President Donald Trump once again dismissed the proposal of leveraging the power of wind energy in the United States, a move championed by the energy secretary himself, saying that the U.S. is one of the most competitive suppliers of energy in the world and that wind energy doesn’t work “that well.”
“We’re the No. 1 energy producer in the world,” Trump said at the end of a summit of Group of Seven in Biarritz, France. “I’m not going to lose that wealth on dreams, on windmills, which, frankly, are not working all that well.”
Trump made a comment during the G7 summit after he was asked a question relating to global warming and climate change – a phenomenon he profusely refuses to acknowledge in the past. Trump has said turbines are “monstrous,” are “killing all the eagles” and cause cancer.
The statements of the president come after the Energy Department released a report revealing that the jobs generated from wind energy have been increasing. The industry, which has added more than 15 gigawatts of energy since Trump took office in 2017, currently employing a record high of 114,000 full-time employees and is the cheapest source of energy in most regions of the United States.
U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry has previously endorsed the benefits of wind energy, which now supplies about 20% of electricity in his home state of Texas. The 15 gigawatts of energy that was added since Trump’s administration started is enough to power a city as big as New York City.
“We think the president is making a political miscalculation in his comments on wind energy,” Tom Kiernan, chief executive officer of the American Wind Energy Association, said in a statement.
Meanwhile, there are also some problems that have been plaguing the wind energy industry in recent years. Earlier this month in Texas, wholesale power prices surged 40,000%, in part because the output from wind farms fell during a heatwave.
