wind projects are now halted.

Wind and solar have benefited from federal tax credits, loans, and outright grants since 1992. But the Trump administration is now working to slash federal government support for these technologies. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB) passed the House of Representatives on May 22. The bill eliminates Production Tax Credits and Investment Tax Credits for renewable systems that begin construction later than 60 days after passage of the bill or for projects that do not complete construction by year end 2028. The bill also halts the sale of tax credits from renewable projects. If the Senate passes the bill, these measures will choke off green energy projects that have relied on federal funding for decades.

Wind and solar advocates attack the OBBB, warning that the bill would create a “nightmare scenario” for US clean energy. These same advocates claim that wind and solar are the lowest-cost generators of electricity but also demand that huge federal subsidies must continue.

Along with federal cutbacks, the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution now drives the nation’s power system, interrupting the renewable electricity transition. Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon, and other giant firms are building new data centers and upgrading existing data centers to power AI. AI processors run 24-hours a day for months to enable computers to think like humans. When servers are upgraded to support AI, they consume 6 to 10 times more power than when used for cloud storage and the internet. Data centers consumed 4% of US electricity at the start of 2024 but are projected to consume 20% within the next decade.

Artificial intelligence drives a massive increase in electricity demand. For years, state legislators forced grid operators to close coal and natural gas power plants as part of a transition to renewables. More than 200 coal-fired power plants were closed. But now, many states face a shortage of generating capacity. Virginia has the highest concentration of data centers in the world, with power consumption forecasted to triple by 2040. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas estimates that Texas electricity demand will soar from a record 85.5 gigawatts in 2023 to 218 GW by 2031.

In December, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation concluded that that over half of North America risks power shortfalls in the next decade from surging demand and coal and gas plant retirements. Grid operators are now stepping back from the transition to wind and solar. Coal-fired power plant closures have been postponed in Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and other states. Nuclear plants are being restarted in Michigan and Pennsylvania. But the big winner will be natural gas.

More than 200 gas plants are planned or under construction. Gas facilities can be brought online in about three years, compared to ten years for nuclear plants. Gas plants can be built near cities, often on former power plant sites, and require fewer new transmission lines than needed by wind and solar systems.

The latest trend is BYOP (bring your own power). AI firms are building their own gas plants to power data centers. Gas turbine manufacturer capacity is now sold out for years. The gas share of electricity production will rise from 43.6% of US consumption in 2024 to much higher levels. The AI power demand and the push for gas are destroying state plans for a transition to green electricity.

California, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Texas, and other states are installing grid-scale batteries to try to compensate for wind and solar intermittency. Huge lithium batteries are intended to store excess wind and solar output when the wind blows and the sun shines and then release electricity when wind and solar output is low. But lithium batteries are unproven technology that is prone to spontaneous ignition, creating huge fires that are difficult to extinguish and which endanger residents.

In the last two years, California suffered four grid battery fires, each at facilities less than five years old. The Otay Mesa storage facility near San Diego burned for more than a week and reignited three times. The Moss Landing battery facility, located south of Santa Cruz, caught fire in January. Forty percent of Moss Landing, one of the largest grid-scale battery facilities in the world, was destroyed in the fire. Residents have sued to prevent the restart of Moss Landing. New York also had three grid battery fires in the last 18 months. Battery fires release toxic gases, force evacuations and school closures, and disrupt communities.

In addition, grid batteries are very expensive. To back up a wind or solar facility for 24 hours requires batteries that cost about ten times as much as the wind or solar system itself. But without grid batteries, wind and solar cannot replace coal, gas, or nuclear generation and still provide reliable power.

The cost of wind, solar, and batteries is hurting the renewable electricity transition. Electricity rates in California, the epicenter of green energy, have risen 116% in the last 16 years, more than three times the national average increase of 33%. California’s residential electricity prices are now over 30 cents per kilowatt-hour, the second highest in the nation. Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island complete the top five for the highest US power costs—all states with aggressive green electricity goals.

The Net Zero electricity transition, endorsed by many states for more than a decade, is failing in the United States. Wind, solar, and batteries suffer from the offshore wind cancellation, federal subsidy cuts, inability to meet the demand of the artificial intelligence revolution, grid battery fires, and high cost. A green energy breakdown is underway. States will be forced to return to sensible energy policy.

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Steve Goreham is a speaker on energy, the environment, and public policy and author of the bestselling book Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure. His prior posts at MasterResource are here.

In a long-overdue course correction, President Trump has pulled the plug on one of the Biden administration’s more outlandish energy-environment stunts—the so-called Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement. Heralded by green activists and their political patrons as a bold step for salmon recovery and “climate justice,” the agreement was, in fact, a $1 billion bureaucratic boondoggle that prioritized speculative ecological fears over the concrete energy, economic, and strategic needs of millions of Americans.

“I have worked for more than 30 years to protect the irreplaceable Columbia River hydropower electrical system. The Biden Administration did its best to initiate the destruction of that system through improper manipulation of environmental laws and policies. This manipulation was reflected in a memorandum of understanding. Thankfully, President Trump has revoked the Biden Administration’s “Restoring Healthy and Abundant Salmon, Steelhead, and Other Native Fish Populations in the Columbia River Basin” Memorandum. This was exactly the right thing to do and provides a foundation for protection of the Four Lower Snake River dams. The President’s order is totally consistent with our nation’s fight to win the race for artificial intelligence, superiority, and energy dominance. The people of nation and especially the rate payers of the Northwest are incredibly grateful for this action.”

