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For Immediate Release
April, 06 2021, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Brynn Furey, Energy Conservation and Efficiency Associate, 954-829-0607, bfurey@environmentamerica.org
Johanna Neumann, Senior Director, Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy, 413-367-4794, johanna@environmentamerica.org
Josh Chetwynd, Communications Manager, 303-573-5558, jchetwynd@publicinterestnetwork.org
New Report: Electrifying America's Buildings by 2050 Could Be Like Taking 65 Million Cars off the Road
Building electrification is a key step to cutting carbon emissions and reaching 100 percent renewable energy.
WASHINGTON
Replacing fossil fuel technology with electric options in the majority of American homes and businesses over the next 30 years could reduce so much net carbon emissions that it would be the equivalent of taking 65 million cars -- almost one-fourth of the total number of cars in the U.S. in 2019 -- off the road. These important savings are just one of the major findings in a new report released Tuesday by Environment America Research & Policy Center, U.S. PIRG Education Fund and Frontier Group. Entitled Electric Buildings: Repowering Homes and Businesses for Our Health and Environment, the study documents the benefits of electrifying the majority of buildings in America for consumers and the environment.
In addition, the report ranks states by their capacity to decrease greenhouse gas emissions through building electrification. New York, California, Texas, Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania were the states with the greatest ability to lower carbon emissions over the next 30 years by cutting fossil fuel usage out of homes and offices.
"Change is upon us -- we just need to embrace it. We have the tools and technology right now to make every home and most businesses in America run -- and run better -- on clean renewable energy," said Susan Rakov, chair of Environment America Research & Policy Center's Clean Energy program. "When my gas stove failed this year, I bought an induction stove. It sure is different -- and I love it. It boils water faster than my old gas stove, it doesn't release dangerous air pollutants into my home when we're cooking, and I no longer have to worry about escaping methane from the stove contributing to global warming."
Such electric technologies as heat pumps, water heaters and other electric appliances like induction stoves can help America end its dependence on dirty, dangerous fossil fuels, the report explains. Advances in these technologies make choosing a fully electric system for homes and commercial buildings an efficient and affordable decision for owners in almost all new construction situations. In some cities, installing a heat pump over fossil fuel heating methods in a new home could save between $1,600 and $6,800 for space and water heating over a 15-year period. In other locations, savings could reach as high as $13,700 during the same timespan.
Electrifying America's buildings is critical to lower carbon emissions and put us on the path towards 100 percent renewable energy. In 2018, fossil fuel combustion in U.S. homes and businesses accounted for almost 9 percent of total U.S. emissions.
"Last century, many families saw their quality of life improve when they switched from a coal-burning stove to an electric or gas range, or an icebox to an electric refrigerator," said Johanna Neumann, senior director of Environment America Research & Policy Center's Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy. "Today, a new technological revolution is underway to replace fossil fuel heating and cooking with electric technologies. The sooner America makes the switch, the sooner we'll realize the benefits of cleaner and more efficient energy."
With Environment America, you protect the places that all of us love and promote core environmental values, such as clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and clean energy to power our lives. We're a national network of 29 state environmental groups with members and supporters in every state. Together, we focus on timely, targeted action that wins tangible improvements in the quality of our environment and our lives.
(303) 801-0581LATEST NEWS
Congressional Report Warns TrumpRx May Lead 'Families to Pay More to Big Pharma'
"The president should work with Democrats and Republicans to actually lower prescription drug costs for families," said Sen. Maggie Hassan, "rather than helping Big Pharma line its pockets."
Feb 13, 2026
Democratic members of the congressional Joint Economic Committee on Friday released a report warning that US families could end up spending thousands of dollars more on prescription drugs because of a website recently unveiled by President Donald Trump.
Launched last week with pharmaceutical companies, TrumpRx.gov is marketed as an aggregator to help patients save on prescription drugs by using manufacturer coupons or buying directly from manufacturers.
However, as the new report highlights, "many of the brand-name drugs listed on TrumpRx have significantly cheaper generic alternatives, which are excluded from TrumpRx. This means that TrumpRx steers families to pay more to Big Pharma when they could be getting the same medication at a much lower price."
"No matter what the president says, the bottom line is that TrumpRx directs families to buy expensive brand-name drugs when generic versions are available elsewhere at a fraction of the cost."
The report provides a chart comparing TrumpRx and generic prices, both for one prescription fill and the full annual cost. It also notes the difference. In some cases, the president's option is $10-50 more a year. However, there are also examples in which families could save hundreds or thousands of dollars with generic drugs.
For example, Colestid, a medication that lowers cholesterol, would cost $2,771.21 a year through TrumpRx, compared with $856.70 for the generic option, a difference of $1,914.51. The antidepressant Pristiq is $2,401.20 on the president's website, versus just $320.88 for the generic, a potential yearly savings of $2,080.32.
The biggest difference featured in the document is for Tikosyn, which helps patients maintain a normal heart rhythm. The TrumpRx annual cost is $4,032, whereas the generic is only $192.68, a difference of $3,839.32.
The report also stresses how extra costs from the president's site could stack up for households in which multiple people need medication:
- For example, if in one family a parent gets treatment for high cholesterol and their child gets treated for seizures, over the course of 2026 this family would pay $2,142 more if they use TrumpRx versus generic drug alternatives.
- For another family where one adult gets treatment for depression while the other receives treatment for menopause symptoms, over the course of 2026 this family would pay $2,493 more if they use TrumpRx versus generic drug alternatives.
"No matter what the president says, the bottom line is that TrumpRx directs families to buy expensive brand-name drugs when generic versions are available elsewhere at a fraction of the cost," said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), ranking member of the Joint Economic Committee and the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care.
"The president should work with Democrats and Republicans to actually lower prescription drug costs for families," Hassan argued, "rather than helping Big Pharma line its pockets."
While the Trump White House responded defensively to the Democratic report, with spokesperson Kush Desai claiming to MS NOW that "product listings on TrumpRx.gov are in no way an endorsement for use of any prescription drug over another" and accusing Democrats of "resorting to idiotic or simply ignorant lines of attack instead of simply giving the president credit where it's due," the panel members aren't alone is highlighting such cost differences.
The added cost for US families also isn't lawmakers' only concern about TrumpRx. Last month, shortly before the site's launch, Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin (Ill.) Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), and Peter Welch (Vt.) sent a letter to the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General raising concerns about the new direct-to-consumer (DTC) platform.
"There appear to be possible conflicts of interest involved in the potential relationship between TrumpRx and an online dispensing company, BlinkRx, on whose board the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., has sat since February 2025," they wrote. "Moreover, legitimate concerns about inappropriate prescribing, conflicts of interest, and inadequate care have been raised about the exact types of DTC platforms to which TrumpRx would route patients."
The trio also expressed alarm about high prices, noting that "pharmaceutical manufacturers who will reportedly be participating in TrumpRx have spent billions of dollars in combined advertising expenses for drugs sold on existing DTC platforms."
"The pharmaceutical industry's outrageous DTC advertisements fuel demand for specific medications, which balloon healthcare expenses," the senators wrote. "We are concerned that DTC advertising, including in relation to TrumpRx, will steer customers to prescriptions that may be reimbursed by federal health programs, creating the potential for unnecessary or wasteful spending."
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Trump Has Spent $40 Million in Secretive Deals Deporting Hundreds of People to Third Countries
“Through its third country deportation deals, the Trump administration is putting millions of taxpayer dollars into the hands of foreign governments, while turning a blind eye to the human costs," reads a new Senate report.
Feb 13, 2026
Using secretive agreements, often with countries that have histories of human rights abuses, the Trump administration has "expanded and institutionalized" a system in which the government deports migrants to nations where they have never lived, according to a report released Friday by Democrats on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The report, titled At What Cost? Inside the Trump Administration’s Secret Deportation Deals, was commissioned by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and is the first comprehensive review of the administration's coercive and secretive agreements with countries including El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, and Eswatini.
Third-country deportations were "previously a rare tool used only in exceptional circumstances," said the authors, but "the Trump administration has broadened this practice into a sprawling system of global removals," sending direct financial payments of $32 million in taxpayer money to foreign governments.
Five countries, which also include Palau and Rwanda, entered into those deals and have taken 300 people. In all, the administration has spent more than $40 million on the deportations, according to the report.
“This report outlines the troubling practice by the Trump administration of deporting individuals to third countries—places where these people have no connection—at great expense to the American taxpayer and raises serious questions,” said Shaheen, the ranking member of the committee. “Through its third country deportation deals, the Trump administration is putting millions of taxpayer dollars into the hands of foreign governments... For an administration that claims to be reigning in fraud, waste, and abuse, this policy is the epitome of all three.”
The senators conducted a 10-month review of the administration's agreements and third country deportations through January 2026, with staff traveling to the countries and meeting with people who have been deported, attorneys, US and foreign officials, and human rights organizations.
The agreements, said the senators, amount to an "expensive and dangerous form of shadow diplomacy that prioritizes the appearance of toughness over the security of Americans" and includes little oversight over whether public funds are being used to finance human trafficking or rights abuses.
While the agreements include "blanket language" on upholding international human rights laws, the report states, the senators' extensive review uncovered no evidence that the administration is conducting systemic monitoring or follow-up enforcement, "raising serious concerns that the assurances made by foreign governments exist only on paper and that the United States is turning a blind eye to what happens to migrants in third countries."
Cart Weiland, a deputy assistant secretary at the US State Department, was questioned by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about his work helping to establish the third country agreements and "could not articulate whether any oversight on their treatment had been conducted. Instead, he reiterated that 'the agreement has a provision that explicitly mandates adherence to international human rights treaties and conventions.'"
Committee staff members also heard from US officials in one country that they had been instructed "not to follow up on the treatment of deportees."
A Trump administration attorney even acknowledged in a federal court case regarding deportations to Ghana, another country that has entered into agreements with the administration, that it appeared "Ghana was violating assurances it had provided the United States, including that it would comply with the Convention Against Torture, after sending a migrant onward to a country where they would likely be tortured."
The senators also found that the administration is likely using third countries to circumvent US immigration law—carrying out removals "that US law would otherwise prohibit, such as sending protected individuals onward to countries where they may face persecution or death."
The majority of migrants flown to third countries have had court-ordered protections prohibiting the US from sending them back to their home countries, where they could face persecution or torture.
"One migrant with protective orders stated: 'While at the fuel stop in the US Virgin Islands, the apparent head [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] official on the plane... told me that those on the plane were being sent to Ghana and that Ghana would send us to our home countries," according to the report.
The document said that "the Trump administration’s defense is that the United States 'does not have the power to tell Ghana what to do,'" a claim it also made after garnering condemnation for its use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport about 250 Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, where they were imprisoned in the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
The report also details how the administration has threatened some countries with increased tariffs, travel bans, or cuts to US foreign aid if they don't enter into the deals.
"The Trump administration is expending political capital in its bilateral relationships that could instead be used to advance more pressing USb national security interests, while not being transparent about the full extent of its deal-making, including what is being offered to foreign governments," reads the report.
The senators emphasized that they released their report "as the administration is aggressively seeking to strip hundreds of thousands of migrants of legal status in the United States through the ending of temporary protected status and humanitarian parole, among other avenues, increasing the risk of expanded third country deportations."
The Democrats on the committee said they would continue to conduct oversight of the agreements and demand transparency.
"The Trump administration should cease its use of these third country deportation deals," they said, "which are putting millions of taxpayer dollars into the hands of foreign governments without oversight while turning a blind eye to the potential human cost."
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Trump Sends Second Massive Aircraft Carrier to Middle East, Ramping Up Iran Threats
Analyst Mouin Rabbani said the deployment comes as “Netanyahu is seeking to... inject poison pills into the negotiations in order to ensure that they fail and thereby set the stage for a new armed conflict with Iran.”
Feb 13, 2026
President Donald Trump further escalated his threats to attack Iran on Thursday by deploying another massive aircraft carrier to the Middle East.
According to Axios, Trump decided to send the USS Gerald Ford to the region shortly after his Wednesday talk with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the seventh such meeting in just over a year since he returned to the presidency.
The Ford, America’s largest aircraft carrier, will take approximately 3-4 weeks to reach the Persian Gulf from Venezuela, where it was used as part of Trump’s operation to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro in January. It will join the USS Abraham Lincoln, which was sent to the region earlier this month.
Trump has said he wants to finalize a new nuclear deal with Iran by next month after ripping up the old one during his first term, and has threatened war if one is not reached.
Iranian President Masud Pezeshkian has said Iran is open to making a deal to limit its capabilities to develop nuclear weapons in the future and to allow weapons inspectors to ensure compliance with the deal.
“We are not seeking nuclear weapons, and we are ready for any kind of verification,” Pezeshkian said on Wednesday.
However, its leaders have said they are not willing to negotiate on their broader ballistic missile program, which they view as the only deterrent against attacks by Israel and the US.
Netanyahu, who met with Trump for nearly two and a half hours on Wednesday, has pushed the president to pursue maximalist demands that Iran is unlikely to accept.
"I said that any agreement must include... not just the nuclear issue, but also the ballistic missiles and the Iranian proxies in the region," Netanyahu said.
Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani said in an interview Thursday with Democracy Now that "what Netanyahu is seeking to do with this visit is to inject poison pills into the negotiations in order to ensure that they fail and thereby set the stage for a new armed conflict with Iran."
So far, this appears not to have worked, as Trump has said he is willing to negotiate on the narrower issue of nuclear weapons.
But, according to Rabbani, "it's really impossible to take any statement he says either seriously or literally because his subsequent actions could either be a very accurate reflection of what he said or the precise opposite."
"Trump seems to think that a deal limited to the nuclear issue may be preferable to going to war to tackle everything else," said Christian Emery, an associate professor of international politics at the University College London. "Yet opponents of US military action, which include all of Washington’s Middle Eastern allies except Israel, should still be worried."
"It is far from clear whether Iran will offer the kind of nuclear deal Trump would find acceptable, and Trump himself does not seem to know what else to do other than double down on military threats," Emery said. "That alone may scupper the talks."
"The danger here... is that Washington, encouraged by Israel, is looking at Iran as a substantially weakened power," Rabbani said. "It has taken note of the widespread unrest in Iran last month. And coming straight off the successful abduction of the Venezuelan president, they may believe that it's just going to be one and done and that there can be a limited clean conflict with Iran."
“But of course, Iran is a very different kettle of fish than Venezuela,” he continued. “Iran has already indicated that should there be a new armed conflict, it will observe neither strategic patience nor restraint or proportionality as it has in previous realms.”
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