President Biden has recently taken extraordinary executive actions directed toward the energy sector to further his climate agenda and mitigate potential electricity blackouts this summer. Among these actions, the administration has declared a national electricity emergency and invoked the Defense Production Act to boost the production of solar power components. In a new insight, AAF’s Tom Lee and Tori Smith explore the various problems with this strategy and how administration’s previous policy missteps led to the country’s current energy problems.

An excerpt:

President Biden has used expansive federal powers to force a rapid shift in domestic energy production and consumption away from conventional fuels and toward wind and solar power. The most substantial measures to force this shift in the energy market have been done through executive action to disincentivize or even block conventional fuel production, while providing new preferential treatment and subsidies for wind and solar power. It is exactly these interventions that have inflicted inefficiency and higher costs on consumers – which ultimately lowers utilization of clean energy – contrary to the administration’s objective.

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