More than 160 solar energy executives converged Wednesday on Capitol Hill for what the clean-energy industry described as its largest-ever lobbying blitz. And they tailored their pitch for a new audience: President Donald Trump and his political allies.
The executives sported surprising accessories: lapel pins with the message “AMERICAN ENERGY DOMINANCE” below an image of the sun rising over a solar panel.
Their gathering was just one part of a broader effort to convince congressional Republicans that solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy can complement - not clash with - Trump’s pledge to restore American “energy dominance.” Trump and his allies have typically reserved this phrase - along with the slogan “drill, baby, drill” - to describe boosting domestic oil and gas production instead.
The executives’ push comes as GOP lawmakers are considering repealing lucrative subsidies for clean energy to help pay for a massive tax and spending bill that codifies many of Trump’s campaign promises. It also comes after Trump signed a Day 1 executive order freezing tens of billions of dollars in green grants and loans authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act, former president Joe Biden’s signature climate law.
Taken together, the two actions have sent shock waves through the clean-energy industry, delaying construction projects and forcing some firms to furlough employees. Thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in investments hang in the balance.
Cue the lobbying and lapel pins.
“We have been working for years to bring a lot of solar manufacturing here to the United States, and anything that undermines that effort is not helpful to achieving American energy dominance,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group that helped organize the lobbying push.
The other groups leading the effort include the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, Clean Energy for America, E2 and the National Hydropower Association. Spokespeople for the groups said members are meeting with Republican and Democratic lawmakers, although they declined to specify which offices.
Some are also tailoring their message for a MAGA crowd.
“Rolling back federal clean energy tax policy. … This is not how you make America great,” said Bob Keefe, executive director of E2. “It’s how you make America suffer.”
One trend the groups are planning to emphasize is that congressional districts that favored Trump in the 2020 election have seen three times as much investment as a result of clean-energy tax credits, according to a Washington Post analysis. In addition, over half of all new clean-energy jobs are in Republican-led districts, according to a separate analysis by Climate Power, an environmental advocacy group.
“At the start of the last Trump administration in 2016, our industry was pretty nascent, so we didn’t have as powerful of a voice,” said Jon Powers, co-founder and president of CleanCapital, a company that owns and operates more than 200 solar and energy storage projects nationwide. Now, he said, “we’re employing folks locally in manufacturing in Georgia and South Carolina. And that is such an impactful story for Capitol Hill.”
While China has historically dominated the global supply chain for solar panels and other green technologies, U.S. solar panel manufacturing capacity has increased fourfold since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. The United States is now the third-largest solar module producer in the world, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
The trend is spurring a transformation in Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s deep-red district in northwest Georgia, where manufacturer Qcells is planning to build a massive solar panel factory after closing a $1.45 billion Energy Department loan guarantee.
“By the time we’re done, we will be employing about 4,000 people in Georgia, and those are good-paying American manufacturing jobs,” said Qcells spokeswoman Debra DeShong.
Spokespeople for Greene and 10 other Republican lawmakers with the most new clean-energy jobs in their districts did not respond to requests for comment.
Frozen funding
Trump’s executive order freezing grants and loans under the Inflation Reduction Act, meanwhile, has caused fear and uncertainty for clean-energy developers nationwide, despite lingering questions about its legality.
A federal judge extended a temporary ban Monday against Trump’s broader pause of trillions of dollars in federal grants. But the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department have continued to implement the executive order, which remains in effect, delaying a wide range of projects, including the construction of solar factories and the installation of electric vehicle chargers.
“You can almost think of it like a government shutdown. … So many things are grinding to a halt,” said Zealan Hoover, who oversaw implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act at the EPA under Biden.
Initially, many clean-energy developers and environmental lawyers assumed that the Trump administration wouldn’t interfere with grants that had been announced under Biden, viewing the contracts as legally binding.
They were wrong.
“This is worse than our initial take. What we initially heard was that if you had a signed agreement with the Department of Energy, they would have to deliver on that,” said an executive at a solar start-up that was awarded a grant from the agency under Biden. The executive spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the Trump administration.
“My gut instinct is that there will probably be many months or years of delay,” the executive added. “Given the speed at which we work … delaying for years is the same as canceling the grant in many ways.”
States and nonprofit groups have also been blocked from receiving grants from the EPA under a $7 billion program to help low-income communities install solar panels. The frozen funding includes more than $62 million that the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment had planned to use to help roughly 19,000 households go solar, with a focus on low-income and older residents.
“I’ve got seniors who would love to get a new roof and solar panels, and they’re stuck right now,” said D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6).
The Post also contacted 28 other recipients of federal grants under the Inflation Reduction Act. Of the 28, 19 did not respond or declined to comment, with several citing fear of retaliation by the new administration.
A rhetorical shift
The grant recipients who did respond were eager to talk about how they’re rebranding their projects to match the new administration’s rhetoric.
“When you take a step back, I do think this is aligned closely with the Trump administration’s goal of energy dominance,” said Andy Marsh, CEO of Plug Power, which is in line for a $1.66 billion loan guarantee to build six factories that make green hydrogen using renewable electricity and water. The Biden administration finalized the loan on Jan. 16, days before Trump took office.
“I’ve had Republican lobbyists walk through my facilities and say, ‘Boy, the Trump administration will love a factory like this,’” Marsh added.
Other firms are walking away from the green rhetoric they used to pitch their projects to the Biden administration.
“I’m not a green tech person; I’m an energy person,” said Joe Mastrangelo, CEO of Eos Energy Enterprises, which closed a $303.5 million loan guarantee in December to fund new assembly lines to make long-duration batteries that are “at the forefront of the clean energy transition,” according to a company news release.
“We don’t have to say climate change,” said Todd Borgmann, CEO of Montana Renewables, which closed a $1.44 billion loan guarantee on Jan. 10 to build a plant that will turn vegetable oil into jet fuel. “We can say energy transition, motivated by national interest, motivated by energy independence (and) motivated by national defense.”
A few executives have been waiting so long for their Department of Energy loans to close that they’ve seen a couple of presidential transitions and project rebrands.
When Wabash Valley Resources applied for a $1.6 billion loan to build a plant to turn oil refinery waste into fertilizer under the first Trump administration, CEO Nalin Gupta said his pitch was that the project would prove “how fossil energy can be a part of America’s future energy policy.” Then under Biden, he said, his project was about cutting carbon emissions and handling waste sustainably.
Now, more than five years into the application process and once again starting over with a new administration, he said, “We are excited about closing the loan whosoever is in charge.”