Schatz: Trump Is Intentionally Raising The Price Of Electricity

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai'i) spoke on the Senate floor about how President Donald Trump's ban on clean energy is creating a shortage of electricity and driving up Americans' utility bills. Schatz spoke after Senate Republicans blocked a resolution to affirm that climate change is not a hoax.

"Donald Trump is the first president to intentionally raise the price of something that we all need. We have a shortage of electrons, and Donald Trump is making it worse," said Senator Schatz. "When there are shortages, people have to petition the king for mercy, and that's what's going on right now. If you are close to him, if you can get dinner with him at Mar-A-Lago, you can get relief. There's enough money in the system for lots of people to get wealthy. But there's not enough money for a regular person living in Kaimuki in Honolulu - paying already three or four times the average electricity rate - paying more and more and more. There is a national policy, driven by the president of the United States, to create a shortage of electrons because he's decided that climate action is against his interests."

Senator Schatz continued, "Even if you don't care at all about the climate, you should still love solar energy. Why? Because nobody should be enthused about paying more for electricity, and this national solar ban is making everybody pay more. Clean is cheap and cheap is clean."

A transcript of Senator Schatz's remarks is below. Video is available here.

This is how times have changed. [Democrats] have changed what we're talking about because energy systems change, prices change, needs change, the load changes. But hearing the Senator from Kansas, it could have been 1998 or 2008 or 2018. It's the same talking points, and it's literally not true anymore.

There was a time where you could actually credibly say, 'Look, I understand there's a planetary emergency, but coal's so cheap. People are struggling. We've got to balance the planetary emergency with the need for people to be able to cool and heat their homes and keep the lights on and all the rest of it.' All of that is out the window. Why? Because clean is cheap, and cheap is clean.

Clean energy is now the cheapest kind of electricity that we can get on the grid, in any kind of reasonable timeframe. There was a time where it was coal. That's definitely more expensive now. There was a time where it was gas, but the cost of gas keeps going up and up and up - for a couple of reasons. Because we're exporting a lot of our gas, but also because the turbines needed to convert natural gas into electrons, there's a huge backlog of them. And so we've got an industrial renaissance happening in certain states, and we've got all this AI data center load coming up, and we've got your normal American economy stuff happening. There are not enough electrons on the grid. What happens when there's not enough of something? The people selling that thing raise the price. And that is exactly what's happening.

That is not a rhetorical flourish. Like they have overnight prices. They have people whose job it is to find how we're going to meet everybody's needs, so when you flick that switch, everything just works. There are technicians, in front of probably three or four screens, figuring out, 'Okay, I'm going to buy this, I'm going to buy this. This is the overnight price. This is the backup.' And what has changed over the last couple of years is that solar energy is it.

Even if you don't care at all about the climate, you should still love solar energy. Why? Because nobody should be enthused about paying more for electricity. And what Donald Trump has done is very unique in American history. It is normal for a president of the United States to try to alleviate economic pain for the citizens of the United States. And this is certainly the first president that I've experienced in the United States Senate, but honestly, the first president that I've even been aware of, who is intentionally raising the price of something that we all need. And it's Secretary Burgum's order, and it's the way Secretary Wright is behaving, and it's the way Lee Zeldin is behaving, and it's the way people in the White House are behaving. They want to create a shortage of electricity.

Why? First, they have ideology against solar and wind. Trump has a particular idea about wind and golf courses and birds or whatever. But they viewed, 10 years ago, solar as a kind of ideological project. As a nice-to-have, United Nations, utopian view of the world. Well, listen, solar is the most pragmatic thing we can put on the grid. Solar is really the only thing that's ready quickly. Why? Because nuclear energy has tremendous potential but is at least an eight-to-twelve-year timeframe. So we're talking about the 2030s. Geothermal also has tremendous potential, but they have not worked out all of the technical issues. And again, that's really a 2030 to 2040 play.

In the short run, we have a shortage. And Donald Trump is making it worse. Now why would you make it worse? Well, when there are shortages of something, the people selling the thing get to charge more. And they are charging more. Again, I care deeply about this planetary crisis. It's actually the main reason I'm in the United States Senate. I care deeply about this. But even if you don't, nobody wants to pay more than necessary on their electricity bills. And this national solar ban is making everybody pay more.

One in four Americans struggle to pay their electricity bills. One in four Americans. So what's Trump doing about it? Well, it is definitely worse than nothing. The criticism about Biden during the inflation crisis was that he wasn't doing enough about inflation. But this is a different criticism. This is deliberate policy choices to drive up the cost of something that everybody needs. And by the way, that's also true for food and health insurance and electricity. All the stuff you need, he's creating a shortage of.

Why? Because when there are shortages, people have to petition the king for mercy. And that's what's going on right now. If you are close to him, if you can get dinner with him at Mar-A-Lago, you can get relief. There's enough money in the system for lots of people to get wealthy. But there's not enough money for a regular person living in Kaimuki in Honolulu - paying already three to four times the average electricity rate - paying more and more and more. Because there is a national policy driven by the president of the United States to create a shortage of electrons. Because he's decided that climate action is against his interests.

And I think if we were going to move forward on permitting reform, but if we're going to move forward more generally on the question of affordability, we have to say: shortages are bad for prices. When there's not enough of something, people charge too much. And right now, we need as many electrons on the grid as we can possibly get, which means we need interstate transmission. And we need to not just permit new projects, but at a minimum, to let the projects that have been almost totally built to be plugged in to the grid.

And so this is not a climate speech. This is a people-can't-afford-their-electricity-bills speech. And I just hope that some of my Republican colleagues understand they've got to abandon their old talking points because it doesn't apply anymore. Cheap is clean, and clean is cheap.

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