Dem
47
GOP
53
The Inflation Reduction Act contained the largest funding ever to combat climate change. Donald Trump intuitively opposes it because he wants to erase Joe Biden's legacy. That is a goal all by itself. Also, his donors in the fossil fuel industry would be happy to get 4 more years of reprieve, even though they know they are ultimately doomed.
Clean energy advocates are planning to fight back by deemphasizing the climate-change part of fighting climate change. Instead, they will focus on five things: (1) beat China, (2) national security, (3) shore up domestic manufacturing, (4) increase total domestic energy production and (5) create jobs in struggling coal communities (especially in southwest Pennsylvania, where there are still 40 active coal mines in the Main Bituminous Coalfield). Trump could be responsive to this pitch.
If all that the sustainable-energy industry has to do to survive is adjust the PR campaign and bamboozle Trump, it has a fighting chance. The national security angle is a bit exotic, but real. China is the main producer of some metals needed to make batteries for electric cars. If China were to block exports of them, that would have devastating effects on U.S. auto manufacturers, who are already struggling to beat China. Millions of jobs could be lost. The U.S. actually has deposits of some of these metals, but extracting them is expensive and the environmental impact is significant. Trump could subsidize the extraction and waive environmental rules (or try to mitigate the damage) in order to break China's stranglehold. This is something he could be made to understand. One ally the electric vehicle industry has close to Trump is Elon Musk. He is quite capable of telling Trump that developing a domestic industry in these metals is vital for national security and getting him to accept it.
There are even a few barriers to the clean energy transition that Trump might remove. One is permit reform. If a company wants to build a massive solar farm somewhere and someone spots a spotted owl nearby, the resulting court battles can take years and sometimes the companies don't even start on account of that. Congress could pass laws making it clear that when there is a conflict between energy production and the environment, energy wins. Environmentalists wouldn't like that at all, but if Congress passed such laws, the court battles would be simple and over quickly.
Another thing Trump is likely to do is support a massive build-out of the electrical grid. This would make it possible to transport electricity from a producing site to a consuming site easily—for example, solar energy from the Nevada desert to Los Angeles or Denver. Trump might also approve construction of more nuclear power plants and projects involving hydrogen and carbon capture and storage. Even wind energy might have a chance with the new National Energy Council being chaired by Doug Burgum, who championed wind energy on the windy plains of North Dakota. Burgum's view is that all sources of energy, both fossil and clean, are needed well into the future.
However, Burgum will have a fight on his hands. The incoming secretary of energy, Chris Wright, is CEO of the country's second largest fracking company. He doesn't believe in climate change and thinks green energy is for the birds. On the other hand, he, like Rick Perry before him, may not realize that the secretary of energy doesn't actually have much say over energy policy. His job is safeguarding America's nuclear weapons. And with Burgum as "energy czar," Burgum may have more influence, in the end, than Wright.
In short, while Trump's first instinct might be to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, people and industries that might profit from clean energy will be lobbying hard to convince him to let it be for the five reasons listed above. Or maybe he will kill it, but then tell Congress to pass a Trump Energy Act that does the same thing. (V)