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The election of President-elect Donald Trump is having a major impact on the clean energy narrative in Washington, with NetZero Insider reporters tracking the political transition now underway and who’s saying what.
K Kaufmann was at the Department of Energy’s Deploy 2024 Conference to hear a farewell speech from Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who focused on the billions of dollars of investment in cleantech going to Republican states and congressional districts. The clean energy transition is “inevitable and inexorable” and “built to last,” she said.
Kaufmann also reported on Loan Programs Office Director Jigar Shah’s appearance at the USEA’s Advanced Energy Technology Showcase, where he argued for LPO’s critical role in supporting U.S. innovators and entrepreneurs with the financing they need to develop their new technologies at scale in the U.S.
LPO’s portfolio includes companies led by some of “the most exciting entrepreneurs and innovators that America has to offer,” Shah said. “I think they’re irresistible. I think folks are going to want us to continue to do big things.”
What people are not talking about is climate and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, John Cropley notes in his coverage of the Solar Energy Industries Association’s new policy priorities. At the top of SEIA’s list are achieving U.S. energy dominance, cutting dependence on China, surging U.S. manufacturing and cutting red tape.
Moving to the global stage in our curated content, Inside Climate News has an eye-opening investigation on “litigation finance,” the lawsuits that fossil fuel companies are funding against countries ― often with still developing economies ― that are attempting to enact climate policies that would reduce fossil fuel use and emissions.
ICN also reports on the rising use of social media — like X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok — to spread mis- and disinformation on climate change, especially during the U.N.’s recent COP29 in Azerbaijan.
In another sign of financial pullback from climate goals, Goldman Sachs has withdrawn from the U.N.-sponsored Net Zero Banking Alliance, according to ESG Today. The company says it remains committed to aligning its financing activities with the goal of achieving a net-zero economy by 2050, its withdrawal comes as U.S. companies are under increasing scrutiny and pressure from anti-ESG advocates.
Moving to the community level, Grist delves into how small fishing and farming communities in the U.S. and worldwide are shifting to overnight work in response to record-setting extreme heat ― a trend that impacts individuals and their communities economically, physically, emotionally and socially. And research shows the trend is set to increase as GHG emissions and temperatures also rise.
The Trump transition is also grabbing plenty of headlines in the mainstream media. The New York Times reports on how climate activists like Bill McKibben are shifting their strategies to the local level. To start, they are “attending the meetings of obscure state agencies or commissions that hold a lot of power over the energy transition.”
A New York Times op-ed further argues for a more pragmatic and less dogmatic approach to climate, calling for a shift from “treating climate change as a moral crusade against fossil fuel villains to treating it as a problem of technological innovation and industrial strategy.”
The Washington Post has a deep dive on the transformation of Tesla CEO Elon Musk from calling for a “popular uprising” against fossil fuels, to his current position as a major Trump influencer who says climate change need not be a short-term priority.
Read on for this week’s Intelligence Report: |
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