While Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency garner most of the media attention, they aren’t the only ones rooting out federal waste and bloat. Currently, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is fighting to claw back $20 billion the Biden administration allocated to the “Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.”

This fund essentially operates a “green bank” that lends money to environmental projects unable to attract private funding.

This may sound like a fine program, but as Mr. Zeldin knows, reliable diets of taxpayer subsidies cause companies to develop a dependence, eventually killing their ability to fend for themselves.

Even the best-intentioned programs can render an industry unable to survive without government support. And the $9 trillion in global subsidies for wind and solar over the past 20 years are a prime example of this.

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When former President Biden signed into law the Infrastructure and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, he allocated hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to renewable energy. Without such subsidies, wind and solar wouldn’t be commercially viable at anywhere near their current scale.

Normally, competition and price signals establish a balance between energy supply and demand. But subsidies distort price signals, disrupting that natural balance. Ultimately, they drive unsubsidized companies out of business, making the industry less cost-conscious and more focused on chasing subsidies.

Worse, overreliance on so-called renewable energy also makes the grid less reliable. The higher the share of intermittent energy sources on the grid, the harder it becomes to match supply with demand.

Take solar power, for example. It abounds during the day, but is lacking in the evening—the exact time when people typically want to cook, run dishwashers, power up their computers, and take showers.

Relying on a high share of energy from solar power results in an oversupply of power during daylight hours. But when the sun sets, expensive natural gas peaker plants must be quickly powered up to compensate for the shortfall.

The subsidization of solar and other intermittent energy crowds out reliable baseload sources (those that can operate all day, such as combined-cycle natural gas, coal, and nuclear power). The loss of baseload sources causes price fluctuations, strains the grid, and drives up energy costs during periods of high demand.

As long as subsidies exist, remedying the situation requires laws like one recently adopted in Texas, which requires new renewable energy projects (beginning in 2027) to have their backup capacity to make up for the hours of the day when they otherwise would not operate. This forces companies to pay the true costs of renewables.

Besides Mr. Zeldin’s scrutiny of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, President Trump’s administration has signaled its intent to scale back other green-energy subsidies. Specifically, Mr. Trump seeks to roll back the green tax credits in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act—credits Goldman Sachs estimates will cost Americans more than $1 trillion over a decade.

Those subsidies include the production tax credit, which pays a flat rate for each kilowatt hour of green energy produced—regardless of whether that energy was produced in a time or place with peak demand or with weak demand.

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The credit’s design rewards energy production even when it’s needed the least. That’s how you end up with so many windmills and intermittent power sources where they’re not needed.

The Trump administration is right to push back. The longer subsidies remain in place, the harder it will become for Congress to eliminate them.

Americans were originally sold on temporary credits designed to strengthen wind and solar companies. Unless action is taken, though, taxpayers could wind up permanently paying these growing subsidies that are fundamentally antithetical to an innovative and resilient energy industry.

As the Trump administration scours the federal government for waste and abuse, it should continue to target the costly and wasteful subsidies that jeopardize America’s electrical grid and raise electricity prices. By paring back green energy subsidies, the administration could facilitate critical deficit reduction, opening the door for pro-growth tax cuts.

Mr. Zeldin’s work to cut the green bank is a good first step.

Innovation and competition—not lobbying and government connections—are the means to a rich and energy-abundant future. Only by ending subsidies and cutting burdensome regulations can we ensure a grid that produces reliable, resilient, and affordable electricity.