Trump’s victory promises to shake up U.S. energy and climate policy, analysts and activists say

During a victory speech early Wednesday, Donald Trump boasted of the country’s vast reserves of oil and natural gas.

“We have more liquid gold than any country in the world. More than Saudi Arabia. We have more than Russia. Bobby, stay away from the liquid gold,” Trump told Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former environmental lawyer and presidential candidate who could play a role in shaping health policy in the next Trump administration.

Trump’s goal in a second term will be to boost fossil-fuel production, his campaign has said. But he will be entering the White House after what will almost certainly be the hottest year on record in 2024. Greenhouse gas emissions, which trap heat and mainly come from burning fossil fuels, reached an all-time high last year. And global temperatures are on track to rise to a level that scientists say will heighten the risk of much more dangerous climate impacts, from more destructive storms and heat waves to rising sea levels that could swamp coastal cities.

Trump, however, has long cast doubt on the scientific consensus that the Earth is getting hotter primarily because of human-caused emissions. In recent months, Trump railed against wind turbines and electric vehicles, which experts say would help curb climate pollution, and he threatened to claw back unspent climate funding.

Yet, a second Trump administration will not be able to stop the country’s transition to cleaner sources of energy, analysts and activists say. Costs for a lot of those technologies are falling fast. Companies are under pressure from their customers and investors to deal with climate change. And states led by Democrats and Republicans alike are reaping economic benefits from new factories and power plants that have received government support.

“It’s not that our job hasn’t gotten harder” with Trump’s reelection, says Mindy Lubber, chief executive of Ceres, a nonprofit that advocates for clean energy. “But there is a legitimate vein of opportunism, of entrepreneurial spirit, of new jobs, of new economics, of business people, of entrepreneurs, of business school leaders who are saying, ‘We need to deal with climate change because of the financial risk, the material risk and, of course, the human risk.’”