Net Zero Is Dead And Gone

It was only a few years ago when the climate change alarms and the green energy fad were all the rage at the White House and corporate boardrooms. Former President Joe Biden’s policies were all tilted toward ending fossil fuels, and many of America’s biggest corporations embraced the concept of net-zero fossil fuels. [some emphasis, links added]

This was the movement during the Biden years to eliminate virtually ALL oil, natural gas, and coal production, and replace these energy sources with windmills, solar panels, and electric vehicles.

This goal was pure virtue signaling, and it never made any practical sense. Roughly 70% of American energy comes from fossil fuels, and only about 10% comes from “green energy.”

Studies showed that the initiative would have decimated the U.S. economy: millions of American jobs lost, hundreds of billions of dollars of lost GDP, and much higher energy costs for American businesses and families.

It was an “unaffordability” project at a time when Americans are demanding lower, not higher, costs. It was all pain and no gain.

Even if the U.S. had reduced its fossil fuel usage, it would have had only a tiny impact on total global emissions because China and India were opening up far more coal plants than America was shutting down.

Washington spent hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to promote wind and solar, yet the sector remains as stalled as the EV plants shutting down across the country.

Good news: The net-zero movement is dead — or at least on life support.

A new study that I coauthored for Unleash Prosperity finds that Wall Street’s once-aggressive embrace of net-zero climate policies has been reversed.

Six of the largest U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo, have completely withdrawn from the Net-Zero Banking Alliance.

What a reversal this is: The net-zero movement once included a powerful coalition of financial institutions representing 140 member banks and $75.5 trillion in assets.

A few financial institutions — such as Morgan Stanley and State Street — still embrace some of these radical regulations, but not many.

Much of this never made sense given that AI and data-center energy needs will double or triple our electric power demands over the next two decades.

That will require an all-of-the-above approach to meet those needs and to keep power affordable for our businesses and families.

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