Despite Trump, some good news - The clean energy revolution can't be stopped

Stuff to be thankful for

Trump vows to repeal climate legislation. The COP29 climate conference backs down on language targeting fossil fuels and commits a far from adequate $300 billion to pay developing nations for climate damages. All during what will go down as the hottest year on the record, likely breaching the 1.5 deg. C barrier for the first time.

It’s all bad, right? Game over for climate? Nope. There’s bad stuff for sure. But there’s some good news. Many efforts over the years in the realms of climate advocacy and public policy have unleashed a clean energy revolution that cannot be stopped, not even by Trump. There’s even reason to believe that the renewable energy policies forwarded by the Biden Administration’s signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), will be resilient in the face of Trump.

A set of reports since the election make the case. I don’t in any way want to downplay the seriousness of the crisis we face, or the fact much more needs to be done. But as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., I want to offer some reason for hope that we can get it done, cause we have accomplished so much already.

To start, spend a little over 11 minutes with the ever informative Dave Borlace of Just Have a Think, an invaluable YouTube channel to which your should be subscribing. Borlace explains why Trump cannot overcome the clean energy momentum. He illustrates how investment in solar and wind energy and battery storage is taking leaps in the U.S., solar up 23% in 2023 and battery storage doubling in 2024. Costs are dropping, hundreds of thousands of jobs are being created, including 400,000 alone in the very red state of Texas. Most importantly, citing figures from Bloomberg, $206 billion in clean energy investments have been made during the Biden Administration, with $151 billion in Republican districts, two-thirds of those coming from the IRA.

In his understated English accent, Borlace notes, “America’s got a nice little economic boom going on with clean energy. And stomping all over it would be as likely to be unpopular in states that turned red as those that turned blue.” In other words, even with a Republican majority in Congress, nothing speaks louder on Capitol Hill than jobs and money.

Matt Simon makes much the same point in his piece in Grist, He’ll try, but Trump can’t stop the clean energy revolution.

“Looking beyond the IRA, Trump has vowed to increase fossil fuel production and once again withdraw from the Paris Agreement. The man who has called climate change a ‘hoax’ also can be expected to wreak havoc on federal agencies central to understanding, and combating, climate change. But plenty of climate action would be very difficult for a second Trump administration to unravel, and the 47th president won’t be able to stop the inevitable economy-wide shift from fossil fuels to renewables.” Citing the same set of figures as Borlace, Simon quotes Zeke Haufather with Carbon Brief to the effect that an element of the Republican party is “going to support keeping some of those subsidies around.”

Even with a more difficult federal policy environment, markets are now driving clean energy, along with policies in many states. Simon writes, “ . . . solar panels, wind turbines, and appliances like induction stoves only get better — more efficient and cheaper — with time. Energy experts believe solar power, the price of which fell 90 percent between 2010 and 2020, will continue to proliferate across the landscape. (Last year, the United States added three times as much solar capacity as natural gas.) Heat pumps now outsell gas furnaces in the U.S., due in part to government incentives. Last year, Maine announced it had reached its goal of installing 100,000 heat pumps two years ahead of schedule, in part thanks to state rebates. So if the Trump administration cut off the funding for heat pumps that the IRA provides, states could pick up the slack.”

Eric Holthaus, writing in Slate, strikes a similar chord in his piece, The Renewable Energy Revolution Is Unstoppable - Yes, even under Donald Trump, and notes how the clean energy revolution has spread worldwide.

“Trump may gut environmental regulations, but even without them wind and solar are now the cheapest source of new energy in the world, period. Even in China and India, wind and solar are now much cheaper than coal. China alone is on pace to add twice as much wind and solar this year as the rest of the world combined.

“Wind and solar now make up 15 percent of the world’s energy mix, up from just 1 percent only 10 years ago. They are now consistently eating away at the share held by fossil fuels—a trend that will continue all the way to net zero. Basically: We did it. We’ve secured a clean energy future for ourselves. The only question remaining is how fast this future will become reality.

“With years of major wind and solar projects in the pipeline and with renewable-friendly policies designed to last, these facts will continue to be even more true in the future, even if Trump tries to undo Biden’s signature climate laws. Clean energy tax credits are in place until 2030; they will stick. The vast majority will continue going to Republican districts, which will help protect them into the future.”

