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When Donald Trump was inaugurated in 2017, millions of people participated in hundreds of marches around the country and the world to demonstrate their commitment in the new cause of resistance. No such large-scale protests are materializing for next January 20; those who hoped Trump would lose the presidential election now seem more demoralized than defiant.
That reaction is understandable. After a period of progress and optimism about the future, and even as the climate crisis grows more dire, we are in for a difficult four years. As Jesse Jenkins wrote just after the election, the outcome “dealt a devastating blow to U.S. efforts to cut climate-warming pollution.”
But for those feeling despair, there is a way forward: Embrace the fight. Sometimes politics is about compromise, sometimes it’s about patience, and sometimes it’s about righteous fury. This time, fury may be just what’s called for.
There’s no doubt that some very bad vibrations will emanate from Washington. Trump is arriving with the Project 2025 blueprint in hand, ready to undermine climate progress in every corner of government. Key agencies will be led by a veritable murderer’s row of fossil fuel enthusiasts, from the fracking executive who will helm the Department of Energy to the “all-of-the-above” enthusiast who will lead both the Department of the Interior and the new National Energy Council, the goal of which is to achieve what Trump calls, in all caps, “ENERGY DOMINANCE.”
As far as Trump is concerned, “dominance” comes not from wimpy renewables but from pounding holes in the ground and burning what comes out of them, the manly pursuit of those whose hearts beat faster at the thought of America’s foes kneeling in submission before our virile power. And it comes from reversing whatever Joe Biden did, not because Trump necessarily cares whether consumers get subsidies to buy heat pumps, but because undoing his predecessor’s legacy shows that Trump is a winner and everyone else is a loser.
As much as some would like us to believe that by giving Trump one of the narrowest presidential victories in history the voters were explicitly rejecting the Biden administration’s climate policies in favor of Trump’s fossil fuel agenda, there is no evidence that’s true. As much as we would have liked it to be otherwise, most polls showed climate change ranking low when people were asked what decided their vote. Indeed, the most persuasive explanation for the election outcome is that all over the world, voters have turned out whichever party was in power when the wave of post-pandemic inflation hit; Kamala Harris nearly overcame that anti-incumbent wave, but wasn’t able to in the end.
So while Trump may not have much of a “mandate” in general, he certainly doesn’t have one to reverse the progress the country has made on climate. That means the politics of opposing the administration’s climate efforts are in advocates’ favor. At the very least, there is plenty of room to persuade the public that the Trump administration is doing something awful on climate.
Embracing the fight will mean acknowledging that while bipartisanship is sometimes an effective tool, it isn’t an end in itself. Republicans should certainly be welcomed as allies whenever they want to join in defending climate progress or pushing back on efforts to undermine it, but the days when Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich would film an ad together pledging their commitment to address climate change are long behind us. It would be nice if there was a consensus on the need to transition off of fossil fuels, but there isn’t. Instead, there’s a climate assault on its way, and while appeals to the self-interest of some Republicans (such as those politicians whose districts are benefiting enormously from clean energy investments) are possible, a battle is more likely.
That isn’t a bad thing. Conflicts are energizing — they clarify stakes, focus media attention, and motivate people to get involved. And just as many climate advocates realized that warnings of doom (even accurate ones) are often less effective than an optimistic vision of a future of abundance, we should also understand that one of the most powerful arguments in politics is that someone is trying to take something away from you. Which is exactly what Trump will likely do, and when it happens, people ought to be mad about it.
This fight will take place both in Washington and between the Trump administration on one side and states and cities on the other. Ambitious Democrats including Governor Gavin Newsom of California are looking for ways to resist the new Trump administration, not only on substantive grounds but also because standing up to Trump is good politics for them. When they do so on climate policy (as Newsom did when he proposed that his state offer tax credits for electric vehicles if Republicans eliminate the ones provided for in the Inflation Reduction Act), it will highlight climate actions Trump is taking that might otherwise have been overlooked.
In many ways, the climate story of the past few years has been an encouraging one — the passage of the IRA (the most consequential climate law ever), steadily dropping prices for renewables, innovations in energy and carbon mitigation, and more. The next few years will be characterized by conflict.
That may not be what climate advocates want, but it’s unavoidable. And no outcome is predetermined. November 5 altered the politics of climate change, but it didn’t end them; there will be plenty of opportunities to create controversies, exploit political opportunities, and get voters justifiably angry. Fighting — thoughtfully, with careful planning and energy — will be more important than ever.
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A conversation with VDE Americas CEO Brian Grenko.
This week’s Q&A is about hail. Last week, we explained how and why hail storm damage in Texas may have helped galvanize opposition to renewable energy there. So I decided to reach out to Brian Grenko, CEO of renewables engineering advisory firm VDE Americas, to talk about how developers can make sure their projects are not only resistant to hail but also prevent that sort of pushback.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Hiya Brian. So why’d you get into the hail issue?
Obviously solar panels are made with glass that can allow the sunlight to come through. People have to remember that when you install a project, you’re financing it for 35 to 40 years. While the odds of you getting significant hail in California or Arizona are low, it happens a lot throughout the country. And if you think about some of these large projects, they may be in the middle of nowhere, but they are taking hundreds if not thousands of acres of land in some cases. So the chances of them encountering large hail over that lifespan is pretty significant.
We partnered with one of the country’s foremost experts on hail and developed a really interesting technology that can digest radar data and tell folks if they’re developing a project what the [likelihood] will be if there’s significant hail.
Solar panels can withstand one-inch hail – a golfball size – but once you get over two inches, that’s when hail starts breaking solar panels. So it’s important to understand, first and foremost, if you’re developing a project, you need to know the frequency of those events. Once you know that, you need to start thinking about how to design a system to mitigate that risk.
