00:00Today on Forbes, why Trump 2.0 won't kill the green energy revolution.
00:07Don't overestimate the damage that President-elect Donald Trump's energy policy could do to the global green transition.
00:14Yes, he has promised to undo the Democrats' 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, deriding it on the campaign trail as a, quote,
00:22green new scam for its $500 billion in tax credits and other subsidies for renewable energy projects.
00:29Cleantech companies and their backers understandably fear losing benefits like an investment tax credit worth up to 30%,
00:37or sometimes even 50%, of a project's costs.
00:40And both environmental groups and investors in clean energy stocks have reacted with alarm to Trump's triumph.
00:47But repeal of the IRA is hardly a done deal, given that most of those projects have been bringing jobs and investment dollars to Republican-held congressional districts.
00:57Cleantech could even benefit from some other Trump policies, like cutting both the corporate tax rate and red tape,
01:03including time-consuming environmental reviews that hold up the siting of green projects and electricity transmission lines.
01:11And here's the most important reason green energy should still thrive during Trump 2.0.
01:16The industry is past the point of liftoff.
01:19Subsidies add extra rocket fuel and are important for the most novel technologies that aren't yet commercial.
01:25But they aren't absolutely necessary for the green revolution to continue.
01:29Economics, customers, and the surging demand for electricity, particularly from all the new data centers being built to serve the needs of artificial intelligence,
01:39will continue to drive the growth of alternative energy.
01:43Over the weekend, President-elect Trump said he would nominate oil and gas executive and CEO of Liberty Energy, Chris Wright, as secretary of the Department of Energy.
01:53Before he was nominated for the post, Wright told Forbes,
01:58To make the world a better place, you need more reliable, affordable, secure energy.
02:03We want abundant, cheap energy.
02:06Still, Wright conceded,
02:15It's worth noting that, like other oil industry players, Denver-based Liberty,
02:20a $4.5 billion-in-revenue oilfield services company, is itself dabbling in green energy.
02:27It has invested in advanced nuclear startup Oklo, as well as Fervo, a startup aiming to tap zero-carbon deep geothermal energy using fracking.
02:37Billionaire climate tech investor Tom Steyer of Galvanized Capital argues,
02:42Our ability to solve this problem profitably is better than anybody understands.
02:47Speaking a month before the election at the Forbes Sustainability Leaders Summit,
02:52Steyer pointed to data showing 86% of all new electricity generation equipment deployed worldwide last year is powered by renewables.
03:01Steyer said,
03:04Nobody in Vietnam put up a solar panel because they were worried about climate-change-induced flooding in Houston.
03:09Nobody did that to be nice.
03:11Steyer implied that they did that because it's cheap.
03:15Consider China, now the world's largest car market, where more than half of sales are electric vehicles.
03:21Steyer said,
03:33Cheaper, faster, better. It goes up like a rocket. Everybody buys it, and that is how you win at capitalism.
03:40If the United States doesn't want to participate in it, and we want to draw a moat around the United States and go back to the 1950s,
03:46the rest of the world will progress. They will succeed, and we will fail.
03:52Make no mistake, fossil fuel producers are among the big winners from the November 5th results.
03:57For example, former Representative Lee Zeldin, Trump's nominee to run the Environmental Protection Agency,
04:03is sure to take an axe to the EPA's new methane rule, which was finalized just last week,
04:08which would fine oil and gas drillers billions a year for fugitive releases of natural gas.
04:14But there are lots of reasons alternative energy will do just fine.
04:18As we said, one major reason is that green energy, like wind and solar, is already cheap.
04:24And then there's a political reason.
04:26An impressive 80% of Inflation Reduction Act benefits so far have gone to Republican congressional districts.
04:34For full coverage, and to see a list of 10 reasons why Trump 2.0 won't kill the Green Revolution,
04:39check out Christopher Hellman's piece on Forbes.com.
04:44This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.
04:54Thanks for tuning in.
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