America’s energy transition is about to get weird

I regularly drive through a suburban neighborhood where almost every house has rooftop solar. It’s a common sight in Massachusetts. But this year, a large cluster of those houses featured something else tucked under the solar panels: Trump signs.

This may come as a surprise for anyone who assumes Democrats are the party of clean energy. But it’s not surprising to anyone who’s followed the arc of the U.S. clean energy industry over the last two decades. 

From the wind boom in Texas spurred by George W. Bush to the rise of the pro-solar Green Tea Party to the conservative states that dominate renewables production, the clean energy industry has a strong red streak.

The clean energy industry and GOP have a complicated relationship. It is certainly true that Democrats spend a lot more time talking about climate change and the economic promise of clean energy. The Inflation Reduction Act was signed without a single Republican vote, after all. And President-elect Trump is explicit about his disdain for any energy technology that doesn’t light fossil fuels on fire — his most ambitious clean energy plan was affixing solar panels on top of the border wall. 

But there has been an unmistakable shift in the Republican party since Trump first took office in 2017.

The most absurd theater of the Solyndra days is gone. Lawmakers are no longer blaming dinosaur farts for a warming planet in hearings or throwing snowballs on the Senate floor to prove climate change doesn’t exist. Conspiracy theories about importing illegal immigrant voters and controlling hurricanes to suppress conservative voters have largely overshadowed more explicit climate denial. 

Some of this shift is because it’s impossible to look away from an industry that creates more than half of new U.S. energy jobs. I have talked with dozens of clean energy companies over the years who have characterized their meetings with Congressional Republicans and staffers as highly productive. Conservatives want manufacturing jobs, they love American innovation, and they care about outcompeting China.

The Political Climate team documented this shift while at the Republican National Convention this summer. Utah Republican Senator-elect John Curtis, who has been outspoken on climate issues, explained why his party didn’t rally behind the IRA: “I like to point to nuclear, carbon sequestration, direct air capture. A lot of Republican [climate and energy] priorities were there,” he said. ”Had they come in standalone bills, [it’s] very likely they would've been supported by Republicans.”

Case in point: earlier this year, the GOP backed a bipartisan bill to support advanced nuclear, and some lawmakers on the right have been active on permitting reform that could help a wide range of clean energy technologies like geothermal, offshore wind, and transmission.

So what does all this mean for the next Trump era?

I’ve spent the last couple of days talking with experts about the outcome of the election. There have been a mix of strong reactions to Trump’s victory, but almost no one believes his next term will crush the transition. His first term certainly didn’t.

Renewables are too cheap to stop. There is simply too much momentum, from drivers like local regulation, state policy, and corporate procurement. But there are still plenty of things he can do to make things harder.

Trump ran his campaign on vengeance, and will likely govern with vengeance. He will seek to reverse major Biden policy priorities — and he now has experienced people around him who can help dismantle the government. The Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission are prime targets. The targeting has already started.

One of the biggest risks is brain drain. Finding the right people to implement the IRA was one of the Biden administration’s hardest tasks. Some of the smartest people working in clean energy went to work in government — and many of them will now leave, or be pushed out, perhaps by Elon Musk himself.

Tax cuts will be another area where Trump exerts influence. Republicans are planning a “rip the Band-Aid and plow through it” approach to cutting taxes across the board, and they’ll be looking for any way to pay for them. It’s highly likely that undoing the clean energy tax credits will be considered.

Tariffs are also an area of concern. Trump has promised universal tariffs on all foreign goods and even higher penalties on all Chinese goods — which would undoubtedly bring inflationary effects to a clean energy industry still recovering from pandemic-related supply chain disruptions.

The big wildcard, though, is Elon Musk. After using his wealth and social media platform to elect Trump, Musk is likely to be a highly influential figure inside the White House — with obvious influence on electric vehicles and artificial intelligence. 

“I’m for electric cars,” said Trump in August. “I have to be because Elon endorsed me strongly.”

Musk has indicated he will take a slash-and-burn approach to agencies, if brought on to lead a newly-formed Department of Government Efficiency. But he also understands the value of building EV charger networks, batteries, and expanding the grid to support electrification and data centers. 

With the guidance of people like Musk and Peter Thiel, the Trump administration is likely to support a rapid expansion of the grid — perhaps using emergency powers — to support data centers for AI. That will undoubtedly create a new market pull for renewables and nuclear (and, of course, for fossil gas and aging coal plants as well). 

It’s going to be a weird time for the energy transition in the U.S. — a period of extremes in energy policy and politics.

A Trump administration and GOP-led Congress could simultaneously wipe out the county’s emissions gains by finding any possible way to boost fossil energy, while also creating the regulatory conditions for clean resources, EVs, and the electric grid to expand quickly. 

The start of America’s energy transition looked like Obama standing in a field of solar panels. Today, it’s going to look more like Elon Musk driving a Tesla, wearing a MAGA hat.

Or perhaps it looks more like a house with solar panels, hosting a Trump sign in the front yard.