Anatomy of an EV Policy Error

The U.S. carefully researched a ‘poor’ strategy and then followed it

By Holman W. Jenkins. Excerpts:

"Mr. Biden’s own White House budget office, in an unsigned, undated “analysis,” begs off defending Biden policy by declining to make any emissions-reduction forecast. Instead, it cites “complicated economic interactions” while regurgitating what it knows are the flawed estimates of outside groups."

"Long-time NASA climate scientist James Hansen, in a recent paper, dismissively points out that “thousands of pages of giveaways to special interests lard . . . the climate bill titled ‘Inflation Reduction Act’—Orwellian double-speak.”"

"a 2013 congressionally sponsored National Research Council study, led by the father of climate economics and future Nobel laureate, Yale’s William Nordhaus, concluded that green handouts and tax breaks are “a poor tool for reducing greenhouse gases and achieving climate change objectives.”"

"Since 1964, a 25% tariff on imported pickups has turned the Big Three domestic auto manufacturers into pickup truck companies that, in an unspoken post-Obama political settlement, use their excess pickup profits to subsidize money-losing electric vehicles.

The EVs the Big Three churn out, as a result, are exactly those that produce more emissions on net than the average gasoline-powered car.

They are the biggest, grandest Hummer- and Escalade-sized EVs, which need an oversized battery just to haul around the weight of their oversized battery."

"Cheap Chinese electric vehicles pose no threat to U.S. manufacturers because they lack the vehicle amenities Americans demand and willingly pay for."

"In American driveways, instead, you’d eventually find more and more cheap Chinese EVs for local errands next to bigger, gas-powered vehicles that American households use for other purposes. If the world isn’t going to adopt carbon taxes, this—the natural, market-based search for energy efficiency—is the only modest success we’ve seen in reducing the expected path of emissions."

"the carbon intensity of global gross domestic product has been steadily falling for two decades at nearly 2% annually"