Decisions continue to be made virtually daily by Donald Trump and his incompetent administration which exacerbate the global warming trend the planet is undergoing; 2024 was the hottest year on record.
Moving rapidly away from fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) to renewable energy (wind and solar primarily) is the path we were on before Trump came to power. This administration is now doing everything possible to shut down our nation’s wind and solar energy projects, and is encouraging and subsidizing the use of more polluting fossil fuels.
The Revolution Wind farm being built off the coast of Massachusetts and Rhode Island in a federally designated “wind energy area” was created after a five-year-long consultation between the state of Massachusetts, coastal towns, federal agencies and branches of the military including the U.S. Navy, Coast Guard and Army Corps of Engineers. This project is now 80% complete, yet on Aug. 22, the acting director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Matthew Giacona (who is a former lobbyist for offshore oil and gas companies) ordered the wind developer to stop all construction on the nearly complete project so the federal government can “address concerns related to the protection of national security interests of the United States.” He did not specify the nature of those concerns. Why would any rational person halt an 80% completed renewable energy project at a time when electrical needs are rising and clean sustainable energy is needed more than ever?
For some global perspective, 11 European countries now have a total 82 offshore wind farms with 3,630 individual wind turbines employing 350,000 people. The United States has three offshore wind farms with a total of 19 individual turbines in operation off the Atlantic coast. Because Trump doesn’t like to see wind turbines from his golf course in Scotland, he decided to do everything in his power to halt any future development and terminate any offshore wind projects being built in the U.S. He is doing the same thing for solar energy development, while relaxing standards on coal power plant emissions, and ordering outdated, inefficient and expensive plants to continue to operate even when scheduled for closure. The actions of this one individual are having and will continue to have negative impacts on the lives of everyone on the planet for years to come. Is this really what people voted for?
The Rural Energy for America Program has for years helped thousands of farmers pay for solar panels that lower their energy bills. The Trump administration is largely putting an end to that. This program, known as REAP, will no longer help farmers install large solar arrays on their land. Even smaller arrays could be unlikely to get funding under new restrictions on equipment made in China. Since 2014, the program has awarded around $1.2 billion in grants and $2.5 billion in loan guarantees for solar in rural areas nationwide, the vast majority of that on farms. About 70% of the two-decade-old program’s funds have gone to solar projects over the last 10 years. But on Aug. 19, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced, “USDA will no longer fund taxpayer dollars for solar panels on productive farmland or allow solar panels manufactured by foreign adversaries to be used in USDA-funded projects.”
China is now the world’s largest producer of solar panels, with about 80% of the global market share in manufacturing. They have significantly invested in solar photovoltaic production with the majority of the global manufacturers headquartered there. The U.S. is falling behind and losing out due to the personal peeves of a single individual. In 2022 the U.S. produced 1.9% of the world’s solar panels.
Over the last six months, U.S. carbon emissions rose 4.2% while China’s fell 2.7%, making it clear that the U.S. and China are on totally different trajectories when it comes to clean energy and dealing with climate change.
As a result of Trump’s policies, developers have canceled $18.6 billion in renewable energy projects in 2025, and announcements of new clean energy investments have fallen 20% so far this year compared to the same period in 2024.
The Trump administration scheme to keep aging, dirty, fossil-fuel power plants operating instead of closing will leave utility customers with between $3 and nearly $6 billion a year in unnecessary utility costs by the end of Trump’s term.
Just days before the J.H. Campbell coal-fired plant in Michigan was set to shutter in May, the administration ordered it to stay open for 90 more days — an unprecedented federal intervention in state-regulated utility operations. That order has already cost Midwest utility customers millions, and Michigan’s top utility regulator estimates that keeping this single aging plant open longer could burden consumers with more than $100 million in unnecessary costs.
In January, Trump took office promising a great many things — including to make energy more affordable. But since then, household electric bills have risen another 10%, and the policies he’s enacted will exacerbate the problems further. Electricity costs are going up in the U.S. — and the Trump administration’s attempts to choke off clean energy development are only going to make matters worse. Electricity prices are rising at more than twice the rate of inflation.
A survey conducted this spring found that 3 in 4 Americans said they’re worried about rising utility bills. Republican leaders — most recently U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who formerly led several fossil fuel energy companies — have tried to blame the trend on the large amounts of clean energy hitting the grid, but that’s not the problem. Solar, wind and batteries are the cheapest and cleanest form of power we have, and a 2024 report from the research group Energy Innovation found no correlation between renewable energy adoption and utility rate increases.
The Trump administration has set up yet another roadblock for wind and solar power in the U.S., one that will make it more difficult for clean-energy projects to qualify for federal tax credits before they expire next summer. Clean-energy advocates attacked the guidance as an improper use of executive authority (which seems to have no bounds under this president) that will make it harder for the U.S. to meet growing electricity demand and will further increase electricity bills.
A new lawsuit filed in federal court this month by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists alleges that the Trump administration violated the law by secretly recruiting a group of people who reject the scientific consensus on climate change to write a report downplaying global warming. The suit accuses the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency of flagrant violations of a law that governs advisory committees.
It alleges that in March, the secretary of energy quietly arranged for five handpicked skeptics of the effects of climate change to form a committee called the Climate Working Group, that then wrote a report downplaying the threat of rising greenhouse gas emissions. As a reminder again, 2024 was the hottest year on record. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (who is doing everything but protecting the environment), cited the report to justify a plan to repeal the legal foundation for regulating climate pollution. But the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 does not allow federal agencies to recruit or rely on secret groups when engaging in policymaking, according to the lawsuit. The law requires that any groups developed to advise federal policy must be disclosed and that meetings, emails and other records be made public.
Trump’s crusade against wind energy is intensifying — and it could come with some serious costs. As much as $317 billion in lost investment, based on an analysis by research firm Cleanview, of 790 projects that were anticipated to be built in the years to come, that are all at risk of delay or cancellation under administration policies. Those states with the most at risk are primarily located along a high wind belt across the Midwest and include in order of potential lost investment: Texas, Illinois, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Maine, California, New York, North Dakota, Indiana, Nebraska and Minnesota.
Republican U.S. senators also moved to strip federal funding for the U.S. Postal Service’s transition to an electric vehicle fleet to save taxpayer money, though industry observers say the move would have the opposite effect. Republican lawmakers who voted for the Big Beautiful (Billionaires) Bill, which included subsidies for fossil fuel development, have now accepted more than $105 million in fossil fuel industry donations. How much longer will this destructive chaos and corruption continue?
Gary Griggs is a distinguished professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Santa Cruz. He can be reached at griggs@ucsc.edu. For past Ocean Backyard columns, visit seymourcenter.ucsc.edu/ouroceanbackyard.