Can solar power avoid Trump’s culture wars? todayheadline

Seamus Fitzgerald hears a lot of opinions about solar power. As the associate director of real estate at OneEnergy Renewables, a solar energy developer, he approaches farmers and other landowners across the Midwest with proposals to lease their properties for solar projects. Some landowners are excited about being part of the shift to clean energy. Others are hostile to the idea of putting rows of gleaming panels on their land.

Fitzgerald manages to convince many farmers by explaining the simple economics of leasing their land for solar power. “At the end of the day, the financial payments from these types of projects are generally higher than what folks can pull off of their ground through other types of crops,” he said. To sell solar power to people who might have hesitations, he often talks about how the technology was invented in America. “When you install a solar project, you’re collecting an American resource here in America,” Fitzgerald said.

It echoes the way that President Donald Trump talks about energy, though he’s usually heaping praise on American oil and gas, not renewables. Still, the Solar Energy Industries Association, the industry’s primary lobbying group, has found plenty of ways to align its work with the administration’s talking points. Now splayed across its site, next to an image of an American flag hovering over solar panels, is a new slogan: “American Energy DOMINANCE.” Earlier this month, the association participated in a lobbying blitz in Washington, D.C., urging lawmakers to keep tax credits for clean energy projects in place.

Solar provided almost 6 percent of total U.S. electricity generation last year, but it’s been growing fast, expected to supply “almost all growth” in electricity generation this year, according to the pre-Trump Energy Information Administration. Many are hoping that the technology — which is broadly popular among Americans, with 78 percent supporting developing more solar farms — can manage to stay out of Trump’s culture wars over climate change. More so than wind power with its towering turbines, solar energy has an ability to bridge ideological divides, appealing to environmentalists and “don’t-tread-on-me” libertarians alike. 

“President Trump has specifically said that he loves solar — and as energy demand soars, we know that solar is the most efficient and affordable way to add a lot of energy to the grid, fast,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, the Solar Energy Industries Association’s president and CEO, in a statement to Grist. 

In December, her trade group released a policy roadmap that reflects Trump’s agenda, with priorities such as “eliminate dependence on China” and “cut red tape in the energy sector.” It’s a change from the vision the association laid out in 2020 after the election of former President Joe Biden, when Hopper promised to “meet the moment of the climate era with equity and justice at the forefront.”

The new language reflects a change in the federal government’s priorities, but also a recognition among solar advocates that they don’t need to talk about climate change to advance clean technologies. “Energy independence — I think that they should scream that from the rooftops,” Fitzgerald said. “Every single politician in the world, in America, should be saying, ‘We’re trying to make these things here to collect energy here.’”

Last year, solar represented more than 80 percent of new electrical generating capacity added to the U.S. grid. But some predict a slowdown. Solar industry stocks plummeted after Trump’s election in November as investors speculated that Republicans might repeal tax credits for solar in the Inflation Reduction Act, the climate law Biden signed in 2022. In January, a report from the data analytics company Wood Mackenzie projected that solar installations would stagnate in many countries because of “post-election uncertainty, waning incentives, power sector reforms, and a shift towards less ambitious climate agendas.” 

“The bottom line is all that adds up to market uncertainty for one of the fastest growing sectors of our economy, and nothing is more important to businesses and investors than market clarity,” said Bob Keefe, the executive director of E2, a nonpartisan organization promoting policies that are good for the economy and environment. “And right now, what Washington is doing in regard to the future of clean energy in America is about as clear as a snowstorm in D.C. at midnight.”

Trump has complained about wind power ever since an offshore wind farm threatened the pristine view from his golf course in Scotland soon after he bought it in 2006. On his first day in office this year, he halted new permits for wind projects on federal lands and waters. But his administration’s position on solar is unclear: He has ranted about how solar farms take over deserts while at the same time saying he’s a “big fan” of the technology. “I think they’re more favorable to solar,” Keefe said, “but who knows? And for who knows how long?”

The Trump administration’s assault on federal bureaucracy has already jeopardized solar projects. The administration has withheld federal grants for climate programs, including Solar for All, a $7 billion program to bring residential solar to low-income neighborhoods, despite court orders to release funding. “We’re seeing real delays in getting that money out the door to the projects that need it,” said Sachu Constantine, executive director of Vote Solar, a nonprofit working to make solar power accessible. 

Despite the continued uncertainty, most Solar for All projects “are still attempting to move forward,” said Michelle Roos, executive director of the Environmental Protection Network, a group of alumni from the Environmental Protection Agency.

By some measures, the culture wars are starting to encroach on Americans’ opinions about solar. Republican support for new solar farms slumped from 84 to 64 percent between 2020 and 2024, according to polling last year from the Pew Research Center. Misinformation campaigns have increasingly targeted clean energy, pushing the idea that solar and wind are unreliable — a line taken up by Citizens for Responsible Solar, a group led by a conservative operative who works to stop solar projects on farmland and timberland. 

There are some valid reasons why people have hesitations about the technology, according to Dustin Mulvaney, an environmental studies professor at San José State University who researches conflicts over solar developments. People might be concerned about projects that take over prime farmland, cut through animal habitat, or affect Indigenous cultural sites. Careful planning can help avoid these conflicts, Mulvaney said. Solar farms can coexist with sheep, for instance. They can be built in a way that leaves space between panels for migrating pronghorn antelope, and in general, avoids prized areas in favor of developing projects on “low-impact sites,” such as degraded lands.

Mulvaney pushes back against the narrative that these concerns are slowing down solar power, arguing that most projects don’t face any resistance at all. Utilities in the U.S. are on track to meet their goals to shift to 100 percent renewable energy by 2060, he pointed out. “To me, the fastest way to get more solar is to require the utilities to buy more of it sooner.”

No matter what Trump does, clean energy advocates are hopeful that solar projects can continue to move forward at the state level. “We feel good about the future for clean energy in our states in the Southeast,” said Mark Fleming, president and CEO of Conservatives for Clean Energy, an organization that works in Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana. “You know, we don’t talk about it in terms of the environment — we talk about it in terms of choice and competition in the market and in terms of good economics, because the price of solar is rapidly declining.” Over the last decade, the cost of installing solar has fallen by nearly 40 percent, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Constantine says that talking about solar’s benefits — whether that’s through creating jobs, reducing blackouts, or pushing electricity prices down — is the key to overcoming hostility. “It is a way to reduce costs, and in this era of rising energy costs and real pinching in people’s pocketbooks, I think that’s a message that resonates,” Constantine said. “When you talk about affordability, resilience, reliability, people get that.”

Naveena Sadasivam contributed reporting to this story.