Trump's Big Stick Might be...Kind of Puny

Can we actually force the rest of the world to make our energy mistake?

Here at home, the Trump administration’s efforts to kill off clean energy have entered the realm of the farcical. As the invaluable Jael Holzman reports, the administration may soon invoke the Migratory Bird Treaty Act to close down wind farms, on the legal theory that “the purpose of a wind farm is to kill migratory birds.” This is obviously absurd, but only slightly more so than the justification they’re now providing for shutting down an almost-complete wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island last week: that it could be used as a staging ground for “swarm attacks” by naval drones bent on attacking the eastern seaboard. (Boy do I have bad news for him about the 4,000 oil and gas platforms operating in American waters).

By now we simply have to accept that the Trump administration is engaged in all-out war on clean energy in the U.S., on behalf of their patrons in the fossil fuel industry. No more of the ‘all of the above’ balancing act that has been the GOP mantra for many years; now it’s just pure warfare, attacking sun and wind at every turn in a bid to keep the hydrocarbon business model alive for another decade or two, even at the cost of destroying the climate. This will change only when (and if) elections allow us to elevate sane people to run our country.

The bigger question is, can they import our insanity—can they force the rest of the world to march to this same tune?

They’re certainly going to try. I’ve been writing about this for the last six months, and this week the Times joined in, with Lisa Friedman’s excellent piece about the “strong-arm tactics” the White House is employing to try and coerce other countries into ditching renewables and buying American oil and gas instead.

Mr. Trump, who has joined with Republicans in Congress to shred federal support for electric vehicles and for solar and wind energy, is applying tariffs, levies and other mechanisms of the world’s biggest economy to induce other countries to burn more fossil fuels. His animus is particularly focused on the wind industry, which is a well-established and growing source of electricity in several European countries as well as in China and Brazil.

During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Trump said he was trying to educate other nations. “I’m trying to have people learn about wind real fast, and I think I’ve done a good job, but not good enough because some countries are still trying,” Mr. Trump said. He said countries were “destroying themselves” with wind energy and said, “I hope they get back to fossil fuels.”

Two weeks ago, the administration promised to punish countries — by applying tariffs, visa restrictions and port fees — that vote for a global agreement to slash greenhouse gas emissions from the shipping sector.

Trump’s threats rest on a premise: that the rest of the world is so scared of the U.S., or so dependent on access to its markets, that they will do what they’re told even if it obviously conflicts with their own interests. Trump is speaking loudly, and he’s pretty sure he’s carrying a big stick. In the very short run, he’s clearly winning some commitments (or at least some promises). Europe, for instance, just agreed to relax its road safety laws to allow American-sized SUVs on its roads. More importantly, to head off a trade war, the EU just agreed to import $750 billion in American gas—but since “the EU” doesn’t import gas (its member states do, or at least companies in those member states) it’s not clear how much this pledge actually means.

Trump’s found one big taker for his rhetoric—the Canadian province of Alberta has cancelled 10 gigawatts of renewable energy projects, which would have met 90% of its electric demand, even as its premier pushes a referendum on secession from Canada on the grounds that Ottawa has crippled it with “anti-resource policies.” (Except wind and sun resources…). Meanwhile, in the larger world of actual money-on-the-table deals, a few interesting signs emerged last week if you were looking closely.

In Japan—one of the big targets of the administration’s LNG push—the news this week was that the country’s use of fossil fuel for electric generation had hit new all-time lows, accounting, according to Reuters, “for less than 60% of utility-scale electricity supplies for the first time during January to June. Clean energy sources - especially solar farms and nuclear power plants - have supplied the remaining electricity, and have sharply outpaced the growth in fossil fuel power sources so far this decade.”

In Pakistan, where individuals put up the equivalent of half the country’s electric in solar panels last year, the government asked Qatar to defer deliveries of LNG. As Bloomberg notes, “the move is a stark turnaround for Pakistan, which just a few years ago was suffering from a gas shortage.” If they don’t need Qatari gas, they definitely won’t be buying American supplies.

In the Middle East itself, as those enviro hippies at the trade newsletter Middle East Utilities report, solar is absolutely booming.

