America’s Clean-Energy Abdication — A Critical Investigation…
Life is beautiful…
Simultaneously, JP Morgan issues a warning about stagflation in the U.S. today. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has recently expressed concerns about the potential risk of stagflation in the U.S. economy. Stagflation is characterized by a combination of stagnant demand and high inflation. Dimon highlighted several significant risks contributing to this concern, including geopolitical tensions, substantial deficits, and persistent price pressures.
Yesterday's concerns about political turmoil for energy companies have now materialized. In the spring of 2025, upon reclaiming the Oval Office, President Donald J. Trump dismantled the delicate consensus that had guided America toward a cleaner future. Through sweeping executive orders and confidential memoranda, he reversed decades of progress, re-embracing oil, coal, and gas while dismissing renewable energy as unviable.
Dimon's warnings come at a time when the U.S. is facing considerable economic challenges. Despite a temporary reduction in tariffs between the U.S. and China, which had led some institutions, including JPMorgan, to lower their forecasts for a recession in 2025, anxieties about inflation and economic stagnation persist. The Federal Reserve has maintained interest rates steady, adopting a "wait-and-see" approach to future adjustments, which reflects the cautious economic outlook.
Drilling rigs roar back into operation, and smokestacks pierce the twilight, marking a national retreat from wind turbines and solar farms. Once a leader in green innovation, the U.S. now relinquishes its moral authority and competitive advantage, undermining manufacturing, empowering adversaries, and accelerating global warming. The repercussions are felt in the Texas shale fields, the Arctic ice, Detroit factories, and Beijing boardrooms.
The complexity of stagflation lies in its resistance to conventional economic measures. Efforts to combat inflation can exacerbate economic slowdowns, while attempts to stimulate growth can further fuel inflation. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell underscored this dilemma, warning that sweeping import tariffs could potentially lead to stagflation.
This reckoning is measured in barrels of oil and tons of carbon, shattered trust, and abandoned ideals. America’s strategic gamble places the nation and our planet on a precarious edge. In summary, Dimon's warnings reflect broader concerns about the U.S.'s economic trajectory, emphasizing the need for careful navigation of the current economic landscape to mitigate the risks of stagflation.
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By Germán & Co.
Karlstad, Sweden | May 23, 2025
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Prologue
Yesterday, we wrote about how politicians create a nightmare of uncertainty for energy corporations. Today, that nightmare has taken physical form. In the spring of 2025, President Donald J. Trump—having stormed back into the Oval Office—tore asunder the fragile consensus that once bound the nation to a cleaner, greener future. With sweeping executive orders and midnight memoranda, he shattered decades of progress and declared America’s devotion to oil, coal, and gas unassailable.
Gone were the lofty pledges to harness the wind, chase the sun, and heal a wounded planet; instead, he proclaimed the clean-energy race unwinnable, its finish line forfeited to foreign rivals. As drilling rigs roared back to life and smokestacks belched their defiance into twilight skies, the earth trembled at this reversal's echo. The United States, once the vanguard of renewable innovation, has willingly abdicated its moral authority and strategic advantage on the global stage.
These reflections plunge into the heart of that fateful choice, mapping the shockwaves that ripple from the shale fields of Texas to the assembly lines of Detroit, from the melting ice of the Arctic to the corridors of power in Beijing and Moscow. It reveals how this abandonment of climate ambition has hollowed out America’s manufacturing base, emboldened adversaries to tighten their grip on future energy markets, and accelerated the march toward catastrophic warming. Perhaps this bad decision is extravagant enough to be considered a formidable luxury jet as a gift. Well, that’s life…
Here is a reckoning of strategy and consequence, where the fallout is measured not only in barrels of oil or tons of carbon, but in shattered trust, forsaken innovation, and the unravelling of the ideals that once defined the American promise. The stakes have never been higher, for in this crucible of policy and power, the fate of a nation and a fragile Earth hangs in the balance.
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I. The Moment of Reckoning: From All-You-Can-Eat Buffet to All-In on Fossil Fuels
Policy Pivot
Beneath the facade of a broad "all-of-the-above" energy strategy during Trump's first term was a clear hierarchy of priorities. While the administration presented every energy source—from mountaintop-removing coal to emerging floating offshore wind—equally welcome, the reality was different. Its sharply focused deregulatory agenda and the symbolic withdrawal from the Paris Agreement made it clear: fossil fuels would always take precedence. We have documented this issue with concrete and undeniable facts, demonstrating that the results have been the opposite of what was intended.
