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The United States is not ready to go for green policies, and the push for it will mainly benefit China, according to Kelly Sloan, senior fellow in energy and environment at Centennial Institute, the Colorado Christian University’s think tank.
Sloan said that legislators’ push for green energies to try and encourage the market to go to a place where it’s not ready to go is naturally inefficient.
“While in the short term, it may benefit Chinese companies, in the long term, I think that will hurt the American economy, even with China’s contribution aside,” Sloan told “China in Focus” on NTD, the sister media outlet of the Epoch Times.
The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden last August, seeks to direct spending, tax credits, and loans to bolster technology such as solar panels and equipment to reduce pollution at coal- and gas-powered power plants.
The top-line price of the bill’s climate policies is around $369 billion.
The Inflation Reduction Act emphasizes tax incentives for companies and individuals who switch to renewable energy sources.
For instance, the bill would dole out as much as $28,500 in tax incentives to American households who buy more energy-efficient electric home appliances, install solar panels on their homes, and buy new electric vehicles. Though families would need to do all these to reach that $28,500 figure, it represents one of the largest government climate incentives ever for individual households.
Sloan called the legislative move a “political decision.”
“The most efficient renewable resource is primarily offshore wind; solar still makes up, even with the advances in renewable technology, only a minute fraction of the overall renewable, the overall energy contribution among renewable,” he said.
