GOP Rep Tiffany renews effort to end federal wind, solar subsidies, amid Trump fossil fuel push

Wisconsin GOP Rep. Tom Tiffany says he's re-introducing legislation to remove wind and solar subsidies, in the slipstream of fellow Republican President Trump's effort to move the country back to producing and using more domestic fossil fuel. 

He made the announcement Wednesday on the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show, telling hosts John Solomon and Amanda Head the issue is part is that wind and solar facilities provide only intermittent power.

"We are seeing 1,000s of acres of productive farmland here in America that are being converted to these wind and solar facilities that just provide intermittent power," Tiffany said. 

"For example, here in the upper Great Lakes, they're on at most 25% of the time. So we're trading base load power that's on all the time for these intermittent sources of power. It does not work. It's raising people's electricity rates."

The Wisconsin congressman also said that his legislation, the Future Agriculture Retention and Management Act, will address the problems created by government subsidized green energy, including rising electric costs.

"The worst part is that they're also taking away our productive farmland," he continued. "And energy production is really important, but there's one other thing that is more important than that, and that is growing food. 

"And we are headed in the wrong direction converting this farmland. So what my bill does is you can go ahead and build this facility, but you're not going to get the subsidies, the subsidies amount of $50,000 an acre that you the taxpayer is paying to these developers, and they should not be getting that if they are converting farmland."

Tiffany reintroduced the measure in February, two years after originally introducing it in February 2023.  The act is cosponsored by GOP Reps. Ben Cline, of Virginia; Warren Davidson, of Ohio, and Roger Williams, of Texas.

Read the FARM Act here.