{"id":29633,"date":"2025-07-01T10:46:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T10:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/29633\/"},"modified":"2025-07-01T10:46:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T10:46:18","slug":"war-on-renewable-energy-maga-ideology-over-economics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/29633\/","title":{"rendered":"War on Renewable Energy: MAGA Ideology Over Economics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note (June 30, 2025):<\/strong> This article, originally published on June 16, has been updated to reflect the latest version of the GOP budget, now advancing as the \u201cOne Big Beautiful Bill Act,\u201d and its expanded rollback of clean-energy programs.<\/p>\n

As Donald Trump championed \u201cdrill, baby, drill\u201d on the 2024 campaign trail, Republicans quietly coalesced<\/a> around an \u201call-of-the-above\u201d energy strategy\u2014embracing fossil fuels, nuclear, geothermal, and, at least rhetorically, renewable sources such as wind and solar. As the growing share of renewable energy in deep red states showed<\/a>, even anti-climate Republicans couldn\u2019t forswear cheap renewable energy. Business was willing to ditch<\/a> Trumpian rhetoric about the dangers of windmills for bottom-line logic: The economics of renewables\u2014solar<\/a> is the cheapest energy source in human history\u2014spoke for itself. But Trump\u2019s war on renewable energy since returning to office demonstrates the triumph of MAGA dogma over free-market principles<\/a>. As the irrationality of the \u201cLiberation Day\u201d tariffs reveals, Trump won\u2019t let what\u2019s good for business get in his way this time.<\/p>\n

Anything-but-renewables<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Trump administration has launched a full-throated war on renewable energy. From killing<\/a> the residential solar industry to freezing billions<\/a> earmarked for clean energy projects in low-income communities to crippling the Department of <\/a>E<\/a>nergy\u2019s ability to connect renewables to the grid, Trump 2.0 does not compromise.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t \u201call of the above,\u201d it\u2019s anything but renewables. Trump\u2019s declaration of a national energy emergency<\/a>, under the National Emergencies Act, explicitly defines \u2018energy\u2019 to exclude wind and solar. The Interior Department is fast-tracking<\/a> permitting for all energy projects except wind and solar. The Republican-controlled Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) allows<\/a> natural gas plants to leapfrog clean energy projects stuck in the permitting queue<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s \u2018One Big Beautiful Bill Act,\u2019 now advancing through Congress, would effectively kill the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) with its myriad clean-energy programs and incentives. But the GOP isn\u2019t just pulling the rug out from under the\u00a0thousands<\/a>\u00a0of wind and solar developers who counted on the IRA\u2019s technology-neutral tax credits\u2014credits that\u00a0helped<\/a>\u00a0create over 330,000 jobs and catalyzed nearly half a trillion in private investment. Senate Republicans have taken it even further. The latest draft of the bill imposes a new\u00a0tax hike<\/a>\u00a0on wind and solar projects that fail to meet unworkable domestic content requirements after tax credits phaseout in 2027\u2014all while sneaking in a new subsidy for coal. That\u2019s just the worst of a bill that also axes grid modernization loans, energy efficiency programs, and electric vehicle (EV) rebates. If successful, repealing the IRA would\u00a0decimate<\/a>\u00a0America\u2019s nascent manufacturing renaissance,\u00a0solidify<\/a>\u00a0China\u2019s global green-tech dominance, and\u00a0raise<\/a>\u00a0utility bills for American families.<\/p>\n

As electricity demand rises, Republicans insist that only \u201creliable\u201d energy\u2014fossil fuel-powered plants that run 24\/7 instead of \u201cintermittent\u201d renewable sources\u2014can keep the lights on and the utility bills low. But solar, wind, and battery storage can and do<\/a> meet demand affordably and reliably. It also ignores that Republican budget cuts will hamstring<\/a> even non-intermittent clean energy technologies like nuclear and geothermal, the same tech Republicans have publicl<\/a>y endorsed<\/a>. Unfortunately for Americans, this war on renewable energy comes with a higher cost<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s \u2018clean <\/a>coal<\/a>\u2019 policies purport to reinvigorate America\u2019s coal industry but will only prolong the life of aging coal plants\u201499 percent<\/a> of which are more costly to keep running than to replace with wind and solar. Trump recently issued executive orders promoting nuclear power. But many of the administration\u2019s policies make building nuclear power more difficult, including cutting the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission\u2019s budgets and limiting the latter\u2019s traditional independence. Indeed, the budget that cleared the House last month requalified nuclear projects for tax credits but moved the start date to 2028, a timeline many nuclear projects cannot meet. Even natural gas, the only fossil fuel price competitive with renewable energy, can\u2019t make up the slack. More investment in gas-fired power plants is unlikely to lower energy prices in the near term: Gas projects will take until at least 2030 to come online, and a massive backlog<\/a> for new gas turbines stretches beyond 2029.<\/p>\n

