For all Donald Trump’s efforts to revive coal, market forces and some of his own supporters are vying to write their own version of America’s energy future.
Divisions persist among the president’s supporters -- and even within his own cabinet -- about whether to continue subsidies for wind and solar power, enact a carbon tax, remain party to the Paris climate accord and plenty of other issues that will shape the U.S. energy landscape.
“Seventy five percent of Trump supporters like renewables and want to advance renewables,” Debbie Dooley, a Tea Party organizer and solar energy activist, said at a Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference in New York on Monday. “The conversation has changed. You have to have the right message. Talk about energy freedom and choice. The lightbulb will go off.”
Trump may be resolutely committed to fossil fuels, but the economic reality is renewables are now among the cheapest sources of electricity. Wind and solar were the biggest sources of power added to U.S. grids three years running, becoming key sources of jobs in rural America. That’s created clean-energy constituencies in North Carolina, Texas and other parts of the country that supported Trump in November.
To be clear, there are enough members of Trump’s cabinet who deny the basic science of global warming that there is little, if any, chance the administration will enthusiastically support clean energy. Instead, the debate is apt to hinge on whether the president will try to actively reverse market forces allowing wind and solar to flourish.
That tug-of-war will play out in the weeks to come at the White House, in corporate board rooms and at economic summits in Italy and Germany. On Tuesday, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry will shed light on the debate at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance gathering, which also will feature Myron Ebell, an avowed climate-change denier who headed Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team.
Last week, Ebell said the book is closing on clean power.
“This large-scale effort to move the grid to solar and wind is a dead end,” Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment, said in an interview. “The wind and solar industries have peaked.”
Policy Matters
In many ways little has changed in America’s energy markets since Trump took office. States including California, New York and Massachusetts continue to move forward with aggressive policies to cut carbon emissions. Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and other businesses continue to power facilities with wind and solar energy.