The Number One Reason Trump's Policies Aren't Driving Up Electricity Prices

Wind and solar advocates look to weaponize rising prices in the midterms

Climate groups, liberal politicians, and the wind and solar lobby are going on the offensive, seeking to blame the policies enacted by President Trump and Congressional Republicans for the rising electricity bills experienced by many American families and businesses as they attempt to capitalize on the issue in the upcoming midterm elections.

Source: Climate Power via Heatmap

The only problem? Their primary argument—that electricity price are rising because the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) subsidies for wind and solar were repealed by the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA)— has zero basis in reality.

Today, we investigate the motivations behind these bad-faith arguments and give you the tools you need to refute them for yourselves.

A Quick Note

We are heading into our end-of-the-year fundraising push for our day jobs at Always On Energy Research. As part of this effort, we’ll be reaching out to our list of Energy Bad Boys subscribers with a fundraising email on behalf of AOER.

As we note below, there is a massive messaging war right now as wind and solar advocates try to pin rising prices on the rational energy policies being pursued by the Trump administration. We are eager to debunk the arguments and the studies, like this one by Energy Innovation, that support them. To do that in detail, we’ll need to raise funds.

Thanks to all of our readers for understanding. Our steady paychecks from AOER enable us to maintain our side hustle, keeping EBB free for all and consistently delivered to your inboxes on Saturday mornings. There’s no obligation to donate, but you can if you’d like to support our work.

The Blame Game

According to Heatmap, wind and solar special interest groups are escalating their attempts to convince Americans to believe that mounting electricity bills are the result of their representatives in Congress who voted to cut “support” for wind and solar generators.

First of all, this argument backfires as an indictment against wind and solar projects themselves, as it’s an admission that they are uncompetitive without lucrative subsidies and far more expensive than consumers were led to believe.

Ultimately, it appears liberal politicos are hoping to make electricity prices the political liability for Trump that egg prices were for former President Biden. According to The Hill:

Democrats are beginning to weaponize the issue [electricity prices] against Republicans, especially after they repealed subsidies for wind and solar energy.

“The big ugly bill is going to mean a lot of big ugly energy bills arriving in the mail for Americans around the country,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) during a press conference back home this month.

“It’s economics 101 straight from Trump University: More demand and less supply as wind and solar is killed, more costs for consumers and small businesses.”

The strategy might work, largely because electricity prices are even more opaque than egg prices, and progressives are betting that an angry electorate won’t care as much about the true cause of high prices as they care about the effect on their family finances.

Their wager has precedent. For instance, President Biden didn’t release the bird flu that resulted in the deaths of 40 million egg-laying birds, leading to public backlash against surging egg prices—yet his poll numbers still declined as egg prices rose.

This did not happen

Time will tell if conservative lawmakers are blamed for skyrocketing power prices—all we can say is, they shouldn’t be.

Rising Prices

It’s true that electricity prices are rising. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the average all-sectors electricity price in June 2025 hit a new all-time high of 13.88 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh).

The graph below shows that retail prices have been steadily on the rise since January of 2021, when the growth in prices began accelerating on their current trajectory. It also shows the exaaaaact moment when windd and solar advocates, who have happily advocated for trillions of dollars in new energy spending for decades, began caring about electricity prices in red.

There are too many individual factors—including billions of dollars in rate hike requests, surging capacity market prices, and rising natural gas prices—that account for rising prices to discuss in one article, but one thing should be painfully obvious to everyone: the OBBBA isn’t the cause.

The Truth: Changing the Subsidy Phase-Out Dates Cannot be the Cause of Higher Prices

Blaming the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) for higher electricity prices is one of the most cynical and baseless claims wind and solar advocates could make because it’s not possible for a policy to impact electricity prices when it hasn’t even gone into effect.

First of all, OBBBA didn’t actually repeal the subsidies for wind and solar (unfortunately). Instead, it will theoretically “phase them out” sooner than they would have been phased out otherwise. However, even with the updated Treasury guidance, there are ways that wind and solar projects can “safe harbor” their subsidies for the next five years.

But even more important for this argument is the fact that Congress failed to enact a retroactive repeal of the Production Tax Credits (PTCs) for existing projects. This would have increased the cost of producing electricity with wind, and these costs would have likely been passed on to consumers, but for now, customers are still benefiting from U.S. taxpayers picking up the rest of their tab.

This Cake is Baked

Another reason that “repealing” the IRA subsidies via OBBBA isn’t to blame for rising prices is that the price increases are the result of investments made by companies five to ten years ago.

As we detailed in our piece, Electricity Prices Are Soaring: It’s Time to Hold the “Energy Transition” Accountable, utilities have been seeking to raise power prices by tens of billions of dollars to pay for their “energy transition” spending—despite the subsidies in place that help offset the expenses with the help of taxpayers.

These rate hikes lag behind the approval of integrated resource plans by state legislators, meaning today’s high prices are due to yesterday’s progressive energy policies.

Conclusion

Americans hate rising prices. For a long time, electricity prices were an afterthought, but the expensive chickens of years of bad energy policy are coming home to roost.

What can’t be said about rising prices is that policies passed by the Trump administration, which aren’t even in effect yet, are the root cause of them. The rising cost of electricity in America stems mostly from the ill-advised policy decisions made years prior, which are now impacting Americans nationwide.

The rate increase requests we’ve analyzed almost always cite the ongoing energy transition as a significant reason for rate hikes—which is unsurprising, given that state after state has retired affordable power plants and spent billions of dollars on new power facilities to replace them, all in the name of the so-called “green” agenda.

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