President Donald Trump’s Division of Vitality sparked backlash final week after posting on X that “wind and photo voltaic power infrastructure is actually nugatory when it’s darkish outdoors, and the wind will not be blowing.”
The message echoed latest remarks from Vitality Secretary Chris Wright, a longtime oil and gasoline government, who defended Trump’s declare that renewable power is driving up electrical energy prices, although he acknowledged the image is extra difficult.
He additionally argued that wind and photo voltaic are “intermittent” and, with out large-scale batteries, “nugatory” when the solar isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Larger reliance on renewables, he added, successfully creates “an entire separate grid” that raises total prices.
Nonetheless, the DoE’s X submit drew hundreds of thousands of views and lots of mocking replies, together with a group word reminding readers that batteries exist to retailer energy when the solar isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.
Among the many most outstanding replies was from Elon Musk, who reduce by way of the noise with simply two phrases: “Um … whats up?”
Alongside his reply, the Tesla CEO boosted his firm’s large-scale battery enterprise, which had lately touted a 370-megawatt-hour storage undertaking in Australia designed to stabilize the grid and develop renewable use. His submit garnered just a little over half 1,000,000 views. Tesla additionally has a photo voltaic panel enterprise to be used in properties.
The Division of Vitality didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
A number of customers additionally identified Musk’s in depth marketing campaign assist for the president final yr regardless of Tesla’s deal with inexperienced power.
Musk spent almost $300 million on Republican candidates within the final election cycle, endorsing Trump after he survived an assassination try. After he was elected, Trump put in Musk to go the Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE,) and the 2 males appeared inseparable, with Musk writing in February that he loves Trump “as a lot as any straight man can love one other man.”
However the two additionally had clear ideological variations from the beginning, notably round renewables. Musk heads one of many world’s main electric-vehicle firms, and has lengthy supported every kind of renewable power, together with photo voltaic and wind.
The alliance unraveled in a really public break-up earlier this yr over the One Massive Stunning Invoice, which sparked Musk’s fierce opposition as a result of it ended Biden-era tax credit for renewable power and is anticipated so as to add to U.S. debt.
In a now-deleted X submit, Musk escalated the feud even additional, accusing Trump of being named within the Epstein information and of blocking the discharge of extra particulars. Since then, Musk has mentioned that he’ll do “quite a bit much less” political spending sooner or later.
“I feel I’ve accomplished sufficient,” he mentioned in a video interview with Bloomberg Information on the Qatar Financial Discussion board.
In the meantime, Trump’s administration has sought to cripple clear power, blocking almost $19 billion in renewable power initiatives and saying that it’ll not approve any wind or photo voltaic initiatives.
The president himself has used varied justifications for his anti-renewable stance, saying that wind mills kill birds and are ugly, whereas he wrote in a Reality Social submit that photo voltaic panels are “farmer destroying.”
“The times of stupidity are over within the USA!!!” Trump added.