Yet that half-hearted plurality now gives way to zealotry. Within days of his return to the presidency, Trump dispatched a flurry of executive orders designed not merely to slow the momentum of clean energy but to arrest it entirely. Where Biden had leaned on federal purchasing power—directing agencies to buy electric vehicles, heat pumps, and domestically manufactured solar panels—the new administration saw only “market distortion.” Those mandates were revoked, replaced by blanket waivers that drove procurement back toward diesel-guzzling trucks and gas-fired boilers.
Perhaps most telling is the fate of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office. Once the unsung engine of America’s cleantech revolution, the LPO funnelled billions into fledgling innovators—companies turning carbon into stone, startups perfecting next-generation battery chemistries, and pioneers of small modular reactors. By suspending new grants, the administration effectively slammed the door on a pipeline of ideas that might have matured into global champions. Hundreds of engineers, investors, and entrepreneurs now watch their timetables unravel, their business models rendered untenable without patient, mission-driven capital.
Even more draconian was the shuttering of the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. Established only months earlier to shepherd high-risk, high-reward pilots—from grid-scale storage arrays to hydrogen-fuel-cell hubs—this office embodied the conviction that government could catalyze breakthroughs too hard to finance purely on private balance sheets. Its closure strands dozens of projects in bureaucratic purgatory: community microgrids awaiting approval, pilot plants awaiting permits, research collaborations awaiting final funding agreements. Without a champion in Washington, they will wither or be repurposed into conventional fossil-fuel facilities by more sympathetic state or local actors.
The cumulative message is crystal clear: renewables are not merely downgraded but disavowed. Once the United States teetered on a path toward balanced energy diversification, it has strayed back into the heart of the carbon economy. In practical terms, this means:
Capital flight from innovation. Venture funds and corporate R&D budgets will skew decisively toward enhanced oil recovery, unconventional gas extraction, and next-generation fracking technologies—areas where regulatory walls are being torn down rather than built up.
Supply-chain bifurcation. American manufacturers of solar panels, wind-turbine components, and battery cells face a market with no domestic anchor; overseas competitors in Asia and Europe will fill the void, securing contracts that might once have been “Buy American” staples.
Geostrategic retrenchment. By retreating from the clean-tech frontier, the U.S. cedes leadership in critical minerals processing, electric-vehicle infrastructure, and advanced nuclear, and with it the alliances forged around shared decarbonization goals. Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative now marches unopposed into the markets of Africa and Latin America, pitching gas-to-power as the bridge fuel and exporting Chinese wind and solar solutions with subsidies that American firms can no longer match.
Regulatory signalling. International investors take heed: if the world’s biggest market can be flipped on a whim, why accept risk in any other jurisdiction? Credit spreads on renewable-energy bonds will widen, the cost of capital will climb, and only the most risk-averse portfolios—ironically, those still tied to coal or gas royalties—will remain functional.
What was once a symbolic tilt toward hydrocarbons has hardened into a full-blown retreat from the energy future. The keystone agencies that once lent structure and support to America’s clean-energy ecosystem have been hollowed out, their staffs demoralised, their budgets slashed. The message to innovators is inescapable: build your tomorrow elsewhere, or build nothing at all. And while global competitors stride forward—banking billions in green investments, ratcheting down emissions, and weaving decarbonization into the fabric of their foreign-policy agendas—Washington’s halls grow quiet, the machinery of innovation rusts, and the world wonders whether the United States has forfeited not just a few years, but an entire generation of climate leadership.
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Budgetary Cuts
Federal R&D funding for solar and battery research was slashed by over 40% in the FY 2026 budget, while fossil-fuel research—from carbon-capture prototypes to unconventional drilling—received historic boosts.
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Regulatory Rollbacks
The Clean Power Plan, already struck down by the courts in 2022, was replaced by watered-down rules that permit existing coal plants to operate indefinitely without carbon controls.
This transformation is not mere bureaucratic tinkering but a declaration that the United States will no longer compete in markets where it does not already hold sway.
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II. The Geopolitical Bet: Why Foreign Winners Multiply
China’s Supply-Chain Supremacy
Over the past decade, Beijing invested an estimated $200 billion in clean-energy manufacturing, cultivating a fully integrated chain from polysilicon to end-of-life recycling. Today, Chinese firms control 80–90% of global solar module capacity, accounting for nearly two-thirds of lithium-ion battery production.
Trump’s withdrawal from green incentives leaves U.S. consumers reliant on imports: EU customs data show that solar panels entering the bloc are over 70% Chinese-made, a number set to rise further in the U.S. market.
