NTD News: David Blackmon Discusses a Troubled Future for Wind and Solar

I appeared on NTD News with anchor Dan Ma for a 10-minute discussion about the future for wind and solar in the U.S. following the enactment of restrictions contained in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and President Donald Trump’s July 8 executive order related to enforcement of those provisions.

Below is a clip of that segment followed by a transcript.

Enjoy the show.

Transcript:

Dan Ma: President Donald Trump signed an executive order on July 7th, directing his administration to end federal subsidies for solar and wind energy facilities, citing their unreliability and dependence on foreign controlled supply chains. Joining us now to discuss is David Blackman, energy policy analyst and consultant. Good afternoon, David.

To start off, President Trump cited unreliability as a potential reason for ending solar and wind subsidies. Can I have your comments on that?

David Blackmon: Yes, the president's concerned and many, many others are concerned that the addition of too much wind and solar diminishes reliability on an integrated power grid. I think everyone recognizes both forms of energy can play an important role in a power grid, but when you pile too much of it onto the grid, you end up taking resources away from baseload, 24-7 power generation, and that ends up diminishing reliability.

We had this situation in Portugal and Spain a few months ago where they had major blackouts because the grid there lost inertia and that's provided mainly by baseload power generation, coal, natural gas, nuclear that runs all the time. And so we want to avoid that kind of situation on the regional grids here in the United States and the administration is, you know, that's a main motivator for some of their policies.

Dan Ma: Do you think the solar and wind industries can survive or grow without government subsidies?

David Blackmon: You know, I may be in the minority on this, but I honestly don't believe they can. I think that once capital markets begin to understand how restrictive those provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act are going to be on those industries' ability to raise capital, you're going to see it become very difficult for developers to raise the capital they need to build new projects.

And so even though they've been given this grace period of one year to show they're under construction and then another year and a half or so to have the projects placed in service to continue to benefit from the subsidies, I think they're gonna struggle mightily to actually achieve that because of the way the administration is moving on policy here.

Dan Ma: How dependent is the U.S. Green energy sector growth on subsidies? Would you say that without the subsidies, basically they would not grow and potentially go extinct? Would you go as far as to say that?

David Blackmon: Well, I don't think they would go extinct, but they wouldn't have had the growth that they've had in recent years.

You know, wind and solar have been around for a long time, really beginning in the 70s and 80s, you started seeing a lot of solar power come online. But they didn't really begin to experience these major expansions until first the states and then the federal government began offering these subsidies and big tax breaks and preferential treatment on permitting that we saw under the Obama and Biden administrations.

They would still exist, but they'd be much smaller than they are today and would not have grown so much in the last few years. And so, that's been a big difference.

The offshore wind is even more reliant on the subsidies and permitting preferences that they've had. Those projects are simply not sustainable. They don't have sustainable business models without all the government handouts.

Dan Ma: Would these industries inch closer to that outcome because perhaps investors are taking this as a signal, right, this executive order, and it could shift investment away from clean energy as well.

David Blackmon: That's correct. I believe that's true. And I think that's exactly what we're going to see happen. I know some critics of those industries were really disappointed in what Congress did, but when you combine the language in that bill with the executive order that was released this week to ensure strict enforcement of the laws, the letter of the law - which also wasn't really happening during the Biden administration - you're going to see it become really difficult really fast for these industries to continue to grow.

Dan Ma: What part of renewable energy industry will be hurt the most by losing federal support? Big utility projects, for example? Home solar systems or factories that make that make the equipment or the workers who install it? What do you think?

David Blackmon: Yeah, well, they all, the entire sector will be impacted. And of course, home solar was already struggling before, you know, during the Biden administration, because California began taking away some of the subsidies out there and it became more restrictive in Texas and other big markets.

And the big solar farms and big wind farms were already beginning to fall into some disfavor because it had become so obvious that Number one, they're not, you know, a lot of the promise from those industries was that, well, you know, everything we do is recyclable and we're going to recycle and reuse most of these materials. None of that was happening.

And then, states like Texas were becoming very concerned about the fact that there's no regulations in any state that, that forced the responsible dismantling and retirement of big wind farms and solar farms once they run their useful lives. And so you were going to have a situation where these 700-foot-tall windmills were just going to stand in the view sheds and dilapidate over time.

And, and so it's just a combination of these things and just a general rising disapproval and pushback from communities and, and others in the public against mounting those big projects near their communities.

Dan Ma: So, if there is a shift in investment, would it be natural to assume that fossil fuel industry would benefit instead?

David Blackmon: Yes, you're going to need to continue to really expand power generation in the future here in the United States because demand is growing so rapidly. I mean, that's one of the downsides of this is we're going have a period here where capital markets, I think, are going to be fairly uncertain which way to jump. But I think that may last six months, but not much longer than that. So there will be a period of time where maybe investment in energy expansion overall is down, but. After that, most of it's going to flow to natural gas and power generation, also into nuclear. And I really continue to believe, and I've said this for a couple of years now, that we're ultimately going to see governments being forced to permit the building of new coal-fired power plants as well with the modern scrubber technology and maybe accompanied by carbon capture projects, because there's going be such a need for more baseload capacity on these grids. You're going to be left with little choice, but to do that.

Dan Ma: And David, tell me if this is a concern to you. Could the U.S. Be giving up its leadership, maybe in clean energy manufacturing and innovation to other countries? Is that a concern?

David Blackmon: Well, I mean, we've never really been a leader in manufacturing these things. Most of the parts in wind and solar are made in China or other countries like South Korea. And so they're not really made here. They're put together here, but they're not manufactured here, so the manufacturing of it is a fairly minor piece of our economy here.

But yeah, I mean, there's concern about that and there's concern about, of course, the emissions. And climate change concerns, if you consider those to be valid, then yeah, I mean, all of that's out there and it's a part of it. And the administration is going to be criticized by the international community, particularly in Europe, for its backing down off of America's climate commitments. And so it's real balancing act they're doing here and maintaining public support for it, you know, will be a challenge going forward.

Dan Ma: Okay, let me just get your comments on one more thing. To what extent is the U.S. Currently dependent on Chinese supply chains for renewable technology?

David Blackmon: It's really a dangerous situation, particularly where energy minerals and rare earth minerals and the magnets that go into every military weapon system, in addition to renewable energy are concerned, we're virtually entirely dependent, like over 80% dependent on China. That is not a sustainable situation, obviously, and the administration is really focused on, you know, freeing up our supply chains from other sources. It's what. Really motivates President Trump's desire to do some sort of an arrangement with Greenland because it is known to have such a huge deposit of rare earth minerals and other critical energy minerals on that island. And so that's a big part of the agenda as well.

Dan Ma: Okay, David. Great conversation as always. Thank you so much for coming on.

[End]

That is all.