Ever since the days of Ronald Reagan, conservative "energy" policy has consisted of granting subsidies to fossil fuel companies on the one hand, and efforts to legislatively cripple their market competitors on the other.
You can speculate as to why this would be, but you don't need to: It's because fossil fuel companies are big donors to conservative causes. It's a simple case of policy whoring. The oil companies pay the most to candidates, so laws are written to protect oil companies. The coal companies cut checks to conservative leaders, so conservative administrations tweak the regulations to allow the companies to more easily dodge safety concerns. If "big solar,” as an industry, started funding conservative campaigns or think tanks, then those politicians would be singing the praises of renewable energy. But new energy startups have only a trickle of money to spend on such prostitutes, while the nation's top oil companies have billions at their disposal, and so here we are.
We all know this, at this point. It is not a secret. There is no ideological consideration that would pair would-be "free market conservatism" with 50 years of whoring for extracting American oil at the greatest possible pace and for the least public good, nor with asinine essays about how we should ignore the human health costs of rampant polluters because the real problem here is that wind turbines are killing off our precious birds. It is all garbage, it is all crooked, and we are at least a decade past the point where any argument can be made to the contrary.
So yes, the Republican-controlled House is as we speak reinventing the tax code to provide subsidies to the industry that has left the most money on the nightstand, while actively punishing those that would compete with those companies. Again. This time, it’s under the ever-dodgy rubric of a "tax bill."
While preserving $15 billion in tax subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, the bill would slash incentives for renewable energy and the electric car industry. Environmental groups are frantic. A coalition of 17 groups sent a joint letter to House members on Wednesday assailing the hypocrisy: “Despite rhetoric from GOP leaders that the tax code shouldn’t pick winners and losers, this bill very clearly picks polluting energy sectors as winners yet again, putting at risk the impressive growth of clean energy and robbing us and our children of a cleaner future.”
We've been here every single year, for decades. Oil companies pay Republicans; Republicans write bills to block the expansion of any element of the energy sector that doesn't benefit oil companies.
How is this a "conservative" stance? Nobody can spell it out. How does this help the "marketplace?" Nobody can ever put their finger on it. It's just common knowledge, in conservative circles, that oil companies are good and not-oil-companies are bad and it will continue to be that way so long as conservative thought-leaders keep getting yearly kickbacks for saying so. Every year, in every bill.