Unleashing American Renewable Energy Dominance

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Oh the irony, it burns. While US President Trump fantasizes about converting Canada into the 51st state, Russia has already converted the US into a Soviet-style satellite state with the eager assistance of the President himself. That extends to Trump’s new “Unleashing American Energy Dominance” plan. Despite the fact that renewable energy now leads in new power generating capacity by a wide margin, the Trump plan supports an outdated, Soviet-era fossil fuel model.

Unleashing Renewable Energy Dominance

What do you think, is “Soviet-style satellite state” accurate? Too harsh? Not harsh enough? Among other signs of capitulation, this week alone President Trump trashed US allies in Europe and handed Ukraine over to Russia on a silver platter. If you have any thoughts about that, drop a note in the comment thread. Better yet, contact your representatives in Congress.

As for something called “energy dominance,” critics pounced all over the “American Energy Dominance” plan as soon as Trump articulated it, and for good reason. Renewable energy has emerged as a powerful engine of economic activity. Nevertheless, Trump practically demolished the emerging US offshore wind industry with one swipe of his pen.

Even as new high-performing offshore wind turbines enter the marketplace, the US will be stuck in the mud as other nations around the world jump on new offshore opportunities. The firm Youwind Renewables, for example, anticipates a sixfold increase in installed offshore wind capacity in the Asia-Pacific region. “Japan alone aims to roll out 10 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030 and scale this to as much as 45 GW by 2040,” Youwind notes.

Youwind credits robust government targets and localized turbine manufacturing among the factors supporting regional demand. Those factors are no longer operative in the US former-President Biden’s 30-gigawatt offshore wind goal is no more, and stakeholders in the industry’s 40-state supply chain have nowhere to go unless they find new business elsewhere.

US Businesses Are Unleashing American Renewable Energy Dominance

US fossil energy producers are finding a dream come true in the Trump administration, but “American Energy Dominance” is a day late and a dollar short. That’s the takeaway from a new market report titled “Sustainable Energy in America 2025 Factbook,” prepared by BNEF for the organization Business Council for Sustainable Energy.

“In 2024, U.S. power generation reached its highest volume in two decades, driven by growth in renewable energy technologies and by stable natural gas generation capacity,” BCSE summarizes, indicating that the growing corporate preference for renewable energy has contributed to stagnation in the gas power plant field.

“Corporate procurement of renewable energy set a record in 2024, contracting 28 gigawatts (GW), up 34 percent from 20.9 GW in 2022,” BCSE said, noting that tech firms accounted for 84% of the total.

So Much For Saving All Your Coal Jobs

The BNEF report also draws attention to the fact that the combination of natural gas and renewable energy is continuing to push coal out of the power generation picture. Coal once accounted for about 50% of US power generation. By 2014 that was down to 33%, primarily due to an abundance of low-cost natural gas.

Trump took office for the first time in 2017, riding into the Oval Office with a pledge to save coal jobs. He failed to stop the bleeding. “In the past decade, coal-fired generation has seen a steady decline from 33% percent to 15% of the U.S. power mix,” BNEF reported.

As the US coal industry collapsed, Trump stopped mentioning coal jobs early in his tenure, preferring to lavish attention on the growth of gas production in the US. His second term promises more of the same, so keep an eye on those coal figures. Last year coal lost ground in the power generation industry again, falling 4.4% from its 2023 share.

Renewable Energy Vs. Natural Gas

If Trump wants to do any more favors for natural gas producers, he’s got his work cut out for him. According to BNEF, gas only accounted for 2.4 gigawatts of new capacity additions in 2024, while wind and solar clocked in at 71%.

That’s not a good sign for gas stakeholders. Although natural gas still accounted for the largest source of electricity last year with a 43% share, renewables (wind, solar, biomass, waste-to-energy, geothermal, and hydropower combined) accounted for a substantial 24%. With nuclear energy thrown into the mix, non-fossil resources accounted for 42% of US power generation.

And, this is where it gets interesting. Low-cost natural gas edged coal out of the US power generation profile during Trump’s first term in office. When the cost of renewables began to drop, wind and solar began to compete against gas for a piece of the pie. Under the American Energy Dominance plan, the gas slice is all but certain to shrink even farther.

Trump prioritized fossil energy, but he does not treat all non-fossil energy the same. He made plenty of room for hydropower, geothermal, and nuclear energy to compete against natural gas, just in time to take advantage of transformational technologies that that have been bubbling up through the R&D pipeline over the past 20 years or so. That includes pumped storage hydropower, “go-anywhere” geothermal systems, and modularized nuclear reactors among other new developments.

Holding The Fort

While hydropower and geothermal may still have an opportunity to accelerate their US business, other clean tech industries remain at risk, especially with Trump threatening to eliminate Biden-era federal tax credits for renewable energy and other clean tech under the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

BCSE and other advocates are lobbying to keep that from happening, with an assist from Senate Democrats.

On February 19, representatives from the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and League of Conservation Voters joined with Senators Tim Kaine of Virginia and Martin Heinrich of Minnesota to rally support for new legislation that will help protect the tax credits, by terminating the President’s “energy emergency” declaration.

“We are producing more energy now than at any other point in our history,” explains Senator Kaine. “Trump’s sham emergency threatens to screw all of that up. Why? Because he’d rather benefit Big Oil and suspend environmental protections than lower costs and create jobs for the American people.”

The legislation requires a vote in the full Senate, expected sometime next week. That means your Senators will have to vote on it one way or another.

Image (cropped): Renewable energy is the real driver of American “energy dominance,” and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy has the receipts (courtesy of US Department of Energy).