Gabrielle Merite for Vox

This story was originally published by Vox.com and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

At every light switch, power socket, and on the road, an unstoppable revolution is already underway.

Technologies that can power our lives and jobs while doing less harm to the global climate—wind, solar, batteries, etc.—are getting cheaper, more efficient, and more abundant. The pace of progress on price, scale, and performance has been so extraordinary that even the most optimistic forecasts about green tech in the past have turned out to be too pessimistic. Clean energy isn’t just powering our devices, tools, and luxuries—it’s growing the global economy, creating a whole suite of new jobs, and reshaping trade.

And despite what headlines may say, there’s no sign these trends will reverse. Political and economic turmoil may slow down clean energy, but the sector has built up so much momentum that it’s become nigh unstoppable.

Take a look at Texas: The largest oil- and gas-producing state in the US is also the largest in wind energy, and it’s installing more solar than any other. Texas utilities have come to realize that investing in clean energy is not just good for the environment; it’s good business. And even without subsidies and preferential treatment, the benefits of clean technologies—in clean air, scalability, distribution, and cost—have become impossible to ignore.

And there’s only more room to grow. The world is still in the early stages of this revolution as market forces become the driver rather than environmental worries. In some US markets, installing new renewable energy is cheaper than running existing coal plants. Last year, the US produced more electricity from wind and solar power than from coal for the first time.

If these energy trends persist, the US economy will see its greenhouse gas emissions diminish faster, reducing its contribution to climate change. The US needs to effectively zero out its carbon dioxide emissions by the middle of the century in order to keep the worst damages of climate change in check.

Now, just a few months into Trump’s second presidency, it’s still an open question just how fragile the country’s progress on clean energy and climate will be. But the data is clear: There is tremendous potential for economic growth and environmental benefits if the country makes the right moves at this key inflection point.

Certainly incentives like tax credits, business loans, and research and development funding could accelerate decarbonization. On the other hand, pulling back — as the Trump administration wants to do — would slow down clean energy in the US, though it wouldn’t stop it.

But the rest of the world isn’t sitting idle, and if the US decides to slow its head start, its competitors may take the lead in a massive, rocketing industry.
—Umair Irfan, Vox climate correspondent

President Donald Trump does not like wind energy—apparently, in part, because he thinks turbines are ugly. “We’re not going to do the wind thing,” Trump said after his inauguration during a rally. “Big, ugly windmills, they ruin your neighborhood.”

He’s put some power behind those feelings. Within mere hours of stepping into office, Trump signed an executive order that hamstrung both onshore and offshore wind energy developments, even as he has claimed that the US faces an energy crisis. The order directed federal agencies to temporarily stop issuing approvals for both onshore and offshore wind projects and pause leasing for offshore projects in federal waters.

Policies like this will harm the wind industry, analysts say, as will existing and potential future tariffs, which will likely make turbines more expensive. Those policies could also pose a serious threat to offshore developments. But the sector overall simply has too much inertia to be derailed, according to Eric Larson, a senior research engineer at Princeton University who studies clean energy.

“Because costs have been coming down so dramatically in the last decade, there is a certain momentum there that’s going to carry through,” Larson said.

Since 2010, US wind capacity has more than tripled, spurred by federal tax incentives. But even without those incentives—which Congress may eventually try to cut—onshore wind turbines are the cheapest source of new energy, according to the research firm Lazard. In 2023, the average cost of new onshore wind projects was two-thirds lower than a typical fossil fuel alternative, per a report by the International Renewable Energy Agency.

In fact, wind energy might be the best example of how politics have had little bearing on the growth of renewable energy. Texas, which overwhelmingly supported Trump in the recent election, generates more wind energy than any other state, by far. The next three top states for wind energy production—Iowa, Oklahoma, and Kansas—all swung for Trump in the last election, too. These states are particularly windy, but they’ve also adopted policies, including tax incentives, that have helped build out their wind-energy sectors.

“It’s just a way to make money,” Larson said of wind. “It has nothing to do with the political........

© Mother Jones