Green tech leaders have warned a Donald Trump presidency could decimate the US offshore wind industry, slow the roll out of electric vehicles and imperil the country’s efforts to become a renewable energy superpower that can compete with China.
With polls showing the former president running neck and neck with Kamala Harris in the race for the White House, industry and climate groups are stepping up their efforts to boost the vice-president’s prospects by hosting donor events, financing advertising campaigns and speaking out about political risks to the sector.
“There is a very good chance that he’ll try to just kill the industry and try to shut things down and maybe even revoke permits,” said Christopher MacRae Ham, manager of offshore wind at energyRe, which is co-developing a large wind project off the New Jersey coastline with Invenergy, the country’s largest private renewables developer.
During this week’s presidential debate in Philadelphia, the former president reiterated his support for fossil fuels and scepticism about renewables and launched a scathing attack on Harris’s energy policies.
“We’ll go back to windmills and we’ll go back to solar, where they need a whole desert to get some energy to come out,” said Trump, who nevertheless suggested he was a “big fan of solar”.
The Republican candidate’s attacks on green energy have alarmed the renewables industry, which is racing to secure government approvals, permits and funding before the November 5 election.
Investors are watching the campaign to determine whether hundreds of billions of dollars of tax breaks and subsidies provided by the Biden administration could be abolished if Trump won. His plan to impose massive tariffs on imports is another big concern, as this could further upend renewable energy supply chains, they said.
Desmond Wheatley, chief executive of Beam Global, a San Diego-based electric vehicle charging company, told the Financial Times: “Wall Street is getting itself convinced that somehow a Trump win is the death knell for companies like ours, which it isn’t. But it negatively impacts our share price.”
Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and vowed to halt offshore wind energy on “day one” if he wins the election. He has also pledged to terminate the “green new scam” — an apparent reference to the Biden’s administration’s flagship industrial policy, the Inflation Reduction Act.
Mark Brownstein, senior vice-president of energy transition at advocacy group the Environmental Defense Fund, said a Trump administration and a complicit Congress would undermine the IRA and billions of dollars of private investments could “whither on the vine”.
“It would be ironic if the Trump administration in the name of making America great again, stalls out the engine of innovation and investment that is the envy of the world,” he said. “The world is not sitting still and China continues to lean into green investment to jump-start its economy.”
EDF, along with two other climate groups — the League of Conservation Voters and Climate Power — launched a $55mn advertising campaign last month backing Harris in swing states.
Grassroots climate campaigners such as Bill McKibben have organised fundraisers for Harris, while Clean Energy for America, a network of industry leaders and workers, is hosting donor events in Washington and New York.
Meanwhile, Trump has courted oil bosses and has received about $14mn from the fossil fuels industry, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks campaign financing.
As president, Trump rolled back restrictions on fossil fuel production and limits to emissions from power plants and vehicles, boosted tariffs on clean energy products, reduced the number of permits for offshore wind, and threatened to kill federal support for electric vehicles.
Nevertheless, US clean energy installations expanded during his presidency. Wind capacity grew 45 per cent between 2016 and 2020, while solar capacity more than doubled, according to data from the Energy Information Administration. Trump’s administration eventually renewed tax credits for solar and wind projects and electric vehicles.
Some clean tech executives believe a Trump administration is unlikely to be able to undo the progress achieved under Biden because the cost of green technologies are falling rapidly and Democrats and Republicans in Congress would likely block repeal of the IRA.
Last month 18 Republicans in the House of Representatives signed a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson, asking him not to work towards “prematurely repealing energy tax credits” supporting new IRA investments — the majority of which have gone to Republican states.
“Even if Trump wins the election a lot of the IRA will probably survive because of the job creation it has delivered in Republican states,” said Charles Cherington, co-founder of private equity group Ara Partners, which invests in businesses working to decarbonise industry.
But others worry the chaos and uncertainty created by another Trump presidency could pause or derail US efforts to build a resilient domestic clean energy supply chain that can compete with China.
Elaine Borseth, president of the Electric Vehicle Association, a non-profit organisation working to accelerate EV uptake, said Trump’s proposals to abolish new tailpipe emissions rules for cars that would accelerate the uptake of electric vehicles and a $7,500 tax credit for EV buyers are “definitely a concern”.
She added that removing government support for EVs would threaten the US economy and domestic carmakers with a 1970s-style crisis, a period when Japanese and South Korean rivals stole market share from American carmakers. This time around the “Chinese will just take over in the EV market”, Borseth added.