The rapid acceleration of solar capacity shows that it is more than just an environmental win. According to the World Future Green Summit, as countries race to harness abundant sunlight, several industry reports project MENA’s solar capacity to rise from a few dozen gigawatts today to well over a hundred gigawatts by 2030. A report by PV Magazine International notes a year-on-year increase of 20–25% in the region’s installed solar capacity, with some forecasts projecting growth to between 75 and 180 GW by 2030.

The creation of large-scale utility parks such as Dubai’s Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park in the UAE, which recently surpassed 3.8 GW cumulative capacity, Egypt’s Benban park, and Saudi Arabia’s Sakaka Solar Photovoltaic Project and the Jeddah Solar PV Park, have widened the fiscal and industrial base. This growth has led to the demand for project developers, skilled technicians, logistics and maintenance firms. In short, multi-gigawatt solar projects have created an industrial ripple, giving rise to dozens of supply-chain SMEs and a growing talent pipeline.

Both Indonesia and Malaysia, two of Asia’s emerging giants, have announced huge solar plans in the last few weeks: Indonesia, fourth largest country on earth, will build out 100 gigawatts of solar by 2030, including

80 GW of solar power, which will be deployed in the form of 1 MW solar arrays paired with 4 MWh battery energy storage systems (BESS). These integrated solar-storage microgrids will be installed across 80,000 villages in Indonesia and managed by the “Merah Putih Village Cooperatives.”

Meanwhile, back at the mothership, China’s imports of LNG have fallen for the tenth month in a row. This is what happens when a country makes a conscious decision to move in a new direction, building vast amounts of clean energy. That decision will have huge international repercussions for decades to come—larger repercussions, I think, than Trump’s petulant demands on our allies. Probably the most important clue to the future was contained in a report this month from the European energy think tank Ember, which analyzed export data for Chinese solar panels to find clear evidence of a “solar takeoff” across the continent. We’re talking large numbers: “the solar panels imported into Sierra Leone in the last 12 months, if installed, would generate electricity equivalent to 61% of the total reported 2023 electricity generation.” As Somini Sengupta reported,

It’s part of China’s global ascendance in the manufacture and sale of renewable energy technologies. Its companies make the vast majority of solar panels, along with the cells and wafers that go into them. Its influence in the world rests, in large part, on persuading people in the developing world that they can produce cheap electricity from the sun.

I think the way to ask the question is this: if you’re the ruler of a developing nation (or a European one, for that matter) who are you going to want to depend on for energy in the future? The ailing and erratic leader of the U.S., who thinks drones are hiding in his windfarms, or the world’s most modern economy, which is turning decisively to the sun, and whose solar panels offer you the prospect not of kowtowing forever to Washington or Beijing, but of actual energy independence?

Trump can wave his big stick (which looks a lot like a nine iron) and foreign governments will try to humor him so as not to cause themselves undue trouble. But I’m pretty sure they’re giggling behind his back.

In other energy and climate news:

+Some of the world’s best chefs are switching to cool, clean induction cooking. As Olivia Rudgard reports,

An hour before dinner service begins at Ikoyi, a small two Michelin-starred restaurant at 180 Strand in central London, the open kitchen is a hive of activity. It’s also close to completely silent.

The zen-like atmosphere extends to the stove, a sleek, shining black slab at the center of the kitchen. No gas here — the restaurant uses a four-ring induction stove, installed two and a half years ago when Ikoyi moved to this site.

The switch to induction means the restaurant is cooler, the cooking process more exact, and nothing is at risk of accidentally catching alight on a gas burner, says Jeremy Chan, the restaurant’s head chef. Chan says he still loves the earthy, emotional experience of cooking with gas, but in the end he picked induction for its safety, efficiency and practicality.

Most importantly, it gives him confidence that his chefs can follow his recipes absolutely to the letter, meaning every dish coming out of the kitchen meets the high standard he expects. He now has an induction stove in his home, too. “As much as I love [gas], I’m never going back to it,” he says.

Chan is part of a quiet movement of chefs who are making the same transition. Gas stoves run on methane, which produces carbon dioxide when burned, contributing to carbon emissions. They are also linked to respiratory health problems, including asthma, and using a gas range at home contributes to some 40,000 premature deaths in the UK and European Union each year, according to research published in 2024.

