On January 20, the United States Department of Energy released a report on the first year of Donald Trump’s second term called \u201cPROMISES MADE, PROMISES KEPT\u201d which touted a return to global energy dominance and a reversal of the \u201cBiden energy subtraction agenda.\u201d But on the ground in energy-industry states, the story is a lot more complicated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A groundswell of anti-renewable sentiment has cropped up in rural and red areas<\/a> of the United States in recent years, echoed and crystallized by the Trump campaign but certainly not created by it. However, this stance has caused many local-level economies to plateau, as some of the nation\u2019s biggest concentrations of renewable energy development were unfolding in red states and counties, which tend to hold the undeveloped land and the blue-collar workforce that such projects call for.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Iowa, for example \u2013 a state which voted for Trump in all three elections he ran in \u2013 wind energy has flourished over the past decade. Iowa is currently the second-largest wind producer after Texas, and wind energy provides around two-thirds of the state\u2019s energy. The state\u2019s largest utility reports that the growth of wind power in the midwestern state \u201chas directly held down Iowans\u2019 electricity bills<\/a>\u201d according to recent reporting from Politico\u2019s E&E News. But now, Iowa\u2019s wind industry has come to a near-complete standstill.<\/p>\n \u201cWind energy development has all but ground to a halt in the face of community opposition, a phaseout of federal tax credits and the Trump administration\u2019s actions to slow the approval of federal permits,\u201d reports<\/a> The Gazette, a local news outlet based in Cedar Rapids. Now, many locals are wondering whether Iowans have shot themselves in the foot by embracing an anti-wind and anti-renewable political agenda.<\/p>\n And Iowans are not alone. \u201cU.S. onshore wind is in its weakest shape in about a decade, not because the technology has stopped being competitive, but because the policy and, to an extent, the macro-environment have turned sharply against it,\u201d Atin Jain, a BloombergNEF energy analyst, told The Gazette.<\/p>\n Embodying this opposition, Trump recently said, \u201cmy goal is to not let any windmill be built,\u201d at a White House meeting with oil executives. \u201cThey\u2019re losers.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have not approved one windmill since I\u2019ve been in office,\u201d Trump went on to say at last month\u2019s World Economic Forum summit in Davos, \u201cand we\u2019re going to keep it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n This could be a major issue for wind-heavy states like Texas and Iowa, both of which helped to put Trump in office. And the bottoming out of renewable energy growth comes at a particularly painful time. Energy demand across the nation (and the world) is skyrocketing, driven by the AI boom and the voracious energy needs of data centers.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s energy policy and its gutting of renewable incentives \u201cseverely hamstrings the U.S. ability to meet skyrocketing power demands and dilutes its economic competitiveness on the global stage,\u201d Sandhya Ganapathy, CEO of Houston-based EDP Renewables North America, told Forbes<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n