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Whether on the campaign trail, at his rallies or at big speeches to the United Nations General Assembly or the World Economic Forum, Donald Trump rarely misses a chance to trash clean energy. His animus stretches back to at least 2012, when he waged a legal battle to stop a wind farm off the coast of Scotland that he didn’t like because it was visible from one of his golf courses.

He lost that fight, but as U.S. president, he’s signed executive orders blocking domestic offshore wind projects and pushed federal agencies to slow new clean energy projects on federal land, even as data centers and the electrification of everything push utility rates to nosebleed levels.

“Because of my landslide election victory, the United States avoided the catastrophic energy collapse which befell every European nation that pursued the Green New Scam – perhaps the greatest hoax in history,” he said in a meandering speech in Davos.

And yet, the fastest rising source of new electric power being added to the U.S. grid this year and next will be solar, with wind growing, though at a slower pace, according to the Energy Information Administration. Based on its short-term outlook, “utility-scale solar is the fastest-growing source of electricity generation in the United States, increasing from 290 [billion kilowatt-hours] in 2025 to 424 BkWh by 2027. Almost 70 gigawatts of new solar generating capacity projects are scheduled to come online in 2026 and 2027, which represents a 49% increase in U.S. solar operating capacity compared with the end of 2025.”

That’s because even though Trump’s administration has done much to gut Biden-era programs advancing clean energy, numerous big solar projects got in under the wire before federal incentives were eliminated and are coming online this year and next. Wind power, most heavily concentrated in the middle of the U.S., isn’t growing quite as quickly, likely increase only by 100 BkWh over the next two years, according to EIA.

Trump is pushing for more carbon energy extraction and........

© Forbes