Trump’s Shadow Ban on America’s Energy Future

When President Trump took office early this year, he immediately declared an “energy emergency” and said his administration would deliver U.S. energy dominance. It would blast through regulatory hurdles, unleash new investments in American production and cut consumers’ power and fuel bills in half.  

Welp. So much for that.  

Six months in, this administration has only unleashed a myopic campaign to send us back to an energy system that is less secure, more expensive, and much, much dirtier. Instead of bringing about energy dominance, Trump has stifled the cheapest and fastest-growing new energy sources, endangering our ability to meet the surging demand for electricity from data centers and the hoped-for manufacturing renaissance.  

In just the last few weeks, the Trump administration erected onerous permitting hurdles for new solar and wind projects on public lands. The mega tax bill he signed axed support for clean energy, putting thousands of new projects in doubt, which will raise homeowners’ electricity bills. And it yanked federal support for much-needed interstate power transmission lines. 

Any one of these actions would be epic on its own. Taken together, they reveal an administration more focused on picking winners and losers than on delivering real results for businesses and consumers. If this is “energy dominance,” it’s one defined by cancellations, rollbacks, and red tape. 

This month, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced that all new solar and wind projects on public lands must now receive his personal approval. The U.S. Department of the Interior has more than 100 wind and solar applications under review, meaning that routine, everyday decisions that were once the responsibility of agency field staff must now get sent to Washington, D.C., for Burgum’s personal sign-off. 

Not to be outdone, U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright abruptly canceled a $4.9 billion loan guarantee for the Grain Belt Express, an 800-mile, high-voltage power transmission line designed to carry thousands of megawatts of energy from Kansas across the Midwest. With the nation in desperate need of more power lines to get electricity from the windy Midwest to consumers in the East and West, this one line promised up to $52 billion in consumer savings while supporting 4,000 jobs.  

Of course, oil and coal companies face no such bureaucratic stranglehold. Adding a political bottleneck at the top sends a clear message: Clean energy is not welcome here. And since it is the cheapest and quickest to build, no new clean energy means less electricity supply overall—and higher utility bills for all of us.  

Meanwhile, the tax credits for electric vehicles and solar and wind energy that were approved by Congress in 2022 have now been largely repealed by Republicans in the current Congress as part of their massive tax cut that overwhelmingly benefits the wealthiest Americans. Repealing these credits is sending shock waves through the energy sector with 35 projects totaling more than $22 billion in investments already canceled this year, according to the business group E2. Over time, these and other cancellations could raise the average household’s energy bill by a whopping $165 a year.  

If it seems hard to believe that this administration would be hiking the bills that Americans pay at the pump and for utilities, you don’t need to take my word for it. Just check out the analysis released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this past week. As it proposed scrapping tailpipe emissions rules, it listed as one main reason that electricity prices would be higher than anticipated, and so drivers wouldn’t want to switch to electric vehicles.  

The primary reasons it cited for spiking electricity prices? Surging demand from data centers and much less new energy from solar and wind because of the gutting of the tax credits.  

If you need confirmation that we need all the electricity we can get, look no further than the latest power auction for 13 eastern and midwestern states, which saw prices hit a record high of $16 billion—eight times higher than just two years ago. There are plenty of reasons for this, but the broader reality is clear: Data centers are driving massive demand growth, and the grid does not have enough supply to keep up. 

Instead of building for the future, the administration is doubling down: propping up old, dirty power plants while sidelining the clean, modern infrastructure that could reduce costs and improve resilience. And consumers are now being asked to pay the price with their lungs—and their pocketbooks.  

It is not too late for the Trump administration to change course, but the damage is mounting. The current approach of canceling major infrastructure investments, gutting incentives, and injecting political interference into basic energy policy is not a strategy—it is sabotage. This isn’t energy dominance. It’s deliberate decline.