Are there no benefits in the Tax Code for the oil and gas industry? Should those be eliminated as well?
This pretty much shows that the tax breaks oil and gas get are substantionally smaller then for wind and solar.
Debunking Democrats' claims about fossil fuel tax breaksAnd even so, it is still more expensive directly to the consumer to get electricity from renewables.
From the article,
"According to CRS, “In 2017, the value of federal tax-related support for the energy sector was estimated to be $17.8 billion. Of this, $4.6 billion (25.8%) can be attributed to tax incentives supporting fossil fuels.
Tax-related support for renewables was an estimated $11.6 billion in 2017 (or
65.2% of total tax-related support for energy). The remaining tax-related support went toward nuclear energy, efficiency measures, and alternative technology vehicles.”
But there’s more to the story, because fossil fuels deliver vastly more energy return than renewables. “In 2017, fossil fuels accounted for 77.7% of U.S. primary energy production. The remaining primary
energy production is attributable to renewable energy and nuclear electric resources,
with shares of 12.8% and 9.5%, respectively,” according to CRS. Wind and solar power only accounted for 3.6 percentage points of total energy production.
So, 65.2% of all tax breaks in the energy sector are going towards wind/solar that only produces 12.8% of all electricity.
You know what, percentages are so hard to think about for the normal person. Lets restate this in fractions. About 2/3s of all tax breaks for energy goes to a sector that only produces about an 1/8 of the total amount of electricity.
So, sure taking away tax breaks for oil/gas would increase prices a bit, but not nearly as much as it would for wind/solar.