In three recent segments, Fox personalities questioned the Trump administration’s efforts to block new renewable energy projects as increased demand for electricity to power new data centers drives rate hikes.
Between 2021 and 2024, average monthly residential electricity bills went up by about $22 per month. Now, energy prices are rising twice as fast as the cost of inflation. According to The Guardian, a recent report from the think tank Energy Innovation found that, “Household electricity bills have increased by 10% since Donald Trump re-entered the White House.”
Several factors, including the cost of equipment updates in response to extreme weather events and an increase in demand for electricity, are contributing to the rate hikes. In New Jersey, grid operators have reportedly been slow to connect new energy projects, with many renewable and storage projects waiting in interconnection queues. In the first five months of 2025, renewable energy projects accounted for 91% of new electricity generation. But much more is needed to help lower the cost of electricity.
One such project is Revolution Wind, a wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island that is expected to power “more than 350,000 homes.” Or at least, it was. On August 22, Trump issued a stop-work order on the project.
A few Fox voices begin to pierce through the network’s (and the president’s) anti-renewable agenda
Fox News has scrambled to find a way to blame rate hikes on renewable energy, recently focusing on New Jersey after wholesale electric bills in the state rose by 20% in 2025.
But in an August 26 segment of Varney & Co., Fox correspondent Madison Alworth discussed the stop-work order in Rhode Island for “national security concerns” and concluded that “at the end of this are those folks that are left in the lurch the ratepayers? Because energy bills, they just continue to go up.”
Host Stuart Varney then asked, “And they haven't spelled out what is the national security concern with the project, have they?” Alworth replied that “they have not.” Varney continued, “I thought we wanted all forms of energy to power AI, wind included.”
Fox contributor and wealth management CEO Mark Tepper told Varney, “That would make sense but what we really want is consistent energy sources, and wind is known to be intermittent. It’s inconsistent.”
(Though he appeared to question the administration’s directive in the moment, Varney has hosted Interior Department Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright to push anti-renewable energy talking points unchallenged in defense of cancelling the wind project.)
During an August 23 interview on Fox News Live, correspondent Rich Edson asked Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin why it was necessary to halt a nearly-finished offshore wind farm.
“What’s the problem with this wind farm in Rhode Island?” Edson asked. Zeldin replied that Trump is “not a fan of wind,” pointed to largely overblown claims of negative environmental impacts, and added that, “Our country needs more baseload power. … It’s just not an honest approach to this entire energy conversation if we start acting as if wind is going to be a substitute for all of those things.”
In an unusual move for Fox, Edson continued to challenge Zeldin. “This project is apparently largely almost finished,” he continued. “You’ve got AI, you’ve got the electrification of everything around us. I mean, we just need power. Why would you take any power offline?”
Later in the segment, after Zeldin plugged a proposed natural gas pipeline, Edson continued to press the question of renewables, asking, “Is there room for both, though?”
Edson and Varney haven't been the only Fox employees to push back recently.
In an August 22 Fox Business segment, anchor Cheryl Casone interviewed Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), a leading anti-renewable voice in New Jersey. Casone asked “The critics will say yeah, sure, but the money was already put through, these projects have already begun, so you’re going to get a lot of job losses. I'm curious if you worry about that?”
She also referenced that this is a nationwide issue, pointing out higher rates in Connecticut and Maine, saying, “The EIA reports that there’s going to be a 13% rise in electricity costs from 2022-2025 just in general. So this is a major problem. And now with AI data centers, we need all the energy.”
Van Drew replied that “this was all about virtue signalling and nothing about reality.” He said he worked with Trump to make offshore wind “a dead industry because it does nothing good for New Jersey.”
Casone later mentioned how Trump’s signature legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill, eliminated the 30% solar tax credit for home owners, adding, “I know there’s a lot of solar use in New Jersey.”
Trump’s energy policies contradict his promises
Trump is actively shrinking potential energy supply and killing hundreds of “good union jobs” by halting the construction of the Revolution Wind Project, which began in 2023.
According to Ørsted, the company behind the project, Revolution Wind is 80% finished. It has reportedly created 1,200 jobs in the region, including 300 union jobs.
Trump promised to “cut energy and electricity prices in half within 12 months” during his 2024 campaign. Instead, the administration is actively pumping the brakes on new energy projects, and costs are up and expected to continue rising. In fact, the Rhodium Group predicts that “new clean capacity additions to the grid will shrink by 57-62% from 2025 through 2035,” tightening energy supply as demand grows. And since Trump took office, 64,000 renewable energy jobs have been cut or paused. BloombergNEF also recently found that billions of dollars in investments are leaving the U.S. in response to Trump’s anti-renewable energy policies.
Experts also say that Trump’s tariffs will make the grid less reliable by making batteries more expensive. According to Wood Mackenzie, Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports could mean that “the cost of a utility scale solar facility in the US will be 54% more expensive than in Europe and 85% more expensive than a new solar plant built in China.”
