Energy groups pan Biden-Harris $7.3B 'clean energy' spending ahead of battleground visit

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FIRST ON FOX: Energy groups slammed the Biden-Harris administration's $7.3 billion "rural electrification" funding drawn from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) ahead of President Biden's Thursday announcement in battleground Wisconsin.

"This is all about politics, this has nothing to do with science. These are not scientifically good energy sources that he's promoting," founder John Droz Jr. of the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions told Fox News Digital on Thursday.

"There's three elements that a proper energy source should have," he said. "One is to do it with reliability, number two is economics and third is environmental impact. The answer is that no one basically is thinking about those type of things. Instead, decisions are made by President Biden and others based on what is deemed to be politically correct."

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Funded by the Democrats' signature Inflation Reduction Act, the billion-dollar price tag is the largest investment Biden has thrown toward the "rural electrification" effort since the Green New Deal, which typically consists of constructing wind turbines. 

According to a White House fact sheet, it will support 16 rural electric cooperatives across 23 states to provide affordable electricity to about 5 million rural households. The Biden-Harris administration says it will enhance grid reliability, lower energy costs and create thousands of jobs while cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Daniel Turner, founder of the environmental group Power the Future, said Biden's timing for announcing the program "is not just coincidental."

"Here we are 61 days before the election and just now they happen to announce seven and a half billion dollars for a very important swing state," Turner told Fox News Digital. "I am sick and tired of hearing that these investments are going to lower costs, because utility bills are up 30% since the Biden administration took over, and all we've done is continue to, quote unquote, invest in wind and solar, and prices have not come down, and evidence of that is around the world."

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"You don't need to spend any money at all. That's the funny thing is that the energy industry hasn't needed government money for it to operate. It needs government cooperation."

The Biden-Harris administration has long been implementing environmental policies that prioritize natural resources over fossil fuels and other traditional sources of energy. In June, the White House enacted new rules seeking to aid companies involved in clean energy, and the White House argued that the investments will help communities tied to the energy sector that predate the green movement.

"Rather than forcing on rural Americans' energy sources they don't want, the administration ought to be removing the obstacles to energy sources that they do want," Ben Lieberman, environmental policy researcher at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Fox News Digital. "I don't sense among rural Americans that there's this desire … for wind and solar and geothermal. They just want affordable energy, and that means affordable fossil fuels, first and foremost. And so I think, rather than throwing tax dollars around, the administration should do a lot more just by removing the impediments to energy sources that don't need federal money but just need less regulatory and permitting burdens."

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On the one-year anniversary of the IRA last year, more than 40 energy groups and think tanks demanded that Congress put an end to what they described as "Green New Deal-type policies" in the law that serve to benefit China over the U.S.

"It was passed with no votes from Republicans. It cost [Sen.] Joe Manchin [of West Virginia] his career, and it was only after the fact that the administration [admitted] it really wasn't about inflation, it was about green spending," said Turner, who led the letter to Congress last year. "They just called it the Inflation Reduction Act because inflation was on everybody's mind, and this is a perfect example of that."

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On a press call before Biden's announcement, a senior White House official said, "It's the largest investment in rural electrification since FDR's administration and will spur economic development and lower costs for millions of Americans."

"And it will create 4,500 permanent jobs and 16,000 construction jobs. He will hear from people on the ground about how these and other investments from his agenda are changing their lives for the better," the official said. 

Fox News Digital's Jessica Chasmar and Charles Creitz contributed to this report.