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When Donald Trump was elected U.S. president for a second time, he promised to promote U.S. energy dominance by increasing production of fossil fuels. Even so, many observers assumed initially that while Biden-era incentives for electric vehicles would be cut, many of the clean energy policies created with the Inflation Reduction Act might stick, given their economic benefits.

That’s because eliminating them, they observed, would deter the supply of new electricity getting onto the grid, since solar, wind and battery systems can be installed much faster than natural gas or nuclear power. Not to mention the fact that the tens of billions of dollars in planned investment would produce tens of thousands of new jobs, particularly in Republican-leaning states in the Southeast. A savvier approach would have been to keep most programs in place, perhaps renaming them the “American Patriot Power Program,” or something similarly jingoistic.

Instead, Trump adhered closely to the Project 2025 manifesto, which advocated for an aggressive rollback of Biden’s “climate fanaticism.” Driven more by spite than economics, he phased out tax credits for large wind and solar projects, residential clean energy tax, clean hydrogen funding and, of course, EV tax credits. Fuel-economy standards for cars and trucks have also been weakened, a gift to carmakers to cash in on sales of profitable, gas-guzzling big SUVs and pickups, but not so good for consumers when fuel prices jump.

Some incentives survived, such as for nuclear and geothermal energy and battery storage. And the moves haven’t killed the growth of utility-scale wind and solar, combined with battery storage – in part because even without incentives they’re often more cost-effective – but they have slowed the pace of additions to the grid, even as electricity demand pushes up power bills for Americans at more than twice the rate of overall inflation. Now with the outbreak of war in Iran, gasoline prices are spiking, up 26% since combat missions began, even though U.S. oil and gas production is at an all-time high. That’s because oil prices are set globally, and if 20% of the world’s oil supply isn’t moving through the Strait of Hormuz due to the war, the price pain is felt everywhere.

Trump’s animus to offshore wind–originating over a decade ago when he decried turbines off the coast of Scotland that were visible from golf courses he was developing–has also led the administration to block several large East Coast wind farms from powering up, even though the region is in desperate need of more electricity. The boom in energy-thirsty data centers is also straining utilities across the country, underscoring the need for an........

© Forbes