President-elect Trump is expected to move vigorously on his priorities next year. Tax policy is on the agenda, as Trump and Congress will push for extension of the 2017 tax cuts. They also aim to cut the vast tax subsidies for green energy passed in President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

One reason to cut the IRA green subsidies is that the cost has ballooned from an estimated $390 billion over ten years to more than $1 trillion. Another reason is the surprising and ironic environmental harm caused by wind power, solar power, batteries, and electric vehicles. These subsidized technologies may reduce CO2 emissions, but there is collateral damage.

It turns out green technologies are not so green.

Solar photovoltaic (PV) panels must cover far more land to produce power than fossil-fuel plants. This year, the Biden administration proposed covering 700,000 acres of public lands in eleven Western states with solar panels — that means 538,000 football fields of land bulldozed and covered with metal and glass structures. Animal habitats and migration routes would be at risk, and the aesthetic value of open public lands would be undermined.

Another issue is PV trash. The nation has already installed hundreds of millions of solar panels, which have lifespans of 25 to 30 years. By the late 2020s, we will start seeing vast amounts of trashed solar panels, as 90 percent of them are currently landfilled, not recycled.

Solar-panel production requires mining for silicon, aluminum, copper, silver, and zinc. More than one-third of the world’s supply of a key part of solar panels — polysilicon — comes from an area in China known for human-rights abuses. Polysilicon is made from silicon in an energy-intensive process that creates hazardous wastes. More generally, products manufactured in China rely on an electricity supply more than half powered by coal.

Wind power creates some of the same problems. Wind farms require vast quantities of land compared with fossil fuel plants, and they need extensive new transmission lines to get rural wind power into the cities. Achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 may require tripling the amount of high-voltage transmission lines in the nation.

Wind power also has a trash problem, because the turbines only last 20 years. Turbine blades are made of fiberglass, are nondegradable, and are not easy to recycle. Used blades are starting to pile up, such as in two junkyards covering more than 30 acres in Sweetwater, Texas. There are also windmill-blade dumps in Iowa and Grand Meadow, Minn.

Studies suggest that wind turbines kill roughly 1 million birds annually in the United States and more than 1 million bats. The Biden administration proposes that U.S. wind-power capacity increase two and half times by 2050, which would raise the bird and bat kills to millions a year.

Offshore wind power has its own problems. It may harm marine life by disturbing habitats, introducing electromagnetic fields, and creating noise from the installation and operation of the turbines. Offshore turbines garner opposition for aesthetic reasons, and they may impact tourism in coastal communities. In July 2024, a 351-foot blade splintered into pieces and washed up in Nantucket, which had to close its beaches.

Another green trash problem is created by the lithium batteries that power electric vehicles (EVs). The lifespan of EV batteries is ten to 20 years. Dismantling and recycling the batteries is difficult, and so most EV batteries are trashed. Dumping lithium batteries into landfills creates risks of contaminating soil and groundwater, and the batteries cause horrendous fires that can emit toxic fumes. There are stories across the nation about battery fires in landfills.

Electric vehicles produce no tailpipe emissions, but almost 60 percent of the electricity they consume in this country is produced by natural gas and coal-fired plants. Further environmental harm is created because EVs are far heavier than gas-powered vehicles, which causes them to emit greater particulate matter from tire wear. And like all alternative energy technologies, EVs consume energy to manufacture.

EV batteries are spurring a surge in lithium mining, a process that requires huge quantities of water. But water is in short supply in the dry lithium-mining areas of Nevada and South America. In Nevada, rivers are already tapped out and aquifers are being depleted.

The Biden administration provided a $2.2 billion loan for a vast new lithium mine on federal lands at Thacker Pass, Nev. The mine will consume billions of gallons of groundwater and create a risk of water contamination with heavy metals. The mine may impact habitats for sagebrush, eagles, antelopes, and other species.

The New York Times noted: “The fight over the Nevada mine is emblematic of a fundamental tension surfacing around the world: Electric cars and renewable energy may not be as green as they appear. Production of raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel that are essential to these technologies are often ruinous to land, water, wildlife and people.”

Perhaps “ruinous” overstates the problems. But the incoming Trump administration and Congress should seek answers, because these technologies are getting $100 billion a year in subsidies. As the footprint of ostensibly green energy expands, the negative environmental side effects loom larger.