America unleashes Trump, complicating the US energy transition

Donald Trump, who has explicitly vowed to use his executive powers to stop the clean energy transition, was elected for a second term on Wednesday morning.

Two years after the U.S. passed an historic energy and climate bill that supported hundreds of new factories and tens of billions of investment into rural communities, Trump’s reelection throws deep uncertainty into the market – threatening everything from offshore wind approvals to EV infrastructure to local lending for clean energy.

In his first term, President Trump threw chaos into federal agencies, and has vowed to step up efforts to fire civil servants that are running critical energy and climate programs at the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy.

The legislative pathway for repealing the Inflation Reduction Act is not clear — and some policies could be preserved by Republicans eager to keep investment flowing into their states.

However, an analysis from Carbon Brief suggests that Trump’s stated policy priorities could add enough heat-trapping gasses to negate all emissions reductions from renewables globally over the last five years.

Elon Musk, who used a Department of Energy loan guarantee to save Tesla and build up the company’s manufacturing capabilities, emerged as one of Trump’s strongest backers — and could now have extraordinary influence over the government under a new Trump term.

Musk has pitched a Department of Government Efficiency that could bring radical cuts and staffing changes to agencies.

States and the business community accelerated their commitments to clean energy under the first Trump Administration. They will undoubtedly do so again. But a second Trump presidency will have sweeping impacts on regulation, climate science, and clean energy implementation that will overshadow many of those efforts.

“Having worked firsthand with both the Trump administration on Hurricane Maria recovery and the Biden-Harris administration to implement the executive order on federal sustainability, I speak from experience when I say that the differences in their approaches and competency when it comes to climate and clean energy policy could not be more stark,” wrote Tanuj Deora, former director of clean energy at the Council on Environmental Quality, in an op-ed.

We will continue to update our coverage with industry reactions.