When Donald Trump first took office, he rolled back a series of environmental regulations, withdrew from the Paris climate accord and boosted the fossil fuel industry. The president-elect, who is in his second term, has promised to cancel remaining funding from Joe Biden’s landmark climate bill, the Inflation Control Act (IRA), and to invest in clean energy and climate action. It is expected to be quite hostile. The $891 billion law would give every household thousands of dollars to switch to appliances like heat pumps, install solar panels or buy electric cars.
Looking beyond the IRA, President Trump has vowed to increase fossil fuel production and withdraw from the Paris climate accord again. The man who called climate change a “hoax” is expected to wreak havoc on federal agencies that are central to understanding and combating climate change. However, it will be extremely difficult for the second Trump administration to resolve many of the climate policies, and the 47th president will be unable to stop the inevitable economy-wide transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Dew.
“This is bad for the climate, and we want it to stop completely,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School. “However, this will also be a wall that will never be built. There are fundamental market forces at work.”
The central irony of climate change is that markets encouraged the massive burning of fossil fuels that began with the Industrial Revolution, creating the mess humanity is in. And now those markets are driving a renewable energy revolution to solve that problem. Coal, oil, and gas are commodities whose prices fluctuate. There is really no room for improvement in the natural resources that humans extract from the ground. Engineers cannot design new versions of coal.
In contrast, home appliances such as solar panels, wind turbines, and induction stoves become more efficient, cheaper, and even better over time. Energy experts believe the price of solar power has fallen 90 percent It will continue to proliferate around the world from 2010 to 2020. (Last year, the U.S. added three times more solar capacity than natural gas.) Thanks in part to government incentives, heat pumps now outnumber gas furnaces in the U.S. Last year, the state of Maine announced it had reached its goal of installing 100,000 heat pumps. 2 years earlier than plannedPartly because of state rebates. So if the Trump administration ends funding for IRA-provided heat pumps, states could get that money back.
Local power companies are also exploring new ways to use heat pumps. In Massachusetts, for example, utility company Eversource Energy is experimenting with “networked geothermal,” which uses water pumped from underground by homes in a particular area. A heat pump uses that water to heat or cool a space. This is much more efficient than burning natural gas. Eversource and 20 other electric utilities representing about half of the nation’s natural gas customers have formed a coalition to deploy more networked geothermal systems.
Green technologies are not only more efficient, they are also simply cheaper to implement. Consider Texas. Texas long ago disconnected its power grid from the national grid. skirt federal regulations. of The Lone Star State is the nation’s largest oil and gas producer. But it is 40 percent of total energy From carbon-free sources. “In Texas, Most solar and wind power of any state“Not because Texas Republicans love renewable energy, but because renewable energy is the cheapest power there,” said Zeke Hausfather, a researcher at Berkeley Earth, a climate research nonprofit. of Next top 3 states The wind-generating states of Iowa, Oklahoma and Kansas are also red.
State regulators are also putting pressure on power companies to cut emissions, leading to more wind and solar power installations. As part of California’s goal to decarbonize by 2045, the state will Increased battery capacity Electric cars and electric school buses can also provide backup power to the grid. This allows power companies to tap into abundant solar energy during the day and deplete batteries at night. This is essential to phase out fossil fuel power plants. President Trump has imposed tariffs on imported solar panels, which could raise prices, but will likely encourage domestic manufacturing of the panels. Supporting the emerging solar power manufacturing industry in red states Like Georgia and Texas.
The irony of Biden’s signature climate bill is that states that overwhelmingly support Trump are some of the biggest recipients of the funding it provides. This means that tampering with the IRA could put the Trump administration in political jeopardy, even if Republicans control the Senate, if not Congress. In addition to providing incentives to households (last year alone, 3.4 million American households filed a claim) Over $8 billion in tax credits (for home energy improvements), this law has so far It ended up being $150 billion. Since its passage in 2022, new investments in the green economy have increased, boosting the manufacturing of technologies such as batteries and solar panels. The project could ultimately create 160,000 jobs, according to research group Atlas Public Policy. “About 66 percent of all IRA spending went to red states,” Hausfather said. “Certainly there is now an emergency for Republicans to preserve some of the subsidies.”
Even more progress was happening at the state and local level before Biden’s signature climate bill was passed. For example, New York has set the following goals: reduce greenhouse gas emissions A reduction of 40 percent by 2030 and 85 percent by 2050 from 1990 levels. Colorado also aims to reduce emissions. At least 90% reduction by 2050. Automaker Stellantis has signed an agreement with the state of California that commits it to meeting the state’s zero-emission vehicle mandate even if a judicial or federal lawsuit overturns it. The same car is then sold in other states.
“State governments will be the most visible challenger to the direction in which President Donald Trump is taking the country on environmental policy,” said Thad Kousser, co-director of the Yankelovich Social Science Research Center at the University of California, San Diego. ” he said. “If the Trump administration lowers national standards, California and states allied with California will seek to adhere to stricter standards.”
Last week, 62% of voters in Washington state soundly rejected a ballot initiative seeking to repeal a landmark law raising money to fight climate change. “Donald Trump will learn what our opponents in our initiative fights have learned: You can’t take away the benefits once people have earned them,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said at a press conference Friday. It’s going to happen,” he said. “He’s going to lose the effort to repeal the Inflation Control Act because governors and mayors of both parties are going to say, ‘This is mine and you’re not going to mess with it.'”
Even without federal funding, states regularly undertake their own large-scale projects to adapt to climate change. For example, voters in California We just overwhelmingly approved a $10 billion bond. Fund water, climate and wildfire prevention projects. “It will be an example,” said Saharnaz Mirzazad, executive director of the U.S. branch of Global Sustainability Municipalities. “Use this at the state or local level to [more of] These types of bonds. We can help you build a more resilient infrastructure. ”
Cities are also a key driver of climate action: In 2021, 130 U.S. cities will Signed a pledge supported by the United Nations their decarbonization. “The uncooperative nature of the federal government is unhelpful, to say the least,” said David, managing director of the C40 Center for Cities Climate Policy and Economics, a global network of mayors fighting climate change. Mr. Miller says. “That doesn’t mean climate action will stop at all. It won’t, and we’ve already seen that twice in recent U.S. history when Republican administrations withdrew from international agreements. The city comes to the fore.”
Mayors do not speak in isolation. Cities are sharing information about how they create legislation, including laws that reduce the carbon footprint of buildings and ensure new developments are connected to public transportation. They transform food systems to grow more crops locally, provide jobs and reduce emissions associated with transporting produce from far away. “If anything, having to oppose the kind of administration that we envision will redouble our advocacy efforts at the local level,” Miller said.
While many local projects may run out of federal funding, city governments, community groups, and philanthropic organizations can still exists. “You think of a spider web, but we use scissors or a machete or something to cut out some of the cobwebs,” says the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that promotes solutions to climate change. said Elizabeth Sowin, director of the organization MultiSolving Institute. . “There’s resilience in having so many layers of partners.”
Overall, climate change has evolved on so many fronts over the years, and will continue to do so regardless of who occupies the White House, often without sufficient support from the federal government. Dew. “This too will pass and I hope that in four years’ time we will have a more favorable policy environment,” Hausfather said. “In the meantime, we must continue our efforts to make clean energy affordable and hope to win on its merits.”
