Thomas Catenacci of the Washington Free Beacon highlights a dubious source in media reports about recent Trump administration energy policy shifts.
Recent reports in NPR, CBS News, and CNBC have cited a study from “nonpartisan” research firm Energy Innovation to argue that President Donald Trump’s repeal of green energy subsidies will cause energy prices to spike. Those reports did not mention the firm’s CEO and cofounder: Sonia Aggarwal, a former Biden climate adviser who helped write those very subsidies into law.
Energy Innovation’s study, which also generated coverage in CNN and the Chicago Tribune, argues that Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill will lead to higher energy prices for U.S. households by phasing out green energy subsidies and slowing electric vehicle purchases. It’s the latest in a long line of studies from the firm, which is known to produce research warning of the downsides to oil and gas while extolling the benefits of green energy alternatives.
Such research is aligned with Aggarwal, who cofounded Energy Innovation in 2012 to “mitigate climate change by promoting the most effective and equitable energy policies” and usher in “a safe climate future.” Aggarwal left the firm in 2021 to serve as the Biden White House’s senior adviser for climate policy and innovation. In that role, Aggarwal was “instrumental” in shaping the Inflation Reduction Act, which put hundreds of billions of dollars behind the subsidies Trump is ending.
Aggarwal’s partisan affiliations—and her work spearheading the subsidies her firm’s research defends—provide much-needed context that was excluded from the recent reports citing her firm’s “nonpartisan” research. Aggarwal, who returned to Energy Innovation upon leaving the White House in 2022, is not mentioned in those reports.
Kenny Stein, vice president of policy at the Institute for Energy Research, said Energy Innovation’s One Big Beautiful Bill study makes a number of faulty assumptions: that more wind and solar power production automatically lowers electricity prices, that any spending on new power generation—green or otherwise—is a positive, and that fewer EV sales will lead to higher fuel costs.
