Trump's unserious solution to the energy challenge
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STEPHEN LACEY | The first week of Donald Trump's second term has shattered any lingering illusions about his energy agenda. As we should have expected, we're relearning an old lesson: take him literally.
Throughout the campaign, when Trump railed against the "Green New Deal" (his catch-all term for the Inflation Reduction Act), some industry observers clung to a comforting assumption — that the complex web of clean energy investments would prove too difficult or too politically popular to unwind. As Latitude Media reports this week, that was "wishful thinking."
The "Unleashing American Energy" executive order, signed on day one, puts an immediate pause on billions in IRA funding — both allocated and unallocated. While characterized as a 90-day review, legal experts see the pause as a carefully crafted first step in a broader campaign to dismantle the legislation. They expect that projects focused on EV charging, battery manufacturing, and renewables are likely to be put on ice, while fossil fuel, nuclear, and critical minerals projects instead get fast-tracked.
In a separate executive order, Trump declared an “energy emergency,” geared toward unleashing the executive’s emergency powers and encouraging more fossil fuel development. One of those powers is suspending the Clean Air Act.?
The U.S. energy system is indeed facing constraints, but the problem certainly isn’t that we don’t have enough fossil fuels. Since 2019, the country has been a net exporter of energy, and in 2023 natural gas exports reached a record high. The challenge is complicated, but the main problem is a lack of transmission, and the terawatts of clean energy sitting in interconnection queues.?
The irony is clear: by declaring an energy emergency while systematically targeting the fastest-growing, most cost-competitive resources on the grid, Trump has made it clear he's pursuing a fundamentally unserious solution to a serious challenge. It's a preview of an energy agenda that appears more focused on unwinding Biden's achievements than addressing America's actual energy needs.
The question now isn't whether Trump means what he says; we know he does. The question is how much of the clean energy economy he can reshape through executive action alone. If week one is any indication, he's determined to find out.
THE ROUNDUP
Trump's first week fallout?
Over the last five days, Trump has withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris Climate Treaty, paused offshore wind leasing in federal waters, and declared a “national energy emergency.” At least five of the 46 presidential actions he signed in his first 24 hours target the energy industry.
The looming question is what his attempt to walk back the Biden administration’s work on energy will mean for the projects that have relied on that funding.?
When it comes to the 90 day “pause” on disbursing IRA and infrastructure funding, legal experts suggest that there isn’t much recourse for the developers behind those projects — at least not yet. John Lushetsky, senior vice president of ML Strategies, said the short delay “threads a needle” between Trump’s campaign trail promises and the stated plan from congressional Republicans to take “a scalpel and not a sledgehammer” to the IRA.
That said, if the pause is extended beyond 90 days, or if there are further, more concrete efforts to cancel allocated funding, Lushetsky said “all bets are off.” Litigation — particularly over allocated funds — seems inevitable in that case. And unallocated funds, even for projects that have a commitment but don’t yet have a check in hand, may just not be spent.
Against this backdrop, the fate of loans handed out by the Department of Energy’s Loans Programs Office — and the office itself — remains especially uncertain. Under the Biden administration, the office, which has a nearly $400 billion authority to offer loans to help projects reach commercialization, signed more than 50 deals, doling out over $100 billion.?
With the order to pause disbursement of funds, “the question mark on LPO is probably the biggest one,” said Lushetsky.
PG&E employs a Silicon Valley approach to innovation against wildfires
Inside a massive dome in San Ramon, PG&E engineers are recreating a utility nightmare: power lines starting wildfires. At the Advanced Technology Services Campus, the utility is attempting to thread a difficult needle: accelerating the pace of tech innovations that the power sector increasingly needs, while ensuring reliability and, ideally, not raising prices.
The ATS approach employs a structure that’s more familiar to PG&E’s Silicon Valley neighbors, a nimbleness that is rare in the utility world. “Sometimes innovation doesn’t require new technology,” said Wen Tu, who leads integrated grid planning for the utility. “Sometimes innovation is just thinking about doing things a different way.”
While ATS works on all kinds of utility innovation, one of its primary focuses today is wildfire prevention. Over the last decade, PG&E has paid billions in penalties for transmission line-caused fires, including the 2018 Camp Fire (California’s largest fire, which killed 85 people and flattened the town of Paradise), the 2019 Kincade Fire, and the 2021 Dixie Fire.
领英推荐
The work is more urgent than ever. Beyond PG&E’s service territory, wildfires continue to tear across Los Angeles County, with the Hughes fire the latest blaze to spin out of control. Both the Los Angles Department of Water and Power and Southern California Edison are already facing lawsuits alleging that their equipment played a part in the Palisades and Eaton fires, respectively.
MORE STORIES + PODCASTS
MAEVE ALLSUP |?Inside PG&E’s race to reinvent California’s grid
THE GREEN BLUEPRINT | ?? GridStor's race to complete one of the first IRA tax credit transfers
MAEVE ALLSUP | Lisa Martine Jenkins | ‘Baseload’ is Trump 2.0’s energy watch word
CATALYST WITH Shayle Kann |??? The climate-ag grab bag
LATITUDE STUDIOS | Sponsored: The hidden barriers to clean energy on tribal lands
IN OTHER NEWS
Latitude Media | On the last business day for the Biden administration, DOE's Loan Programs Office finalized three loans — including a massive $15B one for PG&E.
*Bloomberg | One of the South's worst winter storms in 130 years caused record winter power demand in PJM, where record snowfall occurred this week.
Latitude Media | In the first 24 hours of his second term, Trump signed at least five executive orders targeting the clean energy industry.
Utility Dive | FERC conditionally approved?SPP’s Markets+ Western power market, which they expect to begin operating in 2027.
Semafor | Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), who has helped lead recent negotiations around permitting reform, said it might be more difficult than ever to pass legislation on the issue.
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