Money to ‘decarbonize’ is more useless than gym memberships and extended warranties
January 20, 2026
By Gary Abernathy
Nearly all of us have fallen prey to schemes, scams or even well-intentioned projects that come
up short of the results promised for the money spent.
For instance, the new year has undoubtedly brought the annual rush of gym memberships from
Americans convinced they’ll shed those holiday pounds and get back into shape. Or there’s that
extended warranty we were talked into on a large kitchen appliance that wouldn’t go bad unless it was
dropped from the top of a 10-story building. How ‘bout that costly monthly charge we incur for a
streaming service so we can enjoy the one show we’re really going to watch?
Time and again, Americans find themselves on the short end of the stick, paying through the
nose for services that never live up to their promise. Nowhere is that more evident than in the decades-long climate-based hoax that promised a revolution in the energy industry to save us all from extinction.
A recent column by William Murray, former chief speechwriter for the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) and a past editor of RealClearEnergy, lays bare how promises made by far-left
environmentalists fell far short of their assurances. Murray points out that $20 trillion – that’s $20
trillion – has been spent (over the last couple of decades, according to his source), largely by the U.S.
and Europe, to “decarbonize” the global economy. Murray notes that the expenditure is “pretty much
the total present value of America’s GDP.”
The result? “Hydrocarbon consumption continued to increase anyway. All that was achieved
was a tiny reduction, just 2%, in the share of overall energy supplied by hydrocarbons. Put simply, as the energy pie got bigger and all forms of energy supply increased, hydrocarbons ended up with a slightly smaller share of a larger pie.”
If such a pitiful return on investment happened in any other walk of life, companies pushing the
scheme would go bankrupt and reputations would be in shambles. But the “climate warriors” just grow more emboldened.
Haven’t renewables made great strides? That’s what we read in the mainstream media,
parroting the renewables industries. But read the careful wording used by most advocates of
renewables when they boast about advancements.
For instance, The Renewable Energy Institute featured a story headlined, “Renewables Account
for 90% of US Power Generation in 2024.” Wow! But the details were a little less impressive, clarifying
that “renewable energy made up nearly 90% of the total US power generation capacity added during
the first 3 quarters of 2024, as per a review conducted by the SUN DAY Campaign using Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) data.”
At first glance, readers not carefully parsing the language – or relying only on the headline –
might think that renewable energy accounted for 90 percent of total power generation in the first three
quarters of 2024. Of course, that’s not the case. The story was merely claiming that 90 percent “of the
total US power generation capacity added (emphasis added)” was from renewable energy.
In fact, as reported by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, “In 2024, the United States
produced a record amount of energy, according to data in our Monthly Energy Review. U.S. total energy production was more than 103 quadrillion British thermal units in 2024, a 1% increase from the previous record set in 2023.” In other words, the renewable industry is claiming responsibility for 90% of the 1% added (at least during the first three quarters). Fine.
In reality, the top sources for energy in 2024 continued to be natural gas and natural gas plant
liquids (47% combined), crude oil (27%) and coal (10%). In fact, natural gas plant liquids (9% of total
energy production when broken out alone) were up 7% from 2023.
“Domestic NGPL production have increased every year since 2005 as U.S. natural gas production
and processing capacity have increased,” according to the report. Meanwhile, all “renewables” (wood,
waste, wind, solar, geothermal) combined accounted for the remaining 16% of total U.S. energy
produced. Wind blew in at just over 1.5% of all energy produced, with solar just over 1%.
Here’s the kicker: Even just a 1% capacity increase from 2023 to 2024 meant that the U.S.
produced record levels of total energy capacity. However, electricity capacity powered by wind and solar provides “almost no reliability to the grid.”
That’s according to Mitch Rolling and Isaac Orr of the “Energy Bad Boys” Substack, who point
out that “wind and solar capacity is not the same as dispatchable capacity due to their intermittency.
Intermittent generators are inferior to dispatchable resources for a number of reasons, but mainly
because operators cannot control when they produce electricity and when they won’t.”
As an example, “Despite having more capacity installed than ever before, reliable capacity in
PJM (the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland regional transmission organization) has actually decreased by 2 gigawatts (GW) since 2016, from 198 GW to 196 GW, and is down 6.8 GW since firm capacity peaked in 2018. This comes at a time when peak demand hit new records in 2025 at over 160 GW, according to data from the EIA Hourly Electric Grid Monitor.”
The $20 trillion investment in “decarbonization” in the U.S. and Europe has been an abject
failure. It would be a wiser expenditure of tax dollars for governments to subsidize lifetime gym
memberships for every citizen. At least then there’d be a slight possibility of some return on investment.
Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing
columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation.