Biden Vows to Shut Coal Plants 'All Across America,' Pitches Tax Credits for Your 'Coffee Maker' (November 4, 2022)

Four days before the 2022 midterms, President Joe Biden stood in front of a California audience and made a promise that set off a firestorm in coal country. “We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar,” he said. Moments later he was pitching tax credits for “your refrigerator or your coffee maker.”

The video above shows the tax-credit pitch from Biden’s Nov. 4, 2022, speech on the CHIPS and Science Act at a technology company in the San Diego area. Quotes are from the official transcript published by the American Presidency Project [1].

”Shutting These Plants Down All Across America”

Biden got to coal while bragging about the clean-energy money in his climate and tax law. “Folks, it’s also now cheaper to generate electricity from wind and solar than it is from coal and oil. Literally cheaper. Not a joke,” he said [1].

Then he told a story. “I was in Massachusetts about a month ago on the site of the largest old coal plant in America. Guess what? It cost them too much money,” he said. “They can’t count—no one is building new coal plants because they can’t rely on it, even if they have all the coal guaranteed for the rest of their existence of the plant. So it’s going to become a wind generation” [1].

“And all they’re doing is—it’s going to save them a hell of a lot of money, and they’re using the same transmission line that transmitted the coal-fired electric on,” Biden said. “We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar” [1].

The plant he described was Brayton Point in Somerset, Massachusetts, and he had visited it on July 20, 2022, more than three months earlier. At the time, he told the crowd there that “the coal plant at Brayton Point was the largest of its kind in New England,” not in America [2].

”Your Refrigerator or Your Coffee Maker”

Then came the pitch in the video. “We’re also providing tax credits to help families buy energy-efficient appliances, whether it’s your refrigerator or your coffee maker,” Biden said. “We’re going to put solar panels on your homes, weatherize your home, things that save an average, the experts say, of a minimum of $500 a year for the average family” [1].

The federal credit he signed did not list refrigerators or coffee makers. The Internal Revenue Service’s guide to the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit lists exterior doors and windows, home energy audits, insulation and other “building envelope” upgrades, and heat pumps, water heaters, biomass stoves and boilers, with a cap of $3,200 a year [3].

Manchin: “Offensive and Disgusting”

The coal line landed hardest in West Virginia. Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat with longtime ties to the coal industry, called the remarks “not only outrageous and divorced from reality, they ignore the severe economic pain the American people are feeling because of rising energy costs,” CNN reported [4].

“Being cavalier about the loss of coal jobs for men and women in West Virginia and across the country who literally put their lives on the line to help build and power this country is offensive and disgusting,” Manchin said. “The President owes these incredible workers an immediate and public apology and it is time he learn a lesson that his words matter and have consequences” [4].

The White House: “Twisted”

The White House did not offer the apology Manchin demanded. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden’s words had been “twisted.”

“The President’s remarks yesterday have been twisted to suggest a meaning that was not intended; he regrets it if anyone hearing these remarks took offense,” she said in a statement. “The President was commenting on a fact of economics and technology: as it has been from its earliest days as an energy superpower, America is once again in the midst of an energy transition” [4].

The Rest of the Pitch

The speech, at the Carlsbad global communications company Viasat [5], was meant to sell the CHIPS and Science Act, the 2022 law that subsidized semiconductor manufacturing. “We saw it during the pandemic from factories that make these chips shut down the global economy comes to a halt, driving up the cost for everyone,” Biden said, according to Fox 5 San Diego [5].

Biden also pushed electric cars. “You guys are going to install 50—excuse me, 500,000 charging stations around the country. So it’s going to be—that’s like 500,000 gas stations. Not a joke,” he told electrical workers in the crowd [1].

By the Numbers

4: days between the speech and the Nov. 8 midterm elections [1].
3 months-plus: the time since Biden’s Brayton Point visit, which he called “about a month ago” [1][2].
$3,200: the yearly cap on the home energy credit, which covered doors, windows, insulation and heat pumps, not refrigerators or coffee makers [3].
$500: the yearly savings Biden said the average family would see [1].
500,000: the charging stations Biden promised [1].

What Happened Next

Trump went the other way. On April 8, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry.” It said the country “must increase domestic energy production, including coal,” and called coal “abundant and cost effective” [6].

The credit Biden pitched expired. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed on July 4, 2025, ended the energy-efficient home improvement credit for property placed in service after Dec. 31, 2025, according to the IRS [7].

The coal fight followed Biden. Two days after the speech, at his final rally for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a heckler pressed him on drilling, and Biden answered, “No more drilling. There is no more drilling.”