Denying Louisiana grifters of $156 million in federal taxpayer funds wasted on cost-ineffective energy tactics leaves everybody else in the state better off.

The Environmental Protection Agency, as part of its continuing reorientation away from politicized decisions about the environment, under Republican Pres. Donald Trump, recently halted a federal spending program known as Solar for All. The move came when the recently passed budget reconciliation bill yanked its $7 billion authorization.

Louisiana, with its version known as “Solar for Y’all, had its $156 million allotment cancelled. The program was to provide solar energy panels and batteries for lower-income households and an opportunity for renters in multi-unit residential complexes to subscribe to a share of a solar farm. In both instances a net metering regime would be established that would allow a credit on power bills for the solar power fed back into the grid. The Democrat Pres. Joe Biden-era program alleged that participants would save 20 percent on their bills and increase the resiliency of the grid by having in the wings a power source for the grid when outages occurred. It was part of a larger program costing $27 billion supposed to reduce carbon emissions.

But note the sleight-of-hand involved. The clients still would be hooked to the power grid, thus making providers responsible for reliability issues; that is, when the household units or farms aren’t generating power and they don’t have it stored, then the grid has to compensate.

And solar sources won’t. The sun doesn’t shine all the time, especially during bad weather when outages become most likely to occur. And battery capacity is way too limited and expensive to change a zero production mode for all but a short period. By way of example using back-of-the-envelope numbers, in its grant proposal the state said it expected 112 megawatts to come from this. At a current cost of $500,000 MW per hour for batteries and a mean usable storage of 60 percent, even the six-hour blackout recently experienced in north Louisiana, if it hit every household and subscriber in the program, would require $560 million, or well more than thrice the entire allotment, just for batteries. And battery shelf life (a typical one has a four-hour cycle, but, as noted above, much less of that is usable typically) is 10-15 years or about half the lifespan of the panels.

So, the grid will have to be built out anyway with the needed redundancy – which is borne by all ratepayers. As well, ratepayers will have to pay the extra cost the program participants foist on them, being forced to subsidize their credits because, using the most accurate metric of cost comparison, Levelized Full System Cost of Energy, solar prices at 7 to 13 cents per kilowatt-hour. By contrast, combined cycle natural gas (the predominant form used to supply electricity in Louisiana) is 5 to 7.5 cents/kWh. Thus, if a household is shipping more expensive solar to the grid, other users end up paying more than necessary for the credits it receives back. So, most ratepayers get hit twice: the taxes they pay for this boondoggle and the higher price of energy used to subsidize others.

This scam is nothing more than a wealth redistribution scheme – which actually is the base of any power regulation regime tilted in favor of renewable use where, instead of Marxism as the guiding principle, it is its cousin catastrophic anthropogenic–global warming. Neither has any empirical backing but attract support from fellow travelers acting as middlemen in the redistribution in their attempts to suck public dollars from the people. Worse, because this acts as a subsidy to a more costly and less reliable source of power, it simple wastes money, all in the name of a fake crisis.

Getting rid of this boondoggle won’t make the electricity grid any less reliable or less affordable. That in fact being the opposite case, its demise will reduce the deficit and/or taxes for Americans and Louisianans, and should be celebrated.