‘He’s forcing higher bills’: Trump spends billions to kill clean energy and keep coal alive

The Altamont Pass wind farm in Livermore, California, and stacks at the Mill Creek coal plant in Louisville, Kentucky. Composite: Getty Images View image in fullscreen The Altamont Pass wind farm in Livermore, California, and stacks at the Mill Creek coal plant in Louisville, Kentucky. Composite: Getty Images ‘He’s forcing higher bills’: Trump spends billions to kill clean energy and keep coal alive Critics accuse president of ‘fattening the wallets of his cronies’ as working Americans face higher energy rates The Trump administration has directly spent $2.7bn of taxpayer money on its crusade against wind power while pouring $1.125bn into boosting coal, which critics say is pushing up Americans’ bills. They say the moves are evidence that the president aims to serve fossil-fuel companies like those which donated record sums to his presidential campaign , rather than the working-class Americans to whom he pledged to lower energy bills and other costs. “Trump is getting Americans coming and going,” said Jay Inslee, the former governor of Washington state and a Trump detractor. “He’s forcing higher power bills on them by blocking clean energy, then he’s fattening the wallets of his cronies – all with billions of our tax dollars.” The Department of the Interior has, since March, struck four deals with energy companies, paying them to cancel a total of eight offshore wind projects and pledge to invest in fossil-fuel power. The first such agreement was announced in March with the French energy company TotalEnergies, sparking a lawsuit from seven Democratic-controlled states that alleged it was an illegal use of taxpayer money. The latest deal with Duke Energy was announced late last month. Area chart of federal spending to kill wind projects and boost coal The president has derided wind as “ugly” and “disgusting”, and called efforts to slash planet-warming pollution a “scam”. Previous administrations have canceled or delayed energy projects via permitting, litigation, or regulatory changes, but there is no precedent for the federal government directly paying developers to relinquish legally acquired offshore wind leases, said Jenny Rowland-Shea, senior director for conservation policy at the liberal thinktank the Center for American Progress. “They are trying to snuff out an entire form of energy,” she said. “And it’s at a time when the United States needs more energy … as people’s rates are going up for electricity, as we see datacenters gobbling up more energy.” As it has worked to suppress offshore wind, which experts say should be a key part of any climate plan, the Trump administration has bolstered coal, the dirtiest and most expensive fossil fuel. In September, the Department of Energy announced it would spend $625m to “expand and extend the life of” coal-fired power plants, allocating $350m to “modernize” coal plants, $175m to fund coal projects powering rural communities, and $50m to upgrade wastewater management systems to extend coal plants’