The government agencies that look over land use, how do they handle this particular issue? Are there regulations in place to deal with hail risk?
The regulatory aspects still to consider are about land use. There are authorities with jurisdiction at the federal, state, and local level. Usually, it starts with the local level and with a use permit – a conditional use permit. The developer goes in front of the township or the city or the county, whoever has jurisdiction of wherever the property is going to go. That’s where it gets political.
To answer your question about hail, I don’t know if any of the [authority having jurisdictions] really care about hail. There are folks out there that don’t like solar because it’s an eyesore. I respect that – I don’t agree with that, per se, but I understand and appreciate it. There’s folks with an agenda that just don’t want solar.
So okay, how can developers approach hail risk in a way that makes communities more comfortable?
The bad news is that solar panels use a lot of glass. They take up a lot of land. If you have hail dropping from the sky, that’s a risk.
The good news is that you can design a system to be resilient to that. Even in places like Texas, where you get large hail, preparing can mean the difference between a project that is destroyed and a project that isn’t. We did a case study about a project in the East Texas area called Fighting Jays that had catastrophic damage. We’re very familiar with the area, we work with a lot of clients, and we found three other projects within a five-mile radius that all had minimal damage. That simple decision [to be ready for when storms hit] can make the complete difference.
And more of the week’s big fights around renewable energy.
1. Long Island, New York – We saw the face of the resistance to the war on renewable energy in the Big Apple this week, as protestors rallied in support of offshore wind for a change.
2. Elsewhere on Long Island – The city of Glen Cove is on the verge of being the next New York City-area community with a battery storage ban, discussing this week whether to ban BESS for at least one year amid fire fears.
3. Garrett County, Maryland – Fight readers tell me they’d like to hear a piece of good news for once, so here’s this: A 300-megawatt solar project proposed by REV Solar in rural Maryland appears to be moving forward without a hitch.
4. Stark County, Ohio – The Ohio Public Siting Board rejected Samsung C&T’s Stark Solar project, citing “consistent opposition to the project from each of the local government entities and their impacted constituents.”
5. Ingham County, Michigan – GOP lawmakers in the Michigan State Capitol are advancing legislation to undo the state’s permitting primacy law, which allows developers to evade municipalities that deny projects on unreasonable grounds. It’s unlikely the legislation will become law.
6. Churchill County, Nevada – Commissioners have upheld the special use permit for the Redwood Materials battery storage project we told you about last week.
Long Islanders, meanwhile, are showing up in support of offshore wind, and more in this week’s edition of The Fight.
Local renewables restrictions are on the rise in the Hawkeye State – and it might have something to do with carbon pipelines.
Iowa’s known as a renewables growth area, producing more wind energy than any other state and offering ample acreage for utility-scale solar development. This has happened despite the fact that Iowa, like Ohio, is home to many large agricultural facilities – a trait that has often fomented conflict over specific projects. Iowa has defied this logic in part because the state was very early to renewables, enacting a state portfolio standard in 1983, signed into law by a Republican governor.
But something else is now on the rise: Counties are passing anti-renewables moratoria and ordinances restricting solar and wind energy development. We analyzed Heatmap Pro data on local laws and found a rise in local restrictions starting in 2021, leading to nearly 20 of the state’s 99 counties – about one fifth – having some form of restrictive ordinance on solar, wind or battery storage.
What is sparking this hostility? Some of it might be counties following the partisan trend, as renewable energy has struggled in hyper-conservative spots in the U.S. But it may also have to do with an outsized focus on land use rights and energy development that emerged from the conflict over carbon pipelines, which has intensified opposition to any usage of eminent domain for energy development.
The central node of this tension is the Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 pipeline. As we explained in a previous edition of The Fight, the carbon transportation network would cross five states, and has galvanized rural opposition against it. Last November, I predicted the Summit pipeline would have an easier time under Trump because of his circle’s support for oil and gas, as well as the placement of former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum as interior secretary, as Burgum was a major Summit supporter.
Admittedly, this prediction has turned out to be incorrect – but it had nothing to do with Trump. Instead, Summit is now stalled because grassroots opposition to the pipeline quickly mobilized to pressure regulators in states the pipeline is proposed to traverse. They’re aiming to deny the company permits and lobbying state legislatures to pass bills banning the use of eminent domain for carbon pipelines. One of those states is South Dakota, where the governor last month signed an eminent domain ban for CO2 pipelines. On Thursday, South Dakota regulators denied key permits for the pipeline for the third time in a row.
Another place where the Summit opposition is working furiously: Iowa, where opposition to the CO2 pipeline network is so intense that it became an issue in the 2020 presidential primary. Regulators in the state have been more willing to greenlight permits for the project, but grassroots activists have pressured many counties into some form of opposition.
The same counties with CO2 pipeline moratoria have enacted bans or land use restrictions on developing various forms of renewables, too. Like Kossuth County, which passed a resolution decrying the use of eminent domain to construct the Summit pipeline – and then three months later enacted a moratorium on utility-scale solar.
I asked Jessica Manzour, a conservation program associate with Sierra Club fighting the Summit pipeline, about this phenomenon earlier this week. She told me that some counties are opposing CO2 pipelines and then suddenly tacking on or pivoting to renewables next. In other cases, counties with a burgeoning opposition to renewables take up the pipeline cause, too. In either case, this general frustration with energy companies developing large plots of land is kicking up dust in places that previously may have had a much lower opposition risk.
“We painted a roadmap with this Summit fight,” said Jess Manzour, a campaigner with Sierra Club involved in organizing opposition to the pipeline at the grassroots level, who said zealous anti-renewables activists and officials are in some cases lumping these items together under a broad umbrella. ”I don’t know if it’s the people pushing for these ordinances, rather than people taking advantage of the situation.”