+Big win in Santa Fe, where environmentally minded county commissioners approved a controversial solar project over the objections of Local Suburbanites who Of Course Want Solar Power, Just Not Here. They, of course, will be going to court

In an interview earlier this month, leaders with the Clean Energy Coalition of Santa Fe County, an organization that opposes the solar project and has about 2,000 members, said the group intended to appeal if the commissioners opted to uphold the Planning Commission’s decision.

The vehement pushback has been a source of frustration for the project’s supporters, who say it could generate enough electricity to carry roughly the entire residential power load of Santa Fe and would mark a significant move in the state’s clean energy transition

+Okay, this is the kind of story almost too good to be true, except it’s real. In Finland, where there can be long periods of sun or wind followed by a lull, there’s a real need for battery storage to cover those down times. So they’ve just installed the largest battery on earth made from…sand.

Developed by Finnish Firm Polar Night Energy – which also built the world's first commercial sand battery a few years ago – this battery is about 42 ft (13 m) tall and 50 ft (15 m) wide. It serves as a storage medium for up to 100 MWh, with a round trip efficiency of 90%. That makes it about 10 times larger than the first-ever sand battery, and capable of storing enough heat for the whole town to use for a week.

+Fascinating report from the International Association of Machinists on clean energy jobs, which serves as a kind of requiem for what the IRA could have achieved had Trump not killed it, but also as a sign of just how much employment is possible if we ever get our act together again.

In somewhat the same requiem mode, an important campaign from Rewiring America to get Americans to take advantage of federal tax credits on efficient appliances before they expire at the end of 2025.

“I’ve been doing HVAC installations for the past 40 years, and I can tell you that I’ve seen firsthand how the 25C tax credit has made heat pumps, the most efficient HVAC technology, more affordable and accessible for homeowners. It drove so much business that I was able to form my whole company, Royal River Heat Pumps, around installing just that appliance,” said Scotty Libby, owner of Maine-based Royal River Heat Pumps. “Homeowners should talk to their local contractors now if they want to upgrade their HVAC, take advantage of the tax credit, and lock in the potential long-term energy savings a heat pump would provide.”

+The perennially interesting Hannah Ritchie has new data showing that EV batteries last 200,000 miles or more

In another study across 15,000 cars — which had collectively clocked up 250 million miles — just 1.5% had needed a battery replacement for any reason, so the share that needed one due to degradation was probably even lower.

+We are now precisely three weeks out from Sun Day, and there are hundreds of events scheduled across the country. A few cool examples:

• Virginia Solar Barnraising (Sept 20): Volunteers will climb rooftops to install solar panels on Habitat for Humanity homes, kicking off a national push to put 10,000 systems on affordable housing. It’s part of a $40 million drive to help low-income families save money and gain access to clean energy.

• New Hampshire's "Amped for the Future" (Sept 18): ReVision Energy powers an entire Mallett Brothers concert using an electric F-150 Lightning truck.

• Rutgers Agrivoltaics Tours (Sept 21): Rutgers University will showcase its pioneering research on agrivoltaics, where solar panels and farming work together on the same land. Visitors can walk through demonstration plots where panels rise above vegetables and grains, providing shade that reduces heat stress while generating electricity. Farmers and researchers will explain how this dual-use approach can cut costs, keep land productive, and make agriculture more resilient to climate change.

• DC's District-Wide Solar Tours (Sept 21): Across the District, up to 80 solar-powered homes and buildings will open their doors to the public. Homeowners and experts will share what it’s really like to go solar, and community “Solar Hubs” at libraries and centers will provide vetted installer consultations, practical how-to guidance, and a space to connect with neighbors about clean energy.

• Portland's Sun Power Revolution (Sept 21): Oregon’s biggest clean energy celebration will start with a bridge parade featuring giant puppets, Aztec dancers, and marching bands. The day wraps up with the “Sun Ball” party, hosted with more than 40 partner organizations.

• Kansas Week-Long Celebration (Sept 14-21):"“Here Comes the SunDay!” turns an entire county into a week-long solar celebration. The week features art exhibitions, bluegrass concerts, library programs, and merchant displays, all capped off by a big presence at the Walnut Valley Festival. The celebration ends with a downtown “Walk for the Sun,” uniting the community around the promise of solar.

• Oh, and the six-stop “wool relay” across upstate New York. Details here.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people keep drawing versions of the sun logo for our global gallery. You can join them! A couple of recent favorites, from Chloe Blake Stevenson and Kirsten Hopkins