Trump’s first week in office brought chaos and destruction to the renewable energy transition in the United States (as well as just about everything else). Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, a global movement to stop fossil fuels and build a future powered by renewable energy, summed it up in his January 26 newsletter, How We Make Progress Now:

“The attacks on sensible energy policy have been swift and savage. We exited the Paris climate accords, paused IRA spending, halted wind and solar projects, gutted the effort to help us transition to electric vehicles, lifted the pause on new LNG export projects, canceled the Climate Corps just as it was getting off the ground, and closed the various government agencies dedicated to environmental justice. Oh, and we declared an ‘energy emergency’ to make it easier to do all of the above.”

There is No Electric Vehicle Mandate

During his inauguration speech, President Donald Trump vowed to “revoke the electric vehicle mandate.” Well, there never was a mandate. It was a nonbinding goal, agreed on by the Biden administration and America’s automakers, backed up with grants for EV chargers, federal tax credits for buyers, and other incentives. It aimed to have 50 percent of all new cars in the U.S. be electric by 2030. 

Why? Because tailpipe emissions from cars burning gas is a major source of greenhouse gases and toxic fumes. EV’s have zero emissions.

Exhaust from gas powered vehicles is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions with CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, and particulate matter.

Trump is trying to revoke the federal tax credit and the other incentives to purchase EVs in order to favor gas cars. I think it’s safe to say sales of EV’s will slow. And those of us who have them will be ridiculed.

Charge Anxiety With Electric Vehicles

We purchased an Ioniq 5 EV in November 2023. It took a while for us to get over charge anxiety, also called range anxiety—that’s the fear of running out of battery charge while driving. It’s the same feeling you get in a gas car when the fuel gauge is on empty. The big difference is that there are plenty of gas stations around. Not so with EV charging stations. The election added several new layers of anxiety, not the least of which is the future of EV’s in America, at least for the short term.

Virginia and other states have received funds from the Infrastructure and Jobs Act to deploy EV charging stations. The Virginia DOT awarded $11 million in March and $22 million in October to private companies building charging stations. These are the first installments from Virginia’s $106 million, five-year National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment plan. I have doubts about whether we will see the remainder of these funds.

My hope is that Virginia actually received those first installments and that construction of EV charging stations in Virginia and the rest of the country will proceed.

Electric vehicle charging stations powered by the sun. A win-win for the planet. This should be happening now. Photo credit Shutterstock

The transition to renewable energy throughout the world will continue despite the chaos and destruction from the Trump administration. America’s transition will temporarily slow, but progress will continue.

Backwards We Go

“Drill baby, Brill,” and “Beautiful, clean, coal,” these words were uttered by the President many times. Dr. James Hansen, former Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies had this to say about coal: “The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains, and coal fired power plants are factories of death.”

“Beautiful, clean, coal,” or “death trains?” Photo credit Shutterstock

I trust scientists over politicians, especially convicted felon politicians.