Oh Doug … you’ll be pleased to know Petey mentions the “Inflation Reduction Act” while explaining his failure to get EV charging stations installed:
Another Bumpy Ride for Buttigieg
If you think it’s hard to find EV charging stations, try explaining the government’s attempt to build them.
By James Freeman
Some people think that Bidenomics simply means too much government spending resulting in too much inflation and too much federal debt. But what’s becoming more apparent is just how little Americans have been getting in return for all that consumer and taxpayer pain. To take just one category of senseless spending, this column doesn’t believe that government should subsidize infrastructure for the electric-vehicle industry. But even those who do ought to concede that the sluggish and expensive pace of this project makes it a boondoggle for the ages.
Last September this column noted the travelling travails of Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg as they tried to model politically correct voyaging via electric vehicles. A problem they shared was the difficulty of finding efficient and reliable charging stations.
This still seems to be a problem, and now it’s becoming an especially embarrassing one for Mr. Buttigieg, given how long he’s been talking about his plans to do something about it. If electric vehicles ran on press releases, keynote addresses, memoranda and media availabilities, we’d all be driving them by now.
Even before taking office, Mr. Buttigieg tweeted in December 2020:
To meet the climate crisis, we must put millions of new electric vehicles on America’s roads. It’s time to build public charging infrastructure powered by clean energy and make it available in all parts of this country.
On the very first full day of the Biden administration, Jan. 21, 2021, Mr. Buttigieg talked about charging stations at his Senate confirmation hearing. He quickly assumed office and began issuing a voluminous record of statements on the topic. “We plan to explore best practices on how to help incentivize the installation of electric charging stations,” his department announced in a joint statement with Transport Canada in February 2021.
Impressive proclamations and pronouncements continued all year, culminating in a December 2021 crescendo with a press release issued by his department that said:
Two Cabinet Secretaries to Establish Joint Office to Support National Network of 500,000 Electric Vehicle Chargers
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg today signed a memorandum of understanding to create a Joint Office of Energy and Transportation to support the deployment of $7.5 billion from the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to build out a national electric vehicle charging network that can build public confidence, with a focus on filling gaps in rural, disadvantaged, and hard-to-reach locations…
“Transportation is responsible for the most greenhouse gas emissions of any sector in our economy – so it can and must be a big part of the solution to the climate crisis,” said Secretary Buttigieg. “With this announcement by DOT and DOE, we are taking a big step forward on climate by helping make the benefits of EVs more accessible for all Americans.”
So how big a step was it? Sunday on the CBS program “Face the Nation,” Margaret Brennan decided to explore the results of Mr. Buttigieg’s oft-discussed policy. Ms. Brennan noted the Biden plan for most new cars sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2032 and also Donald Trump’s reaction to it:
MARGARET BRENNAN: … Listen to what he said in New Jersey recently…
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Do you notice, he’s trying to save the electrical vehicle but not the gas powered, which is the vehicle that everybody wants.
They’re going crazy with the electric car, costing us a fortune. We’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing a car that nobody wants and nobody’s ever going to buy.
Ms. Brennan then noted that sales of electric vehicles remain a small fraction of total U.S. auto sales and asked “why aren’t we seeing it move more quickly.” Here’s the reaction from the transportation secretary, according to the CBS transcript:
SECRETARY PETE BUTTIGIEG: Well, this is really important. Every single year more Americans buy EVs than the year prior. There are two things that I think are needed for that to happen even more quickly. One is the price, which is why the Inflation Reduction Act acted to cut the price of an electric vehicle. The second is making sure we have the charging network we need across America.
But I want to talk about the bigger point here, and I take this very personally because I grew up in the industrial Midwest literally in the shadow of broken down factories from car companies that did not survive into the turn of the century because they didn’t keep up with the times.
Perhaps there’s a reason Mr. Buttigieg wanted to move on to “the bigger point.” To her credit, Ms. Brennan decided to return to his little point about the lack of charging stations. Here’s more of the transcript:
MARGARET BRENNAN: … And let me ask you about a portion of this that I think does fall under your portfolio, and that’s the charging stations you mentioned. The Federal Highway Administration says only seven or eight charging stations have been produced with a $7.5 billion investment that taxpayers made back in 2021.
Why isn’t that happening more quickly?
SECRETARY PETE BUTTIGIEG: So, the president’s goal is to have half a million chargers up by the end of this decade. Now, in order to do a charger, it’s more than just plunking a small device into the ground. There’s utility work and this is also really a new category of federal investment. But we’ve been working with each of the 50 states. Every one of them is getting formula dollars to do this work, engaging them in the first handful –
MARGARET BRENNAN: Seven or eight, though?
SECRETARY PETE BUTTIGIEG: Again, by 2030, 500,000 chargers. And the very first handful of chargers are now already being physically built. But again, that’s the absolute very, very beginning stages of the construction to come.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
Even the professional and courteous Ms. Brennan struggled to stifle a chuckle when Mr. Buttigieg attempted to explain away the minute production from his large federal program. But who can blame her?
One must either laugh or cry watching government officials spend so much of our money as they emote about e-cars while suffering high-speed collisions with reality. Camila Domonoske reported last fall for National Public Radio:
When Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm set out on a four-day electric-vehicle road trip this summer, she knew charging might be a challenge. But she probably didn’t expect anyone to call the cops.
Life on the road can get complicated when one is chasing an e-dream and seeking favorable media attention. Ms. Domonoske reported what happened when the Granholm caravan of electric vehicles attempted to recharge near Augusta, Ga.:
Her advance team realized there weren’t going to be enough plugs to go around. One of the station’s four chargers was broken, and others were occupied. So an Energy Department staffer tried parking a nonelectric vehicle by one of those working chargers to reserve a spot for the approaching secretary of energy.
That did not go down well: a regular gas-powered car blocking the only free spot for a charger?
In fact, a family that was boxed out — on a sweltering day, with a baby in the vehicle — was so upset they decided to get the authorities involved: They called the police.
Is there anyone to call to stop reckless and unproductive federal spending? The outlays from the 2021 infrastructure law are just one part of the larger Biden spending frenzy, which is failing even on its own terms of deploying noneconomic monuments to climate concern.
Ending such waste is a job that voters may have to do for themselves.
James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival” and also the co-author of “Borrowed Time: Two Centuries of Booms, Busts and Bailouts at Citi.”
https://apple.news/Aw4VycRYmREi_bdwIRY1IwQ