U.S. Representative Cliff Bentz (OR-02)

The plan’s centerpiece? The eventual removal of four major hydroelectric dams on the Snake River—Ice Harbor, Little Goose, Lower Monumental, and Lower Granite. These aren’t rickety relics of a bygone era. These are robust energy producers churning out more than 3,000 megawatts of clean, reliable hydroelectric power—enough to electrify 2.5 million homes. They also underpin irrigation systems, enable low-cost grain shipments to global markets, and provide flood control. But in Biden’s reality, all of that was apparently disposable if it meant pleasing a few vocal environmental lobbies and checking another box on the Net Zero checklist.

To sell this demolition job, the administration leaned heavily on emotional appeals about salmon runs and tribal rights, while offering precious little in terms of clear, causal science. As usual, the numbers tell a less convenient story. Salmon populations in the Columbia Basin have been under pressure from numerous factors for over a century: overfishing, ocean conditions, predation, and pollution—not just dams. Yet in the media spin cycle, four hydroelectric facilities became scapegoats for a problem that is far more complex than activists care to admit.

That didn’t stop Biden’s team from pressing forward with a top-down, $1 billion effort, framed as a multi-stakeholder “consensus.” In truth, it was little more than the latest chapter in the green technocrat playbook: make sweeping promises, ignore economic consequences, and paper over objections from the majority who would be stuck with the bill.

President Trump’s June 12 memorandum brought long-overdue sanity back into the picture. As the White House explained, the move “revokes radical environmental orders that could risk energy security and agriculture for the sake of speculative climate change concerns.” That’s not hyperbole. It’s a concise summary of the cost-benefit imbalance plaguing most modern climate policy.

Environmental groups immediately cried foul, decrying the revocation as a betrayal of salmon and tribal rights. But one must ask: since when did dam demolition become a prerequisite for honoring treaty obligations? The federal government has ample tools at its disposal to support tribal communities and ecological restoration—none of which require gutting the energy backbone of the Pacific Northwest.

“The Snake River Dams have been tremendous assets to the Pacific Northwest for decades, providing high-value electricity to millions of American families and businesses. With this action, President Trump is bringing back common sense, reversing the dangerous and costly energy subtraction policies pursued by the last administration. American taxpayer dollars will not be spent dismantling critical infrastructure, reducing our energy-generating capacity or on radical nonsense policies that dramatically raise prices on the American people.”

Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright

What the climate policy evangelists routinely ignore—perhaps willfully—is the indispensable role these dams play in stabilizing the very electric grid they so desperately want to “decarbonize.” While their eyes remain glued to spreadsheets full of levelized cost of energy figures and computer-modeled salmon migrations, the laws of physics quietly keep the lights on.

Hydroelectric dams don’t just generate electricity; they provide inertia—a foundational property of any stable power grid. Inertia refers to the resistance of the grid to sudden changes in frequency. When a major load drops off or generation falters, it’s the spinning mass of turbines in hydro plants that helps absorb the shock and prevent cascading blackouts. Without inertia, you don’t just lose power—you risk catastrophic grid failure.

Unlike intermittent sources such as wind and solar—which must be propped up by batteries, peaker plants, or magical thinking—hydro dams supply electricity with near-instantaneous responsiveness. When demand spikes or a transmission line falters, hydro units can ramp up or down within seconds. They act as the grid’s shock absorbers and throttle controls. Remove them, and you’re not just reducing capacity; you’re gutting the system’s operational backbone.

Consider the Pacific Northwest, where these dams serve as the beating heart of a regional power grid that spans multiple states and interties with California and Canada. Take those dams offline, and suddenly every renewable energy forecast in the region becomes a high-stakes gamble. You can’t balance a modern grid on spreadsheets and solar panels alone. Someone, somewhere, has to keep the electrons flowing now—not ten minutes from now when the wind decides to pick up.

“President Trump’s announcement smartly helps preserve affordable, reliable electricity for families and businesses across the Pacific Northwest,” Matheson said. “Hydroelectric power is the reason the lights stay on in the region. And as demand for electricity surges across the nation, preserving access to always-available energy resources like hydropower is absolutely crucial. We appreciate the administration’s continuing commitment to smart energy policies and unleashing American energy.”

National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, Jim Matheson, CEO

The Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement had no credible plan for replacing this critical function. It offered vague gestures at new clean energy investments, which is shorthand for more subsidies to solar developers and consultants who’ve never had to keep a grid stable through an ice storm. The idea that we can simply swap out inertia-rich hydro plants for battery banks and hope for the best is not just naive—it’s reckless.

Yet this kind of reckless planning is endemic in climate policy circles, where energy is treated as a public relations problem instead of a complex, physical system. Politicians promise transformation without understanding thermodynamics. Activists chant slogans about “saving the salmon” while remaining blissfully unaware of how real-time balancing works in a high-voltage network.

President Trump’s decision to preserve these dams isn’t just a win for common sense—it’s a defense of operational integrity in our power systems. It reflects an understanding that energy policy cannot be governed by sentimentality, nor dictated by activist coalitions that mistake complexity for conspiracy.

The Columbia River Basin remains a vital artery for America’s energy and agricultural future. To gamble that away on the basis of activist pressure and incomplete science would be not just foolish, but dangerous. For once, a president has drawn a line—and the country will be stronger for it.