For years, Republican politicians advocated an “all of the above” energy strategy, supporting continued oil and gas production while also scaling up renewable energy. Though criticized by climate activists as insufficiently urgent, this approach acknowledged that building clean generation, storage, and transmission infrastructure would take time. Meanwhile, government incentives helped drive down the cost of solar, wind, and battery storage. When President Donald Trump returned to office in 2025 pledging to achieve “energy dominance,” renewables appeared well positioned to contribute to that objective. Unfortunately, despite the president’s grandiose promises, the administration’s policies have delivered only market distortions and higher energy prices.
For the past year, the administration has made a concerted effort to constrain the country’s fastest-growing energy sources while propping up some of the least competitive, particularly coal-fired electricity. Rather than expanding supply across the energy mix, the administration has adopted a selective approach that privileges legacy fuels, curtails renewables, and redefines “dominance” as government intervention on behalf of politically favored industries, undermining U.S. economic competitiveness and strategic interests. The president has now compounded his initial mistakes on energy policy with a war of choice in the Middle East, which has sent oil prices skyrocketing from roughly $70 a barrel on the eve of the conflict to over $110 per barrel, with U.S. gasoline prices soaring in parallel.
Rolling Back Shifts in the U.S. Energy Mix
Wind and solar have moved from niche technologies to pillars of the U.S. power system because they are among the cheapest sources of new electricity. They now account for the overwhelming majority of new generation capacity across the United States, and the Energy Information Agency forecasts renewables will represent more than 99 percent of new capacity additions in 2026. Solar buildouts alone now outpace new natural gas, coal, and nuclear generation combined.
Since returning to office, Trump has treated that success as a liability. The White House has reduced or eliminated federal tax incentives for wind and solar, complicated permitting for new projects, and portrayed renewable generation as unreliable—even as it offers expedited approvals to oil and gas firms. Officials have claimed renewables undermine national security despite the fact that these technologies are domestic, scalable, and already integrated into U.S. electricity markets.
These claims are particularly difficult to sustain in the context of the current conflict with Iran. Unlike oil, which is traded globally and vulnerable to disruptions at physical chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz, renewable energy sources are far less susceptible to supply disruptions from instability abroad. Whereas fossil-fuel-intensive economies require a near-constant stream of oil and gas inputs to function, renewable energy, to the extent it requires imported products like turbine blades or solar panels, only requires those materials to be imported once, greatly decreasing the risk of potential price shocks. Expanding renewables would therefore reduce U.S. exposure to geopolitical volatility, enhancing rather than eroding U.S. national security.
In contrast with its hostility to renewables, the administration has embraced extraordinary market intervention on behalf of coal. It has invoked emergency authorities and regulatory pressure to delay coal plant retirements, arguing that such facilities are needed to meet rising electricity demand from data centers and reindustrialization. Senior officials have pledged to keep coal plants operating even when utilities and regulators deem them no longer economically viable.
Coal’s decline was driven primarily by market forces, not environmental regulation, as it lost price competitiveness to natural gas and renewables. In 2025, wind and solar supplied 19 percent of U.S. electricity, compared with coal’s 15 percent. Many coal plants slated for retirement require costly repairs, and forcing them to remain functioning imposes significant costs on consumers while reducing grid flexibility.
Enhancing U.S. Energy Security and Affordability
Demand for electricity is poised to rise sharply, both domestically and around the world, as a result of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and advanced manufacturing. Meeting that demand without triggering an affordability crisis will require speed, scale, and flexibility. Wind and solar can be deployed rapidly and modularly, and they are increasingly paired with battery storage that delivers assured power during peak demand.
After the devastating Texas outages during a 2021 winter storm, rapid growth in renewables and battery storage strengthened grid resilience. During recent severe winter weather, most Texans retained power despite rising demand. They have renewables and fourteen gigawatts of new battery storage to thank for that.
Global energy market volatility linked to the conflict in Iran reinforces the economic case for accelerating deployment of low-marginal-cost generation, meaning power sources that require relatively limited cost and time to build, which can therefore be scaled up quickly. Spikes in oil and natural gas prices translate into higher electricity costs, whereas renewables offer low upfront installation costs and deliver enduring price stability, insulating both consumers and industry from external shocks.
Nuclear power, which the administration supports, could also play a meaningful role in U.S. energy policy over the longer term, but new reactors take a decade or more to permit and construct. Emphasizing long-term nuclear buildout and keeping aging coal plants online does little to address near-term demand growth and risks crowding out investment in renewable infrastructure. The result is not energy abundance but market distortion.
The administration’s hostility toward renewables has also jeopardized permitting reform. The United States must clear its interconnection backlog to bring more capacity online efficiently, and bipartisan permitting legislation had a realistic chance of passage this Congress. However, Democrats have now retreated from the measure, as they fear accelerating permitting would simply empower the Trump administration to expand fossil fuel infrastructure while leaving wind and solar constrained.
The geopolitical implications of this issue are substantial as well. China has made electrification central to its national strategy, and it dominates global manufacturing of solar panels and batteries. By slowing domestic renewable deployment, the United States risks ceding technological leadership, losing export markets, and weakening its energy resilience at a time when electricity demand is surging globally.
Policies that consistently favor economically uncompetitive sectors raise unavoidable questions about whose interests are being served. Trump solicited $1 billion in campaign financing from oil and gas executives during the 2024 election on a promise to advance their priorities. Rescuing uncompetitive coal plants while dismantling incentives for cheaper renewables cannot credibly be explained by concocted concerns over grid reliability.
Properly understood, “energy dominance” means producing more energy at lower cost, with greater resilience and reduced geopolitical risk. It requires leveraging the full range of America’s competitive advantages—abundant natural gas, technological innovation, deep capital markets, and world-class renewable resources.
In a world where conflict abroad reverberates rapidly through global energy systems, “energy dominance” cannot be defined narrowly as maximizing fossil fuel output. It must instead reflect the ability to withstand external shocks, maintain price stability, and ensure uninterrupted supply under adverse geopolitical conditions. To date, the Trump administration has staked America’s economy on legacy fuels that are economically indefensible and strategically shortsighted. America’s energy security and future prosperity depend on rethinking this course—and quickly.
