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Donald Trump pledged to push for “American energy dominance” throughout his 2024 presidential campaign, powered by an aggressive expansion of domestic fossil fuel production. He kept that promise in his second administration while also eliminating billions of dollars in federal support for clean energy projects.
That hasn’t been good for Americans’ pocketbooks, though. Sure, a gallon of gasoline is slightly cheaper than a year ago, but that’s more than offset by higher electric power costs, with utility rates rising more than twice as fast as overall inflation. And it turns out that global demand for U.S. oil, gas and coal isn’t keeping up with worldwide sales of Chinese green energy technology.
Chinese exports of clean energy-related products this year through July total $120 billion, according to Bloomberg, using data from the U.S. Energy Department, Energy Information Administration, China’s GACC and energy researcher Ember. By comparison, the U.S. exported just $80 billion of carbon-based energy in the same period. It continues a trend seen after China’s clean energy exports totalled $180 billion in 2024, $30 billion more than the $150 billion the U.S. got selling fossil fuels around the world. The gap is likely widening–Chinese clean tech exports were worth $20.3 billion in August alone, according to Ember.
Rapid growth in renewable power demand around the world is easy to explain: it’s cheaper and can be installed faster than traditional sources of electricity. That’s why in the first half of 2025, additions of new solar and wind power were the fastest-growing source of electricity generation, overtaking coal worldwide for the first time. And in that booming market, China is by far the world’s dominant supplier. Unfortunately, Trump’s current policies and reversal of Biden-era programs ensure the U.S. will fall even farther behind.
Those now revoked tax credits helped to kick off a manufacturing boom in America, generating hundreds of billions of dollars in private investments and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. New factories went up all over the country, making batteries, clean vehicles and energy-efficient products for businesses and homeowners. It was also bringing down energy costs for consumers. Now that momentum is reversing.
“In terms of the global arms race for clean energy jobs and investment, the U.S. went from the middle of the pack to the front basically overnight” with the Biden programs that Trump has eliminated, Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in a statement. But the budget bill Republicans passed on a party-line vote and that Trump signed into law this summer reversed that. “Manufacturing projects are being canceled. Jobs are being lost. Utility bills are rising.”
Trump may make good on his promise of increasing carbon energy output, but it’s a resource much of the world is losing interest in.
The Big Read
A $250 Million Plan To Pull Lithium For Batteries From The Great Salt Lake
The U.S. could become a major supplier of lithium for batteries in the next few years after the Trump administration took a stake in the developer of a massive mine in Nevada. But Silicon Valley startup Lilac Solutions thinks it’s got a better idea that avoids the higher costs and environmental harms of traditional mining: extract the pricey mineral from briny water at oil fields and sites like the Great Salt Lake in Utah instead of digging it out of the ground.
Oakland-based Lilac, which has been refining its patented ion-exchange technology for lithium extraction since its founding nearly a decade ago, is raising $250 million to build its first commercial processing facility at the Great Salt Lake that could produce 5,000 metric tons of lithium per year by 2028. If all goes well, that’s just the start as the company looks to help energy companies pull lithium out of massive underground brine deposits that are often a byproduct of active oil and gas fields across the U.S., such as the Smackover Formation, the remnant of an ancient sea that stretches from Texas to Florida, according to CEO Raef Sully.
Compared to the amount of lithium that can be pulled from conventional mines, “brine is probably orders of magnitude larger,” Sully told Forbes.
Brine projects in the Smackover region that companies such as Standard Lithium, ExxonMobil and Chevron are developing promise to yield hundreds of thousands of tons of lithium annually. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated in a study last year that there could be up to 19 million tons of lithium in the Smackover in Arkansas alone. “We estimate there is enough dissolved lithium present in that region to replace U.S. imports of lithium and more,” said USGS hydrologist Katherine Knierim, the study’s principal researcher.
Read more here
Hot Topic
Former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, co-chair of America Is All In, on state and local efforts to fight climate change
Can you elaborate on what America Is All In is doing as the federal government reverses U.S. climate policy?
First, there’s no ifs about it: We’re not getting the kind of work at the federal level that we need to protect our health, our wellbeing, our economy. So we are really in what I would call a pickle at this point. But having said that, there are huge opportunities out there and we’re going to grab them. [Cleveland] Mayor Bibb is my colleague and so are Governor Newsom and Governor Pritzker. It’s about America is all in and damn it, we are all in. This federal government is not going to take away our rights and our ability to have a healthy environment and a strong economy, which is exactly the opposite of what they are doing.
America Is All In is about gathering together our mayors, our elected officials, our colleagues at the community level. It’s about bringing people together with hope and opportunity. It’s about forgetting what’s going on in the federal government and actually doing what’s right for all of us.
It’s a great opportunity now. We’re growing this initiative. America Is All In is really going to be about how we once again grab the opportunity of our lifetime and move forward. Regardless of what the federal government is thinking about or wants to do, we are going to take it over. We are going to work hard at the subnational level. We’re going to work hard at the community level. And we’re going to start building the kind of future our kids deserve. That’s what America Is All In is about.
Are there some specific programs right now that you’re focused on?
We want to make sure that the Inflation Reduction Act continues to provide progress for us. One of the interesting things about it is not just that America Is All In is working domestically, but we’re going to work internationally as well. Part of this is making sure people understand that we still have opportunities ahead and we have to grab those. We’ve lost a lot in the Inflation Reduction Act, but honestly, we have to move beyond that and understand the power of individuals and communities in this space. It’s enormously important for us to have an international presence. If this president isn’t interested in positioning us in a way that’s going to keep us safe and healthy, then we have to do it ourselves. We just need to move forward. And the exciting thing is that we’re not just expanding domestically, but internationally. We are going to be [at the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference] in Belém, [Brazil].
We are going to go beyond the United States of America so that people everywhere can see us again–so they don’t just look at the Trump administration–but they look at the people in the United States and recognize that we are going to keep moving forward.
There are many opportunities that we have and I think you know them and certainly Mayor Bibb knows, but there are damages that we can’t avoid. We have an administration that doesn’t want to agree that climate change even exists. They’re cutting out our scientists at the federal level, so they can’t tell the truth about what’s going on in the world. And this can go on and on and on and on. But the thing that I wake up every morning and say to myself is we can’t let these people take away our sense of hope and opportunity. That’s exactly what they want. They want us to get so angry that you’re sitting around in a dither.
But I ain’t dithering around, baby. We just have to get hold of ourselves. Really, we own this place. It’s our country. So I’m excited about it and there’s so many things that we’re going to do both domestically and internationally that are going to remind people that we have the power. It is ours to use and we’re just going to go after it.
See the conversation here
What Else We’re Reading
Recipients of the 2025 Nobel Prize for Chemistry included Dr. Omar Yaghi. Current Climate spoke with him last year about using his research to capture CO2 (Forbes)
Trump cancels Nevada solar project that would have produced enough renewable energy for 2 million homes (The Guardian)
America’s biggest offshore wind farm will be online in six months (Canary Media)
Ukraine turns to batteries and renewable power to keep the lights on during war with Russia (Wall Street Journal)
Buildings turn to “ice batteries” for sustainable air conditioning (Associated Press)
A project in Boston is upgrading public housing with heat pumps to cut costs while reducing emissions (Bloomberg)
The biggest U.S. coal sale on federal land in over a decade draws a single bid of $186,000–less than a penny per ton (Associated Press)
Study finds U.S. asthma inhalers produce the same amount of emissions as 500,000 cars (Al Jazeera)
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