{"id":654416,"date":"2026-08-24T20:27:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T20:27:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/654416\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T20:27:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T20:27:17","slug":"renewable-energy-industry-is-starting-to-spend-big-on-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/654416\/","title":{"rendered":"Renewable Energy Industry Is Starting to Spend Big on Elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe fossil fuel industry has long been a campaign finance powerhouse, using its clout to help put sympathetic politicians \u2014 including Donald Trump \u2014 into office.\u00a0 The renewable energy<\/a> industry isn\u2019t as accustomed to throwing around its weight in the political arena. It appears that has started to change, and the industry recently claimed a victory that left many political observers stunned.<\/p>\n

\n\tRep. Andy Ogles<\/a> (R-Tenn.) lost his primary election at the beginning of this month, with Politico reporting<\/a> that a political action committee backed by solar industry executives played a pivotal role in his loss. The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC spent about $2 million in the race. Ogles, who was endorsed by Trump, was one of the Republicans behind efforts to dismantle<\/a> the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) last year, and now he\u2019s been ousted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe same group waged successful campaigns earlier this year against Rep. Chip Roy<\/a> (R-Texas) in his bid for Texas attorney general, and Rep. Ralph Norman<\/a> (R-S.C.), who lost the Republican gubernatorial primary in South Carolina. Like Ogles, Roy and Norman fought against the climate provisions of the IRA.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC isn\u2019t alone. Energy industry experts say that as the renewable energy industry has grown in recent years, it\u2019s started to become more political, partially because it knows it has to.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe return on investment for political action is enormous,\u201d Leah Stokes, an associate professor of environmental politics at UC Santa Barbara, tells Rolling Stone. \u201cIf you can defend a tax credit, it brings billions of dollars to your industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStokes says the industry started getting more involved in politics when the Inflation Reduction Act passed. Hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for renewable energy was approved, which significantly grew the industry and raised the stakes. She notes that hundreds<\/a> of clean energy manufacturing facilities were propped up by the IRA.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cPeople are going to want to defend billions and billions of dollars of investment \u2014 this is a big industry,\u201d Stokes says. \u201cThe corporate tax credits mostly survived, and they\u2019re also the biggest part of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTrump returning to office and putting a target on the back of the industry was a wake-up call, and the industry now realizes that it needs to do what it can to affect favorable political outcomes for itself. The industry is now spending<\/a> tens of millions of dollars per year on political efforts \u2014 including around $64 million in 2024 alone, a major increase from a little over $13 million<\/a> in 2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSpending has gone up roughly fourfold since 2020,\u201d says Bentley Allan, an associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. \u201cRenewable energy has always been involved in politics \u2026 but all of this really got supercharged by the Inflation Reduction Act.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAllan says some of the numbers miss the bigger picture. It\u2019s not just the solar and wind companies becoming more active; it\u2019s also industries that are closely tied to renewables.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou also have to think about battery and EV manufacturers \u2014 firms that aren\u2019t strictly renewable but are part of a broader climate coalition, and that coalition is becoming more politically salient,\u201d Allan says.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn terms of how this money is being spent, some of it appears to be payback for past actions \u2014 as we saw with Ogles, Roy, and Norman. If you\u2019ve damaged the industry and stand to damage it again in the future, it\u2019s going to punch back. Beyond that, the industry appears to be trying to shift the narrative in its favor and defend its existing funding and tax credits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s kind of a warning to other members that if you get on the wrong side of this industry, you\u2019re going to face consequences,\u201d Stokes says. \u201cI also think they\u2019re focused on defending the policies that are allowing the industry to thrive right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAllan says that any industry that experiences a lot of growth is going to become more politically active, especially if the industry feels like it\u2019s under threat, as is certainly the case for renewables as Trump continues to attack it any way he can.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe administration\u2019s efforts to kneecap the renewable energy industry haven\u2019t stopped it from growing, though, especially through solar power<\/a>. Allan says he thinks batteries are going to keep booming, too, and that this growth will likely lead to even more political influence.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou can only bully an industry for so long before it will decide it\u2019s time to fight back. Just ask Andy Ogles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fossil fuel industry has long been a campaign finance powerhouse, using its clout to help put sympathetic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[269],"tags":[276637,276638,442,20705,18,440,19,17,276639,961,133],"class_list":["post-654416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-andy-ogles","tag-chip-roy","tag-climate-change","tag-controversy","tag-eire","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ralph-norman","tag-renewable-energy","tag-science"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117152372978079463","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}