Grid block.
Trump's vain attempt to kill clean energy.
Illustration: Stephen Kelly/Getty Images
Economist Paul Krugman is “very worried” about the future of our nation’s capacity to generate electricity. He argues that our already stressed energy grid is being strained even further by the additional demand created by AI and data centers. And that all this is being made worse by the current regime’s policies. Writes Krugman:
Donald Trump and his officials have a fanatical hatred for renewable energy and indeed of anything that even sounds like an acknowledgement that climate change is real. So they are doing all they can to block solar and wind projects, while trying to force America to burn more coal.
Last year Trump said, “We aren’t allowing any windmills to go up and we don’t want the solar panels. Fossil fuel is the thing that works.” Accordingly, Republicans in Congress have been aiding this onslaught by tearing up the tax incentives that kick started new clean energy investments, mostly in rural conservative areas. And for almost a year, the Pentagon has held up permits for some 155 wind projects in 24 states, claiming they could interfere with military drones.
As reported by The Guardian, Trump’s Interior Department has struck deals with energy companies to cancel eight offshore wind projects, paying them roughly $2.7 billion in public money to do so. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy has allocated another billion or so to “modernize,” retrofit and extend the lives of coal plants that were heading toward closure because they were no longer economically viable.
But will this drill, baby, drill agenda turn out to be successful? Probably not. Nearly a third of all the energy produced in the world today already comes from renewable sources. In the US, electricity generation from wind and solar energy overtook coal back in 2024. Mainly because fossil fuel energy is increasingly uneconomic.
A 2023 Energy Innovation analysis found that 99% of domestic coal plants cost more to run than replacing their output with renewable energy. Plus, wind, solar and batteries are now far cheaper and quicker to construct than gas and coal plants, causing a market “tipping point” that Trump cannot reverse, according to Peter Davidson, chief executive of Aligned Climate Capital, a clean energy investor.
Federal courts are getting in on the act, too, blocking Trump’s anti-renewables actions, such as barring solar and wind projects on federal land, and allowing offshore wind projects currently under construction to resume work. And if you add in other growing sources of energy — like hydropower, geothermal, biomass and tidal — Professor Krugman may not have much to worry about, after all.