One unknown, however, is Trump’s vow to kill the Clean Power Plan, which was designed to constrain emissions from coal-fired power plants and offer incentives to replace them with renewables. The Energy Information Agency affirms Gramlich’s concern in its 2016 Annual Energy Outlook, which assessed scenarios with and without the CPP. Growth in energy generation from renewables is comparable under the scenarios in the early years through 2020, but it significantly slows thereafter in scenarios with no CPP.
One glimmer of hope for renewables’ long-term prospects under Trump is the president-elect’s promise to invest over $500 billion in infrastructure. If some of that spending is devoted to expanding and modernizing U.S. electrical infrastructure, it could eliminate the power-grid constraints that are the biggest impediment to long-term growth for these energy sources.
Another source of hope is that clean energy is supporting job growth and exports, according to Sam Adams, the former mayor of Portland, Oregon, who is U.S. director for the World Resources Institute, an environmental research organization based in Washington, D.C. “There is a fierce global competition already under way to determine which country will be the world’s top supplier of clean-energy technology and services,” said Adams during a press call on Wednesday. He said he would be looking forward to making that case to Trump and his administration.
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