Trump Will Lose the War On Renewables
On July 4th of this year President Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), which significantly cut subsidies to wind and solar energy.
The OBBB only partially repealed President Biden’s climate policies. Tax credits for solar and wind were sunsetted, not immediately nixed. Credits for battery storage systems largely survived. And geothermal and nuclear weren’t touched at all.
But in the month since the bill’s passage, the Trump administration has broadened its opposition to wind and solar energy into what looks like a full scale war on the two technologies.
On July 29th the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its intention to reverse the so called “endangerment finding”, a key 2009 determination that allows it to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants.1 Such a policy could indirectly harm renewables as it may delay retirements of dirty fossil fuel power plants.
On July 31st it got worse as the administration effectively banned the development of new offshore wind farms.2 And the next day the Interior Department issued a deeply strange order requiring new wind and solar projects on federal lands to be more “energy dense” than fossil fuel or nuclear projects, an unnecessary requirement which by definition wind and solar do not meet.3
Remarkably, the administration has also threatened to start denying routine height clearances needed for wind turbine construction issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), abusing a process meant to ensure aviation safety in order to kill wind projects for no good reason at all.4
None of these new policies are in any way related to rolling back renewable subsidies or “protecting the American taxpayer”. Quite the opposite - new wind and solar development on federal lands and waters would generate revenue for the federal government via leases.
Meanwhile as its irrational hatred of renewables grows, the Trump administration’s attraction to fossil fuels has veered into something of a fetish. The Department of Energy (DOE) - a nominally serious agency responsible for America’s nuclear arsenal - recently transformed its official Twitter feed into a sort of OnlyFans for coal, posting sensuously lit photos of individual lumps, complete with come-hither captions and coquettish emojis.
Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Petroleum Mori
What’s most striking about Trump’s war on renewables is the extent to which it is a war no one asked for. The public is still extremely supportive of renewables. A poll in June found 77% of Americans in favor of more solar power, 68% in favor or more wind, and 60% in favor of prioritizing these technologies over fossil fuels.5 Another recent poll found Americans support subsidizing the installation of solar panels 56%-29%.6
And the fossil fuel industry - still wildly profitable from sales of oil and fossil gas - has largely accepted the competition from wind and solar. Reaction from industry to the EPA’s endangerment finding repeal has been lukewarm at best with the automotive and utility groups that originally opposed it in 2009 now opposed to its reversal.7
Some of the administration’s antipathy can be explained by Trump’s personal dislike for renewable technologies, particularly wind. But mostly it is an outcome of Trumpism’s identity as a negationist political philosophy. Lacking any true principles of his own, Trump’s ideology is defined by diametric opposition to the Democratic Party and educated elites. And Democrats love renewables.
And so the administration appears to be taking its cues from a small band of hyper-online weirdos like Michael Shellenberger and Alex Epstein (no relation) - who have carved out mini grifter empires for themselves by perfecting the art of attacking renewable energy. Epstein - a philosophy major with no academic background in energy - was reportedly directly involved in negotiating the OBBB’s energy provisions.8
These anti-renewable grifters live in an alternate universe in which wind and solar are unprofitable, unreliable and exist solely due to ruinous government subsidies which - if left unchecked - will bankrupt the nation and hurdle civilization into a new dark ages. Whether these types truly believe this apocalyptic narrative, or adopt such positions to benefit their own personal finances is unknown. But either way it is a worldview radically divorced from reality.
Liberté, Égalité, Électricité
Wind and solar are not expensive liberal lab projects gone wild. Renewable energy is a technological revolution similar to the printing press, the microprocessor or the wheel. The underlying economics make their universal adoption inevitable. And Trump will have about as much success banning renewables as Sumerian kings would have done banning chariots, medieval Popes banning telescopes or 19th Century British Prime Ministers banning light bulbs.
In the long run, fossil fuels simply cannot compete against technologies like solar and wind which have zero fuel costs, get exponentially cheaper over time, and produce no significant negative externalities. Together wind and solar already generate 36% of electricity in the UK, 30% in Australia, 29% of Europe, 18% of China and 17% in the United States.
By 2050 it is doubtful that the United States or any other large developed economy will generate more than 20% of its energy from fossil fuels. The die has already been cast. Trump will lose his war on renewables. Wind and solar will continue to grow for the remainder or his term. And the next Democratic administration will reverse all of his policies, accelerating the revolution further.
But Trump may lose significant battles even sooner than 2029. There are six Republican senators from states that get more than 50% of their electricity generation from wind alone (Kansas, Iowa, and South Dakota). And another eight from states that get more than 30% of their electricity from wind and solar combined (Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Texas). These places simply cannot keep electricity prices stable without adding new renewable capacity.
And the same is broadly true for the rest of the country. Wind, solar and batteries made up 95% of all capacity addition nationwide in 2024.9 If their development is significantly restrained at the federal level, electricity prices will rise. A modern economy like the United States cannot function without significant growth in solar and wind energy.
Iowa senator Chuck Grassley (R) and his colleague John Curtis (R) from Utah have already placed holds on some of Trump’s nominees at the Treasury Department, seeking to use the leverage to force more favorable regulations for wind and solar.10 It could be the beginning of a significant rebellion within his own party on the issue.
Trump’s glorious 1000-year Fossil Fuel Reich may not last 12 months.