Columbia University Law School climate legal analyst Michael Gerrard also echoes some of the above but issues some cautions in a Yale Environment 360 piece Trump 2.0: This Time the Stakes for Climate Are Even Higher.

“The IRA passed Congress without a single Republican vote, and Trump has said he will ask Congress to repeal it. However, most of the IRA money for clean energy is going to districts represented by Republican members of Congress, many of whom oppose full repeal. Thus, Trump’s ability to eliminate the relevant parts of the IRA is in question, though a cap on the multiplicity of tax credits seems likely. However, the Internal Revenue Service under Trump could make it difficult to utilize the tax credits by issuing very restrictive interpretations of the credits or refusing to release the necessary forms.

“The fate of the IRA will be an issue next year with the scheduled expiration of parts of the 2017 Trump tax cuts bill. Trump will presumably want to extend those tax cuts. Congress will be looking for ways to pay for this. Slashing IRA subsidies could be part of that.”

One who helped craft the IRA, Adrian Devany of Climate Vision, says “‘That’s very doable for some provisions’ of the IRA, but ​’it’s going to be really hard for others,’” in a piece in Canary Media, How to keep the climate fight alive through a second Trump term. Devany also notes, that “with Trump pledging to claw back any unspent funds from the IRA, ​’getting that money out the door is critical, because any unspent money is at risk of not ever getting spent.’”

The Canary Media article reports “That rush is already underway. In the past few months, the pace of federal funding announcements has accelerated, with DOE grid-modernization grants and loans for distributed solar and clean fuels manufacturing, U.S. Department of Agriculture grants for rural electric cooperatives, and financing from the Environmental Protection Agency’s ​“green bank” program for community solar, electric trucking, electric school buses, and building efficiency. Two days after the election, the DOE’s Loan Programs Office finalized a $475 million loan for a battery recycling facility. More can be expected between now and Inauguration Day.”

In the same piece another key architect of IRA, Leah Stokes, calls out an accelerated pace in writing rules and regulations for oil and gas methane leaks, vehicle emission standards and power plant carbon. “‘ There are civil servants . . . who have already been working very long hours for months and years, and that’s only going to ratchet up . . . Regulations can’t just be thrown out,’ Stokes said. The last Trump administration’s efforts to undo Obama administration climate and energy policies ran into a buzzsaw of legal and administrative challenges.”

Finally, in case you thought Trump’s “drill baby drill” will dramatically increase oil and gas production much more than it has over recent years, making the U.S. by far the world’s biggest producer of both, he will run into the industry itself. Reuters reports, “U.S. oil and gas producers are unlikely to radically increase production under president-elect Donald Trump as companies remain focused on capital discipline, a senior executive at Exxon Mobil, said on Tuesday.

“‘We're not going to see anybody in drill, baby, drill mode,’ Liam Mallon, head of Exxon's upstream division, told the Energy Intelligence Forum conference in London. ‘A radical change (in production) is unlikely because the vast majority, if not everybody, is focused on the economics of what they're doing.’”

In other words, the oil and gas industry has little interest in creating vast new supplies that will undermine their own prices. Whatever Trump says, even if he opens new lands to drilling, which he likely will, the industry will protect its own interests.

A common theme that emerges in the above reports is how vital state and local climate action has been and will continue to be in coming years. In fact, state standards calling for up to 100% of electricity to be met from clean sources have been one of the largest drivers of wind, solar and batteries over recent years. With the federal level blocked, states and localities are where we will make progress. We need to ramp up pressure on state and local governments in a range of policy arenas where they are the prime actors. To make buildings more efficient and eliminate their fossil fuel use through electrification. To increase the role of mass transit, biking and walking while reducing auto use. To reduce waste and materials use. To begin to build local and bioregional economies not dependent on growth. We need economies to be propelled by clean energy, of course, but we also need to change our economic assumptions to bring our societies back within ecological limits.

This is not the time to sink into despair, but to acknowledge how much we have accomplished on climate. And how many avenues we have to continue making progress in our cities and states, communities and bioregions. Let’s be thankful for what we have done, and get ready to roll up our sleeves to do more.

Building the future in place is the theme of The Raven. This is only going to become more important with the coming of the Trump Administration at the federal level. Please support my writing and research by subscribing using the button below. $6/month or $5 if you sign up for the $60 annual rate. Or make a one time donation in $5 increments at Buy the Raven a Coffee. And please share this post to your networks!