This one climate myth is what’s causing energy prices to rise

Recent energy headlines have turned red-hot with warnings from the climate left: The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025” will drive up your electricity bill. But climate hawks who think rising energy prices will give them an easy political win should think twice before overplaying their hand.

Because let’s be honest: These price hikes have been on the way since before President Trump’s tax bill. In fact, it has been the myth of an easy energy transition — a delusion that too many climate activists continue to indulge — that has made rising energy prices almost inevitable.

In short, this has nothing to do with the recent budget bill, which has barely had a chance to be implemented.

The myth of an easy energy transition has long been a core tenet of the climate left. The myth was used to sell half the country (and much of the world) on the idea that policy changes and the resulting technological breakthroughs would send greenhouse gas emissions plummeting, leading to a painless and affordable transition to net-zero carbon for everyone.

The myth gained traction as climate change was increasingly framed as an existential threat and climate rhetoric became apocalyptic. Climate action became the dominant — and sometimes only — lens through which energy and environmental policy decisions were made. With this sense of urgency and supercharged moralizing, the myth took a strong psychic hold upon most people supportive of clean energy.

But even before Republicans won a political trifecta last fall at the federal level, climate pragmatists were already seeing the myth start to unravel. The impracticality of 100 percent renewable mandates was becoming evident, particularly given the permitting gridlock for renewables. Climate warriors’ senseless opposition to common-sense, lower-carbon sources of baseload power, such as natural gas and nuclear, provided further hints this would not be easy.

Rising energy costs are just another inconvenient truth that the myth has given us, driven by years of underinvestment in grid infrastructure, growing concerns about reliability, and the higher costs of implementing climate-centric energy policies.

Much of this stemmed from a mismatch between climate ambition and real-world constraints. Nowhere is this more obvious than in policy decisions to ban much-needed natural gas pipelines in the northeast, to discourage new refineries in California, and to overpromise on offshore wind projects to meet growing electricity demand.

Today’s breathless blame game by the climate left is a misdirection from the pile of problems left behind by overly aggressive, overly simplified climate policies masquerading as energy policy. It is also the political equivalent of an extinction burst — a final, desperate defense of the myth’s comforting fiction that a clean energy transition could ever be smooth, fast and cheap.

If you care about climate action that makes a lasting difference, you should support pragmatic and durable energy policy — not the fantasy future promised by the easy transition myth. For those of us who genuinely care about energy abundance and all it promises, a more nuanced accounting is required.

We should be delivering straight talk on the energy transition. This includes a number of propositions that the myth’s true believers find threatening. For example, “Yes, the clean energy transition is urgent. But that doesn’t mean it can be easy or free.”

“Yes, permitting reform is essential. But that reform has to include wind, solar, geothermal, transmission, natural gas and hydrogen.”

“Yes, we should push back on bad ideas, but not at the expense of credibility, and not by ignoring how we got here.”

Most importantly, we should avoid comforting distractions from the real and very difficult work ahead: modernizing our energy systems to be cleaner, more reliable and more affordable.

Overstating the harms of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is one of those comforting (and counterproductive) distractions. Playing political games alienates already skeptical voters and needlessly arms decarbonization opponents.

It’s time to acknowledge that the story we’ve been telling — of a swift and painless transition — was never close to the truth. What comes next will take grit, honesty and compromise. Climate advocates who support energy abundance have a choice. We can keep defending the myth. Or start building a future that actually works.

Tisha Schuller runs the energy consultancy Adamantine Energy and is the author of “The Myth and The Moment.“