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President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Tuesday, July 8, 2025, in Washington. <\/span>Evan Vucci\/AP<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The deficit-boosting <\/span>bill President Donald Trump signed into law last Friday included provisions that will undermine<\/a> US clean energy development. Indeed, a team led by Princeton energy expert Jesse Jenkins estimates<\/a> that it will reduce US solar and wind output by at least 300 gigawatts<\/a> by 2035\u2014enough to power some 225 million homes.<\/p>\n But some Republicans still thought the bill didn\u2019t go far enough. After a failed<\/a> last-minute<\/a> bid to add further subsidy cuts and an industry-killing renewables tax to the bill, Republicans agreed to vote yes after Trump promised<\/a> to take matters into his own hands.<\/p>\n He delivered on Monday with an executive order<\/a> titled \u201cEnding Market Distorting Subsidies for Unreliable Foreign Controlled Energy Sources.\u201d<\/p>\n The order basically instructs the Treasury Department to deny a developer\u2019s application for soon-to-disappear clean energy subsidies \u201cunless a substantial portion\u201d of their project is already built. It also directs the Department of the Interior to revise policies favoring renewables. \u201cWhile many executive orders have limited effectiveness, this one might actually have some bite,\u201d says Yale energy economist Kenneth Gillingham.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Trump administration is taking every opportunity it can find to assert its authority not to spend money on things with which it disagrees,\u201d says Don Kettl, a professor emeritus and former dean at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. \u201cThe implications here are enormous.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJust in case last week\u2019s legislative sledgehammer didn\u2019t do enough damage.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Because of the time it takes to permit and site US projects, Gillingham says, the order\u2019s stringent interpretation of the statutory language will have \u201cthe effect of quashing the market sooner than would have happened otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n Bob Keefe, executive director of E2, a national organization of business leaders advocating for smarter climate policies, isn\u2019t too pleased with the order. \u201cJust in case last week\u2019s legislative sledgehammer didn\u2019t do enough damage to our economy, our environment, and the pocketbooks of anybody who pays an electricity bill, the Trump administration is taking yet another swing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s decree asserts that renewables threaten \u201cthe fiscal health of the Nation,\u201d a claim Gillingham deems entirely false. \u201cRenewables cost something, but they create jobs and generate clean energy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOur workforce is growing, businesses are expanding, and communities are saving money with consistent, reliable energy,\u201d explains Bill Johnson, the owner of Brilliant Harvest, a Florida solar company, but the legislation and subsequent order put that progress at risk, he says.<\/p>\n The order, Keefe told me, suggests that the administration \u201ceither doesn\u2019t understand or doesn\u2019t care that solar, wind, and batteries are the cheapest, quickest, made-in-America energy we can deploy.\u201d<\/p>\n And although Trump questions the reliability of renewables, Gillingham insists that \u201cat the levels of renewable energy we have today, we have nothing to worry about.\u201d He adds, \u201cIf anything, adding more renewable capacity could help us meet additional electricity demand.\u201d<\/p>\n As for the notion that the renewable energy market is \u201cdependent on supply chains controlled by foreign adversaries,\u201d well, sure, China dominates the sector, but that\u2019s the result of supportive policies, Gillingham says\u2014and the policies Trump is targeting were enacted to help US firms compete: \u201cWe would have to support our clean energy industries if we wanted to increase our share of clean energy manufacturing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n