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European Green Industrial Strategy
Brussels has countered China’s ascent with the European Green Deal and Critical Raw Materials Act, making multi-billion-euro investments in onshore battery gigafactories and strategic mineral processing. With Washington abdicating, Europe emerges as the West’s cleantech champion.
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South Asia and Latin America as New Frontiers
Indian and Brazilian governments, seizing the opportunity, have rolled out tax holidays and land-at-cost policies for solar and wind developers, attracting project commitments totalling over $60 billion since 2024. Absent U.S. competition, these regions will host the next generation of green infrastructure.
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III. Economic Fallout: Jobs, Exports, and Innovation at Risk
Manufacturing Exodus
In 2024, the U.S. had 75 operational battery facilities under construction or planned, nearly half in states that swung for Trump in 2020. With IRA credits at risk, dozens of projects have been paused or relocated to Mexico, Poland, and South Korea.
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Intellectual Property Flight
Dozens of pioneering startups—once backed by ARPA-E grants—are now flirting with acquisition by foreign corporations seeking U.S. technology at fire-sale prices. This patent haemorrhage could cost the American economy $15 billion in future licensing revenues.
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Trade Deficits Worsen
The U.S. clean-energy trade deficit ballooned to $30 billion in 2024 alone. Without a domestic production base to offset imports, Washington’s strategy amounts to writing a blank check to Beijing’s state-backed industrial champions.
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IV. Environmental and Security Risks: Betting on a Sinking Boat
Climate Acceleration
By prolonging coal and gas reliance, U.S. emissions—already up 8% since 2020—will rebound sharply, jeopardizing global targets for limiting warming to 1.5°C. The administration’s Department of Energy projects that U.S. CO₂ output will exceed 6 billion tonnes under current policies by 2030.
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National Security Implications
Dependence on foreign clean-energy hardware exposes U.S. critical infrastructure to supply-chain disruptions and potential sabotage. Grid upgrades, slated to integrate smart inverters and battery storage, will instead rely on components designed and manufactured under Beijing’s regulatory reach.
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Energy Access and Diplomacy
By alienating allies who view decarbonization as strategic, the U.S. forfeits moral leadership at key forums—COP summits, G7, APEC—undermining broader coalitions to sanction Russia and Iran or to stabilize fragile states through low-carbon development aid.
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V. The Intra-GOP Divide: Carbon Conservatives vs. Pragmatists
While the administration rails against clean-energy subsidies as a gift to China, a pragmatic wing of the Republican Party presses for targeted reforms:
Content Restrictions vs. Market Signals
Some GOP senators have proposed tightening foreign-content rules on the IRA credits rather than repealing them. This would preserve U.S. mining, refining, and manufacturing incentives while blocking China-dominated inputs.
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Rural and Rust-Belt Resilience
Ohio, Georgia, and Texas communities have staked their municipal fortunes on clean-energy parks. Local leaders warn that slashing credits will trigger bankruptcies, pension shortfalls, and revenue collapses in jurisdictions already reeling from post-industrial decline.
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Defense-Energy Nexus
Figures like former Secretary of Defense James Mattis have argued that energy independence requires advanced batteries and microgrids—technologies the U.S. can only master by sustaining its domestic industrial base.
The political tension risks fracturing the GOP’s narrow congressional majority, threatening a policy logjam that benefits no one.
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VI. Paths to Redemption: Reimagining U.S. Strategy
Selective Reinvestment
Reauthorizing the tax credits with stricter regional and domestic-content requirements could rebuild U.S. capacity while minimizing China’s market share.
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Public–Private Partnerships
Expand ARPA-E and DOE’s Loan Programs Office to underwrite pilot clean-energy hubs in the Heartland, with mission-driven goals akin to the Manhattan and Apollo projects.
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Strategic Tariffs 2.0
Calibrated, temporary tariffs on solar panels and batteries from non-Tariff-Alliance countries, coupled with import quotas that phase out over a defined ramp-up period.
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Allied Industrial Initiatives
Partnering with the EU, Japan, and Australia on cross-border critical-mineral processing, shared R&D platforms, and joint manufacturing ventures to diversify dependencies away from China.
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Civil-Military Synergies
Leveraging defense procurement to guarantee offtake for nascent energy-storage and microgrid firms, creating anchor customers that drive scale economies.
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Epilogue
The Trump administration’s retreat from the clean-energy frontier was more than a policy pivot; it was a watershed moment that reshaped the global balance of power, economic trajectories, and the planet’s climatic destiny. By abandoning ambitious renewable-energy goals, withdrawing from international climate agreements, and rolling back domestic environmental regulations, the administration effectively ceded America’s role as a technological vanguard and strategic innovator to rising competitors in Beijing and a reinvigorated European Union.
