President Donald Trump has threatened to put a stop on new wind and solar power projects, saying in a social media post that they caused higher electricity prices wherever they were built.
“Any State that has built and relied on WINDMILLS and SOLAR for power are seeing RECORD BREAKING INCREASES IN ELECTRICITY AND ENERGY COSTS. THE SCAM OF THE CENTURY! We will not approve wind or farmer destroying Solar. The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!! MAGA,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The president’s remarks follow an announcement earlier this week that banned the installation of solar panels on farmland. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced the decision, writing on X that “Millions of acres of prime farmland is left unusable so Green New Deal subsidized solar panels can be built. This destruction of our farms and prime soil is taking away the futures of the next generation of farmers and the future of our country.”
Banning offshore wind power installations was one of Trump’s first orders when he took office but he does not really feel any differently about onshore wind, citing bird deaths, noise, and environmental destruction.
Even so, the Energy Information Administration said this week that half of new generation capacity additions in the U.S. this year could be solar power.
Ever since the president took office, life has become rather hard for wind and solar developers. The biggest blow came from the One Big, Beautiful Bill, which, however, left them a loophole, if they were fast enough with construction, because the end of subsidies was set to take effect from 2027. From that moment on, wind and solar developers are on their own and on the support of any private financial backers that may be interested in their projects.
The growth in wind and solar capacity, not only in the U.S. but elsewhere as well has indeed coincided with an increase in electricity prices. Now, with the boom in data center growth, the increase in demand for electricity that has already begun in the U.S. will only accelerate, making the addition of new generating capacity urgent.
The Department of Energy is responding to this urgency by planning growth in natural gas and nuclear capacity. Critics, however, argue that climate change concerns aside, these take much longer to build than a wind or solar installation, especially the latter.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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