Earlier this week, Lisa Friedman, Brad Plumer and I reported on the head-spinning moves by the Trump administration that are undermining the government’s ability to combat climate change.
Trump’s policies, which are promoting fossil fuels and reducing support for clean energy investments, are expected to increase emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases.
The changes comes as the energy transition — the broad shift away from fossil fuels and toward clean power — had been racing ahead. Spending on clean energy in the United States topped $280 billion in 2023, up from about $200 billion in 2020, according to the International Energy Agency.
Many of these investments were encouraged by laws passed during the Biden administration. But much of the activity is simply a function of market dynamics as the price of clean energy comes down and demand for solar, wind and batteries grows.
Put differently: not even the White House can fully control the pace of the energy transition.
Over the past month or so, I’ve asked a wide range of policymakers, executives and climate activists what they think will happen to renewable energy projects, electric vehicles and other initiatives now that Trump is in power.
None disputed that the administration’s actions were having an effect. But most asserted that while some of Trump’s moves may slow the pace of change, they are unlikely to stop it completely.
Canceled projects
Manish Bapna, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that it was already possible to see the impact of Trump’s policies in the form of canceled or delayed projects.
“Their policies are undercutting a thriving, clean energy industry that’s creating jobs, cutting costs for consumers and making the country more energy secure,” Bapna said. “Trump’s actions have put those gains at risk, and cast a pall of uncertainty over our clean energy future. Jobs and investments have been thrown into limbo as new factories are put on hold or canceled outright.”
In recent years, the construction of new clean energy projects has vastly outpaced new fossil fuel projects. But Abigail Dillen, the president of Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, said that Trump’s fast-tracking of approvals for new natural gas plants and moves to slow construction of new wind farms risked blunting that momentum.
“That entire trajectory is in jeopardy,” she said.
Danielle Franz, the chief executive of the American Conservation Coalition, a conservative environmental group, said she supported Trump’s efforts to expand fossil fuel production at a moment of growing energy demand.
“The Trump administration is right to cut red tape that is holding back energy production,” she said, adding that she was “cautiously optimistic” that Trump’s policies would be good for both the economy and the environment.
‘The economics have never been better’
Jon Creyts, the chief executive of RMI, a nonprofit organization that promotes sustainability, said that falling costs, as much as climate concerns, were driving the energy transition.
Costs for building new solar and wind installations have fallen significantly in recent years. And once clean energy systems are in place, they are generally very cheap to maintain.
“The economics have never been better,” he said. “We have better solutions now than we’ve ever had before.”
John Podesta, a senior climate adviser in the Biden administration, said that while Trump’s moves may put up some roadblocks, much of the momentum is being driven by private industry, rather than federal policy.
“Will they kill the direction from fossil to clean? They can’t really do that,” Podesta said. “They can make a mess of things, and they’re doing that. They can slow things down, but they can’t kill it.”
Electricity demand
One big reason renewables like wind and solar are expected to keep growing: the United States needs them.
After years of relatively stable power demand, the nation’s appetite for electricity is growing fast, driven in part by the proliferation of data centers, and the electrification of the transportation sector and buildings.
“Nothing is being built fast enough to satisfy those needs,” said Scott Jacobs, the chief executive of Generate Capital, a sustainable infrastructure investment firm.
To meet that demand, companies and grid operators are looking not only to gas and coal, but also wind, solar and nuclear power.
Electric vehicles and China
Electric vehicles are another industry already feeling the effects of Trump’s policies. E.V. sales are still growing in the United States, albeit more slowly than they were a couple years ago.
Trump, who has threatened to eliminate a tax credit for E.V. buyers and stop the federal funding of new charging stations, is putting a damper on the momentum.
But carmakers have invested billions of dollars planning for a future where the internal combustion engine is a thing of the past. “In the long term, “ Jacobs said, “the move to E.V.s seems pretty inexorable.”
And if Trump’s moves do delay the energy transition in the United States, they are unlikely to slow it down for the rest of the world.
Other countries are racing ahead with their plans to deploy large amounts of wind and solar. And if the United States steps back from its efforts to become a leader in the renewables industry, China, which has already established itself as the world’s biggest supplier of solar panels and electric vehicles, will be there to pick up the slack.
“Countries that are committed to addressing climate change will be buying clean energy technologies from China,” said Kelly Sims Gallagher, the dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. “The world will just go on without us.”
— Lisa Friedman contributed reporting
See How Butterflies Are Surviving, or Not, Near You
It’s hard to count insects.
Even as scientists have found that many insect populations are in decline, they’ve struggled to understand the scale of what’s happening. Now, a groundbreaking new study offers grim answers about the status of butterflies in the contiguous United States.
In 20 years, the fleeting time it takes for a human baby to grow into a young adult, the country has lost 22 percent of its butterflies, researchers found. — Catrin Einhorn and Harry Stevens
Read the full article.
More climate news:
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Global sea ice cover hit a record low in February, according to a new study highlighted by The Washington Post.
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The United States is withdrawing from the Just Energy Transition Partnership, a collaboration between richer nations to help developing countries transition from coal to cleaner energy, Reuters reports.
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New York State’s climate goals, which were already under strain, Bloomberg reports, could be hurt more by Trump’s tariffs against Canada.
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