By Brad Plumer
As President Donald Trump works to blunt the growth of wind and solar power and expand fossil fuel production in the United States, the renewable energy industry is making a new pitch: You need us.
Wind and solar developers are increasingly pointing out that America’s demand for electricity is soaring, driven by a boom in data centers, and it’s proving difficult to build enough new gas plants to supply all the extra power that the nation needs.
Wind, solar and battery storage are relatively quick and cheap to construct. That could help avert energy shortages and keep prices low, an argument that renewable energy firms are making to policymakers.
“Our message to the administration is, let’s be realistic about this,” John Ketchum, the CEO of NextEra Energy, one of the country’s largest power producers, said in an interview. “If you take renewables and storage off the table, we’re going to force electricity prices to the moon.”
These are tough times, politically, for the renewable energy industry. Trump has been a blistering critic of wind turbines for years and openly promotes fossil fuels like oil and gas, riding into office on a promise to “drill, baby, drill.” He has halted federal approvals for wind farms, placed a moratorium on large solar arrays on public lands and frozen billions of dollars in spending for battery factories and electric grid upgrades.
At the same time, Republican leaders in Congress are talking about ending federal subsidies in the form of tax credits for low-carbon electricity, which have been expected to supercharge the growth of wind and solar power. Uncertainty around those credits has paralyzed the renewable energy industry, with companies delaying projects and laying off workers.
The chaos could make it harder for the United States to slash its planet-warming emissions, even as scientists warn the risks from climate change are escalating.
But an environmental argument won’t get far with a president who dismisses global warming. So, many wind and solar companies are now casting their industries as essential to achieving U.S. energy abundance.
“The focus is, what do we need to ensure that we have enough energy to retain our dominance in manufacturing, in electrification, in artificial intelligence?” said Sandhya Ganapathy, CEO of EDP Renewables North America, a leading wind and solar developer.
Over the next 15 years, U.S. electricity demand could increase by up to 50% as tech companies build massive data centers for AI, factories expand and millions of people plug in electric cars, according to a new study by S&P Global Commodity Insights.
Renewable companies say they are well positioned to help meet that growth in the near future. This year, wind, solar and batteries are projected to make up 93% of new electric capacity added to U.S. grids — with the rest coming from power plants that burn natural gas. In many places, building new wind turbines or installing solar panels are often the cheapest ways to generate additional electrons.
But data centers need power around the clock, something wind and solar power alone can’t provide. That’s why, at the nation’s biggest annual gathering of the energy industry in Houston last week, many executives insisted that demand would have to be largely supplied by natural gas plants today and perhaps in the future by advanced nuclear reactors or enhanced geothermal plants, which can generate electricity at all hours.
“The AI revolution is coming, it’s going to be big, it’s going to take a lot of power,” said Ryan Lance, CEO of the oil giant ConocoPhillips. “And gas is going to be right at the forefront of driving that power demand.”
Ketchum had a different view. NextEra already owns a fleet of 19 gas-fired power plants, one of the nation’s largest, and plans to build even more gas units as the need for electricity grows. But Ketchum said that wind, solar and batteries will be just as important for meeting rising demand over the next few years.
A big reason, he explained, is that power companies now have to wait up to five years to order new gas turbines as manufacturers struggle to keep up with global demand. Any new gas projects that aren’t already under development are unlikely to come online before 2030, he said. Other nascent technologies like advanced nuclear power are even further off.
By contrast, many wind and solar projects can be built within 12 to 18 months.
The cost of building new gas power plants has also nearly tripled since the inflation shock of 2022, Ketchum said, while wind and solar prices have increased only modestly.
Ketchum added that the intermittent nature of renewables isn’t always a problem, since wind and solar are just one component of a larger electric system. Some regions might have gas turbines that don’t currently run much at night, so ramping those up and then adding solar and batteries for the daytime could help provide additional round-the-clock power.
“Look, nobody’s built more gas-fired generation in the last 20 years than we have, and we agree we’re going to need more gas,” Ketchum said. “But there’s a time problem and there’s a cost problem. So our message is, don’t pull away from renewables, because they’re the only thing we have as a country that we can build to meet the demand that’s here right now and that’s really low cost.”
That message is starting to catch on with some conservative lawmakers. As Republican leaders search for trillions of dollars in offsets to pay for tax cuts, at least 21 GOP House members signed a letter this month urging the preservation of incentives for low-carbon power sources — including wind, solar, hydropower, nuclear and geothermal — that were part of a 2022 climate law signed by President Joe Biden.
For now, many Trump administration officials remain deeply skeptical of renewables. In Houston last week, Chris Wright, the new U.S. energy secretary, said that wind and solar power weren’t nearly as useful as natural gas, and often trigger local opposition.
“Wind has been singled out because it’s had a singularly poor record of driving up prices and getting increasing citizen outrage, whether you’re a farm or you’re in a coastal community,” Wright said.
“Everywhere wind and solar penetration have increased significantly, prices went up,” Wright said. (That isn’t always true: While California’s electricity rates have jumped as rooftop solar panels have proliferated, Texas has seen its prices decline even as wind and solar now provide one-quarter of the state’s power.)
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