With home heating season approaching, energy costs will become a higher priority with Americans this winter.

Given the facts that 78 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and nearly 51 million households are not earning enough to afford a basic monthly budget, the handling of America’s energy policy is certainly a front-burner issue for the mid-term elections.

Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky is a constitutional conservative who can speak to the green energy issue with authority. An engineering school graduate from MIT, he powers his cattle farm and lives off the grid on solar panels and a Tesla battery.

But his opinions on the direction of our energy future conflict with President Joe Biden and his top officials, including Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

During a recent congressional hearing, Massie told Buttigieg it takes about the same amount of electricity to power an electric vehicle as it takes to run 25 refrigerators. If you have two electric vehicles (EVs), that would be 50 refrigerators, on top of your regular electricity needs.

In a follow-up to the hearing, Massie tweeted: “3 days after I explain to Buttigieg that if everyone drove electric cars, Americans would use 4 times as much electricity charging cars as they do for air conditioning, CNN runs a piece saying Americans don’t need air conditioning.”

The Empowerment Alliance, a nonprofit launched three years ago with the goal of fighting liberal policies, specifically the Green New Deal, and promoting natural gas, states that the singular focus on green energy for America is wrong.

“The absolute last thing we need are government-forced policies that move us away from our newfound energy independence, increase our reliance on foreign powers like Russia, and raise energy costs on American families and businesses,” the Alliance stated in a news release after Granholm’s nomination to be Biden’s top energy czar. “If confirmed we hold Ms. Granholm accountable for any attempt to keep fossil fuels in the ground and turn America into a larger version of California.”

Last week, Granholm became a cheerleader for California’s green energy policies, in lock-step with liberal voices like Gov. Gavin Newsome and Rep. Eric Swalwell. Ironically, their embrace of green energy policies and electric vehicles comes at a time when Californians are being warned that rolling power blackouts are imminent and that they must conserve power.

Conservative voices like Tucker Carlson of FOX recently stated that electric vehicles are a disaster for the energy grid, a disaster for the environment and a disaster for your personal autonomy. He said if this happens, it will represent the single biggest change in the way you and your family live in generations.

Amid the dire projections about the state’s overburdened and collapsing energy grid, Carlson said that Newsome came up with his incredible plan to ban gasoline-powered engines and force everyone to drive an electric vehicle, a vehicle that has to be plugged into outlets that in the state of California no longer work.

As for claiming that the green movement is good for the environment, Carlson cited Roger McGrath, a former U.S. Marine, author and history professor who wrote that supplying the materials necessary for the battery of an electric car alone, just the battery, requires processing using fossil fuels, of course, of at least 50 tons of ores. A single battery for an electric car, he explains, needs at least, ‘30 pounds of lithium, 60 pounds of cobalt, 130 pounds of nickel, 90 pounds of copper, 190 pounds of graphite and roughly 500 pounds of steel, aluminum, magnesium, plastic and other materials, all of which are derived from mining that occurs in third-world countries with no environmental regulations whatsoever.

On a lighter note, the green energy fraternity is providing fuel to one segment of the media - the cartoonists.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.