Trump’s War Against Renewable Energy And Green Tech Costs Consumers
January 23, 2026
The Trump administration reportedly has canceled $30 billion in green loans from the Biden era and is revising another $53 billion, reported The Hill.
To be accurate, some of this total includes cancellations from last year, like a $4.9 billion loan guarantee for a power line that would connect wind and solar power to the grid, because generating power means nothing if it cannot reach where it’s needed.
But that is just one example. The administration’s animosity extends to every area, and the results are often unseen costs for taxpayers. The dismantling of the Energy Star program might seem unimportant — just some appliance labeling program. But it was much more than that, providing a vast data resource needed across multiple industries.
Forget for a moment that consumers wanted to know how much appliances would cost to run, to better calculate the true cost over time. Companies of all sorts need the same info, which has been available for such commercial equipment as HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning), refrigerators, freezers, ovens, boilers, large-scale data processing equipment, windows, doors, and more. The lack of information means a lack of insight into how to save money.
The data cutoff is also hurting the entire real estate industry. Anyone who claims that businesses don’t care about environmental issues know next to nothing about corporate practicalities. Developers and investors focus on the long-term costs of building and maintaining properties, as I’ve learned over years of speaking to people in all areas of commercial real estate. Energy efficiency and, yes, even carbon footprints are important to them as they consider costs and current and eventual regulatory compliance.
Green tech is important for lowering environmental impact but also for saving money and providing the energy the country needs. Here are some graphs from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Over the next couple of years, electric generation from natural gas, coal, and nuclear will decline. Growth is going to come primarily from solar and wind, slightly from hydropower. These are critical to ensuring that the U.S. has the amount of electrical generation it needs.
More specifically, according to the EIA’s short-term energy outlook report, natural gas will drop from 40% of electrical generation to 39%. Coal will drop from 17% to 15%. Hydropower will be flat at 6%. Wind will climb from 11% to 12%. Solar, from 7% to 10%.
Then there is the question of how much energy costs. This is a lot more complicated than it might seem. Some fuels are used to directly create heat or power engines like cars. Some are used to generate electricity.
The costs of power from new renewables is now cheaper than from fossil fuels, according to an article in Our World in Data. In the last 10 years, in most places in the world, this changed from fossil fuels being cheaper. “The fundamental driver of this change is that renewable energy technologies follow learning curves, which means that with each doubling of the cumulative installed capacity their price declines by the same fraction,” they wrote. The more that’s done, the cheaper it becomes. Fossil fuel-generated electricity doesn’t follow the same path.
The future for more energy that is also more affordable is renewable, with green technologies reducing the need for energy in specific uses, cutting the overall cost. Trump’s fascination with fossil fuels and dislike of renewables, for whatever reason, is costing the country, and consumers and businesses, money.
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