Trump Cancels Billions In Clean Energy Grants As $2.2 Billion California Solar Farm Announces Shutdown
Interestingly, all of the affected states were ones that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the most recent presidential election, a detail that has not gone unnoticed by political commentators.
The decision follows weeks of tension in Washington, where Donald Trump has been pushing for deep spending cuts as part of his ongoing standoff with congressional Democrats over the current government shutdown.
Despite the freeze, the U.S. Department of Energy remains active. In a new statement released this week, officials announced that 223 clean energy projects are being terminated following an internal review. The review concluded that these projects either failed to meaningfully advance the country’s long-term energy goals or were not economically sustainable.
While the department has not yet released a detailed list of which projects will be impacted, officials confirmed that the discontinued funding had come from programs under the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and other related divisions within the Energy Department.
The timing of these budget cuts comes right after news that one of the country’s largest solar farms, the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California, will be shutting down much earlier than expected.
Costing an incredible $2.2 billion to build, the massive solar project was once hailed as a groundbreaking investment in renewable energy. However, after consistently failing to meet its energy production targets, it is now set to be permanently decommissioned next year.
Critics have been quick to call the solar farm a symbol of wasteful spending and government overreach, claiming that taxpayer money was poured into a project that failed to deliver on its promises.
“It another left-wing taxpayer-funded boondoggle turns out to be a useless waste of money,” one user complained online, expressing frustration over the billions lost in funding.
Aside from financial concerns, several environmentalists have also pointed out that the facility had its own share of ecological issues. Reports claim that the intense heat generated by the solar mirrors caused thousands of birds to die each year, with estimates as high as 6,000 annually. According to a 2016 report by Science Alert, the birds would often fly into the beams of concentrated sunlight and ‘burst into flames,’ highlighting the unintended consequences of the technology.