At its core, the decision to deprioritize clean energy was a profound strategic miscalculation. In the 21st century, energy policy is national security policy. Renewable-energy technologies—from advanced battery storage to next-generation solar photovoltaics—are dual-use platforms with both civilian and military applications. By retreating, the United States forfeited critical ground in sectors that will define economic and military power in the decades ahead. China, leveraging state-directed capital and manufacturing scale, surged ahead in solar panel production, lithium-ion battery manufacturing, and the deployment of electric vehicles (EVs). Meanwhile, Brussels, armed with the European Green Deal, marshaled public and private investment to create a pan-continental energy transition roadmap. The relative retrenchment of U.S. policy has left American firms scrambling to catch up, undermining supply-chain resilience and exposing strategic vulnerabilities in critical minerals and clean-tech components.
The industrial fallout has been no less severe. Clean-energy industries are among the fastest-growing segments of the global economy, offering high-wage manufacturing jobs, export opportunities, and ancillary innovation in materials science and robotics. U.S. states that had begun cultivating clean-tech clusters—particularly California, Texas, and those in the Rust Belt—saw investment shift to regions with more stable policy signals. The hiatus in federal support for research and development (R&D) eroded the once-thriving collaboration between national laboratories, universities, and private-sector innovators. Meanwhile, tariffs and trade disputes further distorted markets, raising costs for solar modules and wind-turbine components while provoking retaliatory measures that threatened U.S. exports.
Perhaps the most profound cost is human. Climate change is a crisis of unprecedented scale, and every year of delayed action deepens the cumulative emissions that drive planetary warming. Rolling back vehicle-emissions standards and freezing fuel-efficiency targets have locked in higher pollution levels, disproportionately burdening low-income and marginalized communities near highways, refineries, and power plants. The administration’s focus on short-term gains in fossil-fuel extraction overlooked the accelerating frequency of extreme weather, wildfires, and sea-level rise—events that carry staggering economic and humanitarian tolls. The moral dimension of climate leadership hinges on intergenerational equity; in relinquishing its mantle, the United States also abdicated moral authority in global forums and negotiations.
History seldom offers graceful verdicts, but the record will be stark. Was this retrenchment a fleeting detour, corrected by subsequent administrations, or the opening chapter of a protracted decline in American industrial preeminence? The answer will depend on the country’s capacity to rebuild, recommit to innovation, and reestablish partnerships both at home and abroad. Promising signs—such as bipartisan support for infrastructure bills that include clean-energy funding, and a resurgence of state and municipal climate pledges—suggest that the ambition void may be filled.
Yet ambition alone is not enough. Restoring leadership demands a coherent strategy that aligns federal incentives, regulatory frameworks, and diplomatic engagement. It requires a renewed emphasis on workforce training, domestic supply chains for critical minerals, and direct investment in emerging technologies like green hydrogen, carbon capture, and next-generation nuclear. The coming decade will test America’s resolve: to seize the opportunities of the clean-energy revolution or to concede further ground to those who see climate action not as a burden, but as the greatest industrial and security imperative of our time.
In the end, the Trump administration’s retreat will be judged not only for what was undone but also for what it galvanized. If it spurred a deeper reckoning—with the limits of partisan divides, the urgency of climate justice, and the strategic stakes of innovation—then history may yet view this era as the crucible from which a more determined, united, and forward-looking America emerged. If not, it risks marking the prelude to America’s long twilight as an energy and industrial superpower.
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In December 2023, Energy Central recognized outstanding contributors within the Energy & Sustainability Network during the 'Top Voices' event. The recipients of this honor were highlighted in six articles, showcasing the acknowledgment from the community. The platform facilitates professionals in disseminating their work, engaging with peers, and collaborating with industry influencers. Congratulations are extended to the 2023 Top Voices: David Hunt, Germán Toro Ghio, Schalk Cloete, and Dan Yurman for their exemplary demonstration of expertise. - Matt Chester, Energy Central
Gratitude is our heartbeat.
Inflation bites, platforms shift, and every post now fights for survival. We’re holding the line with premier tools, licensed software, and striking images—but we can’t do it alone.
Help us stay loud:
One click: Like, repost, or share on X, LinkedIn, or Energy Central—free, private, game-changing.
One gift: PayPal gjmtoroghio@germantoroghio.com | IBAN SE18 3000 0000 0058 0511 2611 | Swish 076 423 90 79 | Stripe (donation link).
Each gesture—tiny or titan—powers the words you read.
Thank you for keeping the flame alive.
You can't possibly deny me...
Have a wonderful day filled with good health, happiness, and love…