President Donald Trump’s Division of Power sparked backlash final week after posting on X that “wind and solar energy infrastructure is essentially worthless when it is dark outside, and the wind is not blowing.”
The message echoed latest remarks from Power Secretary Chris Wright, a longtime oil and gasoline government, who defended Trump’s declare that renewable vitality is driving up electrical energy prices, although he acknowledged the image is extra difficult.
He additionally argued that wind and photo voltaic are “intermittent” and, with out large-scale batteries, “worthless” when the solar isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Better reliance on renewables, he added, successfully creates “a whole separate grid” that raises total prices.
Nonetheless, the DoE’s X put up drew hundreds of thousands of views and plenty of mocking replies, together with a group word reminding readers that batteries exist to retailer energy when the solar isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.
Among the many most outstanding replies was from Elon Musk, who lower by means of the noise with simply two phrases: “Um … hello?”
Alongside his reply, the Tesla CEO boosted his firm’s large-scale battery enterprise, which had just lately touted a 370-megawatt-hour storage challenge in Australia designed to stabilize the grid and increase renewable use. His put up garnered slightly over half one million views. Tesla additionally has a photo voltaic panel enterprise to be used in houses.
The Division of Power didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
A number of customers additionally identified Musk’s in depth marketing campaign help for the president final 12 months regardless of Tesla’s deal with inexperienced vitality.
Musk spent almost $300 million on Republican candidates within the final election cycle, endorsing Trump after he survived an assassination try. After he was elected, Trump put in Musk to move the Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE,) and the 2 males appeared inseparable, with Musk writing in February that he loves Trump “as much as any straight man can love another man.”
However the two additionally had clear ideological variations from the beginning, notably round renewables. Musk heads one of many world’s main electric-vehicle corporations, and has lengthy supported every kind of renewable vitality, together with photo voltaic and wind.
The alliance unraveled in a really public break-up earlier this 12 months over the One Massive Lovely Invoice, which sparked Musk’s fierce opposition as a result of it ended Biden-era tax credit for renewable vitality and is predicted so as to add to U.S. debt.
In a now-deleted X put up, Musk escalated the feud even additional, accusing Trump of being named within the Epstein recordsdata and of blocking the discharge of extra particulars. Since then, Musk has mentioned that he’ll do “a lot less” political spending sooner or later.
In the meantime, Trump’s administration has sought to cripple clear vitality, blocking almost $19 billion in renewable vitality initiatives and asserting that it’ll not approve any wind or photo voltaic initiatives.
The president himself has used varied justifications for his anti-renewable stance, saying that wind mills kill birds and are ugly, whereas he wrote in a Reality Social put up that photo voltaic panels are “farmer destroying.”
“The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!” Trump added.
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