While the hundreds of billions of dollars in green energy spending allocated through the Inflation Reduction Act led to a flood of new wind and solar projects, America's antiquated power grid is not ready to accommodate them.
The nation's largest grid operator, PJM Interconnection, in April announced a two-year suspension on the review of more than 1,000 solar projects waiting to connect to power.
In one case, energy provider Xcel told a Minnesota customer it would take 15 years to connect a rooftop solar system to the company's grid.
California alone, for example, must spend a whopping $9.3 billion on power grid upgrades to support its transition to green energy, the nonprofit that operates the state's electric grid revealed in April.
Daniel Turner, the founder and executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, hammered Biden for spending "Billions of dollars in green cash without proper planning." The nation's power grid problem, Turner argued, shows that the government's work to spur the green energy market is unwise.
Inadequate power grid capacity is far from the only issue plaguing Biden's solar energy push.
The Democrat last summer suspended for two years tariffs on Chinese solar panels sold out of Southeast Asia, arguing that the tariffs would hurt "Short-term solar panel supply." On Wednesday a bipartisan group of senators voted to reinstate those tariffs, a vote that Florida Republican Rick Scott said "Affirmed that the United States will never tolerate a hostile takeover of our industries." Biden promised to veto the measure in an April statement, which said the Chinese tariffs would hurt the "Demand for reliable and clean energy" and "Create deep uncertainty for jobs and investments in the solar supply chain and the solar installation market."
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