Of course, affordability was never really the point. The point is the MAGA worldview, where the wind never blows and the oil always flows.<\/p>\n

MAGA Has Taken the Oil Pill<\/strong><\/p>\n

If Trump\u2019s gutting of cutting-edge scientific research and persecuting corporations perceived as ideologically suspect didn\u2019t alarm Washington, Trump\u2019s on-and-off tariff policy seems to have broken through<\/a> as ill-planned and doomed to fail.<\/p>\n

Na\u00efve as it was to claim to \u2018reshore\u2019 American manufacturing without an industrial policy (while gutting its predecessor\u2019s), the administration has yet to lift<\/a> tariffs on coffee, mangoes, and bananas\u2014tropical crops that cannot be grown in the U.S. (Hawaii and Puerto Rico produce less than 1 percent of U.S. coffee demand.) Trump insists that tariff revenues<\/a> are enough to obviate income taxes, and he simultaneously celebrates that tariffs will make imports unnecessary<\/a> altogether. Both can\u2019t be true.<\/p>\n

Those with the most financial, ideological, and personal influence can, maybe, capture the president\u2019s ear. The Wall Street Journal reported<\/a> that Trump\u2019s 90-day tariff delay announced earlier this spring only happened because his Treasury and Commerce Secretaries ambushed the president while Peter Navarro, Trump\u2019s trade advisor and the administration\u2019s most prominent booster of massive tariffs on every nation, had stepped out. They didn\u2019t leave until Trump made the pause official on Truth Social.<\/p>\n

The health of American industry now hinges on one\u2019s informal and personal ties to the president, which doesn\u2019t bode well for clean energy, especially since the president\u2019s falling out with Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The GOP is still, and has always been, the party of Big Oil. Trump\u2019s tariffs may still harm long-term profits, but, notably, oil interests were one of the rare exceptions in Trump\u2019s \u201cLiberation Day\u201d tariffs. Unfortunately, the logic behind Trump\u2019s Fossil Fuels First strategy is the same as his tariff policy: there is none<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fossil fuels are such a fundamental part of conservative identity that realism no longer applies.<\/p>\n

As Energy Secretary Chris Wright put it<\/a>: Climate change is \u201ca side effect of building the modern world.\u201d Trump recently posted<\/a> a clip from the television show Landman, in which Billy Bob Thornton\u2019s oilman character claims that pumping crude is too fundamental to the American way of life to stop: \u201cWe don\u2019t do it \u2019cause we like it. We do it \u2019cause we run out of options.\u201d But that\u2019s precisely the lie. Trump and his movement drill because they like the war on renewable energy. despite having better options.<\/p>\n

The MAGA agenda is irrational. Trump wants energy abundance but kneecaps the fastest-growing<\/a> energy sector; he wants economic prosperity but imposes the greatest regressive tax<\/a> in U.S. history. It\u2019s a reflection of the modern conservative movement that has succumbed to far-right conspiracism<\/a>, becoming so divorced from reality that not even a self-inflicted<\/a> recession might check it.<\/p>\n

Sabotage and Strategy<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s precisely where Democrats can play their hand. There is an energy crisis: natural gas price volatility, climate-induced extreme weather, and the high cost of aging coal plants have created a perfect storm<\/a> of rising energy prices. And Trump, Republicans, and their big oil donors are willfully exacerbating it by kneecapping clean energy. Democrats need a unified message that defends climate action as the response to the right\u2019s economic sabotage.<\/p>\n

While cheap solar and wind energy projects languish on the sidelines, Republicans are forcing Americans to pay more for dirty fuel. Keep it simple: Fossil fuels = higher prices; clean energy = lower prices.<\/p>\n

But Democrats also need to counter the Republican agenda with a bold vision of the nation\u2019s energy future, one of abundant clean supplies and good-paying union jobs.<\/p>\n

If Democrats fail to act, they won\u2019t just lose a net-zero-carbon future\u2014they\u2019ll lose the country to a movement that values ideology over prosperity and fantasy over fact.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n

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