Wind And Solar Are ‘A Blight On Our Country’

During a meeting of his full cabinet Tuesday, President Donald Trump went off on his administration’s continuing efforts to marginalize the wind and solar industries in the United States. After four years of heavy subsidies and easing of permitting restrictions under the Biden presidency, those industries must be feeling a bit shell-shocked over the steady stream of bad news coming at them from Washington, DC since January 20.

“We don’t want wind, and we don’t want solar because they’re a blight on our country,” Trump said. “They hurt our country very badly, and smart countries don’t use it.”

The President’s comments came after Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the meeting that “wind, solar and batteries combined total just 3% of U.S. primary energy consumption. Three percent for a trillion dollars, half a trillion…that’s just not a good investment, and it hurts our companies, hurts consumers. And the One Big Beautiful Bill also unshackled oil, gas, and coal development in the United States onshore and offshore.”

Trump’s remarks targeting wind and solar are certainly debatable, but the direction of energy and climate policy in his second presidency is well beyond any real doubt. What had been a policy-induced march to advance a struggling energy transition away from mineral fuels and internal combustion cars to intermittent energy sources and electric vehicles has itself transitioned into a policy-induced transition back to the previous status quo.

Following five months filled with major executive orders and administrative efforts to boost the oil, gas, and coal industries, the President’s signing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) on July 4 effectively resets the energy policy playing field to more of a 2019 posture, a time when the United States had achieved a high level of energy security, and seemed poised to reach Trump’s cherished goal of American Energy Dominance.

New Trump EO Targets Wind And Solar

Trump appeared to pile insult onto injury where wind and solar are concerned when, on July 7, he signed another executive order titled, “Ending Market Distorting Subsidies For Unreliable, Foreign Controlled Energy Sources.”

Stating that the proliferation of wind and solar projects “displaces affordable, reliable, dispatchable domestic energy sources, compromises our electric grid, and denigrates the beauty of our Nation’s natural landscape,” the directive orders Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to “take all action as the Secretary of the Treasury deems necessary and appropriate to strictly enforce the termination of the clean electricity production and investment tax credits under sections 45Y and 48E of the Internal Revenue Code for wind and solar facilities.” That part of the order not only directs Bessent to ensure the IRS effectively enforces the provisions in the OBBBA to phase out wind and solar subsidies, it further orders him to to issue new guidance regarding the “beginning of construction” language in the law to prevent “the artificial acceleration or manipulation of eligibility,” and to find ways to restrict the use of “broad safe harbors unless a substantial portion of a subject facility has been built.”

Perhaps even more ominously for wind and solar, the order further directs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to conduct a major, 45-day review to identify any administrative policies under his jurisdiction which provide preferential treatment for wind and solar projects and move to correct them. There is little doubt that the Biden DOI exercised preferential treatment for wind and solar projects both on federal lands and federal waters.

Offshore wind projects in the Northeast Atlantic federal waters seemed especially able in the Biden years to obtain permits and quickly satisfy environmental impact requirements which tend to hold up other energy projects for years. Thus, this part of Trump’s new order could become especially bothersome to those industries.

The order’s other major provision directs Bessent to “take prompt action” as he “deems appropriate and consistent with applicable law to implement the enhanced Foreign Entity of Concern restrictions” in the OBBBA. That section of the new law restricts access to tax credits for any energy project which obtains parts or equipment from countries – like China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea – whose labor practices and other policies potentially violate human rights.

Given that China exerts major control over production, processing, and supply chains for critical energy minerals and manufactured products essential to wind, solar, and electric vehicles, strict enforcement of this section of the OBBBA could create major problems for those industries.

Wind And Solar Face A Tough Road Ahead

Many energy writers and analyists, myself included, believed in January that changes in the direction of federal energy policies would come in the same kind of slow-moving trickle characterized by the first Trump presidency. Instead, we’ve seen a rapid-fire sea change in direction from the executive branch, supplemented by energy-related language in the OBBBA that is likely to prove to be far more impactful than some critics suggest.

Taken all together, President Trump and congressional Republicans have effectively reordered the energy policy playing field in a way that ends any notion that a true energy transition is happening in the United States. Many will argue about the wisdom and potential impacts to come, but no one can deny the shocking speed with which it has all come about.

For those in the wind and solar industries, the thought that this second Trump presidency is still in its early days, with 42 months still to run, must be daunting indeed.